Listen to the silence
22 July 2011 01:41 PM Categories: Writing prompts
One or two times a week, my husband or I sit down with our son to practice his writing. We're gentle. We're nonthreatening. Still, the pressure comes from within: nearly every time he dissolves into tears about selecting a topic. The subject is too large for him to narrow down. He claims to know nothing about x, a subject he's been talking about for days. He rejects all suggestions. There are too many choices (this is a child who is plagued by choice), too many things to be anxious about: the topic, the creation of sentences, the frustrating way that his brain still flips letters, the actual sounding out and writing of words. We push through and I try not to get frustrated myself, to remember that this is for encouragement, to help him in a no pressure environment. No matter. I end up feeling like a torturer. Still, we generally get through it. He's learning perseverance as well as getting comfortable with writing.
And what about me? I’ve put off this write since 6:00 this morning. Perhaps I don’t want to think about the sound of my narrative voice, don’t want to let the outside world into my head (the rumbling of a muffler on the fritz, the whine of the washing machine, the actual buzz in my ears that is a side effect of the medication). Or perhaps there are too many topics, from real to metaphorical, that I don’t want to write about, topics pressing at the edges of my skull that I am not yet ready to let out.
Last night I had a dream where I was staying at a hotel with three friends. The hotel was fancy and expensive and we each had our own room. But two of us were placed in an annex of the hotel, a long walk outside to a cinderblock structure that was dirty and cold, more motel than hotel. It took some time to find it, and my fellow Siberia-dweller wandered off to the bar. I knew she’d be getting drunk and I was hoping to get there with her once the whole room thing was straightened out, even though I knew this was bad, that I was encouraging her alcoholism. I prepared myself for a confrontation with the staff, felt my anger start to burn before I badgered the bored desk clerk for room changes, for what we paid for, was finally making a stand when … I woke up, right before the boy came into our room for his nightly sleep migration.
This happens more than I’d like, my wake up moments before the boy appears, my dreams interrupted and then interrupting my ability to return to sleep while everyone else in the room dozes. Did the sound of him wake me up? Am I "listening" to the boy in some other way? Are there other ways of hearing? And were the three of us in that dream different parts of me coming together again?
Lately I’ve been feeling a strange connection to someone I thought was a lost cause. This feeling is bodily, visceral, the feeling of music coursing through me, the "sound" of connection. I can't verify it, feel almost crazy to attribute it to what will remain unspoken. But I know what it is.
We cut ourselves off from the sound and beauty of the world around us. We block the signals of other people, switch off our receptivity and in the process lose ourselves. I’ve been tuned out for a while, scared by what the world might reveal about me. I've been afraid of other peoples' needs negating my own. I can't live that way forever, risk becoming dead inside, cold, like marble, like a smooth stone drowning in a rippling creek.
I am emerging, I am sending off welcoming signals. I am me and you are separate and beautiful. You shine in the dark, not waiting, but knowing that I'll be there soon.
From the prompt "The sound of ..."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. The words are not coming to me easily this week. Maybe I've been talking to my husband too much (a joke, a joke). Maybe there are many things percolating, waiting to ripen in my mind. This one took some work and I'm not sure how I feel about it. It certainly does meander.
And because this is the first song that came to mind when I was thinking of a title, here's a link to Transmission by Joy Division.
Image by theclyde.
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