I live in the middle of a large city, directly downtown. I am on the second floor of a low apartment building, right above a busy restaurant. Cars and passersby on the street sound as though they are directly outside, and not ten feet down. Music from the restaurant’s kitchen often makes my floor vibrate. Not a day goes by that I don’t hear a siren wailing (I live several blocks from a fire station), and when I don’t hear a siren all day, I grow uneasy.
People chatter and scream into their cell phones on the street. Taxis honk at other taxis, other cars, pedestrians. The TV blares in the living room, the stereo is on to help work pass by much easier.
I, needless to say, have been sleeping with ear plugs for the past three years. Ever since I moved here, I discovered what the word “noise” truly meant.
Growing up in suburban Texas, I know that civilizations’ sounds do reach me: the distant thrum of the highway, the occasional passing of a plane, a car winding down the street. But every time I go back, as I’m falling asleep, I marvel at how quiet it is.
I am a creature of quiet. Being in the city is not only difficult on a social level, and on a personality level, it is difficult purely on a sensory level. I can’t find a park within walking distance that isn’t within earshot of the highway. I can’t find a closet to hide in and not hear someone’s voice rumbling somewhere. Heck, I can’t even go sixteen stories high and not hear the distant sound of construction cranes.
It has come to the point where I can barely quiet myself–where I can’t still my mind as long as I used to. Where I check my email and listen for my cell phone nearly constantly, or turn on the TV when there’s nothing else to do. But in order to hear spirit, deity, and in order to hear yourself, you must first become still.
As Poets, we often forget that silence is just as important an ingredient in our written and spoken work as words and sounds and songs are. Silence is what envelops a sound and gives it strength. Out of silence we come, and to silence we will return.
It is a constant struggle to seek quiet, and solitude, and listen for myself, for Brighid, and the numerous other spirits I interact with. But it is a discipline I must practice, for when I cannot become quiet anymore, I cannot be myself anymore. I cannot be a Poet.
