Beauty of a Sunday

There's an air of detachment that hangs around Sunday that I've always enjoyed drowning in. When I sold homes, Sundays were for open houses and most of the ones I held were in out of the way streets in down market years where if I got one or two people coming through in the two and a half hours I was there, I'd count myself lucky. But this wasn't time wasted. In the homes of other people, the stillness of Sunday afternoons with the sunlight filtering through the windows and settling dust took on a noise of its own. A distant dog barking from the neighbor's yard, lone cars returning to driveways after church or time at the beach, the house kneeling down and taking a rest in the heat all became whispers of the fullness of the passing moments.

At times, the normally busy street outside my apartment patio falls dead in the waning moments of the afternoon, like the world has disappeared and left me with a vast and empty concrete playground. But it's a fragile illusion, held in place only as long as I don't step out the door and into the space of others. The phone falls silent, the birds take up residence in the tree outside and the wind brushes leaves down onto the sidewalk with soft taps.

And then, for maybe five or ten minutes, I can be truly alone.