Noisy (creative nonfiction)

“Feel the delight of walking in the noisy street,
And being the noise.”
-Rumi, “A Community of the Spirit”

I bet the world would take Gen Z a lot more seriously if they knew the difference between “everyday” and “every day..” There is, at least I think there is, a correct way to make noise in this math we call writing.

Words mean things.

I once got in an almost fight with a therapist because she thought “heigth” was a word. That would have been an unholy kind of noise. A rumbling fist fight behind the closed doors of confidentiality. I may have come out bloody, she looked like she could have been a scrapper, but dammit, I would have been right. I am right. There is no h at the end of the word.

A lady in my group therapy had an albino husband. There was some drama with him at the behavioral health clinic. The therapist leading the group said she heard about him coming in and “acting a fool.” Part of his foolishness being that he whizzed in the corner of one of the therapists’ offices and had to be carted out of there by the po po. He was making all kinds of noise—shouts, grunts, tinkles.

I was embarrassed for my people. When the secretaries for the crazy house see me, do they now think, there’s another noisy albino ready to piss in the corner. Somebody get the gloves on. Somebody get that powder that sucks up hazardous liquids. Somebody get a mop.

I speak quietly, still embarrassed for my people. Lack of pigment doesn’t mean lack of decency man, be a human for fuck’s sake. Be a little quieter, in a dignified way. You are not the kind of spiritual noise Rumi was talking about.

That same lady, married to the peeing albino, in my therapy group, looked ratty all the time. Not throwing stones. I can rat it up in fine style myself. Just a matter of fact she looked ratty all the time. And once she said she didn’t take care of herself because her albino husband couldn’t see her anyway and I didn’t disabuse her of her excuse to look ratty, but unless there was something extra wrong with his eyes that isn’t wrong with mine, yes… yes he can see her in all her ratty inglory..

I’m sure that’s not what made him make the loathsome noise and piss in the corner, but it’s just one more stressor, or an indication of a relationship already stressed because the woman cares more about what he can’t see than what she sees in herself.

I wanted to shout in the street that she should be un-ratty for herself, and damn the pissing albino with his not that bad eyes. Be your own woman. Be you for you. Be beautiful for your own liking. But then I realize, shouting at her in the street would be me making the noise at myself mostly because I too, as I said, can rat it up a lot of the time and don’t like looking at myself in the mirror and I don’t look and the internal noise is something like well, if I can’t see the rat tunes that well, I can’t blame myself for being ratty, which is the same argument this lady had but at her other, which is infinitely better than me having this discussion and blaming my quiet rattiness on myself.

-M. Ashley