Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

Simon and Garfunkel, "The Sound of Silence"

I've been thinking about silence. Mostly because I've been in a rather silent mood for the past few days. Dunno if that's attributable to any one cause, really, but I didn't notice I was doing it until a couple days in. Then, like the English graduate I am, I began analyzing it.

There are a couple of lines from Pride and Prejudice that came to me as I've been analyzing my own silence. It's the A&E film version I'm thinking about (also known as the COLIN FIRTH, AAAAAH!! version), a scene at a dance where Elizabeth and her sister, Mary, discuss dances.

Mary says, "I believe the rewards of observation and reflection are much greater."

"And so they are, when there are none others to be had," says Elizabeth. "We shall have to be philosophers, Mary."

It ocurred to me recently that in spite of the obligatory annoyance/amusement at Mary's determined prudishness and anti-social tendancies, I think I agree with Mary's statement, not only in terms of dancing, but social events and other adventures in general. As a writer, I'm pretty comfortable in my third-person limited omniscient perspective. Even in my dreams I'm not always the protaganist; sometimes I find myself pulling out of the character and forming myself as a best friend or simply an invisible cameraman. Because the scene can be so fascinating from a third-person perspective. Who's going to see the subtle flash of emotion cross the heroine's face, or the baleful glance of a disguised assassin behind her back? Certainly not the heroine. The main character misses much of what makes a great story.

So I find myself in dreams and frequently in life closing my mouth, stepping back a pace or two from the others, and watching. What do I see? People who like each other, people who pretend they like each other; flirting, arguing, chit-chatting out of boredom, ignoring, becoming friends; people locked in the bubble of their own perspective, constantly bumping, brushing, ramming into others; people who come onto a scene without knowing what happened earlier and are confused, and people trying to be helpful but messing things up further; people who do kind things insignificant to a bystander but momentous to someone who knows. I see things, I learn things, and I'm usually vastly entertained.

That is . . . until someone notices me standing at the fringe and feels sorry for me. Or until I feel sorry for myself; omniscience is great and all, but it can be rather lonely. Then I wonder what's wrong with me. Am I shy, or am I too proud? Am I like Mary, just making excuses because no one will ask me to dance? Writing about adventure but not experiencing it?

Okay, to shyness and pride I concede, but not experiencing adventure? Nah, that can't be it. Even as I stand aloof, I'm the star of my own story. I have to be, since mine is the only mind I can read. I try to observe myself as much as I observe others. I often imagine what I look like walking through life; even what I look like against the wall with my arms folded, smiling secretly at the people around me. I also imagine whatifs, which gets me into trouble sometimes, like on the skyline ride in hanging pods over amusement parks: what if the cable snapped and we all dropped fifty feet to the asphalt, or landed in a tree, or thudded onto the roof of a building like ripe fruit, sliding off the cone roof of the carousel? (That's when I curse my imagination and pull my legs onto the seat so they're not dangling over the edge.) Would it be fun if that actually happened? No siree. But imagining it sure gives the ride a zing of excitement.

So adventure is one part what happens, two parts perspective. As protaganist I experience my life, and as author of my story I expand the material and refine the experiences into themes, emotions, and scenes.

At the end of these thoughts, I feel quite content with myself, my life and how it's going. Then I realize that while my mind has been churning out a bildungsroman, I have scarcely spoken a word. During this week of quiet, I've realized that people have a hard time with the sound of silence—especially protracted renditions of it. It seems that after awhile happy silence doesn't sound a whole lot different from apathetic or moody silence.

So! Life must be a balance of author and protananist, observing and participating, quiet pondering and conversation, writing and doing. This is me, seeking equilibrium. I hope that sharing a chapter of my thoughts makes up for some of the silence.

Flooded!

I was tired on Thursday (May 8) after work, so instead of going to the temple as I usually did, I decided I would take a nap. I turned on my computer first, cause I always do, then cleared off my bed and sat on it to take my shoes off. Lappy booted and I walked over to check my email and other sundries. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. I lifted up my foot, but I hadn’t dreamed up the sensation: water had soaked through my sock. The carpet was wet.

I felt around for the size and source of the wet spot. Had someone really, really overwatered my plants? No. Did I have a cup of water on my desk that fell? No. Maybe the laptop peed all over the floor? “Don’t let’s be silly,” I muttered as worry began overriding humor. The wetness lasted as far back into the corner of my room as I could reach, beyond the desk.

Nobody else was home and time was of the essence, so I quickly moved all my stuff out of that corner and pulled the desk across the room. It’s amazing how fast a little zing of adrenaline can turn lethargy into energy. Water was coming in from outside through the bottom of the wall somewhere under the carpet in that corner. About a quarter of the room had wet carpet now, but it didn’t seem to be coming in too fast. I called the landlord and my roommate for help, and headed outside to find the source.

Yep, there it was at the corner of the house, seeping into my basement bedroom: a huge puddle of water. I didn’t spend much time investigating; I moved some more of my stuff out of danger. Nothing was really wet except my empty laptop case, which had sucked up the water like it was dying of thirst. The only other worrisome items were my suitcases and the electrical cords running through that corner, and all of those were a tiny bit damp but mostly high and dry.

