by Bill Harrison

What the heck is that? Gunfire? At 5:30 a.m.? On Sunday? In Centro? Wait, no. Those aren't AR-15s; they're firecrackers. Here we go again. I guess I'm awake.

I grew up in and around New York, "the city that never sleeps." For most of the year, I live in downtown Chicago, allegedly one of the most violent (and noisy) cities in the U.S. At home, I'm almost never woken up by sounds, except when the roof repair guys start tromping around at 7 a.m. right above my head. Here in tiny San Miguel, however, I'm finding my inner peace and many a night's sleep regularly interrupted by all sorts of sounds, including clanging church bells, choruses of barking dogs, and, of course, fireworks.

I know San Miguel is a loud place. It wouldn't be one of the most attractive places on the planet without its sights and sounds. Much like the hills and the cobblestones, if you want to hang out here, the bells, dogs, and fireworks come with the territory.

There are some other sounds I find especially tricky to manage. For instance, the car, truck, and motorbike traffic never stops here on Calle Umarán. There's a bit of a lull between, say, two and six in the morning, but otherwise I might as well be camping out on one of L.A.'s freeways. The traffic volume is particularly irksome because our casa is located just below the summit of a steep, slippery cobblestone mount. Most drivers have to give their engines a good kick in the ass-elerator to make it over the hump. Our hill is alive with the sound of revving.

One night last month, I'd just begun to drift off to Nightmare Land when I was roused by what sounded like shoveling. In Chicago, it might have been someone digging their car out from under a foot of snow. But I was fairly certain it hadn't snowed here in central Mexico in the last two hours. I cracked open the front door and gazed in the direction of the rhythmic crunching. Sure enough, there were two gentlemen shoveling gravel into a house three doors down on the opposite side of the street. At midnight. They kept at it for a good hour (it was a voluminous pile). I really wanted to find out why on earth they were doing this grueling work literally in the middle of the night but, given my scant attire and grumpy mood, I thought it best to leave my curiosity unsatisfied.

Today's cacophony began rather earlier than usual. Es domingo, amigos! Where are you all going at this hour? I'm guessing the bone-rattling boom-sst-boom-sst boom-sst-boom-sst emanating from a few of these vehicles must be young'uns who haven't yet hit the hay after last night's revelries. The rest of you have no excuse. You ought to still be in bed, dang it. (And stay off my lawn while you're at it.)

These sounds, though completely normal, grate on my nerves, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, my people don't do boisterous. While some folks live out loud, we live quietly in our heads. In other cultures, twelve hours of ecstatic dancing to the thunderous pounding of drums is just another day. I think of Big Fat Greek weddings, Carnaval in Brazil, operatic "discussions" over dinners in Italian restaurants, and seemingly every other day in SMA. New Orleans has its rambunctious funeral parades; Black churchgoers raise the roof with their thunderous praise bands and gospel choirs.

By contrast, in my culture, studious graybeards gather clandestinely in the early a.m. to mumble together for twenty minutes, if they can scrape together ten of their ilk (a minyan). If not, days begin without the morose community morning prayers. On the sabbath, the synagogue might have a cantor and possibly an organ, but no choir and certainly no band. Once a year, we break out a raucous instrument—a ram's horn—not to celebrate but to atone. We don't have parades memorializing lives lost. Instead, we mope around in a room with shrouded mirrors for eight days, weeping and noshing on bagels and deli.

Yep, we're a fun lot.

The other reason for my over-the-top startle response to certain sounds is my hearing. I can't see worth a damn without my trifocals, and I have to use a cane to get around. But I have exceptionally fine hearing. During my career as a bass player, a cellist friend used to say, "We're string players. We can hear the grass grow." This is an accurate assessment. The irony is that my spouse is hearing-impaired; she's mostly deaf without her hearing aids. I often have to do the listening for both of us, especially out in public, something I'm glad to be able to do.

But sometimes I envy her. Having ultra-sensitive ears isn't necessarily an advantage, especially in loud environments. For example, any given night in El Jardin is a real challenge for me. I like Charles Ives as much as the next guy, but when there are four mariachi bands playing different music simultaneously (with, shall we say, questionable intonation) it's a bit much for my poor auditory cortex to handle. My wife can just turn her hearing aids down or off and, poof, problem solved.

Next year we'll be staying in a sedate part of San Antonio, where I hope to be able to get, in Elmer Fudd's words, some "west and wewaxation at wast." In the meantime, perhaps I can learn to sleep with a pair of noise-canceling headphones clamped on my ears.

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Bill Harrison is a psychotherapist, writer, and former professional bass player. His memoir, Making the Low Notes: A Life in Music, was published by Open Books Press in June 2023. His other work can be read in After Hours, Allium, Another Chicago Magazine, Bass World, Counseling Today, The Intermezzo, Sledgehammer, Under the Gum Tree and elsewhere. Bill lives in Chicago with his poet/therapist wife and a rambunctious Bengal named Jazzy. All three of them spend part of the year in San Miguel de Allende.

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