Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The colored people arrive, sit firmly down, Eat their Express Spaghetti, their T-bone steak,... Handling their steel and crockery with no clatter, Laugh punily, rise, go firmly out of the door.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,... The pleasant whining of a mandolin And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And now he comes again with clatter of stone, And mounts the wall again with whited eyes... And all his tail that isn't hair up straight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was like being quite alone on the roof of the world. I felt that if I were to go to the edge and look over ... I would see belo...w all that I had ever known; all the crowded cities and seas covered with ships, and the clamor of harbors and traffic of rivers, and farmlands being worked, and herds of cattle driven in dust across interminable plains. All the clamor and clatter, confusion of voices, tumults, and conflicts, must still be going on, down there--over the edge, and below--but here there was only the sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mexico is a nineteenth-century country arranged for gaslight. Once brought into the harsh light of the twentieth-century media, Me...xico can only seem false. In its male, in its public, its city aspect, Mexico is an arch-tranvestite, a tragic buffoon. Dogs bark and babies cry when Mother Mexico walks abroad in the light of day. The policeman, the Marxist mayor--Mother Mexico doesn't even bother to shave her mustachios. Swords and rifles and spurs and bags of money chink and clatter beneath her skirts. A chain of martyred priests dangles from her waist, for she is an austere, pious lady. Ay, how much--clutching her jangling bosoms; spilling cigars--how much she has suffered.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect'...s wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving; ducks by... the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter and a whistling like riggers straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that you know of, their labored homes rising here and there like haystacks; and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on the beach, their little red skiffs beating among the alders;Msuch healthy natural tumult as proves the last day is not yet at hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »