In the interest of documentation, I have a sore throat, singing is easier than talking although that was weird at first too, and my talking instinct has been rewired pretty well. I’ve been on the phone on and off all evening, short conversations (probably less than five minutes each), and each time I’ve called for a specific purpose (like to ask my mom how long broccoli keeps in the refridgerator, for example), and that’s gone okay, but if conversation drifts in a different direction, I find I have to pause and put words together a lot before speaking. I haven’t interacted with anyone face-to-face yet, but obviously I’ll be paying attention when I do.

I put on some music to sing along to while I washed the dinner dishes, and I spent a few good minutes putting together a playlist that I knew I’d enjoy but that also wouldn’t be too demanding, and this is going to read a bit funny but it felt like singing made my vocal chords feel good. It felt good to slide up and down notes, to remember where to breathe, to sing along to choruses that I love.

But seriously, my throat hurts now.

I talked today. On purpose. For, my cell phone tells me, one minute and twelve seconds.

It was really weird. I’m having a hard time making my mouth keep up with my brain, connecting thought to speech.

The big question, of course, is why, and the answer is unfortunately extremely mundane.

I pretty much learned to drive this summer. I’ve never owned a car – I’ve never needed to. But obviously you cannot really function in Austin without one. Trying to do so last year was terrible. This summer my dad bought a new car and is letting me drive his old one.

This afternoon, I walked out to that car to drive to the movies, and one of the windows was broken. Broken as in, had fallen into its window-well. This happened to a different window on the same car last year. I thought, Crap! and then I thought, Has anyone broken in, and then I determined, no, no one had, and then I thought, Crap, it rained! Is there water damage? but there doesn’t seem to be. I don’t drive very often, because I still don’t like driving (though I am learning to tolerate it and becoming a better driver), so I had to really think to remember the last time I drove it.

And then I had to call my dad, because he doesn’t text message, because it’s his car, because I had no idea what to do, and because I could never have planned this. And then I had to call my mom, because my dad didn’t answer the phone.

That was an hour ago, and I’ve been back and forth on the phone quite a bit since, but I’m still having trouble connecting my brain to my mouth. There’s just no other way to put it. Talking isn’t an automatic thing at the moment. I have to concentrate on forming sentences. It’s kind of a similar feeling to when you’re drunk and you have to do something intricate like tie your shoe, but it’s more like if you’ve been sleeping really deeply and someone wakes you up with something urgent and you can’t quite make sense of what they’re saying let alone respond.

This morning I began shifting into presentation mode, that is, tossing around ideas for how to present this project in class. Given that shift, and given that I was able to maintain silence for seven days and about sixteen hours, I don’t feel that speaking early is any kind of “failure.” I had already begun to change the parameters of the project (reasons for which I’ll write up later), and there’s no reason why I can’t put those into practice later this year.

I’m going to still be paying attention to my speech and communication over the next few days, as I “come out” of this period of silence.

But first I need to figure out what to do about this stupid car.

SAYING SOMETHING

Things assume your shape; discarded clothes, a damp shroud
in the bathroom, vacant hands. This is not fiction. This is
the plain and warm material of love. My heart assumes it.

We wake. Our private language starts the day. We make
familiar movements through the house. The dreams we have
no phrases for slip through our fingers into smoke.

I dreamed I was not with you. Wandering in a city
where you did not live, I stared at strangers, searching
for a word to make them you. I woke beside you.

Sweetheart, I say. Pedestrian daylight terms scratch
darker surfaces. Your absence leave me with the ghost
of love; half-warm coffee cups or sheets, the gentlest kiss.

Walking home, I see you turning on the lights. I come in
from outside calling your name, saying something.

CAROL ANN DUFFY

I’m expanding the bounds of the project again. I’ll post field notes here next week. The new goals are: No writing/typing to substitute for verbal communication, no instant messaging, and mediated communication only if it’s for class or to arrange social interactions. There is a longer explanation, but I’ll post it later. See you in a week.

