From the second story of our house the highway sounds like an ocean. The similarity is enhanced when the sun shines brightly onto the exterior walls of the apartment building visible from the upstairs rooms on the northern side of our house. To us the roar is constant, dissipating after we have fallen asleep, and picking up again before we are awake.
Our street runs east to west, and the rising sun illuminates the rooms on the eastern side–the spare bedroom, the dining room–and in the evening the setting sun shines into the house’s western-facing rooms–the master bedroom, the study.
Sometimes as we are finishing our final cycle of dreams, almost awake, early in the morning, the dog asleep in his bed next to ours, snoring quietly, the actual orientation of the highway and the rooms is distorted in our minds, and for a few moments before fully waking it is as though the highway near our house, parallel to our street, is rotated ninety degrees, and it is as though the sun rises over our house as it does the sea, and the roar of the highway traffic is more like the ocean than ever. I grasp at this image, but it fades as we wake up completely, leaving the slightly flawed analogy intact.
Alex B. Fine 