Silencing the Noise

by Christine Kling

Last Saturday, I boarded a plane at the Charlotte Amalie airport and flew home to Fort Lauderdale, exactly one month after I'd left for my Caribbean 1500 sailing adventures. In the time I'd been gone, I spent 11 days at sea, 11 days on the dock, and 8 days at anchor.

I flew back here to South Florida on Saturday night and the one big difference I've noticed between life on land and life at sea – is the noise.

Yes, a sailing boat does have lots of noises, but they are background noises. The whoosh of the water, the singing of the wind, the creaking rigging – these are all just a fabric of the day to day life aboard a sailboat, and your brain catalogs them all and marks them as normal, healthy boat noises. You almost stop hearing them. They become less "noise" and more like background music. When you hear a bang or clank or new pitch, you sit up and take notice and generally wonder what is breaking.

Here on land, it seems that everyone is trying hard to distract themselves from all that noise of garbage trucks and motorcycles and sirens. They are talking into cell phones, listening to iPods, watching TV, looking at the Internet, listening to the radio.  It's rare to see anyone simply paying attention to his or her surroundings. In the first couple of days in Fort Lauderdale, everything seemed so loud, but I've found myself adapting and getting reaccustomed to the noise level.

Lots of noise for us human beings is noise we hear in our minds. Those little nagging voices that keep us awake at night are always saying, "What did my boss really mean when he said that? Did I remember to turn off the iron? Should I get gas here or look elsewhere? Did I pay that bill?" We often obsess over the minutia of life and forget to pay attention to the beauty around us and the fact that we are the minutia of the universe.

I miss those night watches. Try sitting under the billion stars of the Milky Way for three hours, and you will see how much it silences those pesky inner voices. Don't allow yourself electronic distraction – just sit with the quiet of your own mind. If you are like me, you will start telling yourself stories and some of the most amazing thoughts and ideas will flow into that quiet. That's gold for a writer.

So, I am forcing myself to keep my butt in the chair and working night and day on the editing and formatting Circle of Bones. I'm not going back TALESPINNER in New Bern, NC until the book is published. I miss my boat, and even though it will be bloody cold up there, I really want to get back to the quiet of my diesel engine pushing me south down the ICW and sitting in the cold cockpit contemplating the stars.

But for now, in spite of myself, I am back on land and fitting in. What a racket!

Fair winds!

Christine

 

 

 

Share on Facebook