Sharpening the silence
Anderson, Chris
Sharpening the silence Last week I lost my voice: It was just laryngitis brought on by me combination of a cold and all the talking leaching requires. It didn't hurt when my voice started sounding...
...My voice is coming back again and I'm worried...
...People hear you say something-or readsomething you've written--and men later when you've stopped caring about it or forgotten it, they want to talk and you have to disavow it or deal with it in some way...
...is fading...
...The wise and knowing father...
...Late afternoon turned to evening and they were quietly playing around me, occasionally telling about something that happened at school, and I would just smile or nod...
...Words make commitments...
...To whom can I talk about this distrust of words...
...Somehow I want to continue to live that purer, better life...
...There was an inverse proportion between the quantity of talk and the apparent-value of the words...
...The voices inmy head are getting louder...
...At the end of the day there wasn 't the sense of raggedness and exhaustion that always, follows a day of being verbally out of control...
...They talked more...
...It didn't hurt when my voice started sounding gravelly gad then rasping, and then disappeared altogether, so to begin with there was the pleasure of getting sympathy for appearing sick...
...Words turn into little pests you have to put up with, little bits of uneasiness to live with...
...Other people felt freer to talk and to talk to each other in my presence, so that the ebb and flow of those particular occasions was especially satisfying...
...It's exhausting really, expending so much energy outwards, generating...
...Thequiet...
...In some instinctive way I don't believe I exist, so I keep up a constant stream of language as a way of making sure that I'm noticed and that I notice myself...
...The trees were budding...
...How to explain mis nostalgia for silence...
...a haze of wo*ds to be seen through...
...Losing my voice was anexcuse not to talk and a reason not to feel guilty about mat...
...Something similar happened at home with the kids...
...At meetings and in class people seemed to listen more closely to my whispered comments...
...The main effect, though, was a strange alertness and focus, $e way a blind person's other senses sharpen...
...Suddenly wifii mis attack of laryngitis all the lines of force balanced inside, establishing themselves is a pattern instead of going every which way-like the time a tree surgeon came to examine our sickly tulip poplar and toW us net to be concerned because the tree was "thrifty," self-sustaining and in good shape...
...Language is a kind of verification for me, a confirmation...
...There wasaspeciai quality of fight ia the early spring sun...
...I sat on the couch in my accustomed place and they came to me...
...CHRIS ANDERSON CHRIS ANDERSON is assistant professor of English and composition coordinator at Oregon State University...
...Laryngitis established mat same kind of economy in me, at least for a while...
...I've thought of faking it but I know that my impulses would give me away...
...The daphne blooming by the front door gave off its soapy perfume...
Vol. 116 • April 1989 • No. 8
