Whose Silence Are You?
— Listen, I wonder, whose silence are you? O, o, o, o.
— Let’s begin with a poem by Thomas Merton:
In Silence
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.
O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.
“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”
— The whole world is not so secretly on fire. All our silences are of freaking fire. Still, there are the stones.
— I’m wrestling these days with having my silence stolen. Silence in the sense that Umberto Eco talks about in his essay on censorship which I mentioned in this post. Remember his call to: Redi in interiorem hominem? The digital noise as a drug is something I know I need to address for myself, for my mental health. As a first step I had this idea to cull my instagram — to unfollow those accounts that have been inactive for over a year. I’m shocked/notshocked by how many accounts that I followed that were inactive for two years plus. It appears the smart kids did a mass exodus (went dormant) about January of 2024. I have been misinterpreting absence as reticence in many cases, my bad. My other step has been to adopt the idea of a half-sab or half sabbatical from social media. Instead of having just one day off per week, I am going to try to take several days away. I mean, duh. Lastly, I’m trying to make my home email a sacred space. So I’ve unsubscribed to almost everything, bookmarking sites instead, old school. Who knows, maybe that’s not the answer either, but I’m wondering if emailing friends isn’t the way to go?
— Two poems by Wendell Berry which I found in Soul Food, but which are of course in books by WB as well.
Breaking
by Wendell Berry
Did I believe I had a clear mind?
It was like the water of a river
flowing shallow over the ice. And now
that the rising water has broken
the ice, I see that what I thought
was the light is part of the dark.
To Know the Dark
by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
— We’re shuffling between light and dark at breakneck speeds, faster than any dealer in a small town casino where the odds against are always the worst, hilariously bad, and still we play and play, losing our shirts over and over again.
— Now might be the time to just really get to know the library of dark and the silence, the library of oblivion.
— I’ve returned to Joseph Campbell, who was at times too much of his time, but usually is a decent human being. We’re all well aware of the “tranformation flight” of the hero, I’m sure, “where the hero, with the powers after him, carries his goods back to the light world as fast as he can.” He had gone into the darkness, and now returns from that “yonder zone.” Still, is what he brings back wanted? “The great problem is bringing life back into the wasteland where people live inauthentically.” “Bringing back the gift to integrate it into a rational life is very difficult. It is even more difficult than going down into the underworld.”
— Is it time to go back into the woods? Probably. But one must also remember, as Campbell says, that “you do not have a complete adventure unless you do get back. there is a time to go into the woods and a time to come back, and you know which it is. Do you have the courage? It takes a hell of a lot of courage to return after you’ve been in the woods.”
— And then he hits you with: “When the world seems to be falling apart, the rule is to hang onto your own bliss. It’s that life that survives.”
“When the world seems to be falling apart, the rule is to hang onto your own bliss. It’s that life that survives.”
— So I was re-reading (and need to go deeper) The Wasteland by T.S.E. And this is a good guide for it. I have been attending to the idea of the fragment, and so: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” is worth thinking about. And then the ending is the Aum Shanti chant which I once found useful and might again, particularly the Aum in all the things.
— From the guide on Poetry Foundation written by Tyler Malone:
“Amid the whorl of her tidal thoughts, we find a reference to the song “That Shakespearean Rag,” a minor hit in 1912:
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
The cultural degeneration from Shakespeare to popular music is emblematic of the decline and debasement seen throughout The Waste Land. Eliot interestingly affixed an “O O O O” to the beginning of the song, which is reminiscent of the final lines of Hamlet: “The rest is silence. / O, o, o, o.” The woman suggests a game of chess, the image that gives the section its title, and betrays a sense of listlessness, indolence, and anticipation.”
— Have been also re-reading Andy Warhol. What hits this time through: “Sometimes people having nervous breakdown problems can look very beautiful because they have that fragile something to the way they move or walk. They put out a mood that makes them more beautiful.”
— Thanks, Andy. We’re all beauties, you know, and I know.
— I’ve been listening to the Stones, as one does. I didn’t own a lot of albums but definitely more of the Stones than anything else back in the day. Just today I found out I’d been mis-hearing a lyric forever. Which is kind of funny — I always thought it was “file an instant cake” rather than “buy an instant cake.” You live you learn you laugh, dryly. But you know, still, things are different today, and a lot of stuff is still a drag. I’m still the person you meet at certain dismal dull affairs. Or I would be if I went out. Anyway, I’m going to keep filing instant cakes in my mind. You can’t stop me Mick Jagger.
— Again with the silence the light the darkness. Filing instant cakes into the darkness. File also some bliss into that oven, turn the light on, and see what rises. O, o, aum.
— As usual, photos are mine, taken on Fujifilm XT4, processed mildly in Lightroom. Words are mind from my skull to yours, with the exception of the quoted ones, which have been properly sourced.
— Lastly, might you like to subscribe or support? Links below etc.
