“The Natural” by Maxwell James
--page 5

         Just then, I heard the noise for the first time, or noticed it for the first time, because there was along with it the knowledge that it had always been there, and would never allow me not to notice it again. It was not one noise, but many different noises finding similarities, and singing in concert—the clinks of coffee cups against saucers, the rustling of newspaper pages, chair legs scraping against the hardwood floor—all the forgotten sounds that I’d passed over so many times before. They suddenly became inescapable, seemed to tell me that I was becoming included within their monolithic buzz. What the noise told me, as I was alone with it, immersed in it as everyone else rushed around, oblivious to it and to me, was that something would have to change.

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