The door is open; the AC is off. It's 80 degrees out, or so says the gauge and that's fine. There's something real in the slightly sticky overused air on the East side of the metro tonight. I wouldn't want to breathe it all the time, but this is okay.
The gray noise - how should I describe it for those who have crickets or silence - is a sort of waterlike sound that rises and falls. Some of the underlying tone is tire whine from the freeway 15 floors down and 5 blocks away. And there are syllables sometimes a few resembling a sentence, down there on the warm evening sidewalks. Not much is happening. No sirens or Harleys, though they'll be by. They never stay away long.
I hear the bus brakes, and I think air conditioners make sound; not the little window units over in the senior highrise so much as I mean the big tangles of pipe and tanks atop the various buildings. Those contraptions have to make noise, and even though I can't necessarily isolate the sound among everything else, they're very likely suspects.
Most of the stars are on the horizon, and they move UFO-style, descending towards MSP. Along with those flood lamps there are - if you look close - little blinking warning lights. I know those abominations make racket, but we're a good 10 miles from where they land and take off. It wasn't that way when I lived by Lake Nokomis. That wasn't gray noise, they sounded like they were dropping bombs as they took off . . .
. . . ah, see. I knew there'd be a siren.
But all in all it's quiet enough for me to hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. Open the door in the morning, during rush hour - now that's another story entirely.
I know a place out West of Delta, Colorado where you can pull over and walk down the into this unremarkable canyon below the road. There are no farms or streams or animals, except for maybe a scorpion. And if that scorpion moved, you'd know it. Your breath sounds like some Grendel sneaking up behind you.
And then there are all those places where you can hear the crickets and it's not quiet at all. We tell ourselves that's so peaceful, and I'm not saying it isn't (unless the bar's getting out, or a couple drunk friends don't see eye to eye).
Peace is internal I think. It's best not to depend on our surroundings to provide it. If you want, you can turn in to find your happy place. Then take it with you wherever you go. Even into the Longbranch.
But, don't listen to me. Truman Capote would tell you I'm just typing. And he'd be right. I am.
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Comments: 19
Nice touch adding that Truman Capote bit at the end. Great stream of consciousness piece, this is. Wonderful descriptions. Enjoyed it very much.
Marcia, thank you. I do this writing off the cuff very little, and I tried as much as possible to just describe what was going on (or not going on) as it happened.
Dolphi, I find it easier to sleep with background noise, much like people by Niagra Falls and other places. However, downtown St. Paul is largely quiet at night, so when bikers come down the street and rev their motors to hear them echo off the buildings, that's a bit too much contrast. There's also the occasional disagreement among pedestrians, and I find that especially annoying. So we keep the window closed after we go to bed.
The AC in my road-weary Volvo is out of Freon, I won't switch it over to the "new stuff" this summer, because other things are ahead of it on "the list".
The past few weeks have reminded me what it's like to drive with the windows down in city traffic ( I'm reexperiencing things like realizing that the radio can not be turned up loud enough to compensate for traffic noise ).
So, your story is timely for me. "Hot time, summer in the city, back of my neck feelin dirty n' gritty "
Glad the monsoons are back. Today it's only 100°.