This Happened

Tags

coffee, houses, men, observations, traffic

Last week I was downtown enjoying a cup of coffee in a small vest pocket kind of park right off one of the main streets in town.

If you happen to be on the curb of this street you often get subjected to all sorts of noisy cars with loud mufflers and exhaust systems that are loud either by design as in on purpose or as in neglect as in the tailpipes fell off and you don’t care or can’t afford to repair bill.

The park sits back from the street and offers a respite from the din of relentless traffic.

I have s streak going with coffee and this park that I started last summer and I hope continue until the weather makes the streak untenable.

Drinking coffee, minding my own business as I was the only one in the park until an older fellow came walking through occasionally leaning on a cane he was carrying.

” I don’t really need this,” he offered, ” showing me the cane but it helps with my sore leg. The one I broke and had surgery on to repair.’

” I need to get back to work” he said although judging from his struggling gait and his age I thought work would or should out of the question for him.

He mentioned something about being a roof and then I knew for sure his working days needed to over. I know a roofer once who said that by the age of 30 your knees were shot from all that squatting and balancing on pitched surfaces.

We agreed the cooler weather was no friend to broken bones even after they had healed.

The man said he had to go find his brother and just like that he was gone.

A passing conversation reaching out for a friendly face, mine I guess, which leads me to another story about an older man.

I once wrote post about him called ” The Grey Man” but it seems to have disappeared from these pages.

There is a house on the corner of two intersecting streets that once was most likely covered in red brick. The red brick remains but sometime in the past it was covered on that sort of fake grey stone that seems to have pink tint buried in it.

At one time the building was probably a bar or hotel judging from the angled front steps and what’s left of what must’ve been a sign over the door and the fact the whole door and step units were placed at an angle facing both streets.

Now I think it’s just apartments or maybe rooms, certainly not in the high rent district.

I was driving to work one morning. It was early. The sun was still below the horizon and the sky was a half light grey as though you knew it was going be cloudy all day anyway.

There was a man seated on the steps wearing old and dirty clothes and no matter color they might have been at one time the clothes were now grey. His long beard was grey and the smoke from his cigarette provided a grayish haze around his face.

He was the grey man in front of his grey house.

Solitude

Tags

noise pollution, relaxing, silence, traffic

Or as Elmer Fudd said, “Be vewy, vewy kwiet.”

I was going to title this piece ” Sounds of Silence” but then I would probably owe Paul Simon 3 cents for using his already copyrighted song title although I am not using it for personal profit.

I could have titled the piece ” In My Solitude” but I would have to write a check to the Duke Ellington estate.

I live in a neighborhood where traffic varies from bustling to meandering to not at all. That being said the noise level generated by cars, trucks and busses can sometimes seem annoying and overwhelming, intrusive and too much especially when a Harley roars past at midnight on a hot July night.

I was going to write ” Hot August Night” but then I would owe Neil Diamond money.

The point here is neighborhood noise, traffic, lawn mowers, string trimmers, leaf blowers and other gas powered implements of garden maintenance and upkeep is something we’re stuck with as we have heaped these aural indignities upon ourselves. I use an electric mower so I’m half guilty of being a noise merchant.

When I was a kid we pushed the mowers and swept up the leaves. Now everyone needs horsepower. Noisy horsepower at that.

Earlier this week there was marked lack of traffic and since it was raining a marked lack of power lawn mowers. In other words it was very, very quiet – See Elmer Fudd above.

And so the ambient noise that had somehow become reassuring was all but absent as though there were no people around anywhere within earshot. And that was not reassuring.

The din of cars, mowers, occasional helicopters reminds me there are people somewhere nearby.

When it’s quiet, like they say in the old western movies,” It’s too quiet out there, I don’t like it,” part of me tends to agree.

The place was really quiet back in March and April and into May. We all know why. Then the traffic returned along with speeding, driving while texting and running red lights.

I’ve been to places where the lack of sound, the silence is itself a sound. I have camped in the woods and visited friends who live near Nowheresville and it gets really quiet out there.

It takes me a while to get used to hearing nothing. My nervous system is accustomed to being stimulated by the low hum of something making noise somewhere.

At first I really don’t like it but as my brain starts to adapt to the sounds of silence (sorry Paul) I can always feel a sense of relief and I wonder what it was like when it was always this quiet.

Were people less tense? Was peace of mind really achievable?

They say that it you are really at peace with yourself you can hear corn grow on a hot July night. That takes introspection and quiet time and a whole new level of relaxation.

So which is it? The reassuring hum of machines or the reassuring sound of nothing?

