SOMETHING I NOTICED

While I was in Geneva at Maria’s place, I’d often stay up late until around 2am which is pretty normal to me. First thing I noticed that though her complex is bordered by to other apartments for a total of something like a 100 units, I was pretty much the only person up. The place was dead quite and you couldn’t hear anything from beyond either, not a single car horn, stereo, shouting, anything. Maria had informed me her neighbors were militant about quiet hours after ten, and any noise whatsoever wouldn’t be tolerated, and that seemed to be the general pace of things pretty much anywhere I went. Excessive noise was absent and stores didn’t blast inane disco music at painful levels, not even H&M, which here is like going to dance club.

I didn’t hear any car stereos either or people honking car horns in futile gestures of impatient communication. It was civil, it was peaceful, as opposed to this country in general, where noise making is a kind of territorial pissing that sadly everyone seems to tolerate with blank faced disconnect. I’ve always thought the blasting of car stereos or irrational shoutings I’ve heard in any city I’ve lived in to be just a base form of egoism, a total disregard for others. It’s no big observation we’re a nation of juveniles in a giant playground people also happen to live in and with some trying to generate some sense of peace and serenity. I’m rather lucky where I live that it does tend to be quiet after hours, with the occasional drunk couple arguing or insipid upstairs neighbor arguing with her boyfriend or playing her music loud while fucking late into the night. Step outside a few blocks and it’s a senseless mess.

To hit the point home for me, on the second day I was back I was talking to a friend in front of the 190st St. Station when I car came around the corner leaning on the horn for no obvious reason whatsover but to simply to make some preposterous noise. An old woman sat in the passenger seat laughing. A normal, even accepted scene, and something entirely revealing about the state of things. We’re fucked.