Untitled And Unfinished...

Glancing out the window of her bedroom, the woman noticed changes in the sky. The gradual progression from  blue to shadowy gray signaled the beginning of her favourite time of day, dusk. Pulling away from her desk, she shut down her computer, temporarily freeing the room and herself from its almost omnipresent fan, a noise she had grown so accustomed to that it barely dented her consciousness anymore, furthering her belief that the world had become one large cacophony of overbearing sound.

As much as she used and saw the benefit of computers and other forms of technology, this barely fiftysomething often found herself longing for silence, for life beyond the screen, a symphony of cicadas and frogs found at the heart of Spring, beyond the walls of small flats, shops and businesses now dominating almost every suburban landscape.

Adjusting her grip on the rims of her chair, she rolled out of the room, pausing to turn  so she could see beyond the flats' open screen door. A faint breeze, punctuated by alternating frogsong, swept into her thoughts  as she noted the lone car in front of her building. Making her way to the building's backside, she entered its carefully tended courtyard, a haven of trees and pruned hedges that temporarily kept the din rising from the adjacent  rodeway at bay.

In this spot, as the sun set, it was easy to forget the cares of the day. Closing her eyes for just a moment, she concentrated on slowly inhaling and exhaling, an exercise practised daily in her former life as a student of hatha yoga. She was soon still and almost asleep when the blaring claxons of an ambulance broke her calm...