On our uncertain silences

When neither of us is sure whether a silence is awkward or pleasant, I observe us both deciding whether to say something. And we do decide we must say something, anything really, if we conclude it is an awkward silence we are sharing, or a rude one. It is sad, and funny, too, to watch two people (especially when we are the two) scramble mentally, trying to recall snippets of news caught on the radio, some a topic of general interest. Perhaps one of us will mention a recent, vaguely-remembered study that has proven definitively something we are sure we have known all along -- that friendship makes us happy, or that we have fewer friends now than ever, or that happiness in friendship helps us live longer, or that we're more afraid of dying than ever.

Sometimes we interrupt each other in our eagerness to stop up the silence which is pooling around our ankles, and splashing into our shoes and up our shins, making our conversation seem to be a slow, hard wade. If we were confident of one another, though, things might be different. If we were certain that the other was comfortable, if we each knew that we each knew how to survive the silence that from time to time will flood up between two people, things might be different.

We might smile at each other as we let the silence overflow the dams we had built up against it; we might even hold hands as we held our breath and kicked off from the floor into the surrounding silence. As it is, we struggle and flail, each trying to drag the other to back to dry conversation.

Dream synopsis #1

I had a dream I was being poisoned. I must have been a sort of Juliet in my dream, because it was all part of a plan that I was being poisoned. I was going to be saved at the last minute, and escape. But I had to drink the poison first.

So I drank and drank the poison, trusting the plan. But then I began to feel strange, heavy and sleepy. (It is strange to feel sleepy in a dream.) And I knew that the poison was working, and I became afraid. I went to all the people in my dream, even the ones who weren't involved in the secret plot of my pretend poisoning, and told them I could feel myself dying. I told them I was afraid to die. They all assured me it would be alright, that my dying would not happen: it wasn't a part of the plan.

But I could feel that I was dying, from the poison. It was very lonely. I was very frightened. I couldn't find anyone who would believe that the plan had failed. I woke up before I could.

Principles of Experimentation

Each morning, I make the coffee for my office. Many people like it very strong, and a few people like it very weak. I like it somewhere in the middle. Ever since I have begun making the coffee, I have been carrying on experiments with it. Sometimes I will gradually reduce the amount of coffee grounds I put in the coffee maker, to see how long it takes for those who like strong coffee to complain. Sometimes I gradually increase the amount of coffee grounds I put in the coffee maker, to see how long it takes for those who like weak coffee to complain. Sometimes I purposefully make too few cups of coffee, and see who asks for more first; sometimes I purposefully make too much coffee, and see if anyone complains at the waste.

I know that this means that everyone thinks I do not know how to make coffee, or at least am very bad at it. But they do not know they are a part of a set of secret and beautiful experiments in human nature. Because of this secret, their complaints feel like small victories. If I were to arrange my whole life according to this principle of experimentation, perhaps all objections others have to me would only contribute to my sense of discovery, and of scientific determination.

I wanted to ask her

I wanted to ask her how to live well, alone -- how to be alone and live well.

But this is not the sort of thing one person who is alone can ask another person who is alone.

This is something else people who are alone must be alone in, learning how to be alone.

It isn't the same thing as being lonely, or as being by oneself -- I don't think.

But these are the guesses of someone learning to be alone, guesses that can only be tested by living them,

because there is no one who can tell you how to be alone.

Realism

It sounds to me as if

the birds outside

are calling "Help!" and "No!"

in strangled voices;

I know that this should mean

I am in some dark mood.

But it doesn't.

It only means that birds

can sound that way to me.

Toaster

Every morning, I make myself a piece of toast. I do not have a toaster. I make it in my oven's broiler. This works just as well, except that my oven does not have a timer, and does not spit out the toast once it has become toasted. So I must remember my toast. This seems simple, but it is not.

In order not to burn my toast, I must think mostly about my toast for as long as my oven takes to toast it. I do not need to think only of my toast, but the majority of my conscious mind must attend to the toast, or I will forget it and it will burn. It will become, not toast, but char. But who wants to think with 51% of their conscious mind (at least!) about toast? Perhaps for a second or two you might want to think about toast, its crunch, its taste. Perhaps even for 30 seconds you might want to think about toast. But who wants to think about toast for as long as it takes to make sure it becomes toast, in order to make sure it does not become something else, something hard and black and inedible (or something on fire and inedible)?

I realize how little I truly want to think about toast (though I want very much to taste toast), because almost every day it burns. It burns because I promise myself to give at least 51% of my attention to the toast, but I do not keep my promise. I am distracted by other things. These are things that I believe are more deserving of 51 or an even greater percent of my attention than toast. (I admit that these things will not burn if I give them less.)

