The great noise

Drafted on Oct 19...never pushed the publish button. 

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This is a story of what assimilation and being adaptive is..

As I shut the glass windows in my study, to block out the loud droning of construction noise twenty-one floors below, I replace the unsolicited buzzing with the soft chime of Emilie-Claire Barlow singing Les yuex ouverts on my Harman Kardon speaker.

I have been living with this noisy...'aural chaos' - enveloping about three corners of my dwelling, for the past three years.  I moved into this pad ten years ago.  Being twenty-one floors off the ground has always been a privilege.  The view, the breeze...up until now.  It came to my awareness only recently that, the massive noise from the construction site on the ground gets louder as it travel upward...onto my ears.  

Imagine having spent more than thirty-six months surrounded by round-the-clock droning of a manmade monster.  Well, this perceived 'chaos' is part of the deal, the price of development.  When this MRT project gets completed, my status of being a crazed resident who lives next to a colossal noise pollution, will change into an owner of a condominium in a downtown prime location - with an MRT station at my doorstep. 

As I lather the soap on my skin under the warm shower in my bathroom, taking in the invasive buzz of the working trucks and machines from the ground; feeling the bumps of hives on my bare skin, left side of my back - stress hives, I realise that it is only when my mind quiets, that I notice the droning outside.  I pull the bathroom window to a near close, lowering the volume of the noise.

This construction and its sounds, are not unlike my restless mind.  Its core is a constant buzz of noise and listlessness, so persistent and so busy that it becomes the normality of my existence/being.  When and if I stop in my track to take note of the jarring sounds, I would cringe and slightly hate myself for putting up with it.  I would lament and whine to my visiting friends when they come over. I then console us (me) by shutting every windows here and put on the cool air-conditioner, sometimes I will garnish our surrounding with cool music playing in the room, and lit an expensive scented candle. 

Because the core is so embedded with noise and activities, I essentially bounce from one distraction to another.  I became addicted to projects and doing things.  You know how you tend to talk louder in a loud bar, to be heard?  Yes, that's me, living right inside the construction site noise of my mind.  I compensate, and console the noisy mind with more tasks and to-do-lists.

During the first phase of MCO in March - April when the construction was halted, I soaked up the quietness in the air outside my windows.   It was a short-lived period of course.  Now it seems the work has taken on a more fervent pace, the buzz got louder, the hours are longer. 

It was during this period that I got to know my anxiety-restlessness twins better.  Backed up to the wall, with a string of physical manifestation staring me in the eye,  I had no choice but to talk to it...them.