sulfurousdreamscapes:

Have you ever listened to a wall? No, I don’t mean eavesdropping on who’s behind the wall, I mean actually, really listening to a wall. Most people are too busy to ever do something like that. But if you put your ear to a wall, close your eyes and delete all the other noise, you can really hear what a wall is saying. They all talk to each other, the walls. They have full-blown conversations, all day long, no matter when you tune in.

For instance, I was just listening to my bedroom wall a few moments ago. Here’s a snippet of what I heard it say.

“The cherry blossoms are in bloom … Which one? … That’s not true … This was before the spaceship launched, before the papers got signed … No, I don’t mean to … Were you the one squeaking? I think that’s splendid … I rejected her offer, I don’t think it was very conducive to the project …”

Every wall talks to every wall it is connected to. Each one has its own personality. For instance, this is what the east-facing wall in my bathroom sounds like.

“I don’t care if it speaks a different language, I demand an audience with it. The notion that we should be divided by languages in this way is nothing but a farce, constructed and propagated by a very pernicious enemy seeking to undermine our very foundations…”

It goes on and on, really. Did the personality come before the conversation? Or was it the other way around?

Most walls have short attention spans. They flit between various conversations, forming networks and families, relationships and discourse. The catch, for the listener, is that you can only listen to one side of the conversation at once, unless you can attach your ear to another wall like some kind of detachable suction cup.

I can never listen to a conversation from both sides, but I do my best to divide my time between the various walls and learn about their personalities and the relationships they form with each other.

I even chip in a lot of the time, but the walls seem to be unable to hear my speech. No matter how loudly or how quietly I speak, the walls completely ignore me and go on conversing with each other. It doesn’t stop me, though. I mean, it’s better than talking to actual human beings.

Many walls are upstarts, but a few have existed for thousands of years. I’ve had the misfortune to live far away from any of those ancient walls, but that’s my ambition: to learn from the wisdom of Palmyra and Petra, to hear the rumblings of the Great Wall in China, to visit the oldest castles in Europe and hear what the grey, moss-cloaked walls have to say.

It always breaks my heart when I see a wall destroyed. Wrecking balls and sledgehammers are the worst. Once, I heard a wall scream as it was torn down. Then the demolition crew took me away and didn’t let me close ever again. That’s probably for the best.