Their fighting began as I finished playing; there was a moment of overlap as my notes crackled quiet under the ceiling fan and their scorching-hot shouts spilled out into the night air. We greeted each other on the airwaves. I was leaving and they were coming. I left pacified, having worked out the tension with music, they arrived enraged, both cascading with anger as their mutual feedback signals collided. Having been pacified, I regarded the couple passively, philosophically, sympathizing with whatever disagreement they were having with something almost bittersweet. Having been enraged, they regarded sounds and sights with severe irritation, becoming insane with the bad feedback.
Dogs barked. People stood at their windows, listening. They waited, the muscles tensing in their backs as the shouts grew more intense. They wondered whether they should wait, or to call the police, before it was too late. They were waiting for a crash. Breaking glass. Something to tell them what to do.
The humid night air was electrified with the threat of violence. Of the expectation of a terrible event. Of the expectation of the expectation of others. We were all communicating with one another in our own isolation, in our collective imagination.
This country is wound tight, winding tighter, the fabric pulling dangerously taught around some unseen force, revolving, as a stick in a tourniquet. You see it in faces. In the eyes...glistening furrows indicating converging pressure. Or on the freeway, the lines of cars whipping tight, speeding up, shrinking closed. They're all acting cornered, whether they are being cornered or not. The hair up on their backs, their teeth bared. Sighs and hunching shoulders.
Well, it can't be all that bad. It comes in waves. Like nausea. There comes the periods of intensification, and then it relaxes. And repeats.
I was almost run off the road today. But it's alright. I'm here to say that it is alright. So being here is something. Or else it would be nothing. And there wouldn't be a problem anyway. Eh, I've dispersed out too far to say anything else interesting.
