Friday 7 March 2008

Blinded by what I hear.

    Something that I felt today, something that I heard
    Swinging from the chandeliers, hanging on your word
    I remember watching you once upon a time
    Dancing from across the room in another life

I finished Ben's new scarf. Black and grey stripes like the little guy at the beginning of the Horton Hears a Who trailer. He can layer it over his headphones and ignore the world as he walks in his own, hands strumming to whatever plays on his iPod, eyes seemingly unfocused but missing nothing, an instinctive peripheral vision that borders on spooky.

When I put on my headphones, also threaded under and up over a handknit scarf, fuzzy pink mohair that I usually wind up picking off my tongue for hours afterward, I launch myself onto another planet where I am blind but my hearing is perfect, one where oxygen comes in the form of musical notes and I walk a rhythm on bars and tabs. The one where a freight train could sneak up on me and I would chose to ignore the blaring horn in favor of a great lead from a long-dead musician, or beauty in a lyric I'd concentrate hard to remember, to bring the words back home while that engine leaves streaks of paint on my skin and tears my clothes to ribbons, leaving me a memory for someone else to keep or shove away.

He worries about me. I have been glued to headphones of one size or another, one quality or better for most of my days, and I still haven't learned how to watch where I'm going or how to avoid a train.