Sssshhhttt!

Debate about to set stricter rules for selling alcoholic drinks has been blazed by a proposal of the national director of communities health services (GGD Nederland). He proposed to raise the minimum age to buy alcohol from 16 to 18 years and to forbid the supermarkets to stunt with prizes of alcoholic drinks. Although there is a real problem with drinking young people I doubt if higher prizes and age limits will solve this. As long as alcohol will be associated with a tough image or the idea that partying is no fun without being totally pissed the problem will remain. Personally I don’t mind if people want to get drunk if they don’t affect me.  The latter is almost impossible because drunk people have little sense of their own behavior. That is obviously noticeable during weekends in my street when people pass through in the middle of the night, returning from their parties. Shouting, screaming, cursing, stumbling over their own legs, acting absolutely ridiculous. I observed it many times because the screaming and shouting sometimes sounds alarming, as if people are about to be killed and disturb my night anyway. I have heard boys desperately screaming to each other about loving each other and demanding why the other one does not see that. Well, I would not see it either if someone shouted it to me in a state like that because, although drunks (and little children) seem to speak the truth, next morning they have forgotten everything. One time, in Winter, when the streets were frozen,  I saw a drunk girl performing the scene of Bambi on ice in a very bad way, and I have as little respect for her as for another drunk girl who cried her eyes out under a lamppost  while screaming she wanted to die because of “that bastard”. See, that is the real image of too much alcohol: behaving ridiculous. Who would respect the party pooper who vomits on your  furniture or doorstep? Or drinks enough to get in a coma?

Again, I don’t mind as long as they won’t disturb me with it. But it is the noise they make that is really annoying. Last night at 3:00 AM I was woken again by a group of loud screaming people. The trouble is that my bedroom is at the street side of the house. I could change rooms with my study which is facing the backyard but the neighbor kid sometimes starts jumping his trampoline with a sleepover friend at 6:30 AM making terrible noise. Nuisance is a real stressor. Especially in times of exams. It is hard enough to read about depression and other disorders without interruptions. Because of the good weather even my escape zone at the lake is crowded with noisy people. That is when you realize Holland is really small, too small actually. I am longing for a distant place to live, in the middle of the woods or even a dessert seems appealing (as long as there is climate control and a swimming pool). I feel grumpy and exhausted and although I normally love sunny weather, I wish it could rain now so much that it would chase everybody back in their closed houses, like how it is most of the time here.

However, realizing that I feel zero tolerance about almost everything these days, there has been a general shift lately about making shameless noisiness. I have read an article online about teaching silence (http://toineandernach.blogspot.com/2012/04/stilte.html) in classrooms but I had experienced it already during lectures in college that people think it is normal to continue their conversations and even their phone calls when the professor in front of the room can hardly make himself audible. In a room filled with 500 students the constant buzzing is very disturbing but it is also very disrespectful. These lectures are not even mandatory!

While elaborating some more about noises and their effects on my mood the public maintenance service men start their motorized weed trimmers with blazing sounds. Could they not have stuck to their muscle driven hoe?  Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again. Because a vision softly creeping. Left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence. No matter how rare that is these days and despite weeding. .