Purpose-Driven Sound

The sound of The Silence granted permission to listen.

Not the damn ringing in my ears. That is just white noise vouching for old circuitry in the head. Or like how the random snowflakes, sparking on the screen of the old Motorola, vouch for the old circuitry of the Big Bang.

But to listen.

To the burbling emitting from the living gut of the woman sitting next to me in The Friends (Quaker) Meeting.

To the rumble kurplunk from the hallway behind where John Pemberton's automated dispenser-contraption for his ubiquitous carbon dioxide infused coca elixir resides.

To the Silence of the Light that I can never hear.

To the punctuated ejaculations of emotional amplitude responding to the rise and fall of the strategies and tactics of the crucial war of football.

I listen.

My eyes open.

I see.

At eye level, just across from me, out through the glass wall, on the brick retainer holding back a bed of low-crawling junipers . . .the squirrel.

No move is without a purpose-driven cause.

Jerk. Look. Listen. Chew. Freeze. Drop down. Reach. Pick it. Sit up. Roll it in his hands. Bite. Chew. Spit. Bite. Chew. Spit. Stop. Wait. Listen. Drop down. Reach. Pick up. Sit up. Roll it in his hands. Bite. Chew. Spit. Bite. Chew. Chew. Spit. Chew. Stop. Wait. Listen. Drop down. Dart. Stop. Repeat.

Purpose-driven.

An action by him for the every needed action of his doing.

The sound from The Commons is both filtered and amplified by the wall of glass.

The Commons is a tumult of a rainbow of jerseys, sheltering rolling dark thunder clouds of loins with their flashes of red and yellow depicting allegiance to the rivaling herd , all supported by a forest of hirsute power poles ambulating in chaotic orchestration. Just the manifestation of the manliness requisite to the spontaneous folly of fall flag football on the college campus.

It is purpose-driven.

Every instinctively purpose-driven choreographed motion so involved with the sheer randomness in the movement of an elliptical pigskin.

The squeals. Of delight. Of disappointment. The interlude of the sound of Silence. The squeals. Of delight. Of disappointment. And the dance moves a few yards hither.

To hear. Sounds.

Permission accepted.

To be purpose-driven.

To listen.

To The Sound of Silence.

The Refectory Manager