Philip has gone for a bicycle ride. It’s 77 degrees with a slight breeze. It’s quiet here at Zero North. It reminds me of summer Sundays in Ashland when the whole town sounded empty and there were no friends to play with. I’d stand in my mother’s garden listening to the bees, inhaling the perfumes of different flowers, feeling a sense of desolation, like I was living in a ghost town. I later realized that everyone was in church ’til late afternoon, except for us, which is why it was so quiet and so few people were out and about.
I don’t think the sound of a town in worship is a peaceful quiet. It’s a creepy quiet, full of sequestered secrets and self loathing. The only exception being the call to prayers I heard one hot morning in Herzliya (Israel). Islamic prayers being projected across neighborhoods through speakers is an otherworldly and beautiful experience. It sounds like ancient human longing and love. I sat on the curb of the empty neighborhood smoking cigarettes and listening. That quiet was peaceful. The stillness on Sundays in Ashland was disquieting and oppressive.
Today the quiet is similar, except that it’s not distressing to me now. A few dogs are barking, a helicopter drifted overhead lazily (if such a thing is possible), the slight breeze is shuffling the leaves of the trees and grasses, and then nothing. Nothing. Until birds are chatting again. No human voices. A door opens and shuts down in the gulch below me.
This is a silent second. A damsel fly has landed on the wire cage encircling the Seckle pear. Now a child shouts at another child. The goldfinches are back at the towering fennel up on the mound. A tire crunches gravel close by. I think that’s why I was led to this specific spot in Grass Valley, so it could reshape old experiences into new and better ones. To show me how to experience stillness without a sense of scouring emptiness. I don’t have to live in fear anymore, like I did when I was a kid.
It’s still true that the quieter it is around you, the more likely you’ll hear terrifying things happen, IF they happen. And I’ve always been waiting for the bad things to happen, I’ve been hypervigilant my whole life. Vicious dog fights breaking out. Violence between humans. Children screaming with fear. The shaking grumble of an earthquake rolling towards you getting louder until it breaks open into a thunderous jolt of tectonic plates grinding against each other. The shocking sound of explosives could strip the peace away.
When there’s music, television, people talking, lots of cars, mowers, construction, children antagonizing each other playfully – all the usual noises of a busy city or household – it muffles terrifying noises such as someone bursting into sudden rage, or creeping in the bushes outside your window. It gives you a buffer when they happen, they don’t tear your heart out of your chest. You have to tease out the potential threat from other noises, you’re alerted before you’re alarmed. You have more time to decide what to do, how to react. It prevents you from freezing with panic, unable to protect yourself should you need to.
Zero North is right downtown but set off a little from the road, it’s quiet and peaceful. Most of the time I’m hanging out there with Philip and the noise of our chatter or videos we’re watching. But because there’s no steady power, I can’t have my usual ambient noise going on all day from television. The situation has stripped me of my comfort and the buffer between outside unwanted stimuli and myself.
It’s not my active plan to get comfortable with stillness and quiet because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping the TV on for many hours of the day if it makes it possible to disconnect the hypervigilant part of my brain to get other things done, to think more clearly. It’s a curious thing, to experience environment prompted personal growth and healing. It’s always going to be okay (with me) to set ambient noises of my choice to be more comfortable. But maybe I’m going to get to a place where I can also choose the stillness and find comfort in it too. I would not accept a person suggesting I try to get comfortable with silence, it would show me that they think I’m weaker for not being comfortable with it. But to have my little piece of property present this opportunity to me without judgment is a remarkable surprise.
Today I felt a little sense of peace in the usually ominous quiet.
That’s brand new.