Whenever I couldn’t help but take notice of a conversation in a crowded noisy shop or someone’s voice reverberating inside a quiet train carriage,
I transcribed the sounds that I heard in my notebook.
Rather than intentionally avoiding or blocking out the sound,
I adopting a welcoming attitude, and tried to maintain a healthy feeling.
However, I held on to my notes even after leaving the place.
It would have been easy just to rip the pages up and throw them out,
but I hesitated to take such a simple approach to something that was right there in front of me.
That would have been as the same as choosing not to stick earphones in my ears to mute the sound at that time.
For the time being at least, I strained to decipher my unmanageable notes.