h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Silence

Until I was carted off to hospital, I lived in Lincoln, a state monument with a population of approximately 50 souls "downtown", perhaps another one hundred in the historic district, which runs for ten miles through the Bonito Valley. It is a place of great beauty and rural quiet, if you don't count the donkey. The quiet and the true dark nights are what drew me to New Mexico. In the Bonito Valley the stars glitter right down to the edge of the hills and if it weren't for the masses of crickets echoing off either side of the valley you could probably hear them.

I don't see moon or stars any more, and would be unimpressed if I were to look up from this street somewhere in Albuquerque. There are laws protecting the night sky in New Mexico, home of the Very Large Array (of telescopes), so all street lights are capped, but even so, a smudge of light obscures the stars along the rim of the sky.

One January morning in 2007 I awoke to heavy snow, and went outside with the cats to look around. The silence wasn't complete; snow makes a tiny noise as it hits on other snowflakes, and cats go galumph-galumph as they forge through chest-deep drifts. But we were all startled by a heavy whoosh whoosh whoosh -- the pinions of a pair of ravens flying west up the street, right over our heads.

I knew, once I was permanently sat down in the wheelchair, that I was going to have to give it up sooner than I wanted or had planned, but I was envisioning an Ali McGraw departure, an orderly disposal of chattels and finding of homes for cats. Full makeup and no pain. While I was trying to make plans for possessions and pets, I never gave a thought to the intangibles. Otherwise I would have thrown the clothing aside and stuffed my luggage with silence.

I ran my digital tape recorder a few weeks ago, in the morning, to try and capture the normal morning ambience, of several televisions set face to face and frosted with the sounds of patients, staff and machines. You can hear that recording here (autoplay is turned off):
http://www.lilatladera.com/h2g2/ladera105.html
Nobody else seems all that bothered. I guess it's because they're city dwellers. Down on the skilled hall they have television sets mounted on swing arms, with jacks for headsets, so it was always a lot quieter up there. And the only noise we had to deal with at night was an occasional disoriented patient. Here on South Back, either the family brings in a set or Ladera digs one up from their donated collection of cathode ray tube sets, and the hard-of-hearing play them at the volume you hear in that recording. This is the worst aspect of nursing home life for me, especially at night, especially now that I have a neighbor who stubbornly refuses to turn her box off, even at midnight. She gives as an excuse the fact that she's dying. Well, yeah!

I long for crickets, and instead I've got laugh tracks. Be warned: there are laugh tracks in hell, packets of high-volume artifice with the texture of an aural weetabix. To be in involuntary propinquity to an American sitcom is damnation without relief. I'm buying myself a noise-cancelling machine for Christmas.

[Amy P]

Once again, compulsive reading Asteroid Lil. The older I get, the more I realise I am quite happy totally alone. I get actual discomfort from being with too many people, or even a few people for a long time.

I look forward to the day when a well programmed robot would fetch me food/drink/medication and keep my electronic devices well charged. And do it quietly.

Peace & quiet is something I take for granted. Although I live in a fairly built-up area, the noises are muted enough to just be a drone in the background, easy to blot out.

Deb

Scilence is something I think we take for granted when we have it, and really miss when we know longer have it... Maybe its because I was brought up in a pretty quiet area, but even after more than a decade here, I still can't quite adjust to the level of constant noise...

Last night in bed, tryign to fall asleep, I can hear the radiators/heating, and other backgroudn (I guess electrical ) hum in the house, (some of which is I think the lighting in the kitchen, whcih is under my bedroom)
As I slept badly, as useual, I could hear traffic, at 1 AM, then 2 AM, again, a bit after 3 AM, with a few drunken people in the street at I think about 3 AM and after I finally fell asleep, to wake at 7 soemthing, the traffic was fairly heavy again by then, though at least I managed to nap some more and block it out...
I'm sure at the time, when I had the new windows put in, it seemed so* quiet, compaired to how it had been, and it must* be quieter thna it used to be, with the old windows, but I think now, I've just gotten used to them, so the noise from outside doesn't necessarily seem that* quiet...
Of course, the very strange thing is, when I'm 'out in the country', at William's, the quiet seems somewhat disturbing to me now too... so I can't seem to win either way...

It brings to mind the day my son was transferred from one hospital to another when he had pnuemonia. We'd gone from our own room to a very, very noisy ward where every bed had a television with something different playing. It was a Thursday, just before Easter. Thankfully most of the patients left the following day and there were just four of us left for the next few days.

I should be ashamed of myself, for what I did/said, one time, when IN hospital.... I was feeling so* so* ill... Hadn't slept for days and days, and in our ward (six beds, I think* three a side, but I could be wrong), opposite my bed, was a very very ill, well, dieing, cancer patient, who was basically being kept in, whilst he died, and was on some seriously strong I guess just pain-killing medication etc... The upshot was he was hallucinating and talking, sometimes shouting out, etc... I can't quite remember what I said (I'd not been that* long out of a coma ), but I think I thretened to kill him or something like that I got moved to a seperate side ward, which was good, for the peace it gave, but you do tend to be ignored somewhat when your not on the main ward... I kinda feel really guilty about it now, but I wasn't necessarily very well myself at the time and still with a only slim chance of making it out of the hospital alive

At 5 am this morning I asked my aide, "Will you ask E if she will kindly turn down her teevee?"

The aide walked across the "street" to E's room and announced, "Sandra wants you to turn down your teevee."

"ASKED!" I shouted, "I asked, I didn't DEMAND!"

"SORRY," E yelled back, and an international incident was avoided. It was stupid of the aide to have framed my request like that.

Always difficult... I guess some people, (myself included sometimes), have very odd sleep patturns, and in any establishment, wehre you've got a mix of people, at any time, night or day, there can be a conflict of waht differnt people want to do... for me, when I can't sleep, at all, its probably as annoying for me, as it is for my lodger, who gets to hear me plodding about in the front room, up and down to the toilet, making coffee, at 4 AM, and trying* to quietly* listen to the radio...

Headphones. I have a pair of cheap but good Sennheisers that even have the letter 'L' in braille to indicate which ear is which. If South Back had teevees with headsets, the patients who use television as a sedative could listen whenever they like as long as they like, and many diplomatic incidents would be averted.

I always forget about headphones... which is silly, as I've dozens of various pairs from little in the ear ones, to big pro DJ/Studeo versions thanks for reminding me; and, now, I don't even need to get up, if I want to do that, as I can access worldwide radio stations, podcasts, etc., all from my mobile phone, using the houses WiFi, so it wouldn't knock up a huge datausage cost thanks for reminding me headphones exist! really.... I should have been blonde...