You know, I am a person who aborbs things--sights, smells, feelings, sound.
Sound plays a big part of my life. Dunno' why, but I remember familar sounds, long after they are gone forever from my life. Sometimes, the associated smells, as well.
Some sounds bring back happy memories, some..not. Some are just ordinary noise, heard while working or doing chores around the home.
One of my first jobs, when I was around 18, was as short-order cook in a bowling alley. To this day, I can hear the constant rolling rumble and clatter of the balls, the ear-shattering clacking of the pins as they go down. The ka-thunk of the ball return. The smell of beer, french fry grease (before the health nazis banned animal-based cooking fats), and that chemical smell that pervades everything--the wax they used every morning on the alleys, to keep them up to snuff.
And then, there was our old lawn mower. A green model dad got from Sears or Wards or K-marts, I forget. I can still hear the whipping sound of the pull cord as I tried to start the engine. (The half-muttered curses when it wouldn't blinking start.) The tang of gasoline, and the sour smell of old mown grass clinging to the underside of the mower. The continuous clattering buzz of the engine as I walked back and forth, row after row, with the occaisional clunk-murph, as I hit a mound of dirt that the moles had thrown up in the back yard, or the blat-snap when I accidentally ran over a twig.
The high-pitched whine of mum's old hand-held, Sunbeam two-beater electric mixer, whipping up the mashed potatoes every Sunday night. It used to be a bother, when I was taping "Mostly Folk," my favourite folk-music programme, on WRPI, which ran from 6pm to 8pm every Sunday. That's because the electric mixer's noise would somehow come through the radio, and so some song would wind up having the high-pitched whirrring sound of mum's beater in the middle of a song track. It was like having a mosquito on Steroids buzzing through the middle of a really good tune.
The distinctive sound of the village's yellow and black school bus, it's old motor grinding up the steep four-lane motorway, with a loud, throaty humming of its engines, on the hill that our little dead-end street was located off of. You didn't need to look at the clock, you heard that bus and knew that it was 3:30 or thereabouts.
When I was taking a heavy-equipment operation class, in my early 30's, working on and around bucket loaders, bull-dozers, dump trucks and back-hoes for 4 hours a day, five days a week (the other 2 hours were spent in the class-room) I got so I would hear the back up alarm--you know, that pesky "beep-beep-beep"---in my sleep. To this day, I still find that sound really annoying.
The sound of the furnace clicking on, on a cold winter morning. The familiar light metalic ticking of the baseboard radiator, the quiet basso hum of the gas furnace firing up, down in the cellar. Me, rolling over in my blankets, trying get closer to the wall and the comforting warmth. Feeling the heat rising up, even as I perhaps could hear heavy sheets of icy sleet, hissing against the window pane above me.
I can remember, back home when I was a teenager, waking in the dark on a late June morning, at 4am, to the sound of dozens of robins singing merrily at the top of their lungs. Sometimes I would groan and put the pillow over my ears. Other times though, the pull of nature was too stong, and I'd throw on my hiking boots, jeans and flannel shirt. Slap on my cowboy hat and go outside and join them in welcoming the sun to a brand new day. It was glorius!
I remember, walking around the wetlands, the way the cat-tails swayed in the wind, a rattling sigh. The myrid little orange trumpet-shaped blooms of jewelweed, and the rasping yet melodic call of a red-winged blackbird, perched proudly on a swaying cat-tail reed. The musty smell of mud and the feel of the wind brushing my cheeks.
I remember the softly rising and fading whooshing sound of the wind, soughing and sighing in the boughs of a towering eastern hemlock tree. The way the sunlight danced off the little needles as they swayed gracefully in the wind--it was if the sun itself was laughing with joy. The tang of the pines, the deep rich smell of earth, the mildly exotic and mellow scent of Greek oregano (aka; wild marjoram), the sharp, wild call of a blue jay ("M-RAH! M-RAH!"), high in the tree.
The sound of the rain--the most amazing of all nature's symphony's. Each drop of rain that falls, makes its own distinct sound. Some drops fall on water, some on trees, rooftops, grass, my hat. And, taken altogether, they sing a hissing, pinging,, drumming, thumping, plopping, dripping chorus that no human could ever truly hope to emulate.
And the almost total lack of sound, on a cold and clear winter's night. Standing in a field of virgin snow, like standing alone on the moon. The brilliant white light of that moon, throwing shandows on the field as if it were daylight--but a rich, blue-toned light. The stars shining so brightly and fiercely in the ebony heavens, as to seem like diamonds which you could simply pluck from the sky. And the wind, the bitter, teasing winter wind. Softly stirring the great bushy boughs of eastern white pine. Their song so soft, you have to strain to catch the tune. The sound of your breathing, your very heart's beat. The night so still and so pure, it almost seems as if time itself were holding its breath until the coming of spring.
