Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Quiet and un-

You've heard it before, that your sense of hearing grows sharp, or blooms, perhaps, in total silence. When I'm in my apartment alone I think about this a lot, how the radiators seem cacaphonous, the dripping faucet almost too much to bear. And of course, my own thoughts come out louder and echo longer. That's the hardest part.

Sometimes the thoughts are like a little elf or Rumpelstiltskin, some other hostile, but mainly harmless, little being who is just there with words, only appears when the rest of the cast has left the room, throws injuries and embarrassing memories in your face, slaps you with your own words.

Or it starts far away, like a siren three blocks south, and you think it'll turn away. It doesn't. It's coming closer. Closer. YOU are the crime scene. You're inside it.

Or sometimes the solitude is enough to lull you. It rocks you and pulls you close to its inner cool, pulls you under some surface, something watery and unclear. And as you let it pull you, you hear something muffled, trying to reach your ears through the waves. Louder, but less intelligible, something urgent, but its effect subdued through gallons of this lulling solitude. You have to hear it. You have to comprehend it, and you know you won't.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You've stopped writing. Why is that? What about answering qn 4.