I love the sound of cars outside my window, especially at night.
Well, not just cars. Anything, really - the bark of a dog, the steady
thrumming of a helicopter, even the wail of an ambulance (if I’m
not already asleep). Laying in my bed, every time I hear one of those
sounds, I’m overcome with sonder, which I think is worth quoting
the definition at length:
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid
and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends,
routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues
invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with
elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll
never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra
sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the
highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
Maybe it’s a function of being home all day with a remote job, but
I like to imagine the people’s circumstances as they drive their
cars, the choices they made in life thus far, the thoughts that are
actively going through their head as they pass outside my window. Why is
a person driving a loud and obnoxious car at 11 in the evening? Are they
worried about fuel costs? Do they like their car? Do they enjoy
rebelling against those asleep in their homes, knowing that they will
never be able to respond? These and other thoughts enter my head as
I’m trying to fall asleep and the hums, purrs, growls, and roars
of engines enter my room. With every vehicle, I note the sound, the
time, what direction it’s going, how fast it’s traveling.
It’s even more thought-provoking when I hear them at a distance,
but they never pass outside my house. How loud do they have to be if I
can hear them all the way over here? Are they racing with other people?
Or are they alone? What sort of life does the faceless, bodiless person
responsible for that sound have?
Of course, there are other sounds besides cars that come up in a
suburban neighborhood, and it would be remiss not to mention the steady
hum of a lawnmower, or the gentle cooing of a mourning dove, in the late
afternoon, at the time where I’m at my sleepiest and struggling to
stay awake as I trudge through lines of code or sit through another
meeting where I pretend to understand things that I don’t. Except,
oddly enough, where the nighttime sounds inspire a sense of curiosity,
these gentler, milder sounds usually result in feelings of despair. As I
sit in my comfortable chair in my comfortable home office, using my
comfortable keyboard and mouse to perform my comfortable job, life
passes on outside, and that life is not as comfortable. The lawnmower
shreds blades of grass, causing them to release their grassy smell, a
sign of distress and death. The dove’s coos reminds me of a time
when I was younger, where life was simpler and every day did not look
the same.
Perhaps the rarest and most eerie of the sounds I’ve heard are the
howls of the coyotes. Deep out in the woods surrounding the back of my
house, where tall grasses and even taller trees border a small creek, I
can sometimes hear the screams and yips of the coyotes at night, always
at night, discordant and piercing as they break the monotony of whatever
I’m doing. However far away they are, they demand attention. Why
they howl, I don’t know, but the sounds always fill me with an odd
mix of admiration and dread, lasting well after the final coyote stops.
I’ve never particularly liked coyotes, particularly after they
killed my last cat, Smokey - perhaps the subject of another entry - but
all the same I enjoy hearing them. In a life where I’ve continued
to grow increasingly more silent and isolated, they, and the cars and
trucks and helicopters and lawnmowers and doves and everything else
I’ve heard, remind me that it’s okay to take someone’s
attention and stand out.