Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Soundscape
He woke up to the world CLANKING!
Then the alarm buzzed like a thousand
hornets!
He eventually microwaved pancakes,
but ate them fairly clammy since
the oven had roared so.
Okay. Okay. So the Big Noise had
beset him. Others had written on the
Internet not to bother with the
expensive remedies and prescriptions.
Useless.
After a week, would go away, they promised.
He thought he could stand it. The acid
test: Head Librarian, MRS Aldo Barsi,
whose voice ground glass anyway.
The next apartment’s pretty teen always
sang of a morning. Dulcet. This one,
a drunken chorus of cruel Masons.
When the diesel bus came to pick him up
it sounded like a hundred.
Mr Detts announced the stops. He clamped
his ears against him this morning. But when
he got to his destination, couldn't avoid the
extraordinary clash of "Merve and Grove
Avenues, CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD!"
He smiled back at Driver Detts. No use
revealing one’s malady of the Big Noise.
The smiley types always reported things.
His schedule, thank God, favored him this day.
He had only to show a World War Two
propaganda film to ten separate classes from
Mother Cabrini High.
He tried to not be overfirm in shushing
the girls, though his head was exploding
from their super-raucous chatter!
Peeling Vegetables For the War Effort
“What a load of shit!” each class proclaimed.
Regarded the film as an treasured antique
and didn't appreciate the girls' fashionable
cynicism.
Then, the Head Librarian wished to see him!
That would kill! Kill!
But he caught a break, the only one ever.
She had thrown her husband out that morning
and was hot! Not in her usual icily corrective
mood. So, she cancelled!
On the bus home he blurted out his Big Noise
suffering to Mercy Collins, who put a large
hand on his knee. "Life goes too quiet anyway,"
proclaims she.
Who gets off at his stop and follows him up
to his apartment. He serves her Earl Grey
Tea, and he's Earl Grey to her from then on.
She's more active-minded about the BN
and orders a white-noise hearing aide.
The drone delivers an hour later by throwing
it through a cellar window.
The crash of broken glass terrifies him, of
course. Avalanche! But she fetches it, and
tunes it to his liking. Then cuddles him,
singing Irish lullabies. Which he can hear
as in a childhood dream.
She never leaves, which is the second only
break he has ever received.
“You turn me on, Earl!”
Labels: drone, Earl Grey, future, library, noise, overwhelming noise, Romance, sound
