When life becomes a puzzle I become as tiny as I can get. It is as though I want to take as little of the space on the earth as possible. Be the tiniest problem for mother earth. I want solitude, to be unheard, mostly invisible, and as dim as a living soul can be without attracting any attention. I would gladly offer a firefly the immensity of humankind on these nights. Tonight is like that. If I could I would disappear. Whenever I think of disappearing I think I will end up on the other side of the Universe with other materials disappeared before like the pen cap.
After work i come back to my room, I put the key in the lock and turn it soundlessly. When the locks click into place, they apologize. No white lights. No just-like-daylight. Daylight is loud and lifelike. Light is loud, I think. Has anybody ever measured the sound of light? Today I read in a book that a deaf lady asked her lover if falling snow had a sound and he lied to her. He said it did. If someone asked me if light had a sound I would say yes, but nobody ever asks me things like that. People just ask me why I look like death, if I am sick, how my breathing is. Well if you can hear me breathing it’s not very good, is it.
I found an old table lamp with a fused bulb in the store room, so I walked across the street to buy a new one. 10 watts. It’s a comfort. It’s a quiet light. It watches me and when I look at it, it very politely looks away.
There have been so many tears shed from places so deep within me, I might have thought I was a cave. After a point crying isn’t sobbing, and sobbing isn’t weeping. It’s just a soundless echo. It reverberates inside your bones and turns your marrow to whey, but it is mute. That is when you know this is not sadness. This is grief. Something inside you says this is how you cry when something dies, except you don’t know what has died. And it hasn’t been long enough for anything to begin decomposing, but inside all is rotten already. You wouldn’t know anyway, would you.
Here is my trouble: I look for my mother in all my lovers and I find her every time. They love, they leave. They love, they leave. Somewhere in the middle they get very angry at me. Some throw things. Most say the worst words you could imagine strung together in a sentence. But the worst is when they say nothing at all. Nothing. You wouldn’t think that in a world as noisy as ours, there could be anything noisier than silence. But it’s deafening. It’s like stuffing your ears with cotton until you gag on it. But I don’t think it is my mother I am looking for anymore. I think it is a mother and I also think I am looking in the wrong places. Lovers have good intentions but they’re not your mother.
I wanted to write today because it is the quietest form of conversation I know there is. I need to be quiet now, but the words are building up and somewhere near my voicebox they transmute into tears and this is pointless. Each time I pick up a book, I wound myself with what I read. Words are the sharpest knives. Faith, and time, trust, and loneliness, integrity and blame, worthiness. It is so much easier to feel responsible for everything you are losing. At least you know where to aim. But when there is no question of blame, what do you do? Well. You sit in a dark, quiet house and tell yourself that this will pass. That maybe tomorrow will have answers. Or that maybe it is unimportant to understand the workings of the Universe and simply let yourself become one with the earth. And if you put your ear to the ground and listen, you may even hear the unbearable lightness of the dark.
After work i come back to my room, I put the key in the lock and turn it soundlessly. When the locks click into place, they apologize. No white lights. No just-like-daylight. Daylight is loud and lifelike. Light is loud, I think. Has anybody ever measured the sound of light? Today I read in a book that a deaf lady asked her lover if falling snow had a sound and he lied to her. He said it did. If someone asked me if light had a sound I would say yes, but nobody ever asks me things like that. People just ask me why I look like death, if I am sick, how my breathing is. Well if you can hear me breathing it’s not very good, is it.
I found an old table lamp with a fused bulb in the store room, so I walked across the street to buy a new one. 10 watts. It’s a comfort. It’s a quiet light. It watches me and when I look at it, it very politely looks away.
There have been so many tears shed from places so deep within me, I might have thought I was a cave. After a point crying isn’t sobbing, and sobbing isn’t weeping. It’s just a soundless echo. It reverberates inside your bones and turns your marrow to whey, but it is mute. That is when you know this is not sadness. This is grief. Something inside you says this is how you cry when something dies, except you don’t know what has died. And it hasn’t been long enough for anything to begin decomposing, but inside all is rotten already. You wouldn’t know anyway, would you.
Here is my trouble: I look for my mother in all my lovers and I find her every time. They love, they leave. They love, they leave. Somewhere in the middle they get very angry at me. Some throw things. Most say the worst words you could imagine strung together in a sentence. But the worst is when they say nothing at all. Nothing. You wouldn’t think that in a world as noisy as ours, there could be anything noisier than silence. But it’s deafening. It’s like stuffing your ears with cotton until you gag on it. But I don’t think it is my mother I am looking for anymore. I think it is a mother and I also think I am looking in the wrong places. Lovers have good intentions but they’re not your mother.
I wanted to write today because it is the quietest form of conversation I know there is. I need to be quiet now, but the words are building up and somewhere near my voicebox they transmute into tears and this is pointless. Each time I pick up a book, I wound myself with what I read. Words are the sharpest knives. Faith, and time, trust, and loneliness, integrity and blame, worthiness. It is so much easier to feel responsible for everything you are losing. At least you know where to aim. But when there is no question of blame, what do you do? Well. You sit in a dark, quiet house and tell yourself that this will pass. That maybe tomorrow will have answers. Or that maybe it is unimportant to understand the workings of the Universe and simply let yourself become one with the earth. And if you put your ear to the ground and listen, you may even hear the unbearable lightness of the dark.
