2004-01-15 at 9:27 p.m.
It's going to be me and the quiet, me and the words, me and the music, me and the noises in the night, me and the resonance of my thoughts.
I'm left exhausted by the encounter. you bore me in a fundamental way and I haven't felt this stripped of my energy in a really long time. I fumble with words to find ones that will fill the space and I can read your judgments of me as your eyes creep down past my face.
I look hard and I'm not exactly sure what I see.
Despite
the hunger
we cannot
possess
more
than
this:
Peace
in a garden
of
our own.
You have big questions and I have no answers. I wonder how you can sit with their heaviness.
Nothing but the honesty of our words to sustain us. Suddenly, we're in a place where the sound of a noise outside can bring a room to a silence, when you can sense people's anxiety on their face, on their bodies like a second skin.
I'm amazed by the subtle sensations of the body, the way that I can sense the slow arrival of illness. First, it is the pain behind my eye and then the dizziness, we are walking and your words are blurring, syllables sliding into each other. Later, i slip the two small pills into my mouth and i feel the pain soften, dull. it is a peel that can be pulled back and for the first time in a day, i feel myself restored.
Once you allow people to talk about it, once you peel away the outer layer of silence and give people a language to discuss the things that happen when the doors are closed, when the neighbors aren't listening, when everyone else is asleep, you realize how many people carry the same weight with them, how many have learned to move around that invisible palpable thing. I'm always amazed by the strength you have, coming together and telling your stories, searching for words for which you already understand.
Whatever makes you feel better is a cure.
What you learn is to be attentive to the things right underneath the surfaces, to read the slight changes in eyebrows, the downward glances. I can tell you what everyone in that group thinks before a word is even exchanged - I have studied their faces like rosetta stone, I know every line, every crease. so that's how I know the damage of today the moment it's been said, the second after the last syllable, before even the words have formed in response.