• Strident Memoirs

    Each note played into tune is yet another permanent stamp into one of the many musical compositions that make up our minds. The bass is of sorrow and love extends as the lightest gas in our atmosphere, and together, the rhythm causes the simplest cracks in our psychological structure, each mark an awaking to what the world carries in a sense of reality. We continue to withdraw from the time that continuously ticks away. This time is sacred, to a second does the final breath of those that carry their inaudible tones lasts, and to this second is our every breath lost within the deepest voids of the Universe. We steadily revolve around our very own star, and our time is a product of its essence, but what of the sun’s time? What is of the time of emptiness? These constant breaths consume the thriving creature that feed on our dust and grapple onto an atoms skin, and the elements fall within the tears of space to disappear into this calamitous chasm. What is left behind? We must all remember that sound itself is a wave; it is a cry from the substances that had once screeched through the heavens as its footprints were enfolded in darkness, so that only the belly of its sound would be able to boundlessly march its way throughout the universe, telling its tales to those who can't see, and those who would never experience a journey such as the one it had written in the skies. Because each word that comes out of our mouths are dispersed and forgotten, but only to us, as they are remembered by those that felt the push of its tide course upon their living flesh. The sounds that we’ve picked up throughout our lives have been absorbed and compressed within each and every tissue in our anatomy. These sounds, these memories make up who we are as they are the words that are written down in black ink onto our guide books.
    There are many things that I’ve encountered throughout my young life that have helped to make the big leap from my very own nest, the most comfortable of bed sheets that have kept the warmth of my mind within radiance, and now I stand at the thresholds of adulthood. To my innocents, a sound was but a quick snap, it came racing in to break the rope that ran across my own finish line. To the time of now, and of the future, these simple sounds became the foundations for every step I would ever choose to take. When I think back on my life, there are certain things that hold nothing but emptiness, missing pages, and certain things that jump out like a sudden wound. One powerfully vibrant memory is that of the creaky wooden staircase. I was in second grade when we moved from Bethel to Southbury, and the house that I walked into would soon become the most natural cue for my mind to follow when faced with the word “home.” For nine years we lived in that house, and though the dining room floor was about to collapse, the roof had already partially fallen through, at some points you could not tell what was wall paint and what was mold, and we filled full garbage cans with rainwater during storms, I will always miss living in that house. But a sound that I can remember, other than that of water falling at my bedside, was the wooden staircase that led up to the second floor (my room, my parents room [which later switched to my sisters] a bathroom, and a walk in closet). In time we soon had each of the different family members different sounding creak on the staircase memorized as they stepped down onto the rotting wood, so we knew by the sound of the step who was coming up, we each had our own stepping profile. If we were away you’d always find Oreo (my cocker spaniel) waiting at step five, looking out the window. She was one of the largest parts of my growing up, and when she died, I felt as if it were I that took her place on that step, looking out into the abyss for another being to fill that hole that things like Oreo had fit in so well, the sound of her bark would never go forgotten, but the staircase holds more memories than that. The stairs hold something that to me a very dark memory that some may consider a possible prelude to madness. I was known as the worrier ever since I was a child, as I was the one (along with my father) who would go around at three in the morning making sure the cats were in and locking up every window and door. Worrying consumed a large portion of my every day life, and if there’s one things my therapist said I needed to get over it was the concept of needless worrying. I remember this night, it was another one of those days in which my dad forgot (or didn’t have the money) to pay the electric bill, so for a night, I would live without sound. As I was lying in my pillow, with the horrible silence enticing my fear and imagination, I heard the staircase vibrating over and over again, a message of warning to that of its listeners. At least four times did I have to go crying into my parent’s bedroom, telling them with such honesty that I had heard somebody coming up the stairs. And I wasn’t a five year old “monster in the closet” kid, I may have been eleven or twelve at that point, a cowering momma’s boy who had little to no self esteem whatsoever. It seems to me that my fear of emptiness has had such a profound effect on how I live today, because of instances such as those, I have always been so afraid of facing a silent room, or walking out into darkness. Because I fear that of my own voice within this silence will give away the fact that I am a living breathing human in a room waiting for convergence, because within this silence rests a mind that continues to speak in consistent riddles. All I can do, all I’ve ever attempted to do is to run away, by turning on a TV or Radio, or going to sleep in my parents bedroom.
