Silence

Once a week, the federal government pays me to sit in a quiet computer lab (which, for tradition’s sake, is called a library) for most of the afternoon. Within this confine, the clattering of keyboards murmur on with only the occasional cell-phone to break the rhythm. A bizarro-Wordsworth could sit beside me and write about the tranquility of the flow of humans in their fabricated industrial environments. He’d ponder what secrets they silently chatter to each other with their invisible text-messages and facebook-feeds. He’d gather up his observations into a handful of words and fling them out to the world on his twitter feed.

At times I wish the library didn’t have windows, as it reminds me that there’s a natural world outside with dirt and trees. After many hours, the hum and rattle of the HVAC system becomes the life-beat of the world around you. You are but a helpless fetus and the HVAC system beats its dusty heart for you, breathing dry, cool air into you. I used to imagine I was in a colossal spaceship, the walls shielding me from the lifeless vacuum outside as I hurdle through space at time-warping velocities. Now, I wonder if there’s any world outside at all. Perhaps we carve our world by chipping away at the nothing and then building walls against it. If I open enough doors in this building, I’ll find one that won’t open, because the next room hasn’t be built yet. You might scoff, but it’s more entertaining then being trapped alone in a computer lab until the clock hits 10:00.

Silence grows in places like these, the same for office buildings in the dead of night. After copiers cease their whirling, computers power down, and the little red lights on coffee pots dim, Silence oozes up from the drab carpeting and fills the gray cubicles. It moves in and makes itself home in the abandoned spaces of peoples lives. But by the time the sun peaks between the dusty blinds with it’s burning fingers, the Silence has left with nary a memento left behind to commemorate its midnight revelries.

When the Silence fills a room, it coats everything inside with a timeless shell. I’ve seen it happen while I sit at my post late into the evening. I’ve seen it swallow up an entire shelf of reference books and watch them become sealed away in an eternal state that won’t break until dawn. If I’m not careful, it will swallow me too. My hours will pass in the blink of an eye, and I’ll have finished exactly none of my homework. A bit of light music piped into my mind by headphones creates a little island of time around my head stops me from drowning.

Someday I’ll stay up late and greet Silence when it oozes into my room. We’ll sit together and it will show me some of the secrets it’s learned over the years. When the sun comes up, he’ll vanish and I’ll go about my day, grinning to myself about my secret. I wonder if Silence and Darkness are friends.S