The deafening silences

There's something really peculiar about the silence. It seems to be the loudest sound in the world. The one in which you seem to fear that your thoughts are audibly being pronounced for all to hear by Morgan Freeman. 

Ever since I started living on my own, I have found that the silences are really the one gift I can give myself. But it wasn't easy. Having grown up in a home which was always full of people, I craved having my own little piece of real estate. My father, being the former Marxist man of letters thought the television was a tool to amuse the masses and distract them from the real shit going on. He vilified it and rationed the amount of time his children could sedate themselves on it. This is not to say that Marxism leads inevitably to an authoritarian leadership with rations meted out by the man..but it's a curious coincidence. 

When he finally relented to the insipid offspring of his beating each other up, leaving stains in his books and running around like maniacs, he finally announced that the TV would move to our bedroom. This was the beginning of the end. This meant that the one place I get away to read a good book, practice my martial arts moves or appreciate the beauty of (insert name of -gorgeous lady or any female with a pulse that I was not related to -here) with the fervor that only a 13 year old boy can muster, was gone. 

At any given time someone would have the screen on and hence their bodies would occupy the same space as my stuff. My bed would be sat on and thus rendered  too warm to enjoy when bed time arrived. So I took advantage of a reasonably sized compound in which I could go and just let my imagination run free. But alas, God's most curious creation, the mosquito waited . So too did a particularly excitable Alsatian that couldn't understand that I was a boy with a deep soul seeking a place to take a dip in the munificence of my own deep thoughts. 

Blast.

One day, I hoped, I would be free . Boarding school for quite obvious reasons did not offer this and neither did university. It's only when I first left to live on my own that I was full on excited about the chance to finally have some alone time. Away from the raucous of people's opinions on the weather, on this TV show or who should be president, on exactly which restaurant made the best food in Kampala...I would finally be free to ponder things from the infinitesimally banal to the profoundly important. I would be able to read those books BBC says everyone should read.

So finally it happens. I move into a little apartment on my own. Armed with a  little 2 bedroom apartment with the basic furnishing including a little TV that I swore I wouldn't turn on and with a week before my room ate would show up. I had my chance. Oh the glee.

Night 1 and I finish hanging my clothes in the closet and sorting where my stuff goes in the new digs. I sit on my bed and start to think. And suddenly the worries and anxieties come rushing in. What if I had chosen the wrong course for University? What if there is no deeper meaning to life? What if Friends was a shit TV show that had tricked me into thinking it was deep. Damn you Chandler Bing!

I went to the kitchen and had a drink of water.

I looked at the TV.

Blast it. No I shan't do this. I shan't.

Well maybe just tonight. Just to get rid of this silence for a few moments.

Click...TV on....

"Maybe tomorrow", I said. "Yes, Tomorrow I'll bask."

Part 1 of 2


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Submission 3 of 7