    A walk through our old house would come with many different sounds, it would seem that there wasn’t a single location of peace, but fore me, those sounds helped me to look at life without fear. I can assure that most people have vivid memories of the music that they have faced in their lives. Because music is much more than a customary sound, it is a melody that can potentially cause thousands of physiological attributes. A musical mood is the wheel to many revelational equations. In my life, seeing music in different qualities have had me see life through many different perspectives. My older/est brother was a huge influence on the person that I became, for he was the vision of distance, he was the face in the rear view mirror moving away into the sunset as our vehicle walked towards the light of the moon. Throughout my life, my brother has become the vision of the person you don’t want to be, for he has slipped and crawled within our view so very often. Music for me represented the different worlds that existed even within my own home, to become a part of each world, I had to become a part of that music, and doing so was a very natural experience for me who has had a very powerful grasp on the mysteries of emotions. There, through the blue door in the kitchen, passed the “mud room,” my brother would be locked up beyond the graffiti door, smoke emanating through the cracks, his hardcore screaming bands of hate treating each wall as if it was a paper filter to an ocean of madness. I remember being very young, and my siblings and I (the ones that share my generation) all proclaimed that The Beatles were our favorite band, however with a bit more experience, that did change, but in the sanctuary of others, that statement turned its own tide. When I was with my older brother, my favorite band was “Slipknot,” but it was only when I was within those thin walls, bouncing up and down on his bed and screeching my lungs to dust with an innocent tongue. What that music was to me was one of the most important concepts to coincide with my worrying nature, because a silent room was an empty room, and when I didn’t feel the pounding heartbeat of that sound, shaking our house, it meant to me that the beat of his own heart was at flaw. One thing to understand about my brother, it was that whenever he was away, you could guess he was in some kind of life threatening danger. To this day, the most stressful memories of my life are the one in which I wonder where my brother is, for there are times in which that question would bring only sadness. So for me, hearing his music was the same thing as hearing his own life, and I cherished every second I ever spent with him, so even as my parents would clamp there palms upon there ear canals and bang heavily on the walls, I would smile at the sound, for it was reassurance that everything was okay.
    There was one sound in my life that never left my side, it was my very own shadow, a version of me that hid from the masks of light, and sunk into the truths within the darkness. Wherever I was, I would always hear this sound, because this sound was the one and only sound that truthfully spoke from the deepest depths of my soul. In a sense, I am quite the talker, though my voice isn’t caught by the ears of my peers or coworkers, a tape recorder would show that my voice is a muscle that is constantly exercised. Throughout my very own life, my voice has been the one echo that my ears would never be able to forget; it is the most usual customer to my sense of sound. Though every time the bell rang as the service door swung open, a new tale would being to be told, because this voice has been the voice of truth, and the most truthful voice of reason. I know where my voice has been throughout my life, and that understanding is what has brought through the harshest moments, but where it hasn’t been is also an important tool to understand who I am. I can see it even as a child, my parents always told me that I was the quiet one, even as a baby, would never cry, only wine and give my family famous “bottom lip” routine. And one memory I have of growing up in the social world is of sitting around in our Kindergarten clusters, screaming out quick answers to simple questions. Story time always came with it, while reading those flimsy picture books; the young teacher would playfully ask the class a simple question regarding who’s doing what in the plot and why. When the question mark cued a response, we would all scream out answers, seemingly simultaneously, but there are of course a jumble of shrieks and hollers that last the span of about 5 seconds, and there is a large gap between the first person to scream and the last person to scream. The one that screams last only yells an answer to mingle with the parade of thoughts that bubbled above our pixilated heads. For these children, the question wasn’t the cue to yell, the blare of the crowd was the cue to mimic the sounds that were heard from the rest. Are these children slow? Were they not listening? This is a possibility, and can be the reason for many delayed responses, but what about the ones that truthfully makes a habit out of it. In these minds, in my mind, when a question is asked, a whole new bunch of questions spark an everlasting flame in our consciousness. The worst thing is to be the one kid that says something different, especially if they’re all right. There is something that people have to remember, it’s that habits are hardly the simple, stop smoking or brush your teeth commands, the hardest habits to break are the ones that have been etched into the sub consciousness. A small thing like letting other people answer the questions for me has evolved into a complex machine of intellectual malfunctions in my head. Whenever posed with a question, the first task that my mind is programmed to perform is to wait for somebody else or something else to answer it. Then, if nothing comes, there is the possibility that if I answer now, it will look slow, so instead of searching for an answer, I say nothing and wait for the asker to conclude that I’m just too shy to let it out, when really the only times I can truly think is when I’m in front of a computer screen or in a quiet place by myself, this is when my voice is heard. My voice exists within my mind, and people don’t realize how empty I am in a social situation, I truthfully cannot answer questions when posed, I can only answer with a moment of silence.
    A sound is a wave, it will continue on throughout the universe forever. Through this world and the next, each sound we make can never stop growing and each of our minds are constantly sucking in this undying meaning left by those that cared for us. I know that I will never forget what the past has left for me, and I know that I will never let anything kill off the person that I am on the inside. All I know is that time itself is the essence of life as we know it, and each second, a new world is born, a new door is opened, and a new concept is recognized within our minds, and everything that I have ever sensed or perceived has been recorded within the construction of my being, and I will not stop until it is completed, and I pass on a legacy of my own, screaming my own meaning into the sky for all that follow to hear and write their own destinies from its lessons.