The Sound of Silence

I know it's only been a few days since my last post...but as I keep promising myself and twitter, I really do want to start blogging more often. And it's a lot easier for me to do now that I have a laptop in my room with me every night--when the blogging urge hits I can just start immediately before I lose motivation. And tonight, the urge is persistent. It's like this little kid tugging my sleeve and whining, "Kiera...Kiera...Kiera?! BLOG. Please blog. When can we blog? Are you going to blog? Huh? Huh, Kiera? Are you?! Kiera!!!" Obviously it's pretty annoying. And how do you expect me to sleep under those conditions?

I find myself quietly tucked away in my room this evening after my penultimate first day of school. It's been an unusually short summer, not as in it went quickly--though it did--but as in "it already freaking feels like fall even though it's still technically freaking AUGUST". My window's cracked open and letting in a cool, after-rain breeze, and the periodic sound of water slowly slipping off my roof to the ground pulls me in and out of my own thoughts. My room's a little chilly at the moment, but I like it that way since it gives me an excuse to pull out my (always comforting) lavender footie pajamas covered in penguins--these (the pajamas...not the penguins) have gone significantly unnoticed and unused since about March. I value times like these when I can just sit on my own and think to the noise of late-at-night-in-a-small-town.

Tonight I'm thinking about silences. Silence seems like something that's very straightforward: the absence of noise. But it's far more than that. There are many different types of silences. They each have a noise and a tone all their own within their soundlessness.

There are library silences and test-taking silences, where everyone is quiet because of an almost unwritten rule and social agreement that those are settings in which a low sound level should prevail. There are conversational silences--some natural and comfortable, some entirely awkward and nearly unbearable. There are shocked silences, and there are disappointed silences. There are silences that defy connection. But there are also silences in which communication and understanding are still taking place--in which words can become unnecessary. Tonight's silence is a relieved silence. I've made it through DAY 1 of the new semester and am perfectly happy to just sit inside while still experiencing the air from outside, knowing that everyone else in my house and most of the people on my block are sound asleep as I type these words.

I'm reminded of one of my favorite Simon & Garfunkel songs, which has a line in it about no one daring to disturb the sound of silence. But as those fabulous lyricists encourage, I do dare disturb the sound of silence--I add my own punctuating rhythm of clicking letters, making it my silence: a silence in which I express my muddled thoughts, but in many ways am still saying nothing at all.

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Under-Appreciated Vocabulary Word of the Day:

lacuna (lah-kyoon'-uh) n. a blank space or a missing part; gap.

Random Song Lyrics for Your Entertainment (and/or Enlightenment):

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence"

--Simon & Garfunkel in "The Sound of Silence"