Noisy City

Walk With Care

Have you ever stopped to listen to the city? Really listen to it in its entirety? Lifted your head and conceived of the symphony of noise that demands to be heard?

Those impatient, abrupt noises that compete for life. Only existing, only validated, if they can are heard above the din.

Noises that rudely cut across each other, jostling in their selfish desire to make their way. Barging through over-crowded space.

The sharp, cutting noises that rent the air and scream most shocking distress.  Inducting others into their state of madness.

What about those low rumbling noises that fluster and bluster their laboured, ‘oh so tedious points’. Unaware – uncaring even – that no one is listening to them. They know themselves well to be bores, yet they bore on, undaunted.

And what of the angry outbursts? Those abrupt loud BANGS that forcibly interject. They will not be ignored. They will make their point! In rage they subside as quickly as they flare. Until the next time. 

There are as many noises in the city as there are souls. Some loud, some, flamboyant, some soft and anonymous. All shapes and sizes, all personalities and types. It just takes a close ear to know them, but in truth, few people take the time. Other peoples noises are not their business.

Why don’t you stop and listen to them, next time you are in the city?

But remember – and keep this to yourself –  listening for noises is something best done on your own. Noises can be self-conscious. More than a few hide furtively when everyone stops to listen.

Hitting the Skids

A flurry of warning signs, signals danger ahead.

We all ‘hit the skids’ at some point. That’s an inevitable fact. It should be expected and when it happens, it must be accepted.

However, what is truly shocking, is not that challenges come along and destabilise our lives, but that more than often, real signs of our impending catastrophe were actually all around us.

The signs were there! Sometimes many of them. In big bold colours. Some of them were even FLASHING. Yet we simply did not see or recognise them. Those signs did not – perhaps could not – prevent the catastrophe that awaited us.

Like many, when I have experienced real reversal or hardship in my life, I have revisited situations in my mind, only to realise – most shockingly – that the signs of impending disaster were indeed all around me. They were prominently displayed and they all screamed their messages of warning. The signs were doing their job, if only I had been able to recognise them.

There is no bitterness towards anything that has made me who I am – that’s the acceptance part – but it’s never wasted effort to become a better reader of the signs.

I suspect that is a true lifetimes work.

STOP – Having Children

Road safety and family planning.

Melbourne has more than its fair share of interesting and colourful signs. As someone who only moved to Australia relatively recently, I think part of my fascination with Australian signs is that they are unfamiliar to me. I did not grow up with their colours, shapes or styles and in that sense I find them culturally and aesthetically very interesting.

I think signs can tell us much more about a culture than just the intended utilitarian messages that they convey.

In addition to that we have here the ‘adapted sign’ which is also a feature of Melbourne. That in itself lends a whole a new dimension. Most of the adapted sign’s I’ve seen are too raw to post, but this one was tame and made me chuckle when I saw it.

[P.S. I have no personal position on how many kids anyone has, that’s up to them.]

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