Shhhh

I spent a good part of Sunday silent, but then decided to get back into the world, calling my son who's with his dad this weekend, calling a friend I'm worried about, going to dinner. Best part of no email, no IM, no IRC day -- sitting out on my back porch in my my deck chair. watching the semi-circle of green swaying trees, their leaves aflutter, a green shimmering of foliage and light, mesmerizing really, for more than an hour. They were talking volumes. A summer storm was coming. And also they were whispering about fall -- they are already knowing the September score in July. If I were a person who took drugs, I would say, I dropped some really excellent trees on Sunday morning and I was high most of the day on them.

And with all other stimuli gone -- phone, e-everything, talking, reading, writing -- the simplest things were enormously entertaining and sensuous -- like food. I was swept away on strawberries and tea -- also swept away with sweeping up -- a deep cleaning of my house and things made silent sense. At one point mid-morning the noise of silence was really getting to me. What a roar! Quiet can be so loud, which is to say, so intense and profound. Also strange, with nothing to read, I found myself reading my rock, looking at every contour, and oddly interrogatting my clothes, noticing my funny little girl tight blue jeans looking cheery and cute, wondering why Gloria Vanderbilt came up with that little swan logo on the back pocket, my grey soft rugby shirt with white collar a conversation too -- how'd it get rubber buttons? Something to do with Rugby the sport, Rugby the school, just a mistake? I was asking my shirf why.

Like the slowness I found after injuring my foot two weeks ago, I was tossed into a ravine of total arrest -- stopping dead in my tracks -- to look at everything longingly and take a long time doing it. My foot is much better, almost well. I looked at the wound. I am so glad it's well. Mid-morning I stretched out on my bed, felt my limbs solidifying into stone. They weren't going anywhere. They were taking full advantage of the interruptus. I wondered if I had been glued to the bed, I could barely will myself to move, and then finally able to lift a limb or two, I turned over and felt into a sound sleep, napping for an hour. Old horse, steps slowing, into the barn, my body flopped down in the hay, snooze away.

I missed writing and got the urge a few times -- for pen and ink, not keyboard -- which surprised me. To resist the urge and stay quiet was not easy. Now the time is up and I am up at this ungodly hour, to take each letter out of the box -- alpha, beta, gamma, delta -- cut them out like a hostage note, paste them in place to say, "Being held against my will -- prisoner of silence and melting time, May I come home to words now please?"