Essay time

2003-02-01, 10:42 p.m.

I wrote this last week, hope you like:

Sometimes the Silence is Deafening

You open books, thinking it�s your own choice. You remember these hands are yours because that burn on the back of your right hand is shiny in the class light. Here, in the class, before ten thirty, fifty students are humming, like locusts. That�s what passes for social behavior, and I am thumbing through the pages I read last night.

Mostly I�ve got my head bowed when I read, that�s how I�m reading in class today. It�s the way the ambient noises mix with written words that makes a book worth reading sometimes. I�ve got to make sense of each noise, by categorizing, identifying each distinct author of sound; starting with the writer (this book is Chuck Palahniuk, the psychology text is still in my bag), and radiating out deliberately. It�s when you understand all the noises around when things get really quiet.

His voice wants to know why people are so scared of silence.

My ears boil with blood and I listen harder.

Her voice, she is talking about the neon wrapper in her hand, how it reminds her of Mexico.

I�ve been reading for five minutes and I�m already forgetting the other sensations zooming to and fro in my brain. I�m diverting rivers of synapses into an endless dam created by literary meditation. it�s like being caught in the cold, when you are single minded, and all you taste is the cold air. When you are in the cold-where your hands turn beet red, then purple- you�ve got to stay focused because slipping away into frozen shock is one submissive thought away. I�m reading the words like I�m treading along the river banks, but when I lose touch of the soft sand, being skeptical is all I can do to keep from drowning in the pages upon pages of paper and ink.

His voice, to my left, wondering where the party is this Friday.

There are two people clicking their pens in the room, in unison, immersed in their own conversations, unaware of each other.

By now, with the class starting, and with the teacher handing out work, the humming subsides; I think her scarf looks like snow on Mount Everest, detailed with a Shirpa�s Byzantine footprints. She�s talking about the brain today, so we are in a natural state of polar opinion as a class. We are all ions, zooming from attentiveness to lethargy in response to her electric speech. This time it�s a student with a particularly daring agenda who makes the class buzz. I�m here, with my head bowed, watching the collective body movement of college students in debate.

There is an overhead on the screen that shows a blank space in the lower left hemisphere; I look at my book, with a flat black cover, thinking the empty pages and this blank space must be so unsettling when people need to fill their life with sounds to cover up the calm. Taken from distinct points of view, this book and that section of brain have each been localized, and prodded in the interests of filling the void of understanding. Those views, and those perceptions, they belong in a wax museum, an after-the-fact observation. Those ideas are not in the room with me right now, in this classroom. They are on clear plastic, illuminated, a rock star of information, except the singer is a recording, cold and metallic; unresponsive.

That�s the fear of silence in words, because we feel the urge to fill in the blanks with footnotes and comments. I remember the how the cold was stuck to my body, and the quiet was overwhelming, but beautiful. After all, nobody had ever written a song like that of a falling snowflake. Turning the heat up, it signals for heated words, more noise, more controversy, and I turn my head in all directions to watch. Makes me think; the people with tunnel vision must have once been the most open minded children to have formed a lifetimes worth of opinions in their pubescent years. Sometimes I think they�ve got it easy. For them books are dialogues without commentary. And for them, questions are answered years before someone asks them. Even life, which seems to give away secrets with an unnatural frugality, is simply described by their preconceived notions.

He is mad because�

The Earth must be the only home of life because�

LIFE is TOUGH

At the end of class is when the noise erupts after having been, relatively speaking, capped for the last eighty minutes (god forbid I keep my mouth shut for that long). I pack my bag and get up, a girl walks in front of me and I mouth out the words pardon me -the polite person should always verbally address an on comer, smiles or nods can be misconstrued- and I follow the line to the door. I open my book and read the lines from Lullaby while I walk:

�Anymore, no one�s mind is their own. You can�t concentrate. You can�t think. There�s always some noise worming in.�

My cell phone rings, I let it buzz in the breast pocket of my jacket. People keep calling, and the messages are all the same. Give me a call when you get this. Delete. Pick up, Paul. Delete. Even if I wanted to talk to them, I wouldn�t call them. I can�t stand it, talking in two places at once, because that�s all it is; your chance to fuck over the laws of physics.

Lunch is going to be quiet, I have a chair in a corner of the library, with my book, and a view of the trees outside. The noise addicts would call it anti-social, and the quiet would be too much, but when I bow my head, the voice of the writer resumes, striking with solid prose that outlasts most songs or conversations I will ever hear. The corner is cold, and I can feel the air, even through my jacket.