The sounds of Mexico are different in every city and village. In Todos Santos I sat on a stone patio the day after Christmas listening.
I took in the hammers ringing across the hillside, each one with its own echo, and the birds too, like squeaky children’s toys, hidden in the dense canopy, unconcerned they were missing the hammer’s rhythm.
Then there was the gentle to and fro of a palm-frond broom on a stone walkway, the sweeper as invisible as the birds and she too swishing to her own rhythm; somewhere a trickle of water, not from a fountain, but a dysfunctioning part of the plumbing, made its way into the mix.
In between all of these disparate sounds, I took in the accelerating cars, some with radios blaring bad Beetle music, some competing with the adjacent car to make it first to the corner. Hotel workers’ holas filled any left over moment of silence. I followed them, in my sound-sense world, floating through fleshy leaves to arrive–some pure—some muffled–in ears I cocked alternately to blue sky and the flagstone at my feet.
Sound meditation goes straight to the solar plexis. The hammer will ring there. The brush will sweep away other thoughts. Finger tips will tingle with the tinkle of the water and carry their vibrations to the bony carapass.
And when a dog barks, the heart will startle at the familiar as if it were unknown. The slack jaw will welcome it to the sound soup. The ribs will widen to receive each sound and allow them to shout and shove the stiff bones. The somatic sound temple is a rich place to be.
What do you hear when you sit with awareness to sound?
