In my Birmingham sphere, I heard these sounds:
- Wail of the fire engine and EMT truck from the next corner
- Ringing of the bell from the Orthodox Church
- Rumbling of the train on the track on the other side of the highway
- And always always always the whirring rolling thrumming of the car and truck tires on the highway pavement above me
In my new place in Mobile, it is quieter except for two constants.
One is the nostalgic, soothing heartbeat of an ordinary, inexpensive, battery-operated wall clock my mother gave me a couple of years ago, which had been hanging on a wall of her petite dining room.
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
And there's another sound, more assertive:
Dock
Donk
Dunk dunk
Dick
DUCK
Dick
Dack duck
That is the drip onto the top of my window air conditioner/heater from the window air conditioner/heater on the floor above me.
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| My dripped-upon window unit. Mobile, Alabama. September 2021. |
Omnipresent.
It's not a bad sound. It's just a never-ending sound.
Kind of like the constant humming of the white-winged doves in Alamogordo.
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| Nesting white-winged dove in Alamogordo, New Mexico. March 2013. |
As we enter fall, I'm sure the drip will cease as the air conditioner upstairs eventually goes dormant.
Occasionally, a lumbering plane flies low and loud across my horizon. Not anything like the sonic booms of my Alamogordo apartment, but so low and loud - a rumbly loud - that sometimes I wonder if the plane is about to plow into a neighboring building. None has, yet.
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