Rude Awakenings

So spring has sprung, the grass has riz, and we know where the birdies is.  The temperature is starting to become more stable and we can almost feel safe putting away the warm woollies.  People are planting gardens and putting out flower pots and opening pools and planning vacations.  We wake in the mornings to the sound of birds singing sweetly as they make nests for their new offspring.  It is a sweet and joyful time of year.

But once or twice a week the peacefulness of the neighbourhood is shattered by the hounds of hell that are roaming the country in the guise of  leaf blowers.  Their roar is ear splitting, nerve shattering and totally without purpose.   For some reason the leaf blowers  only  seem able to roar to life  at 7 a.m  Rarely are they heard in the late afternoon or evening.  They start their cacophony even before the grass is cut.  If the fates are kind the noise is over by the time the lawn mower has started, but that rarely happens.  I have seen landscaping companies with three or four employees all armed with leaf blowers and blowing the same pile of leaves and debris!   And don't bother trying to holler at them for silence, they are all wearing protective ear muffs!  And some of them work for the city so they are a different species altogether and better left alone.

What is the benefit of these horrible pieces of machinery?  I have pondered this question for many years.  And the only thing I can come up with is that they are toys for boys.  Men love their machines.  They love their gadgets, especially the ones they can hold anywhere near their waist. (jackhammers, floor polishers, golf clubs)  It's not like the leaf blower is more efficient than a rake.  It's not.  It spews the leaves and litter and dirt and pebbles and small animals all over the yard and onto the street where the whole mess clogs the storm drains.  A lot of the "debris" is food for squirrels and birds...pine cones, and seeds are blown to the street.   Is it a time saver?  Perhaps it's faster, but if you need 3 or 4 people to do one area how much money are you really saving?  And what about the gas and maintenance of those monstrosities.  They can't be saving money.  Raking is a sustainable and ecologically sound way of taking care of the yard.  Has no one realized that?

Here's the real question though.  Everyone is entitled to get their job done in whatever way works for them and if that means blowing the leaves all over the place, then whatever floats your boat.  But why in the name of all that is holy, has no one come up with a way to make the damn things quieter??  There must be some technology that could eliminate the noise and the fumes.   Why are these not outlawed, or bylawed the way cars are.  If you have a car that has no muffler you are required to have it fixed, it's a noise violation!   I have not met anyone who thinks these leaf blowers are great.

I want to start a petition to have these made illegal if they are not made silent.  But this is a first world problem.  There are so many other serious issues to get angry about.  Eventually the noise stops and the fumes blow away, the squirrels carry the pine cones back to where they were, and the birds find the seeds.  And I take advantage of the early wake up call and write rants about the leaf blowers.  Something for everyone.

Quiet Please!

I have often wondered who decided that we needed to be constantly bombarded with noise day in and day out.   It seems everywhere you go there is noise.  Music, or news,or a sports game playing on a big screen, .  Even in my apartment there is music coming out of a speaker in front of the elevator on my floor,and in the lobby a television screen because how tragic would it be for me to have to be left uninformed in the brief time it takes the elevator to come. Even in the dr's office waiting room we are subjected to news being broadcast on a t.v in the waiting room.  There seems to be no escape from it.  Why is this?  Did people complain that they were bored in the waiting room or at the elevator or in the restaurants?   Don't we all have enough devices these days that we can plug in to entertain ourselves no matter where we are?  Is it too much to expect people who are eating together to actually talk to each other rather than gaze numbly at the latest headlines?

As you can probably guess, I like quiet.  I like it a lot.  My apartment is silent.  T.V is never on, unless I am watching a movie, I don't play any music, no ipod. When I am playing on line games I turn the music off.   And I like it that way.  I like music, but I always have music in my head and have no need to add to that.  I find noise distracting and as annoying and very stressful.  AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON LEAF BLOWERS!

Maybe it's that we are all afraid of our feelings. Maybe we need noise to distract us from what is going on inside ourselves.  Maybe we don't like to be alone with our thoughts.  They might make us face things we would rather not face in our own lives.  So we keep feeding our brains endless stimuli to mask that stuff.  Have you ever sat in silence?   Turned off everything in your home and just sat and listened?  You should try it.  It's amazing how relaxing it is.   When I leave a noisy place I feel my body release all of the tension I had been holding while being assaulted by noise.   And yes, even music is noise to me unless I am some place for the sole purpose of listening to music. The worst is when music is being piped in at a volume so low you can't tell what song is playing, but you can still hear it.

I was shopping at Target one Christmas and I noticed something interesting.  There was no music.  It was quiet!  And because there was no music, people who shopped there were quieter.  The whole place had a relaxed feel to it.  It was wonderful.  Costco is the same.  It is busy as hell most days and moving around in the store is a puzzle.  But the atmosphere is calm.  There is no music.  Just the sound of people shopping.

I think it would do wonders for peoples mental health to spend at least one hour a day in silence.  Not necessarily silent meditation, but just silence.  See if you feel more refreshed afterwards.