On Listening

Sometimes, no in fact many times I wish they would go away. ‘You have two ears and one mouth!’ Some say; ‘use them in the same fashion,’ but, I cannot! I wish I could though, I really wish I could but my living days and even my nights are spent trying to drown out the cacophony that prevails. I have listened in the past. I have taught my ears to locate the distant voice over radio networks fraught with chatter and all manner of radio speak, very difficult to do while being ‘jammed’ but there was always a procedure for that; a counter-counter measure. Once upon a moon ago, once upon many moons in Africa, I listened in to an exchange of fire between the South African Defence Force and SWAPO insurgents, the Irish Police Monitors working for the United Nations screaming through the airwaves. Alas, and with some regret, that was a long time ago. I say regret, because there are no counter-counter measures for what I hear now. These voices intrude on my every waking moment, and I am sure they present the nightmares during my intermittent sleep. Sometimes, I hear a weapon being ‘cocked!’ It is a strange sound when back home in your town you grew up. I listen in though, I listen in for the round to be discharged from the weapon and put me out of my poor misery but it never happens. Voices, external voices of detriment harass me daily. They never say anything nice, never say anything of any great importance, it’s always a derogatory comment directed at me. They insult my wife and children, they insult all my thoughts and actions and deeds, and they have for many years swayed my thinking away from the positive I used to be. Sometimes but not very often I cannot hear them. I listen, I wait, but sometimes they are ‘away.’  And I struggle for things to say to my dearest because in essence, I am enjoying the silence that prevails, but in truth, these moments are very rare. I can locate them though, they are the times I am climbing a hill such as Great Gable, or Scafell, Skiddaw or Helvelyn. My times camping in The Lakes are the only real respite breaks I have. I wish though, for my own counter-counter measures so I can change frequency of all I hear to my damaged ears. But that, will only come on pain of death. I am in the here and now hearing voices and weapons and I am tortured. So much so that sometimes I wish my own head to explode. Maybe, there is a round for me somewhere that will end this plight. Maybe, as I go about my daily business - venturing the shops, the round I hear being breached will be discharged, and maybe, for real, I will be discharged from this life, change frequency so to speak. Sometimes, I listen, I listen so hard for silence, I listen so hard that below the resonance of the voices I can hear my blood pumping through my skull. And all I am listening for is the silence that for many, feels empty and frightening. I am listening for the silence while my head has its own radio speak. One day, it will happen, and I’ll know I’m on my way out of this world. And do you know something, as I change frequency and become solid once more, my hearing locating the wisps of time fly by to a different world, I’ll not want for here again, not here where nobody uses the correct ratio, of two ears to one mouth. Then you see, I’ll be done shouting and shouted at, and my new world, will be the silence we disturb through the making of noise to drown ‘other’s noise, and my hearing will rest in peace. Not wanting the search for silence that just never comes my way. Silence, for some, is frightening! For me, with my external voices, it would only be pure tranquillity to have them gone, it would be the peace I so long the world would find, it would be the Peace of a walk in The Lakes, where I can once again locate the song of a bird, and hear without fault, natures morning calls, a nature, that here in suburbia; is lost.

Michael J Waite 4^th April 2013.