!!!!

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. Schopenhauer

My neighborhood: Sometimes there is silence, sometimes there is noise. Noise predominates. The most prevalent noise is the constant chatter, usually of voices heavily accented, which sometimes flares into yells and imprecations, fusillades attending some who-knows-the-reason histrionics. (Strangely, my street, Ives, experiences quite it share of lovers' spats; Rhodies seem to know little about restraint and even less about decorum.)

There is also a presence most terrible, most brutish, and, unfortunately, most loud -- a fat, stunted, sloping-browed miscarriage of humanity who rides endless circuits around the neighborhood on chopper reminiscent of the one belonging to the anthropomorphized cheetah who sells ersatz-cheese snacks (Here he is now! Speak of the devil and he is bound to show up.) -- a chopper so constructed as to maximize the combustive noise of the engine. The noise it produces is window-rattling, nerve-fraying and can only be described as farts of the gods. What this mongoloid's object is one can only speculate. I am of the opinion that it involves mating, and this noise-making is part of some ritual, remarkable in both its crude ostentation and apparent inefficacy and perhaps peculiar to northeastern pipe-welding illiterates, devoted to that end. I imagine he believes this infernal bike of his so compellingly announces both his potency and availability that the females of the neighborhood cannot but swoon at his approach and fling themselves into recumbency on the street to receive his seed. C. is of the opinion that, being so apparently stupid and unlettered, he can only get his own back this way, with his noisy bike, against the society which has so thoroughly thwarted his jouissance and neutered his will with its oppressive expectations of civility and the productive disposal of one's time.

In addition to this motorcycle idiot are those whom I call "the people of the stoop": squatters upon entryway steps for hours on end, carrying on with the sort of pointless, high-decibel blather only indolent welfare cheats can ken. They appear in the process of being squeezed from the neighborhood by the property-value-minded Portuguese, and are under constant surveillance by the Providence police. Truly, then, one can say that these stoopsquatters' bark is worse than their bite.

Despite these clamorous elements, however, Providence -- at least the east side, where I live -- seems an orderly city. I have found it even more retiring than Tucson; many more businesses here keep bankers' hours. Not to be outdone, my bank does not even keep bankers' hours, closing its door to commerce at 4 PM daily (noon on Saturday).