silence is not so much golden as it is a rather insipid shade of mauve.

i have been staring at the puce-colored curtain for well over six hours today. it is a shabby one, a makeshift wall of a cubicle in the way it covers the high, chain link fence that surrounds my desk. it makes me think of my grandparents' house in mckeesport whose perimeter sported just such a fence and whose interior walls were painted with almost this exact, putrid shade of pinkish brown. i have tried to spice things up a bit with some black and white photos of the city and italy and even a great oil pastel of watermelons on a table in the summertime. it has helped, but nothing will ever erase this color from my mind as having one of the most boring associations ever, in all of my insignificant history.

also, it is just so damn quiet in here.



that is, except for the banshees.*

downstairs there are some rather warbly and hooty sopranos singing into the rafters in a manner that irish folklore would deem worthy of summoning the chariots of death. i'm sure that all the dogs within a six-mile radius have buried their heads as far as they can into the earth by now. those lucky pups. meanwhile, i have to sit up here and endure the squeaky strains that somehow filter up through the cement floors into my sensitive ears.

i find that my hearing has become rather acute after working here. someone is clicking a mouse. there is a person, no a girl, sitting on the other side of the mauve curtain tapping a pencil on the desk. ken is flipping through papers in the back. someone is writing on an index card. a chair squeaks on the other side of the room. the door slammed shut. my keyboard is deafening. the sound of my own breathing is like a tornado.

either i've been working in the library too long, or i'm becoming a superhero. i desperately hope it's the latter. and maybe i'll even get a cape.

*once Michelle and Annie both thought, simultaneously, that banshees were in fact weird monkeys.