The Din

I was late getting to the doublewide that I call my office this morning. The (prescription) drugs that I am taking help me sleep later in the morning, even though the local landscape crews routinely violate the local noise ordinances - often starting their infernal noisemaking machines before 7am. Sometimes, you just want to go down there and grab the thirty-odd-six out of the hall closet and shoot the tires out of their truck, but I can tell you from experience, the so-called authorities frown on such nonverbal attempts at communication. You tell them, these mecacahs don't fucking speak English; they say, sir, you can't discharge a firearm within the city limits, especially to damage property. And on and on it goes. So, you might as well just stay in bed and pretend that the lawn machine noise is like the constant hum that the drugs make in your head anyhow.

There is no peace and quiet in the suburbs. On the 2 mile route that I walk every day, there are several tear-down sites. One about 200 yards up the hill from my house is just a big hole in the ground where they have completely removed all traces of the former small ranch house that dwelt on that lot. Pipes, concrete foundation, hydrangia plants - everything. There is a sign that offers to build to suit owner. Every time I walk by and look at the sign my head starts to ache thinking that I will be hearing them pounding and sawing for 4 months while they build a new mansion on the site.
The noise ordinance actually permits them to start banging and sawing at 7am on construction sites. There really ought to be a law against them playing rap music on their big boomboxes. The only positive aspect of this is that all construction sites are silent at 4pm when all the workers quit making noise, jump into their pickup trucks, and go to bars to get drunk.

So, there I was standing outside the doublewide at 9am this morning looking up at a clear blue sky - marked only by the vapor trails of jets careening through the stratosphere on their noisy arcs to their destinations. There is a certain echo of jet plane engines in a cool cloudless autumn sky that I never noticed before 9/11/2001.

I began to think of my upcoming vacation flight to London, the ephemeral nature of nature, the treasure of the present moment. The humming in my head seemed to go away, like someone somewhere had closed a window. The Ativan was kicking in. Finally. Good stuff that.

I opened the door to the new FEMA trailer and went inside. The crew, as usual, was on break. Nobody paid any attention to me. George was explaining how the junk scientists had just proven the existence of dark matter in the universe. Lardass thought it was suspicious that in the same month they also discovered three new planets and Jon benet Ramsey's murderer.