Check in
I’m writing mostly about one thing today: the great gift of winter, silence.
Negative space
Music and art share a secret: what’s real is what’s between. In art, it’s what is known as “negative space.” In music, it is silence.
From “These Dreams” by Heart:
The sweetest song is silence That I’ve ever heard
Psalm 46
Be still and know that I am God
What’s between is what’s real
Consider this quilt top. It’s a traditional pattern known as “Drunkard’s Path.”
At first, you might notice the dark material, the “pattern.” But look beyond that to the negative space, the white areas. It’s an entirely different quilt.
In the 2007 documentary Helvetica, the typeface’s designer, Massimo Vignelli, explains that white space is what defines type:
Typography is not the black. In essence it’s the white between the blacks that makes good typography. … In essence it’s like music: it is not the notes, it’s the space between the notes that makes the music.
Alan Watts has plenty to say about sound in The Book (On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are). “Hearing melody is hearing the spaces between the tones, . . .” he writes.
Yet the general habit of conscious attention is, in various ways, to ignore intervals. Most people think, for example, that space is “just nothing” unless it happens to be filled with air. They are therefore puzzled when artists or architects speak of types and properties of space, and more so when astronomers and physicists speak of curved space, expanding space, finite space, or of the influence of space on light or on stars. … Space is the relationship between bodies, and without it there can be neither energy nor motion.
Five kinds of silence
The silence of a room, a sound as unremarkable as beige-colored walls. Beneath the silence, though, I detect a continual rustling. I think it is the buzz of millions of dust mites. Once, after I fumigated a room for fleas, the sound was totally dead. No buzzing whatsoever.
Buzz. No buzz. No matter. Like floaters in the eye, the brain learns to ignore the buzzing. If you think about it, though, the buzzing is there. Always.
The silence of night, still and quiet but seldom without sound. The distant, mournful wail of a train’s horn, the skittering of bare branches in the winter wind, the rustle of leaves as small animals pass. Crickets. An owl. Sudden sharp, brief cat fights. The popping of beams as the house settles. The moon seems to climb through heaven silently, but maybe, up close, it rumbles and grumbles its way through frozen space.
The silence of mist and fog. Wet stillness, a blotting out of senses, hearing among them. Many communications made on foggy days will be misunderstood.
The silence of earth. Dense, pressing, implacable, unforgiving. Even the earthworms make no noise as they pass through. If their soft bodies scrap against the grain of the soil, they may make tiny friction sounds, but the earthworms have no ears to hear them.
The silence between. The audience holds its breath as the conductor raises the baton. Each note is separated by an infinitesimal, imperceptible period from the notes that surround it. In the silence of that space, the notes breathe and blend. Vibrations and overtones persist, but there is always a break before the next wave.
Silence, stillness, snow
Winter in much of the country means snow, as it did in the Minnesota of my childhood. When it’s cold and dry, the snow squeals underfoot, and when you stop walking, the silence spreads to infinity. You hear your heartbeat, and not only that, the heartbeat of the world. Somewhere below your feet there is warmth. . . .
Cycles
All of life is about renewal and change. You’d think change would happen and that would be that.
Yet change can only bring more change; otherwise inertia would take over the Universe. Nothing sticks for long. Change can mark me, move me, propel me to endless newness—but more change is coming.
How can I be afraid of change when change is the heartbeat of the Universe?
You know the feeling: we’re all waiting for something more, the splendid vista just over the next hill. I’ve been on the edge of something new, of renewal, all my life.
And then—I find it. In the Silence.
In peace. In the baby’s sigh or the perfect leaf, in the stars of a clear night or the trembling note of a flute. The crunch of breakfast cereal, a perfect strawberry.
Then all is right. The moment is perfect and divine.
. . . Right until the next moment, when the cat cries or the postman knocks or there is scandal in the news.
Girding for change
Withdrawing from the world is an unequal answer for most of us. We are called to co-create the world. We must be about business—our mother’s or our father’s or God’s or our own.
We could step back from the world. We could manifest as a tree, have form and shed leaves and drink deeply of the earth and be just what we are forever, not unchangeable but rooted.
Yet even a rock can be disturbed and eroded. Change happens, is inevitable. So how can we be consistent in anything, even the highest and best?
Hail, Bozo!
We are all, in the words of one faith teacher, quoting the Firesign Theater, just bozos on the bus.
Everybody is on that bus. Nobody escapes being human, which means being fallible.
“Fallible” relates to “foible,” a funny word. Maybe that could be the word of the day today. It would show that even “negative” words are worth pondering.
Words like: Depression. Anger. Angst. Despondency. Fatigue. A boxful of words. And at the bottom of the box, Hope. Hope, unfolding its wings, still wet from the chrysalis. Hope, alive in the silence. Alive where miracles happen. Just your ordinary daily miracles. Her wings beat out new words: Resolution Strife Unease Resolve Renewal Rapture These words, the mantra of our yearning hearts. Spoken in the universal language, which is love. Spoken again and over again. Something to keep for ourselves, in the surround of our hearts.
Silence as a savior
For some people, there is never any quiet time, no silence, only cacophony.
An old friend of mine didn’t know that there was an infestation of squirrels in her attic until the day the power went out. Before that, the radio or the television was alway on. There was never silence in her house, except at night, and that’s when the squirrels were asleep, too.
But when the lights went out, it was obvious. She couldn’t miss the skittering noises made by hordes of squirrels that were living uninvited in her house.
Make your own silence
Just for a day, an hour, 10 minutes, take out the ear buds, turn off the speakers, click off the remote.
Let silence rush in upon you. Take in breath as it washes over you. Exhale into its expansion. It’s known that many people cannot sit still, cannot bear to do nothing for more than a minute or two. Please, don’t be one of them. Because they are not really living. And you, living, breathing, my Dear One, You, of all people, Are worthy of A least one Precious Moment of Silence.
Check out
~Monthly resolution and wave action~
Remember that January is “no shopping” month How is that working out for you?
I blew it almost immediately. I found this remarkable little app that mimics the clicker for my Roku smart TV. All the functionality, never needs batteries. I signed up and paid for it without thinking.
But I resolve to be good for the rest of the month! Sometimes, you can only move forward. Forgive yourself.
Back to silence
Here’s some Byron:
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar . . .
Even in the sea, it’s the space between the waves that makes meaning.
Be good, Be kind, Gentle Ones. Embrace your silence, Your winter birthright. —30—