Mobile, Alabama
August 4, 2005
Wow. I can hear birds. The drops of rain as it spills from the leaves of the trees overhead, remnants of the typical afternoon thunderstorm that crawls over us daily now. Off in the distance, the rumble of thunder echos back to me. The rest is silence. Amazing. No air conditioner roaring overhead, so clanging and banging of the neighbor’s mobile home ancient air conditioner wheezing and coughing to keep up next door. Just the tap of the keyboard keys as I write this. Why the hell do keyboards have to make sounds anyway? To let you know you made contact? To emulate the ancient typewriters? Oh, please! Stupid. If the letters appear on the screen, the keyboard has done it’s work. You shouldn’t have to HEAR it.
Ah, you can tell, the silence is already starting to irritate me. It’s not the silence but the intrusion of sound into the silence. My ears can’t cope. It’s been a couple months of non-stop air conditioning roars, day and night. My ears don’t know what to do.
In an hour or less, the air conditioner will be back on. For right now, I’m sitting, still sweating, but cooler, as the thermometer drops below 80. The door is open, and other than this damn keyboard, the silence of nature surrounds me.
Well, I should get up and turn the fan on at least, to suck the cool air into the trailer, but for a moment, there is silence. More noise pollution.
Still, for a few minutes, what a nice change.