Dull And Duller

We're suffering what's now become, it seems, the annual haze in this Far Place. The air smells of burning and at certain times of day things look distinctly, well, hazy. But the thing is that I rarely seem to notice this with quite the same intensity as most other folk. Two colleagues were complaining of the smokey air with intensity yesterday evening when I hadn't noticed anything particularly unusual. And I'm not implying they were over-reacting. It's clear that the polluted air causes great discomfort shading into real problems for lots of people. I'm lucky in not being one of them - but I also wonder how much this is due to a dulling of my sense of smell generally. I just don't seem to notice odours with anything like the clarity I recall from my youth.

And then earlier this week I was faced with the awkward realisation that my hearing isn't what it used to be. Some of our science people were demonstrating how high frequency sounds are gradually lost to our perception. The problem was that I didn't hear the sound at a frequency they clearly took for granted everyone in the room could hear. Now it's not that I'm panicking about going deaf, because I don't think I am, but it was chastening to experience the loss of a faculty I suppose I used to possess.

When you add to the above that my eye-sight has never exactly been 20/20, and I need to get up close and personal with a computer screen to read anything on it, it's clear I'm a sad case. The great thing is though that the idea of retreating from the white noise of the world into a little cavern of tranquility holds a deep appeal for me.