Perhaps twice or three times tonight all sounds save one faded in my ears, and I felt how quickly and quietly tension can be tucked out of sight. I wonder how much we all hold back behind a free tongue. For my part I remain uncertain how much I hide, and whether fleeting impulses of camaraderie and jealousy are eroding my most obvious (to myself) concealment.
Once, memory whispers, things were simpler, and we all spoke openly, without reservation, or at least without anything lying sullenly beneath. More likely, I wasn't paying much attention, and never glanced aside to enter a silence through which fall only a loaded phrase or a few tense murmurs. Hindsight suggests that it was I who was simpler, because new revelations concerning the past still abound.
This is a fine time of night for being melodramatic, but finer yet for going to bed, given that I am a) tired and b) no longer have the least inkling of what I'm trying to say.
posted on Sunday, July 11, 2004
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