August 11, 2014
A-few-years-ago I learned that when Giti and I had one of our very (very, very) loud discussions – usually in the quiet canyon evenings after a-couple-of-glasses of wine each (echoes of Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson) – that probably both sides of the canyon (at least a square mile’s worth) could hear our every word. I began closing the windows on such canyon evenings.
I mean, when you can hear cars coming up or down Canoga from a-half-a-mile-away in either direction – you know that sound carries quite well!
I discovered this pantheon-, Greek amphitheater-like sound clarity about-four-years-ago when I was sitting on my patio (which is on the 3rd floor off the street [with the house in between]) and I thought someone was talking to me on my patio. Come to learn, my neighbor was talking to someone on the street! That dialed me into how well sound from the street carried up to the home, and, vice versa…
I had additional education on our local sound transmission when my neighbor (who lives on the ridge above me across the street) became a fan of my garage music performances and we discovered that we could have easy conversation from my driveway to his perch 50 feet above me. And I always hear him when he is cussing out his neighbor.
I developed additional “talking” paranoia when I clearly heard Giti’s telephone conversations coming from the street behind us (part of her walking trail) and all-the-way around the corner into our driveway – while sitting on that aforementioned patio. You see, one of my neighbors thinks we are spies and when Giti speaks Farsi on-the-phone…Uh oh!
But nothing scared me quite as much as when it sounded as if someone was either being murdered or witnessing a murder (just last week!). It was a typical, still, canyon night, when I was awakened by the blood-curdling screams of a woman screaming “No! No!! No!!!” which was followed by a car revving and then a crashing sound. I lay in bed thinking that I had just been privy to a murder…but no law enforcement showed up until the next day — when a police chopper started circling “the hood.”
Indeed, police choppers have circled our “hood” 3 times during this past week and a line of flashing squad cars were lined up the side street kitty-corner from us this past Wednesday – so I know I wasn’t dreaming and this was not just some dyslexic porn actress’s massive climax (yes, yes, yes, our ‘hood’ has become a bit notorious for filming these flicks).
I heard her so well because my bedroom window was wide open…
In Woodland Hills, you see, we have to sleep with our windows open in the Summer – because most of us simply can’t afford to run our air conditioners 24/7 and we attempt to utilize the cool of the evenings. So when Giti and I get our requisite 2-3 sessions in during these still, Summer Evenings — we stay pretty quiet, because as I have demonstrated: sound carries exceedingly well around-these-parts!
And now, I’m beginning to think our neighbors have quiet sex as well; or that they don’t have sex at all; or, that they all have afternoon delight in air-conditioned splendor: because aside from the odd car going by; or, the potential cocaine psychosis of a female neighbor — no sounds drift through our acoustically perfect night air?!
Is everyone else doing it during the day with the air conditioning running? Does everyone work a graveyard shift in our “hood”?? Or, do we have a celibate neighborhood?
Could it be that the folks in this part of the world no longer experience genuine passion in the cool, canyon, night air? Is each of our empirical performances now mediated by some buffer like air conditioning? Have we become that jaded?
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