iAlogue: Mumming

This iAlogue Story focuses upon the absence of internal dialogue, those rare Mumming moments when the internal commentary rests.

Eugène Romain Thirion: Study of the Head of the Angel for “Joan of Arc Listening to Voices” (c. 1876)

"I have no story today because I have not a thing to say to anybody …"

My internal dialogue never was continuous. Though it usually seems uninterrupted, breaks do occasionally appear. I do not always notice, and since I'm the only one serving as witness, if I don't notice, it's as if it never happened or just as good as never happening. I do sometimes notice, though. I notice these empty slots without commentary, for any comment would nullify the Mumming effect. Mumming appears like a slip of paper placed between pages in a set, a spacer. If it serves any more profound purpose, I have never been party to it. It signifies nothing and needs no meaning attached to justify its presence. I think of and about it only in its absence, for when it's present, I let it lie or leave it lay. My internal dialogue has nothing whatsoever to say while I'm Mumming.

With all the attention presencing attracts these days, I can sometimes seem altogether too present, too aware, too much in a moment. I should allow myself some inert time, some space within which I do not need to strive to make any difference, within which I needn't attempt to accomplish anything, a few moments where being isn't the purpose and understanding seems beside any reasonable point. A period spent on the sidelines. A few moments of supreme irresponsibility, absent without leave, not working.

I don't remember learning about Mumming when I attended school. It certainly was not part of the curriculum at home, either, for there, one attended to their assigned chores, no excuses asked or offered. It was a matter of learning responsibility. We'd clean out the furnace clinkers even when we felt sick and deliver our newspapers regardless, seven days each week. We were expected to keep that lawn mowed without being hounded and were always present and accounted for. If we slacked, we regretted it because our responsibilities would fall on someone else's back. Even recreation was just another form of engagement, distractions, just another form of the usual interactions. One never stopped the narrative voice. That radio never knew silence.

Adulthood seems almost entirely different than I expected. I anticipated knowing so much that I would rarely feel baffled. A sense of sufficiency would certainly follow me everywhere I roamed. My notions of how it would be turned out to be fantasy, yet I still believe in the possibility that my experience so far has been somehow non-representative, and everything might still change toward how it really should have been all along. I often exhaust myself by counting differences rather than blessings, aspirations rather than accomplishments, and shortcomings rather than long-goings. I might focus on the easily observed and conclude the absolutely absurd. My internal dialogues might fill empty airspace without resolving much. My dialogue diet would lack much more were it not for the occasional Mumming interlude. It gives me a break even when I don't deserve one. It leaves a hole just where I needed one.

I have no story today because I have not a thing to say to anybody, much less myself.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved