sounds from the floor
may 6, 2025Today I laid my stomach on the floor and let my Left Ear listen to the sounds that only exist between my bedroom floor and the downstairs neighbor’s ceiling. It’s a sound I would usually ignore, one I assume I don’t want to hear before I even really hear it. But today I listened to it like someone speaking. Quick clicks interspersed between a droning buzz. I don’t know what makes that sound, maybe it’s electricity flowing through appliances or the ceiling fan or a sound with no source at all (which is what I usually presume regarding sounds like these). My Right Ear was hearing Far Away sounds, birds chirping and workers talking and trucks beeping. The sounds that everyone can hear, the ones that connect us. And our other ear is pressed up against some floor whose sounds only our individual selves can hear. The sounds that have no clear source of origin, the sounds that are easy to ignore and drown out with thought or music or Far Away sounds. Yet those sounds are there for us, our ears press up against these floors so we can hear their sounds and wonder at them. A world of our own alongside a world of all of ours.
For so long I have only listened to the Right Ear that hears the Far Away sounds. Those sounds that come from sources I strive to become, from finely tuned instruments played by experienced hands. I’ve assumed that I could simply listen to them and know how to play songs of the same caliber with the same nuance in my fingers. I didn’t bother to pick up my own instrument and learn its notes and quirks and how my fingers would feel tacked against the strings in bizarre positions. I hadn’t even plucked it to hear how out of tune it was!
Truthfully it wasn’t that I wanted to play my instrument so much that I finally picked it up. I was more so just nauseated by the songs my Right Ear kept hearing over and over without end. I wanted Silence. And in Silence I ate my food, walked my legs, stretched my body and sat with my mind. And the Silence nauseated me because it was never really silent in my head. I could not escape the noise of my overworked organs suffering under the oppressive rule of my monarchical mind. The body would take over at times and move around some traffic cones the mind had put in place years ago to send energy down detours that jammed up the back roads to a staggering halt. When the cones were removed, it took my little cells some time to remember their original routes and get off those stopped up roads, but sometimes it’d feel like a dam broke and all the energy in my body surged through every inch in an intoxicating way. So I started breaking down every dam I could feel, and eventually my mind got swept up in the floods. Sometimes bobbing along, sometimes drowning.
It was loud then, both ears trying to make sense of two melting worlds that mix like oil and water. I had to pee a lot. My dreams were a thin concoction of mild nightmares starring characters from the past and strange situations at my job. And about the government enforcing a strict cash-only, tap-to-pay ban. And looking at the moon under a hazy dark sky. The flooding was as nauseating as it was intoxicating, like a repetitive nicotine buzz bordering nic sickness. Unlike nicotine though, it was a sickness that released god knows what from all five of my bodies. The dense, untouchable silver ball always spinning in my abdomen feels smaller and lighter now. I let my body exist as a creature of its own will, let it guide me rather than attempt to constantly contort it into the ever evolving imaginary image of what it “should be” in my mind. It’s fascinating to witness its innate strength and coordination as well as its limits and weaknesses.
When we ignore the current abilities of our mind and body and attempt to put ourselves in postures we are not ready for, the mind and body compensate by straining the wrong muscles to hold us there. When we continue to ignore the strain and remain in these postures, the body and mind acclimate to it and begin using those muscles to keep us upright instead of the proper muscles we override in our striving towards the Should Be. And it takes a lot longer to release the straining skeleton and relearn correct alignment than to move slowly and expand from a sturdy foundation. However, there are endless situations where we are forced to move quicker than we are prepared for and it is inevitable that we will have to go backwards and learn to walk again. Accepting the turnaround is often harder than the rebuilding.
To do all this is beautifully painful, but above that it is a sacred gift to even have the chance to dig around inside myself on my own accord. It’s quite fun too, and the best (or worst?) part is that it never ends. I write about it all in past tense but I have only just begun. My brain is learning when to listen to which ear. It seems to prefer the Left Ear against the floor now. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again, I don’t want advice I want inspiration. I don’t want to give advice either. I’ve been reteaching myself how to breathe again and I do not speak hyperbolically. My body had forgotten how to breathe in its natural way over the many years I spent worshipping the Should Be and taking advice from the cracked lips of its devoutly dammed up deaf Preachers. I blasted Far Away sounds coming into my Right Ear at deafening volumes and did not know how to listen to the Left. I could not tell you how you should breathe, but I do hope to show you that you don’t have to drown out those incomprehensible sounds coming from your floor. And remember that if you’ve been frozen, you must melt before you can flow again.
Godspeed,
Kara