bells for her.

the street where i live has three churches on it. it is an interesting (and not unironic) place for a girl who was essentially raised without religion to end up; sometimes i wonder if it was a gentle suggestion from the Almighty, to have us end up on a street that would probably be a prominent military outpost if heaven had an army occupying earth--in addition to the three churches on this street itself, there are two more within a one-block radius. plenty of barracks for all who pack flaming swords.

but i digress.

the main attraction of having all these churches so nearby is not the beauty of the buildings themselves, nor the exquisite care with which they tend their gardens, nor even the fact that there's something about having three houses of faith so nearby that makes a girl feel a little safer about ambling down her block when she comes home late at night. it's the bells. you would think that in a city with so much noise, the addition of the regimented chimings would not necessarily be the most welcome addition, particularly on early sunday mornings, but i find something soothing about them. i love that they toll the hours from sunup to sundown, with the hour counts coming in reliably off key by comparison to the more musical chimings which precede them. i love that on sundays, there is a special bell to call the faithful to services, and that it has a significantly more ominous, stern chime, like an austere governess calling the children in to supper. i love that none of the clocks keep the same time, with the hourly chimings coming about three minutes apart. i love that every now and then, with no set schedule, rhyme or reason, one of the churches will play a little tune on the bells--never anything instantly recognizable, but a cheery addition to the morning stillness.

i never thought i'd like living in the aural shadow of church bells; they were the bane of my existence the summer i spent in bathford (nothing shatters the early saturday morning silence quite like a belltower that is ten feet from your window), and reason number one that we opted not to take a larger apartment on the outskirts of carroll gardens--the mere mention of the bells from the church across the street provoked an involuntary tic in the downstairs neighbor that led us to believe that, despite his protestations that after a while you don't even notice it, the belltower was not a particularly pleasant addition to the neighborhood (reason number two was that it was thirty yards from the BQE, a hideous and noisy major thoroughfare, with the lack of proximity to any subway line but the G clocking in at number three). but since taking up residence in this little eyrie of ours, i've grown to love the bells. and i shall miss them terribly when we take up residence in england this summer.

oh, yes. we leave in twenty two days. did i forget to mention that?