Saturday, January 26, 2008

Silence

A virtual acquaintance of mine has a blog. It is in a language other than English, so I use Babelfish to translate it. I can get an idea of what she is saying, but not the full meaning. I like her writing. I think that it is very good. Inspired. By what, I don't know. But I return to it every few weeks.

Lately she has been writing about silence. One of the definitions that she lists for Silence is: the sonorous version of the darkness

Because I've been listening to music and blogging about it, I started to think of the quiet. Of silence. How it is a rare thing.

About a week ago at work, I was going between buildings. I heard a noise in the sky and looked up. There were about 60 Canadian Geese flying overhead, in about 4 groups. They turned and were so close that I could hear their wings flap. Nature in silence.

Tonight, our family went to have dinner with my supervisor and his family. For a moment we all were quiet. The radio wasn't on. It was just the sound of the wind on the minivan. Machines in silence.

When I awake in the middle of the night. Angie lies next to me, with her CPAP machine, and the baby monitor hisses lightly from Caroline's room. Comfort in silence.

You can hear a lot in the silence.

If you listen.

2 comments:

Doug said...

What?

Steve said...

Good silence is hard to find. Lots of intrusions, internal and external.