Sounds
I wish I could post sounds. I'd post the little ditty that plays from my washing machine when you turn it on and the other ditty that plays when the cycle is complete. I'd post the electronica version of Jingle Bells that plays when you turn on Lisa and Colin's washing machine. On a tangent here, I must note that although my machine doesn't play a Christmas song, I found a red and green felt stocking and a red felt hat with a white ball at the end IN my washing machine when I first arrived. Maybe the Chinese workers who moved the machine felt sorry for me and put Christmas IN my machine since they knew it wouldn't be coming OUT of my machine.
I'd also post the conversations coming from right outside my door early in the morning. Apparently the school employs women to come and sweep and mop our floors every morning around 7am. I think they're actually alarm clocks and the brooms and dustpans and rags and mops and buckets of dirty water they swish around on the floors are a front.
I'd post the sounds of children that I hear all day long. I now know why people become teachers. Who wouldn't want to hear the sound of children laughing and playing and learning every day for the rest of his/her adult life? When I hear the children I'm filled with a mixture of days-gone-by and days-yet-to-come. It is a very satisfying feeling.
The apartment building is set pretty far off of the main street, which Colin informed me used to be the main runway for the old airport 12 years ago (now I understand why everything feels so huge on that street), but you can still hear the occasional car alarm. This morning, I heard one that sounded more like a hyped-up rapper’s underlying beat. Instead of making full rotations of the annoying blaring sounds, this car would chirp out the first note or two of the annoying sounds and then move on to the next.
For China, sounds are a huge part of the experience. If I trusted the electronic equipment sold here (where do I even BEGIN with the irony there), I’d go buy a huge fuzzy microphone (“is that thing edible?” Go see SPELLBOUND if you haven’t already) and walk around Wuhan trying to capture the sounds that make up my understanding of the city. Seattle is so quiet. I suppose the noise quotient of a city is directly proportional to its “Industrialized” or “3rd World” standing.
And here, in my little sanctuary, as if in love with noise myself, instead of silence, I’m listening to music. Loud.
