The moment of silence

Babatunde Alaran

What does silence mean to you? To me it means the language of perspicuity; and perhaps, it means a symbol of disconnection — which is apparently a coalesced definition when someone is suffering from PTSD. Or the ability not to talk through the corpuscle of oneself. Although, silence is not science nor the epistemology of unnecessary thought. It is just a trepidation of behaving against the subconscious of a peculiar event. It is even not an art. It is just a discovery of being obsolete to a particular interregnum.

Meanwhile, someone like me hates the state of silence. It is indeed mind-disturbance for me because of the approach to irrational encroachment that comes with it. To me, it is just a creepy subject that affects humans from not hearing sounds. When someone begins to imagine the crescendo of an event he/she will begin to question the credulous timing of what happens and why does it happen?

These questions aren’t ordinary. They are an element of silence. Silence is love. It affects the emotion and triggers a therapeutic hope for what is going to happen at some point. I experienced this recently. It was during this COVID-19 that silence became clear to me. But the best place to experience — silence is a cul-de-sac; where the ambiance is cuddly, with a tidal wave, or perhaps, without the chirping birds. That is silent of self-isolation.

Silence is like a soliloquy. Silence is an act of a culpable situation that is somewhat surtitle to things that happen to us. Sometimes it is sullen, which paradoxically affects the way we think towards our creative process. This day when I encountered silence as a supple object; I began to think beyond my discretion. Did I ask myself: is silence part of a human’s approach to life? Is it a new way to understand the temerity of the crisis? Meanwhile, at the time I was asking myself these questions, I began to worry about the situation of COVID-19 globally.

One of the things this pandemic has caused is that we now see ourselves as people who are in the sanatorium. We stay there hoping to get well soon. While those who are truly in the isolation centers are in deep silence. Silence is not a symbol of rejection or discrimination. Teaching us that creativity is a sanctum is where silence belongs.

However, during this process of my life as a writer, I begin to wonder what is my existence and how it will work directly to bring a new way of choice to my consciousness. I felt worried for myself when I looked at the mirror to see how tattered I was because I could not associate myself with people around me. This is what silence in a moment of COVID-19 has caused me. I became scoundrel to myself. I could not talk to people. Even on phone, I scolded any receiver as if I was sclerosis.

The condition of silence was surreptitious, also, it was even fierce because I was alone. I acted alone. I did my chores alone without the preference of nobody. Loneliness is an instrument that triggers the decision we make when we groan. Therefore, it is subjected to silence which is a pivotal approach to the way we act to things that are irrational. To be irrational is absolutely a cause to redefining the impetus of self-consciousness or to convincingly defend a decision that is out of content. Experiencing another way of silence during this COVID-19 is stealthy.

I saw everything around me with a strange eye. I stayed in my room for days. I was briefing myself when this pandemic will end. Seriously, one of the effects of this pandemic on a writer is that you will see it as seclusion for the craft.

But, it is somewhat demoralizing because you are not exposed to the real world. Before this pandemic, I wanted to buy books to read, I walked down to the book store closer to my home; and when I got there, the book store was closed. I was deeply frustrated. It was a moment of silence for me because I could not have access to another world which was like an eponymous to me at that time.

Writing in a vacuum is dangerous. It is even deadly. It is a pretentious event that happens to the brain just because you are writing without a reference. So, when I got back home from the book store. I was surfing on the internet to see maybe I could download books. None of those books I downloaded talk to me during this time.

Silence means when you are away from your sense of vitality. To my own understanding, this brings an irrevocable time to us. And it dawdles; also utters the year to the debacle. I never knew this until my mind began to occupy the circumstance at this present time.

This is the time of the anomaly. It is a time of despair. This is the moment of incredulity and time of obvious philanthropy.

But during this time, I felt I was a little bit paranoid about the entirety of things while in quarantine. Sometimes I do imagine, if death is a traumatic action while will philosopher, John Locke says Tabula Rasa. Death is presumably the act of submission to pain and grief; and literarily, to make people think in a ratiocination manner — for the moment it will become rectitude. Whenever someone dies, silence will give a real interpretation of grief or groan. Similarly, these bring repute to the deceased. Death is a referral to silence.

Being in this condition was like rehabilitation. Relatively, I could not feel the relic being in a position to questioning my body on when this COVID-19 will end. Many of the answers to whom I thought were just resentment to the thing that I imagined in my dream. Nightmare is a residual of false ideas that come to mind.

Truly, when I understood the meaning of silence was the moment I could not write. I was absolutely reckoning to the past which was also recondite to my growth. These times nobody knew me but the retrospection was self-doubt.

During that period, silence to me was like a rigmarole. I couldn’t understand its scenario properly. Not until a day when I saw a man who was a riff-raff. He came near me with a kind of reconciliatory laughter. I was naïve. I thought he was a sanguinary when he came closer to me. I ran back abruptly. I hid closer to the kiosk in my neighborhood. To run from a stranger is because saturnine time someone has spent in seclusion. COVID 19 has made me become a real bonhomie because I have been savaging myself to become skeptical about my own action.

Silence has taught me a lesson about schism.