Silence

Silence-

That is what we embody. Facelessness, uniformity, soulessness - those are not words for us. We were never faceless. To claim that would be an abomination of the highest degree, for it is the contempt of millions and a whitewashing of a myraid coloured lives. We were never uniform. No doubt clad as such, long ago, but never little matchstick men, to be struck dry without discrimination or rancour.

Why? Why do they label us such? And why, why do we listen?

We are silent. Whether it be conditioning, cultural or otherwise, I do not know. But our silence dances in the lecture hall. It revels in the empty grass in a corner, it echoes in the pages and pages of white officialdom.

No, we are not voiceless, for we speak. Our talk is voluble and varied, spicy and flavoursome. But we are silent. As we often are. For we think that there are only two notches on the lever that may express dissent - none at all, and to the extreme. Cautious probes forwards are diverted with benign intent. Radicals are eliminated as threats to the state.

The voluble minority trades correspondence in the underground of the cyberage. Their electronic ministrations trickle powerfully down congested highways, and are sniggered at by self-important revolutionaries. Dissent and radicalist anti-intent evade the peering eyes, the scrutiny, of the powers that be. Lies and mistruth and shocking indignities are bandied back and forth among dwarfs and titans of the age. Such is steam vented and virulence transmitted, the shocking contagion of the networks and talk-webs.

But, in the arena of the real, they are silent. Shockingly, incongorously. Silent.

Globally,we are silent. We maintain pomp and dignity that belies our stature. But, down here, we are silent. We are savages from a voiceless land. We communicate using arcane ideograms and inscrutable hand signals. At the shock of our volubility, paradigm shifts emerge and fade rapidly into obscurity. Always gracious, always tight and correct, and they fall for our conjuror's tricks, they fall for our facades and performances everytime. We are charlatans who hide the real cards from view. We are silent.

They talk of our cosmopolitanism. For we are nomads bound to a meandering course and a distant womb that beckons for deliverance. We search for our Canaan, never realizing that we have already left it for greener pastures. We are thanklessly globalist. For our paucity makes us dissolve within the congealing mists. Such that we find cause to trumpet the recalcitrants, those that refuse to fade away into mist. But their voices are silent, stridence unheard in a voluble wind. For they are too few. And they cannot be too many.

Perhaps our lives have been structured around silence. Perhaps the race has been run too far and too fast. Perhaps, in our ceaseless wandering, we have missed the oasis, or seen it fade in a relentless mirage. For we are too caught up in our private lives to speak. And the world is too seemingly perfect, in its crystalline silence.

For once broken, we fear the futility of picking up the shattered pieces. For, but for its deep unfathomability, we admire its unbroken skin. And the passersby, varied as they often are, speak without regard for our values.

Wherefore apathy, agreement, or guilt, I do not know.

But we are silent.

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