There is no way on earth I could have posted yesterday. Why? Because here is my Monday schedule. I wake up by 6:30am – yesterday I woke up at 6:00am to finish that paper I mentioned. I make coffee (so I don’t have to stop on the way to class for it) and eat breakfast and see if anything interesting happened in the world while I was sleeping. I’m out the door by 8:15 at the latest, because my first class is in the Ransom Center, which is a bit of a further walk than the RTF buildings. I’ve got class from 9 to 12, and the professor usually actually keeps people in the room until 11:50 or 11:55. Then I walk back up to the RTF area, grab lunch, and have to be in ACTLab by 1. Trans goes from 1 to 4, then there’s an hour-long break where I usually try not to grab a coffee. Then TransLab is from 5 to 6:30, SoundscapesLab is from 6:30 to 8, BlackBoxLab is from 8 to 9:30, and office hours go to eleven. I got home around 11:15 last night. That’s fifteen hours on-campus.

So yeah, I pretty much just collapse Monday nights when I get home.

But here are some interesting things that happened on Monday.

I only know the names of like two people in my first class, because it’s one of my minors. I went about five minutes of before-class hanging out before I felt I had to present my card (I was asked a direct question). The two people I was engaging with had what I think might be the normal reaction: “How long are you doing this, why are you doing it, have you broken it yet, I bet I can make you talk,” etc. One of the people knew ASL fingerspelling, so rather than writing down my answers, I fingerspelled one-word replies (”What department or class are you doing this for?” “ACTLab.”).  And then class started, and I just didn’t say a word. And I don’t know if anyone noticed. It’s the kind of class where that can happen, and I’ve only recently started saying more than one or two comments per class anyway, just because I felt so dumb compared to, say, the girl who can identify medieval scripts.

I got a wrap at 7-11 for lunch. I felt a little rude when I only smiled instead of actually saying thank you to the cashier, but that’s mostly just because, having been a clerk, I usually try to be extra nice to people behind cash registers.

Then came ACTLab. At the beginning of class, I wrote a few things on the white-board at the back of the classroom, but writing – even writing as quickly and as sloppily as I can – just can’t keep up with verbal conversation. Whoever you’re “talking” to has to watch you finish your thought, and in the meantime, they’re already miles ahead of you, mentally.

We did a really long extended movement/meditation exercise in the middle part of class, during which I played DJ, mostly successfully, though I wondered this afternoon what would have happened if I’d put on Fatboy Slim instead of Celtic chant.

During the first part of the discussion that followed, I got up and put an etymology up on the projector, because we were interrogating language on a pretty close level, and I thought it might be useful. I love etymology, so I put up a few more, picking up on keywords in the conversation, like “oppose,” “define,” “resist,” “open.” And then, at some point either toward the end of class or the beginning of lab (we continued the discussion in lab, so it kind of all blurs together) I started “talking” by typing into a Stickies note, blowing up the font to like, 64-point. I quickly realized that not everyone was reading what I was putting up (the way the room is arranged, some peoples’ backs were to the screen), and that my “speech,” situated at the front of the room on a giant glowing screen, had both unfair authority and the potential to be quite subversive. What would have happened, for example, if I had just started typing “LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL” (which I didn’t do)?

This led to some interesting “conversations,” where one person, not necessarily sitting anywhere near me, spoke to me verbally while I responded onscreen. Typed words leave a record, but to keep my half of the “conversation” conversational, I deleted what I typed after I knew the person had read it. One student started calling me “ghostwriter,” to which I responded something along the lines of, “You think, therefore I am.” Later the same student began typing – onto the same monitor, using the same keyboard – a conversation with me wherein we listed as many one-word bands (ie Spoon, Rush, Nirvana) as we could, which reminded me a little bit of the whisper effect I experienced on the first day.

Finally, during the SoundscapesLab (I’m not officially enrolled in Soundscapes, by the way, I just go for fun), my lunchtime coffee wore off, exhaustion took over, and I decided to take a nap on the Big Comfy Couch at the back of the room. The lights were low, the discussion was extremely technical and incomprehensible to me, and I dozed off. I woke up to voices that seemed to be saying my name. My first perception, as I struggled out of sleep, was that people were talking either about me or to me. Someone said my name and some kind of greeting (I don’t even remember who, because I still wasn’t quite awake), and I automatically responded, “Hey.” I didn’t realize that I’d spoken until Joey pointed at me and crowed, “You talked!” or something very similar. I did. And I’m reporting it. But I’m not entirely sure how awake I was when I did it. What’s the difference between that and sleep-talking, which I have no way of knowing whether or not I do, because I don’t have a roommate? Who knows.

I’m going to have to write about today tomorrow afternoon during my break, because I’m tired.

