the silence

If silence is golden. Speaks volumes. The chime before meditation. And after. And in-between. The silence of the lambs. Bleating. The silence of no lambs bleating. The silence of no iambs, pentameter or otherwise. The echoic silence after the 3-foot-diameter steel gong is gonged. The eloquence of the words not said, the argument not posited, the point not made, the victory not sought. The power of the pause, the well, the hollow, the vapor, the sky. The weight of it. The invincible juggernaut weight of big fat, divine Unspokenness rolling down the avenue for the Krishna festival, devotees throwing themselves before the wheels to be crushed in sacrifice. That kind of obeisance to silence. The silence more than absence of words or sounds. The white space of silence. The anvil of it. The cartoon bank safe falling onto the sidewalk from the skyscraper of it. The where did it come from and where does it go silence. The ringing in your ear silence that screams. And the silence after that.  

texting one two three

the text text texts Scripture scripture stuttering writing the writing the word words wording string of semantic syllables passage extract narrative pretext context line lines nonverbal unspoken legible utterance utterances legible illegible indefinable posit of posing etymological energy of imprecise embedded thought would be thought inked inkling of linked intuition articulation you say text synonymous anonymous musing musings musingification beyond deeper than hermeneutics semiotics sunny cloudy composition in the infinite cloud unlouded texture texting fabricated text the text tyranny of term terminal terminology text textual silence nothing no-thing  
 

the vow

We took vows. We made a vow of silence. We all did. Some complied more than others, or so we have "heard." I took a vow of silence. During the Ceremony itself, the Presider spoke no words, nor any sign language utterances. All the Candidates knew in advance this was at the heart of the Ceremony, not the only vow but a critical one. Stark in its simplicity, its lack of protocols, aberrations, rewards, punishments. We knew this out there in the world. We knew this, we were told, warned, if you will. We could've run right then and there. I could have run. We complied. We affirmed by standing as one, rising from the pews, our white cotton robes rustling (the robes took no vow of silence!), our cowls covering our heads. Obviously white vestments or black. Had to be either one. We stood as one. However, two Candidates, one male and one female, refused, they remained seated while the others stood. The Ushers politely ushered them out into the blaring noon sun. No remonstrances, no frowns. They were told, we were all told, this was a last chance to shun the vow of silence, to make a silent statement of rejection -- or freedom, if you subscribed to such a worldly view. Better now than later.

I stood. I assented. I had no hesitation. If I were to hesitate, would I have remained seated? We will never know, will we?

The first week was the hardest. Such a new means of living, with so little training or practice! The Ushers were tolerant, letting the odd, random spoken word to escape, as happened with many, if not most, of us. Things like "yes" or "no" or "what." One quickly learned that such monosyllabic slips faded away, subsided, stopped, given no conversational milieu to flourish in. After all, what does "what," "yes," or "no" even mean without a prompt or context or wordscape? Almost nothing.

I napped a lot at first. The antidote to this, the Ushers knew, was work in the fields. Raking, pruning, digging, mulching, watering, transplanting. The work was a boost to my spirits, uplifting, despite the hard labor involved.

By the end of the first year, the silence became a routine, an atmosphere, a given. I can't speak for anyone else (obviously, I am not permitted to speak at all), but I was surprised that the wordless soundscape (coughs, sneezes, burps, farts, yawns, knuckle cracklings continued to flourish) did not create a white purity, a pristine echo in my heart and mind. Quite the opposite. The silence, for me, evoked a roar of white noise. No, no, that's not quite right. Sure, there was the static of anxiety, fear, and restlessness, but that was nothing compared to the relentless interior monologue gonging in my head, made silent only by sleep, which over time became increasingly sparse.

Wasn't this the purpose of the vow, to silence, or quell, the running commentary of my mind? Weren't they trying to soften, eventually mute, our narrative (a worn-out word), our editorial board, our storyteller without lips or voice?

Voice. That word. Voice. Do I have one? (Whispers in my cell have proved inconclusive.) I am convinced that my voice persists; it has not vanished; its imprint can still be felt. 

