The Sound of Silence (Fall Equinox 2015)

The Sound of Silence (Fall Equinox 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)

Just over fourteen years ago, I was standing out in our front yard listening. All the planes had been grounded. Even living many miles from a major or even a minor airport, I was struck by how much background noise that normally emanated from the sky had simply disappeared. It became more notable in its absence.

Even traffic on the nearby four-lane roads sounded light. Our house is bracketed by several major roads within half a mile in three directions. The slightest breeze from the east, north or south brings the monotonous low hum of tires treading pavement. Few people were moving around that day if they could avoid it. Like a major holiday, most hunkered down wherever they wanted to be.

Uncertainty tinged the air like a corrosive chemical spill. Like the aftermath of a mass migraine, the shock and numbness of the previous day’s pain had not worn off. Media outlets had exhausted their sources of new information and devolved into increasingly dramatic speculation. Rumors surfaced in real time only to submerge hours later when someone finally did a fact check or sought official confirmation. Video that most of us never wanted to see again played on continuous loop in the background of every broadcast like a traumatic childhood memory we couldn’t get unstuck from our collective consciousness.

Almost everyone I know remembers September 11^th. I remember September 12^th.

That morning, I had turned off all the receivers. I knew from previous crises that no new news would be forthcoming soon. The professionals were gathering and sorting through information as they prepared for a response. No one knew exactly what would happen next. Events had spiraled well beyond my control.

Still a bit shell-shocked after spending the previous twenty-four hours cataloguing scenarios, I sat with my coffee at the dining room table looking out the front window. A flash of red drew my eyes toward the hibiscus hedge. A cardinal flitted through the foliage, playing hide and seek among the scarlet blossoms. A blue jay soon joined him, sparking a bit of a territorial skirmish.

Then I noticed the scurry of squirrels chasing each other up, down and around the pine tree and across the front lawn. One noshed on a mushroom like an ear of corn in the shadows of the hedgerow. None of these animals either knew or cared what was going on, or what it meant to me. Their lives went on uninterrupted. I drew comfort from the thought.

That’s when I wandered out into the front yard to soak in the silence. I knew I would want to remember that day, that I was unlikely to experience another with the white noise of civilization missing. Where the softer sounds in the symphony of life could finally rise above the diminished noise floor. I found the music that bled through that previously unheard silence reassuring. Our daily anxieties don’t matter in the larger context of life.

Since then, I’ve learned to take solace in silence as a way to regain perspective after a crisis. Or so I thought.

I spent much of this summer shrouded in a different kind of silence, one that felt more judgmental than reassuring. As I’ve said before, silence often has a quality, one I’ve grown accustomed to interpreting.

When people don’t know what to say, they don’t say anything. They quickly adopt a don’t ask, don’t tell policy with anything that makes them uncomfortable, anything they don’t want to think about. They convince themselves they aren’t that close, that anything they have to say would be unwanted. That others will reach out so that they don’t have to. That all you really want is to be alone.

Most times, they are wrong.

After I posted the Summer Solstice message, a profound silence descended. A few people touched base with us as a couple but only a handful with me as an individual. People whose friendships I thought I’d cultivated remained silent. As if to say nothing I’d gone through carried any weight. I knew it was coming. Not the first time. And probably not the last. But rarely have I felt so isolated and alone.

So when record summer downpours unexpectedly cooled the air outside from subtropical to something more temperate, I snuck out on the porch to smoke. Just loaded up my pipe with black Cavendish and sat staring at the green across the ditch, listening to the rain on the metal roof. Watching the odd squirrel take shelter on the gutter spout beneath the eaves. Stroking Nyala or Mara when they curled up beside me. Time slowed to the pace of smoke rings drifting away on the faintest currents.

I didn’t return inside feeling refreshed or rejuvenated so much as if I’d paused my fall farther down the chasm for a few precious moments. My focus was shot, my motivation faltered. Consistent stretches of writing were measured in minutes, not hours, days or weeks.  I spent most of the summer struggling to regain my balance through simulated, secondhand human interactions: watching movies, reading books and playing games. Or just synchronized napping with Nyala who rarely left my side.

I still find I am more easily exhausted, as if I’m recovering from a physical wound. Even now I don’t want to write this. I’d rather crawl back into those entertainments. Not because what I have to say is so difficult. Because saying it feels completely futile. And largely, it will go unread.

Several times over the past three months, I almost stopped writing completely. I came close to tearing down all my sites and walking away from the brand I’ve built. Retreating from revealing my thoughts and experiences to an at best ambivalent audience. Echoing silence with silence.

Most, but not all, of that temptation has passed. Though in all honesty, some days the coin remains in the air. But writing is something I do instinctively, for myself and for Karen. I need to remind myself that everyone else is just along for the ride.

So while the balance between light and darkness has returned to something nearing normal, the intervening silence has likely shaped me in unanticipated ways. In music, the rests define the notes. In writing, empty spaces create the words. In art, it’s best to focus on light or shadow, and avoid the middle values that just muddy up the eye.

But as I learned fourteen years ago, what I do or think doesn’t really matter in a larger context. In the words of Amul Kumar, a professional photographer and friend whose creative instincts I very much admire: “In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: It moves on.”


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III