At night, when the television volume is set at 2, when earlier in the day it was barely audible at 25, I begin to wonder which noises are missing.  How many words had I ignored from people I neglected to hear?  How many songs had floated over me and landed atop the ears of my neighbors instead of on mine?  What was the deafening white noise made of?  My mind was made to dissect things.  I want to know.

Where did it all go?  Where did they go?  Had they needed me?  Had I failed them?

Had my whispers ridden the wind to follow someone home and hit their ears at a time when they required companionship?  Did they assist someone, hold their hand to help them rise out of loneliness?  Had this all happened without me knowing?

Did my eyelash fly away and travel to a toe?  A toe that began to itch as a dagger flew overhead.

Had my tear joined a river?  Had it caused a distant dam to break?  Did it flood a hidden village in the distance?

Had a hair come loose from my head?  Had it flitted off and acted as a binding in a nest of an eagle that would grow and inspire a poet’s words? Words to change a man?  A man who would change history?

I’ve come to know some things in my life.  Things that are fact to me now.  Things I’m certain of.  One such thing is this, everything means something.

Absolutely everything has an effect.

Sitting in this musing, wondering where the noise has gone, I find within my soul the sudden urge to scream into this darkness.  I want to yell loudly.  Something good.  Something great.  Something powerful.

I feel the need to create some positive chaos by shouting out into this quiet night, disturbing the peace.  It’s in my nature.

Tranquility leaves me stagnant and mossy if I linger too long inside solace.  I need to breathe it in sometimes, that’s true, but I know I can’t stay.  My reality has always moved hastily and loudly, in jolts and rushes, forward and back. Peacefulness is only a place to visit briefly.

Comfort for me lies in a riot, a rally for change.  Naturally, that is where I’ve been found. That’s where I feel my spirit is most powerful, accepted, and strengthened.  I am not as familiar with chirping crickets and cool night mists and floating fog.

I prefer red/green/yellow shining off of streets, the smell of hot highways, the buzz and hum of power lines and people.

But, here in the silence another part of me wakes.  One I don’t know by name yet.  An introduction is being made.  She finds refreshment in this place and I’m realizing I am becoming whole again, comfortable anywhere, as chaos and calm coexist in me now.