Half an Hour in an Afternoon.

The one thing I learned about silence that last week and a bit was that silence isn't so silent.  At the house, silence was bush, far off car noise, and the occasional train from a half mile away.  My tv's were not in the living area, or were downstairs.  We had no stereo any longer and no radio. Laundry was in the basement. The kitchen appliances only made noises of an active working unit.  That is not the way things work in the modern world. In the modern world, all these things demand our attention right now.  

The dryer beeps when it's cycle is done.  The washer buzzes in the most irritating fashion.  The dishwasher beeps when it is done and beeps again when you open the door and it thinks you want to start another load but have forgotten, when all you did was get your best coffee cup.  The coffee maker beeps when the coffee is ready.  The breadmaker making the bun dough beeps when it is time to add things if you were planning to do so, fruit, nuts and such, and beeps again when the proofing is done.  The oven beeps when you turn it on and when it reaches temperature.   

Who decided this was what I needed?  Who thought my life would be improved?  Isn't requiring your phone be attached to your hip enough of an impostion of the modern world into life enough? Couldn't these things be set as an alarm on that apendage if you really needed it?  

In the silence I was searching for, I found all this excess noise stridently demanding my time and attention.  Who decided this was the way that the world should work, that I needed a beeper for everything I do?  I fully accept that I have reached the age, where I need an alarm to remind me to take my midday meds, but that is set to my choosing and my choice of sound when it goes.  I can live with that.  At least they haven't attached buzzers to the pill bottles.

Beepers buzzers and bells.  They fill the world interferring with the silence.