Essays

It is Sunday morning, and I am lying in bed in my Connecticut apartment. It is raining lightly, and I hear the raindrops, along with the mixture of street noise from the pavement below. I live close-by the local fire station, and its activity cannot be missed. And even though I live on the second floor, I can clearly hear conversations, arguments, discussions and all manner of banter from all directions, from the streets below.

During my childhood, my family spent a lot of time visiting my parents’ relatives in New York City, especially Brooklyn. And it was there, in the heart of reality, that I learned at a very young age, what a human being was capable of tolerating. You see, many of my aunts, uncles and cousins lived beneath, next to or over the EL. As in elevated train, as in New York City subways, which is really a half-misnomer, as many of those behemoths travel nowhere near underground. But who would ride the ‘upway’, or the ‘up-there-way’? Not that iron-willed, tough-minded New Yorkers would care what something is called. It is just that they would have to say it every once in a while. “Yeah, take the up-there-way to Brighton Fifth and the Avenue.” Never gonna happen. Subway is engrained in the lexicon, and that’s that. But I digress. (What’s new?)

When I first became aware of trains and their attendant roar, I really cannot say. I guess it’s Pavlovian, something to which one just becomes accustomed and reacts to in their own way. Like sleeping when trains are thundering past your window. Point is, I never had trouble slumbering in Brooklyn. Anywhere else in the country, well, that’s a different story altogether. Woody Allen makes much of the fact that he cannot sleep when in ‘the country’ which, to him, is anywhere above 92nd Street. The crickets’ chirping bothers him. And so, too, have I become accustomed to sleeping through noises loud and whiny, and everything in-between. Back in the New Jersey suburbs, I was always conscious of the local firehouse, situated mere blocks from our home. Its shriek and wail could knock a person back against a wall. But my family was made of hardier stuff. We had slept beneath the EL! So the sirens never bothered me. It was the little things which crept into my psyche, much as a bothersome gnat or mosquito might. In fact, in the cool quietness of an idyllic New Jersey neighborhood, gnats and mosquitoes could be heard, something you could not say about Brooklyn, where you’d be fortunate to hear your front door buzzer over the din of everyday city life. In fact, in New York City, unless a giant rat was actually knocking at your front door, with his valise* in hand, you had no idea there were other noises.
I had just turned 18, and decided to enlist in the military. I was shipped off to Texas, and basic training. I cannot recall if I had trouble sleeping through those several weeks of hell, and that’s only because I, along with my bunk mates, were in shock at being yelled at constantly, and made to do things which any self-respecting young person would never even dream of. Like going outside for calisthenics when the mercury hit 100ºF. After it was all over, I was assigned to a base near Denver, Colorado. I had never left the east coast in all my early years, and here were the Rocky Mountains, nature, snow… and crickets, chirping. Of course, with marching, drilling, school and other activities filling our days, and sometimes our nights, sleep came, whether or not it was planned or allowed. Like in class. So my time in the military is probably not the best barometer to gauge my ability to snooze under adverse conditions. When I finished my hitch, I came back east, and enrolled in college, in lower Manhattan. I found a place to live in Flatbush, Brooklyn, not far from a subway station, and next to a police precinct. The memories of my nascent days among the falling sparks – from the El – flooded back. I could sleep again, in peace, if not quiet. And that was the point. The clamor of the city was my nightlight, and I clung to it dearly. To me, it said, “Hey! There are people nearby, rest easy.” The fact that some of those people carried weapons and no badges was of little import. The noise is what I wanted and needed.

Fast forward several years. I began to travel, and visited places I had either read about, like Washington, D.C. and Salt Lake City, or had never even heard of, such as Vina, California and Naples, Idaho. While I loved traveling, and was making a living doing so, I found I was both fascinated and sometimes repelled by what passed for local customs. In Vina, there exists a Trappist monastery, where, though no vow silence exists, even during the normal workday, ambient noise is kept to a minimum. Same with Naples, though there, it is the scarcity of persons which allows one to sit outside and not be overwhelmed by auditory distress. While the atmosphere in Naples might not be construed at ritualistic, in Vina it certainly is. Tohatchi, New Mexico, is another story entirely.

