Sounds inside and outside the study

1. Sally snoring the righteous snore of a dog who has done a day's work (and is thinking of asking for a raise).

2. Domestic squabble between squirrels on tree stump directly beyond the window.

.3. The clatter and rumble of a freight train crashing through on its way north to ?

4. The sound borne on a misty night's air of someone picking out show tunes on an out-of-tune piano.

5. A dog from down the road, barking into the night at some insult real or imagined.

6. A robot call from the Good Will wanting me to press 1 if I have any clothing, books, or useful goods for pick-up by a truck that will be in my neighborhood tomorrow.h

7. The hiss of tire treads reacting to asphalt as a car roars up Hot Springs Road toward Mountain Drive.

8. The sound system on a MacBook, celebrating the night with some solo piano of Fred Hersch playing songs of Thelonious Monk, making them sound anomalously like Maurice Ravel.

9. A scurrying of tiny, clawed feet skittering across the roof. May be rats; squirrels tend to crash early.

10. And now a soggy, squishy quiet, where you realize the quiet actually has a degree of character to it that emerges as a kind of suburban shyness, a stillness without ambition of being anything more. Almost as preternatural as being awakened in the middle of the night by the awareness of a train not passing or a band of coyotes not, for a change, engaged in barbershop quartet.

11. Quiet out there.