My father was given to homilies, and i remember hanging up from phone calls with him where he’d invariably close the call saying “communicate.” Like all good advice, it’s easy to hear - a little more difficult to put into practice. I have read where a huge percentage of all human communication involves body language. We derive a great deal of information from cues found in the posture and carriage of other human beings - filling language with elegant phrases like “turn of a woman’s ankle.” The question becomes what is understood by whom based on what¿ I can say with good authority that many a woman’s turned ankle was saying nothing at all to me; ah misunderstanding and what it can teach us if we are good students. Awareness is a solid partner to the barely understood and often maligned effort which communication brings to any exchange. In order to convey a thought or feeling, one must have an idea or sense that might be of interest to the right party. Not all turned ankles are speaking directly to you; so how to learn which ankle is the one that beckons with all the delight and joy that might accompany such a quiet expression¿ I’m beginning to have my doubts that a computer is capable of conveying such complicated communication; which if true, means that communicating the fundamental nature of allure via screen does not bode well for parsing the manifest other pressing misunderstandings in our rapidly devolving civil fabric, much less the rapidly evolving isolation of the human soul.
My skin is the boundary of my self-awareness with my aged senses informing a fading echo of the sharp rich odors and sounds of youth. However, as with all vacuums, the fallow field wants to grow something. It is almost as though as the world recedes with all its attendant distractions the stranger i’ve avoided all my life grows more confident that it might be heard. Memories become just that, faded echoes of events no longer present to the senses - love, hate, want, misery. All once vivid demands from a complex interchange of indoctrination, assimilation and socialization now cardboard cutouts with balloon voices repeating ancient litanies about exhausted turmoil. The stranger within is vastly more comfortable with these specters of past power than what my withering “i” is willing to accede. The self once so intent on satisfaction of all urges has trouble ceding ground that doesn’t result in accomplishment or gain, while the stranger seems more content just to be heard. However, like the honest misunderstanding of the lady’s “turn of an ankle,” simply because my quiet stranger was not the one being addressed at the time does not mean the dame’s own stranger was not expressing a want, just not a want for me. My internal stranger conveys much want when not shouted over by what Leonard Cohen wrote as “the blizzard of the world” or at least that is what i’m beginning to hear. Perhaps my life would simplify if i just allowed my interior to speak its desire and fly with any yes or no reply.
I accept that any reader considering the forgoing abstruse dialogue would require persistence to locate meaning, yet if there is this much difficulty for one person to make clear basic ideas about self-awareness, how much more difficult must it be for all of us to discuss with others far more complex issues such as shame, fury, fear or hatred, most especially in a media culture filling itself up to the rafters on scandal and excess¿ For myself it has become very important to learn how to hear without taking a position, save understanding. Is the woman’s ankle turn addressing me; is my prostate hardening; is the war i object to mine; is en vino veritas true - ad nauseam¿ That the universe could be as curious as i aspire to is very encouraging, yet if i’m as obstinate a student as when young, what could i possibly learn from a curious universe whatever its dimensionality¿ Awareness is a correlation of communication in so far as one can barely speak of what isn’t known - an interesting intersection in the top secret world of ours. A paradox for me is the concept of what can possibly be known outside of one’s own self. If love is relinquishing: where love predominates will is absent; where will predominates, love is absent - paraphrasing Carl G. Jung, what can i affect but myself. So too with awareness, craving a woman will teach me very little about her, while watching her ankles can be quite instructive.
Understanding the world and possible meanings of reality about our existence is not going to give up much ground from a frontal assault. I could join a militia that adheres to my particular flavor of freedom and proceed to take no prisoners, but then i couldn’t sit here and share my confusion with others as puzzled as myself, possibly more so - maybe you will help me find other members of my tribe - stranger things have happened¿ I’m becoming more certain that fun, nee happiness is closer to the core than anything normally found virtually anywhere, and its far cheaper - air travel being the climate change elephant with its footprints in the jello, so to speak. You didn’t really think tripadvisor, hostelworld, couchsurfing etc., etc., etc., were just touching base to know you’se well - didja¿ Wherever you go - there you are. The dilemma goes back to an argument i had with a young engineer - his position being “knowledge is finite” vs my continued belief how can you say what you don’t know. Are we species simply the micro to the universal macro¿ Rumi says we are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in a drop. If true, introspection takes on a whole new wrinkle. What if my reticent stranger whom i am only beginning to appreciate was actually “the” stranger and we are just notes in g_d’s song¿ As yet, i’ve never read anything to prove this potentially heretical idea false, but the administration is young still. What is useful regards an honest desire to communicate¿ This is a complex question for me because there are many who are close and not so close who would, if not shut me up altogether, then at the very least have license over my tongue. This awareness is grievous, but i’m unsure whose sadness it is. My stranger has heard awful things spoken yet because it has never harmed me as the faded echoes of memory have, i feel more safe with myself than anyone i’ve ever known, and i’ve known some very loving people in my very fortunate existence.
The further i travel the greater the mystery; i will feel better when i can say the same for fun, nee happiness. I know the essence of my happiness is not virtual; the corollary would be that my faded memories left because i no longer made them happy - it would be insane to believe oneself so powerful as to make another happy, unhappy, angry, sad, strong, weak, better or less. I have found i am more comfortable with crazy people once i learned it is not contagious, but it can be a perilous contact high if they are beautiful or hallucinating. My deeper concern is welcoming home the stranger who has patiently waited to share my heart’s desire. I believe it be nearly impossible to give kindness to another if one has not found within one’s own skin a deep and abiding warm regard for one’s life. I also believe that if one acts from this warm regard it is possible to know better one’s own pain, suffering and inimical factotum born of our collective history within a dark and sometimes dangerous world. The fact remains the more things change, the more they remain the same and it will likely be true as it is now that when you are born crying while everyone around you’s laughing; and when you die laughing, those around will be crying. But the in-between time when you have the opportunity to “leave the world a better than you found it” - Jane Sterling, is where your internal quiet stranger has a chance for redemption and reintegration if one can still hear the serenade of a mother’s laughter or cadence of prayer in a father’s important lesson throughout the places one visits or rests one must acknowledge with respect to our human frailty.
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silence - the sonnet
it is quiet on a Sunday morning
but somewhere in the world there’s too much noise-
but somewhere in the world there’s too much noise-
crying in the eyes of children mourning
something that can’t be done with any poise.
what is the sound beyond the human grief-
is it love, or an infant in deep sleep¿
why is our good ship earth stuck on a reef
so dire, while the good captains make no peep¿
is a tornado core eerie’n silent?
is our world a tornado core- passing
with zephyr winds foretelling bad intent,
or have we learned and all our hearts massing¿
it seems to me the quiet that is found
while loud beats calm with silence all around
jts 06/30/2017
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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