Cacophony

(Noun) 1. Harsh discordance of sound; dissonance. 2. A discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds.

What a word. It makes me think of the jumbled sounds of an orchestra warming up; each instrument doing its own thing perfectly but creating a horrible cacophony as a contrasting prelude to the organized piece to come. It also makes me think of that old 'Calgon' commercial where the housewife is bombarded with screaming children, the telephone, TV, vacuum cleaner, etc., until she screams "Calgon, take me away!", and is whisked off to a quiet, luxurious bath.

I live amid a constant cacophony - a mind-numbing symphony of noise. It sounds like children screeching, giggling and hooting; video games beeping, trilling, and endlessly playing the same four bars of tinny music; dogs barking, growling, and howling; modern 'conveniences' ringing, blaring, and humming. When I go to work my head clears of all the noise. I take in the sound of the wind in the trees and grasses, birds chirping (and bigger birds screeching as they dive bomb my dog - but that's another story. I digress.), water gurgling in a stream bed, big game crashing through the underbrush and calling to each other. Somehow by the time I get back home I can face the cacophonous onslaught again, wade through it to find my precious children and breathe the mountains into their noisy little souls.