Jody was seventeen years old the first time he heard his own
thoughts. Having grown up in the heart of Brooklyn, quiet was a thing unknown
to him. Every second there was the sound of cars, people, or sirens; a constant
swirl of penetrating noise that never ceased. With noise persistently making
its way into his head, Jody could only analyze those external sounds. There was
never time to hear what his own mind was trying to say, or what his heart was
saying. It seems banal to talk about listening to one’s heart, but that is
because many are afforded the luxury of having that ability and therefore take
it for granted. But Jody grew up unaware of solitude.
Nothing
about him stood out. He dressed like everyone else, listened to the same kind
of music, was a good athlete but only played sports because his friends did. He
followed trends and followed people and was never one for competition because
he had no desire to be compared with other people. Just being a person among
other people in a school was all he lived as.
His friends
were mostly the same. And their relations might not even be accurately
described as friendships because they weren’t as personal as a friendship
should be. The connections did not quite exist as human-to-human; they just
existed. Jody and some other boys had simply accumulated over time and their
crew was formed. They were a crew and they spent time together because they did
and it was routine. And those were about the deepest connections Jody had to
anyone other than his mother and father, whose relationships to him were not
very close either.
He would
spend time with girls on occasion because he was a smooth texter, but most
realized on the first encounter that he was empty in a way and they wouldn’t
want to go out with him a second time. But this never bothered him. He was fine
because he never really had much interest in his relations with girls. He just
did it because that was what boys did and that’s what he would talk about with
his crew.
---------Updated
To sum it up, Jody did not stand out and was very, very
average.
On his
seventeenth birthday, Jody’s parents surprised him with a weeklong trip to Cape
Cod. To Jody this wasn’t a great gift and he had no desire to leave his routine
life in the city, but his parents had already booked a cottage so he couldn’t
say no.
The drive
was long and boring, which was expected when five hours are spent staring at
the screen of a phone. Jody felt relief at the sight of the large hedge
spelling “Cape Cod” at the end of the Bourne Bridge, only to have his hopes of
arrival crushed by his mom, who told him it was still about an hour to Truro
where they would be staying. Driving around the roundabout that followed, Jody
saw something he’d never seen before. In every direction he could see trees and
grass and some sort of vegetation. Of course he’d seen trees in parks and along
streets in the city, but always with a backdrop of tall buildings. This was the
first time the tallest object in sight was natural. He put down his phone.
For the rest
of the ride, Jody watched his window. He watched the world that existed. Beyond
his school and his friends, beyond people he knew, there was life here that
lived independently from him and uninterested in him. Nothing he saw was new,
but it was all new to him.
Despite his
revelations in the car, Jody spent the first few days on the beach playing
games on his phone and listening to music not suitable for the beach. Certain
music is very acceptable, but hearing Drake repeat in auto-tune he is the greatest
ever does not quite match warm sand and the vast Atlantic. Jody hardly went in
the water because it was “too cold” and he didn’t find it comfortable. At night
he and his parents would go out to eat—and never too adventurous of a meal—and
they would go back to the cottage and Jody would turn the TV on to something sufficiently
entertaining to watch.
The fifth
day went the same until they got back from dinner. There was a note on the door
from the caretaker stating there was some circuit problem and the power would
be out until an electrician could come in the morning. It was only 8:30, too
early for bed. Jody’s phone was dead from a full day of use and without
electricity there was no way of charging it. His mom suggested he walk down to
the beach and with no other options, he did. Their cottage was on the bay side
so when Jody got to the beach, the water was still. Across the bay, following a
shimmering orange reflection, he could see the light at the top of the Pilgrim
Monument in Province Town. Down a ways to the left he saw the searching beam of
a lighthouse, which marked the end of Cape Cod. Continuing left in his sight,
he saw the opening of the bay. Well, it was impossible to see, but he knew it
was there. It was the spot where the ocean morphed seamlessly into the sky, no
distinction other than the knowledge that there must be a line between the two.
-------- Updated 3/20/13
While staring at the vast blackness before him, Jody slowly
became aware of something new. Everything was quiet. There were no car horns,
no sirens, no talking, no constant phone notifications. There was the gentle
sound of the bay waters moving, but that sound becomes so in sync with breath
it turns into an extension of body, an external reserve of blood and life being
guided by the pulse of one’s heart. Jody, who had lived up until this point as
an empty being of influence, felt this.
For the
first time in his life, Jody thought. Truly thought. Not about what his crew
was doing or what he would do with them when he returned home, but about
everything below the immediate surface of his mind. With no distractions, all
he had was quiet and himself.
At first he
thought about nothing. He had reached this new freedom of solitude and even in
a blank state he was experiencing a greater kind of thought he had ever known.
Suddenly, his mind dove directly into the bay before him, immediately being
swept around by invisible currents.
