How irritating can be a gentle tiny sound of water dripping on irregular intervals? Based on my recent experience I can only say pretty fucking irritating and not calming or soothing at all, on the contrary. It keeps me effectively from falling asleep in the evening and wakes me up on an unearthly hour in the morning. It comes from a water pipe panelled inside our bedroom wall, everytime someone takes a shower in some other apartment of our block of flats. And some people like to take showers at three AM it seems. The silence that usually cradles the nighttime often serves to amplify any little noise to improbable levels and in this case every single drop that leaks from the pipe and falls to some as-of-yet inexplicable location somewhere within these walls sounds deafeningly like, well, a waterdrop falling several metres before landing on hard surface. Not very dramatic when described like this, I know, but when all your senses are focused on waiting when the next drop falls, in the silence and in the darkness, it’s hard not to think of what Chinese water torture must be like. With the interrogational and other such aspects removed, of course, as well as the ground zero of the fall relocated from one’s forehead to somewhere else. But still. The situation is utterly unbearable and steps have been taken to rectify it as soon as possible.

This reminded me of something I wrote on my previous blog, the original Pressure Valve back in 2003, when I was hearing a lot more voices than I’m hearing nowadays, especially of the kind others were unable to hear and me talking about my notions and voices resulted in people giving me very uneasy looks. I can’t remember where this one came from, probably some ordinary nightly noises reshaped into something else by an avid imagination, too much freetime and feeling a bit cuckoo and lost in life. I used to just spew out the text back then and upload it immediately, not really concentrating on anything bigger that might be forming in the background and with a little more thought could have been developed into a proper storyline. I’ve always been hesitant to retouch something written a long time ago, so I’m just going to post it here the way it is. There’s a certain absurd charm in it.

5.3.2003 From The Pressure Valve

And thus came the day when I finally decided to find out what the noises were and who made them. Countless nights had I been lying awake in my bed, listening to the quiet sniffling and shuffling of feet, hesitant sniffing and scratching. I had located the source of the sounds. The wardrobe had been attached to the wall by some long forgotten previous owner of my home and that's where the sounds came from. No problem there, except there was nothing in there but my clothes and the wall was a solid outer wall of the building, made of stone.

I took all the stuff out of the wardrobe and examined it's backpanel a bit closer, tapping it with my knuckles. It returned a hollow sound and slightly gave way to my pushing. The scratching grew louder and more determined behind it, like claws trying to penetrate wood. It was disturbing but I wasn't particularly afraid, only eager to find out what was causing all this.

So I withdrew from the closet for a moment to get my chainsaw. For some reason I thought it appropriate to turn off all the lights before revving up the saw. The noise was deafening in the still of the night as I applied the saw to the backpanel, expecting to hit stone any time. I cut through the wood with ease, noting with slight surprise that there was nothing resembling stone at all behind the wardrobe, only a thin layer of wood and then an empty space.

I put down the saw when the hole was big enough for me to go through. There was a dimly lit room behind the wardrobe. The air was stale and felt strange in my lungs, as if it had been used up ages ago and there was no need for it to be breathable anymore. Something was moving in the far corner of the room, wrapped in shadows. I stepped closer and suddenly a huge black dog emerged from somewhere. It gave me a long sad look and sniffed my hand. I patted it on the head and it sat down and absent-mindedly started to scratch itself.

There was a rocking chair in the corner, softly creaking, and an old pale man sitting on it, watching me in silence. He had clearly been dead for a very long time. I didn't know what to say so I just stood there. He gestured me to move closer. I felt I had to apologise somehow for ruining his wall with my saw.

"Err. Sorry about the hole on your wall", I said with a stifled voice. There was much less oxygen in the air than I was used to and my lungs felt like they were filled with thick liquid. The old man looked over my shoulder towards the wall where I had come from.

"What hole?", he replied.

I turned around and noticed that there was no hole on the wall anymore, only flawless brickwork. The old man got up from his chair. "Would you care for a cup of tea, young man?", he asked in a friendly voice. I was very confused by now but remembered my manners.

"Yes, please."

The black dog had fallen asleep and was snoring gently on the floor.


THIS WEEKS’ BOOKS OF CHOICE:
“Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal” by Christopher Moore. I saw this on a second hand bookstore and had no other option than to pick it up. The title of the book made me do it. I love slightly blasphemous takes on religion and this looked promising, despite the off-putting picture of the author on the back. Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter. I gets a lot better after the first chapter and I’m glad I didn’t go with my first instinct and quit reading because at first the book seemed to be All Crap. I ended up immensely enjoying the story of young Jesus and what he gets up to with his best pal. Towards the end it gets more serious, dealing with the days leading up to crucifixion, and although the ending is disappointing and cheap I still think it was a good novel and I had a good time reading it and chuckling to it in trains and buses filled with people, not minding the stares they might have given me.

THIS WEEKS’ BOTTLES OF CHOICE:
Hécula, red wine from Spain, made from to-me-previously-unheard-of Monastrell grape and not making a very strong impression. An average red, full bodied and nice but nothing much more. The most outstanding quality of it was the astoundingly short taste. I sipped it and it tasted and felt rewarding, but then it just sort of stopped, when I expected the lingering aftertaste to kick in. That was quite extraordinary. A worthy companion to meatballs and the bottle emptied eventually but, well, you know. Average.

Château de la Jaubertie, white wine from France and a grand disappointment with too much of the heavy pungentness I dislike very much. I’m not sure what I expected, maybe something similar to the wonderful experience with Petit Bourgeois. I contemplated between this and a bottle of albarino for the pike-perch I had prepared and maybe the disappointment was partly because I chose unwisely. Still, average, or below average, and won’t be bought again.