THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE
Suddenly, it’s not there...!
Have you noticed that when your electric power supply goes off
there is a sudden sense of loss and a pressing weight of silence falls upon the immediate world about you.
We, as a people, tend to live much of our lives against a comforting background of noises, an amalgam of many things, muted in most cases, fortunately, There is an element of disbelief, but reality lingers very much
there in the shadows where it is virtually unnoticed. When it all stops suddenly, the silence is oppressive!
There can be no “sound of silence”, I suppose, but the element of heaviness falls upon us in a very real sense.
Sometimes, when the electricity fails, we sit or stand for a few seconds trying to realize what has happened. A change has come about ,and it is not good, but exactly what it was might be comes to us only after
we realize the darkness pressing in around us. Some state the obvious when they say” “The lights are out!” in a tone of dis-belief. The TV screen is a blob starring into blackness, the refrigerator is silent, the air-conditioning is not running,
or, the furnace, if it be during the winter time when the crisis comes to your house.
The first thing to be done is to find your way to as many light switches as possible and snap them on and on and off in random order until you have no idea what positions they will be in when and if, the power
returns. As soon as you are assured of the fact that the loss is general and not solely where you were at the time it happened, you try to remember where it was you put the flashlight so you could find it speedily if such an emergency
arose. Mother goes searching for candle stubs.
These common steps, and others, occur in rapid sequence in most families. Someone will get on the phone and call anyone to ask if their “lights are off”....which they are. One such person called is sure to remind you
that your freezer is no longer holding fast to those low temperatures you need to retain the quality of all the meats and vegetables stored therein. You resist the temptation to take a peek to see if the little light comes on when our lift
the lid. Usually, it works out that someone else in the family has already done that. Several have already tried the refrigerator.
If you are not much at dialing phone numbers in total darkness (and it is amazing how many people can do that!) you ascertain the fate of your neighbors by opening the door - front or back - to see if their lights
are burning. They are not. You feel comforted in the common sharing of disaster which has, it appears, to come to all...not just you alone.
The door opening sequence is a good thing because it allows street or highway noises to burst upon our ears even though they be far away. Sounds have returned! There is hope of survival. There might be the
sound of a plane moving above; a distant siren telling of a rescue vehicle searching out suffering somewhere. When it happened years ago you could even hear a train whistle in the far off hills, and it all became less tedious somehow.
You step back into the darkened rooms and express your
determination of wait it out. New problems face you. What does one do while waiting it out? No stereo, no computer to play with, no fireplace to sit by, and no one has the slightest idea where that old battery operated radio might
be by now. If someone does remember, by chance...the batteries are dead, of course, the terminals quietly turning into a gray-green fuzz therein.
By that time the children are hungry, or they have to go to the bathroom, or both. Then -
Glory be! The power is restored as quickly as it had disappeared. The weight of silence is lifted. Noise, at last! Living is back to normal.
A.L.M. August 1, 2001 [c699wds]
