October 18, 2005

I'm alone.  and this silence reminds me of something I miss dearly. 

Get ready for another one of my ramblings.

I recall the time when my father and I took those evening walks through New York streets to get to a local video store. We used to borrow videos and such. I remember being incredibly afriad of walking those nights. Although I was just a young girl, I was aware of the reputation of the streets at night. Especially in the Bronx. I tend to start talking too much to avoid my fear of a muggler coming up and robbing us blind..  However with my father,  it was completely different.

I knew, and he knew that it was very important for his well-being of being away from home, just for a while,  just to contemplate,  just to listen to the hustling of the streets, just to have some down-time. Even if it meant being out in the dark. And I knew he took me along so my mom wouldn't be worried about him out their alone. Even if I was just a 6 year-old fragile girl. 

And my own presence,  was fully indispensible to his well-being. He understood that each of us knew of the other's well-being, and for the reasons for it, and knew how each depended on the other.. how each of us meant more to the other, in this most important of all ways, than anyone or anything else in the world. And that the best of this well-being lay in this mutual knowledge, which was never really concealed nor revealed. There were no words, or even ideas, or formed emotions, of the kind that bave been suggested here,  no more in my father than in me.

These realizations moved clearly through the senses, the memory, the entire feeling of  being next to each other in a place known as 'bad'.. but it felt so peaceful and safe. Sometimes on these evenings,  my dad would whistle some oldies tune and then perhaps we'd start talking a word or two,  but my father would never finish part of that tune. For some reason,  silence seemed much more pleasurable, and we would never seek to say much,  or to listen for a replay, or to even finish what we were saying.

And then when we pass KFC we'd walk slower.. I suppose to smell the chicken. But I must say,  it smelled pretty darn good. And its really unusual how at times, all I hear is us. Even if we didn't say much, and the cars may get a bit noisy.


It was times like these where silence means everything.