One Day I Tried Leaving the TV Off

Tuesday. Light sun, the same house as always, except the television is dark.

Ten past six. My eyes are not fully open and my hand is already groping along the bedside for the remote, as it has for more than ten years. Press. The screen lights up, someone reading the morning news spills into the room, and I remember what I promised myself last night. Press again. Dark.

The quiet does not arrive all at once. It comes in layers. First the ceiling fan, ticking at one fixed point in each turn, which I have never heard before although it has ticked since last year. Then a bamboo broom sweeping the neighbour's yard. Then the bread seller calling from the lane below, a hoarse voice I only knew through his loudspeaker.

Half past seven. I am a seamstress, taking in repairs at home. Today the sewing machine runs in a house where no other voice cuts in. For the first time I hear the rhythm of the needle: clack, clack, clack, and then one small hitch. I stop. The seam along a sleeve is slightly off. Normally I only notice at the thread-cutting and have to unpick it. Today I caught it ten stitches sooner, and saved a stretch of unpicking.

I would not dare say the television makes me sew badly. I only know that today I could hear the rhythm of my own machine.

Nine o'clock. Lua from across the road brings in a pair of trousers to be hemmed.

"Why is your house so quiet today? Standing at the gate I thought something had happened."

"I am trying the TV off for a day."

"Oh my. I thought you were away. Why switch it off?"

"I do not know yet. Just trying it to see."

Lua laughs and leaves the trousers. I stand at the gate a while, listening to her shoes fade down the lane. I am a little embarrassed: it turns out that for all these years the neighbours have heard our television the way they would hear me being home.

Eleven o'clock. Cooking rice. A knife in my hand for the spring onions, and my mouth already feels empty. I reach for my phone, open a cooking video, and prop it against the salt jar. A while later, the man in the video is explaining how to marinate pork, and it hits me: I have only swapped one sound for another. The television is off, and the kitchen still will not be quiet.

I laugh by myself. Then I switch off the phone and drop it in my shirt pocket. The spring onions hit the hot oil with a hiss, louder than I expected.

Three in the afternoon. This is where I slip. The afternoon is stuffy, the machine is resting, and the house is so still that the stillness feels heavy on my shoulders. I turn the television back on. A dubbed soap opera is halfway through an episode, and I watch for exactly ten minutes, needle still in hand.

Then I turn it off, because I have had what I needed. I do not feel I lost. I never swore off the television today, I only tried one day, and there were moments I truly needed that sound. Knowing that I needed it is already something.

Half past five. Rain arrives without warning. It beats on the tin roof for a long while before I look up from the seam. It is not like rain in a film, because nobody cuts in with dialogue. A downpour comes in a rush and thins out, as if counting. I sit listening until it falls in separate drops, and remember a piece I once read about listening to the sound of falling rain, when I could not understand why anyone would write so much about a rainstorm.

Seven o'clock. My son comes home, throws his bag on the chair, and sees the dark television.

"Mum, is the TV broken?"

"No. I switched it off."

"Why? Hey, I can hear you chewing so clearly."

"I can hear you chewing too."

We laugh, then keep eating, slower than other nights. I watch him pick up a piece of fried egg and notice a habit I had never seen: before he picks up anything, he rests his chopsticks for a beat. He may have done it all along, hidden by the noise of the television. It is like eating a meal without your phone, which this evening brought to mind.

Ten o'clock. Dishes washed, hands dried, I look around the house. It is the same house. One thing is different: for the first time in a very long while I can hear my own footsteps walking from the kitchen to the living room.

Before turning off the bedside lamp, I put the remote on top of the cabinet, a little out of reach. I have not decided about tomorrow. Maybe I will switch it on again. Maybe lower. Maybe only at three in the afternoon, for ten minutes.

I do not mean to say the television is bad. Tonight I only want to write down that for one day I let it stay off, and the house turned out not to be as quiet as I thought.