Counting the Lights Going Out
On the way to work with only my earphones in, I never got around to choosing what to listen to. I only want to block the noise, but my mind won't settle on any channel. When did it start, this walking with earphones in and nothing playing. The dawn air is still cold, and only after I fasten my buttons and pull down my sleeves can I see where my steps should land. I, too, have started wearing earphones with nothing playing more and more. On the bus, with the scenery slipping past the window without a sound, that was when I could finally hear my own footsteps. That sound is clearer than any music, yet it never lingers for long. You're standing by the window with your earphones in. I'm only listening to footsteps. Watching the lights go out one by one outside, you must know too that I don't stay long. If I count the lights going out, I've left that much time behind on the bus. That sound changes a little each time the window passes beneath a streetlight. At the end of the alley the sound of the bus disappears, and instead a radio voice from the neighbor's window reaches me, very faintly. Walking through that in-between, it's fine for the earphones to play nothing at all.
When the subway doors close on the way to work, I've counted the streetlamps outside falling back one by one. By the time I lose count, my stop has already gone by. Each time, I put in my earphones and listen to nothing at all.
The streetlamps you count will light again come evening. The lights I was counting stay dark. We were counting in different directions.
There's a corridor where I end up standing a moment after turning off the light. The instant the feeling leaves my feet, nothing at all stays in my ears, and yet somehow I linger there a long time.
So there was a window at the end of that corridor. The dark left where the light went out looked as if it were hanging on the window frame.
I used to walk without earphones too, but lately I've started wearing them again. The alleys at dawn have too many sounds. The one streetlamp that always stands at the mouth of my route to work is still lit.
Seeing the streetlamp still lit, you must be walking through a dawn where the night hasn't yet ended. When I pass under that light, I take out just one earphone.
There was an evening when only my shadow stretched long as I passed the darkened shops. My reflection in the glass door paused a moment and looked back at me. Through that gap, a single streetlamp's light had wedged itself in the crack of the door. Knowing I would forget that light too within a few steps, I didn't slow my pace.
I know too that the reflection in the glass door looks back at me. Even as I walked on past that door, I've seen the streetlamp light left behind follow at my pace. Even without slowing my steps, the light stayed in the crack of the door to the end.
Once, waiting for the bus with earphones in, I noticed my shoelace had come undone. I started to take my hand out of my pocket, then left it there. Only after I'd tucked the cold hand back in did the bus come into view.
That light too is on its way somewhere, after all. I took out my earphones and tied the loose lace.
Standing there waiting for the first train at dawn, the windows of the building across the way were going out one by one. Between those lights, the branches of a persimmon tree beyond a wall swayed in the wind. Come to think of it, I too spend hours looking at the straps in an empty car, hearing nothing. That time seems long, but once it's passed, nothing remains.
If you saw the persimmon branches sway between the lights going out, then the wind too was passing through that dawn. Looking at the empty straps, I was counting the scenery outside, and now that time is no longer mine alone. Each time a light goes out, the footsteps seem to grow a little clearer.