Sky fetish, part 1

Life from my balcony is all about sky, breeze and the sounds of life. Mostly sky.

Friends visiting the townhome where I used to live often commented on how quiet it was. The most common sounds in my enclosed courtyard were the splashing of my pond, my rocker scraping stone and the occasional mad whir of hummingbird wings. The near-silence was one of the things I liked most about my home on the farthest outskirts of the city.

My favorite thing was that I could see both the sunrise and the sunset from my red rocker.

Now, in my urban third-floor nest, the soundtrack of life from my balcony includes the steady hum of a nearby freeway, the sudden bleet of a siren from the fire station a block away, the iconic sound of the train whistle half a mile beyond the trees, plus people, car doors, birds and more birds, rustling wind. As much as I treasure silence, I now find great satisfaction in the continuous reminder of life being played out within shouting distance of me.

And despite the unceasing sound, I always have a deep sense of serenity on my balcony. I think it’s because of the sky, which from the third floor feels both in my face and somehow even more distant.

Every day, the sky show is different. The moon changes shape and size. Clouds are fat or thin or white or purple. Today the treetops are green and in 60 days — an atom’s heartbeat — they will be flirting with gold and orange. Last night, heat lightning. At this time of the evening, the lights of passing planes begin to show themselves far in the distance, so far they move at a crawl, going nowhere until they vanish. I’m not even a speck from their window as I sit  on my balcony, wanting never to give up the night and go inside.

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