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difficult night

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

There has been a noise complaint about my apartment. Someone complained of a "knocking". For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it could be. Chopping onions & peppers? The construction sounds outside?

Then last night I had a bit of trouble falling asleep (it was raining loudly and had gotten chilly) and I heard "the knocking". I don't know if it was because the building was rapidly cooling as everyone shut down (this was around 22:30) but a banging sound started coming from the wall behind the sink/stove combo in the "kitchen" end of the room. I'd heard similar but quieter sounds when I had water running, and I'd heard one or two of these night time sounds in previous nights, but tonight I was having trouble getting to sleep and so I witnessed maybe a dozen of the noises. I got up a couple of times to see if I could track it down but it mostly refused to happen when I wasn't up in the loft. So I checked the strength of the construction of the loft, which seemed fine, and decided there wasn't much more I could do. I moved some cans of beans and fish and so on out of a high shelf above the sink, and wrote an email to the Oyo people who have been leasing us this place. I finally turned in again some time after eleven and must have fallen asleep quickly.

Until 01:00 when I was shaken awake by my first real earthquake since I've been back. That, too, passed, but it's not a great time to be woken and by five when I woke for good I didn't feel at all rested.