9/20/12

Geomuted
By Jeff B Willey


Silence once golden became essentially priceless when old mother earth was hooked to life support. Cloud brightening procedures and reflective aerosols—chemo for a dying planet in the form of increasingly frantic geoengineering attempts—had largely failed. As a last resort most of earth's surface was covered in environmental homeostasis machinery, which gave rise to that humming everywhere, a maddening, planetary vuvuzelan drone. Silence could not be had, not at remote northern lakes or out on the thawed tundra, silence having followed much of biology to extinction. There were old recordings of silence, but they couldn’t be heard for the din. Of course there were density isolation chambers, but only the obscenely wealthy could enjoy those. Some people claimed not to be able to hear the drone, to be so used to it, but I didn't believe them. Only the old ones remembered silence, the pure natural kind and what it was like. How one could drive a few kilometers out of town to the purely natural ambiance of wind rustling the trees, a burbling creek, chirping birds. Their recollections made me yearn for something I had never known. Then came the fateful day of the Sun-out. Homeostasis apparatus failed over large sections of the globe. The infernal hum suddenly ceased and a tremendous silence the likes of which hadn’t been discerned for generations descended. Some wept, some rejoiced, but I like most others just stilled myself and listened in wonder to nothing, nothing at all.


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Jeff thinks that every moment in time already exists, believes the metaphysical croissant is real, and likes to pretend his bicycle is a horse. Despite the dark energy looking to rip our atoms apart, he’s convinced we will remain stored as information on the outer surface of the universe. See more of his writings and art at http://theselfcleaningworld.com