“Bang!” He knocked on the table.
“Bang!”
I trembled even though I was paying attention on him. I leaned closer to the inner space and breathed the air of quietness deeply. My eyelids were dropping down, as if the smell of that air was narcotic…
Sitting in a place where the sounds of Mr. Baker and the sounds of passing students were heard at the same time, I detected a separate world from my left ear and my right ear. I heard screaming, laughing, and speaking,sounds at a normal communication volume, from my left ear; I heard whispering and murmuring, sounds that create an intimacy and soothing feelings, from my right ear.
Sometimes I felt distracted; sometimes I felt tired. Ultimately I leaned and took deep breaths. “Let my world gets isolated and let the sounds of softness flow into where it should flow.” I closed my eyes. I took deep breaths.
I didn’t hear or understand much about the poems at first. “It is not supposed to be a debate club or an academic discussion,” I told myself, “It is a zone of silence of soul; it is the best time to practice listening to a single sound.”
The light was dim; the quietness was stationary. Mr. Baker’s voice was like a drop of water getting ripples flowing, flowing out, and flowing out a little bit. My instinct was like a stick of detector receiving intermittent signals from the subtle water waves.
“This is the poem about my dad…” As Mr. Baker proceeded, I felt nervous. The more the poem got personal, the closer the poet was standing in front of me. It was sore and it was silent. It was still the ripple, but with the detector getting activated. Strangely, I did not remember any words or details of the poem, while I remembered pictures of Mr. Baker getting a phone call at his dizzies moment and driving on a road filled with darkness. While he was driving, his mind was drenching into the darkness with straightened attention. He imagined himself standing by his father and recalled blindly on some memories about his dad…
Once the claps started again. I sat in the original way,looking around at people’s numb faces numbly. The quietness did not creep out of the room. My heart was sliding somewhere else.
Walking back, I let the wind slapping my face freely, as I felt empty in mind but rich in my breath.
