Aldous Huxley
Silence is the source of great strength. Lao Tzu
Saying nothing . . . sometimes says the most. Emily Dickinson
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves. Thomas Carlyle
It's time to shut the door on all the talking about what happened and what should've happened and why I'm upset about what happened and to simply keep my mouth shut on the subject, the subject that jumpstarted this blog.
So, I sit now, day one, in spaces of silence on the matter, hoping that the burning in my heart and the chatter in my mind will follow in the footsteps of the physical silence I've been able to muster.
I'm staying in Alameda for the night, and it's very quiet here. I think I hear a fog horn or a train far off in the distance from time to time, but there are no dogs, no cars, no people laughing, no music, no telephones ringing. I'm curled in a corner of a room on a small bed, a bed made for a child to sleep in, asking for quiet to hit me like a wave--knocking me to my knees, if necessary, pushing through me like music, but absent of notes.
Today, as I move into silence, I feel afraid of uncertainty. Though I know, intellectually, that there are no certainties in life, I'd lived in some delusion about some small regular occurrences I'd come to rely upon. Something as simple as a phone call from a particular person before bedtime or the mockingbird at 11:20 PM, scraping its song like metal against metal. Here I am, in a different city, moving out of certainty. Where there was noise, there's silence. Where there's silence, I face off fear before I can find the strength in this new place.
In the new place, I might hear the wings of birds but not their song. In the new place, the sky shines sundrops, glowing but soundless. In the new place, there's not his reassuring voice after dark, but the vast possibility of God--a presence so awesome it sometimes scares me.
In the new place I wait for silence to have the heft and solidity I'm searching for as resting place.
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