Listening To No Sound

Making believe: what are the choices? Clarabell did not speak. A not so distant cousin of Harpo Marx, less libidinal and subversive, with no sinister, Semitic leer, the unheard clown made clear, across nearly thirteen years of television shows that he was a harmless mute and that his power resided somewhere other than in his vocal chords or in his verbal intelligence and that cerebral communications through the wonder of human language was not the path he could or would choose.

Silence. It is feared, cherished, misunderstood, compelling, disturbing, comforting, thought provoking and attractive. Spiritualists, others who meditate, psychics, thinkers, poets, scientists, the compassionate and the scheming, dreamers and builders, prayerful persons, despondent ones, patient ones, so many different souls: they all utilize silence and the best of them employ it not as a manipulation but embrace it as appropriate to the moment: an opportunity to think, to withhold what could be a thoughtless outburst or a needless filler of an uncomfortable interval of embarrassing imaginings that "chit-chat" might cover up and render neutered by a banal or yawn-inducing remark.  The pregnant pause never grows old. A heartbeat has no home without its partner, the interval of no thump, no reverberation. Lightness without the dark and beauty without that which is horrific: we somehow knew of black holes before our august scientists informed us of the stupefying concept of them and we somehow know that our pulses mimic something in the universe: a tension and a release that echoes down time's corridors to  unseen horizons.

But again, how do we hear what makes no sound?  Dreams seem to be an offer of a path to travel. It's a treasure hunt, but what are we seeking?  We do not want the noise of waking hours, the distractions of appetites, cares of maintenance, finances, the posturing for fame and displays of pride and self-adulation. We want a place of refreshment, the quiet yet rippling brook, the empathetic and yes, the empathic friend, the mildness of a loving father, the sleep undisturbed with hortatory alarm clocks tossed out of bedroom windows, as the ancient riddle for juveniles explained, by the moron who wanted to see time fly. Are we really so superior to this mental defective, or do we not so secretly envy his liberating antics much as we find a kinship with Clarabell's mischief with his seltzer bottle or his rubber bulbed horn. Ah, the horn…like the dog's bark, he does want to speak, but the words do not come. It's the inexpressible. We all come short of a certain eloquence, no matter how silver tongued we or the world imagines us to be. But we must try. This may be the beginning of prayer.