And that is why I have written this crumpled note, unfolded into legibility, I pray. Hear my voice. Rescue me. I can't speak for any of the others. But rescue me. I've had enough. Get me out. There are rumors, scribbled on napkins or toilet paper, that some have made it out.

I'm screaming. I'm shouting. 

Can you hear me?

petitioning the desert fathers and mothers

The Zen Dads and Zen Moms barely walked barefoot into the desert. Their silent footsteps and stilled voices echoed against the dunes. For the curvilinear tawny dunes, picture, the landscape of Lawrence of Arabia. 'It is written.' By accident or providence, the barefoot pilgrims discovered the Holy City of Lightanddark. They commingled and communed with the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers. The sands were hot, the nights cold. Our protagonist applied to join the community in the desert among the dunes. Only by invitation, he was told. What was on the application, he asked. A portfolio of pain, a paean of penance, a prostrate petition, he was told. This is not the French Foreign Legion, he was warned. You don't enlist, we don't recruit. The hardest question on the application (which existed neither on paper nor on digital atoms) consists of: why? Our applicant surmised this would be a cinch. Easy. Yet he was forewarned. No whining, self-pity, or quixotic gestures toward finding oneself. Skip the escape rhetoric, the confession, or the absolution. The self-actualization crap. Our fallen hero wanted to join, even if momentarily out on the periphery, along the outer borders that required a Passport of Perfidy. The chasm between then and now, between her and him. Hesychasm. Sacred stillness silence. I want to be honed, carved, cured, our triumphant warrior wailed. There is no cure, there is no cause, replied the palindromic Abba (Father). I want to be whittled, reduced, spared, declared the supplicant-applicant. There are no words, smiled the recursive Amma (Mother). Iconic. Dolorous. It is not to hide but to expose, not to lose but to find, implored our narrator. Let me dry out, sober up, be salved, o saviors, prayed our petitioner. Why, the Abba and Amma intoned speechlessly. Read my lips. Quiet. White sands. Ascetic fasting, paring down through prayer, alms as balms. 'Though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed.' The desert monks and nuns, in a chorus cried, Cities of the night, metropolises, subway roars; there's your desert for you. Dig in. Delight. Yet the applicant seeking to join the Settlement of Sandy Silence persisted. Let me be hewn, tell me how, he said. And waited. 

Community Values

The TV is on in the Community Room. The community is undefined, but presumably it means the people who live in the building’s 40 apartments, and their guests or friends. The community is entitled to use of the room for family events: birthday parties, wedding or baby or baptismal or confirmation showers, graduation galas, family reunions, divorce or annulment commemorations, book signings, candidate kickoffs or pronouncements, landlord-sponsored and –contrived get-to-know-each-other gatherings with pizza, wings, and soda and coffee, and post-funeral gatherings. We’re in a basement. At the top of one wall are windows facing up at grates on sidewalk level. The opposite wall features glass walls and doors with venetian blinds. The blinds are typically closed. When the TV is on, it most often is tuned to the local Time Warner Spectrum channel with its endless, night-or-day loop of local weather, stories of death and mayhem or small-town thievery or depravity, the scores of high school teams, their success or failure in the sectional championships, the regional marching band competitions, the stray murder or rape, the drunk driver rocketing the wrong way on the Thruway, the statement from the sheriff’s office about the latest suspects, the mug shots of the young and accused with their surprised, scarred, and scared or defiant faces.  All to be repeated again after an appointed duration that viewers are trained to expect, such as “news on the nines” or “weather on the ones.” I walk by in the hallway outside the Community Room. As a resident, count me as a member of the community. No one is in the room. The blinds are drawn. The lights are off. The television is on, the newsreaders’ voices solemn and barely audible to a passer-by. I walk in and pick up one of two remotes sitting on the firm, faux leather chair. I click the O/I power button. Nothing happens. Someone once told me O/I stands for Out of Operation and In Operation. That does not seem plausible three decades later — if that is what I was truly told. Time was, we saw Off / On as the choices. It couldn’t be O and O, for off and on, could it? Too confusing. (I am pausing here to let you Google this modern-day mystery on my behalf. What did you discover? Thanks for coming back to finish reading.) I click the O/I on the other remote, and the massive screen on the wall goes blank, fades and cracles to black-but-not-quite-that-color, accompanied by a palpable silence. The local voices are silenced. The hearth is doused. No smoke puffs toward me or up a chimney. The electronic hearth with its comforting chatter and hum is snuffed out. The Community Room’s temperature is lowered by 1.7°F. I walk out. I do my laundry. When I return to the hallway by the Community Room, its lights are out, its blinds still drawn. And the TV is on again. I keep walking.

