Last night I woke up in the middle of the night upon hearing loud banging in the house. I was fully awake at once. Bang, bang, bang-bang, bang… I was all ears, and then I heard the central heating kicking in. The gurgling of the water in the radiator next to me was exceptionally loud. And so was the burner in the basement. It seemed the burner was out of order, which would not be surprising after ten years of service. It took me several minutes to realize that the banging that woke me up was just rain. The downpour was pretty strong, but the dripping of the rain onto the tin skirting at the base of the chimney above my bedroom was not unusual at all. And then I realized that all the loud sounds I heard had to do with my exceptionally sharp hearing rather than any unusual activity around me. In fact, it was my acuity that was out of the ordinary for some reason. Only then I remembered similar experiences described in James Austin’s Zen and the Brain.[1] He, too, reports experiencing bouts of hypersensitivity. Not long ago I read a section dealing with a heightened sensation of his two hands.[2] He is concerned with neurological explanations of such phenomena, but I could not care less about them. I will never forget the loud banging in the middle of the night, though.

Addendum (October 29, 2012)

On some reflection, my hypersensitivity two nights ago is quite easy to explain. After a bit more than a week with me, my son left yesterday morning. We had to wake up relatively early so that he would make his flight. Also, he did not feel all that well when he went to sleep. Something was wrong with his stomach. On top of all this, there was the change from summer to winter time during the night. Thus I took my time while setting the alarm clock, for I was to get up first. A bit anxious about the whole thing, I was all ears even while I slept. Thus my hearing went into overdrive at some point. In retrospect, it was a wonderful experience. It is only a pity it cannot be brought about at will.

Footnote

1. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1999 (first published in 1998).

2. “The Feel of Two Hands,” op. cit., pp. 399-402.