November 2020,
Yesterday, Sandy and I put an offer in on a second home. The house shares about 2/3 of our Western property line and fence.
We moved into our current home in West/Central Berkeley on a weekday. All of our prior visits and inspections had occurred on weekends, so we were shocked to see what had felt like a quiet street turn into a cacophony of trucks and city vehicles. In our rush to secure this house, we’d failed to notice that it was just under a block away from the Berkeley City Corporate Yard. The main parking location for all of the city large vehicles: backhoes, street sweepers, garbage trucks, etc. It’s also the fuel and gas station for all of the other city vehicles such as police cruisers. Monday at 6:55am, hot rods, souped up trucks, and motor cycles all race down our road to park their personal vehicles and clock in by 7am.
It was no wonder, then, that by the time our own moving truck had pulled away, the city vehicles were all tucked into bed for the night and Sandy and I walked back to our new home the four blocks from our favorite pizza place, that we relished in the considerable drop in volume. The night was filled with crows settling in, the swoosh of sound of a car speeding by, the barking of the neighbors dogs: all of which sounded like silence to us after that day.
And then the next door neighbor elevened his sound system with classic rock. (This turned out to be the only time over the next 16 years that he ever did this.) We were surprised later that week to meet him: a mild-mannered (I’ve never used that descriptor before outside of Superman), HOH, professor of nursing.
The following weekend introduced us to a different musical delight: Japanese guitar and signing. To the essentially virgin ears, it made us turn to each other and ask ourselves, “Oh hell. What have we gotten ourselves into?” It does take some getting used to. I don’t know if it is to everyone’s taste, but overtime I grew to listen for it on Friday evenings. Our neighbor (on our other side) played every week. Sometimes by herself, and sometimes she had guests over to join in.
Then over the years her playing grew a little less frequent, and it wasn’t long after it stopped altogether, we saw her house go up on the market.
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January 2021
When I started this post a couple of months ago, we placed an offer on the house. Now a couple of months of silent Fridays later, Sandy has moved in comfortably, and the boys spend half their time there and half there time here. On the Fridays when I’m alone, I’m tempted to play recordings of Japanese guitar. It feels like it should be a staple of their life: the soothing, yet haunting, discordant, yet harmonious nature of it.