The Quiet of Becoming

What struck me was the silence.

It was profoundly quiet. No human noise intruded. No incessant talking, with vowels elongated into enforced relevance through vocal fry. No frat party drone, with a monotone bass as lifeless as the conversations it drowned out. Cars, more cars, and even more cars. If you counted all those passing vehicles, their number might equal the dead cells your skin sheds daily. More incessant talking, stomping, chairs scraping on the floor, metal clanging against metal. Leaf blowers, those dreadful machines, cutting all thought into senseless fragments — how I despise those things. It seemed humanity was in a constant state of anxiety, announcing its existence through noise. But here, it was quiet. I could hear my own breathing. Hesitant.

Once I attuned to the quiet, I found it was not silent. A rackety rhythm of birds, with their varied pitches, marked the time. One tune echoed in my mind for an hour. The sun began to set, bringing with it a gradual rise in the buzzing and humming of insects, some rustling in the grass. All carried by the wind, creating an oceanic rustle in the trees, weighing down the day’s end. I followed my own breathing as it slowed. A calm wave of warmth and slow awareness spread from my stomach to my limbs and fingertips.

I had found what I sought. It had remained elusive all year, becoming more so with each passing week. Just when I had forgotten that it once existed, that it must have existed, it struck me anew.

This is the week I am moving, leaving the building where I lived for six years after my departure from New York and arriving in Bloomington. The noise here always felt different from the city’s clamor. New York has you thrown in a vibrant display of a multitude of lives going their way. There is an auditory partaking in life. When the neighbor’s radio unfailingly turns on at 7 a.m. to broadcast the news in Spanish. When the occasional “Shmuck!” is hurled into the air by a passerby, for good measure. When you hear the music. Bloomington noise felt different. The cars with their exhausts roared in constant necessity to bring people here or there. People in transit moved past without presence. Everything echoes, with sounds amplified throughout the day, only nothing possessed rhythm. There were no birds. The insects had long since vanished. Bloomington’s soundscape was never about coming to life, but rather the ceaseless busywork of people moving through their days devoid of desire.

I never ceased to long for New York.

I remain in Bloomington, but I’ve left downtown. Before moving into a quieter neighborhood next month, I am staying in a short-term rental on the outskirts, unwittingly finding myself in a much-needed retreat, a mental exile.

With life condensed into boxes and a small bag’s belongings for a month, my mind ventured into the possible, the future. Academics live by a different calendar. Not Julian, not Gregorian. We time ourselves in semesters, marked by the start and end of teaching, punctuated by a series of urgent research deadlines plotted in between. Now I had one month and a half ahead in this green exile.

A month promising inner peace. I looked out of the window.

What if I get used to this?