SHARING SILENCE V

Finally, some people say, especially when they talk to me, that silence is to noise what tonic is to gin. One can have a field day playing with these contrasts. I'm told around the same discussions that I should not be lied to that the revolution will not be televised. That as long as it is well shot, edited and packaged in 54-minute documentaries with commercial breaks and experts commentating each scene and scenario it can be televised. 'Look at what they did in Iraq. There were retired US Army Generals in Fox and ABC studios putting names to warships firing cruise missiles from the sea. They told you it was a cruise ship firing a Tomahawk missile that travels hundreds miles and you believed them. If you were the Sheik of some Gulf sheikdom wouldn't you have gotten on the phone the following morning and ordered two cruisers or frigates or destroyers and loaded them with those surface to surface missiles packing a cluster bomb payload?' Of course I would.

And now you wondering what it the point of all this? Get off it, there's no point, it's just dumber and dumber. What this serves to complement is what I mentioned that a revolution can be televised, the same way way for silence to have value one needs the clutter of the tongue against the front teeth. Life wouldn't have value if it wasn't for death. Silence wouldn't have value if it wasn't for noise.

There's a film I once heard of called The Silence of a Lifetime, which I now think was about the river. During Winter the outdoor is so serene one can heart their own hear protesting its enclosure behind the rib cage. On cold winter nights, under warm duvet covers and darkness a lover can share the richness of silence with their lover on the other side of the Vodacom line. There are times when a message on an Inbox folder carries more weight than a sumo wrestler in a ring. That's when people shed tears over nothing because it overwhelms them. Silence becomes such a valuable currency one can take to the bank and deposit in a Current Account.

Every night before I go to sleep I spend some time reflecting. Often I don't like what I see in myself and resort to playing a game on my cellphone which immediately tranquilizes me to comatose. Sometimes I hypnotize myself through a session with the first born of mother earth and collapse into a load of semi-dead beef. Worry no more; I was a cow in my past lifetime and I chowed grass. I guess I used to graze the green hills of Caversham as a Bonsmara that met its death at a Newcastle abattoir. Something in my mind tells me it was at the beginning of the 19th century and I was owned by a family that went by the name Teasdale, that later passed away and was buried at Caversham Farm. And for me, this is the second coming. A stupid man named Frak Nietsze who lived around that time once said that we should endure pain because 'that which does not kill you will make you stronger'. Yesterday was not painful though, even though today I consider myself a survivor. For one, I never spoke to no one on my cellphone and it feels liberating. I shared my silence with the world and they'll know I was here (Caversham)