Background Noise
If you get real quiet,
if you listen real close
to your body,
your culture,
there is a stubborn hum,
a dull hiss,
an icy static.
At first it's annoying.
A foreboding whirr.
It comes out mostly
when all else is silent.
What is that?
Some days it's louder.
Usually Monday.
Other days it's quiet.
Friday?
An uneasy disquiet.
The other day I was at work
and a client called to cancel
their appointment.
Their reason for cancelling
was due to them having to
ride in the ambulance
to the hospital
with their student
who was suicidal.
This was something new.
I had never heard that reason given
for cancelling an appointment.
I have a feeling, a premonition almost,
that more and more and more of
this
is where we are headed.
Intuition tells me
the background noise
is our nervous system.
The nervous system of me and you
and your dog, the cat, the plants and
trees, the mud and the bugs and
even the whole earth itself.
It is agitated.
And we have ignored it.
We have numbed it.
We have tried to forget it.
And now,
it is being remembered.
That tinnitus,
that incessant buzzing, ringing
will soon become howling.
The mournful sound of the
nervous system of the whole earth
asking, begging even,
for some mercy.
It started out as a whisper.
It will get louder.
It will get our attention somehow.
Maybe that was what the pandemic
was related to?
Hundreds of hours of floating
in silent darkness
has put me in direct contact
with the agitated state of
our nervous system.
Stiff bodies and frayed minds, wires
crossed and short-circuiting
signals no longer reaching their
desired destinations.
Flights delayed, computer glitches,
power outages, road rage.
The point is this.
If my nervous system feels stressed,
life will feel stressed.
Overworked and neglected and ground
down for long enough,
the body begins to say "no."
The system breaks down.
Communication falters.
This is the state of the ecosystem,
the food system,
the healthcare system,
the political system,
the nervous system.
It's almost
as if nature is saying,
be prepared to listen
(while listening
is still an option).