in search of quiet

on returning home

I returned home a few days ago. not “home” the word I use for wherever I’ve been sleeping at night for a few months. perhaps home is a place where my parents reside. perhaps home is the interior of my mind, if the walls that bind these scattered impressions to the thing I call “me” truly exist.

things with roommates don’t always work out. in the midst of an overwhelming fallout I overwhelmed myself with a week of multiple departures. I attempted a week of rushed goodbyes to wonderful co-workers, drowning the silence of my apartment with the day’s activity. no words passed the invisible wall, flexible yet hard as granite, between me and my roommate—until I poured my heart out Friday night.

Saturday morning I awoke at 4:45am—an 11-hour drive to Phoenix lay ahead. delirious, drowsy, I drunk in the sunrise. the sun’s brilliant orange, unhurried, began its daily ascent to an ephemeral throne above the clouds.

many long hours later I negotiated a familiar hill—to get home I must never reach its apex, but accept a rightward escape. the short remainder of the journey is entirely determined.

I almost never ascend the hill these days, except sometimes on morning walks.

Ted and I drove to the top of the hill once. it wasn’t really a hill—just an apex on this disfigured oval that calls itself a road. I can’t remember what we talked about or listened to. maybe we said nothing. I’m quite sure there was music, because there is always music with a cherished friend.

I have been thinking more and more about the tools I use to drown silence. recently I spent some months with Headspace Guy as he initiated me into his metaphysics, into his appreciation of the unlabeled contents of the mind. as a teenager I used to drown silence with food and TV—pure enjoyment allows us to forget the sometimes terrifying realization that life exists.

perhaps I later began to drown silence with work, conversation, books, music. I want to rediscover silence as mutual participation—silence as something that happens between two or three or ten people. for now, I’m existing in the vulnerable ensconce of home in a town where everyone is reasonably distant.

silence is easier here. I don’t know if silence should be easy.

~ word broth ~

The burgundy on my T-shirt when you splashed your wine into me
And how the blood rushed into my cheeks, so scarlet, it was
The mark you saw on my collarbone, the rust that grew between telephones
The lips I used to call home, so scarlet, it was maroon

I wasn’t sure about Midnights on the first listen but as I revisit parts of it, I’m enjoying the repeated motifs—Maroon reminds me of Red, but just as the song’s color-scape restricts itself to shades, so do the feelings it attends to. maybe feelings lose their vividness with age—perhaps what was once technicolor becomes refined and subtle, variations on a theme. maroon and scarlet instead of red and blue.