foolish mortals

"There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how"

There are a few people in this world I find it amazingly easy and intrinsically rewarding to talk to. (Very few). These are those people you can talk to about anything. The weather, the news, Nikola Tesla's moustache, walking into things, accidental dates, books, quality screenplays, timbre, shoes, personality, love, raccoons, sex, politics... you get the drill.

These are those people you can tell your deepest secret to, follow it up with a mom joke, and it just flows.

In case you still don't know what I'm talking about, these are those people you have conversations characterized by laughing fits with. Everything somehow ties into what was said fifteen minutes before, three hours ago, five days previously. You can be open, and honest, and serious, too, and time zooms past either way. With these people who are on your wavelength, so to speak, it's way past your bedtime before you know it. You've covered everything from favourite foods, to life, the universe, and alchemy, and you feel somehow happier and better for it.

The best part is that when you find one of these people, you can have an off day, but you revel in the proven knowledge that tomorrow, if not right now, you'll get back to it again. And it'll be just as easy, just as sparkling with wit, just as off-the-cuff, and spontaneous, and random, and hilarious. Sometimes, if you're really lucky, you'll find someone that'll bring it out in you even when you're not feeling it at all.

I love those people. I love those conversations.

Today, I thought that maybe what Tolstoy said about every unhappy family being so in its own right applies to conversations as well. Or, more aptly, silences.

The silence after a joke flops is different from the silence with anticipatory undercurrents. The silence after a fight is different from the silence after a kiss. There's the comfortable silence you share with best friends that have been there through scraped knees and heartbreak, then there's the awkward silence between long-lost cousins and first dates (hopefully not at the same time).

There's the silence rife with internal struggle, the one where so much is fighting to get out, but more is beating it back. Then there's the silence that comes from matching thought. Nothing comes in, nothing gets out, except "Say something, stupid."

There are silences that swallow you whole, and silences you wish would end, and silences you'd like to shatter but can't. There are guilty silences and funny ones too, exchanged over smirks, crossed eyes, and ice cream.

There are silences words would wreck and moments when silence is necessary. A mournful silence, an overwhelmed silence, a silence that remembers.

Thoughtful silences are rare, because most people talk to think, but I'm told they do exist. As surely as Peter Pan, anyway.

"Shocked speechless".

There are disappointed silences, and sad ones, angry ones, and contended ones too.

Conversations - well, conversations are all the same - all "happy" in the same way. When they're good, they're good. And when they suck, they quickly turn into silence.