land of the 'free,' home of the loud

When did every medical / surgical waiting room come equipped with a blaring television? Obviously, it was not always the case. In the Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, and maybe Eighties, it's not as if waiting rooms had radios to distract and divert us. What did people do? Read? Fidget? Pray? Converse? But starting -- when? -- in the Nineties or Oughties, televisions became ubiquitous in waiting rooms, as well as in a plethora of public places (supermarkets, barber shops, brothels, broth houses, sports bars, cafes, bistros, restaurants, fast-food joints, wedding chapels, betting parlors, electronics departments in mega-stores, corner stores, bodegas, salons, confessionals, opium dens). Televisions showing exactly what? Blather, folderol, pablum, static, chatter. Recipes, DIY, so-called news, energetic nihilism. Stories of triumph and optimism. America's great product: homegrown cheeriness blanketing doom. (You hear people use the phrase, "a disease of denial." But isn't all disease of denial? Go further, MadAvenue is built squarely on the bedrock premise of denying the Biggest D of All, the unmentionable and unspeakable closure of all closures.) So, today I paced a waiting room, an expectant father awaiting surgical news (all went well), searching for the never-to-be-found remote, tempted to tell the reception desk person to shut it all off, wishing If I Had a Hammer. What would Thoreau do? (WWTD?)

an infinity of the unnameable

"In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?" 

-- Harold Pinter

Ah, who else but Harold Pinter, the renowned master of the white spaces of silence in conversation (or lack thereof)?  

To answer the question, an Infinity of the Unnameable.

speechless

Have you ever spent a day willfully not speaking words?

I have not.

I think I could.**

I think I may, some day.

The point? To clear, to see and hear more clearly. To BE more clearly, like still water that was muddied.

Or I'd just nap more on such a putative wordless day.

**(Many who know talkative me would howl with laughter at this claim.)

white noise

white noise
without the noise
now 
that
is
silence
white space
in living
color

the silence of the iambs

I just finished a novel by Haruki Murakami imbued with silence. It was as if silence were a character in the novel (in the text; academics like to say text). "Silence descended over them," or words to that effect, appeared on the page many times. As a reader, I felt those silences. They were like white spaces on the layout of a page, or white scenery on a stage, or deep pauses in a conversation, as in a Harold Pinter play. Sometimes the silences were comfortable, reflective; other times, they were painful, anxious. Isn't that a strange thing about humans: that a silence can be rewarding or agonizing? Have silence scientists figured out a way to measure it, gauge its import, its flavor? I suspect they have. And I would not at all be shocked to learn that our bodies give off a smell to provide a clue (or a cue, for that matter) as to what sort of silence is descending, a salubrious silence or a malevolent one. Ours is not a time of silence. Our culture does not care to abide silences. There is little silence of the lambs or of iambs. (Couldn't resist that bit of English-major snobbery.) Silence of the child at the mother's breast, the purring of a cat, the cough in the cathedral pew, the silence of the beads being told. All silences punctuated my minor sounds. Or silence of the phone not ringing, the voice that is no more, the word unkenneled, the interval between lightning and thunder. And so much more. So much less.

zilch

Like, um, I, like, totally got nothing to say. Nada zilch zero zed nil zip aught null. Like, know what I mean? I got nothin'. (Not that such *nothingness* ever prevents us in cyberverse from blathering on and on and on and on and on anyway.) Know what I mean? Like, totally.

moment of silence

On Monday, President Obama called for a moment of silence at 11 a.m. EST for the victims of the Tucson shooting rampage.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, observed this moment of silence.