Whenever I begin to do another thing too wholly, too absorbingly, I know I will burn the toast, even if I seem to myself to do so only for a few seconds, a minute. It does not matter for how short a time I care about another thing more. When the toast is cooking it is sensitive to whether I have given it only 49% of my conscious mind or less. My toast seems jealous of me, and will spite me by burning if I do not give it all the attention it requires. Very often, I eat burned toast, because I am unwilling to think mostly about toast for as long as it takes to toast, and I am unwilling to admit defeat.

And because I am unwilling to buy a toaster.

Bad Samaritans

He was terribly frightening, make no mistake about that, lying there bleeding, a sight to make your whole body turn cold. Of course, you could only really see him if you looked. He was half-hidden in some shrubbery -- just a leg sticking out, an odd groan now and then. It would take a morbid curiosity, a desire beyond the normal to know whether he were alive or dead to investigate. And most of us are not so curious, not so eager to shoulder another's troubles.

Blame us if you like, but don't act as if you don't understand why we did it.

We are always painted as selfish or self-righteous, too wrapped up in ourselves to stop and help an obvious need. But I assure you: we were too frightened, not too proud. We weren't just busy; we were afraid. It was fear which blurred our peripheral vision and quickened our step. It was self-protection, not self-interest, which made us assure ourselves that we had seen no movement in the bushes and, anyway, if we had, it was certainly an animal.

The dead or dying man might well have been a trap. Everyone knows that there are bandits in the hills. It would take only a moment too long of too real an interest in the wounded man for them to spring, to beat and strip you too. And then you would be no better off than he.

Maybe he was pretending, even, feigning hurt to draw innocents off the road, like a coyote will a dog, so that the others can encircle it, and feed off their cousin's flesh. And if he wasn't pretending? Well, then. This road is hardly deserted. Surely another less busy, less connected person will come along to see to him.

I am weak and a woman, we thought to ourselves, particularly vulnerable. I am no doctor, anyway. I would probably make his situation worse by twisting a broken limb or unstaunching a wound. If he's not going to get well on his own, then I certainly won't make him any better -- and if he will, then what use am I? I have children to think of, friends, elderly parents -- what would those I am tied to do if I were set upon and killed in the hills? I will certainly report this to the proper authorities when I come to town, we assured each other. If their offices are open, anyway, and if they believe me, and if they're not too busy with the crime rife in our own city.

To take him to a doctor would be an expense we simply could not afford. And why should we? We didn't get ourselves jumped. We know how to be cautious, to travel only in daylight, only together. He invited it, going alone like he must've been. He must have people who will wonder what has become of him. Or, if he doesn't, he must have lost them through his own fault. They should have seen to him. What alchemy, exactly, transforms a single man's foolishness into a public responsibility? This is why we stick together, so that we don't put other people in such an uncomfortable, even embarassing, position.

As we lie in our beds at night, thinking it all over, our hearts twist within us. We turn and turn and secretly think, whisper to our drowsy spouses beside us, that that showy Samaritan only did it to make us look bad. All he did was make a normal response to inconvenience and unseemliness and danger seem shabby -- sinful, even.

He was heroic, certainly, we wouldn't rob him of that distinction. He will no doubt make the news -- shining in white robes, unafraid for himself, lavishing his effort and his wages on a stupid stranger, even now comatose in our hospital, using up tax dollars.

But we comfort ourselves. We take comfort, because we know the man beat up and left for dead was one of ours, not one of his. We know that the bleeding man was like us.

And this knowledge is the very reason we could shrug off the demand of his moans by hurrying along a trifle more briskly on the other side. Because we know he would have too. It was an exchange we all understood. Generosity is good only to a point, only within what is reasonable. To go beyond that is to heap foolishness on foolishness.

And, as I said, we were afraid. We couldn't have helped anyway.

Now, on top of our hurried lives, our many struggles, our lurking fears, our tired attempts at decency, we are ashamed. We are ashamed of ourselves, and cannot look one another in the eye.

It was he who did this to us, the "good" one. And we wish with all our shame-filled hearts that he hadn't come.

If he came along again,

and we recognized him from afar off,

walking down the road,

just at dusk,

alone,

I think we might set upon him,

rough him up,

rob him of the money he is so careless of.

We might stop our ears to what he has to say, and strip him of those fine garments he is so eager to spread over strangers. Maybe we would leave him lying in a ditch, to think over what he did to us as night comes. He might grow cold as the mountain road. Let that teach him to leave us well enough alone.