I “hear” the beat of my heart. Or perhaps I feel the blood coursing through the vessels in my head, near my ears. The difference between the sensations of sound and touch is almost indistinguishable when both are so faint and distant. But another—much louder—sound disturbs my quiet at the moment. It’s the sound crickets make, but it’s not really a sound at all. At least I don’t think it’s really a sound. My body creates a sensation of sound; only I can hear it. According to the American Tinnitus Association, “tinnitus is the perception of sound when no actual external noise is present.” So both the “sound” that mimics my heartbeat and the crickets I hear are entirely in my head. In other words (mine, only…no one else would be so crude to say it…), I am unbalanced. “It’s all in your head,” I can imagine people saying to me, if I were to reveal the fact that I hear noise that isn’t there.
If I hadn’t given up on trying to sleep before 3:30, I might have been able to avoid these irritating noises. But the very real noises emerging from my mouth and nose when I breathe, coupled with the cramps on the outer side of my lower left leg, made sleep virtually impossible. So I got up. I made coffee. I ate some peach yogurt. I took dishes out of the dishwasher and dried the ones that never dry of their own accord. And I became conscious of the damn crickets. And the blood coursing through my veins. And the noises a house makes while most people sleep.
If death weren’t so final and so complete, I might want to experience it, just to have the luxury of absolute silence. Every so often, I get these ideas in my head about the allure of complete silence. I’ve written about the subject before. I want to know how silence feels; how it must lull one into an ecstatic, trance-like state. Pure, uninterrupted silence. Like total darkness, but for the ears, not the eyes.
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I used to vacuum the house regularly between visits by the cleaning person, but I have gotten out of the habit. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been spending so much time either working on the other house (painting and so forth) or thinking about working on the other house. The reason for my failure to regularly vacuum and clean notwithstanding, the fact remains that I have been falling short on keeping the house clean and dust-free. Consequently, as the time nears to put the house on the market, there is more “clean up” work to do than may be possible in the time I’ve allowed myself. At the same time I should be cleaning house, I must be packing and moving things to the new place. And I should be putting the finishing touches on painting, etc. on both places. I’ve put myself into the almost impossible position of insisting that my current house be put on the market immediately, while not giving myself the time necessary to get the house ready to show to prospective buyers. This dilemma, one of my own making, arose because I am fed up with the slow-as-molasses pace of the process. It’s been four months since closing on the “new” house. But to look around the house where I live, one would find scant evidence of any significant preparations for a move—not even regular dusting and vacuuming and routine cleaning of the kitchen and baths. It’s not that the place needs a deep cleaning; it’s just that it needs the routine stuff that I’ve more or less ignored while I’ve spent my time on the other house. I’m frustrated with myself for letting preparations for the move lag so badly. But I’m unwilling to allow that frustration once again inject even more delay into the process. I could scream. But I won’t. Because it’s 4:15 in the morning and my blood-curdling scream could cause the neighborhood to erupt in panic. So I will continue to sit and stew and pace back and forth in a cage with a door that is closed, but not locked. I am experiencing a shock to my system in the present moment; it is caused by the transition from the past to the future. I am not handling that transition well. I have ignored too many day-to-day obligations. I must repair my rhythm.
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Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.
~ Alvin Toffler ~
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I had a routine once. When I woke up, I skimmed news websites, wrote my blog post, and then made a breakfast that usually consisted of a poached egg, a few radishes, a piece of Canadian bacon, and a glass of tomato juice. Then, I’d putter for the rest of the morning; a trip to the post office or the grocery store, some more writing, and a few other mundane things. Then I had lunch, which often consisted of a tin of smoked herring, sliced tomatoes, a few slices of purple onion, a chunk of bell pepper, and cucumber spears. The afternoon may have included an aimless drive and general puttering, followed by a simple dinner. The rest of the day and into the evening were relaxed and simple. Sometimes I watched movies, sometimes I read, sometimes I cleaned house and did laundry. It was a simple routine. It wasn’t entirely satisfactory, but it wasn’t dreadful, either.
My routine has gone out the window. That’s what buying a house does to you; at least that’s what buying a house that needs much, much, much more work than you thought it did does to you. It upsets your routine. It inflicts a new reality on top of an old one. It tinkers with something that wasn’t entirely satisfactory by exposing it to something that sometimes feels dreadful.
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Enough. I slept briefly while sitting upright. Time to remedy that situation.
