Creative Non-Fiction (Both Auditory & Weekly): Street Musicians, Video Games, and Wandering Thoughts

This week's creative non-fiction is really meta-writing, a window into a sleepy morning trying to write but continually getting distracted.

So many songs float through my head as I’m sitting down to write in the last few moments before leaving for work. The cicadas have already started their abrasive chorus outside, started working their magic, making the air seem hotter, heavier. I don’t care for this notebook anymore, I want to move into the cute spiral bound banana paper notebook with the owl on it.

I recommit to getting through these last few pages and strains of a melody from the street musician at the farmers market drift through my memory. She was a flautist, I recognized the song. My fingers had traversed the same ground once.

In the shower down the hall my husband whistles a tune and I say, “wow, Final Fantasy VII?” and immediately think how it’s a lucky guy whose girl can play that sort of name that tune. I had an orchestration of that theme once, which makes me think of the music in Darnassus. Pushing video games from my mind suddenly seems difficult.

A diesel F-250 idles out in the alley, the cicadas are still going, I forget about the video games and think of the street musician again. There aren’t enough street musicians in Baltimore. One time I cried in a New York City subway station, my heart wrung out by a single-stringed Asian instrument.

My eyes feel swollen. The morning light offsets the mantle of exhaustion, somehow I keep writing. Three and a half pages to the end of this notebook, to my entry into the banana paper pages and the owl. A flock of pigeons takes off from the roof, wings slapping the air. The truck leaves and the cicadas seem distant for just a moment.

My eyes really do feel puffy. I don’t remember this happening quite the same when I was younger. The clock strikes 8:28 and it’s time to start out to the bus. Any later and I might forget my lunch in the rush. It’s time for my day to begin.