Sunday, June 22, 2008

sunday noise

The sounds of a Sunday back home:

Mosquitoes. I’m at Ed’s farmette and the buzz is horrific. Maybe if I butchered some of the grasses and shrubs, where they wait before hitting on us, they’d be less pernicious?
I take the lawn mower out and hack away at the weeds and grasses at the site of the future writer’s shed. So, the sounds of Sunday include a lawnmower running wild over Ed’s property.

The tilling machine used by the Hmong farmers renting land just to the side of us. (Whom are they renting it from? Don’t know. The developer maybe? Because rumor has it that it’s only a matter of years if not months before these fields will turn into a subdivision.) Working hard on what traditionally is a day of rest. When the machine is quiet, you know they’re hitting the weeds by hand.


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Ed’s saw: he’s cutting beams to create the contours for the shed. The area is cleared now. (I took down the last tree that was in the way this morning. Ed doesn’t have the heart to take down trees.) But it’s not level. Our “co-builder” Amos is threatening to deliver the frame of the shed in a matter of days (which I translate to mean sometime this summer) and the ground is still far from even.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear Ed’s five-pund hammer pounding in posts. I’m at this moment taking a break from digging holes for more possibly-dead roses.


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Coffee? Yes! The sound of the motorbike. Past fields of green, to a very pleasant place. Just down the road. Fields of green and skies of… increasingly, gray.


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So pleasant is this pause that we never notice the darker clouds taking charge up above. We race back with sounds of thunder and drops of rain chasing us to the shed. (The finished one, the place where Ed hangs.)


Meanwhile, somewhere in Paris, by the River Marne, you will have heard forks and knives clanking against plates as people settle down to serious Sunday eating.

Followed by a river walk. Shades of green.

Like ours? Just a little bit?


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