At the beginning of each year, I crave silence. The juicy steak of nothing. The salacious salad of hush. Chirping leaves. Rustling robins. The wholesome soup of Harford Road traffic. Sirens. Noises without the notice of human voice. Wind sauce. Air pudding. The harmless hum of staring wide-eyed out the window. Through the flit of blinds, golden as the day: the light wallows naked across the red deck, the bird feeder, the patio chairs. All glossed in the sweet hue of quiet.
Silence is a dish best served in January. With it the years’ bricks are laid. The characters are drawn up. Choose your three-piece suit: retreat, rewire, and resist or reset, restart and refocus. Whichever you choose, make sure you’re layered. Prioritize comfort over style.
The poet David Gate says, “January and February are not the months for new things for me. I save that for Spring and the end of summer. This is about less. Especially after the celebration of December.” My heart agrees. My head retreats to the safety of a book.
In January, I read the most. True crime nonfiction. Queer African fiction. Poetry in translation. Anything on my shelf I haven’t reached and read to completion. Before Prozac, it was the weary cry of depression that found me bottom-glued to the chair, for hours on end, rubbing the language of poets and writers over me as a salve; paper acting as god’s sovereign echinacea. Now that I’m properly medicated, my tendency to read and re-read is a craving for slowerness. One book a week is simply not enough. Two at minimum with the dollop of a blinking candle, and a well pearled smoke.
Last January, I was driving home after working a 12-hour day. It was evening, around 7:30 p.m. and like every day, I had left that morning at 6:50 a.m. I don’t remember why I had stayed after school. Perhaps it was our quarterly literary reading or a dance concert or maybe even my tri-annual sportsball chaperone duty. Whatever it was, I was again leaving the school building in the same darkness I had arrived– with no overtime pay and no other incentives except for a summer that was still six golden months away.
Aside from the time, this route home was like any other– down Hillen, left at Morgan State, South on Harford Road, home within 6 more minutes. Exhausted, I talked to my mom on the phone. The traffic light harked red! then green!. Alas, I was within the 6-minute stretch. I sped along spritely, when all of a sudden, from the weeds of blackness, a deer bounded right in front of my car. Or was it a fawn? Within six feet of the creature, I swerved, hit it on its side and watched it fly backwards– all 350 pounds of its gymnast into a backhand spring. A backhand spring by a 350-pound gymnast. Have you ever hit a body? The harsh thud of flesh on metal nearly made me faint. I pulled over into the bus lane.
-I just hit a deer, ma.
-Oh, I thought you were screaming because you saw an old friend.
-What should I do? I killed something!
-Just call 411. They’ll dispose of the body.
But there was no body. No blood. No limping creature. No wailing other than my own. Just a fistful of fur tucked under the newly scrunched hood of my Prius. The deer had disappeared as swiftly as it had appeared.
I killed somebody, I panicked. I killed someone’s child. I killed someone’s someone and I can’t even say sorry.
I hung up on my mom and called my best friend.
-I killed something. I hit a deer.
-I’m so sorry. That’s so scary.
I walked around the exterior of my car. I went to the woods to find the deer. I found his family, his friends. I apologized profusely. They looked at me, as they do in headlights, unblinking. I talked to my grandfather, newly dead and partying handsomely in his own version of heaven.
Old man, I pleaded, please let me never hit a body again. Will you forgive me for taking someone’s someone? The horror. Losing you was enough. He didn’t respond.
I waded in the silence. Then, I chose my outfit: reset. I cleaned my house and burned incense cones. I thanked the fire and tore collards from the stalk with my hands. I decided to take a trip to a place I’d always wanted to go. I made plans for myself, for forgiveness, for feeling my feelings, for being debt free. I had been humbled and figured the best way to sharpen my oyster knife was with silence.
Humbling, the start of the year. Generous, the opportunity to try again. Each year brings with it extreme noise. But the underbelly of that noise is silence. The space between. The calm before the calm. A pure slate served at the table set for deep listening. In January, I am home because something in me turns like a key and I’m forced to sit with myself. What I hear are my desires, my fears, my failures. I answer them softly. Shhhh.
