rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

it’s quiet here in my apartment, and I’m bored.
though this beats last night. my neighbors have been going at it, recently, and by ‘going at it’ I don’t mean banging. sounds like they’re having a pretty nasty breakup, which, according to my co-worker/neighbor downstairs, has been in the makings since early this week. she gleaning all of this through walls and eavesdropping, as am I. I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but either they don’t know half the block can hear them when they fight/fuck/entertain into the wee hours, or they’re too loaded to care.  
last night, the both of them were drunk, and they started screaming at each other right as I dozed off. lots of door-slamming, storming up and down the stairs, back and forth across the floor, and the generous use of ‘fuckin” as an adverb. I’ve never met the guy, but from what I can tell and what I’ve been told, he’s a giant, stupid redneck. so I laid in bed, pondered whether or not to call the cops, and decided against it (because, really, who wants to get the authorities involved?), but listened for something to tip me off that he may have laid hands on her.
no, really. how chivalrous of me. cracking wise about domestic violence may be a reason I’m usually alone on Valentine’s Day.
so. in my head, I went through my inventory of things I would need should this situation arise. cell phone, to call the authorities I didn’t wanna call; something with which to stomp ass … I don’t have a baseball bat, which is probably for the best; and fortitude.
but King Redneck eventually left, which caused everything to quiet down. I was out about five minutes later. hopefully, she boots his ass to the curb, and it’ll be a few more weeks before she’s found another hillbilly to enter into an abusive relationship with. and the apartment will be quiet again. that way, I won’t do something stupid and interject myself into someone else’s problems. 
my co-worker/neighbor downstairs, though, she left a strongly-worded note on their door, asking them to pipe down. next time, she says, she’s calling the police. and I can’t tell you how emasculating it feels to be something of an unofficial signatory to that. which isn’t necessarily the right thing to say, but the truth.

I haven’t followed the news in the last 48 hrs, even though I work at a newspaper. so let’s see. I heard that Jugg Gregg (oh how I wish America had a senator named Jugg) backed out of his cabinet position. and Oblammer is gonna get his package stimulussed by no-later-than Monday morning, which was the original arbitrary deadline.
whatever. fuck it. if it works, great; if it doesn’t, it’s not gonna be the end of the world again. it’s been nearly a decade since the neoconservatives and the international opium trade conspired to blow up the World Trade Center (see here), and despite massive amounts of upheaval in other parts of the world, life has soldiered on. American society is very insulated. unlike most of my apartment. but that’s okay. because it isn’t very cold out tonight.

I can hear a train passing through town.
there’s tracks not far from the house I live in. all of about three hundred yards or so, close enough that it gently rattles my windows when freight goes through. I don’t recall hearing the train whistle, though, which is odd.
train whistles take me to Valparaiso, in the summer — in August, or even September  — on the porch, in the evening. in Valparaiso, the porch becomes the most lived-in room in the house when its warm enough to be used. full of assorted lawn furniture. back issues of National Geographic. stacks of diet pop, dusty because no one drinks it save for the holidays when it’s put in a cooler full of ice for relatives. the TV, the one with the channels of note written on its casing in pen so no one has to hunt for the TV listings in the paper, is moved out from the kitchen. rusty windchimes hang from the awnings. a hole is in the screen where the dog makes its way through.
this porch, it looks out upon the yard (as most do), a yard that is lovely and dark-green and full of mulch, nobby roots, and at night of raccoons and all-the-time of dogshit, courtesy of the afore-mentioned dog. 
in August, in the late evening, this back yard has an electric feel to it, when every bug in the world is singing and it’s still warm enough outside that everything’s hazy. the cut-grass smell lingers perpetually in the air, because it’s summer and there’s yardwork everywhere. but by this point, you haven’t heard a lawnmower in half an hour; even the diehards have given up as the light fades. it’s quiet. it’s here that you hear it, its warning, so natural that you probably don’t note it. 
this is what train whistles (or the conspicuous lack thereof) brings to mind. it isn’t that they’re overwhelming in this vision, it’s just that they’re always there. like bookends. or stanzas.