[from journal of 30 November 2011]

Because the house is small and all the walls are partial, the activities of each of its three inhabitants are clearly audible to the others at all times. This necessitates a stratagem: headphones. We are a Headphones Household. My brother at the kitchen table traces his stencil alphabets and works wearing headphones plugged into a radio tuned to a Golden Oldies frequency. Husband wears headphones to shield me from the noise of the thoroughbred racing he watches on TV. I wear headphones playing iPod ambient sounds to cover my brother's whispered mutterings, which irritate me.

Yet sound is my stock in trade, so to speak. With my headphones on I do not hear the cats racing up and down the stairs or the clacking of my mate's keyboard as he chats with Facebook friends. I cannot hear my old terrier's thin wheezes and snores from where she sleeps at the foot of my workbed. I cannot hear the bleats and squawks of the lovebirds in their kitchen cage (which annoy my brother so, even through his headphones, and which make him mutter and curse). It makes me sad to shut myself off from the world's sounds in this way. My headphones are plugged into my iPod, and I listen to ambient music or noise-blocking sounds such as rainfall or ocean surf or even sometimes the recorded low roar of a gas furnace--most effective for meditation.

So much of my written work springs from auditory stimulation. "Silence"--the open untrammeled waves of household air. The small ambient components of quotidian quiet.

This tells me more than anything how badly I need a small writing shack to work in, so I can celebrate again the music the world makes.

Like Huckleberry Finn, I feel, by my closed winterwindow.

... I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, a way off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. ... Well, after a long time I heard the clock way off in the town go boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees--something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. That was good! Says I, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.

With these headphone sounds blotting out the music of the world, I might very well miss Tom when he comes to fetch me.

So I move within deep and deeper. Will that world offer its own soundtrack? Will I be able to hear it there? I must listen hard.

Out the window--wind's up. Unsettled weather. Overcast moving past. Tree tops swaying. Naked poplars and pines in their thick black coats leaning southward and then springing back north; lower limbs shimmy and twist, excited.

Enough of writing, though I could go on all day today, I think. Please may I have a trailer to write in? What can I give you?

Time for errands.

I miss your company.