The Hum.

Woke up one morning and spent a good ten minutes just trying to open my eyes properly and focus. When I eventually got out of bed, roaring symphonic music blared in my ears. I jumped back onto the bed and it stopped. The moment my foot touched the floor again it screamed in my head. ' This is a good day to stay in bed ' I thought as I pulled the quilt over my head.

I dreamed in that days sleep. Sleep came easy as did dreams. Landscapes, colours and you. All peacefull places with no effort to move on when the time came. Time was moving past with no panic whatsoever. There were few waking moments in that day of sleep. I remember studying the floor for a couple of minutes wondering if it may have become safe but I let that train of thought leave without me.

The next day I did't think twice about getting out of bed and when I put my foot on the floor an almost imperceptable low hum rang gently in my head. That was four years ago now and the hum has remained, never wavering and never getting any louder or softer. It is just there. I've thought once or twice to go and see a doctor about it but that was an express train.People don't look at me any differently since the hum came. They still look at me as though they'd scraped me off the bottom of their shoe. And I still smile at them. I haven't done too much dreaming since that day though. Not even after I had saved a drowing woman from the river. I can't confess to being particularly scared as I dived in, I only thought how clear and fresh the water was, and how clear the hum was under water. The drowning woman was very greatfull when she had recovered which I thought was nice of her.

Sometimes, just for the hell of it, I put ear plugs in my ears and sit on the floor and just hum along with the hum. I can get my hum pretty low if I try hard enough. I think I did change after the hum came even though people still treated me the same. I started affecting other peoples characteristics. Even fictional characters charaterisics. Sometimes I would have a favorite thing to say such as 'I laughed like hell.' Or 'cool' or 'absolutely ghastly.'
I even thought for a time that I looked like other people. One time I thought I looked like James Dean and another Albert Einstein. It didn't last long though. I thought I looked like Woody Allen once and had to snap out of it.

I told a girlfriend one time about the hum and said I wanted to crawl inside my mouth and embrace it. I didn't see her around much after that but that was okay by me too. I met her once sitting on a park bench and she told me that even though she knew she didn't want to see me she hadn't been able to stop dreaming of me since the last time we had met. Like an idiot I apologised. It was sincere idiocy.

All the fruits of the days experience should be ripe for picking by dream time but it would seem that my orchard slumbers in permanent winter.

It's not easy to think of things in the past or at least not rationally. Since the hum came I don't dwell on things for too long. The hum beats a kind of rhythm but remains static.
One day about a year ago I met someone else who said they also had the hum. I was walking in some deep forested hills when I came across a log cabin with what I took for a frail old woman sitting outside. I greeted her and she gestured for me to sit. I asked her about herself and she told me she was a gypsy. She said that people didn't want other people roaming wild anymore so she found a nice spot and built her house. She asked me what I was doing so far in the woods and I told her it was a good place for humming. She said she had noticed that too and that even when she wasn't humming she was humming. We ate rabbit which was cooked over an open campfire and then we sat around and hummed some together. I stayed with her for a month or so and we quickly became lovers. She didn't know how old she was but I'd say she was about sixty. Far older than me in any case. She was really quite skinny but far from being frail she had more life in her than I did. We made good love and we hummed alot too. We were both grateful for that time. When the time came it wasn't hard to move on. Thinking of her now has just reminded me of something that happened last week.Just for a moment I thought the hum lowered in frequency just for a second or two. I was standing on a railway platform waiting for a train feeling a little miserable as I had a slight cold, and out of nowhere a woman I had never seen before came up to me and put a purple shawl around me. As she arranged the shawl about my shoulders our eyes met for a split second and the hum seemed to deepen as though it were using less energy. I tried to express my gratitude with a smile and it seemed to work because she smiled back at me before walking away. Incidentally, by the time I had reached my destination I felt quite alright again.

I sometimes wonder how many people on this planet have the hum. Not too many I guess. Although it could be that people with it don't feel any particular need to talk about it. I know I don't. Especially since I told my girlfriend that time. I thought Buddhist monks might have it but I went and stayed for a couple of days in a monastery and there wasn't a hum among them. They were nice guys and all and I was grateful for their hospitality but they didn't get what I meant by the hum. They talked some about a perfect tone with which they tried to be in tune with but I could tell it wasn't an audible thing. They allowed me to sit and hum along with my hum while they chanted and I think in some way we both benifitted from it. They said they didn't dream much either.

I never become not aware of the hum. I'm always listening to it. Even when I am talking to someone the words seem to come out of thier own accord because I'm too busy listening to the hum. When I saved the drowning woman I didn't think twice about diving in I just listened to the hum. I was listening to it too when I was mugged. I kicked the knife out of the muggers hand as I listened. He wasn't very grateful and he didn't smile at me before he ran away. I kept the knife. Funnilly enough as I put my hand down to pick it up a cat came out of nowhere and started butting my hand with its head and purring. Then it lay on my feet and let out a long low growl and looked up at me. It followed me home so I kept it. She's very beautful and very sure of herself. At night she sleeps on a pillow next to my head and sometimes I hear her softly growl. She reminds me a bit of the woman in the woods.

I've just been having a bit of a hum to see if it would help me remember any more anecdotes but it hasn't and as all this remembering is becoming a touch tedious I think I'll just go on humming a while longer.