peace & quiet

It’s so quiet.

Los Angeles is a city of around four million people in the area strictly defined by its municipal borders. But that’s only one part of the enormous spread of humanity that covers this part of California. Los Angeles County’s population tops 10 million. The OC to the south adds another three million. It’s a vast sprawl of homes, offices, strip malls and gas stations stretching from the sea inland to the desert, to the northern mountains and beyond.

You already know about the traffic. Everybody knows about LA traffic. But it doesn’t really bother residents all that much. Angelinos have adapted by sticking to their own neighborhoods unless strictly necessary. As much as we can, we choose our jobs, our friends, our shopping centers and entertainment venues based on location, first. I’d throw a going away party for a friend who moved from the westside hipster neighborhood of Venice to its eastside equivalent, Los Feliz. It isn’t hyperbole for me to say that I’d see them more frequently if they chose New York City.

Commutes in Los Angeles are measured in time, not distance. Drive time is a complex, fluctuating metric based on weather, the time of day, and seasonal factors that affect traffic like spring break or beach weather or the Oscars. Visiting friends from Canada have been flabbergasted when I have estimated for them that their proposed 16-mile drive across town on a Monday evening would easily take them three hours. They’ve been even more astonished when they have attempted it, and found I was right.

I live on the Westside — an area loosely defined as the part of the city that lies west of the 405 highway. Specifically, I’m in the grimy-meets-gentrified neighborhood of Venice Beach. I chose it because it’s one of the few places in this city where I could take myself to coffee, dinner, drinks or shopping at any one of a number of truly great places without getting in my car. For somebody who grew up in Toronto, a city of walkers supported by a solid a public transit network, being able to ditch the car sometimes was key.

I lucked into an adorable, 1940s rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment. There are only four units — plus a half unit that was probably once a rental office or caretaker’s apartment but that is now home to my senior neighbor. My place is on the second floor, above the garages, and overlooks a private courtyard with an olive tree, a patch of grass and dozens upon dozens of potted plants that I’ve since come to know are lovingly maintained by the senior neighbor.

Past the edge of the garden, I look out onto a narrow slip of water that’s part of a mile-square grid of canals that dates back to the 1910s. Lined with an architectural mash-up of Edwardian cottages, McMansions and modern masterpieces, these little waterways serve no purpose other than to look pretty. The water isn’t even waist-deep. While plenty of homes have canoes, stand-up boards, or kayaks tied up out front, most are rarely used. That leaves the water to the glittering schools of tiny fish that slide through the pipes each week as the automated fill system cycles fresh water in from the ocean, and the riot of sea-going birds that feed on them. On any morning, I’ll see egrets, herons, cormorants and pelicans diving for an easy meal. And ducks. Because of course there are ducks.

It’s a pretty little piece of the city, but it’s still a piece of the city. And it’s only about six miles from one of the busiest airports in the world. LAX brings nearly 90 million passengers through its gates each year. Looking south to the flight pattern at night, I can see the white lights of inbound aircraft cued up for landing all the way to the horizon. And while I mostly don’t think of the planes as noisy, my lights-out call is sounded by a Quantas A380 that roars off the runway bound for Sydney every night just past 11 p.m. 

Yet, as I drifted off last night, there was quiet. No thrum of traffic or rumbling jets, no squawking tourists, kids with boomboxes, or clinking glasses from a dinner party down the street. Even the neighborhood dogs were quiet. I guess since they’re now at home with their masters full-time, they have fewer things to bark about.

There were sounds I’ve never heard before. As I lay there in the dark, the hum of my refrigerator in the next room reached me for the first time. In eight years of sleeping here, I’ve never once heard it. It took a long time for me to even identify what it was.

Then this morning, I awoke to a cacophony of songbirds outside my window. I’ve never noticed them before, either. For the first time in memory, I didn’t reach for my headphones on the way out the door for my morning walk. It wasn’t a conscious thing. I just... didn’t. And I didn’t miss them. Instead of plugging into a podcast, I experienced the world with all my senses, listening to the sound of my own slurps of hot coffee and the springy taps of my footfalls. A rustling from a tree branch overhead drew my eye to a pair of perching crows I never would have seen, had I not heard them.

Residents of Venice, Italy, are experience something new in their city as well. Not the swans and dolphins of social media memes – those are fake – but they are reporting seeing fish in their canals as sediment settles in the usually busy waterways. Meanwhile, NASA satellite images shown early this month indicated a drop in nitrogen dioxide levels over China in February. This global break could affect more than just the spread of a deadly virus.

I’m pretty sure this experience is going to change us, although I don’t think any of us are sure how, just yet. And while I’m far from finding the peace in all this, I’m going to choose to appreciate the quiet.

Stolen from the internet because I don’t feel like stepping outside with my camera.