Situated near the confluence of the Four Corners area, Tohatchi sits in the midst of the Navajo Nation, the expanse of land covering much of northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and bit of southern Utah. Among this terrestrial vastness, I could walk for hours and neither see another human or hear any sound other than nature’s own. At first, it was unsettling, disconcerting. Me, who had grown up accustomed to screeching, shrieking and shouting being societal norms, suddenly having to come to terms with… silence. What was that? I said, “silence”. Oh, SILENCE! Unless having experienced this yourself, the feeling of being shushed and hushed over and over, cannot be adequately described, especially when my response was, “I was only speaking in my normal voice.” My first night in Tohatchi, though I was excited, I was still tired, from the long ride, and unpacking, and meeting new faces. Dinner was joyous affair, with much conversation. By day’s end, I was more than ready enter unconsciousness. As I brushed my teeth, and got ready for bed, I was aware of voices, and not the usual ones rambling around inside my head. I figured people were in the hallway of the building in which I was staying. No big deal, I thought. Then came the zinger. I had just crawled into bed, shut out the light and was drifting off when I heard the first shot:

G61! G61? What about G61? Then, B24! No! It couldn’t be. I got up and padded out into the hallway, found a newly-made friend and, as tactfully as I could manage, asked what in the name of creation was going on in the building. “Oh, that’s the Tuesday night bingo. Your room is directly over the hall. But don’t worry, they only play until eleven o’clock.” I wasn’t sure what to lament more, the 11:00 pm breakup time, or the fact my friend qualified it as the “Tuesday night bingo”. Sleeping beneath the El, that I could handle. Bingo was a different story. But I got used to it, so much so, that I began to help out during the Tuesday night bingo, as well as the Sunday night bingo, and probably all the other contests as well, running together as they did. Hey, when in Rome, right?

But it was in Salt Flat, TX, at the other end of the region, where I found that quiet does not necessarily mean peace. In December of 2004, I met up with a friend, a Chicago native, who had relocated to New Mexico some years back. He had migrated south, from Albuquerque, winding up on a barren parcel of land, miles from anywhere, and anyone else. His property and houses – he had two – were set back several miles from the main highway. This was truly, literally, in the middle of nowhere. It was a one hour drive, through nothingness to either Carlsbad, NM or Van Horn, TX. Splurging consisted of driving more than two hours into the metropolis of El Paso, hard by the Mexican border. When I first arrived, my heart sank: this was… what was this?! My friend said he had to take off for an appointment, and that I had run of the ranch, as he called it. He took off down the dirt and stone encrusted road, until I could no longer see his lights. I ducked inside the main house, ate dinner, watched some television, and decided it was time for bed.

Now, I have traveled, and been there, seen that, done this…you get the picture. But I had never before experienced what I have come to label as total completeness, the feeling that I was in the right place, and never wanted to leave. I stepped outside, into the ink of night, for a walk of about ten seconds, to the house I would be occupying. But I stopped halfway when I happened to look up, at the sky. As there was no artificial light – both houses were dark – I could see stars, planets, comets, you name it. I stood there, transfixed, basking not in the glow of glorious sunshine, but in the wondrous richness of pure light, natural light, so opulent and luxurious I had trouble knowing what I was actually looking at. Later on, people would tell, “Oh, sure, you can see the Milky Way from out here.” But that first night, I neither knew nor cared whether it was the Milky Way or any other candy bar I was viewing. This experience was so stunning, I never wanted it to end. Then came bed.

As my friend had left some hours earlier, I was now the only human for several miles. While the wind made known its presence, as well as some scurrying creatures, not one man-made sound was evident anywhere near me. I slid into bed, hit the light and was immediately enveloped by the that inky, velveteen darkness, accompanied by a silence so deafening, it was hard to emotionally, or verbally, define. Never had I felt this way. I actually became claustrophobic. The all-encompassing blackness, coupled with the stillness was a feeling I had never before felt. It was neither eerie nor foreboding. Rather, it was a newness, like the first time we jump into the deep end, or our first kiss. In short, it was, and felt like, a new experience. How can and does one define one’s own serenity? To some, sitting at the ballpark, on a sunny, humid afternoon is nirvana, while others cannot get enough golf, or beach time, or… whatever the case may be. After I had lived there some months, my assistant came out to visit. She had lived in that region for almost 20 years, grown up there. She found the place “boring”. “You’re not scared?” I asked. She said she wasn’t scared, “…’cause there ain’t nothing out here,” but all the same, she was bored, “’cause there ain’t nothing out here.”

And maybe that is just the point.