Week 1 Prompts: Know thyself....

All of these prompts start alone, in a quiet room. It's quite the opposite of real life to me these days, but I've come to find that sometimes, even with someone else right there with you, it can be just the same as being alone. But, I'll work with what comes to mind when I put aside reality at present.

          1) Alone in a quiet room. Listen. What do you hear?


Electricity. Buzzing in everything around. The ceiling light, the Tv screen. The whir of the tiny fan inside my laptop, joining in with the ever so quiet thump-thump-thump my ceiling fan makes. But underneath all those small noises, somewhere, hiding in my bedrooms old, dilapidated wood floors, there is a lone cricket that makes his presence known every so often. That cricket reminds me of something from my childhood. And every time he rubs his legs to chirp, it just becomes fresh in my memory again, as if it were only yesterday. My mother and father had a rocky relationship, and by the time I was 4, my mother left him. He had a problem with alcohol, and drugs, and quite a few other things. He would have us come to visit, usually just to get money from our mother that was meant to feed us while there, and use it for his addictions instead. The memory that comes to mind though, I must have been about 8 or 9. We were visiting for a weekend, and my father (like any other time) had drank to the point of complete incoherence.  Nothing to write home about. He lived in Brownfield, Maine. If anyone knows where that is, then you know it's one shithole of a small town. I'm not even sure that the term town can be used for it honestly. Lots of pine trees, lots of nothing. We (by we I mean my sister, 3 years older than myself, my father and I) were all in the living room. It was mid-summer and all the windows in the house were opened to let the evening breeze cool us off. My father was leaned back in a chair, barely conscious, and drooling into his beard. All I could hear was this overwhelming chirp of crickets outside. It was a perfect symphony of discord. As it reached its crescendo, my sister and I began giggling. This woke our father, and he asked us what we were laughing at. I replied by saying, "Dad, don't you hear them?" He asked who I was talking about, and I told him the crickets. He looked at us both, then looked around the room, and as he wiped the drool from his beard, he said, "I don't hear any damn crickets."  I'm sure to some people, who grew up with the ideal family life, might miss the humor of this memory, but even now, nearly 20 years later, it's the first thing that comes to mind whenever I hear a cricket. Not some heart-warming kodak moment, but it brings a small smirk to my face all the same.

          2)  Alone in a quiet room. How did you get here? 

Based on all that I know of life, which is largely based on just my own, I got here through a combination of circumstance and choice. Not everything that has led me to this exact moment in life was of my own doing, but I am also not free of blame. A good deal of choices I have made over the years took me further and further down a path that, had I made different decisions to begin with, might very well be someplace else entirely. It's a complicated mix of cause and effect, sometimes the world was the cause, sometimes my own stubbornness. Either way, regardless of the how's or why's, I am here. The cur and the quomodo make no difference from where I am sitting. After all, there is no going back, only forward from here.

          3) Alone in a quiet room. But what's really happening? 
I'm sure there is a lot more happening than I could possibly imagine. The house overall seems too quiet, so I suspect the kids are either doing something they shouldn't, or are brooding about not being able to do what they want. The cats are off somewhere sleeping, or shredding more toiletries. When everything is quiet, that seems to be when shit is actually hitting the fan. The calm before a storm. Outside almost looks pleasant, with a bit of sun peeking out here and there. But it's a lie. There' a draft blowing in through my big bay window across the room, and I know that despite appearances, the world is more or less frozen out there. While I sit here pondering and writing about what might really be happening, whatever actually is happening is doing so around me. I feel like I am in slow motion, normally this would bother me. I spend too much time trying to figure out what's really happening in my life that I sometimes miss what is happening. Missing the forest for the trees or some such nonsense. My body screaming at me for moving will win out today, and rather than put energy or effort into discovering what may be going on, I'm just going to lay here and accept that the world is still turning.