Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Miniatures

LET’S BE SILENT

We’ve been informed where we’re allowed to be silent. There are fixed time slots and places, rain or scorching shine. We record everything, listen, take heed to instructions on how to conduct ourselves, the role proper breathing plays, and how to best make use of the intervals of silence. At this point, we haven’t gotten very far—always in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’s no one around to apply the silence. On some days, we’re not addressed by a single word. How, then, is one supposed to learn to be silent? We’d like to know what it feels like and what it causes to form inside oneself. Those who might know profess that they cannot speak, and the clueless talk and talk and talk without ever making sense, and it takes some cunning to shake them off. That ’s exhausting. In the process, of course, we lose sight of time, choose the wrong places, take details into account that make no difference at all. When we meet a trusty person who appears to understand our problem, we entertain, woo, and flatter him, giving it everything we’ve got— and it does actually happen that he teaches us the first steps into silence. But he grows increasingly impatient the longer it takes—unfortunately we’re slow on the uptake—and he simply disappears into the night, while we, tired from these new impressions, have long

229