A Life and its Sounds

Existence contained within the apartment complex these days. Indoors all the while , enjoying the secure privacy of the allotted confines. But losing, every passing day,a grip over the sounds which belong to us. Is the shrill cooker whistling out from our kitchen? Aggressively sweeping our floors in the late afternoon,who? An assertive flushing in which toilet? Too many times, I have gotten up from work to trace these sounds to a source outside our flat. Yet I cannot help waking up with a start when I hear something tumble over and make an ominous din . None of these banal catastrophes turn out to be harmful. They happen elsewhere, in another home, and are of concern to someone else whose face I shall never see.

Why are all these sounds infiltrating? Given that our thick walls block out all television noise ?And with all windows and balconies grilled perfectly, who can complain that the building has not succeeded in the promised redistribution of the piece of space it set out to conquer? At night, I keep hearing what is perhaps an important machine that needs to keep thudding like the weak heart of a giant and kind monster. As this persistent disturbance lulls me to sleep, I am surprised how much I have accepted these stray sounds of shared existence . Almost as if they were my sounds. After all, don't we hear strange noises, the odd squelch or churn rising from the labyrinths inside our own body? Perhaps we should never disown what we merely can't comprehend.