City symphony

3:00 in the afternoon, and she's asleep: worn out, I suppose, from her morning fun run with L. The medal that she earned for participating - that all of the kids, in a surprisingly literal illustration of the common complaint about this generation of kids, earned - dangles from her neck; her runner's bib is crinkled beneath her, still pinned to her back.

So I pull over the car on this glorious Saturday, park on the side of a quiet diagonal street, and roll down the windows. I take up Michael Walzer's The Revolution of the Saints, an influential history of early Puritan political thought, and idly leaf through it, looking for references to action and passivity. But soon I find myself unable to ignore the symphony of sounds that washes in through our windows:

The passing cars, behind us, whoosh like waves of surf on a gently inclined sandy beach.
A student rolling a large bin of household items drops a lamp, which makes a large, hollow sound.
A robin, hopping near to the car and eyeing me warily, twitters as if to reassure himself.
The wind occasionally picks up, filling the arena and overshadowing every other sound.
A passing police motorcade is accompanied by a series of blurting sirens.
A car door slams in the middle distance: a dull, airy, resolute thud.

And as I turn another page, the supple, leafy flexibility of the printed page rasps, as Cleo sleeps on, three feet behind me and a world away.