(How long does a moment last, by the way?)

I almost forgot to observe it. I saw that my laptop clock announced "11:02," and then sat quietly in my office chair, eyes closed, silent, for about three minutes.

I got to thinking: why not have a moment of silence every day?

Really, why not? Are we honestly too busy?

Could we not spare even one minute?

This practice is neither secular nor sacred (take your pick), neither atheist nor religious (who cares). Or all of those. Or none.

Why could we not pause, collectively, even if just for one minute, at 11 a.m EST every day?

I am totally convinced it would bear fruit; that it would be a step toward peace.

Why not?

How could it hurt?

(Yeah, yeah, there are legit exceptions: air traffic controllers, long-winded professors and politicians, emergency responders, panhandlers, doctors, radio blowhards, nurses, casino employees [ahem], and curmudgeons at coffee shops.)

But why not try it?

Give me 10 good reasons.

[ ]

this is a silence between posts

silence

The sermon was about space.

And silence.

Space on walls in a gallery, allowing room for the paintings to live and breathe, as it were, or as it is.

The space between words or sounds, which call silence.

Oddly, he spoke of John's Gospel and the Word. And the Silence eternal before the Word. Then, curiously, the eucharistic prayer said something like, "Your Word has never been silent."

My lawyerly mind (I'm not a lawyer, though) said to myself, which is it?

Why can't my zen mind say: why does it have to be either/or (the title of a Kierkegaard work)? Why can't it be both?

(Grammar purists might tell you that the slash, or virgule, is used improperly above.)

Silence.

Mirabile Non Dictu

Back in high school, in Latin class, we learned the phrase "mirabile dictu," o wonderful thing to say. After listening this weekend to a fine interview with Gay Talese, on PRI's "To the Best of Our Knowledge," I realized, a bit, the value of "mirabile non dictu," o wonderful thing not to say, the silences between sentences or words.


[silence]


As Talese wrote in Origins,

I learned [from my mother] ... to listen with patience and care, and never to interrupt even when people were having great difficulty in explaining themselves, for during such halting and imprecise moments ... people are very revealing--what they hesitate to talk about can tell much about them. Their pauses, their evasions, their sudden shifts in subject matter are likely indicators of what embarrasses them, or irritates them, or what they regard as too private or imprudent to be disclosed to another person at that particular time. However, I have also overheard many people discussing candidly with my mother what they had earlier avoided--a reaction that I think had less to do with her inquiring nature or sensitively posed questions than with their gradual acceptance of her as a trustworthy individual in whom they could confide.

I interrupt too much. This underscores the danger, the harm, caused by my hyperexuberant conversational reflexes. It shows the spiritual index of silence. But . . .

White on White

No words can describe

the whiteness of the lake-effect snow I walked in and on and amidst this evening,

nor its moisture-laden airiness and fluffiness,

nor the greeting-card alabaster tree limbs laden and droopy,

nor the snowdrift's swallowing silence,

nor the tracks the dog made, as did I,

nor the holiday lights in the park casting their own brand of a yellower whiteness or their reds and greens and blues, nor the sight of the dog gamboling and dashing like a rabbit or a deer, or, well, a dog.

The wind's razoring was a stinging reminder of that old Irish blessing, the one that prays, "May the wind be ever at your back."

Oh, the wind at your back (as opposed to in your face) makes a difference all right!

To me.

But not to the snow-hungry Maggie (presumably half yellow lab and half German shepherd).

All nature is poised and waiting.

Waiting to be present.

And that's what Advent is for me.

This waiting.

Like a deer in the brush. Waiting.

We are waiting for what? And why?