Day 15.1: Religious Babble

[sunshowerdandelion]

I live in a country full of noise, especially religious noise.I mean this in the broadest sense possible: holier-than-thou moralizing, hypocrisy, prejudice, and especially this incredibly grating form of public spirituality which involves noise, noise, noise. Literal noise: calls, praise-chants, talk, babble, yowls, caterwauls. Every evening at around six till eight there is this omnidirectional assault of low droning punctuated by shouting and calling which blocks any sort of thought. I mean omnidirectional - it is impossible to escape it. I've tried all forms: I've spent about two months' wages on noise-cancelling headphones (they do not block out the sound), earplugs (ditto), heavy curtains (ditto). The assault resumes at four in the morning, full volume, and I'm more often than not wrenched awake by really, really bad singing.

I don't know what sort of spirituality this is. Other countries don't have it: I've asked. Those other pious countries don't dump. And it is dumping - dumping gallons of putrid waste into the air. It'd be something if the singing were actually good, but it isn't. It's monotonous and dull, but insistent, like a dentist's drill or the someone else's 'wake me up' alarm repeated over and over and over. Worst of all is the mind-killing.

I hate, hate, hate this sort of noise. If I had money I'd move to a place with less religious noise. Other noises I enjoy, but there is something uniquely filthy about this sort.