My favorite sounds come from chimes. All kinds of chimes. Whether they are wind chimes with random objects on different lengths of string or bells with an orb on a chord you can use to make them ring. I’ve never met a chiming sound that didn’t make me think that we are one step away from another dimension. And I happen to know for a fact that tinkling is the sound a fairy makes when it hides and peeks at you through branches of trees. You hear it at first and then you’re not sure you did, but if you look out of the corner of your eye without turning your head there’s a shimmer of something fairy-like that you can almost see. But my favorite chime of all is a big old grandaddy, a pyramid made of hollow metal tubes that makes a sound that you don’t need ears to hear. Its vibration hangs and expands and drifts for what might be an eternity and then it enters you and resounds there until you begin to wonder if that sound has actually come from you. But nothing comes close to chimes all chiming together at the beach with a dark storm in the air. And you are a raucous audience of one with first row seats to a concert in the wild wind. So, in my experience chimes are not just objects designed to make pretty sounds, they’re reminders of something far more important than that, though I can’t say of what, but I can say that it’s worth having to untangle them in the morning and not to take them down.
Essay submitted by Evan Lobel to honor his wife Tamie on Mother’s Day – as well as their three daughters Joey, Cori and Haley . The Lobel family has been coming out to Fire Island for over 40 years.
