29 July, 2012

On becoming a cyborg – SciencePunk

On becoming a cyborg – SciencePunk: Someone has let a bored teenager into the Foley artist’s suite of my mind. My shoes ring like milk bottles on the paving stones. I kick a leaf and it makes a sound like a crisp packet. Birds tweet obscenely. They swoop from tree to tree and I can hear the tips of their wings pressing together. A man on the other side of the park pops the lid of a soft drink with a rifle crack. Above it all, the strange sighing rasp is still there, breaking waves of an ocean suspended above me. I reach up and pull out the songbirds. The ocean above me collapses instantly, crashes down as cotton wool, insulates me from all that unnecessary noise. Silence presses in on me. I feel swaddled and safe again.