“Summer has set in with its usual severity.”
Hot doesn’t quite describe the weather. Both papers this morning were filled with pictures of people in fountains, at Frog Pond or by the shore. Boston will be in the 90’s-we’ll hit the 80’s. The rest of the week looks the same.
Winter has an intimacy summer lacks. In winter, we sit behind closed windows and doors in our private little worlds and try to stay warm and cozy. In summer, privacy disappears. All those windows and doors are left open so we can catch the slightest breeze. Yesterday I heard a neighbor sneeze twice.
When I was a kid lying in bed and trying to fall asleep, I could hear the TV downstairs and the one next door. I heard neighbors argue in raised voices and mothers yell at kids to settle down and go to sleep. The clink of glasses and the murmur of several voices meant a party. We knew most things about each other, but it never really mattered. Nobody mentioned them. We were friends and we were neighbors.
I know everyone on my street, but we are not close. My friends are at the end of the street and in between are the neighbors with whom I chat. We bemoan the heat, compliment each others’ gardens and wonder when it will rain. I can hear them through open windows, and I suspect they can hear me. Bob’s booming laugh from the house at the end of the street is easily identified. My other neighbors are Brazilian, and they speak to each other in Portuguese. Their kids answer in English. I can hear little boys screaming from two different houses. I wish I couldn’t. Dogs bark all the time. Across the street, Herb and Joanne keep all their doors and windows closed all summer. Joanne says it keeps out the heat of the sun. I think it makes them feel safe.
My favorite time is late at night. It is only then that the houses are quiet. The night birds and the peepers from the pond make the only sounds. I sit in the dark, listen to the birds and watch the fireflies. I don’t make a sound. I don’t want to intrude.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: neighborhoods, summer, winter
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
July 6, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Oh yeah! You’re right : Late summer night, and the night itself. Peacefull! Magic! That’s the only time of summer I like.
July 6, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Mario,
That’s my favorite part of summer too. THe nights always feel perfectly lovely.
I also like the very early mornings when everyone is still asleep.
July 6, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Again reminded of … “The Hissing of Summer Lawns”. Such an evocative title.
s
July 6, 2010 at 9:28 pm
s,
When I first heard of the album’s title, I thought of the noise sprinklers make. I don’t know why.
July 7, 2010 at 9:56 am
To me it’s always been the murmuring’s you hear across a neighborhood …
Hard saying what it really means – fun to discuss though.
s
July 7, 2010 at 12:06 pm
If you are interested in reading about what others think of this song and the rest of the album, there are **94** customer reviews here
and lots of them are full of interpretations of one and another piece on the album, including the title track.
And, of course, I have my own views of the piece (and the album, which I picked up as soon as I saw it). At the time, I thought of the sibilance of the “s” sounds in the lyrics as a riff in itself. A set of sounds set in the subject…the subject so soft and serene in the heat of summer.
Poetry is a set of angles and shapes, rounded and collected and placed just so like art in another land. Poetry is syllables and words, speared like postcards on a refrigerator with a dartboard door.
Poetry is often best when read aloud in a small group or a large crowd, gathered to parse and pause over the mastery and taste of language itself. Where mental mastication chews on syllepsis and ellipsis, simile and metaphor, just like agreement between subject and verb and king.
July 6, 2010 at 1:35 pm
The walls were to thick on the bottom floors when i grew up, so we seldome heard anything from our neighbours. But that didn´t mean we didn´t know what was going on 🙂 🙂
Here in the village it´s always quiet. But I did hear a child laugh this weekend 🙂 I only know of the closest neighbours. The houses are to widly spread here, in groups of three or four and I only know the closest names on the properties. All houses has different names here.
We have very few animals that can be heard of night time. Owls ofcourse and katydis in autumn. Otherwise it´s quiet, very quiet.
Have a great day now!
Christer.
July 6, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Christer,
We had several houses near us so it was noisy. I think in small villages nothing is a secret.
Where I live is also called a village but it is very much larger than yours with houses everywhere.
Neighbors make noise too at night.
July 6, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Most people in my neighborhood have the AC on now so doors and windows are all closed. It’s just as quiet as winter.
If it’s not too hot, the kids are out playing in the street and the empty lot. I still live in a neighborhood where the parents can let their kids play out in the street. If it is too hot, the kids are in someone’s yard playing in the pool. Unless it’s next door’s pool, I can’t hear them.
Night is pretty quiet, too. Sometimes I hear the screech owl. Sometimes raccoons. About the noisiest time is dawn when all the birds start singing up the sun.
July 6, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Caryn,
Only one of my neighbors has air conditioning, and they are the ones who never open windows or doors. They tend to barricade themsrlves. The rest of us just sweat.
The kids in my neighbor play in their backyards so I never hear them.
I love the morning birds first song.
July 6, 2010 at 3:13 pm
It’s all about the nasty heat and humidity in the summer down here. Those of us that have to work in it try to make the day go by fast, older people stay indoors or swim in their pools. The water usually is bathtub ready. As a kid up north we loved tennis in the morning and swimming in the community pool all afternoon. Still we managed to get into trouble.
July 6, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Z&Me,
It is nasty here too right now. This should be August, not the beginning of July. Last year at this time it was sweatshirt weather every night.
July 6, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Back in the early 80’s, I’d stay up until after midnight to catch some cool outside with a friend. We’d sit out at our picnic table in the back yard with the rumbles and buzzes of mosquitoes and air conditioners around the neighborhood. We’d hear an occasional dirt bike screaming down a major street about two blocks distant. Then, there’d come that magic moment: conversation would be at a lull, and ALL the air conditioner compressors in the neighborhood would be OFF at the same time. It wouldn’t last long, even if we were willing to suspend the conversation. Inevitably, within two minutes, there’d come the whirring sound of a compressor starting up again…then the next and the next, until all was cacophony again.
July 6, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Rick,
We listen for different sounds in the night, but we share an enjoyment of the quiet time when most of the world is sleeping.
July 6, 2010 at 9:33 pm
?Summer has set in with its usual severity.? «…
I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…
July 7, 2010 at 9:38 am
Thank you!! I appreciate the trackback!!
July 7, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Rick,
I love to hear poems read aloud. I even have this long time habit of reading anything I’ve written aloud. I listen for the softness of the language, for how well the words mesh and whether they give the picture my mind envisioned when I wrote. I can see the words as I read them aloud.
July 7, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Yes, I went from being scared to read aloud in the early grades from raising my hand before high school was out. In college, I volunteered to read for blind students in sciences, since I was in engineering. I could tell them what was going on in the equations and the specialized text that liberal arts folks just threw up their hands at.
But poetry has always been special to me…except for the two years of a semester apiece when I took British Poetry: Beowulf to Burns, then Burns to the Present. Argh. Profs with egos the size of Rhode Island who stabbed to the heart anyone who didn’t send back to them exactly what they said the poems stood for in class, in papers, and on tests. Ugh, ugh, ugh. But, after graduation, I never had to SAY what I liked about poems again for a grade. I could read poems and write poems to my heart’s content.
Some things, even college classes can’t quash. 😉
July 8, 2010 at 9:39 am
Rick,
I majored in English, but the professors never really decided what I should hear. They let me decide. Our understanding comes from our experiences and few of us share those so the poems reach us in different ways. Sometimes, though, the poets tells us what they meant and how the words related to them and their experiences.