The Silence Between Us

It seems, many times, that life is naught but one huge transition.

Well said, Sonia.

I am in one of those mini transition that makes up the one large, aforementioned-and-conversely-annoyingly-stated transition.

Moving back home.

It's not that I am despising my time. I sleep late, lazily walk to coffee, sigh, breeze through magazines, a mall, a salon, thank you notes. Lots of breezing and sighing and sleeping. It's nice really. It feels like time moves slowly, but then in a sigh it's Friday again and I have no where to go but my living room.

I read a short essay by a friend of mine who described an Anthropology lecture. The subject was more or less about communications between other cultures, one in particular whose young people did not speak to one another during courtship.A student volunteered his dismissal that it would seem impossible to chose your mate without conversation. The professor then ceased to talk for ten minutes, to the increasing anxiety of the class. As they giggles, twitched and shuffled she waited until the intensity of the silence seeped in. Then she asked of the class if they could imagine existing in that still and quiet space, while locked with their Other, slowly falling in love.

Jesus, can you imagine?

When I am in a damn post argument silence with my mother as she carts me around in her little Prius, five million angry little thoughts and quips are running around my head like mice in a maze. Over an argument about how much she hates Julia Roberts because her laugh is the same in every movie. NO IT'S NOT MOM, SHE HAS DEPTH. But picture a mandated silence surrounding falling in love, an experience that literally functions around over analyzing feelings, perceptions, and the potential of life binding. How do you tell someone about all those crazy things, if without a very long and verbal pronunciation? How do you send them a look that says "Set the date!" or "Hey, how about we make this thing official? I mean, unless you want to keep seeing other people. Because I'm kinda keeping quiet with two other guys but I'm at the point where I just thought we could keep the silence between us."

Anyway, Home is my silent place.

And my Other is my newly minted, almost graduated self.

And she and I are not in a good place.

But we're keeping it quiet.