camwyn | (no subject)

One of my weekend habits is feeding the cats before going to bed on Friday night and then sleeping late Saturday morning. It doesn't always work, as the cats tend to eat the food before I reach the other side of the apartment (it's not a big apartment, they're just that fast) and then try being pitiful the next morning in the hopes of getting more, but at least I usually get to make up for a little of the sleep I didn't get earlier in the week.

This morning I woke up to the sound of one of the many, many nearby churches tolling its bell. Not ringing a carillon or anything, just: BONG.

BONG.

BONG.

BONG. I thought perhaps I had slept until noon and that they were counting off the hour.

BONG.

BONG.

BONG. I looked at the clock. Not noon, more like eleven. Okay, I could see that too.

BONG.

BONG.

BONG.

BONG. It occurred to me that none of the churches around here ever toll off the hour. Perhaps it was a religious observance being signaled? Was it Pentecost? No, too early for that, and it wasn't any of the other Holy Days of Obligation either, and I was pretty sure the local Protestant church ('local' in this case meaning 'three blocks away rather than five') didn't have a bell like that.

BONG.

BONG.

BONG. I'd been reading about the Yucca Mountain containment facility last night before I went to bed, and the This Place Is Not A Place Of Honor message, and the thought was still lingering somewhere in the back of my head. I wondered if, maybe, the church bell was tolling out the end of the world being upon us. Not in a panicked or wailing kind of way, but in the sense of 'here is the inevitable, and it came by surprise as He always said it would come'.

BONG.

BONG.

BONG.

BONG.

The world was still here some interminable number of rings later, so I'm assuming there was a wedding or a funeral or something, but I still half expected to get up and find all of Hoboken empty. Ah, well.