Alone is never really alone. If you are sitting in front of your computer screen, as I am writing this, then you are not likely alone. Alone is when you close all media off in the house and listen. Listen to the wind against the window and it shudders the glass in the frame in pulses that remind you this is no longer fall weather, but the onset of winter.
If you listen well enough, you shiver, not because you are cold but because you sense the cold on the exterior of the glass. You listen for the creaking and cracking sounds of the dog walking across the 150 year old floor boards. The house is old but so is the dog. His legs make sounds that chip at his hip to cause him to limp with his hind left hip. Only if you listen could you have noticed.
The mouse in the wall scurries to find a place to hide. Then you think, I have mice in the wall. You can deal with that later as the sounds increase around you and the cars on road are now discernible. You know that last vehicle was a truck, so you look out the window to confirm your skill. A branch rustles against the house and the siding whines with scrapping sounds that reminds of a black board scrapping.
The variety of sounds begin to speak to you of the various memories in the house. The parties of family and friends. You reminisce of each conversation the arguments that were fought over meals. Each was important at the time but now they seem so silly in retrospect. Funny when we are alone enough how we can listen so much to all things in our home. The present can become the past so easily. Who said time machines were not real?
