Silence Please

When was the last time you experienced real silence?

Silence is often thought of as the absence of speech. This type of silence can be found in weird places, like the forest, libraries, and Greenland. The absence of speech is often lovely, and after a day at work, where everyone wants you to do something, the absence of speech is what you want most of all. That, and a bottle of vodka.

But no matter how lovely the absence of speech can be, it is not to be confused with actual silence. When you go to the forest, a library, or, God forbid, Greenland, you might not hear nagging, but you will hear something else. In the forest there will be birds singing, deer walking around, cute little mice being eaten by foxes and just the simple sound of the wind in the trees. In a library you’ll hear people whispering, the sound of someone turning a page in a book, and probably the local winos hiding out in the textbook section. On Greenland, there will inevitably be the sound of snow falling, or snow melting, or snow just sitting there, and of course, the sound of Inuits running through the snow to escape the polar bears.

M is in Estonia, again, and I’m pretty used to the relative silence I get in our apartment when he’s gone. I don’t usually talk to myself, and if I turn off the music, the TV and stop typing, I have silence.

Or so I thought.

This morning, I woke up at 6 am by M’s UPS beeping like crazy. It kept beeping for a few minutes, then turned itself, and M’s server, off. And that’s when I noticed it. The silence. We were having a blackout and the back-up power supply to the server was the last thing to go. Even the compressor in the fridge was silent. There were no cars in the road, no electrical buzz that always seems to surround us. Nothing. Only silence.

And that’s when it hit me.

This is what it must be like inside M’s head.

Silence, unfortunately, will also be observed in Poland tomorrow, with two silent minutes, while millions mourn the loss of their leader. The tragic plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski this morning, also killed his wife, Poland's army chief, their central bank governor, and several members of parliament.

Naturally, this is a terrible loss for the Polish people, who lost the entire political elite in one horrific plane crash. With no President, and no army chief, Poland is in a state of shock. With every respect for the people who lost loved ones in today’s crash, I am just going to go ahead and pose the question everyone is asking themselves.

Does this mean Poland is up for auction? *

Silence Please