Monday, November 8, I observed my first day of silence for my thesis. I was not entirely sure what to expect, but I did feel a high grade of excitement for this sort of game I would be playing, with myself and all I would encounter that day. I started the day in my house with a minor slip-up: I addressed one of my roommate's cats out loud, as I do per usual when I am alone in the house with them. I repeated the glitch later on that same afternoon with another one of the house cats. If it had not happened more than once with these animals, and not at all with any of my human acquaintances, I may not have thought of the occurrence as anything significant. But I got to wondering why it is that humans even attempt to carry out these one-sided conversations with animals of other species? Why do we use words in our tongue knowing they will not be understood, except for perhaps the tonal inflections of the expression? Why not then instead make the appropriate noises and sounds that could communicate the same sentiment and could perhaps be more easily understood by the animal conversant? Or are we afraid to misspeak in the language of purrs and hisses? Should a species be limited to the language of its own, or shall we become bilingual to speak with birds? Here I found an example of how language is a limitation in the ecology of inter-species communication, in the coherence of Morton's "mesh". It "says" more to simply eat your fellow creature than discuss the matter of predation with it.
As I rode my bicycle to school, I noticed that the interior of my mind was far from quiet. My head was still cluttered with sounds, noise, blips of phrases and worded-thoughts. As I passed signs on the road, I heard the echo of their name resound and linger until another overlapped or took its place. I realized perhaps it would be good to meditate in the morning before beginning my silent days to clear some space in my psyche and calm its churning.
Perhaps the most peculiar observation I made in this first day was in my interaction with my classmates on campus. Though I had come prepared with a small Moleskin with written on the first page the words in bold: "Please excuse me from speech today. I am observing a day of silence. Thank you." in case an interaction should become excessively awkward, I realized as the day went on how little I needed this doctor's note. Many of my classmates that spotted me and approached me opened up with a spill of chatter, all about their days and worries and complaints and prospects, and wandered away to their to-dos never even realizing that I had not spoken a word in the exchange. I came to see that in many cases conversation can be very one-sided; all that was required of me was to be sounding board in which others could carry out their inner dialogue with a listener present-- no response was necessary on my part but an understanding smile and nod. Language in this context was clearly not ecological, or only ecological in the sense that the speaker was relating to his or her self out loud.
I ended my stretch of silence by departing early from campus to my home where I took a hearty nap before work. I work as a caller at Phonathon, a department of Loyola in which I am required to call alumni through a computer database, confirm their contact information, give them "exciting news and updates" about the university, and entice them to make a donation to the school. Of course silence is not entirely conducive to this activity, so I must break my speech fast upon arriving. In retrospect, I suspect that I returned home early on that first day of my practice in mental weariness; it does require much to hold my tongue, perhaps more than participation in mindless blabber. I also perhaps had a sneaking sense of isolation in being surrounded by the sounds of talk and not being able to partake. I did find my bicycle ride home most pleasing, and felt perhaps more immersed in the air around me than ever, confirming my prediction that refraining from language may create for the nonuser a heightened sense of connectedness to the ambient. I felt a calm as I fled.
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