Silence
The silence is disconcerting.
It is eerily quiet tonight. True, the windows are set hard to jamb. After all, we are to freeze before dawn. Even so, there are no muffled exhaust rumbles, distant train whistles, no faint echoes of a world beyond streaked glass. It is eerily quiet.
There’s no music tonight. No footsteps in hallways, no gentle snores from an adjacent room. There's nothing more than the mechanical hum of the cooling fan in my computer. And the clicking/clacking of keyboard keys.
There were no phone calls this evening. No letters to savor.
Everything and all have seemingly vanished.
The cacophony of the sunny Sunday afternoon is a distant memory. That reverie, even, doesn’t feel real on a night like this when all is somnolent and silent...
‘Ceptin’ the hum of a cooling fan and the clicking/clacking of keyboard keys.
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posted by Jonas | 4/13/2011 01:10:00 AM
7 Comments:
I wonder why we find silence eerie? We are so used to the noise polution...even lighting creates a hum. I think of Indigo who can hear nothing, and then myself, who will never hear silence again (damn tinnitis). Maybe it is the anticipation of what will break the quiet. We wait for it to smack us between the eyes.
Oh no! No phone calls?? Ah ha I don't have your number lol...
Being out in the boonies I am surprised at times by the rare vehicle passing or a plane overhead. But if I sit outside and stay still I am deafened by the roar of nature.
I rather like total silence. It's so rare these days. You sometimes don't notice the noise until it's gone.
Some nights I love that silence, other nights not as much. Right now I can hear the kids moving around in other parts of the house, which comforts me.
On these nights the silence is loud and the little noises are reassuring. I think I've been there before. Good poem.
xo
erin
I do believe it's related to the fact that we live in a noisy world, Annie. And isn't it true that we somehow, subliminally, remain ever attuned to the sounds of our environs? I know I am. I took great comfort in hearing cat paws scratching linoleum. I knew the sonic vagaries of water heater, furnace and roof beam. I understand the music of the night - the cries of doves and distant train whistles. What I found so extraordinary was that all of that fell to silence this one night. Yeah, it was decidedly disconcerting.
Nature, in her purest state, is an amazing trip. I'm a city kid. There aren't all that many stars in the night sky in my world. There's really so such thing as "dark". Came as quite a shock to me to be lost in nowhere and finally see the Cosmos and realize, that on a new moon night, I can't even see my hand in front of my face. And what I like about my "new" life, is that I hear the owls, the coyotes, the distant trains and sounds of Nature at her best and her furious worst.
Yes, indeed, Patti, silence can be very eery.
I'm like you, Quaker Gal. I take comfort in familiar sounds.
Thank you, heart rumbles.
No words are necessary, Erin.
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