This post is the product of an assignment for my Creative Nonfiction class in which we were told to take notes for twenty minutes on the sounds that we heard. Through doing this, I realized how important sound is to me, especially having had a hearing loss when I was younger. Not only that, sound is all around me, even though I don’t realize it most of the time. To do this assignment, I took a walk on a path that is conveniently right behind my apartment.

The intriguing thing about deliberately paying attention to sounds while on a walk is that all the other senses are more noticeable as well: the feel of the wind in your hair, the feel of your shoes on your feet, the feel of your heart pounding, the taste of the cool air, the sight of the sun behind a cloud, the way it makes goose bumps rise on your arms…
But as far as sound… The firsts are the train and the highway. Sometimes they seem indistinguishable from each other, but every once in a while, I hear a particularly loud truck or a squeak of a train car. A section of coal rambles by and I think that maybe the “chug-a chug-a chug-a choo choo!” that children cling onto is closer to its actual noise than I thought. Not because of the engine, but because of how the tracks interact with the cars.
The caboose disappears and the highway becomes prevalent. It doesn’t echo, but it somehow fills the world.
The noise becomes more personal: the slap, slap of my flip flops, my gentle breathing. And then it goes outward again. A car whooshes past, water sprays, a “hi” is panted, and a stream falls over occasional waterfalls.
A bridge: A bike passes over each board, which emits various clunks. I skip and jump on random parts of the bridge, but my feet can’t produce the same notes.
I approach the highway. Plastic on a truck flaps in the wind that its speed creates. The sound of the stream rises as the sound of the road rises and I notice the juxtaposition of birds twittering and the vehicles on the highway bridge.
Under the bridge, the highway is a bassoon. The frontage road that also crosses the walking path is full of circular noises. The cars are souls, or maybe winged insects, racing by.

I haven’t had a lot of time to read in the past few weeks, but I did manage to devour a magnificent book. The name of this wonder: Orfe by Cynthia Voigt. It is short (only 120 pages long) and it is spell-binding. I only set it down to make tea and managed to read it in an hour.

The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking that it would be a perfect book to teach in a classroom. It does have some language that I could see a high school English department would have trouble with, but I think it’s as good as some of the classics.

Orfe is told from the perspective of Enny, who reminds me of Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby in a way because she mostly serves as an onlooker and narrator. The book follows all the encounters she has with her friend, Orfe. They meet in elementary school, get separated, and then meet again when Enny is in college and Orfe is trying to make it as a singer. That’s as much as I can write without revealing too much.

Tagline on my copy is, “There is music in her madness.” This sentence is what drew me to the book at first, but after I read it, I discovered that it isn’t the right tagline. I thought that Orfe would go mad or she would be mentally ill and she’s not (in my opinion) because of it. So if you just happen to pick up the same version as mine… ignore the sentence it is misleading.

I also do not like the sentence because it is  more dramatic than the language of the actual story is. The language is similar to some you would find in creative nonfiction, simple yet specific. Here is an example from the first page: “This is what I remember: I am sitting at a school desk. A wooden desk top with an open shelf of ridged blue pipe metal under it… It is recess and we’re inside, so it must be raining.” What I especially like is the fact that when Enny is a child, the events that she describes are more like the cloudy memories of childhood with not much dialogue and then when she is an adult, it is mostly dialogue.

Although the language may be simple, the subject matters aren’t. Some of issues that it touches on are addiction, bullying, and poverty. When I read it again, I’ll probably encounter more. That’s one of the beauties of re-reading.

The only thing that I wish was different about it was the ending, which is very abrupt. But even so… I would still say that if you’re tired about hearing about the mess that is Fifty Shades of Gray, it is definitely a book to read.