I'm still trying to wash stuff up from the semester, with some urgency. Head still full of stuff that needs to be done Now for others, and I'm stalling, spinning my wheels as I try to both get that done and also make the shift back to my writing mind. Forward and back at the same time.
I'm sitting on the couch with the lights out. I've opened a window - can hear crickets and cars, people in the circle below. If I lean my head out I can hear a kind of soft blanket of conversations from people and TVs in the apartments opposite. It's so quiet. For months there has been construction going on at work, and lately they are painting our apartment blocks at home. The cherry-pickers have enormous engines that run a constant loud irregular noise. Before the painting there were weeks of waterblasting, of all the paths and all the covered walkways - the hoses run from tank-trucks which make the same kind of engine noise. And before the water-blasting was renovation on the apartments below and above us - tearing up the tiles and retiling, etc. So it's been pretty inescapable noise pollution since some time last year.
It's very hard to get away here. One can't easily go to an outdoor space (usually too hot) or a public indoor space (almost always crowded) to get peace. So for the night to just sort of fall open like this is beautiful.
But the night is often like this - quiet, open - we just keep the windows closed for the airconditioning, so we never feel it.
It's like this, living on the equator in the 21st century. You're just trying to keep it all out, secure your structure. It's not novel to notice this, on paper, but when you're living it it becomes invisible. It's just what you do to try to make things work. But sooner or later you have to wonder what would happen if it all stopped - the painting, the waterblasting, the construction, the airconditioning, the insecticide fogging, the leaf-blowing.
A green half-sleep would fall over us. Fevers would creep into the dozing. Moss would slip over every surface. Vines would begin work at the cracks and corners of walls. The drains would clog with thick, fat leaves, and the monsoon would have its merry way all over the roads and rooves, opening structures piece by piece.
As soon as I opened the window a striped mosquito flies in to try to bite me. They move so fast, designed to evade a slapping hand or tail. I wonder what it carries that I can't see. And does a mosquito feel different in itself when it's got dengue or malaria? Are they more hungry or more frantic?
Life goes on, doesn't it? Maybe changing uncontrollably quickly, in waste and mismanagement, devolving and fragmenting, but it's so hungry, it goes on.
I'm sitting on the couch with the lights out. I've opened a window - can hear crickets and cars, people in the circle below. If I lean my head out I can hear a kind of soft blanket of conversations from people and TVs in the apartments opposite. It's so quiet. For months there has been construction going on at work, and lately they are painting our apartment blocks at home. The cherry-pickers have enormous engines that run a constant loud irregular noise. Before the painting there were weeks of waterblasting, of all the paths and all the covered walkways - the hoses run from tank-trucks which make the same kind of engine noise. And before the water-blasting was renovation on the apartments below and above us - tearing up the tiles and retiling, etc. So it's been pretty inescapable noise pollution since some time last year.
It's very hard to get away here. One can't easily go to an outdoor space (usually too hot) or a public indoor space (almost always crowded) to get peace. So for the night to just sort of fall open like this is beautiful.
But the night is often like this - quiet, open - we just keep the windows closed for the airconditioning, so we never feel it.
It's like this, living on the equator in the 21st century. You're just trying to keep it all out, secure your structure. It's not novel to notice this, on paper, but when you're living it it becomes invisible. It's just what you do to try to make things work. But sooner or later you have to wonder what would happen if it all stopped - the painting, the waterblasting, the construction, the airconditioning, the insecticide fogging, the leaf-blowing.
A green half-sleep would fall over us. Fevers would creep into the dozing. Moss would slip over every surface. Vines would begin work at the cracks and corners of walls. The drains would clog with thick, fat leaves, and the monsoon would have its merry way all over the roads and rooves, opening structures piece by piece.
As soon as I opened the window a striped mosquito flies in to try to bite me. They move so fast, designed to evade a slapping hand or tail. I wonder what it carries that I can't see. And does a mosquito feel different in itself when it's got dengue or malaria? Are they more hungry or more frantic?
Life goes on, doesn't it? Maybe changing uncontrollably quickly, in waste and mismanagement, devolving and fragmenting, but it's so hungry, it goes on.
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