50 Miles Past the Middle of Nowhere

I remember one day in Japan--I'm thinking it was the same day a rat crawled out from under a vending machine and died on my foot, but maybe not--looking around and realizing that in all the time I'd been there, it had never once been dark, or quiet.

The first house where I lived, the people in the next house over played the same enka song, every night at 2 am. If you're not familiar with enka, go stick a cat in a garbage disposal; that would be the sound of Bach compared to enka.

And also in that first house, there was an alley that ran along one side. On day in February, they came and dug a six-foot hole in the alley, right outside my bedroom. Then that night, they filled it back up.

This went on until I moved out in April. Every morning, dig the hole. Every evening, fill the hole back up.

Meanwhile, they put up sawhorses with big blinking lights to let you know that, come daylight, there would be a hole here.

Paper windowshades and bright orange blinking lights don't go well together.

It was never dark, and it was never quiet.

I just stepped outside here to see if the light to the north was the aurora or the full moon hitting a cloud. I heard a dog barking, about three blocks away.

And that was it.