THE NARRATIVE ARC

Solitude aka Silence

The most beautiful partner in the world

These days, I often find my silence more eloquent than my words, and for one who has been hard to shut up for most of his life, this is saying a lot.

Preschool, I’d speak to anyone — uncles, neighbors, checkout clerks, strangers — about anything, mostly fabulizing or sharing what played in my mind at the time, which as a rule I found interesting, if not captivating.

I figured others would too and so would listen and ooh and aah and admire me even before I knew the meaning of that word, though I sure knew the nice feeling of being at the center of grown-up attention.

Many of my parents’ friends were amazed that one so young could talk so much and lie so convincingly.

Accurately pegging me as overly loquacious, all the way from first grade through sixth my poor, despairing teachers always placed me in the front row, opposite her (or him) all the better to keep my tongue in check. Was I embarrassed? No. Far too intoxicated with myself to see this other than a badge of honor, this hard-to-shut-up thing.

As an aside: I’m glad I didn’t spend my early school years in today’s educational climate, for I would surely have been branded ADHD and duly medicated, which would no doubt have derailed me but good.

However, by seventh grade, I had begun to think before I spoke, and that solved the issue, no more facing the teacher from there on.

Still, I liked talking and I always thought (mostly incorrectly) that opinions I held would prove impressive or amazing to others, so I often shared them, invited to or not.

Eventually, in my early twenties now, I caught on: the world was not necessarily all that interested in what I had to say.

So I clammed up for a while, some years in fact. Twenty, give or take.

Then: well, to hell with that.

So I started writing, telling myself things.

I came to discover this was like coming home after a long absence abroad, for writing was something I had always enjoyed. Through school, it was my favorite subject — in Swedish then, of course — but, now, after living in the UK and US for the better part of these twenty silent years my English had grown good enough to take for a spin.

And spin I did. Yarn after yarn. And, oh, yes, I had come home, even if this house was built with English words.

And I wrote and I wrote.

But a few novels and novellas later, along with a score or two of short stories — all of them self-published — I finally caught on again: while I found what I had to say captivating enough, the world at large did not necessarily concur.

Interestingly, though, during my writing years I grew very interested in what the world had to say, especially about the perennial questions — Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? You know, those things — and I finally saw the wisdom in shutting my mouth and opening my ears.

Approaching the final third of my life, I turned to Buddhism and solitude and here I found another long-lost home and truly began to see the value of silence.

Will it improve on the silence?

Shirdi Sai Baba once offered this amazing advice: “Before you speak, think: Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it kind? Will it hurt anyone? Will it improve on the silence?”

“Will it improve on the silence?” What an amazing question. Obviously asked by someone who appreciates and sees the value of mumdom.

These days — although this might well be construed as me tossing rocks after having made glass houses, my more or less permanent residence over the years — I have, all too often if I may say so, come across people who cannot for the lives of them stand silence, who must fill it with something, no matter how inane or loud.

Who must be doing something. Moving. Gesticulating. Scaling rock faces. Laughing at idiots. Checking email. Selfing. Huffing. Puffing. Blowing houses down.

This does bring to mind Blaise Pascal’s great observation: “All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.”

I read somewhere, don’t remember where now, that some people after ten or so minutes in a sensory deprivation tank welcome the optional electric shock (a mild one to be sure, but by no means painless) that’s on the menu if they cannot bear more silence — anything, in other words, to break the utter stillness of the dark and quiet tank.

Talk about Pavlov meets Pascal.

George Saunders, who I am sure agrees with the above two statements, observes the following about our media’s influence in his brilliant essay “The Braindead Megaphone” (which I recommend you track down and read, by the way; and which these days I think of as “The Braindead MAGAphone,” for obvious reasons):

“A culture’s ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.”

This, in my book, is the opposite of improving on the silence. It is raping it. It is kidnapping silence and holding it hostage for profit.

The interesting, and also very scary thing about this Saunders quote is that he wrote “The Braindead Megaphone” in 2007, and things have not improved since then, I’d venture you agree.

These days, the loudest, most inaccurate, most divisive, most grotesque voice is the one most listened to and reported on, to both the general and social media’s shame.

This frightens me.

Today I am, by any standard, a recluse.

For the last decade I have called Crescent City my home. I own and live in a cabin a ten minutes’ walk from the very seldom Pacific Ocean.

This is a small town. For me, just the right size. Everything is five minutes away and no red light is too long.

A beautiful coastline, to boot. It’s like Big Sur with a Walmart.

I read a lot. I write a lot. I meditate a lot. In other words, I am happily married to Solitude, and very comfortable with Silence (Solitude’s other name or sister, take your pick).

I prefer reading a speech rather than watching it. I prefer writing to speaking. I prefer silence to almost any sound (birds and ocean waves are just fine, of course). Very few things I say, or write, or even think, improve upon the silence.

When I rise at 4 a.m. the world is a perfect place. It’s dark outside, even in the summer, and the neighborhood (another word for my world) is asleep.

I can count the cars I will hear between now and when I set out on my morning walk along the Pacific shore in a few hours on my fingers. This is such a beautiful change from Los Angeles, where I lived for a quarter of a century and where any time of day or night ten seconds worth of car-listening would fill all ten fingers, usually along with as many toes — and I would still, often as not, come up a few digits short.

My morning sitting (meditation), usually an hour or so, is rarely if ever disturbed by noise, and should some sound invade my little loft chapel, I barely hear it, nestled in Samadhi.

During my morning walk — a mile out and a mile back — I usually see only a handful of cars, and over the weekends I might see nary a none. Again, I think back to Los Angeles now and then and thank my lucky star or guardian angel or local deity: thank you, thank you, thank you.

And when I come back to my little cabin, and open the door, I am again greeted by Solitude, the most beautiful partner in the world.

Nothing can improve upon her silence.

© Wolfstuff