If you have a lot of experience driving beaters, you are familiar with the state of subconscious vigilance as you drive down the road, grooving to whatever music is on the radio, perhaps hearing the rhythm of the tires on the seams in the road or of the windshield wipers keeping time to Me and Bobby McGee or something, but simultaneously part of you is always on duty and at attention, listening for sounds of breakdown – the screech of the fan belt, a new engine knock, squeaking brakes, something funny in the transmission, the Formula One sound of a muffler going. Even after I bought a new car for the first time, it took me months to get out of the habit of turning off the CD player to try to determine if the high-pitched tones I’d just heard meant my rear axle was about to fall off, or were just something the producer had added to the mix in the studio to give the music a little more high end.
We’re currently hearing noises in our house as well. After all, it’s September, the expensive month. There is the familiar sound of the upstairs shower dripping; one of us hears it, says we should get it fixed because it’s bad feng shui, and the other says, “yes, as soon as we find the part…”. Two nights ago, there was the sound of the dishwasher running all night, instead of turning off after an hour as it’s supposed to – dishes sure were clean in the morning, though.
Also new is the weird thrumming in the middle of the night. I guess it’s always there, below the threshhold of perception during the day when kids are fighting and in-laws are butting in; but at night it sort of emerges from the background, as if the house is meditating. “Ommmmmm.”
Alpha: “What’s that sound?”
Miguel: “Um, burglars?”
Alpha: “No, we thought we heard burglars last week. No, that humming sound.”
Miguel: “I thought it was my tinitus.”
Alpha: “No, your tinitus is a high-pitched whine.”
Miguel: “I thought that was… never mind.”
The noise was loudest in the stairwell. Was it the furnace, which we’ve just turned on and are still trying to get to work right? Maybe not, because the sound gets quieter when you go into the furnace room, not louder. Some wiring problem? Could be – we just had an electrician here “fixing” things. Or maybe the plumbing is getting weird, preparing to burst through the walls when we have guests here for Thanksgiving?
Who knows. After an hour of going from room to room in the middle of the night, head tilted at an angle to best listen to the night, we said, “fuck you, mysterious noise,” and went back to bed.
Also, this morning we noticed that I’d forgotten to lock the front door for the first time in my life, and speculated about what a burglar would’ve thought if he’d marched in. “Where the hell’s the TV? No stereo either, just a bunch of books! Someone beat me to it!”
Boy, having a full range of movement sure is nice.