Wagoneer

I live in a refuge from noise. The noise that shines down upon my days like fluorescent lighting. The noise of traffic and responsibilities. Noise from co-workers and concerns. The noise of news. We lose power in this refuge, from wind storms fallen on power lines. From the erosion of underground cables, death knells delivered by forest creatures buried in the earth. When the trees are cleared you see animals running from that noise, animals you didn’t know were neighbors.

The noise has a threshold 10 miles from my home. When you cross this imaginot line, you see weasels unsteady on the road. Sometimes elk. A badger, once, late in the evening. Eagles fly overhead, though less magnificent than the ospreys, who love their power over the skies. The ducks would rather walk. You can tell by their steadfast concentration. Ducks never soar, hover or rise. They whistle from lake to lake.

The noise stops at my door. It becomes so quiet that you hear your body speak. And during such a time last night, my insides spoke to me, plainly. Baudelaire wrote of spleen, like the king of some damp, rainy clime. Rimbaud spoke of heart, heard nature’s song. But these are not the organs that screamed my name, but my liver, instead and it said to me, above the noise,

‘Dude. Lay off the boxed wine.’

I looked around, to see if the voices stirred my hound, reposing by the hearth, quietened by a day’s…

‘Ditto the tylenol.’

‘What about cigarettes!’ I pleaded, now yearning for the noi—

‘No! Of course not, you moron! And stop beating your brow with the back of your hand, for chrissakes! What the hell is this, Wuthering Heights?’

‘My wine! My tobacco!’

‘Easy. I mean just lay off for a few days. You just need to give me a break until Saturday.’

‘Oh. Right.’

And I returned to the silence, now that my insides had spoken their peace, and prepared to cross the threshold that is Portland, Oregon, where come this Saturday I will reawaken mine organs with nectar from the agave and leaf from the longbottom, and pills from RiteAid…

‘Dude. Serious. No tylenol.’

‘Oh, right. Okay, just the tequila and a smoke, then.’