To my mind, the best possible outcome of a vacation is its many opportunities for sweet, salubrious, life-affirming sleep. This is all the more so if that rest occurs while a cross-breeze ripples at my cheek, a ukelele plinks in the blue-white distance, and the steady ocean roar seduces my frenetic brain waves to go out with the tide.
So when I discovered the power of recreating those tropical island environs within the limitations of my own bedroom walls, I felt like I’d hit upon new levels.
The only thing better than dreaming of yourself dreaming is conjuring that same image of your cuddled-up self, but with a placid-eyed John Lennon dropped in by your bedside. He is strumming an acoustic lullaby written just for you. Curiously, his neat, broad nail beds are painted with small yin yangs (a dream detail that may be deeply metaphorical or merely the result of browsing nail art on my phone before bed, oops).
Such is the level of sleep to which I have recently summited after discovering the unmitigated pleasure of going to bed with a sound machine.
Atop the altar to sleep that is my bedside table, above the totems of incense and essential oils, sits my pièce de résistance.
It’s called the Dohm, and the device itself is remarkably simple. Dohm, “the original natural white noise machine” is puck-shaped and droid-like; picture an aspic mold rendered in the trustworthy, beigish-tan of an orthotic shoe.
Plug it in and flip on its satisfyingly analog switch, the size of which is perfectly grabbable, should you need to paw for it after you’ve hit the lights.
With all the simplicity of a children’s toy, its casing can be twisted around to adjust the aperture of its diagonal pie crust-like vents. This allows you to calibrate the tone of the “whoosh” (or more accurately, the “dooohm,” that is emitted). All this to say, you can literally control the vibe. The device is also known as a sound conditioner, meaning it is not intended to cancel noise, so much as drown it out by whipping any background noise into one soothing stream.
It started when my sister accidently left her newborn’s sound machine at my parent’s house over the holidays. My mom ‘looked after it’ until my sister could retrieve it and later reported some of the best sleep she’d had in years. Soon enough, everyone in my family seemed to have one. And figuring I was no less a luxury than the rest of them, I decided that I too deserved to upgrade from merely lulling myself to bed by the sound of the dishwasher’s rinse cycle.
I know that there is no shortage of ambient noise apps available on my iPhone which are perhaps equally easy to use and also free. My favorite one, which I used to use while traveling, offers options as vast-ranging as “color auras” (mine is “brown”) to “clothes dryer” to “frogs at night” (which if you’re in the rare camp of unrepentant Jack Berger acolytes, is all YOU, baby!).
However, I just can’t quite part with the physicality of this prized possession. Lately, I’ve even grown accustomed to leaving it on throughout the day, thereby elevating my room to a perpetually serene sanctuary, much like some therapist’s offices or the cool stone corridors of The Now.
It’s like the conch shell you place on the mantle after a trip to the beach, picking it up every so often to tilt it towards your ear to remember the ocean — and these days, I haven’t fantasized about the ocean more.
It cost $44 and it’s a sensory portal to a primordial sound — only this one is all the more electric, and within reach. So, join me, water babies. You’ll be happy as a clam.