Circle of Silence

Posted on July 28, 2004 in Encounters Journals & Notebooks

The waking have one and the same world, the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.

  — Heraclitus

A prisoner of his portable tape player gets a buzz on his cell phone. He pulls out the right plug so that the voice in the phone can go into his left hemisphere while the music soothes his neglected right hemisphere. The conversation ends after a couple of dozen words. The phone clicks as he shuts it. The earplugs go into orbit around his walkman and the wrapped gizmo goes into his backpack. In a few seconds, the table is empty. Four chairs chat at the silence.