I used to love noise. Silence was not my friend. Silence was at best awkward and at worst, spooky. But then I got to know her.

	A dozen years ago, I'd went to live with my cousin up in Seattle to study graphic arts. I lived in a small apartment there above Gaswerx with a dreamy view of Lake Union & the Needle. I also had to deal with the unfortunate MaryJane smoke from my neighbors but... oh never mind. I especially loved skating in the morning to school, listening to music, and watching the empty streets come to life. A second routine, to which I was nearly as faithful, was skating a block past school in the morning to hit up McDonald's. While not the healthiest of choices, there were some mornings a hash brown and OJ woke me up with that perfect salt-sweet-slap.

	There was an older gentlemen who frequented McDonald's most morning I was there. He was black with salt & pepper black hair and a chin that reminded me of Gary Payton. He was very quiet in a simply content way. From his clothes, I wasn't sure at first if he were homeless, but this turned out to be more a cultural milieu of Seattle of which I was not yet acclimated. One morning, after changing my clothes in one of the McDonald's bathroom stalls, I came out to wash my hands and he was standing there shaving. It felt weird to me that we saw each other most mornings for two weeks and had not yet said anything. So, in the spirit of uncomfortable silence, I chimed shooting my hand out.
	
	"Can't stand the silence. Hi, I'm Christian!"

	"Jaman." He shook my hand, but countered frankly. "Silence isn't at all bad, man. Silence must be heard." That was funny. I sighed one of those polite affirmations you give when you're not sure if what you heard was deep or off-putting. We would go on to be casual acquaintances for a few months. Turns out he used to live near my home in Cali. Jaman's words hung with me for two reasons. At the time, the biggest reason was that my favorite music artist told me seven months earlier that Silence Must be Heard. That day I started to realize those lyrics didn't just sound clever. The other reason was, unbeknownst to me, I had already started craving silence because of the Internet. What I've learned since then is that to say silence must be heard, is also to say that occasionally the noise must end. But what is noise?
	
	Please read the next sentence twice. If you own a smartphone, you know what noise is. 

	Now let's drop the whimsy and talk exactly about what I mean. Sit alone in room without pixels for your eyes or a playlist for your ears and your thoughts will start to happen. If you use your smartphone regularly, this will bother you. Fight the urge to close your eyes and cover your ears. Look around at everything. I look at everything on my phone all the time but my gaze shifts only a few arcseconds (= not looking around at all). You need to turn your head now and lock on to things. Play the Perloined' Letter and look for something. Study it with your eyes, then look at the opposite direction and do the same. Practice again and again.

	Now lets get back to the whimsy and all those lines that often sound more clever than they are. You know those lines. You see them all the time on bumper stickers. They make people think an argument was just won without a drop of logic from the well of knowledge. If you can escape the noise, look around, and possibly read a real book then you'll start listening with your eyes. You'll remember what silence is. Therafter, you'll step reluctantly into noise instead of plunging into it when you go on break. You will listen more with your ears and the noise will fade. Then you'll know what silence sounds like and when you do, even your whispers will echo. - D

//Just saw the movie, "The Spirit." What exactly became of that time I'll never know, but simply wasting the time or killing it would've been more merciful.