Platforms Are Not Quiet

You get used to the quiet, being in space. Perhaps that’s the first thing you notice once you’re up there: the world’s chatter, just…fading away. Like it never existed in the first place. It went from peaceful to strange, and later went back to peaceful as the hum of the engine and equipment faded into the background and you begin to become used to the overwhelming quiet. It’s really quite nice, in fact.

Then I got back to Earth, and it’s just noise all the time. I couldn’t even sleep for the first night because of the possums in the trees, and the birds all chirping at some awful time. In my first week in this house I had to have what sounded like an entire brood of furry creatures removed from the roof, and it was awful. Half because of them, and half because of the workmen called in to repair the damage. Just…ladder platforms everywhere. People climbing on them, the sound of boots, chatter, tools and all sorts. Not that I don’t understand or appreciate what they were doing. Aluminium platforms were how they were able to get up to flush out all the animals and patch up the roof. Without them it would’ve been like lying down to sleep with a zoo right above my head, which isn’t a concept I’m really very fond of.

Still, I wasn’t used to any noise, except when Aleksander used to whistle in the mornings back on the space station. Even that I sort of just worked into my sleep cycle somehow. Aleksander whistled VERY loudly, but maybe that showed me that I CAN grow to ignore things. I eventually learned to sleep with all the roof works in the morning, and it wasn’t like I had much to do with my time in the early days. It was enough just watching the guys and asking how they get these aluminium platforms around Melbourne. There were a lot of poles. So that’s the solution: make friends with your problem. Unless it’s possums, in which case boot them out of your life.

-Apollo