Noise Writing Spark

If it is a weekday, I will invariably be woken up by a phone call from Kelley Services, the temp agency I work for as a substitute teacher (I almost never answer these days). Every third Monday of the month I am stirred out of bed by the sound of four weed-whackers harmonizing their motors as they make precision cuts along the edge of the house: the lawn guys are here. If I don’t get out there in five minutes the guy on the riding lawn mower will have to knock on the door to bet me to open the gate to the backyard. I don’t want that to happen. Because, if the door is tampered with in any manner the dog, Palmer (a Corgi/German Shepard mix-so), will start barking in high pitch shrieks. All of this commotion usually wakes my girlfriend up if she isn’t up already. By ten o’clock the guy across the street will be out sitting in his car with his stereo on full blast, the sub-woofers woofing at peak decibel output levels. The loose glass in our windows rattle with every pulse of an “A” tone. So, now we know what our window panes are tuned to.

Useful information.

            After a cup of coffee, my girlfriend has fired up her sewing machine and is revving it up in small intervals laying down intricate stitching patterns on something she intends to sell on her “Etsy” account. On longer stitch lines the machine will be revved up to full speed which causes the back left foot of the desk she has the machine on to become a woodpecker trying to break through the hardwood floor.

            Eventually the guy across the street will pull off and head somewhere, work I suppose. Off to rattle more windows, tell everyone what their house is tuned to. (If it rattles, it occupies that wavelength).

            Some days the air traffic is busy. These days we take headphones outside so we can still hear what we are doing on our computers and tablets and phones. Living in Roebuck/Centerpoint, you will invariably hear the roar of a passenger plane overhead. They are close to the ground. Close enough to demarcate the individual panels that make up the fuselage. They fly low because they are either about to land or have just taken off. The Birmingham International Airport is less than five miles away from my house. Which, let’s say, would be great if I flew often. But, of course, people living in my area, including me, don’t get to fly very often. We are tied to the land by our poverty.