Sounds of Silence

Silence or noise? Which is better, really?

They say that the Big Apple is the city that never sleeps. They say that about Las Vegas, too. And they have their points, there’s no denying. But I bet I can say that about any medium to large city in this country; maybe in the world.

Take where we are for existence. Should be the quietest place in the city. Parked snug in an alley even the bums don’t use, waiting for something to go down.

But is is quiet? Hell no.

Just now, there’s a plastic bag someone’s been careless enough to drop out a moving car window that has a brief affair with a lamppost before skittering across the street going god knows where.

There a snort and a rattle and a clink of bottles of the bum on top of the grating maybe dreaming he just got rolled.

There’s the screaming in Spanish-this time, it could be in English, Chinese, Korean, any one of a hundred languages next time-going on three stories above our heads in the tenement with the boarded up windows.

On the other corner, where the streetlamp’s burnt out but is still sounding a buzzing hum, is Big Tony who thinks he’s talking low to a scared kid no doubt approaching for his first buy.

Overhead, planes fly in and out, out and in, and I wonder if they’re going to places I’ve seen or have never been. I wonder if I want to go there. Back or forward.

In the back of the Chinese restaurant Starsky likes so much is a brief, but loud, stuttering of Chinese into the alley before the door closes and that space is, at least, silent for the moment.

But only a moment, because the next moment, a cat jumps into the dumpster outside the joint, investigating the leavings and coming out with a rat I could probably saddle and ride. The fight is brief, but vicious. The winner is obvious, but blood has been spilled on both sides, which attracts the huge black flies, even in the middle of the night to burrow and lay their eggs in the soft, dead parts before the cat gets them all.

Janice, the tattoo artist in her flame red spike come fuck me pumps is arguing with her spineless worm of a husband again as they lock up the shop at 3:30 am. Something about fucking up the books. I don’t give a shit enough to care.

The steady wind sweeps the streets of its candy wrappers and gum wrappers and cigarette cellophane and a million other things people just drop without thinking about it, like the city is one giant garbage can for their use.

But Duluth, man, Duluth is quiet. It’s a pretty big city too, but most people don’t think of it that way. But you should hear it right before or right after a huge snowstorm after the wind has taken the afternoon off for coffee. Absolute. Stone. Silence. Not a bird, not a bug, not a rat, not a cellophane cigarette wrapper dares to disturb the almost cathedral quiet of Duluth after a Big One.

Inside the houses is a different story, sure, but they’re so insulated against the cold, none of the voices get to you. And yes, sometimes, you’ll hear Mrs. Miselburski yell at the twins to come in for dinner before they break their heads on that old toboggan, but otherwise, nothing but clean, crisp white.

And silence.

The kind where even your own thoughts seem sacrilegious, and your breath, though frozen, is as silent as a ghost.

Twelve years ago, hell, maybe even seven, you’d have asked me where I preferred to be on a night like this and it would have been no contest. Standing out in the middle of all that whiteness listening to nothing but absolute silence, even my brain turned off for a few blessed minutes.

Now? It’s no contest the other way. There’s never silence, but there is quiet, and often times when it’s quiet, bad things happen. Sort of reverse psychology, maybe, or my way of spitting into the eye of the devil, but I’d rather have Starsky snoring in the back of my car at four am than to listen to his silence under ten feet of Minnesota snow.

I suppose it’s all in the perspective.

Mine’s changed now, and I think, hope, it’s for the better.Give me noise. Any noise. Because in this city, Silence = Death.

And I won’t have that.

Ever.