It's Oh So Quiet

Saturdays are long days. Open to close. For twelve hours, I work amidst noise. Music, talking, other people talking, laughing, yelling, joking, more laughing... more laughing. (We're a funny bunch of friends.) From morning until night it's straight up, nonstop noise. In theory, it seems like a nice retreat to come home to silence.

In theory.

But, late at night (actually, early in the morning) when I come home to silence it's just discerning.

The Girls and I lived in the old house for three years. Directly above the restaurant, the noise was constant. It was noisy when we worked, it was noisy when we went home. It surrounded us, engulfed the house, and made everything feel safe. Music, talking, other people talking, laughing, yelling, joking, more laughing - and we heard it all through the floorboards. Muffled, but present. We had no neighbors on our block, but we had noise. Evidence: life existed, if only in the form of the throbbing bass lines beneath our feet.

And now, I live on a quiet street. In a quiet house.

It's like someone pushed Mute.

I got home tonight, it was almost one in the AM. I could hear my feet crunching gravel. I saw no people. No evidence of life, except the cars. People drove here. People are inside those houses. The house to the right of mine glows through drawn curtains. Across the street, the blue flicker of a television turned on in a dark room flashes through partially opened blinds. To the left, the for sale house has a porch light on, which proves someone had to have been there to turn it on, even though now the house is empty.

And they are all completely, totally, silent.

So, I sit in my house and listen closely to my music, the dog determinately chewing his bone, and the click of the keyboard and I try not to hear the house settling, the refrigerator click-whirring on to control it's chill, or the wind shaking the storm windows.

It's going to take some time to get used to this, I think.

In other news, iTunes DJ had my melancholy in mind tonight when it concocted this playlist:

Holland, 1945, Neutral Milk Hotel
All I Want, The Violent Femmes,
I'm So Tired of Being Alone, Al Green
I'll Never Belong, The King Khan & BBQ Show
Heaven, The Talking Heads
Someday You Will Be Loved, Death Cab For Cutie
Strange, Built to Spill

Is Apple tapped into my subconscious? Steve Jobs is such a creep.

k.