Silence

I woke up last night to a beautiful sound- A sound I hadn’t heard since I was back in California resting in the cusp of my hammock with a pinch of peace between my fingers. I remember it pierced a perfect puncture straight through my left ear, and wove through every crevice in my brain like a silent snaking dream. But at 3:34 in the morning, when this sound decided to step back into my life, I got sad. Because I remembered the amount of time that had swept by since I had the chance to pull this sound from my ears, hold it straight out in front me, admire it, rub it between my fingertips, and say, “You beautiful thing, where have you gone?” But have no fear, all you realists and non-fluent speakers of poetry, I don’t actually hold conversations with imaginary strings of sound. No, I like to make friends with invisible beings, with the world’s colors and utterances rather than the world’s vagabonds and nomads. But my most beloved friend of all, hovers like a ghost between our lives, but his presence is so obscure, you must listen close to hear it. He hides from sporting events, he’s quite an introvert really, you’ll hear him in the art room, when Sara Sicherman is not around (inside joke), you’ll hear him during prep, when the grade 9’s aren’t around. As a matter of fact you’ll hear him right now ... Silence. Silence is essential. These days, we like to look silence in the eye and say, “you’re awkward. If you come near my next social interaction so help me God I will stuff a dirty sock of ‘how’s the weather?’ in your mouth, push you off the cliffs of ‘I’m so tired, are you tired?’ and watch you topple to your inevitable death between the jaws of bloody crocodiles.” We grab fistfuls of silence, and fistfuls of awkward, and mush them together like tie-die mashed potatoes until they’re a spongy, off-brown color of forced flat line conversation. But why are we so afraid, of something so harmless? Indeed, we love silence like we love the scent of expired rain, we love the tune of silence like the chords of a Beatles song we bask in rays of silence like Coleridge in an opium-laced dream, but when do we seek silence in a world of perpetual noise and say, “you. I need. You.” Silence is forgotten. Some of us are so confident that we know what to say, that we think too much and speak too little, and need to branch our voices outwards and scatter our leaves of opinions everywhere, all over the ground like fall is an incessant vocal season. But how can our ideas be shown, if they’re given so little time to grow? To get by alive, in this world of furies and thoughts and “oh my god’s” and “wtf’s” and hashtag yolo’s and pollock paintings of medias, we need silence. How are you supposed to breath in a world of suffocated commands without silence? How are you supposed to hear your own desires above the lawn mowers of influences without silence? Silence is enlightenment. To me, love is not all you need, it is silence. You don’t get by with a little help from your friends, you get by with a little silence. Shawty is not a ten Silence is a ten. Ignorance is not what is bliss, it is silence. So do yourselves a favor, put your ear to your chest, and listen. Clap with one hand and listen. Pause your music and listen. Tell a bad joke, and listen. Walk alone for a bit and listen. In this world of restless communication, silence is the dial tone. So lend your ears, unfasten them from your head, and listen.