Monday. Finishing the last of my morning coffee before it grows cold, and lost in my thoughts and the space heater next to me pulses out the warm air that it is increasingly unnecessary at this point of spring, but which I retain the usage of, the way a man stubbornly stays in bed on a chilly morning.
My thoughts turn to my writing project, on which I got stuck again. My mind stumbles upon the solution, that might break the ice jam at last. It depends on help from an old friend. But that is a good thing after all? Dependency on others frightens me as it takes things partially out of my control. Yet this is exactly the reason it is good for me perhaps.
As my mind comes to a pause, I notice through the blinds that the sky has turned a pale grey blue in the east. Moreover, and more significantly I hear the solitary chirping of a bird outside, probably in the tree outside my window. It sings in bursts of notes, each maybe five seconds long.
I listen to the rhythm and pitch to discern repeated patterns. As I do, I imagine I am listening to one side of phone conversation, except through some filter where the phonemes have been transformed into pure notes. I imagine I can almost hear the words through this filter as the person speaking narrates their day to the other party.
My paternal grandfather, who was a high school biology teacher in my hometown in Iowa, would surely be able to tell me the name of this bird, or at least make a good guess. I possess no such bird knowledge and could only start naming birds I know which exist here in the Sonoran desert, of which there are more species here than anywhere else in the United States. The desert here is not barren, only dry. The heat, in fact, makes it a dry jungle.
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