Signal from Noise.
Or the longest AirBnB review ever
I have been living for the last two weeks in the noisiest, most chaotic, diverse zone of head-splitting blow-your-top auditory assault of an AirBnB I have ever spent the night.
I am new-come to a foreign land, in a pueblo not larger than a hundred cement-block buildings along a small river that empties into the Mexican Pacific Coast. A landing place for the last few months of my sabbatical; a time for development, acceleration, and growth after a challenging last two years.
I sit here now at my desk, aka the dining table in the outdoor kitchen. There is nothing more than a single white curtain between me and the ubiquitous passing vehicles: water trucks starting their deliveries at 5:30 am. The construction trucks from the multi-unit development project a hundred feet down the street to my right. Old beat-up pickup trucks with cheap megaphones hawking shrimp or fruit in shrill, nerve-grating timbre. Motorcycles with no DMV restrictions on sound or exhaust.
All of them run rumbling and screeching in protest at the torture of the washboard cobblestone carrera that lies as a major throughway into town center, a mere 25 feet from me as I write this. The trucks kick up dust that spills from the construction project just past the brewpub next door, on my side of the street.
It breaks my focus.
I can’t concentrate.
How long is this debilitating painful annoying aggravating disturbing tranquility-shattering cacophony going to last?
I came here with an itinerary and a schedule. One that was built over months of planning in silence and abundant personal space. One that assumed it would be chaotic here, but relied on the idea that spending a little extra on AirBnB would allow me to at least shut out noise while inside. Enough to meditate. Or read. Or, failing that, maybe during some hours of the day it would be relatively quiet.
This was not the case
I can’t keep myself in any rhythm.
I came here to write, to be creative, to practice very clean and healthy living. To fast intermittently, meditate, practice music, and take care of my body. It was more the plan of the Monk I had been back in Arizona than anything I could be here in this place. A monk has his mountain temple. I have a sound tunnel with no wall, that fronts this cobblestone street. In the back there is a square hole larger than my shower cut out of the grey concrete wall, with a screen on it and no window. The hole opens to an outdoor kitchen being used at all hours by 3 teenage girls. They play music, have boys over, drink and laugh, loud like they can’t conceive of anything put on this earth that could stop them, I might add… They practice twerking. They fix midnight snacks at 2 am after coming home from the bars or beach fires.
I can’t close the window. It isn’t there.
Dogs bark, a staccato clap from any angle, any distance, any time.
And I came here to spend my time convincing myself spiritually that ‘there is no spoon’ not getting angry because physically there is no window. My meditation is literal practice to not get into patterns of aversion towards unpleasant sensations. I’m taking a bath in unpleasant sensations. And the water is full of other people’s things. People I didn’t invite into my bathroom.
All I can think is, what can I do to stop the noise? I can’t think of anything that isn’t mean. I can’t think. I want to be mean. I get angry. I feel overwhelmed. It’s a physical feeling, like waking up inside a barrel filled with hot sand, naked, with a sunburn. And not being able to get out. Sometimes when it gets too much to bear I take a walk. Or a run. Or I go to the beach, but that just reminds me of hot sand…
I am amazed at watching other areas of my life suffer because of sound. My diet for one. I can’t plan my way around the tasty, cheap tacos on every corner. A salsa-trap too sweet to avoid. My Keto cookbook lies unopened, covered in dust from the trucks beating the cobblestone street for 3 weeks. My desire to talk to strangers, or have patience with the building manager. Or neighbors.
I retreat, into a shell of noise-cancellation headphones, that leave my ears itching and sore overnight. All else is chaos and disruption. Noises caused by other people become black and solitude white. The world divides. I check out of the noise, of the outside. Especially at night, I turn my back and walk away as the building manager tries to explain that the neighbors are new and there is nothing he can do. I feel rude by the time I get to the top of the stairs. But I do not have the energy to change it. All non-survival level concerns are excused away by lack of sleep.
I am guessing this is all typical stress response for many people. It is a privilege that I don’t have bigger stresses in my life than noise. That doesn’t make it easier.
And nothing gets done. I can’t focus. I contemplate giving up.
A war zone should even have some hours of quiet.
I try to tell people about this torment. Friends who listen with a polite smile frozen on their mouth. Or strangers, who clearly prefer to go back to having fun. No comprehension in anyone’s eyes.
Am I the only one who is bothered by this? Why does this racket bother only me? And why so much? Other people live here too…
There is a bar, right next to my building. It has really good live music, if that’s what I’m into. It sounds muffled but still loud if I’m not, or simply lying on my bed trying to read. They promise to stop at 9pm. It’s a rule, the locals keep promising me. Its written on the AirBnB. I think the rule applies to the whole town. There are about a baker’s dozen bars here, one for every block. I have usually thought about complaining at least a hundred times before 11:30 pm. Most nights. At its worst, I had to listen to binaural white noise at 3/4 full volume on my good quality headphones with active noise cancellation in order to fall asleep. I could still hear the boys howling on the patio at 1:30 am.
Should I go over there and talk to them? None of my friends suggest this option… I talk to whomever will listen. I can’t think too hard about who they might be.
My sleep gets blown up. I am half asleep all day.
Where is the joy I felt just a few weeks ago? The extra gear? The springed step?
There is another sound tunnel, right next to mine. A stranger lives there. Her music, like mine too, can be heard easily from my writing desk, which is my kitchen table.
Everything is fuzzy, like I experience it through a long tunnel, like it comes from far away.
In between, or when away, my mind clears. My thoughts, focus, perspective, slowly come back after a time. And my mind says to me:
- Yes, this is really an anomaly. Enough independent and random sources of chaotic noise to be a perfect coincidence. But also a great lesson for you.
- You have had a nice and privileged time in Arizona. You are welcome, it has been a difficult year for many.
- Yes, the sanctity of silence and serenity is seriously significant. You need to prioritize it in order to live the way you like.
- It’s ok to cry uncle. Sometimes toughing it out is not the best way to move through it.
- Uninterrupted concentration and its shadow, daydreaming, are good for you. they help with expression, problem solving, and staying motivated.
- You make this noise too, practicing your saxophone.
- Good job not escalating when you are disturbed. Especially when you are out of your mind angry with the teenagers at 2:00 am and you can’t sleep. An eye for an eye makes for terrible neighbors.
- It takes some time to be able to read how a place works. Sometimes it’s hard to listen. You can’t be of a place unless you can hear its rhythms.
- Be grateful you don’t have bigger sources of stress.
- It’s a particularly first-world sense of entitlement to lose your shit over the roosters before dawn. Or even to expect building standards. Anyone who has lived in a 3rd world country for longer than a week, outside a luxury resort, knows this.
- It also teaches you to love your home country more because of the absence of the things Americans take for granted.
- Yes, I can become accustomed even to the chaos and unexpected interruption of anything and continue my practice. Wow.
I can say it’s gotten easier. I’ve meditated on the distractions to meditation. And I’ve heard them speak. I’m not angry anymore, because I have had to throw out my high expectations, at least for now. And things are fixing to be better soon…
Soon, I’ll be moving on. As soon as I can. Sooner than my term ends here. Losing a little money is an acceptable price for peace of mind. My equilibrium is priceless. Solitude and silence call to my soul. Until then, it’s 18 hours of noise cancelling headphones a day, and go deeper inside.