Sounds Through a Window in Little Village
The sudden and alarming rumblings of the train, combined with the incessant wailing of an ambulance in the background, come blasting in sharp and loud through the open window and startle me out of my daydreaming. The rumbling becomes louder and louder, and sharper and sharper as metal grinds against metal. It becomes so high-pitched at some point that I wonder if I’ll have to cover my ears.
The commotion eventually fades away and now there is only the dull sound of the waking train slowly gaining traction. The ambulance has now been replaced by a fire truck siren further west. On some days, it’s an ambulance, fire truck, and police car going all at once. Not to mention the sounds of the ‘undercover’ vehicles speeding dangerously by. I can also hear the Cermak bus as it pulls up near the viaduct and when it ‘kneels’ for passengers.
In addition to all that there’s a car alarm going off, someone is yelling for someone to come out of their house somewhere down the block, the neighbors are yelling at their kids about homework, and it’s raining, a heavy, loud plopping, incessant rain.
The chaos of sounds is always imminent.
There is another track alongside the train that carries passengers back and forth from the city but those trains seem to just flash by. They seem lighter in sound, too, perhaps because they are just a little further away. Although I’ve never paid attention to their routine I’m sure they are on a schedule. It seems like there are a total of four tracks pero yo no se.
Further north from this group of train tracks is the Pink line at Central Park. If you’ve never been to the area, there’s a garden and fresh produce market on the corner at Ogden and Central Park as you exit the train.
I like it there. They carry fresh produce, some refrigerated items like milk, yogurt, and cheese, and some dry goods, too. I love their salad greens grown by aquaponics. Is that how you phrase it? They also had/have classes. I took a couple of cooking classes and learned how to make herbed butter and veggie pasta. It’s a cool spot. (Now all we need is a good coffee/tea shop nearby and wow!)
Oh, by the way, sometime in 2019 I took home a plant from Farm on Ogden’s “free plants” stand they had near the entrance of the shop. Well, that plant is still lush and beautiful. I’ve repotted into several times soI have it in several locations including welcoming visitors by our front door. Good stuff!
A couple of blocks east of the farm is Quality Car auto shop where Ranflas took place earlier this year. That was a fun event and one of my first group outings in 2021. The event had DJs, a mariachi, an art exhibit, vendors, crafters, artists, and classic cars of all kinds. It was really nice to see the neighborhood come together and I appreciate everything the artists involved in the event continue doing collectively and individually.
We even saw someone walking their pet goat. Awww. See the album for proof.
As the sounds once again startle me and awake all these thoughts I tell myself to write it somewhere… and here we are.
For what it’s worth, it’s important for me (perhaps, even, therapeutic) to write down the sounds that make up the landscape of anything — this block, this neighborhood, La Villita, the community, this area in the Midwest. I like listening to everything that’s around me, despite my intentional (and vast, a veces) consumption of specific music.
It matters to me what each experience sounds like. The sound composition of things (or, um, everything?) is imperative. For me. For me.
I should have prefaced this all by saying that while I work in my room, as I sit at my desk and write with the open window to my right, I’m also playing the Sarah Silverman podcast in the background and randomly pressing play on tracks I’m writing about. There are times I need all of these sounds going on. These things happen. I haven’t even begun to describe the joyous sounds that happening as the sun settles. The long whistle from the camote vendor, the bell of the paletas couple, or more recently the voice of the man driving slowly by on his truck, a speaker onboard, selling produce. I love it.
Well, sometimes I love it, sometimes I can’t handle it so much.
What about you? What are some of the sounds in your neighborhood, not to sound all Mr. Rogers about it?
If you’re in the mood, here are some of today’s selected songs…
