I hate the sound of lawn equipment, as does my dog. The noise grates through the mornings like sandpaper, scraping against my patience before I’ve even had the chance to use it. The irony of being awakened by the sound of someone else’s productivity is not lost on me. The lawnmowers arrive with confidence. And just when we’ve adjusted, they’ll return in the afternoon— as if inconvenience is a requirement of the service.
My dog, who has no concept of property values or neighborhood maintenance, responds with an alarm that I too wish I could express without consequence. At least one of us is speaking our mind.
When they aren’t outside, the air conditioner hums through my apartment at a pitch just high enough to forget about until I remember it again. It becomes most unbearable in the moment I notice it. I can live with it for hours, but then my attention catches on the sound and I cannot release it. Suddenly, the apartment feels like a machine I just so happen to sleep inside. I’ve always felt it’s better to be loud on purpose than to pretend to be quiet. There is something so honest about an argument, a slammed door. Ever since I moved here, I’ve longed for the promised silence that has yet to arrive.
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Everyone speaks on my street. Not to each other. On the phone or from somewhere beyond an open door, they’re always speaking to someone who isn’t here. Their voices drift across the parking lots. I hear people discussing errands, appointments, relatives, and problems that seem to require an entire afternoon of explanation. They can talk for hours without making eye contact.
They keep their porches and patios clean as if to embarrass any blemish that dares to exist. Their spaces are immaculate, untouched by the evidence of actual living. It makes me not want to use anything out of fear of someone finding out I may actually use the things that adorn my apartment. I imagine a neighbor looking over and catching me with my feet up, a cup on the table, a blanket slipping from a chair. What a scandal it would be to discover that a home is meant to be inhabited.
My street stinks, literally. No one uses the dog park, yet everyone has a dog. We seem to telepathically take turns leaving dog droppings that no one can be held accountable for. It’s absurd to maintain the appearance of cleanliness while collectively refusing to practice it. I imagine everyone blaming everyone else, though no one ever says anything. We are all implicated, and therefore no one is responsible. Unlike porches and patios, the sidewalk cannot be staged.
I miss the sound of arguing in lieu of proper entertainment. Not the noise itself, but the intimacy of it. I miss the way an argument could pull an entire household into the same room. Even the silence afterward meant something. People sulked, apologized, refused to apologize. There was a kind of closeness in being unable to escape each other.
Sometimes I’ll put on Zeus Network just to watch people touch each other and mean it again. Watching Natalie Nunn instigate battles like God, I wonder if anyone has ever died from nostalgia. The fights are excessive, brutal, almost choreographed, but I find myself drawn to the sheer physicality of it all.
People stand too close. They point, shove, embrace, threaten, and cry with their whole bodies. Their emotions refuse to remain neatly contained within the boundaries of good manners. There is evidence of one person reaching another, even if the reaching takes the form of a fight. I do not necessarily miss the dysfunction. I miss a world in which other people could still get under your skin because they were close enough to touch it.
No one smokes on my street. Smoke is nostalgic to me in a way that flips my stomach and burns my eyes. Here, smoke only signals labor—from construction sites and passing vehicles. And like conversations and patio furniture, it appears alone. There is no gathering around it, there is only exhaust and the residue of movement without destination.
It used to signal camaraderie—barbecues, cousin walks, neighbors lingering outside long after the food was gone. Smoke rose from grills and cigarettes, from the things people cooked and the things they shared. It gathered above folding chairs and crowded driveways, settling into clothes and hair, marking everyone with the same scent.
It was a hazy force field that could split communities wide open only to fasten them back together. Inside that haze, people borrowed things, exchanged stories, complained about relatives, and watched children run between yards. Nobody needed an invitation to linger. The smoke announced that someone was outside, and being outside meant there was a chance you might belong to something.
But prosperity does not love company. Only misery does. Prosperity loves isolation. It loves a patio so pristine that sitting on it feels like vandalism. It promises peace and delivers distance.
So no one smokes on my street. They speak, they stink, but they do not smoke.
The lawn equipment will return tomorrow. The air conditioner will hum. Someone will have a conversation with a person I will never meet, and another dog will leave something behind for the rest of us to step around. The porches will remain clean, the patios untouched, and the people inside their homes will continue to live as if living were something best done out of sight.
Sometimes I think the noise is the only thing here that refuses to pretend.
I am waiting for smoke.
I miss my family.
My dog will bark, and I will listen.