Transubstantiation

Moving water and moving air often have the same sound.

When I go camping, I seldom sleep all the way through the night. If I’ve pitched my tent next to a river or stream, I’ll hear it when I wake up (either during the night or early in the morning) and think, in my still-partially-asleep state that it is the sound of wind, not water. I’ll think to myself that the wind must have picked up during the night and begin wondering if I staked down the tent well enough to keep it from blowing over.

As I write this post, I’m in a hotel room near the beach, and through a window to my left, I can hear the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashing against the sandy shore. Every few minutes, the computer’s fan will come on and run just long enough for me to notice it. I hear a rushing sound similar to that made by the pounding surf, but it is coming from in front of me instead of from the window. Confused, I look up and try to locate the source of the sound, wondering whether there is another open window that I didn’t know about somewhere in the room. I quickly notice that it is just the computer fan and go back to work.

Air sounds like water. Water sounds like air. Sometimes fire can sound like air or water. I’ve never experienced it, but I suppose that a landslide could mimic the sounds of a waterfall or tornado.

On one hand, it makes me marvel at the human brain, knowing that, if I pay attention, it can distinguish those sounds enough to recognize them. On the other hand, it also makes me realize that our sense of hearing is not nearly as finely-tuned and well-developed as we might like to think it is.