It’s too early in the morning, and the neighbors are outside rattling glass bottles and jumping on cans like the hoarders they are. This has forced me ever deeper into the fantasy that one day I can live down a very long private drive and not have to hear the intimate recycling-sorting banality of my neighbors. I won’t have neighbors. Then, anyone who wakes me in the morning, I can just fire, divorce, or send to boarding school.

To most, having a house like Doris Duke’s Shangri-La would primarily be a status symbol. To me, it would be a reprieve from the auditory assault of living too close to other people. I almost always wake up to noises like barking, weed-whacking,  people arguing, or construction. You know what they say about children? I think it should apply to people in general:

All people should be seen and not heard.

Especially before noon.