  The house is deathly quiet.  Again,  and since the end of Sunday,  the house has died early and was born the next day early,  it is woken by light every morning now.  Even the clouds are lit with the early sun.
 It's as if the entire world has changed.  But now as I have turned off my amp for the fifth time,  I have unhooked the mic and taken it down,  it being ready for the session tomorrow,  the one that may decide my future,  I can't help but hearing that definitively speaking silence,
 its slow and subterfuged voice calling out across the night and the overcast sky,  across my deadbox room,  into my brain,  and there it pounds its strange drums and chants its strange tune and tells me now to write about it and compose a ballad for its continued life,  and it says that after all is said and done,  and the age of existence is over,
 he will reign above all,  silence who is golden shall have his crown when the aeon of time is up.  It was this silence that motivated me to write this post.  I stood from my bed,  reading as I have the past few nights,  and came to the bathroom,
 looking into the great mirror there for the first time in,  it seems,  a long time.  Where hence has this face come from?  The only thing that has remained the same of this aged face are the eyes that still call out even to me.  They have stayed forever as a haunting testament to my person,
 that ever shall all know that once and before I am Josh and shall ever be.  But this face.  The face that glimpsed this same mirror ten years ago and knew,  " I am me,  and thought none the different.
 The face that,  only years later,  would,  tear- strewn,  look into this same mirror as his most beloved pet died,
 as his aunt was pronounced dead in a hospital,  and that he was subjugated to stay at home for the funeral,  the same mirror and the same face that said,  " Your parents are not each other's any longer"  the same face that,
 upon a beach miles away,  had sun- burnedly grinned into a sunset and drew hearts into sand with a girl that he no longer recalls,  and three years later,  to do the same,  the same boy who had walked the streets of Nashville,
 bemused with the life of the city at night,  the same face that,  sitting on his grandmother's porch with his best friend,  had screamed and cried out for Anfor something,  to avenge his deepest heart's betrayal,  the same heart that was betrayed by his father and gave forth the same cry,
 the same heart you have seen now.  The same face that has cried,  has laughed,  has sighed and fallen to musing,  has raised its eyebrows in shock,  and has given everyone anything it could.
 And today,  there was the face in that same mirror again,  the mirror where all of this had started,  and there I was as before.  " I am me,
 it had said,  " but I am more than that,  as well.  I am myself,  and I am my friends,
 I am my lovers,  I am my shadow,  I am my music,  I am everything that surrounds me,  and still,  and above all of this,
 I am me.  And somehow,  despite the strange,  long- haired ghost in that mirror,  the pale-
faced,  sunken- eyed boy that stood and stared back answered,  " And I am you,  as well,
 and had smiled despite his terror at being insane,  he did not care,  the mirror smiled and he smiled back,  and his mind had spoken to him and he had answered as if it were common,  content with the answer,  and had fallen silent.
 If there was one thing I have ever learned it is it:  the face above is as much as the face beneath The face of my life is here as well as within.  As if by magic,  I am something else again.  But still I am me.
