A hissing sound of silence at the North Pole, the body’s hunger for sensorial change, and the sensory void that gives birth to desire as a sacred expression of the eternal.
Dear Renee, it has been the hardest day, I don’t often find myself in this melancholy these days. Something about absent fathers on Fathers Day, something about not being able to escape from company that is too much for my mind, body and soul. And what did I do, but deliberately come here to escape, because this is where I feel alive and welcome. In gratitude. Louise x
You wrote this note yesterday, that it was the hardest day, a melancholy day of combined absence and too much. Knowing you, as I have come to know you over the past year, I would imagine you were seeking silence to still yourself in presencing the recognition of absent fathers in others lives and perhaps your own. To find the silence in the noise can be more than we can muster when the heart is tender.
It is heartening to read that today's letter could give you a place to rest. Thank you for sharing this with me.
And I offer this that you already know but because you are human and I am human, you and I also know it can be hard to remember, and it's good to be reminded:
That place in you that knew where to turn is the silence within and between us, always there, always pulling us toward it, tenderly and with care. Silence found you. . . .
"when you hear something and then you do not, trying with your all to hear it again. What was that? is the beginning of coming to our senses." - brought me immediately to perceiving silence... to request again, from an inner space, to be in that perceptual/perpetual silence again - yet, as one aims to grasp at silence... that is what seems to evade... it remind me of that Narcissus Shock - noticing that love for those in-personal silent sensations for a brief moment - only to falter away under the ripples of recognition...
The fleeting nature of silence. This is what you are touching. We see in what you say here the (lifelong) spiritual journey that silence can send us on. Thank you for your thoughtful reflections.
I was fascinated with the man you met in Cold Foot. I have found that people and I include myself in this too, are silent and darkness avoidant. For me it has gotten to the point where I crave silence, desire darkness. When I went on my recent women's retreat, I loved the complete blackness at night. No streetlights. No flooding house lights. I sat outside in utter silence with a deep darkness around me that made the many stars above visibly available. I was seeped in a deep abiding peace, a fullness of silent exquisiteness. Interesting how darkness is the background that makes light visible, how silence makes sound possible.
Your recent experience in the desert seems sublime and a re-enchantment of being. May it be food for you for some time. And I echo you that we are avoidant of these 'absences' so pregnant with potentia: light, sound, movement. The question, in response, tends to be: what are we afraid of? Which is a valid question. Increasingly, I wonder more about the unbearable yearning we touch in silence, in darkness. The closer we come to the peace you share here (so hard to access in the buzz and hum and flooding house lights), the closer we seem to come, too, to the void of the eternal, and the more breathtaking the moment, even as it may be washed through with "the peace that passeth all understanding." We are an enigma to ourselves!
'Nothing does not mean that nothing was not there.'
This winter I went out on our lake. It was very early in the morning, a dark clear, very cold night. I was the only creature stirring and I heard the hiss. That moment has lived within me, offering nourishment, every moment since.
I could feel the silence in your words Renee. I know you have carried it with you and it molds both your heart and your work. Thank you for this excellent essay.
It brings me such gladness, such profound gladness, to know that you have heard this hiss. It does not go away. Does it?
To your reflection on the silence in my own life, it is true that the silence 'keeps' close now. In one manner unintended when I began, those thirteen months were a deepening inquiry into silence.
Ecstatic, always. I especially homed in on your point about silence requiring stillness. This one is a particularly unique one for me since neurologically I no longer “perceive stillness.” And for years it was the deepest source of my angst. But out of necessity/adaptation, my awareness eventually opened up to a stillness that exists within and around the perceived motion. It’s hard to describe, perhaps more a steadiness of spirit than a steadiness of the physical experience, but powerful nevertheless, and also unconditional.
I have thought of you as I have reflected on stillness these several weeks.
Thank you for sharing your experience of opening up to . . . the stillness that exists within and around perceived motion.
I do not have this neurological condition, and so I do not know your experience, of course. But of this exploration here, my unintentionally minimalist response is: Yes.
I imagine in the stillness, there is a profound sense that the stillness has no end. . . .
absolutely...I think that's the biggest gift of this condition, that my experience of stillness now doesn't depend on "perceived stillness" if that makes sense!
