White Noise

In honor of my new neighbor, a young pot-smoking guy just out of college who works in advertising and enjoys bringing over a steady stream of his pot-smoking friends to party on the balcony just outside my bedroom window on weeknights, I purchased this little white-noise number, the Marpac Sleepmate 980.

It’s awesome. Although it doesn’t fully eliminate the sound violations from my sphere of awareness, it does dull them enough so that I can reign in my anticipatory anxiety, slow my boiling blood, and talk myself down onto a calmer plane. Did you know that stress responses – like quickening blood, platelets getting sticky, and rapid breathing – increase one’s susceptibility to disease and health challenges?

There’s no need for me to outrun any saber tooth tigers, yet when I hear my neighbor at times when I don’t want to hear him (when my need for silence and quiet goes unmet), I get stressed, and my body reacts just as it would if I had caught site of a tiger ready to pounce – albeit probably with much more anger and much less fear than if my neighbor actually were a bloodthirsty saber toothed tiger. Why is it that saber toothed tigers went extinct? Anyone know? I’m too tired to wikipedia it at the moment.

Anyway, getting back to the most terrific sound machine ever. It’s fantastic and highly recommended. I keep it on the first setting to create a relaxed, noise muting environment. It’s like a little white noise sound cocoon that envelopes and soothes, the effects of which are magnified by my earplugs (I can’t quite break myself of that habit yet). Sensory deprivation. One day I’m going to go in to a dark sensory deprivation tank where I float on water in a wet suit that makes it impossible to feel the water, with ear plugs that make it impossible to hear, pitch blackness that makes it impossible to see, and no noise or smells. It would be awesome, and perhaps a little scary. It would have to be simple and easy to get out of instantaneously, or otherwise the anxiety would ruin the experience.

I’m tired and rambling slightly and clearly in need of my white-noise machine induced dream time. I’m on Book 5 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Chronicles and continuing to voraciously eat them up one after another. All I want to say is that I love Jean Claude and Anita and can not wait until they get together. If I were Anita, I would absolutely choose Jean Claude over Richard. Richard is sexy but he’s also kind of a pill. Jean Claude would totally take him. He’s like Geoffrey from the Angelique books. Dashing, strong, and dangerously sexy, and a vampire to boot.

Vampire Book Obsession

I’m obsessed. I picked up “The Harlequin,” by Laurell K. Hamilton, quite by accident a few days ago. The main character is Anite Blake, a vampire hunter, necromancer, and – by the time of “Harlequin” – a lover of vampires and wereleopards, wolves, and lions. Cool female character, humor, hot vampires, magical powers, and masses of sex. For obvious reasons, I tore through it.

It wasn’t until I had finished it that I realized “The Harlequin” was the 15th or so book in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Novels and that there were 14 others that I had jumped over! I made a special trip to Barnes & Noble, couldn’t find the first one, so settled on buying the second. I finished the second one and needed an immediate fix, so I went to a different Barnes and Noble and bought the first one. I read it last night, walking to work this morning on the sidewalks, on the subway, and in the elevator going up to my office. It was with extreme reluctance that I laid the book aside to begin my work.

When I was younger I read all of the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles and loved them, but until picking up the Harlequin I hadn’t realized there was a whole genre of Sci-Fi/Fantasy that was Fantasy/Horror. Actually, I think it’s quite unfair to put the Vampire Hunter novels in Horror. They’re not “Horror” just because they have vampires sucking people’s blood, rampaging zombies ripping people apart, or berserk ghouls… OK, maybe they are horror. I guess I like Fantasy/Horror Books (but not movies ala “The Saw”). Who knew?

Has anyone else discovered these awesome books? Other suggestions in the same genre?

Commute Enhancing

Many months ago, my friend Simone bought me the book You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay. The book, in the vein of The Secret, but more practical and how-to oriented, is about the power of your thoughts to create your future – the power of thoughts to create your reality. It starts with recognizing negative thought patterns, moves to identifying where the negative thought patterns and beliefs came from, and then moves into how eliminate and release them from your mind.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book to me is the author’s conviction that releasing negative thoughts, and replacing them with positive affirmations, can actually heal the body of illness and disease. That idea sounds far out there in a way, but it appeals to me because I do quite strongly believe in the mind-body-spirit connection. It makes sense to me that if your mind is filled with negative thoughts and negative energy (which I felt like my post of yesterday was a bit), those thoughts and energy could impact the health of your body in a negative way. Conversely, if your mind is full of positive energy, it seems eminently sensical that the energy could have a positive effect on your body, whether its boosting your immune system or creating more dramatic types of healing.

When Simone bought me the book, I was genuinely interested in reading it, and I had a sense that messages that I was ready to hear and learn awaited me in the book’s pages. But, life, work, and relationships all proved distracting (sometimes pleasantly so, sometimes stressfully). In my moments of free time, instead of picking up You Can Heal Your Life, I found myself gravitating towards other books, mainly in the contemporary fiction genre, like Wind Up Bird Chronicles and Kafka On The Shore (both of which I really liked, and would recommend).

A few days ago, however, I had a brilliant idea: Buy the book on tape! Or, more precisely, buy the DVD of the book, and download it onto my Ipod. Really, I have to give Bacchus some of the credit for this brilliance because, for Christmas, one of the things he asked for were books on tape. He’s very busy with his work and spends a lot of time in the car, and wanted to use that time in productive, mentally-enriching way (or, maybe he just wanted to read Ulysses). I thought it was cute of him, but didn’t think to apply it to me, because I really enjoy the act of holding a book and reading it. That’s how I like to experience books.

“Self-Help” books are different than novels and other types of books. Novels, I like to escape into. I like to fully absorb them and allow them to fully absorb me. With self-help books, you’re not escaping into a different world, you’re opening yourself to listen to lessons, messages, and tips – things that, I have found, are sometimes better in small doses. Hence, listening to them in small pieces on the way to work, on the subway, and waiting in line at Starbuck’s all work perfectly! (Btw, I don’t really like the “self-help” term, and I’m not sure if it’s the most appropriate term. On the other hand, any books trying to help you grow as a person are, at their core, about helping you help yourself, so maybe it is an accurate term?).

The last two mornings, I’ve really enjoyed my walking-subway-in-line-for-coffee commute listening to You Can Heal Your Life. I’m about half way through and I’m finding the book full of useful information and positive, self-affirming messages. I’m really excited about the book, and I’m super excited about this “new” way of using my Ipod and making the most of my morning commute.