Background noise

There is a consistent buzz in my head.  It is more of a low hum, and sits just between my thoughts lobe and the irritation cortex in my brain.  Sometimes it is all I can concentrate on, and it leads me to despair. Please make it stop. It is an environmental noise, and a month or so ago, Andrew and I spent a Saturday evening trying to locate its origin.  Andrew is an engineer in almost every fibre of his being, so he had a mathematical plan.  We would triangulate the sound.  Yes - this was news to me too.  I would have just ventured out, fuelled by sheer determination, and stabbed blindly in the dark, hoping to get closer to the irritation.  But using the scientific method worked.  We drove to one edge of Pinelands, hoppped out the car, made silent assessments of the direction and intensity of the sound, and then conferred.  We could agree on direction.  I wrote down our findings in my notebook, and we drove to a different corner of the suburb.  Rinse and repeat, until we had plotted the possible area by intersecting the notebook lines.

And there it was, tucked away in a back street in a neighbouring industrial area.  Even at 8.30 on a Saturday night it was churning out steam and noise.  It is an massive plant that looks to me a bit like a mine with corrugated walkways and conveyor belts. And a security guard who walked up to us to see what we were doing there on a drizzly evening. The company manufactures oils and margarine products.

I was glad to have found out where the annoyance was coming from.  I knew it wasn't all in my head, but locating it exactly made me feel a lot better. I could direct my anger at a particular company rather than just vaguely thinking it must be somewhere out there.  Information is calming.

Sometimes I get lost in the trap that something is "all in my head."  And to be fair, a lot of thoughts do get stuck up there and need to be coaxed out.  

I am wondering if I can use this triangulation system to pinpoint other noise in my life.  If I stand and look at something that is bothering me from one angle, jot down my results, walk some distance away (metaphorically) and note the problem from a different angle, rinsing and repeating until I can work out the intersecting point,  maybe I can  find a cause and create a solution.

My heart hurts at the moment.  I don't know why - it feels as if a ball of wool (mottled blue!) has been cut through with a pair of scissors and there are all these loose ends sticking out and if I pull one, the whole thing may unravel. It is probably all in my head, but I am going to test the triangle theory with this as a case study.

Beautiful Peaceful Sedgefield

Recently we slipped away for to Sedgefield for a few days, and had a glorious holiday.  Highlights included painting rocks, having my face splat with shaving cream, eating celebratory pecan pie and NOT having this constant droning sound in my ears. Coming home made me even more aware of it and its effect on me.

 

 

 

I think it is the frequency that bothers me most.  Not so much the Hertz, but how often I can hear it - even now at 11 on a Sunday evening, the drone continues.  It is non stop. Time, I think, to phone City Council and see if there is any recourse. Enough already.  

 

A creative community project in Sedgefield - we left our contributions to be added!

 

 

 

A face full of shaving cream - part of a hilarious Task Master game we were playing....