Power mowers, power blowers, power edgers. Chain saws and weed whippers. Pervasive, pushing, penetrating noise.
"Silence is not just the absence of noise any more than peace is the absence of war. It is rather a positive and difficult accomplishment, a state of justice in the soul in which according to the classical formulation stretching back to Plato, each part receives its due in the performance of its proper function–the passions to give affective force in accomplishing the dictates of the will, the will to execute the commands of reason and reason to receive the truth; truth from without in abstracting essences from sense-particulars, truth from within in recognizing principles, and truth from above in obedience to grace. All that in the single word, ausculta–'hear.'" John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture
