An incomplete list of things I can hear right now:

1. The spinning of my laptop’s hard drive
2. The spinning of the blades of the exhaust fans that keep my laptop from overheating
3. This apartment’s air conditioning
4. The ringing in my own ears, which I blame on living in a noisy world
5. The “sixty-cycle hum” — a 60 Hz humming sound produced by pretty much anything running off alternating current (refrigerators are the worst)
6. The sound of my own fingers typing on the keyboard of my laptop
7. The whirling blades of ceiling fans in several places in this apartment, and adjacent apartments
8. Traffic on nearby roads
9. My never-ending internal monologue

Except during power failures, which shorten the list a lot, this is about as quiet as it ever gets here. Another person might call this “silence.” It isn’t.

There is no silence.

Ever.