What is this Note?

2009/10/03

I stumble through dark streets, not drunk, not exactly. A dissonance follows closely behind. Echoing off the walls, the crunch of snow, the scrape of dirt and salt, and the a-rhythmic peal of shrieking wind. They hulk over me, a giant, a stain, mocking my pretensions for silence.

Queer sounds bend and twist through alleys and gutters, lending a texture of oppressive moisture to the air. The night is overgrown with doleful keening, fleeting howls propagating behind me, broken bottles before. I jump at each scuff of shoe, each unutterable syllable, each flurry of driving soundflakes. In my attempts to reap the silences, I'm blighted with dazzling vectors of chaotic choir.

Still my failures, dredged up by the winter's call, walk beside me. They put their arm around me and whisper spirals inside. Grotesque imperfections, walking tumors on my path, gurgle a mountain range into existence. Pressures exerted by underground forces throw the sidewalk into a churning sea of inanity through which I stride. A pause, hints of starshine and the encouraging friction of skin on brick drives the merry wanderers deathward.

A quickening of step hails clouds of potential. My feet pound in my heart pound in my head. I run through the noise, wisps of demonic silence coiling about this fire. It rages, whipping its unhinged maw through sparkling galaxies of stillness and now. Through soundproof windows, filled with fear, addled faces mutter to themselves their superiority, mutter their own entrapment. I, now electric, bolt, my doors dead-locked, my eyes dread-stalked. Dead-panned revulsion stares its withered stare and expects of me grace, that tick in the corner of its mouth betraying amusement. I stop to reckon this, and a discordant clarity erupts from below.

Coldness radiates, plodding bonewards. Ice, frigid branches, greet more warmly, and again that discordant note like an unfamiliar accent. The sinking giant slips in behind me and picks up my head, for what reason I cannot—

A mad giggling tinkles down the street like broken glass. Two make their boisterousness fill the very silences in the cracks in the sidewalk. Their turgid necks swell and their torpid feet wander with the drunken stumble of love. My heart can't help but swell with bile. I tell myself: assholes in love are still assholes, right? Yes. Their clamorous wailing rises above the rooftops and swirls up to the sky, crystallizing into distended sinews of vibration.

These billowing silences, at once twirling and surging, kick up noise like debris in a tornado. Yet it creeps through the night with the lonely sadness of a distant train whistle.

The almost mournful wailing turns to an empty rage as the polarized sounds snap to alignment. The giant, too full for words, speaking in black and white, leaves my side. On feet of music, it glides toward the couple. They're oblivious. It carves swaths of silence, leaving in its wake the quiet sighs of wind-blown leaves.

It accelerates toward them, a whine of grating static pulsing through its tightening veins. With Fall's swiftness, it gains ground, car crashes issuing from its ever-open mouth into the night sky. The cacophony, heart striking a schismatic percussion, rises above them on a crescendo's edge, staring down like a supernova's core.

And it silences them.

...

If I have stood on the shoulders of giants, it has only been to gain the height from which to fall.