THANKFUL FRIDAY

I am never prepared for the hours and hours of silence when I am in Woods Hole, MA. I have known for months that I was making this trip and I did a thing I most almost never do. I waited until the last minute to pack, to plan out my tasks in the lab space, plan my off hours time. So, on this trip, not only am I unprepared for the silence, but I am unprepared from the lack of planning. I feel like I have had vast amounts of time left unaccounted for, yet I spent a whole day and a half updating my inventory list for our lab space and taking care of some administrative details. I’ve shut down computers and unplugged equipment, made note of transmitted light bulbs to bring with me in the Spring. But I have moved along at a snail’s pace.

Maybe this is what I needed.

The North East coast is awash in color this time of year. There is a constant cold wind blowing in off the Atlantic and though the sun is blinding, it is cold. The joke is that I have never been here when it is warm. I am always visiting when the leaves are changing or when the Rhododendrons are blooming. I am always visiting when the area is in full techno color vision. It is slightly discombobulating, the juxtaposition of bright, almost loud, colors mixed with the silence. Woods Hole is a ghost town right now. For my first night, I thought I was the only person staying in the dorms. There’s a small gathering of scientific journalists here now for a conference. By small, I mean they all fit at one table in the cafeteria. I walked over to one of the beaches yesterday morning and had it all to myself.

On my last day, I met up with Chad and Jess. We spent the afternoon, tooling around the Cape in their camper van, stopping to hike out to the Knob or taking photos of lighthouses. We had hours of catching up on what is happening in each other’s lives. We had hours of laughter. My sides ache this morning from the shear amount of laughing. But I do miss my bed, my pillow. I miss my dog and honestly, I miss Michael. I always worry about the two of them when I am away. Will Josephine get enough attention? Will Michael eat a vegetable? Will he notice if the pets are out of water or remember to empty Rosie (robot vacuum)? I’ve done this before and often, left the two of them to their own devices, and I always come home to a dog and a person who are still breathing, both happy to see me.

Part of settling into the silence here and the snail’s pace of things is letting go. I realize that in the absence of outside noises, my internal voices get louder. Each thought is a thread or weed pulled from my brain. I am learning to pluck out the annoying voices, the ones who speak of worries and doubts. Michael and Josephine are just fine. In fact Josephine is probably just now noticing that I’ve been gone longer than usual. I am learning to organize the thoughts and voices leftover. I wonder if there’s something there, something useful. Is this a story? Is this a reminder? Is this a positive affirmation? Sometimes it is just a reminder to stare out into the ocean or look up into the night sky. You know how sometimes a person shares a picture of their dog with a goofy look on his face with a caption of “No thoughts, just vibes” ? This is what it means to stare out into the sea, to take a moment for just feeling your feet sink in the sand and the salty wind hitting your face. Vibes. No thoughts.

Give the thinking a rest.

SILENCE

I stepped out into the backyard with the intention of closing the chicken pen for the night. The sun had just set and the stars were visible in the night sky. I paused to look up. Sometimes I am amazed at the number of stars that I can see in the night sky while still in the city with light pollution. As I stood there looking up at the sky, I suddenly realized how quiet it was. There were no sounds of cars on the roads, no bird song. There wasn’t even a rustling of the leaves from the wind. It was so quiet that I thought that I might have lost my hearing. Right at the moment I started to panic, I heard a car driving somewhere in the distance and I sighed a little in relief.

I live in the city. The neighborhood is always filled with sounds of traffic, cars blaring music with the base turned up so that you can feel the vibrations even though your sitting on the couch inside the house. Often, I can hear children playing basketball or some game that has them running up and down the street. Sirens and helicopters make an occasional entrance into this neighborhood orchestra. Recently, a pair of owls can be heard calling back and forth to each other. The other evening those two owls flew into a tall tree whose limbs dangle over our backyard. Josephine saw the big birds swoop in for a landing, her ears perking up. Her whole body went rigid and on guard as she barked at the closest owl. They stayed for a few minutes before flying off over the house.

My city is a far cry from New York City where you are constantly accosted with noise. Cars honking. People yelling. Construction. Sirens. The minute you step inside Central Park though, all of that noise dissipates. If you walk to the deepest center of the park, the noise of the city completely disappears, but only to be replaced with the sounds of birds and people laughing. For a moment though, you could easily believe that there was no city. In the moments when I realized I could hear a car in the distance, I thought about the last time I was in Central Park. There was snow. There are many pockets inside New York City where you can go to get away from the noise of the city. Once, I rode the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building and it was just me and the elevator attendant. It was a long, silent ride to the top. Central Park is still my favorite respite from the city noise.

So often, I have longed for peace and quiet. I long for moments of silence to sit and read without interruption. The chatter can be too much. There is always a TV on or music playing or someone talking at me. The demand for my attention can be overwhelming. I tend to savor those rare moments when there is quiet in the house. Those weekend mornings when everyone else is sleeping are mornings to be savored. Yet, I found the silence I had encountered in the backyard to be unsettling. It was a complete void of any sound and in that moment, my brain listed all the things it wasn’t hearing. Ever since, I have been making a point to pause for a moment each day. I close my eyes and make a mental list of all the things I am hearing. Then I list all of the things I am not hearing. If I have extra time, I think about the things I miss hearing. When I think about the things I miss hearing, I can hear them.

They are whispers, barely audible, but I can hear them.