The song of four friends playing cards

I lay up in the loft and tried to sleep but gave up on avoiding listening to the boys downstairs playing euchre and talking about the cities where they each planned to move and just opened my eyes and stared at the cedar ceiling and opened my ears to learn what I could from the words and maybe end up falling asleep to them like a bedtime story and even if not oh well this too shall pass I told myself and a good opportunity to practice letting go of my own desires like wanting to fall asleep and instead meditating on the present listening to the words not only as vehicles of meaning driving from their mouths to my ears with some sort of useful information in tow but also as just sounds like what I read in a spiritual book about how when you look and see a dog it’s really something before you say in your mind oh that’s a dog it’s the color and the shape as if you were seeing a dog for the first time or even just seeing in general for the first time not knowing that you could walk up and feel its fur so I lay and listened and tried to just hear the noise and furrow my brow and wonder ah what is sound what are these noises laughs exclamations interruptions oohs and ahhs glasses being set down on the table cards being shuffled altogether the art of the opposite of a silent movie a pictureless film with only one long song for its whole soundtrack the song of four friends playing cards in the living room at night.