Thursday, August 21, 2014

20140821.0647

I have remarked several times before that part of the reason I try to write in the morning is the relative quiet of the time. Even in New York City, the early hours are relatively quiet; the buses and trains still run and rattle by, and some trucks go down roads they ought not, but the din and tumult are greatly muted. In the much smaller town where I now live, I have found far more quiet in the mornings (and at all times), particularly since it is a college town, and college students are not exactly noted for being early birds. It is a thing I have come to appreciate, even if I have not always availed myself of it as I perhaps ought to do.

Yesterday and today, though, it has not been the case that the mornings have been quiet. Even now, I hear the metallic buzzing of lawnmowers at work, cutting the grass while the dew is still wet upon it. While I know that outside work is best done before the heat of the day sets in, and I expect that today will be quite warm, I am surprised--and not entirely pleasantly--to hear it happening in the area surrounding Sherwood Cottage. It is not a thing that has much happened before, so I have grown accustomed to not having to put up with it in the slightly more than a year I have been here. (I enjoyed Don Quixote, by the way.) That I have to put up with it now is a bit of an annoyance.

I suppose that I am guilty of curmudgeonly nimbyism in being annoyed; there is something of an old man's "get off my lawn" about my thought (and written?) wish that the mowers would take their work somewhere that is not in my backyard. It is not a flattering supposition, of course; while I am not at all averse to being called a curmudgeon ("I had fun once. It was terrible."), the rank hypocrisy of the nimbyism is something I ought to know better than to indulge. It is the same kind of impulse that calls for homeless shelters--somewhere else, or that wants to have bike paths and playgrounds put in--over there. It is not helpful, and it is not good of me to have it.

The realization means that the thought will not drive action. I am not going to charge out onto my front porch to rant at those who ply their trades in the growing morning. I am not even going to wallow in the annoyance at them. I have gotten it out of myself, to my benefit. And there is another, better focus for my vexation in any event; I will attend to it. The cats are about their shenanigans again, running around and making noise (although not every noise). There are people in Sherwood Cottage still asleep at this point, and I am not a safe base in some feline game of tag...

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