The funniest thing is that it really happens - when you whisper, everyone in the room begins to tiptoe. They creep along in silence as if...as if there's really something to be quiet about.
It's day four of my acute laryngitis, and it's been mostly entertaining, as I use Colin and my friend Stacy, visiting from Chicago, as my "translators" for phone conversations, and we laugh at the oddities of life around a person who can hear but not speak above a whisper. It's like driving on the left side - everyone feels the need to re-orient. Colin can't help but whisper back - I think it's a sign of empathy - and though with Stacy around there've been three people consistently, we're all beginning to feel how my relatively constant stream of conversation fills the room. The silence is - just weird.
But immensely comforting, to be with people with whom speech isn't necessary every minute. We were upstate when my voice left me and it started to snow, and in front of the fire I lay in silence on one couch with my head in Colin's lap as Stacy typed into her laptop on the other. I can count on one hand the times in my life when I remember feeling so - content. And complete. Actually kind of nice, that my "disorder" keeps me from ruining a perfectly companionable silence by filling it up with unnecessary chatter.
Only yesterday afternoon - day three- did I begin to entertain the notion that there may be something more lasting going on than vocal folds slightly inflamed due to my recent cold. Maybe I really injured them coughing. In twenty years of professional singing, I've never had laryngitis, therefore I'm unsure as to its "normal" track of recovery.
It's strange to imagine a world without my voice. More than part of my identity, more than an extension of my ego, my voice is almost another person with whom I feel I've always lived. Like my "deamon" (a la The Golden Compass.)
Already yesterday I heard the outgoing message on our answering machine and thought, she sounds so far away. Who is that girl? What if I lost my voice, or I regained it and it wasn't...pretty to listen to? Imagining such a world requires reorganizing the pieces of my soul. It's not entirely a bad thing, ...just...completely different.
Maybe being sans voice would help focus my now scattered energies. Funny how over the past few days I've become more diligent about practicing my harp. And I'm more interested in that dance class I've been studiously not attending for ten years. Perhaps it doesn't matter what my mode of expression is. I just need one.
Maybe without my voice I would finally get that job with Doctors Without Borders and do something important in the world. Maybe focus my energies on healing. Maybe many things would be different.
Anyway, I'm settling in. We've pulled out the sign language dictionary, and changed the outgoing message on my cell phone so it instructs people to leave an email address, FAX, or some way to reach them which does not involve my speaking. I'm wondering how I'm going to change that plane reservation for which I need to speak to a person. How much can I depend on others to be my voice, and for how long? How much does one of those TDD devices cost?
Colin thinks maybe I cursed myself by taking the picture above. We were in a special place in Glacier Mountain National Park called The Trail of the Cedars, where gigantic trees have grown without being molested by fire, some for over a thousand years.
The Cedar forest feels holy. Footsteps fall almost silently on the ground softened by pine needles over eons. Like when you walk into a church, all but the most insensitive immediately lower their voices. And look up. To where a canopy of ancient trees instructs your soul upwards, to your third eye and then the Baihui, the point in Chinese Medicine which translates as The Point of a "Hundred Meetings."
There's a reason monks take a vow of silence in order to hear the subtleties of the energies around and within. I can see why. Losing a voice is like losing one of your senses - all the others immediately become heightened. In the sanctity of the forest I suddenly wanted to feel how soft one of those pine branches was and instinctively put it to my lips. Colin said it looked funny, so I made eyes and he snapped a picture.
I think I can live in this space happily for some time. Hopefully, though, not forever.
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