Quiet

There was a man once, who lived far away from everyone else. He lived in a house in the middle of a field, which was surrounded by forest. There was a long, winding dirt road through the woods up to his house, and he was the only one to ever use it. In the house, the man had two dogs, and a typewriter and a wood burning stove. Outside the house, the man had a vegetable garden and some chickens. He spent his days tending his garden, walking in the woods, looking after his chickens, and chopping wood. In the summer, there was warm wind and blue skies and green trees. In the winter, there was heavy snow and long fire-lit nights and crystals of ice on every surface.

In the morning, the man would wake up early with the sunrise, and walk about his house naked. He would fix himself breakfast, sometimes fruit, sometimes bacon, and then he would tend to his chores; sometime a loose slate needed to be fixed, sometimes the water heater needed to be mended. He took immense, quiet pleasure in his work. He did things that needed to be done and fixed things that needed to be fixed, and when he was done he had always achieved something in the most immediate and practical way possible. When he was finished with his work for the day, he would sit down at his typewriter and write stories about people he had met and relationships he had had and things that had happened to him.

After a simple lunch, he would sometimes make his way down the long winding dirt road, and meet his friends in the city. Compared to his quiet home, the city was loud and dirty and noisy. The man didn't like the noise, but for the short time that he spent in the midst of it, he enjoyed it. He enjoyed the pace and the information. He enjoyed the city as an outsider who could visit whenever he liked, and then leave as he saw fit. He would drink with his friends, and they would talk and laugh and they would sometimes meet more people and they would ask him who he was and what he did. He would tell them an unenthusiastic half-truth, and then listen to them talk and absorb their speech and mannerisms and try to absorb and to understand them.

After he had been in the city for a while, he felt the noise begin to change. He would begin to block it out instead of appreciating it in all its terrible beauty. It began to work its way inside him, and become part of who he was; it became a constant, that he could either fight or accept, and most of the time it was too persuasive for him to fight. When this happened, he would leave the city and return to his home in the field surrounded by forest, and he would listen to the not-noise made by the birds and the wind and the trees and he would appreciate that it contributed instead of distracted; created instead of destroyed; it was unapologetic and indifferent, and it didn't ask for anything. The man would smile and he would look forward to going to the city again. Sometimes he would sleep outside on the grass and wake in the morning covered in dew and he would want nothing.