My roommate, V, called me back and asked me to pick her up from campus, so reluctantly I left the flooding apartment to get her. It was what I needed, though: you can never have too many intelligent, common-sensical people at the scene of a disaster. I went in to check on my bedroom as soon as we got back to the apartment, and this time it ocurred to me to check the empty bedroom across from mine, which had a wall facing the backyard like mine. I opened the door and was introduced, for the second or third time in my life, to unbreathable stench. Even though my self-preservation instinct had me holding my breath as soon as I caught a whiff, the scent was palpable, and it made my nose sting and itch. The air was damp with it, and it looked like the entire carpet was soaked. A tiny river of dirty water was flowing past the window.

Ok, so it’s not like we hadn’t noticed a bad smell growing in the apartment. But we’d kept that bedroom door shut since L moved out, and there really isn’t good air circulation in the apartment. V and I had assumed that it was something in the fridge. In fact, as I swam through the stench toward the window to get a closer look at the water, I was thinking, “Oh good, it’s not rotten food in the fridge.”

I opened the window to that bedroom, once I saw there was no danger of water running through it that way, and then hurried outside to tell V that the leak was worse than I’d originally thought. I called the landlord again and encouraged her and her husband to hurry.

While we were waiting for them, V and I followed the water up the hill of the backyard to a sprinkler control in the ground near the back door. Clearly something was broken there, but we didn’t see any knobs to turn to get the water off. The water was coming out in a small but steady stream, so the control box was underwater and the overflow was running down the hill, past L’s old bedroom window, and pooling at the corner of the house where the ground leveled out. V eyed the situation. “If only we had some sandbags,” she said.

Well, there’s a gravel/dirt area on the far side of the yard, and we have a ridiculous amount of plastic bags under our kitchen sink. It only took me a few seconds to put two and two together, and then V and I spent the next twenty minutes filling the bags with dirt and piling them up near the broken sprinkler box. Fortunately, our newest roommate has gardening ambitions, so we had shovels and other tools at our disposal. Our next idea was to try and siphon the water elsewhere in the yard with a garden hose, which worked beautifully.

By about that time, the landlords arrived (and weren’t they pleased to have smart tenants). They turned off the water and started pulling up the carpets, and V and I started digging a trench to lead the water away from my room. Once that was finished, though I looked around for some other way to help out, there wasn’t much more I could do.

By this time it was getting dark, and I glanced down at my sweaty body, rumpled clothes, and mud-covered hands and was surprised how I felt. I felt happy and fortunate. If there was ever a perfect time to have a flood, maybe this was it. We all had evening plans, but they were easily cancelled. We had the tools and the smarts at hand to fix this problem before it got any worse. Nothing of mine had been ruined (though the laptop case is substantially uglier). L had taken her things with her when she moved, instead of storing them at the apartment temporarily, as she’d originally planned. My friend K, who’s highly sensitive to mold, didn’t move in (she would’ve had that room). I had taken my shoes off in preparation for a nap, but stepped into that corner and got my feet wet before actually taking one. My room was affected, and I’m the one with a grandma nearby who graciously allowed me to spend yet another weekend at her house. Most surprising of all, I could’ve felt anxious, stressed, and very grumpy, but all I thought about was what could be done next and how glad I was about all these coincidences. That was the greatest miracle—that I didn’t have to count on hindsight to show me how much I was blessed, but I noticed each blessing as it came. It was as if I sat in the backseat of disaster, calmly watching everything through the window, understanding that every detail was planned and taken care of by the guy driving.

The carpet in my room is mostly dry now. Ugly and crispy from mineral stains and an unfinished carpet-cleaning job, but dry, and my stuff’s back in place over it. Actually, I find the stains more irritating than that whole evening of work, isn’t that strange? I have to keep reminding myself about little coincidences and taking the backseat view and for heaven’s sake, New Orleans and (more currently) Maryland. The flood, and mulling over and discussing the flood with others (who always share their flood stories after) has taught me again that there’s always a silver lining somewhere.

Mine’s streaked across the middle of my bedroom carpet.

Spring Fever

Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Reeds driftin' on by
You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

"Feeling Good," the Michael Bublé version

I'm feeling really happy today, and it feels good. Finally, there's the sun shining, birds chirping (and pooping merrily on my car, arg), tulips and daffodils finally blooming, and blossoms bursting onto the scene and raining down petals. Finally there is no snow ahead (fervently knocking on wood). Finally it's spring.

And other things. I got a new roommate, and it's been fun getting to know her. We might get another one this week and then, wow, the apartment will be at full capacity for the first time since December. There were a lot of new faces at church last week, students moving in, and something about the atmosphere of making new friends helps me to see even old friends differently. It's time for a new start, a fresh perspective; it's my chance to be better than I was before.

A week or so ago I was very unexcited about these kinds of changes. I hate to have good roommates move out, and maybe I'm just lazy or weird this way, but sometimes the prospect of reaching out and getting familiar with a whole new set of people is . . . exhausting. So much effort! Once I'm shoved into newness, however, I rediscover that the new has its own energy, and that change can be for the better.

I relearned these lessons last night, talking to new and old friends and laughing harder than I've laughed for a long time. Spring is here, and winter is finally shed from my shoulders.