Musical balloon

I glanced out of the window while I was drinking my coffee: a musical balloon was floating gently in the calm morning air. I picked up my camera and went outside. There was no rush. The pilot drifted his craft around the perimeter of our neighborhood at a gentle pace. I tracked him over the rooftops and trees as the sun began to warm the air. I wondered what the musical notation on the ballon would sound like and if Charlie Chester would be able to name that tune!

It was quiet abroad; hushed almost. Several bicyclists rode by and a few people were out walking. A dog on a mission raced towards me and stopped to check me out. Clearly I was not part of his mission because he dashed off at top speed. The ballon slowly sank out of sight.

I was reminded of a computer game that one of my office colleagues from two decades past in the old country would play incessantly with the deliberate if slightly irrational intention of losing. He did so just to hear the sound effect that played for a stricken balloon in the game descending to its demise. A MIDI version of the third movement, Marche funèbre, from the Piano Sonata No.2 in B-flat minor Op.35 by Frédéric Chopin is permanently burned into my temporal lobe, alongside Three Blind Mice, but that is a story for another time.