White Noise

    One of my favorite moments in film is Sailor Ripley lighting a cig....framed by the haunting roar of white noise.White noise to me is symptomatic of change and movement. It is the sound of looking back on how you looked forward to a moment in your life. A definite moment you either were looking towards or shrinking from. A moment which was at once so very far, yet simultaneously was lurking around the corner....waiting to snatch you away from the comfort of your present existence.
  
    You know when you reach that moment when months had ticked away as seconds do...memories have a distinct way of shrinking time, even as we are making them. It is at that moment when white noise attaches itself to the memory of  how you reached your present space and time, when images blur from repetition and the sounds theses images possess bleach themselves of their tonal distinction...white noise...

    So, I had this in my mind leading up to our departure for Singapore. I had memories of what lay in my future accompanied by white noise, not dissimilar to the gutteral whine of a jet engine ramping up. I knew that when this jet engine was ramping up, the roar would call to mind the smear of images comprising the approach to this day...when everything would change.

    June 19th is usually a long way from March 3rd.....but not in 2011 it wasn't. I closed my eyes and sheepishly sought sleep the night of my interview, knowing it would neither come quickly or stay easily...eerily similar to the night before our departure...usually seeking sound to succumb to sleep, I cupped my ears from the inside and stepped blindly into the darkness...awash in white noise...

   I don't really know why I didn't cry that day...I was certainly saddened by the fact we were leaving, but more so by the fact tha so many of those I love were sad because we were leaving...I don't worry about misconceptions, those who know me know there are a few things I am terrible with...Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries...goodbyes. If you ever want to feel loved, move to the other side of the world and watch the welling tears of those dearest to you...you can't sheild your eyes from the stinging shine of tear streaked cheeks...

    When the plane left the ground and the jet engines began to unwind, the memories of the final days meshed with this moment and my hopes for our future..

...and the silence washed away the sound of white noise...