Thoughts on Silence
1.
I remember reading that once you go from observing a conversation to participating in it,
half of it is lost to you. The sound of your own voice ripples your vision, warps the picture
before you. Your thoughts thicken like concrete. Certainty seduces you. You begin to forget
how much you did not know, just a few minutes ago.
2.
In Quaker Meeting, all of the pews face the center of the room. People sit across from each other
saying nothing. One hour, uncountable breaths. Awake. Sometimes, an urgent pull,
a hot metal hook in your diaphragm, a heady adrenaline buzz, your heart sending bees
through your veins. How terrifying – the certainty. The need to speak when you know
everyone must listen, how desperate the message is that wants to shatter such quiet.
3.
My first love did not speak to me for four years after we broke up. I wrote books, albums
for him. They were not so much art as transcripts of the half-dialogue constantly running
through my head, thousands of bottled messages the tide washed back to me, sealed tight as promises.
Last summer, we spent 7 hours in a coffeeshop in unbroken conversation. I said
simple, mundane things surprised me. Sometimes, I said nothing at all. That evening,
the bottles on the shore were full of seawater. For all of their urgency, I cannot recall
a single scroll. Not one word they held.