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vaudevilleghost
@vaudevilleghost

My first house in the city was on a freeway offramp; the noise of it was inescapable, but after a while you can convince yourself you're used to it. The constant roar fades into the background, it stops keeping you up at night, and eventually you just stop thinking about it. The noise becomes a part of you, a part of the city.

I was thinking earlier of something I read once: "cities aren't loud; cars are loud." And it's true. You can hear it, sometimes, when you're out walking, or riding a bike, and for a brief moment a silence descends, and you can hear everything: your footsteps, the birds, the wind in the trees the falling rain. You feel this sense of calm, of freedom. A weight lifts. You didn't even realize how oppressive that weight was before, but now, everything seems so bright and beautiful--and then the cars come back. Even deep into the night, they always come back.

It just takes one. These moments of stillness are always fleeting, and always the weight settles back in, and having so recently known the calm, it sits a little less comfortably. You have tasted, just for a moment, what it is like to be rid of that constant sound, dulling your senses, suppressing the little sounds of life.


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in reply to @vaudevilleghost's post:

earlier this year i visited my fiance’s family in india. city of 12 million people, over 6 times as dense as home (chicago), yet distinctly quieter, because most people get around on foot, bicycle, motor scooter, or auto-rickshaw. the few cars there are don’t make much noise anyways because they hardly break 18 miles per hour; it’s not until about 30mph that most cars’ tires become louder than their engines. it was remarkably peaceful

Even as someone who still can't help caring and attaching oneself to cars (albeit it's now more to the obscure, rotting-down classic korean cars), I also have been finding much more serenity and calmness whenever there are less-no cars in the street. Shame Seoul's traffic jam and overpopulation issue is only worsening ""despite their efforts"".

There is an undeniable appeal to the car as a machine, as an icon of the freedom of the open road, as a historical and cultural artifact. They can be very cool! I don't think there's anything wrong with finding them cool. You should see how many hours I've sunk into racing games.

But that moment of peace that washes over me when the sound of cars fades away is just so profound.