Sunday, 10 August 2003 | Noise

I don't hear the rooster anymore, which is good, I suppose, since someone once told me that the rooster was very likely employed as a cock fighter. I'd wondered why I could hear such a creature in Brooklyn, especially so regularly, but cock fighting had never occurred to me. Originally I'd found the sound of his voice amusing.

Some Sundays the evangelist's sermon penetrates my windows as noticeably as daylight. He mostly speaks in Spanish, which I prefer, though that makes me wonder how I know that he's an evangelist. I suppose he could be an auctioneer of some sort, or a political activist. But something in his voice gives him away.

The thumping bass of the drive-by vehicles sets off the car alarms like dominoes, which inspires hands to turn dials on the portable stereos until their speakers shake from over-stimulation, which turns talking into yelling and laughter into shrieking. This is the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built.

...

I arrived in New York one year ago today. It of course doesn't feel like a today, but somehow like both one month and several years, simultaneously.