Letting The Noise Out

Sometimes a room is just too noisy for me. Could be any type of noise, but it just exceeds my personal limits and I have to turn it off (or turn all of them off).

It’s not as simple as it sounds. If there are multiple sources, each one has to go in its own order. Radio off; music off; tv off; scanner off; anything else, off. But only one at a time, with a pause between them. Let the room slowly quiet in steps, rather than one large “thump” of quietness.

When it’s all done, you wait for a minute for all the residual noise to find its way out. True, all has been turned off, but there seems to be bits and pieces of noise trapped in the woodwork, some molecules sticking to the walls, atoms whirling around in the air. They have to find their way to the nearest exit before the room is perfectly quiet.

Ah, now it’s done. Now all the cacophony is banished, the sound waves no longer bounce from wall to wall, echoing off hard surfaces. Now you can even hear the stillness, as you would on a snowy night when you can hear the flakes falling in the quietness of your yard.

It is a time to meditate on the mysteries of the universe. Why do I live in this galaxy, instead of another? Are trees the “hair” of our planet? Maybe Einstein was right when he said, “Maybe all the planets, stars, galaxies and the entire universe are just one atom in the windshield of God’s car.”