connoisseur of breath

artwork by andalib - (hope he doesn't mind my thievery).

i would have expected that the minutes, hours, days would lurch to a crawl but in fact the moments that make up my waking hours have sped up, even the nights seem too short and all too soon i'm woken by the plaintive sound of my alarm. i'm happy with the tone i've chosen - considering my choices were limited to only the most irritating on the planet. i found one that sounds more like it is beseeching me to open my eyes, more of a plea rather than demanding it with all the cacophony of morning with its already-jarring brightness and its glittery ambush of 'new day, new life' promise. i have a love/hate relationship with certain tones and noises and voices and whispers. i'm easily irked by the sounds of people eating, chewing, slurping, sipping...but i only notice if we are in a quiet space and i'm not eating myself. it's not that i expect the activity to be mute, i mean i do appreciate the beauty of a crunchy green apple, i just don't want a blow-by-blow account of the process. i used to love the ringtone i picked for my cell phone in haifa because it signalled good things, great conversation, details for a night's plans, laughter, voices from far away, voices i had missed. i have grown to despise various songs only because i chose them as the 'wake up track' in our cd alarm clock. i guess i don't really like being woken up. unless it is spontaneous. perhaps my puppy pressing his wet nose into my forehead, or my baby sister placed in bed next to me when she was only 3 months old - looking at her lengthy lashes and feeling that surge of pride that only a sibling is entitled to. i love the sound of rain pouring down - tennessee rain is incredible, makes up for living in melbourne for 2 years and seeing rain only a handful of times. poor dry australia. i enjoy the sound of the ocean. but really, who doesn't? i want to meet someone, anyone, that doesn't love the ocean. i wonder if that person even exists? even in this land-locked state i'm sure every soul has an affinity for these vast bodies of water. that's why it is lame when singles write that their hobby is to 'walk along the beach' because, seriously, that is so unoriginal. if you didn't like to walk along a beach you would be unique and special, and perhaps somewhat sad. i do know people who don't like sand though - so how do i reconcile that? if you don't care for sand you may not care for ocean either. it's a quandary.