
With the weather in Baltimore quite pleasant of late, Cleo and I have had a few chances to spend some serious time outside. Yesterday, because the legendary Memorial Stadium playground happened to be locked up, we wound up on a quilt on the grass of nearby Clifton Park. A few golfers puttered by, completing rounds; some schoolkids ambled, slowly, towards a school. And as Cleo practiced standing, I simply listened to the ambient noise.
A steady stream of cars, on nearby Harford Road, was most obvious. There was the sound of a mower, as well, and the occasional beat of a recorded snare drum, from a nearby tool shed. The voices of workers, every few minutes. And, beneath, that weird and constant hum of any city. In all, an insistent symphony: so strong, in fact, that when a jet actually did pass overhead, on its way to BWI, I couldn't even hear it. Its noise was lost in the steady rush of the city.
Obviously, no one expects cities to be quiet. But, as Hempton argues, it may be possible that the constant need to tune out ambient noise has led us, on one level, to become insensitive listeners. We spend so much energy, he says, ignoring extraneous sounds that we also repress the sounds of our community and our children. So for a few minutes, I simply listened to the drum, to the cars, to the wash of noise. And then I listened to Cleo: to her tiny but persistent huffing; to the slight rattle in her chest that's the residue of a cold; to the arc of her juicy raspberries. Is there more? Obviously. Is it often lost? Sure. Inch by inch, though, we fight to retain what's important.
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