5 of 360

Write now Article Tools

Yesterday I awoke to a crazy calm. The kind of Stephen King quiet that means a monstrous clown awaits its drain birth upon my entrance into the bathroom or the coming alive of my paintings to pull me into some strange world from which I will never re-emerge.

A quiet. A crazy calm quiet. The quiet of no running water.

The water was out in Cincinnati for 24 hours and what we were left with was the disquiet that screams something is wrong. The opposite of no news is good news. The sound of silence equals trouble.

Unnerving. I never recognized the dull roar, the hum of water pumping through our apartment building. I never even heard it until it was gone and the silence was strange. Scary. Like life had stopped moving in some way, which actually it had because life is water, without water there is no life, everything withers up and roasts. We have nothing without water.

The worst part was that we not any extra money to buy water to buy for flushing the toilet. When it's yellow let it mellow is fine until the mellow decides it is ready to stand up and walk out. I felt awful using what drinking water we had to flush the toilet. It was the epitome of luxury, to literally flush good drinking water down the toilet. Horrible feeling. Knowing there are people who are dying of thirst and there I am pouring it down the toilet. These are the moments where I realize what a charmed life I indeed do lead.

Yesterdays silence was the personification of my own silence here. My silence about the things going on around me I cannot discuss until I leave this place. My filling the silence with blither blather, anything to take the attention away from the very important things that I cannot talk about just yet. A crazy quiet that blocks me up in so many ways I am scared to count.

I worry about writing things about what I see and hear around me. Especially social movements aside from personal struggles, because I don't know what thing will get me thrown into a wall or into jail for disrespecting our gentrified president.

They say that some of the most creative and brilliant of literature and narrative has emerged from people living without free speech of sorts. I wonder how they did it. I find the silence to be choking me. That if I cannot talk about what is real and around me, I cannot talk about anything at all. I am bound in this crazy quiet, silenced by a foreign schema and living in creative limbo by individuals and groups all around.

Today, the outside quiet is over and water runs through the building bringing sounds of movement and daily chores. My silence inside feels like it will never end.

Learn more about this author, Liquid Fire.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Short stories: Life lessons?
We want to hear your view. Write now!