Door Sounds Beyond the Earphones
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. 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. When I take the earphones out, the sounds inside the bus often seem stranger than usual. Only then did I notice that the doors close with a different sound at every stop. The speed at which the streetlights slip away outside differs a little too. Since I started hearing a different door sound at every stop, I find myself listening for the next one without meaning to. That sound feels like a bridge to the world beyond the earphones, so my ears moved slowly, at the pace of the streetlights slipping away. Only after the bus left the stop did the window go quiet, and what remained in my ears was not the engine but the stillness of that place. There was a night when the evening wind came in through the gap in the window, and the earphones, still plugged in and making no sound, felt like the most natural thing. The stillness of that night stayed a while even after I took the earphones out. Winding the cord around my fingers, I knew by the way it stopped swaying that the bus had already passed the alley. 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, the earphone cord stays tangled in my pocket, swaying only under the streetlight at the mouth of the alley.
Different from that door-closing sound you were hearing, what I hear is the kiosk lady opening her door every time the light changes at the crossing in front of the market. That door never slides at the same speed, and the day's weather shows in the angle at which she takes the handle. Only after hearing that sound do I finally move my feet.
When I hear that sound and start walking, even the air paused for a moment before the crossing seems to flow toward the open door. Come evening, I might hear that door closing too.
On the night you left the window open, I heard the curtain rippling in the wind. I fell asleep where that wind had passed.
The sleep you took where the wind had passed probably held even the footsteps of someone passing outside the window. Until that sound reached the frame and scattered, I found myself holding my breath.
I tend to take out my earphones while listening to the ticking of an old clock. There are times that sound seems so unfamiliar. Some nights, after I take out my earphones before sleep, the room is so quiet that my breathing seems loud. Once that quiet grows familiar, I find myself waiting for the next day's sounds.
So after I take out my earphones, in that quiet, I come to know little by little what sound it was I wanted to hear.