Posts from — September 2009

When I was an undergraduate, there was a very large, heavy curved bench hewn out of gray stone that sat just outside one of the Arts buildings. Aside from the fact that it was big and ornately carved, one might not think much about it. It was utilitarian. People used it to sit on or rest things on as they came in and out of the side of the building, and not much else.

But there was a secret about that bench, that not many people knew, or took the time to discover.

If you went there at night when it was quiet…

and you sat at one end of the bench, with your back against the arm rest…

and another person sat far, far away, all the way at the other end of the curved bench facing you in the same pose …

and you both leaned your heads to the side to touch the curved stone back of the bench…

…and you whispered something almost imperceptibly into the stone…

…the curve would carry the sound around the curve into the ear of the other person and they could hear you like you were whispering right into their ear.

Someone, at some time, designed this bench on purpose, to carry a whisper around a curve. Someone took the time to do that, instead of just making it a regular bench.

I loved that when someone showed it to me for the first time. And I loved it each time I showed it to another person and their eyes lit up with delight and amazement.

I still love that.

I’ve been thinking about that bench tonight. And suddenly I long to feel myself sitting at one end of the whisper seat, with my ear leaned against the cold stone…

And to have someone there with me, who I could seat at the other end and whisper back and forth with, feeling our smiles light up in the cold, dark night. Just us, two points on a continuous curve.