Stopping in a grassy meadow, in the warm sun, a gentle breeze disturbs the tops of the longer blades of grass, and as my gaze tires, the scene blurs into a sea of green stillness, conscious only of the flickering tops of the grass, wafting back and forth…

• The crunchcrunchcruch of boots on snow
• The sound of traffic on the street below
• The purring of a cat laying on my chest
• Soaking in a warm tub after tossing in a Lush Bath Bomb.

Just a few things from my current environment that I can think of as hypnotic.

One more thing that was a constant when I was a kid: the sound of cicadas on a hot Texas summer evening.

cdbtoo

The flashing red dots on the clock between the 6 and the 24.
The green car radio panel glowing in the dark as I drive to site.
The thin sinuous line of sunrise following the profile of the silhouetted hills.
The black letters on the silver keyboard of my laptop.
My hands rubbing together as I dry them under the bathroom blower.
The backlit doorway on the way to the bathroom as I approach from the dark corridor.
The gurgling electric jug, as I wait for it to boil.
The glowing USB symbol on my portable hard drive.
The pattern of the gravel on the ground and the crunch of my steps as I walk from the car park.
The long narrow corridor tapering in the distance to a tiny exit door at the far end, which gets bigger as I approach.

It’s amazing how little I normally notice as I go about doing what I have to do.

A boat a great distance away in the ocean, …. not sure whether it is approaching or moving away, …. then I make up my mind, …. and then presto! …. it is easy to see it is moving in the opposite direction from what I guessed.

Walking out into the yard and suddenly seeing the huge barn owl on a branch above me, just watching. This amazing creature often startles me this way. You’d think I would learn, but I don’t. It is a very trancie feeling.

Tasting salt when I thought it was sugar.

Arafin

Sometimes I’ll pause the television to read email or grab a bite or whatever… as I get engrossed in what I’m reading the TV has a screensaver that starts to throw regular patterns of indirect light against the white wall.

Tuning my stringed instruments, sometimes I will start focusing on the beat frequencies, which for the nonmusical are the rhythmic pulses you hear when two strings are slightly out of tune. As they come into tune, the sound of the pitch seems to increase and I notice the blankness in my mind as the pure tone seems to fill every part of my consciousness for a brief moment.

Sinking into a hot tub takes me someplace very still, even if I am with other people. I am noticing as I think about hypnotic things that they all seem to involve more than one sense.

Doing Sudoku puzzles, I get very deeply absorbed and an hour goes by in a snap.

Bench swings. The kind that use to be on everyone’s front porch. Back before everyone had air conditioning. People would be on their front porch sitting in their swings waiting for the sun to go down. The gentle motion is very hypnotic. Especially on a soft summers night.

The first time I heard your voice I thought of an elegant antebellum mansion with a old swing in a gazebo surrounded by a beautiful garden. I can imagine a beautiful southern lady in an elegant dress (Gone With the Wind type) in the swing next to me. I won’t add more detail about the dress, because I don’t want to get in trouble. :-) Perhaps a pitcher of ice tea (unsweetened) nearby with water trickling down the sides.

I can’t be the first person who told you this. So I don’t know how original this is. But I like the imagery.

Mike

_ I always sleep with a fan on. The white noise of the fan blades create a calming effect that helps me fall asleep.

_ Rather than read, I often listen to audio books. Just as one can “get lost” in a book, time also seems to fly by especially when I put headphones on, blocking out any outside noise, and listen to a book.

_ Today while lying on a couch in my sisters family room, I noticed I was staring constantly at the slow counter clockwise rotation of the ceiling fan. It would have been easy to close my eyes and doze.