March 29, 2003 - 6:03 p.m.
burwash...night of the living dead
it has been my experience, i think authoritatively, that rarely do you have the problem of someone talking too little. Usually you can't get people to shut up. Even if they don't speak your language they're trying to talk to you, trying to communicate, trying to ask you something. Even if they're shy, their shyness speaks to you. Their averted eyes, and peeking, twitching smiles tell you that something, anything, is going through their mind. Something, some sign of life, to let you know that they are glad of the weather, sorry to be taking up your leg room or appologetic for having nothing to say at all. Or else you get their whole life story.
I had just the opposite experience, sitting down to an over early dinner. In the empty hall, i sat across from her. Not directly across, but kitty-corner (as my grandmother would say) to her, at least we had our aloneness in common. I ventured, 'you don't mind if i look like i'm sitting with you, do you?'
she looked horrified that i'd spoken. It was so strange. I've never seen someone try so hard not to speak before. She looked so miserable. only, she didn't try or look anything. nothing. no thing. she just was. it seemed effortless the degree to which she was indifferent to the world around her. i sat, imagining her head on different bodies.... her face on the body of a little girl, completely unimpressed with the party dress her mother was forcing her to wear, but unable to even throw a tantrum,
her head stuck on top of a body staring eternally at the ocean, in a rocking chair, but not rocking, just sitting forever and ever.
her head on a body, craddling a dead man's body in her lap like the virgin mary,
her expression was so practical, multipurpose, suitable for every occasion, from bereavement, to disinterest, to drug induced coma...
needless to say, that's all i can remember about her, i know i tried to say other things, but fell silent in my astonishment, in the utter futility of speech.
as she, expressionlessly picked herself up to go, i hoped for a moment that she'd glance up out of the oblivion and at least acknowledge that a being with a pulse had sat for 15 minutes recycling her air...
no such luck.
thank you for the lovely dinner conversation, it was such a pleasure to have met you..
