Silence

Thursday, 13 April 2006

This is an unashamed complaint. Please bear with me.

Q: What do you get when you put a Mexican in a room with a loud music sterio and a hammer?
A: A very happy Mexican.

Silence. I had to look this word up in the dictionary the other day, as I had forgotton what it was. I don't know why it is, but Mexicans are die-hard DIY'ers. They need their hammer and sterio fix, or they'll go mad, I swear.

I had it in the last house I lived in. Our neighbour upstairs thought nothing of it to hammer away at his plumbing at 3am in the morning right above my bedroom. Each 'klunk' would resonate through my skull, just to keep reminding me I was alive. Not that I wanted to be reminded of that at 3 in the morning mind. But that was just on occasion.

As I sit and write this, I have a loud radio and hammering noise coming from the front yard of the house where I live, and booming hammering and another loud radio reverberating through the walls from the house adjoining to the back of my bedroom.

It would be ok if this was the exception to the rule, but there is at least one set of hammers and sterios going at it somewhere in sound-privacy-invasion-shot of my room at most times during the day, nearly every day.

And even that might be ok, if it wasn't for the music at night. Oh yes. Fling open the windows, crank up the volume "Let's keep people awake at night!" I hear them chant in fits of giggled laughter with their mouth frothing with delight. Last Friday, the music actually didn't stop the whole night long. But don't worry, everything was ok, as I was greeted by hammering again at 8:30am the next morning.

Now, whenever I catch a bit of silence, I tend to think it's a blank slate, waiting for someone to paint on it.

The amazing thing is, the only time it usually stops for any reasonable length is Saturday night/Sunday morning, and that's when I need to get up for Church!

Mexicans are the true Picassos of noise. I've no idea on this earth why God chose to put someone like me in the centre of a city like this. Perhaps I'll learn to tolerate it one day. Or perhaps I'll go deaf first. I bet even the deaf can hear this though.

Well, I think I'll go and listen to some music now. Hang on, I'll just go and open the window.

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