A HEAP OF LANGUAGE

I switch on the light and clear
the table. You come from the ocean
and dry yourself. Inside us, apologies inch
their way around. Most of what we say will hardly matter.

GRAHAM FOUST

THE PRECISION

There is a modesty in nature. In the small
of it and in the strongest. The leaf moves
just the amount the breeze indicates
and nothing more. In the power of lust, too,
there can be a quiet and clarity, a fusion
of exact moments. There is a silence of it
inside the thundering. And when the body swoons,
it is because the heart knows its truth.
There is directness and equipoise in the fervor,
just as the greatest turmoil has precision.
Like the discretion a tornado has when it tears
down building after building, house by house.
It is enough, Kafka said, that the arrow fit
exactly into the wound that it makes. I think
about my body in love as I look down on these
lavish apple trees and the workers moving
with skill from one to the next, singing.

LINDA GREGG

Another thing I have to come to terms with in putting these notes up here is their personal nature, the fact that I am describing myself and my life in a place where anyone could read it and in a place where I’m making no effort to conceal my identity. Keep in mind that I’m conscious of that as I write this.

Because my silence is changing.

Right now I’m relaxing on my couch, taking a break from that response paper. I just ate dinner. I’m chilling out in my pajamas, a blanket and my laptop in my lap, and I’m listening to music and my neighbors talking on their patio outside like they do almost every night.

And as I’m sitting here listening to Ryan Adams, I start to wish I could sing along. Not wish in a conscious, words-in-my-mind way. I just want to. And obviously, I can’t. And my throat starts to feel funny. I touch my neck, and realize that I don’t really know much about the anatomy there. I don’t know exactly where my vocal cords are, what the arrangement of muscle and vertebrae and organ structure is there, but somehow by not talking for longer than I’ve ever not talked in my life, I’ve done something to this structure that holds my head up. It feels like there’s a ghost in my throat. That’s preposterous and more poetic than usefully descriptive, but it’s the truest way I know how to say it. There’s a ghost in my throat.

The other thing I need to get out is the realization I had very late last night and continued to develop this morning, the realization that silence – my silence, anyway – is a kind of skill. Or that it requires skill? But I think it is a kind of skill. Like, yesterday, I think I relied too much on writing things down as a way to communicate. But I have eleven more days to get better at not doing that, to either improve the way I communicate with the people I communicate with on a regular basis, or to simply improve my ability to communicate or “be silent” in general.

Tomorrow will be my first day where I’ll be around people for most of the day. I have class in the morning, then a one-hour break, then an afternoon class, then another one-hour break, then evening lab and ACTLab office hours, if I stay for those. Because I learned this weekend that it might be easier to be truly silent in increasingly larger groups of people, I’m a lot less nervous than I was on Friday. I’m anticipating a few modifications to my routine; I won’t take the bus, even if it’s at the stop when I walk past it, because I might not be able to make it to the door without having to say “excuse me” to get people to move, for example. Still, I know I’m going to learn a lot, and I’ll get to know my silence in a new way.

AFTER READING TU FU, I GO OUTSIDE TO THE DWARF ORCHARD

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
up from the damp grass.
Into the world’s tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

CHARLES WRIGHT

MAKING YOU NOISE
for my mother

The day before you are deaf
completely, I will make you
noise. I will bring birds,
bracelets, chimes to hang
in the wind. We will drive

from Idaho to Washington again,
and I will read to keep you
awake, and I will tap
little poems on the backs
of your arms, your neck
to be sure you hear me.
I will play spoons on your body
in restaurants, smack
my lips, heave you
sighs, each one deeper
than the rest. We will finally
shout. And then, as quiet
slips in, settling over,

I will speak. I will keep speaking.
I will sing you nonsense songs
until you go to sleep.

FRANCESCA BELL

Isn’t that a great word, ephemera? It comes from a medieval Latin medical phrase used to describe passing fevers. I love words.

If you know me at all, you have probably noticed that I carry a Moleskine almost everywhere I go. I’ve been filling up that Moleskine for just over two years now, and it’s only got a few pages left. But I realized that I’m beginning to treat this space as a kind of digital Moleskine. Except it’s a little harder to stick things in between digital leaves. But I’m going to try. Here are some poems I’ve been thinking about as I, er, go about my silence.

THE FORGOTTEN DIALECT OF THE HEART

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

JACK GILBERT