Silence

The Beauty of Humanity

March 2019

Snake holds the door for me as we go outside.

“See, I have some manners,” he says, half-joking. He is much as I remember him, his voice, his particular mannerisms. His hair is streaked with silver - I didn’t remember that from the last time I saw him, at W’s father’s funeral - and I like the silver just as much as I like Atlas’ jet black curls.

He lights a cigarette as soon as we are in the open air; they don’t smoke in the house. He doesn’t offer me one this time. When I arrived that morning, I took the cigarette from his hand and took two good drags, then gave it back.

“Do you want a cigarette, Misty?” he had asked. I shook my head.

“If I smoke a whole one, I’ll puke,” was my answer. It has been seven or eight years since I last smoked tobacco; I’m not sure exactly why I wanted a drag. A quick nicotine high, I suppose.

I don’t take it from him again. We walk slowly toward my truck, Baby Li curled to my side as usual. Does he find it awkward that I nursed her in front of him? Probably. A lot of people are uncomfortable with breastfeeding, especially thirty-year-olds with no kids of their own. Does that bother me? Not particularly.

Snake is one of those people who needs constant sound. Like so many millennials, the sound of silence makes him uncomfortable. I think silence brings him just a little too close to his own thoughts. He chatters as we walk, and I like listening to him, even though half the time I have no idea where he’s coming from.

Silence brings him just a little too close to his own thoughts.

When Atlas talks, you listen, because Atlas only opens his mouth when he has something that needs to be said. He lives in the real world. When Snake talks, you aren’t quite sure what is real and what is fantasy. He lives in his own world.

And it is a dark world, a depressing world sometimes. Filled with death, anger, things that make no sense to him. “I can’t think of any reason why we shouldn’t just nuke the planet right now,” he says.

This statement hits me hard and I stop walking, turn to him and hold up Baby Li.

“This,” I say, rather forcefully. “Isn’t this a good enough reason not to?”

He looks at Baby Li. I can see what he sees, a round, blank face, devoid of reason or understanding. A human so primitive that it can’t even hold the drool in its own mouth. “Maybe,” he says doubtfully. We walk in silence for just a moment, then he fumbles for his phone to find something to show me on YouTube.

He just can’t stand the silence.

I wish I could show him what I see. Humankind, as a whole, has operated so long under the assumption that we are born bad, and we have to work our way out of the badness. But to me, Baby Li is pure perfection. I didn’t feel that way about Dusty, necessarily - it was something I had to learn.

Deepak Chopra talks about the silent witness that lives inside every person. The silent observer, who takes in everything that happens, good or bad, without judgment. A newborn is that observer, pure life, pure hope, pure love, with no fear or judgment to determine its actions. It's every movement is spontaneous because it has learned nothing to hold it back. It is the most untainted thing that exists.

A newborn is pure potential.

It could turn into something terrible, for sure, but it could also turn into something beautiful. And even if it does turn into something terrible, something that hurts inside and so turns that hurt outward, to other people; even then, the beautiful perfection of the silent witness is still there, buried deep beneath the layers of what our fallen world has created. The potential for beauty is still there. Isn’t that a good enough reason to keep life going?

We are the highest means the Universe has of experiencing itself.

Like Snake, I live in my own world; like Atlas, though, I am not much of an orator. My world comes out in my writing. I want to tell Snake all these things, but I can’t. I can only write them.

He tells me about things he has found online, people he’s met, girls he has slept with. He tells me about the music he’s working on, the video games he mods. At one point, he tells me that his dog had five puppies.

“Is five too many?” I ask, teasing.

“Not for puppies,” he answers. It’s the most serious thing he has said. He wants me to know he’s not into kids.

That’s OK with me.

About my own life, I say almost nothing. I don’t mention Atlas at all — they never liked each other. I tell him that I smashed a bunch of furniture before I drove here this morning, and his expression at this piece of information is unfathomable. But I am not here to tell Snake about myself — I am here to learn. I’m just not sure what I’m learning.

So I stay silent.

“Actually, I’m pretty fucked up,” he says just before I leave. He hadn’t said it sooner. I finish buckling Baby Li.

“No, you aren’t,” I say firmly. “You are perfect.” It was something I never knew how to say when we were kids.

I wrap my arms around him like I used to, under his heavy black jacket, and for just a moment we are both sixteen again. Then he pulls away and I know it is time to go home to Atlas.

He starts back toward the house, then turns around and calls, “Drive safe. Don’t kill anyone.”

It makes me grin and I answer, “Ditto.” He smiles in response and turns back around. I know he will go upstairs and blast his music, maybe find the inspiration to write something new.

Me? I drive home in blissful silence.