Search of Silence

Most others she knew listened to music. They listened to it everywhere they went - providing their lives with a soundtrack. She had no soundtrack. She rarely listened to music because there was not a fashion in which it spoke to her that necessitated the dependency on it.

That's what she liked to think.

The truth was that her constant inner dialogue wouldn't shut up long enough to appreciate it. It was loud, incessant and rather opinionated. Giving her little opportunity, she rarely listened to the world around her - only that what was inside of her.

This morning, however, she stopped. She shut up. She listened to the quiet.

Listening closely, silence was not actually silent at all. Perhaps a fact that she knew once but long ago forgot. In the quiet, she found the hum of Earth. She could hear it and was quite certain even in the absence of electronics, cars and the wind, she would hear it vibrating in her ears. Thinking the noise of silence is what the science community calls "Earth's Chorus," she could only call it "company."

They say that darkness is the absence of light. Logically, silence is the absence of sound. Endlessly hearing Earth's Chorus in the quiet, she wondered... where could she find it? Certainly not here, not on Earth. If she couldn't find it, she'd bring it to her. Her ears. Without them, she could find silence.

Her hands would not block the sound. Pillows wouldn't either.

Van Gogh came to mind. Cutting off one's ear didn't seem so outrageous. But that surely wouldn't keep out the sound. Her eardrums held the key. There she could find silence. One's ears. They are not so necessary.

"No, no. I don't think I need them."

Aloud. She heard. I don't need my ears.

Where did this stream of consciousness come from?! This inner dialogue just will not stop. Even in the quiet it goes on. Perhaps this narrative; this ambling narrative is her soundtrack.