What Keeps You from Sleep?

What a week.  It left me exhausted until today.  For some reason that only the accommodation gods understand, my neighbors fell into a synchronous systematic sleeplessness designed to keep me awake at all hours.  Did you ever see the Hollywood Squares?  If so, consider my studio the square in the middle.  If you haven’t, imagine a room surrounded by eight other rooms (minesweeper anyone?).  It’s not that everyone around me makes noise all at once, on the contrary, we all have differing schedules.  Therein lies the rub.

The symphony of madness began the other day when I heard a woman screaming from the flat next door; all the more chilling since prior to that I’d never heard a peep from the other side of that wall.  At first I thought it was the TV, then I realized it was a woman in distress – serious distress.  Uncertain what to do, I went downstairs and got a guard (remember my Chinese is basic to the extreme but my powers of nonverbal communication rock) and dragged him upstairs.  We could still hear the woman crying a bit and, to his credit, the guard did knock on the door and talk with the mystery tenant(s).  I’ve heard nothing since.  Still gives me chills.

From then, the whole place went to hell.  On the other side, another quiet flat, a couple started coming in around 2am every night; they are prone to loud conversation and ample hawking noises in the bathroom. Not so bad as that’s when I normally go to sleep. Between 3 and 4am, every day, I now hear someone walking down the upstairs hall in heals, keys in the door, door closing, lock turning and into the flat above me.  How can I hear her steps clear down the hall?  Throw in TVs too loud at odd hours, doors slamming, and cleaning ladies chatting in the morning in the hallway and suddenly my world got real noisy.

Last night I brought over an air filter.  White noise.  Slept through it all.

I’m not much of a poet, but you be the judge.

Late at night

Fast asleep

Roused by my neighbor's heavy feet

Sounded like a water buffalo