It is past 3am.  Usually I’m asleep but my sick boys needed their daddy to buy more fever-reducing medicine…  It is an emotionally difficult thing to drive the streets of LA at this time of night/morning.  You see all sorts of things that break your heart, which I won’t describe on this occasion.  I’m back at home and what strikes me tonight are the sounds, or rather the quiet.  

I’ve slept in Manhattan where the noise is deafening and (I’m assuming) never stops.  By comparison it always surprises me how quiet LA can get at night, particularly in this section of Hollywood where there are more than 30,000 people per square mile.  Granted, this is not a weekend or holiday so there are no loud parties going on, but still I’m amazed that all is peaceful tonight.  I open my balcony door, enjoy the gentle breeze coming from the coast, and soak in the quiet.  Aside from the chirping of invisible crickets and the never-ending breathing sound of LA’s monstrous freeways (some people liken it to ocean waves), all other noises come and go.  In one hour these various reminders that I’m not alone included:

• police sirens wailing very softly in the distance

• a sliding van door opening and shutting

• cars driving too fast down our residential street

• bottles and cans clinking – down below me a man in a conical straw hat is collecting recyclables from my neighbors’ trash cans.  His shopping cart is a volcano exploding with full trash bags

• long scraping sounds – a neighbor is dragging trashcans out of the way so he can park his car alongside the curb

• a screech of an alley cat

• a helicopter humming overhead – it passes us by to perform a police search in an adjacent neighborhood

These sounds come and go but things always return to the dominant sound for tonight: the peaceful crickets and freeway breathing.  LA’s quiet.   

Now my eyes are following a neighbor’s footsteps which never make a sound as he paces back and forth; I can see the red glow of his cigarette.  It is amazing but I really could hear a pin drop.  …In the giant city of Los Angeles of all places.  How bizarre! 

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