Feb. 12, 2023
Dr. David, Editor / Publisher
I adore old pickup trucks. At university (UConn class of '78), I drove a 1960 Chevy along the backroads of rural northeast Connecticut. But I don't adore the racket that rattle-trap pickups make bouncing over these cobblestone streets.
My house is humble, bien mexicana (very Mexican). One of its rooms is the oldest habitation in Colonia San Antonio, built to house the care-taker of the church. The church itself is just a hop, skip and pole vault over the wall here at the end of my dead-end alleyway. ("Cerrada" sounds so much more romantic than "dead-end", no?) Humble as the house is, it yet possesses perhaps the greatest luxury here in San Miguel, quiet.
The place is set back from 20 de enero. I can hear noise from that local byway, but rarely at any great volume and always only briefly. With tall buildings on either side serving as sound barriers, my exposure is chiefly limited to the moment when the offending vehicle is passing my alley's narrow aperture onto that street.
Then, in the other direction, the adjacent back plaza of the church, large and almost always empty, provides another buffer, especially psychological, against the urban hub-bub.
While I am sleeping, when I need it most, the quiet is enhanced greatly by two important factors. One, my bedroom is set back, recessed in the farthest corner of my abode. Two, I use earplugs. Those foam plugs (tampones) may only cut out 35-40% of the noise, but it is a critical 35-40%, enough to allow me to overlook the rest.
Rising at night to answer nature's call with the earplugs in place is an eerie sensation, like moving submerged, under water, in the dark, as if in a dream. I was reminded of this yesterday when I read an article about the world's quietest room. Echoless by design, in it you "lose your balance due to the lack of reverberation in the room, which impairs your spatial awareness."
The title of the article is No one can stay in the quietest room in the world for more than an hour (actually 45 minutes). The reason for this incapacity is that, while the room is silent, your body isn't. People go batty listening to their heartbeat, breathing, joints moving, blood flowing, intestines churning... When left to ourselves, it seems, we are quite noisy.
The same thing can happen when we are left alone with our thoughts. Without the distractions, background ideas become amplified. Solitary confinement is severe punishment, not only because it deprives us of social contact, but because we can't get away from ourselves. Isolation, if it doesn't make you crazy, makes you sane.
My semi-monastic, writer's existence finds me frequently alone with my thoughts. Generally, I find them good company. When I find them bothersome, I take the blame. I wonder who is being bothered, what aspect of me, and why. I observe the bother more closely.
When I do, invariably, I find something wonderful is trying to get through to me. Undoing these neurotic knots, digging into "the problem", is always messy work, but always leads to treasure:
