Au Revoir Cable

They came and took the cable away yesterday. In the words of Charlie Brown, "SIGH."

Mad Men ended last Sunday night -- not yet dead to me, as Lost became, but really trying my interest -- and I really watch nothing else. Fifty dollars a month for a zillion channels that I don't watch, and for a service that I mostly use for noise. The first I need, the second I don't. In fact, if I could turn all of the noise in my life into dollars, I'd be filthy rich!

As ridiculous as it sounds, that fifty dollars is something. With our furloughs, each of my paychecks has been cut by $100. Something seems really off about that, and I probably should contact the payroll department to see if that is correct because I don't do math. Since we are paid every two weeks, that means I'm down $50 per week, and around $200 per month (I think, remember that I don't do math). That seems like so little, but my rent went up $100 just at the time the pay went down. Then, I have to pay for my own travel since it isn't directly related to school business. Even if it were, even if I were acting as official representative of the school, I'd still have to pay half -- and that after bargaining.

At least the extra work I'm doing for Women's Studies will pay off next semester with a little "overtime" pay. Yet, even that is on the chopping block. The work will still have to be done, but there will be no pay for it. Excellence Without Money, don't you know!

This isn't different from anyone else. I'm lucky that I have a job. I'm lucky that I have a place to scale back to. I don't have to worry about caring for a child, or putting one through college just so she can qualify for a minimum wage job at the end. I don't have to worry about foreclosure or repossession. I'm not facing bankruptcy. I am just trying to figure out ways to cut back because I am at my limits. Cable is one of those cuts.

The cable hasn't been out of the apartment for 24 hours yet, and already I hear the quiet. It's not a real quiet. I live above an intersection of two busy highways, and my windows are open because the weather is mild, and because central air/heating is another big expense. So, my apartment is pretty dang noisy at most hours. Still, the cable made some sort of silent noise, a hum and buzz at a level just beyond human hearing, yet still within human awareness. The internet does that, too, as does the cellphone.

I started to notice this in England. I had no internet. I had no computer. My phone was off, so no connection to e-mail or anyone who could call. England itself also seemed quieter. Not silent, or even quiet, mind you, but not as noisy. The trains seems to rumble and screetch less. Very few people had their cell phones attached to their ears -- and NO ONE walked around talking into thin air because they had a bluetooth device on.

Seriously, I think I could count on one hand the number of people walking down the street talking on their phones, and I don't think I saw one person paying more attention to texting than where they were going. In the train station, in the pubs, people sat and talked to one another, in person, or read. In the pubs, there was no music. The t.v. -- if there was a t.v. -- was muted with the closed captioning turned on. No one having a conversation paused to check their text or phone messages, and certainly no one did it while in the middle of a conversation with another person. Maybe it was just the places that I went. Maybe in London I would have been bombarded with that particular type of noise. Nonetheless, where I was, the quiet was comforting.

Now, I want more of that quiet in my regular life. The quiet seems to slow time down. I can concentrate. I can think. I don't feel like I'm being bombarded with pebbles (or eaten by minnows). I don't feel like I have ADD. I want more of it, to see what lies within that quiet, and see what I can carry out of it.

Don't worry, I won't become one of those self-righteous, "I don't watch t.v. because I'm so much better than everyone else," types of people. I will probably envy your cable, and lovingly flip through every channel in hotel rooms. I'm one of the wicked, idiotic masses in that regard. I just don't want to escape into the noise right now. I want the quiet.

If it also saves me $50 per month, all the better!