Image: An AI generated image created for this post. Otherwise, it would have been a picture of a dead baby snake which is interesting, but not related to the topic at hand.
Now that the election is over, I would like to see our nation adopt a new tradition. An annual day of silence. No talking, no talking heads on TV, no news, nothing. I think asking people to spend a day in contemplation, without forcing their opinion on anyone else would be a worthy thing to do. And having a day where no one had to listen to others spew whatever is in their head would be beautiful. Especially after having had to live through two years of abusive TV commercials meant to demonize anyone who believes differently than you do.
Have you ever thought about the language of silence? As a writer, how do we capture the absence of sound? Is the absence of sound what we even mean when we think about silence? We have cliches like 'quiet enough to hear a pin drop' but that requires that we all agree to the same set of assumptions. For instance, whoever drops the pin cannot be standing on carpet, or outside in the grass or snow. Then there is 'quiet as a dormouse' which is intriguing because a dormouse is a rodent that hibernates for up to six months a year. The one I struggle with most is 'quiet as a church mouse.' If you think about it, in times of yore (Writer's Note: all cliches originated in yore), churches would have had stone or wood floors which would allow someone to hear the pin drop, so perhaps they would hear the mouse scampering about as well?
In Love: a novel of grief and desire, Ed Gideon spends his dead wife's birthday going to the graveyard to wash her headstone. It's the only time each year that he visits Lisa's grave because he doesn't want to reconcile that grave with his memories of her as a vibrant person. He then goes home and pours himself a glass of scotch and sits on the back porch.
Ed took a sip of the scotch and settled into his chair on the deck. Lisa would have sat next to him, her chair catching the late afternoon sun while his was already in the shade. He was not ready to sell, not yet. Lisa seemed happy with the thought. She was not ready to lose him, either.
The wind rustled among the leaves of the trees behind the house and the songbirds were trilling softly. The cicadas hummed in the fields underneath it all. The effect, however, was stillness. A moment when everything was in its proper place, and things were as they should be.
Perhaps silence is less about the noise around us and more about our ability to find stillness in a moment regardless of the noise surrounding us. As with most things in life, that means that I am responsible for my own state of being and need to act accordingly. Sometimes I hate having to be responsible for myself and all that it entails.
I still like the National Day of Silence idea.
Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!
Comments