The whitewashed
companions surround the room, rising from floor to ceiling, mostly
unadorned save for a glossy frame here, or a dusty candelabra there.
Events happen here, in this room, with these stalwart companions;
conversations, musings, tears, silences, songs. They remember these
things, and if you look and listen closely it might just be possible
to hear words once said playback, or to see times once spent rewind.
The walls have eyes,
you see?
Extrinsic eyes like
portholes to the outside world; a thumbnail clip of things possibly
missed as moments speed along without the room. Though like our own
eyes, windows can be shuttered to block out what we don’t want to
see, or others to see in us.
In an aggravatedly
anthropomorphistic vein, inward eyes watch the private moments of the
room, each catalogued with a respectively appropriate representation:
a smile, a sagging head, a dance step, a tear falling. These eyes are
unshuttered; they see and let us be seen.
The walls have ears,
too.
Who among us is not
guilty of conversation amidst the lack of sentient company? Perhaps a
troublesome project required the oration of thoughts in order to find
a way through. Maybe the day’s petulance caught up and was turned
back with a private monologue. Whatever it may be, where did those
words, whether spoken in love or discord, go off to? Did they just
cease to exist the moment the sound waves had dissipated? Tell that
to a historian.
What if those
omnipresent companions heard and made invisible records of each
precious word spent in their presence? They’re always there;
they’re always willing to listen.
The walls have a
mouth, if you bear with me.
I’ve shouted
before: in public, in private, where others could hear, or where no
soul could hear. But I’ve never felt so heard as when the paint and
plaster respond. Try it some time, call it a bucket list thing:
source a clear space, with a listener’s mind, and just talk. If you
pay careful attention, the walls will reply immediately. Oh sure,
it’s a fair bit like a well-trained parrot speaking, but have you
considered that maybe, in some way, your voice was heard and
understood and sympathized with in that faint echo?
So why do we
identify rooms lacking in people as “empty?” Every single one of
them has the ability to see you and to let you see. Each the prowess
to hear you out. Each the compassion to acknowledge you in your
moment.
I posit a simple
answer, a hypothesis—with theory potential—as to the solitude of
the empty rooms:
The walls do not
have arms.
