As a young kid, I had the usual childhood fears—of the dark, of weird sounds at night, of dying, of the deep unknown, and so on. Recalling those years, I got rid of many of these fears by age 10. By the time I was 17 (and freed from Marcos jails), I was truly and literally fearless—except for an irrational phobia or two that took me many years to fully defeat.
Recalling these stuff leads me to reflect on how I was able to overcome many of my childhood fears and even a few hardcore fears of my later years. It was certainly a complex tangle of situations and encounters, worthy of a book to be edited by a psychiatrist no less. But since it’s now past midnight going into a nice Sunday and I’m enjoying Neil Young’s “Rust Never Sleeps” album on my lonesome own, I’ll be content to inspect just one persistent pattern: memories of sounds that carried the message, “Fear not, everything’s alright.”
Yes, that’s my secret weapon, my secret shield, my armor of sounds—acquired since childhood and nurtured into adulthood with the help of family, comrades and friends. For this good fortune, I guess one way to thank the cosmic spirits is to share my 11 most reassuring sounds. Here they are: Continue reading “My 11 most reassuring sounds”