TWO LESSONS

I have entered into an absurd game of avoidance, on very simple terms: using dark paint in a bright room.  The tiniest smudge will amount to catastrophe on my newly white walls, so I am reduced to an unconventional dance with carefully scripted moves.  I had not fully thought it through before I began.  My precautions are a reverse version of the floor-is-lava game, where I am the dangerous element and everything else will be safe only if I don’t so much as nudge it.  My implements and I will be doing some serious regrouping before our next attempt.  Somehow in all my imaginings of this particular project, I failed to predict how volatile it would be; there is no easy way to execute this plan.  In the future I’ll be using the dark paint first.  Or maybe this will be the last time – with some experiments, once is more than enough.

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I didn’t understand at first how best to be alone.  I’d had some experience, of course, but this was new: I was consistently the only person in the house for the greater part of the day, and there were adjustments to be made.  At first I played music to fill the void, much the same as when I drove, where the radio was always on, always starting up as soon as the car did.  Between driving and my time at home I systematically eliminated all silence from my life.  This lasted for about a month this summer.  It took a visit from my sister and her candid assurance that she’d rather just talk to me while we drove to make me turn off the car radio.  After that I stopped manufacturing noise to keep myself company.  There are simpler methods, anyway: a few open windows fill the house with a continuous buzz of crickets and cicadas, and I can still hear myself think.