Sunset

The sun sets on the West Bottoms

Pictured is the sunset of May 3 (2018) which allowed the night to overtake the Missouri River Bottoms, the Charles Wheeler  Airport (one-time very cool Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri,) commonly called the "Downtown Airport" and once considered the most dangerous airport in the U.S., and the rather hair-pin river bend around the south end of the two runways.

This is also the view from either of the two windows of my loft in the River Market area of downtown Kansas City. It is rather industrial, actually, and one constantly hears multiple train engine units pulling freight along the south side of the river, or across one of a couple of bridges, also visible from my windows. When I was a teenager, we referred to the act of one long, sustained car honk as "laying on the horn." The engineers of these trains sometimes lay on the horn, at any hour of the night, (no matter how wee) and I don't really know why. Is there a cow standing on the tracks? What is a cow doing so far from the barn at two a.m.? Perhaps the laying on of the horn in the middle of the blackness of night is something train engineers do for pure joy. It's loud here; it must sound awesome from inside the engine.

There are other noises.  Bolted firmly to the roof just inches above my head, as I occupy my top floor loft, are, like, five or six air conditioning compressor units. You know the ones. Yours probably sits outside, beside a back, or side, wall, and when it comes on it makes a loud humming and whirring sound. I have five of these and they are old and they hum and whirr more loudly, and they also vibrate and sort of . . . thrum.  If two or more of them are running at the same time, the thumming sets up harmonics, which resonate through the roof and into my loft, ultimately winding up inside my skull, sounding like incoherent demons urging me to do something, I don't know what.  Yet.  I have reported this noise, this local variant of the Taos Hum, to the "Lease Managers."  It has done no good, so far.  According to the Internet, tenants with noise complaints have little legal recourse. The terms for breaking the lease are two and a half months rent, plus 30 days notice.

The math:  2.5 x (too much) = (way) x (too much.)