The apartment

(photo of the apartment building I'm staying at)

I have been very burnt out by New York for the past few years. I always complain about wanting to move, yet I never do. One of my most common complaints is the noise. Where I live, savages from the neighborhood come out of their caves and believe that everyone within earshot wants to hear their music, and so they play it as loud as they can so everyone can join in their festivities. Another problem is that car alarms frequently go off, and no one bothers to turn them off, or kids and other savages hit cars on purpose to make a sort of car alarm symphony. Sometimes people scream and choose to fight on the sidewalk, or trash trucks move slowly up the street growling and beeping while leaving a wake of garbage behind them.

When I walk around other parts of the city, neighborhoods that I might think are more pleasant, I realize that the same problems persist, and thus it seems like the only way to escape such madness is to leave the city all together. And so I was really looking forward to getting out of New York for a few weeks and enjoying the peace and quiet of another town. Perhaps Milan is too big and busy to be called a town, but my ignorance just wanted something different. If I were more capable of objective thinking, I would consider that Milan is a large city, and that it would certainly have all the noises and madness of other large cities. But I am not that intelligent.

So it was a wonderful surprise last night when the car alarms of the Bronx were substituted with house alarms in Milan. Perhaps someone was really robbing some apartment, but the alarm kept going. And going. And going. I have recently learned to zone out certain things from my mind. It helps me cope with the ridiculous noises that I have to put up with in New York. And so I was able to do the same here in Milan. However, when an alarm continues to sound for several minutes, it is easier to relegate the screaming tones to background noise than if the alarm is turned off, then sounded again. The later happened four times last night. After the first alarm was turned off after 5 minutes, I thought that I would be able to fall asleep peacefully. A couple of minutes later it sounded again. I think that it is actually the startle of first hearing an alarm like this that jars the soul and causes the greatest anguish, just as when the alarm is turned off, a tremendous serenity overtakes the soul, and I become grateful for the peace I now have, and the peace that existed before the whole mess. It also surprises me, the defeat that I must acquiesce to when I hear the third and fourth attack of the alarm, and I no longer become startled of angry, but rather submit to the idea that this the truly how the world works, and who am I to expect any better?

Eventually I fell asleep, and I don't know how many more times the alarm sounded, because I did not awaken until late the next morning.