{"id":106,"date":"2007-12-06T19:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T09:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pbw.id.au\/blog\/uncategorized\/drifting-off\/"},"modified":"2016-09-21T20:07:35","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T10:07:35","slug":"drifting-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2007\/12\/drifting-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Drifting off"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in the Blessed Sacrament chapel at St Stephen’s a couple of days ago, listening distractedly to the sermon echoing in the body of the cathedral behind me, as I drifted off sleepily. The almost indecipherable words commanding attention from some unseen source reminded me of another sensation. I suddenly realised that one of the defining characteristics of the state of drifting into sleep is a similar loss of precision in things heard.<\/p>\n

As you slip over the edge, some sounds retain a grip on the attention longer than the rest; familiar voices, for example. It’s not that these foreground sounds echo\u2014indeed they seem to become sharper\u2014but that the auditory background becomes blurred, so that the voice that arrests your melting attention becomes detached, and drifts off above the blurring and echoing sounds below. It was a sensation frequently noticed and immediately forgotten, brought back by this auditory accident before the tabernacle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was in the Blessed Sacrament chapel at St Stephen’s a couple of days ago, listening distractedly to the sermon echoing in the body of the cathedral behind me, as I drifted off sleepily. The almost indecipherable words commanding attention from some unseen source reminded me of another sensation. I suddenly realised that one of … Continue reading “Drifting off”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introspection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-1I","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":107,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2007\/11\/night-vision\/","url_meta":{"origin":106,"position":0},"title":"Night Vision","author":"pbw","date":"Sat 24th Nov '07","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't enjoy aspirin the way I used to. Aspirin used to be a taste sensation for me. I would always chew the tablets, for that shrapnel burst of salicylate, almost as mouth-curdling in its own way as lemon, and it seemed to me that the analgesic effect was kick-started\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Introspection"","block_context":{"text":"Introspection","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/personal\/introspection\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":105,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2007\/12\/raindrops-keep-fallin\/","url_meta":{"origin":106,"position":1},"title":"Raindrops keep fallin’….","author":"pbw","date":"Thu 6th Dec '07","format":false,"excerpt":"It rained briefly but heavily in the city at lunch time yesterday. The sun came out almost immediately and the sky was predominantly blue again. I was sitting under cover of what used to be the Bank of Queensland building. As I walked out towards Elizabeth Street, a light rain\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/personal\/observations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":524,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2018\/05\/consciousness-time-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":106,"position":2},"title":"Consciousness & Time: Part 2","author":"admin","date":"Wed 9th May '18","format":false,"excerpt":"A Little Consciousness Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Belief & knowledge"","block_context":{"text":"Belief & knowledge","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":111,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2007\/11\/jesse-and-bob\/","url_meta":{"origin":106,"position":3},"title":"Jesse and Bob","author":"pbw","date":"Sat 10th Nov '07","format":false,"excerpt":"Peter and I went to the movies last Tuesday to see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. We came out pretty much shell-shocked, so to speak. 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All House of Representatives seats were on the line, but although Democrats won control of the House, they made little impact in the Senate, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/culture\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":87,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2011\/11\/close-encounters\/","url_meta":{"origin":106,"position":5},"title":"Close Encounters","author":"pbw","date":"Sat 12th Nov '11","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in 1977, and was a blockbuster success for Steven Spielberg. Here's a\u00a0thumbnail sketch of the plot. A team of investigators find, intact in the Gobi Desert, a flight of Navy planes which disappeared in the 1940's, and\u00a0interview a witness to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith"","block_context":{"text":"Faith","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/faith\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}