Snow and silence came to the backyard overnight. With my mug of coffee, I sat on the stoop, listening to it for a few minutes before I put on the music.
The silence here is friendly, but I remember when silence was scary. It still can be, depending, but not lately.
What about the quiet causes our minds to conjure up the monster that, for most of us, never shows up?
The odds that something lurks, whether in our mind or the woods behind the balsams and the birches, are always there, so it’s more than likely that most fear is about the unknown—and dead silence comes with a hefty dose of the unknown.
Music doesn’t chase away fear, but it does give it something easy to dance to; that’s why most of us turn up the radio in the first place.
I knew who belonged to the black shadow just outside the reach of the one hundred-watt bulbs in the lantern-esque lights that guard the door, so I left them off.
Ellie gives away her position because she snorts the snow, probably trying to reach the scents that remain below. She also stands and stares a lot.
She probably doesn’t know it, but it’s the next best thing to the cloak of invisibility. At three-thirty am, a black dog, not moving, is no longer there. It’s good that her sneeze is friendly, giving away her position on the perimeter, reassuring me that she’s not further into the green growth, finding the skunks and porcupines who have the sense to stay in bed a bit longer.
The new place is calming for me—no traffic whizzing by the house, no one walks here, not in the dark. Muddy lanes have a way of minimizing morning joggers.
My biggest current concern when inside is that I will never get it through my head that the silverware drawer is on my left now, no longer on the right. Each time I pull the drawer and find scissors, tape, and leftover screws, I shuffle quickly back to my non-dominant hand for a fork to eat the leftovers I’ve prepared. This problem, too, shall pass.
For now, it’s the silence I think about. A dose of Jackson Browne will take care of that. Full of kibble and what sounded like a quart of water, Ellie had fallen back asleep on her second bed, just off the kitchen.
Don’t be scared of the dark. Snort the snow, rest assured the skunks and porcupines are back in their beds. If it gets scary, turn up the music. It makes it easier to dance around the trouble, but don’t be scared of the dark.
Snow and silence came to the backyard overnight. With my mug of coffee, I sat on the stoop, listening to it for a few minutes before I put on the music.
From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,
TC
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