Quiet | noise
Even in lockdown, I craved more quiet, more time alone. I wanted a silence so deep the pressure would force my thoughts to crystallise at last. I wanted the silence of the sky or deep water or snow. Mostly, I wanted the rattle in my head to stop and I definitely wanted everyone else to shut up.
Turns out, though, I will do anything to fill the silence. I watched all five seasons of Queer Eye. I read books. I worked and talked and planted flowers in soil that is slowly, slowly improving. Seeing a worm in that garden bed felt like a greater achievement than any word I have ever put on any paper anywhere. I never did bake and I never got bored enough to sort out the house. I emptied boxes, though, that were packed when we moved home from Melbourne 18 years ago. I found letters from my sister, my mum and, very occasionally, my dad.
Mum’s letters were warm, immediate, chatty – it felt like having her back again. She sent me newspaper clippings and cartoons, gossip, weather reports and family news. We were learning to live in different places when neither of us really wanted to. So we wrote and talked on the phone and sent emails back and forth. It was fairly new tech then, and you’d better believe we tried out every font and colour.
My sister and I traded in trinkets and ephemera, the angst and sense of becoming peculiar to 20-something-year-olds everywhere. Ticket stubs, sale receipts, film programmes, wrapping paper and fabric scraps crossed the Tasman, lightweight marks of small-scale adventure and discovery. What we were learning wasn’t particularly profound or unique, but it was ours.
Dad’s letters were courtly, formal, beautifully written. He was considerate, thoughtful and gave little away. His questions were philosophical and often uncomfortable. No easy ride there, ever.
I don’t write letters now. Most personal correspondence is by message, text, what’s app. I’m sure this establishes my demographic and vintage very precisely. I’ve all but given up on birthday cards – for those I love most, there is little new to say. I’m fond of the soundbite and the zinger. If I were younger, I might go to memes but being cranky and in my mid-40s, I find them banal. Mum would have loved these forms, with their erratic spelling, accidental truth, the back and forth of a good, funny thread. She would have hated the meanness though, the lack of generosity. She could snark with the best of them but always from a place of believing people were fundamentally good. It bewildered her when they weren’t.
We’re in deep winter now, the turning, gathering time of Puaka Matariki. Branches are bare but the trees are in bud, the first leaves tightly furled and waiting. The witch hazel is starting to flower and the earliest cherry is a scatter of blossom. Bulbs are pushing through, the shoots an early clue to what lies in the dirt. Ferns are softly furred clumps and we’re transplanting flax. We’ve been slow to clear and mulch the vege beds but I’m not sure it matters much. The chard looks like it will live forever.
It’s this time of year that I most notice the difference between our side of the valley and the other. The ground here is cold – frosty mornings harden into long, chill days. We light the fire early and cycle washing between line, rack and dryer. The opposite hill is a five minute walk away and five degrees warmer. It’s where I unbutton my coat and feel my shoulders drop in the sun. I’d live there but the houses are awfully close together and you can’t see the sea so well. I’ll put up with a lot for a glimpse of the sea.
It’s time though, isn’t it? Time for change.
There was a moment there in lockdown where we all heard what lies beneath the steady buzz of our busy, stressed lives, what breathes in the dark while those old demons of privilege – racism, patriarchy, capitalism, homophobia – play out their last, desperate hands. It was hard to hear and is fading fast as we get pulled back into the norms, but we did hear it. “It was like someone switched off the fridge,” said more than one person. “I didn’t know how much noise I live with all the time.”
The solutions, the pathways forward started to look different, different and deeply, inter-generationally familiar. Māori and Pasifika communities led the way. Networks and self-determination saved whole communities. Iwi opened boundary checkpoints to keep their kaumātua safe. Food gathering and distribution networks swung into action. Firewood was gathered and taken to those who needed it. At Puketeraki, flowers were placed on graves in the urupā to mark Mothers’ Day for those who couldn’t be there. The government was reminded at every turn – and God did they need it – that the Treaty partnership means listening, not making unilateral decisions. The mainstream was shown to be partial, misleadingly normed to a white, middle-class status quo. Under pressure, it couldn’t answer all the questions. It didn’t even know all the questions to ask.
And we’re just starting, bracing and preparing for the what’s next. Maybe it’s time to find something that is neither quiet nor noise. Something closer to fierce, deliberate action, long conversations, wide listening, learning. Something closer to the ground, and to each other.
