noise opera
David Mampel
Groveland Mack was sleeping last night until the jets at Boeing Field roared their test engines at five a.m. and spoiled everything. As a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), Groveland hated noise. HSPs are easily over-stimulated and need time to be alone so they can process external stimuli. He was like a jumpy cat. Felines are sensitive, mystical creatures. Groveland wished he had been born in the Australian Outback. He probably would have become a shaman, but he lived in a city with no village elders to guide him.
The sonic blast brought Groveland back to life like thunder and lightning zapping Frankenstein’s eyes open. Or, maybe he was dead. He wasn’t sure. Groaning and cursing, Groveland imagined full throttled 737 engines were louder than wet, windy bomb cyclones howling around the walls of his house. Twenty-seven birch trees on the perimeter of his lawn whipped their branches around like heavy metal head bangers. Groveland could see yellow leaves leaping into the wind like bodies in a mosh pit of gutters. Was he floating above the trees?
Somewhere past the gray darkness, a waxing gibbous moon existed. The Planets app on Groveland’s phone could prove it. Where the hell was his phone? Groveland thought he heard raindrops the size of ice cubes thumping a punk beat on his kitchen window pane, but there wasn’t any sound.
The howling wind and rain was quiet too. It certainly wasn’t as loud as yesterday’s constant whine from Mr. Chang’s buzz saw endlessly cutting ceramic tiles for yet another project. Mr. Chang lived next door. His yard looked like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. His neighbor had tiled a walkway between trellises and tomatoes and hooked up downspouts to a rain barrel which Groveland thought was not a bad idea. The industrious neighbor’s family might survive climate change better than most. Groveland couldn’t understand Mandarin, but he liked how his neighbor smiled and waved whenever their eyes met. The Tower of Babel confusion of foreign language eased whenever his neighbor shared extra vegetables with Groveland’s elderly mom or his mom brought the neighbors homemade cookies.
What was his neighbor sawing the other day? Groveland wanted to peek through the slotted fence, but he didn’t need to. He had a good view of it from above. Was he floating above his neighbor’s house? Was he dead? He tried to run his fingers through his hair, but there were no fingers, no hands, no head, no hair. What just happened?
As soon as he wondered, Groveland saw himself floating out of his body after the jet engines woke him up. Did the jet propulsion test at Boeing shock him out of his sleep triggering a heart attack? His spirit passed right through the ceiling of his cottage and hovered above the swaying birch trees. He couldn’t hear mechanical noise as a ghost, except for the jet engines that shrieked through the veil of the third dimension. Apparently even disembodied spirits can hear those. Well, spirits don’t really hear anything because they have no biology with ears and other sense organs. It’s more of a pure conscious awareness, but still annoying.. Groveland considered loud sound can even bring back the dead like Lazarus. He wondered if Jesus yelled louder than an industrial gas-powered fan to call Lazarus out of that dark tomb.
A flash of pure conscious awareness revealed to him that there was a petition going around in the 5th Dimension to put a stop jet engines. Groveland suspected that was the reason Boeing was struggling so much lately. It was a good thing he sold his stock when he did. Being dead could give you lots of Insider Information.
But Groveland imagined not hearing car alarms, leaf blowers, political pundits, and car commercials with spiritual messages was the best part of floating outside of time and space. He decided he liked being dead. He loved how fun it was. He could even fly like all the times he wished he could as a kid. Groveland liked the tranquility and creative freedom on the other side.
After a span of immeasurable time, his spirit floated back inside the cottage and merged with his body lying on the bed. Groveland’s phone rang louder than an obnoxious hungry crow. What? He could hear it? Was he just dreaming? He wanted to fly again, but wondered if he could throw peanuts at his phone to make it shut up.
His refrigerator motor started retching like a sick cow mooing in the distance. Groveland cringed. Would the distractions ever end? No. Three Scam Likely phone calls followed soon after. Groveland missed pure conscious awareness. He missed hovering above the trees. He was back in his body with all its aches, pains, and delicate sense organs.
Groveland grunted and rolled out of bed. He shuffled over to his couch, plopped down and rang a small Tibetan brass bowl with a six-inch brown wooden mallet. The sound of the chime calmed him. It wasn’t grating or distracting. It was soothing. His ears followed the ringing into the silence.
After twenty minutes, Groveland’s breathing slowed. A spaciousness opened inside his chest. He got up to make a green smoothie. Filling his blender with cucumber, celery, romaine lettuce, lemon juice, coconut water, cayenne, avocado, green apple and ginger, he put the cover on and flipped the switch. The grating squeal of his Vita Mix cut through him like all the other metallic and electronic noises he hated, but something was different now. Maybe the dream he had of being a free spirit out of time and space broadened his perspective. Maybe the meditation chime still rang inside him.
Whatever it was, Groveland began humming along with the blender. The Vita Mix was tuned to E-flat, his favorite key to sing in.
Before Groveland’s smoothie was pureed to perfection, he started singing in unison with the grinding noise of a kitchen appliance.
David Mampel writes fiction and poetry to survive the cold, rainy darkness of Seattle and “daylights” as a full-time caregiver for his elderly parents. His work has appeared in Copperfield Review Quarterly and CommuterLit.com.