Much like most modern-day people, there are rarely quiet moments in my day.

However, I don’t mean quiet as in noiseless or without the constant chatter of computers, cell phones, iPods, or the droning toll of endless meetings. No, that is something I have come to enjoy and rally around … it’s inside my own head that the noise won’t stop.

I read somewhere that each person’s head, the skull and the resonating chamber it forms, is tuned to a specific note. If you hum long enough, and are really so inclined, you can figure out what tone your head is in … b flat, d minor, etc. So inside my head, is this tuning. And all the noise inside of it is tuned to that note … like the slow and low humming of a kitchen refrigerator going unnoticed in the daily kitchen of our lives. It’s often times a comforting tune, something I have grown accustomed to, not learned to, but “grown” accustomed to. Learning means some form of awareness during the process, no?

Back to my head and the noiseless days it goes through.

I have found that even at rest, my brain goes on these wandering journeys that my body has opted so vocally to be left out of. My brain wonders how it can surf more, how it could rig an entire mosquito netting system in the backyard so as to extend the living space area and still be bite-free. Recently, my brain figured out how to make a yummy snack using grape nuts, chunky peanut butter and a spoon. Mind you, I rarely complain. My helpless, and often times all too willing, body finds this all amusing. It figured out that it’s better than running up this hill that I live on for exercise. Let “Miss Smarty pants” think herself tired and get out of the way.

The problem is that the chamber orchestra in my head never stops. It literally keeps going, even when my body has checked out using a concoction of muscle relaxants and electrolyte go juice. About the only time Miss  Smarty-Pants gets a break is during surfing … when all thought stops and the body takes over. When those waves start rolling in, all thought is nicely set aside, and muscle memory and pure reactivity is put in its place.

I’m sure you have an activity that places you in the same state. Some use drugs, some use alcohol, some use adrenaline, but we all have this state. For most surfers, the quiet or soulful meditation that veils us as we trim down the line, cross-step into a dance with the waves, bottom-turn effortlessly … well … that’s one of the few moments where the chamber becomes silent, and we hear music from the ocean!

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