A Lesson in Quietude

       The quiet of the mostly industrial block, peppered by an Irish corner bar, a handful of obnoxious, weekender assholes, and some Kosovo oil workers, always gave me solace. Sometimes, the quiet is lonely. Especially in the winter, when nothing moves. Even the cold wind seems to gut everything's kinetic energy to its core, leaving it stranded, frozen solid, unable to move. A dead series of blues into the water, the same sky, the Staten Island treeline, bumped and peaked into Guido hairstyles. Out there, just as quiet as in here.

       I have never been one of those people who couldn't sleep due to noise, or sounds. Truth be told, when quiet, gentle voices are in the next room or a few rooms away, speaking low and thoughtful, it is immensely comforting. Something about falling asleep on Christmas Eve in my childhood bed, listening to my parents, relatives, talk in the same low manner about family stories of old, tales and troubles and memories, while sipping familial brandy. That, or the television. But I need the knowledge that someone is watching the television that I am listening to play out in the next room. Television with no one there is a crime scene, isn't it? 

       No earplugs for me, then. Suddenly, however, in the final days and weeks before the end of the year, the saw emerges.

       It's the middle of the day. I'm waiting for work, not likely to get any, or not anytime in the middle of the weekday to be sure. Then, I hear that noise. 

       Suburbia. Virginia Lane--my childhood street--indeed. Summer. Tall grasses. What is it? 

       Is it coming from someone's television? It doesn't belong here. It's a band saw or something like it cutting some wood, or some kind of massive material. Almost like a smoother, lower pitched chainsaw. 

       My associations with this noise are as stated above. I heard it as a little kid in the back woods of rural suburbia. It's summer. Not just so, but a particular feeling of summer without school. Now, I have been hearing this noise for a couple hours, but it is just registering now. 

       It's feeling the comfort of home, of being looked after, of my dad being alive, and working and happy at home. Explains the tears that keep forming around my eyes. The sound is bringing me to him, and it's bringing a sadness that is more direct than the spatial loneliness of winter on the street. 

       Open windows, sunshine and sound have a cocktail all their own. A longer, drawn out, infinite sadness. It is soft, though, a nap in the cool grass. It will pass, and remain, even after I concentrate on the other small happenings of the interior. The TV show, the cat, the phone, the outplay of my mind into the airy stage in front of me.

       It continues for a few days, but then somehow (and I did not hear when the change of guard took place) it becomes drilling. A big jack hammer, which sounds like it is dragging its nose in some very tough layers of cement. Not getting anywhere. It continues for at least four hours and then the next day, and the next. 

       It is both distracting and ugly in its noise pollution, and highlights the utter quiet inside my home. Via an internal dialogue of fear and worry that I have been feeling of late, I wring my hands about the state of my imagination; it is a serious matter. The quiet and terror of drilling afternoons is felt in my lower back and I begin to take note of every single sensation that reverberates within me. 

       One more day of this. Like any other day. Somehow, the internal strife begins to get the better of me so I decide to shut off for the day and not do anything with myself but ingest programming. 

       Then, something happens.

       Outside, the sky is actually a bland blue-grey that I can't even discern as a color. The drill ceases. The sky finally breaks open directly in front of me. 

       In the silence, I can follow, see it, embrace it. Liquid blue. An absolute vetted from my mental uneasiness and solitude. 

       I look past the street. The sky stares back at me, with that look. It still wants to swallow me whole. Every angle of light bursts in and rushes the scene all at once.

       The next morning, I am back in my bed, on my couch. Same lonesomeness on a once quiet street. Drilling again. It hasn't cracked its own code yet. Just the same as before. 

       The sky is again bright, but without any color. Seems as if it might never look back at me that way again. But I have a knowledge that is constant. This knowledge warms me in the same way that Christmas Eve, memories of late night talks, and balmy summer nights do.

       The sky is without limit.

       The sky can do anything it likes.

       The sky is all possibility.

       The possibility of that,

       is enough.