Thinking of Jim

Morrison, that is. Specifically:

The cars hiss by my window
Like the waves down on the beach

There are things that surround us, which we don't notice because they surround us. The gentle, wistful, shy sound of car tyres on rain-wet streets falls into this category: for three of the four seasons, I hear the cars hissing by and am vaguely charmed by the sound, though it seldom rises to my consciousness. Then with the onset of winter, it stops: car tyres in snow make a different (lesser, uncharming) noise, and snow muffles sound in any case. I seldom consciously notice this change as autumn shades into winter: how could one know at the time that this particular rainfall would be the last of the year?

It's raining this evening, the first precipitation since the thaw that ended winter, and so for the first time in months I am listening to the sound of the sea.