One Sunday morning I stirred around 7am just as the pale blue of pre-dawn was slowly becoming a peachy haze. Being a closet suffer of SAD I was quietly relieved that it looked like it might be a sunny day after what felt like days and days of heavy cloud cover. Cold I can handle. Endless grey I cannot. I blame my enviably warm and sunny upbringing in the south of Portugal. In my memory it never rained though apparently it must have because there was still life and greenery in our garden at the end of our ten years of living there.
As the kettle spluttered to life I could hear Eli wittering to Biddy, Rabbit and Polar Bear in his cot. I could hear the gentle rumble of the trains outside our kitchen window going about their usual journeys for anyone brave enough to be outdoors this early on a Sunday morning in November. And even…was that birdsong?
And then there was a new noise. It started so gradually at first that I barely noticed it. The clank of metal on metal, a ladder maybe or lots of scaffolding poles. The unmistakable holler of one workman to another. Then there was muffled hammering, noticeable but not intrusive. I was able to forget about it when distracted by my tea bag missing the bin or the sound of poor Biddy hitting the back of Eli’s bedroom door at pace.
And then there was more. The piercing, rhythmic crack of a sledgehammer on concrete and eventually the head-splitting sound of an angle grinder and the fizzing of spitting sparks. Our Sunday morning symphony was complete (or so we thought) and set to continue like that for the rest of the day. It was close enough to our living room window that, if I wanted to, I could spit my gum over the barrier and into their workspace (maybe a Beebee gun would be more satisfying…)
So this was noisy but tolerable. We couldn’t exactly ignore it any more but showing Eli the sparks and watching the workmen chip away at what looked like a key part of the railway arch made it entertaining anyway. How is that staying up? And with he trains still trundling over it – amazing.
But then there was drilling. Not at building site number one, oh no. On the other side of the house was building site number two. The mosque across the way is flanked by scaffolding and has been for some time. And of course Sunday is as good a day as any to get cracking on that building work too. So now we were the unhappy filling in a building site sandwich. And until our friends upstairs decided to get going on their DIY it was actually pretty funny.
As a part of a course Matt and I did a couple of years ago at Regent College in Vancouver, we listened to a radio programme about the impact of city dwelling on stress levels. It comes as no surprise I’m sure that a main conclusion on the programme was that living in the city increases stress and conversely exposure to green, natural beauty is physiologically and psychologically beneficial to us. But the thing that stood out to me about the discussion we heard was the journey our brains go on in being exposed to city noises such as pneumatic drills, sirens and car horns. In order to cope with the constant assault on our ears, our brains have to be selective about what they process otherwise it all gets too tiring. Before long we start to block an amazing amount of the noises out. We become more and more numb to our surroundings. This then means that in moving from place to place, even from city to country again, we are more closed off to the things that benefit us as well as the things that don’t and are generally less connected to our environment.
We have a friend who is a Jesuit priest and he taught us a lot about the art of Phenomenology – ‘the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness’ (thank you Wikipedia) I.e the study of what it means to be present, aware, conscious.
What I’ve learnt from our Jesuit friend is that if we’ve intentionally moved into a neighbourhood to learn, absorb, love and struggle in it, then we can’t shut part of it off. It is all relevant and all informs how we understand each other and change in response to it. I think sometimes it can be easy to demonise urbanisation and idealise raw nature, well I’m definitely guilty of that anyway, having grown up building dens inside 150 year old olive trees. But I’m keen to take this city in, warts and all (even when all I want to do is run away and find somewhere peaceful to hide) because that’s when I learn most about what my friends and neighbours face every day. Which is one of the reasons we’re here. Move in and live deep. Work out what transformation means. A noisy building site is just the tip of the iceberg. If I shut that off, I’ll miss everything.
anotherkindofparadise 