Some Sentences for Listening from a Listener’s Diary

A Listener

 

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For a long time, the listener listened.

 

Then, suddenly, surprisingly for others, the listener proclaimed with the full force by years of patience: ‘FUCK LISTENING.’

 

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From one listener to another: ‘I think we might have to try again.’ 

 

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Don’t ask a listener for directions. 

 

Such a concept is completely lost on those who listen.

 

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Along the way to The Great Temple of Listening a small birch tree was calling it friends. 

 

At the gate of The Great Temple of Listening a sign said: ‘No birch tree parties allowed.’

 

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A listener is often identified as a ghost of a future past. This is not a self-identification.

 

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In the evening sun, on a small balcony over a now quiet city street, a listener searches for the meaning of life through remembering wrongly the spoken poetry captured during the day at the market.

 

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When a listener gives up listening, listening doesn’t cease to exist like the listener ceases to exist. Listening simply transforms. Floats on, slowly and disturbingly. Occupies elsewhere.

 

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A listener comes down from a mountain, gets washed up on a shore, plants herself as a seed, and escapes an exhausted copper mine. All at once. And again, and again.

 

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Is God actually listening? 

Or is that a silly human-fication of God? 

Or rather, do humans become gods when listening?

 

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If they could, they would listen more funny. They are tired of listening so seriously, so boringly. So proper or polite.

Tomorrow they will start training. Maybe while wearing a funny hat.

 

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A listener is placed under listening surveillance by the listening authorities due to suspicion of listening abuse. 

Wonder how this story will unfold.

 

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A listener is assumed to live happily ever after. Why? 

A listener proposes to translate such a concept into the practice of listening.

 

‘A listener is assumed to attempt to be.’

 

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A group of listeners fell first to their knees, then unto their backs. Starring with closed eyes towards the dark and thick night sky. They listened so completely that the sky began to cry, to open up and crack. The listening created a point of gravity never felt by the sky, and slowly but steadily the sky started to fall down and land upon the listeners as a soft and heavy blanket. The listeners kept on listening until the earth they laid on felt their force, and also slowly gave in to the weight of the sky and the listening. The earth swallowed both listeners and sky. 

 

This is the myth of how the earth learned to listen. 

 

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“No more. You must Slow Down. Heal. Rest a little.”

 

A listener listened and wondered upon the radical statement that was.

 

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Listeners rarely argue. But when they do, the argument is silence stretched too thin.

 

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Two listeners sat in a garden. They tried to outlisten each other. It’s unclear what happened.

 

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One listener to another:

“I’ve stopped listening to conversations. I now only listen to the spaces between them.”

The other nodded, “I stopped listening altogether. I’m waiting for the silence to explain itself.”

 

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After years of listening, the listener turned to the mirror and said, “I think I’m finally ready to hear myself not make sense.”

 

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