April 4, part two: red (8 minutes)

a redheaded finch (I guess) pecks at the seeds in the feeder. sometimes he sings.

the red flag on the mailbox is up. some mail to go out.
there are two mailboxes side by side, one is red, the other is black.
the neighbor across the street drives a black volvo. he just pulled up. red brake lights.
a red bumper sticker, small, square, a white line across it from the upper left corner to the bottom right one. he's a diver I guess.
there's an ornament hanging from our porch, cloth bird-type creatures, a single bell at the bottom which hardly ever rings. two of the bird creatures are red, the others are blue, green, orange.
there's a red candle in an old lamp converted to a candle holder on the blue trunk.
american spirit red roll-your-own tobacco package.
a construction site down the street with a red dumpster out front.
a police car or ambulance siren somewhere in the distance, fading, returning, fading. surely red lights are flashing.
the weather turned cooler. i'm wearing a long sleeve shirt with red stripes on it.
a dead plant hangs in a red planter on the far side of the porch.
a seat cushion mostly red, but yellow and pink too.
another house being remodeled down the street. red door frames in the middle of white paper, TYVEK printed on them.
kids toys, a porch swing, red plastic.
a bicycle reflector.
the red hat of a garden gnome.
a sticker in the front window of my truck for a music festival l. was in when she owned the truck.

a red stop sign on a yellow pole.

April 4, part one: alarm (8 minutes)

I set the alarm for an unusual amount of time, not 10 or 20 or even 5 minutes, so I wouldn't know when to expect it. I find that it takes me 10 minutes a page on average, so I usually know when my writing time is up. I want to be surprised when my writing time is up. I want to by surprised by the alarm.

I heard an odd alarm going off earlier today. It was kind of like an emergency vehicle siren, but it was different somehow, like it was coming from the sky, coming from all around. It went on for a few minutes, then a man's recorded voice said something. The voice was coming from that same place, on high, all around, like the voice of god perhaps, or maybe Big Brother. I went to S.'s room. "Did you hear that?" He said yeah. "What was he saying?" S. said in a voice mimicking the man's, "ALL CLEAR." I guess it was just a test.

I don't set an alarm to wake up by. I usually wake up six to nine hours after I go to sleep. I don't usually have to be anywhere in the mornings so I don't have to set an alarm. I'm glad about that. If I stay up late, like if it's two or three a.m. and I have to be somewhere, then I have to set the alarm, but that's rare. My cell phone has a pretty gentle alarm so it's not so bad.

I saw the neighbor taking a shower, shaving his legs in the back yard of their house once. That was alarming! You can really only see it from our front porch I think. That was last year, at the end of the summer. Since then he got a girlfriend. He hasn't been showering and shaving outside since then. Maybe it's just---