Tiny sounds

People keep asking me what I'm doing with my time off. What have I done so far? What am I doing next week? I need to come up with a good answer because the truth is that I'm going to be just hanging around listening to tiny sounds.

Tiny sounds are the sounds that are there all around us but we never notice them or care about them because we're too busy. You can tell that you're relaxed because you start to notice the tiny sounds around you. I think most of us are familiar with that phenomenon. But my revolutionary theory goes further - I've turned things on their heads and shaken them up. My theory is that by deliberately noticing the tiny sounds you can induce a state of blissful relaxation. (This is a specific application of my more general theory that cause and effect are in fact usually interchangeable, but more of that another time.)

I noticed a great tiny sound just this afternoon. I was putting some cold hot cross buns under the griller to convert them into hot hot cross buns using the magic of thermal energy. I'd put down a sheet of alfoil on the griller tray and turned on the griller, and as I turned away to get the cold HCBs I heard a faint little squeaking noise, as if there were cartoon mice in the cupboard singing a little lullaby to their cartoon mouse baby. A little investigation revealed that the tiny sound was coming from the serrated edge of the alfoil rubbing on the edge of the griller tray as the hot air from the griller gently blew across the foil and moved it up and down. Awesome stuff!

Tiny sounds like that pull you out of yourself and induce a state of serene calm. It makes me want to tool around in a fleet of Rolls Royces like an Indian guru. But it's not just about hearing them and then just digging them for the rest of the day. Hearing the tiny sounds gets you prepared for really listening to the big sounds, the ones that carry the really important messages.

In my case, the big sounds came in the form of Lionel Richie's Greatest Hits that I'm spinning up on my boombox right now. Let me tell you, hearing that alfoil squeak under my hot cross buns has really got me into a good place to hear Lionel preach it.

Freedom, no more lies! We can save this world if we try!

Oh yeah!