Swimming

Sound, too, is not dominant, though for other reasons.

There is an attempt to muffle noises in the Home. There is soundproofing here and there, padding in the walls and so on. But it does not matter. Everywhere there is noise. Constant, grating, strident noise.

Everything is alarmed, you see. Open the wrong door, or the right one at the wrong time, and emergency alarms begin their incessant beepings. If a patient rolls over and hits the nurse's call button, more beepings, equally loud. If one of the machines that support the patients in their beds malfunctions or runs out of some necessary fluid, yet more beepings and bleatings.

And, of course, all the rooms have TVs, usually tuned to competing channels, and (given the viewers' almost inevitable deafness) usually quite loud.

Yet, after a day or so, you learn to tune out all this. It blurs away. Becomes indistinct. In time, it's all just white noise, and in a strange way, even serene.

Or, here's a better description. Go swimming. Put your head under the water. Listen, if you can, to the talk of other swimmers on the surface. What do you hear? It is reduced, of course. Their conversations dwindle, grow dim, are incomprehensible…

And somehow alien. As though you eavesdropped on strangers from a different world, far away and chill, where concepts are different, nothing quite makes sense, and communication…no matter how sincerely attempted…is impossible.

Yet, even so, there is hope to be had. It is in the knowledge that you will eventually rise, abandon the rushing waters, come again upon the tile and earth, feel the towel over your shoulder, the sun on your body, the warmth, the knowledge, hear again the spoken word…

Rendered coherent. And whole. And potent.