The main difference is that I no longer am woken by school buses using my street as a cut-through to Park Terrace.

From my house I can still hear the highway. It’s more muted, but still present, even at 3 AM. Accompanying this last gasp of modern convenience gone awry, the sirens. At minimum, they arrive in the morning and afternoon around regular commute time. Some days, they are more frequent.

The ice cream truck’s song still permeates the neighborhood.

Louder now are the horns. People lacking imagination are driving in circles, roaring down side streets and laying on the wheel. There are parades to wish people a happy birthday, and I hope whoever was receiving those greetings on my block was profoundly moved by it because a dozen cars blasting the horn repeatedly is a sound I find annoying. But what are you going to do? Complain? You’re only allowed to complain about noise made by activists, not those wishing others well.

Quarantine sounds like the birds that have been here all along, that are hardly heard while normally spending the day in a building across town.

It’s one teenager playing basketball in the street, rather than the group of four or five who normally gather. It’s kids laughing as they try to find a way to play together, physically separate, and laughing because the new game is “let’s smack each other with lanyards from six feet away.” These two little buddies are inseparable and it would be cruel to remove this small joy.

Quarantine sounds like sporadic domestic disputes in the middle of the street or on a back porch. A phone being stomped. A piercing “pendejo!” before an ex’s clothes are dumped in the street. Somebody shoving somebody else at 2 AM against a door, with the woman hollering about wanting no part in the man’s drug activities.

A child walking around in his back parking lot, blowing a whistle.

Elderly neighbors chatting with a fence and space between them. They have time now to plant flowers, to get to the home improvement projects that work forced them to neglect.

It sounds like quiet spots withing a bustling cemetery; most people won’t be inconvenience by walking on soggy ground. . . and that is how you get to be alone outdoors.

It sounds like gas being too cheap.
Sirens.