sibilance
You can’t write about silence because it doesn’t exist. It pretends to exist, we talk about it, we yearn for it, we aspire to it, but life is never truly silent. There is always something making sound, your heart beating, your lungs breathing, there is always a whisper of life, somewhere.
My mind is never quiet. I have never been able to meditate, to completely clear my thoughts, there is always some phrase or idea that raises its hand and waves for my attention. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, although sometimes I do wish that they would all just sit down and read for a while. Or take a little nap.
But mostly I like that my mind moves in circles, thoughts flowing in and out and around, and then back again, sometimes when I least expect them. I like that a line for a poem can just appear, on a page that my brain has already printed. I like that words are perpetual, always there, my constant companions.
Yes, peace and quiet sound really nice, I wish for both fairly often, but in truth I would probably get bored.
I like to stay up, alone, when everyone else is sleeping, I like the way the house sounds when my husband and son are here and asleep, it is a different sound than when I am home by myself. Even though I can’t really hear anything, I can sense their presence within the quiet. Perhaps it is the peace of their sleep that I feel, palpable evidence of their dreams.
Sound travels further at night, and our dreams entwine themselves around what we hear and tell us the story of that noise, this whisper. They (the proverbial they) say that dreams don’t really play out as stories, that they are just flashes in our brains, synapses, individual thoughts or images that our mind strings together later, and then adds meaning. I’m not sure I believe that.
I think dreams are stories that need to be told.
Poems are emotions that struggle to exist.
Words and images are the conduits.
Silence can exist, in a vacuum. But I am not there.
