Cacaphonies

I was off work today, and I got a lot done, but it was one of those vaguely unsettled days in which I would have liked the gray clouds to be whisked away and replaced by cool, dry air. I would have liked to have taken a drive today, but the city drew itself close about me and it seemed the very center of my known universe. I really couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. That is what living in a place for years will do to you, especially if it is a city of any size. There seems no escape. It is everywhere, the be-all and end-all.

I went to the office supply store and bought necessary things (ink for my printer); I went to Barnes and Noble. That was nice, a diversion. I went to the mall and ate awful Chinese food. Scratch that place. Then I went to another chain bookstore (notice the pattern), and there were just a few people in there, but all I seem to remember are the stacks and stacks, on table upon table, of bargain books. I made a cursory sweep through just to see if something, ANYTHING was worth buying. It’s really depressing. For years now, it seems the exact same kind of remainder books are for sale, even the exact titles, or the generic equivalent. Finding something good would be like winning the lottery on those tables. I don’t know why I bother. Bargain books are a compulsion to me. There’s always the possibility of a find, and that is what keeps me coming back.

But what I most remember about being in that store was the noise from a TV-VCR in the children’s area of the store, with the volume on a cartoon show of some sort blasting so loud that you could hear it all over the store, and it is a big store. It was one of those really obnoxious, violent cartoons, really wretched entertainment if you stop and watch any of it at all. Hearing it was enough. And who should be the object of all this cartoon mayhem? Why two passive little children, a boy and a girl, maybe 3 and 4 years old. Sitting in a small caboose watching that junk, the same stuff they probably spend hours glued to the screen at home watching. Is it any wonder kids can’t think or reason today?

(Sorry, it just angers me when I think of what is purveyed as children’s entertainment these days).

Later in the day, in the quiet of home, the assorted inanities of the day began to recede from consciousness. The traffic, the terrible drivers, the ugly highway with its dreariness and drabness — all in the past. Then I went for a walk. It was cool for the first time in a while. Nice. The evening was pleasant. I was lost in some disturbing thoughts, though, and then looked up to see a jet airplane practically overhead with the most terribly loud and strange-sounding engine noises issuing from it. In fact, it was so loud and so menacing a sound that I for a brief instant I thought the worst — that it was having engine trouble and that, oh no, it was going down. That is the kind of sound it made. An awful few seconds. And then it was gone. The neighborhood was quiet once again.