"Well the World, it turns around
Just like a wave on the shore
and I slept with the tide
Just like a memory slipped away"
This is the first verse to a song my Dad used to sing to me with his guitar when I was growing up. I remember he used to sing it to us before we went to bed and I could still hear it playing in my head along with the waves crashing on the beach down the street from our house long after I was supposed to be asleep.
To this day when I go to sleep I still feel it is all too silent without the ever present and repetitious sound of the waves moving up and down across the sand. When I was living in San Francisco I fell asleep to the sound of the city; the willful grinding of the street cars on their endless tracks, the steady hum of cars racing through the metropolis in the dead of night. Now that I live out in the country there is nothing to fall asleep to except the murmur of our old refrigerator and a few wistful sighs from a very spoiled dog.
This quietness, this Swedish stillness is one of the major reasons I wanted to move. I felt I was over stimulated by all of the movement around me. I felt if I just had a little time away to myself I would be able to think more clearly. Little did I know that once I left it I would still hear the ambient noises of my recent past in my head; they move back and forth through my memory like the words of a profound sermon or a meaningful conversation that could never be finished. The muffled sound of movement and chaos are like a song I always listened to but never liked until it stopped playing over and over on the radio.