I think nothing beats something hands down but it’s been so long since any of us have really heard nothing we don’t know what nothing or silence really sounds like. Our ears seem to need to be constantly filled. In most cases they get assaulted and our stress level goes up and up.

I mentioned to friend today that I found spot to run so far from everything that I only hear my feet hitting the ground and my breath. That’s it.

It’s a brief respite but some day I would like to live where the lack of sound is it’s own sound.

Where the night sky is dark and stars are visible by the thousands.

Maybe the words of the words of the prophets ARE written on the subway walls and tenement halls.

If you see Paul Simon tell him I owe him a buck.

No Right Turn On Red

Tags

being polite, cars, red lights, traffic

An observation on the power going out downtown today and what happened when all the traffic lights went dark.

Somebody hit a pole or something but the end result was that power was cut to a section of downtown.  The city ran cops out to control major intersections and traffic moved smoothly.

But on the smaller streets no longer controlled by stoplights an interesting thing happened.  Public works dropped off four foot high stop signs and placed them at intersections where police officers were not stationed.  And then something pretty cool happened.

Drivers politely stopped at the stop signs, looked left and right, made eye contact with other drivers and pedestrians and everyone took turns driving through the intersection.  Traffic ran smoothly, there was no stop light grand prix getting from light to light since we all knew that we’d have to stop anyway.

Amazingly, I got across town faster than I would with traffic lights in normal operation.  Right turn on red was no longer a take your life in your hands situation.  Pedestrians rejoiced.

All on a beautiful, windy and sunny November afternoon.  Have a great weekend and be careful out there.

There’s a lesson somewhere in this I’d say.

The Paris NoteBook – The Eiffel Tower and a History Lesson

Tags

Eiffel Tower, history, Paris, traffic

Big plans to be at the Eiffel Tower when it opened at 9 am.  Only problem was that we slept until 9.  A note about time zones.

At first I was really aware that the east coast of the US was 6 hours earlier.  Once I settled into Paris it didn’t matter what time it was anywhere at all.  Maybe that’s the definition of a vacation – losing track of time and not caring.  I eventually lost track of the days.  Hurray for me.

The Eiffel Tower in addition to being the hugest thing I’ve ever seen is painted brown, not black as I had always pictured it.  From the second level I was able to all over Paris.  I had no desire to truck to the top.  Gift shops aka “Boutique Official” everywhere in the tower.  I wonder if they were in the original plans?  As always just hordes of tourists everywhere.

Guidebook note :  Eiffel Tower – assume pickpockets are working the crowd.  Arc d’ Triomphe – assume pickpockets are working the crowd. The Louvre – assume, you get the picture.

Later in the day while on the Avenue de Winston Churchill I met an Algerian man.  We chatted about Churchill and Charles DeGaulle.  He was looking forward to the anniversary of the liberation of Paris which is coming up this week.  I told him of my plan to visit Versailles and he said when you see it ” You will lose your words.”

The man was very friendly and knew his WWII history.  Here’s the thing I found most fascinating about history and being in Paris.

In Boston, for example there is Bunker Hill, the Old North Church and on and on.  The events associated with those locations happened over 200 years ago.  The liberation of Paris occurred in 1944, a time that is nearly in my lifetime.  Meaning that I can talk to people who were there.  My father and uncle both probably spent time in Paris during and after the war.  There are photos and films of that history.   Boston wears it’s history proudly and it’s never far away.  In Paris history is a current event.

Took a stroll on the Champs D’Elysee.  It’s big, noisy, brash, crowded and expensive.  Not a highlight at all.

The Arc d’ Triomphe is amazing.  Again, monuments in Paris are not small.  Took the tour to the top for more amazing views of the city.  Witnessed the re-lighting of the eternal flame at the tomb of the unknown soldier which is at the base of the Arc.  The flame is commemorated and relit every day at 6:30 in the evening.

Witnessed an example of Rue Rage in the traffic that circles the Arc.  Nobody got hurt just a lot of yelling.  According to the guidebook when an accident happens in the traffic circle at the Arc the insurance companies just split the tab as it’s nearly impossible to figure out who was at fault in the accident.

Took a boat ride on the Seine and we sailed past the beaches.  The City of Paris trucks in tons of sand and creates beaches on the banks of the river for a couple of weeks every summer.  There was a British family on the boat.  They were eating baloney sandwiches on white bread with mustard which tells me that they came over for the day since I believe it’s impossible to find white bread in Paris.  The kids were well behaved and wearing Yankee hats for some reason.  Paris is the last place I wanted to see Yankee hats.

Started to get with the program as we had dinner at 8pm at a delightful sidewalk cafe.  A Frenchman seated next to us was observed dipping his fries in butter.

Sunset at 9:36 pm local time.