SOUND THING

Staten Island is a pretty dull place, aurally. I just heard some guy yell swears at another guy outside the window of this room up at Hunter, which is slightly exciting. However, walking around Staten Island is just plain boring, at least where I live. I live in a county called Great Kills and yes, we call them "counties". Great Kills is mostly residential. Most of the people that live there stay in their houses all day and all night, except for the summer when all the South Shore kids decide to pay us sixth gen Italians a visit. Then it's not so boring, it's just annoying and the sound of street racing at 4AM is unpleasant.

I decided to not put my iPod on during my walk to the train one day, which takes roughly 25 minutes, and I wrote things down in my notebook as to what I saw and heard. Well I can tell you now that there was a whole lot of inactivity on that day on the count of it being nice out and school in session. But I did see a lot of video game systems turned on indoors thanks to the steadily rising unemployment rate.

I mostly heard the occasional car pass by and the ruffling of leaves. You can talk to trees but they can't talk back, so I suppose they are always making the most conversationalists until they fall over and hit a power wire. Then you just hear a snap and some buzzing, and then darkness, although darkness doesn't make a sound.

Once I heard a couple arguing. This is not uncommon because in my area you rarely see a family with a divorced, single parent and many of them have that "stay together for the kids" mentality since there are so many kids there. Of course they all go to public school, and I thought about walking over to my old public school to take a stroll past the school yard, but decided that might be kind of creepy and left it be.

I'd have to say the most prominent soundmark is the dog that barks at me as I walk past it every day. He hides behind a white fence and I'm pretty sure if he were let loose he'd tear me to pieces. Each morning when I walk to the train this dog barks at me. When I walk back home late at night he's still there barking. I can't remember a time when this obnoxious dog hasn't barked at me because this has been going on for at least six years now. This thing will never die. If it does, I will not know what to do.