The Whistle: A Mini-Mystery in Two Parts, part I
I went to bed early last night because sleep is the only thing I love. I slept for an uncertain amount of time until my roommate woke me up around midnight with loud music. Normally I don't mind because normally it's drum and bass electronica and normally I'm all for that and normally I sleep just fine with it. But last night was Bad Rap Night.
I didn't want to be a bitch about it so I let it go until I glanced at the clock expecting 12:30 and got 3:00 instead. I started pounding.
It took 43 pounds for him to open my door and ask if he was being too loud. I considered my answers:
No, I was drumming along with it. I just suddenly got really bad at that.
No, I'm having sex with the hole I cut in the wall we share. You're in for a surprise.
No, banging things helps me sleep.
"Yeah, actually, you've been keeping me up for hours. Normally I don't mind, but I have an early doctor's appointment tomorrow."
"Kay bro, I'll turn it down a- wait. Is it too loud right now?"
"Uh… yeah, kind of."
He disappeared for a moment. "How 'bout now?"
"That's better."
"Kay bro, you just knock if it's too much."
"Kay."
I don't feel like I slept at all. But I know that I did because I had two dreams:
In the first, I was driving in a reality that, by someone of my generation, can only be compared to a video game. I was driving up a woodsy Lombard street of sorts. It was all dirt and roots and trees, my car a low-riding cross between the tank-like Batmobile from the latest film adaptation of Batman and a Volkswagen Beetle. I was racing someone.
I won the race, however, the top of the street was at such a steep incline that it was nearly a wall, and though I had pulled my emergency brake, no tire truly sticks to the road as its maker's advertisements imply. I leaned back in my seat to gloat at my opponent and the car rolled over backwards many times.
In the second dream, I met a non-existent girl who was a singer and, in all probability, pretty good looking. I don't remember.
We were introduced for the purpose of writing and recording a song, and we were using non-existent computer software for the second part. It had a metronome that ticked like all metronomes. The strange part is that it also whistled a different note for each of the four beats of the measure. Such a feature would make a metronome utterly useless for keeping time with music, since the discrepancy of the notes would be so annoying and distracting. But on and on it went with my dream metronome: Low, high, not-so-high, still-lower-but-not-so-much-as-the-first. We were using an unrealistically slow tempo, meaning that each note was held for roughly two seconds.
The dream ended and I awoke with no idea of how the song turned out. For the second day in a row, I had beaten my 7:00 alarm by two hours. It's a great feeling to wake up naturally as the sun starts to rise.
Low, high. Bam. There it was. The first half of the metronome tune from my dream. Outside my window.
Low, high. Every 30 seconds or so. At a sixty degree dusk with just the very beginnings of the sunrise, it was absolutely enchanting. And mystifying. Which perhaps explains what happened next:
In a very short amount of time, I decided that I've been wasting a lot of life lately by worrying about school and how I'm going to get caught up with it after being on medical leave and on and on and on with this every minute counts mentality and Oh. How it has been killing me. So I got out of bed and put on some jeans and my jacket. Watch, ring, wallet, journal, pen, pencil (you never know), shoes. I decided that instead of getting up and trying to do homework because I've been trained lately to hate myself when I enjoy myself, I was going to go outside and find this whistle. I was going to explore until I found it, took a picture of it and...
I don't know. It doesn't really matter. What mattered was that I was going to go out on a great adventure on a fine spring morning and find something interesting.
I didn't want to be a bitch about it so I let it go until I glanced at the clock expecting 12:30 and got 3:00 instead. I started pounding.
It took 43 pounds for him to open my door and ask if he was being too loud. I considered my answers:
No, I was drumming along with it. I just suddenly got really bad at that.
No, I'm having sex with the hole I cut in the wall we share. You're in for a surprise.
No, banging things helps me sleep.
"Yeah, actually, you've been keeping me up for hours. Normally I don't mind, but I have an early doctor's appointment tomorrow."
"Kay bro, I'll turn it down a- wait. Is it too loud right now?"
"Uh… yeah, kind of."
He disappeared for a moment. "How 'bout now?"
"That's better."
"Kay bro, you just knock if it's too much."
"Kay."
I don't feel like I slept at all. But I know that I did because I had two dreams:
In the first, I was driving in a reality that, by someone of my generation, can only be compared to a video game. I was driving up a woodsy Lombard street of sorts. It was all dirt and roots and trees, my car a low-riding cross between the tank-like Batmobile from the latest film adaptation of Batman and a Volkswagen Beetle. I was racing someone.
I won the race, however, the top of the street was at such a steep incline that it was nearly a wall, and though I had pulled my emergency brake, no tire truly sticks to the road as its maker's advertisements imply. I leaned back in my seat to gloat at my opponent and the car rolled over backwards many times.
In the second dream, I met a non-existent girl who was a singer and, in all probability, pretty good looking. I don't remember.
We were introduced for the purpose of writing and recording a song, and we were using non-existent computer software for the second part. It had a metronome that ticked like all metronomes. The strange part is that it also whistled a different note for each of the four beats of the measure. Such a feature would make a metronome utterly useless for keeping time with music, since the discrepancy of the notes would be so annoying and distracting. But on and on it went with my dream metronome: Low, high, not-so-high, still-lower-but-not-so-much-as-the-first. We were using an unrealistically slow tempo, meaning that each note was held for roughly two seconds.
The dream ended and I awoke with no idea of how the song turned out. For the second day in a row, I had beaten my 7:00 alarm by two hours. It's a great feeling to wake up naturally as the sun starts to rise.
Low, high. Bam. There it was. The first half of the metronome tune from my dream. Outside my window.
Low, high. Every 30 seconds or so. At a sixty degree dusk with just the very beginnings of the sunrise, it was absolutely enchanting. And mystifying. Which perhaps explains what happened next:
In a very short amount of time, I decided that I've been wasting a lot of life lately by worrying about school and how I'm going to get caught up with it after being on medical leave and on and on and on with this every minute counts mentality and Oh. How it has been killing me. So I got out of bed and put on some jeans and my jacket. Watch, ring, wallet, journal, pen, pencil (you never know), shoes. I decided that instead of getting up and trying to do homework because I've been trained lately to hate myself when I enjoy myself, I was going to go outside and find this whistle. I was going to explore until I found it, took a picture of it and...
I don't know. It doesn't really matter. What mattered was that I was going to go out on a great adventure on a fine spring morning and find something interesting.