I only feel bad when the sound goes down. I can see the next eight, silent hours. Silence from the outside. The inside is never quite less than a muffled growl. I see myself in some parallel universe, or even this one. Explaining to my pragmatic, European girlfriend what I mean by muffled growl.
“Why you growl? You mad?”
“No.”
“You mad at me?”
“No. The opposite.”
“Then why you growl?”
The short answer is, “I don’t know.” The longer answer that might take a few jumps over our language barrier requires a certain nuance with English, i.e.,”Why aren’t you growling?”
Growling is guttural and seems monstrous. There are examples across every culture when a noise means more than an articulated cry. I don’t want the next eight hours to be silent in any way.