Winter 2014
It was a cold wintry morning. The alarm shrieked and I bounded out of bed, made a quick French press coffee, and headed out into the blistering cold for an 8:30am dentist appointment. My mind was fixed on getting there, and on little else.
As I slid in the door like a batter sliding into first base, the receptionist gave me a quizzical look and said: “You are right on time for tomorrow.”
Tomorrow?
I stood mute, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it all. I sauntered back down into the subway and onto a waiting subway car. The subway doors stuttered closed, then opened again. People got on. The doors opened, closed, closed, opened. I sat there with other passengers waiting for the car to move. The doors opened again. More people got on. Nobody got off. The doors closed, then opened and stayed open. People fidgeted, then looked down at their hands.
I felt like Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. “Estragon: Well, shall we say something? Vladimir: Yes, let’s say something. They do not.
After a few long minutes, the loudspeaker crackled and I heard the word: ‘Fire.’
Now might be a good time to get off, I thought to myself. None of us moved. Finally, the conductor confirmed what we had all concluded: This car is disabled. The doors opened and we all got off.
I thought about taking a taxi as I emerged to the street above ground but there weren’t any and anyway the streetcar was on its way.
It was grey outside – grey on grey like sheets of wet newsprint. My thoughts drifted to the ridiculous turn of events. As I walked towards the streetcar stop, I was catapulted into the present moment by a startling cacophony of sound —bark-bark, quack-quack, honk-honk. I looked around for the source and saw nothing except a man in a transit shelter on a bench drinking water from a water bottle. The sounds started up again. I looked back towards the bus shelter. The man with the water bottle was up on his feet, as if propelled off the bench by some invisible electrical force, eyes and mouth contorting into a clownish, surreal mask of curiosity and consternation as he bellowed at everyone and no one at once: Suck it in, suck it in!
A man in a baseball cap froze in his tracks, pretending not to notice. I stared fascinated. Others moved away. The sounds grew louder, more insistent – more barking, quacking, wheedling, brrps and phritzzes, clicks and pings, and an urgent, shrill ‘Suck-it-in-Suck-it-in’. The sounds were strange, amazing, poignant, creative, desperate, dissonant, embarrassing, odd, and I couldn’t help myself, I could feel nervous laughter rising.
The streetcar arrived. The man boarded the streetcar first. He headed to the back, and sat down. A handful of us got on the already packed streetcar and waited for the inevitable. The light turned green, the streetcar clanked forward and suddenly the air was electric with a loud honk-honk, several quacks , a rat-a-tat-tat of cawing and wheedling and a torrential downpour of gassy pings and clicks.
A little girl sitting on her father’s lap queried her father in a gentle whisper, ‘Daddy?” Her father looked around and caught my eye. Tears of silent laughter streamed down both our faces. The woman across from me, said ‘He’s got quite the repertoire.’ I nodded – and in that instant it dawned on me that he might have Tourette’s, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary vocal and motor tics and gestures.
I stopped laughing, feeling horrible for laughing.
” Tourette’s?” I whispered to the woman across from me.
The woman nodded sadly. “It must be so hard for him.”
The streetcar driver kept her eyes on the man through her rear-view mirror but she said nothing. His noisy eruptions peppered the air. I watched him as he struggled to contain himself, to shore up the onrushing river, to meet our stares with noble quiet.
As the light turned green and the streetcar clanked forward, I heard something extraordinary. The man’s sounds merged seamlessly with the sounds of the streetcar and traffic. They were in perfect synchrony with the clanking, ringing, rocking, and hissing of the car against the tracks, and the screeching and honking of traffic. Within seconds, his bbrpps and pings and clicks and honking no longer sounded discordant or obtrusive. They were music.
I was mesmerized, in awe. I felt joy rising, unexpected joy. The joy of pure discovery. If I listened one way, he was a man with Tourette’s. If I listened another, he was a genius, an artist. A composer scavenging symphonies from the detritus of days. A sculptor carving gargoyles for protection, hope and chance. God delivering the secret of all secrets: How you listen changes what you see.
Listen with love and curiosity, life will become a miracle in motion making broken hearts whole. Listen with fear and judgment, you will shut out every possibility of a miracle and break every heart at the place it was broken before.
My stop arrived. I glanced back at the man as I got off. I thanked him silently for the gift he had given me. He was completely still, chest erect, face relaxed and dignified, eyes fixed on a distant horizon.
~ Christiane Schull