So, as it were, I found myself wandering the streets of this magnificent northwest city. Why? I was tired but no sleep would come to me. I had been writing a book and I came to a place where the two main threads collided with each other … and exploded to bits. You know, when the train that crossed the country (what’s that called … I’m drawing a blank … oh it’s the Trans-Continental Railway (or approximately that — I asked my cell phone).
Anyway, the insomnia (I couldn’t remember that word either, so I asked my wife and she told me) drove me out of the bedroom and onto the sidewalks so I could burn off some energy and clear my thoughts. Now, midnight in this Pacific northwest population-magnet is not a quiet time. In fact, there is no quiet time in this haven of fish markets and roasted coffee beans.
I heard noises of trucks and cars and construction equipment; sirens and whistles and car horns; marching band horns and drums and crowds yelling and people shouting, cheering, laughing, or jeering; My ears caught the cockle-doodle-doo of the good-morning rooster and the cluck, cluck, cluck of the truthful hens (i.e, they were not lying, they were laying)I heard the cry of a hawk, the bark of a blue heron, and the shrill, familiar screech of the Nebraska Sandhills Crane. I heard dogs and cats, pigs and bats, sheep, goats; I heard horses and donkeys and cows mooing or lowing or whatever they do. As they say, the ox and the ass were noisy too.
Then, like being struck by ten Yamaha tubas and a Steinway piano falling from the sky, it hit me. I heard absolutely no baby chicks. No, not a one.
You could say that I was: PEEPLESS IN SEATTLE.