Soundscape

There used to be a time that I scared people by being overly silent. You should know that my parents used to work at home from 9 to 23 and did not want to be disturbed. This condition engenders the capacity to refrain from making noises. It took me a while to realise that this capacity has the potential to scare people who are not familiar with the silent condition. Ever since, I make a conscious effort to produce sound for the sake of not disturbing other people. There is a nice paradox.

Anyway, I wanted to complain about an annoying sound, or at least it is annoying to me in its onomatopoe(t)ic quality. I shouldn’t complain, since it is summer, but it scares the hell out of me. Maybe its my phobia of feet (I didn’t know that existed until someone told me she suffered from it, too) that gets activated by the slithery sound of sweaty flip-flops.

Yes, I am oversensitive and, if the silent condition wasn’t enough, the visually impaired state I’m in will amplify any sound in my perception. But there are also advantages to the innate capacity of absorbing soundscapes. I can recognise people by their footsteps and find out people wear different shoes before I actually get to see them. Barefoot is not an option, neither are flip-flops.

Neanderthal frown

This is not about the first Neanderthal fossil find in the Netherlands. It’s about its keeper, or what you can read into a photograph. I’m not really interested in the fossil, although it’s a unique find, of course. I cannot help but thinking that the young man in the background is dwarfed by this small piece of young Neanderthal man. It puts things in perspective, foremost the current state of archaeology, which apparently is still all about “the first …” and “the oldest …”. If you look closely you can see the keeper’s frown, and if you could listen in on his thoughts, you may sense his despair: “A find like this gets more media exposure than four or five years of work on a thesis will ever get”. If so, you’ve been reading my mind, of course, not his. And the Neanderthal frowns, permanently, will not blink, just stare back at you.

Revisited

Note to visitors (and myself): I am currently subjecting the blog to revision and have temporarily put all posts offline. I hope to release them soon, one or two at a time.

Smoke

Who you’d rather not see in a library, is the fire brigade. First, there was an annoying smell, then an annoying noice: smoke had set off the fire alarm at the end of my day of work in the library. The most likely source was an overheated copy machine, not your average fire hazard. What if this had happened after I’d left from work? The fire brigade would have been alerted and have turned up anyway. They had arrived within a couple of minutes on this occasion, so what. The most annoying thing, however, is that the next day the copy machine repair man couldn’t find any trace of overheating, let alone fire, and refused to take the machine away. “There is no precedent for this in any of our machines”, so it didn’t happen. I know it did. Every day since, I have pulled the plugs on the machine, even if I wasn’t working myself, just to be on the safe side. A machine will never put trust in you, unless you pay it the attention it’s due.

blind spot

they say you turn blind
if you stare at the sun

but i can’t stop looking
cannot stay cool

the outbursts of energy
changed into hot flash

charged by the butterflies
that make me feel alive

i have a soft spot
for sunspots

a fatal attraction
a blind spot

The hush of the very good

Those of you who are into poetry, are probably familiar with the feeling that in most collections there are only a couple of poems, or perhaps ten at the most, that resonate with your own disposition at a given time. When you reread a collection, these favourites may have changed. I’m a lazy reader and most of the time I take my cue from Jonathan Caroll’s blog who ever so often includes a poem. If I like it, it prompts me to order the collection. Usually, this happens when the poem in question puts things around us in a different light, as in the case of Todd Boss’ poem “Things, like dogs”. The whole of section five (and other pieces) in his collection “Yellowrocket” offers a things’ perspective. But this one, at the start of section 3, resonated the most, and I cannot stop reading it over and over again.

Resolutions

will not fail. will write all blog entries on my list. will not fail. will finish my thesis. will not fail. will be happy. will not fail. will find a new job. will not fail. will lose more weight. will not fail. will indulge in (writing) poetry. will not fail. will launch an e-journal. will not fail. will submit articles. will not fail. will enjoy myself. will not fail. will cry my heart out. will not fail. will eat. will not fail. will stand tall. will not fail. will save energy. will not fail. will make friends. will not fail.

Monkey business

Although I ‘enjoyed’ a Catholic upbringing, I don’t think a confession will make this go away: I have to confess that I am responsible for (probably) killing a tree. All of the branches of the tree at the centre of our faculty have been cut. Oral history wants that this has been done before and the tree survived, and more: it had never had so many branches before as after the cutting. But not any longer. Now it looks as bare as one of those trees in a zoo environment for monkeys (or a range of other mammals who tend to ‘abuse’ trees, or simply consume them). Every day I get to the office, I am confronted with the consequences of expressing my concern about the noises this tree made under the load of heavy rain and a mild autumn storm. I thought cutting off a couple of branches would have done the trick, but no: all of them had to go. To make things worse: the cutters were publicly enjoying themselves in the act of sacrilege. Also, people around the office came to me (watching the act and its result) to express their concerns that this rigorous approach seemed unnecessary, without knowing that I was the culprit. To some I would confess, to others I didn’t. Luckily after a week people resigned to the state of affairs, but I’m left with this feeling of guilt. A feeling that will last until spring, hoping the tree will have turned out alright again by then. If not …

P.S.  Spring 2009. It’s a miracle, it’s still alive.

What’s your favourite music?

It always annoys me when this question is popped to fill dead air space. To be honest, I don’t know. Any music will do, although classical music does not rank high. Of course, there are some skeletons in my cd-boxes that fill me with shame, but still I listen to these now and then and on many an occasion this will give them a new quality. Normally I will play one album over and over again for weeks, if not months, just because it captures a mood on more than one level. I remember writing my MA dissertation on one record, but strangely enough I don’t remember which one. Which doesn’t really matter, because these times have gone. The other side of this overindulgence in one record (or the other) results in neglect of the larger part of my collection. I’d like to apologise to all records concerned and hope that they will tempt me into overindulgence when their time has come.

Calling the elevator

A couple of times I have been caught off guard by a phone ringing somewhere near my office. Undefined noises are always unsettling, especially in buildings emptied for the night or the weekend.  It turned out to be the emergency telephone in the elevator. The question that remains is: who is on the other side of the line? Is someone actually calling this particular elevator? Is someone squatting in the basement and using the elevator phone to stay in touch with the outside world? Has somebody been calling the wrong number over and over again? Has the phone number of the elevator accidentally been assigned again to someone else and every time this person is being called the elevator phone rings as well? Maybe next time it rings I’ll pick up the phone. Or maybe not, to avoid having to explain the situation to someone working at a call centre using computer generated digits.