I even feel bitchy about our mostly-GOOD neighbors. Because the truth is that I do not want to have visible neighbors at all.
I don't want to see my neighbors, I don't want to hear my neighbors, and I don't want them to see or hear me.
I don't want to see their dog, or see/smell/step in their dog's shit, especially in our own fucking yard. I don't want to live close enough to a neighbor's yard that wherever they throw their dog's shit or direct their dog to squat that the smell of it drifts over to my life in my yard. Especially if they have a black lab or large dog with soft, wet, giant shits.
I don't want to HEAR my neighbors' dog(s), and especially do not want to hear that low, persistent woofing for sometimes hours without ever once hearing my neighbor say "shuttup" to the pesky motherfucker. I also don't want to hear any neighbors' tiny dogs and their chirpy, anxious yip-yip-yipping.
I do not want to hear my neighbors at all. Not his daughter's boyfriend parked in the driveway talking on his cell phone like a little bitch, not his worker bees, not his friends, not his cunt of a lazy ex who honks when she pulls up instead of hauling her fat ass out of the car.
I do not want to hear my neighbors' power tools or hammers or engines starting up or car doors slamming or VOICES. I don't want to hear any of that EVER.
I don't want to hear my neighbors' engines revving or cars warming up. And I don't fucking EVER want to hear the sound of a large vehicle's back-up warning system, those brain dead beeps you can hear from blocks away. I am glad that I learned this because now I know never to ever live within a mile of any place any sort of dump truck, loader, pick-up & delivery vehicle, or garbage truck visits regularly. No carpet store, no nursery with landscaping materials like bark, no city facility with large mounds of gravel.
I don't want to see my neighbors' friends. I don't want to know who they are, and I certainly don't want them thinking they can cut through my fucking yard to get to his.
I don't want to see or hear my neighbors' kids or even know they have any, whether they be screaming infants or sullen teenagers. I don't want to wonder whether or not I should call them cops when they have a party or a fight. I don't want to fucking KNOW if they're having a party or a fight. I want no auditory or visual or olfactory evidence of those things to penetrate my peace and quiet in the center of my property.
I don't want my neighbors animal shit or dead-car fluids or septic tank seepage or lawn and garden chemicals to sully any of my own groundwater or picturesque streams.
And if a cougar ventures into my yard I want to be able to kill it. With a gun. I guess that's a little off topic.
I don't want my neighbors to know whether or not our lawn is mowed or whether or not we even HAVE a lawn. I don't want them to know whether or not there's moss on our roof or if I'm standing paralyzed in the morning dew feeling wet grass tickle my ankles. I don't want them to know what I'm wearing or not wearing when I'm inside or outside. I don't want them to gawk when my girlfriend absent-mindedly sticks her hand in her bra and fondles her breast while standing at the kitchen window.
I want to be able to shoot anybody who trespasses, and for it to be obvious what is mine and how you should fucking keep out. I don't want any fucking public trails inviting strangers to mosey on by or through, way too fucking close for comfort. I probably wouldn't ever shoot someone, but I at least want to be able to look at them with extreme hostility and tell them they're not welcome, not now and for their own safety, not ever again.
I need a buffer. A deep, wide, green, dark buffer no one can see through. I want to make believe that I am untouchable by people surrounded by a thick denseness of forbidding nature. I want to have chickens, but I don't know about roosters because they are loud, and they are loud in the morning, which is the worst.
I understand how mean and unsociable it is to not want to get to know your neighbors. To pretend they don't exist and avoid making eye contact with them. I do think that is missing out on something good. But I feel in my bones that I'm missing out on more by not having quiet wet growing places all around me to explore and get to know intimately, like I and my closest family are the only ones to smell and touch and investigate and hear them in all the decades that I live there.
I'm sad that the possibility of having this kind of freedom from others and privacy is nearing impossible. IS impossible if even a small percentage of the people in the world demanded it. That this place is just overrun with people and their sounds and their dog shit and their own shit.
I feel sort of petrified by the fear and likelihood that I'll never have this. That there will always be neighbors in my peripheral vision. That I'll never be able to melt into green invisibility.
Even if you're able to afford a few acres out in the woods or country, sound carries farther where it's quiet so you just need more. And you have to be constantly vigilant everywhere now for where they'll put the next landfill or development or resort or border patrol station. People are everywhere and most of them show no regard for maintaining a big space cushion between each other. They show no shame over their sounds and growling oversized useless pickups and stupid fucking mobile phone conversations. I SHOULDN'T KNOW THIS MUCH ABOUT YOUR STUPID LIFE!! Not without using stealth, anyway. Or reading your stupid blog (like this one).
I don't want to see the headlights of the cars pulling into my neighbors'. I don't want them to be able to penetrate the gloom that should surround me.
