The other day, while tidying up, I found an old paper address book, and flipping through, decided to contact an old acquaintance some of you will know, Steven Caldwell. His phone number was the same as it was a few years ago and we ended up having this amazing conversation about Buddhism and communication, grieving, healing, compassion and most importantly for me, silence.
He mentioned that people in silent retreats find it difficult to look each other in the eye. He used words about silence I don’t think I would have thought of – wicked, uncontrollable – and it seemed to me that I need to write a poem at some point about this silence. When I was watching the seduction scene in The New World, which is mostly silent, it occurred to me again. And thinking back a number of missteps I have made in one of my most important relationships this year, they mostly relate to enunciating things that could have been left unsaid, unspoken, in the delicate collusion of trust.
I am mostly a very social person, an extrovert. I recharge in crowds, as thorfinn has said many times. Or at least, I used to. When daisynerd suggested years ago that I should try living alone, the idea terrified me. Now I crave my space. And while I crave company also and too often feel like I am an outsider, even in the outsider crowd, I have started craving the company of only a few people, people I know will challenge me to discuss the world, life, politics, science, rather than the inward focus that I fall into otherwise, filling silences with panicked analyses of current obsessions or boastful retellings of personal history.
I realise that my most treasured friends – you know who you are – are those I can shift modes with: we can arc through the world-solving, illustrate with the personal, support each other through crisis and most precious of all, sit in silence, touching or not touching, looking each other in the eye, loved, loving, safe.