I’ve been thinking a lot about noise lately. Part of this is because the yarn store is in between two restaurants who get deliveries multiple times a day by large diesel trucks that are left running during unloading – talk about your loud white noise! – and partly because of the construction that’s going on across the parking lot; for as annoying as we find it, I can’t imagine being in CVS or the bagel place on either side of the construction, having to listen to it, feel it through your feet all day. But also part of this is from last week, when the guy a few houses down was getting the majority of his trees removed. I love the sound of chainsaws, but am not such a fan of the sudden drop and boom of trees (I tend to forget that’s going to happen with chainsaws, and always jump and tense up at the boom, which eventually can give me a migraine).
But some white noise I love. I love the sound of wind in trees, running water, the ocean, rain on the roof, and bird song. The ocean may be my favorite out of those, with rain on the roof a close second. I can tolerate air conditioners, but only if they’re at a steady pace. The kind that come on and shut off and come back on always startle me out of my reverie, or worse, out of my sleep. I prefer box fans, or ceiling fans as a steady noise that also brings coolness.
My friends Lauren and Arthur were really big into journaling. Arthur would always say that you should write at least three pages of thought a day, that getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper would clear your mind. And if your mind was ever so stuck that you couldn’t even write what you were thinking, that you should write what you hear. Sometimes, he’d say, he’d spend a week writing three pages a day only about what he heard at the moments he had pencil to paper.
What do I hear right now? The window unit air-conditioner. The dogs breathing, one of them snoring slightly. The bell on the cat’s collar as she scratches. Some sort of ticking-ish sound, like plastic hitting metal – I think it might be from the AC unit. Birds outside, but only the loudest. It’s hard to hear outside noises over the AC. Except for the garbage and recycling pick-up; that’s pretty easy to hear.
What noises do you hear, right now?
