Chapter VII: The Ontology of Silence

From every corner of experience quiet, in its variations, is the sound of existence itself, the sound of absence. Silence has varied qualities. Think about the silence of dawn in the woods where the light of day pierces the top of the trees each moment like God holding its breath a split second longer; unmistakably old silence vibrating with memories of a forming world. Or, consider the silence of the city at sleep, thick with human noise, its asphalt heating up from the day's activity, not yet dissipated, a whole inhabited unconscious simmering like neurons firing in synchronization. Or, think about the silence before storm, a stretch, poised like a bow-and-arrow, the sound of silence true, always an inevitability; and, then there is the silence after-storm the world emerged as if it was hollowed out from a gutting, shaken pure everything is deemed newborn

Yet there is silence that eats away more profoundly—silence that is not absence, but presence. The silence of a chair just vacated, a body just risen, its wood-wrapped bones still aching from laughter, like a cocoon from inside. The conspiracy of dust-sunk honky-tonk piano keys yellowed from wear, all nestled in a hollow sepulcher, all unmarked graves now, mixing each motion of waiting and stillness. Silence not waiting or stillness, but all that once was, and all that might've been. It could be our humanity; the hunger for joy, for meaning, for the end of the absurdity of existence. A suffocating throbbing, vibrating out of the absence in our baggy flesh, whispers of a world continuing long after one's corporeal heart stops a raucous cry.

Compared to what hibernates in the crevice between us, all these silences are mere shadows. This is not the silence of absence, but the inertia of collision, two solitudes smashing together in a void with a space that used to be bracketed by a bridge of words. This is a silence of life. This is a thing with teeth. This is Dostoevsky's underground man seeping through the walls of his own skull as he muzzles an invisible scream. This is the absurdity Camus chiseled out of stone, the gulf between the cry of the soul and the universe's dismissal. This is where you are, and I am here. Between us is the infinite, starless night, a situation so dire that even despair cannot bounce off its walls.

All these silences fade in comparison to what rests deep within us. This is not silence as in sound, but the inertia of collision—the collision of two estranged beings meeting in a space where language once connected them. It is silence that has been touched by life; it is a presence with teeth. It is as if Dostoevsky’s subterranean man is writhing inside his head, holding back a scream that will never make it to the outside world. It is the absurd that Camus sculpted from stone; it is the difference between the screaming agony of the human soul and the indifferent shoving of the universe. This is where you are and where I will remain. Between us is an unconquerable, starless night—a space so delicate that despair will find nowhere to stand on its naked walls.