Fascinating exploration. I had both 'silence' and 'stillness' lined up a few weeks ago as themes for Symbiopædia but put them on hold in view of your project. Your firsthand account of an actual visit into the arctic circle of silence is extremely moving
Absolutely stunning piece, Renée.
The phrases that kept coming to me (before reading this) were 'silence is a sound' and 'stillness is a movement'. I love how you unravelled the listening into the silence. How the absence of something awakens our awareness of it. (I'm thinking of the phrase "deafening silence")
Thank you for making the connection between void (vacant, vacare) and voice (vocal, vocare).
Of course, in the word 'want' we have both ~ wishing and lacking ~ rolled into one. Waning (vanishing) until the sense of need (or desire) kicks in.
Desire ~ desiderare ~ one of my favourite words. It describes the whole (human) being listening to the humming (or hissing) of the spheres...
We seem to be weaving a cloth with similar threads so often. I'm stirred every time this recognition comes alive. Reading about your inclination to explore 'silence' and 'stillness' in Symbiopædia, then waiting for me to go first brings an image. Perhaps you have played this wordplay before.
On a theme, such as desire.
*I write a phrase, sentence, or poem on a line of the page, then fold the page and hand it to you. You do not see what I write.
*You write a phrase, sentence, or poem, then fold the page and hand it back to me. I do not see what you write.
*Again I write, and same thing, hand it back to you.
*You write . . .
This goes on until the page is full.
Then, we read the words as one piece.
How rich this exploration on a theme would be!
Were you an etymologist before Gebser entered your world?
I came to this reading today silently reflecting on a quote from the cult classic film, The Big Lebowski. The quote: “The dude abides”. Not to attempt to ground your offering here in popular culture, I think perhaps you and the Coen brothers may be pointing to an Eternal beneath the silence. That which remains unchanged, enduring…the sound between the notes, the buzz in the atmosphere, the steady honing beat, the harmony of the spheres, the gentle hissing.
Renee thank you for turning me on to Peter Kingsley and through him Parmenides…these dudes abide.
Happy Father’s Day to all those good dads that abide.
"The dude abides": Peter Kingsley brings Parmenides to us in magical, mysterious ways. It delights me to imagine you reading In the Dark Places of Wisdom. He is a brilliant storyteller and phenomenal scholar. He doesn't muddle the story with scholarship. That's left for the end. In Catafalque, about Carl Jung, his notes are an entirely separate volume.
Dear Renee, it has been the hardest day, I don’t often find myself in this melancholy these days. Something about absent fathers on Fathers Day, something about not being able to escape from company that is too much for my mind, body and soul. And what did I do, but deliberately come here to escape, because this is where I feel alive and welcome. In gratitude. Louise x
Dear Louise,
You wrote this note yesterday, that it was the hardest day, a melancholy day of combined absence and too much. Knowing you, as I have come to know you over the past year, I would imagine you were seeking silence to still yourself in presencing the recognition of absent fathers in others lives and perhaps your own. To find the silence in the noise can be more than we can muster when the heart is tender.
It is heartening to read that today's letter could give you a place to rest. Thank you for sharing this with me.
And I offer this that you already know but because you are human and I am human, you and I also know it can be hard to remember, and it's good to be reminded:
That place in you that knew where to turn is the silence within and between us, always there, always pulling us toward it, tenderly and with care. Silence found you. . . .
With love,
Renée
"when you hear something and then you do not, trying with your all to hear it again. What was that? is the beginning of coming to our senses." - brought me immediately to perceiving silence... to request again, from an inner space, to be in that perceptual/perpetual silence again - yet, as one aims to grasp at silence... that is what seems to evade... it remind me of that Narcissus Shock - noticing that love for those in-personal silent sensations for a brief moment - only to falter away under the ripples of recognition...
Jacob,
The fleeting nature of silence. This is what you are touching. We see in what you say here the (lifelong) spiritual journey that silence can send us on. Thank you for your thoughtful reflections.
I was fascinated with the man you met in Cold Foot. I have found that people and I include myself in this too, are silent and darkness avoidant. For me it has gotten to the point where I crave silence, desire darkness. When I went on my recent women's retreat, I loved the complete blackness at night. No streetlights. No flooding house lights. I sat outside in utter silence with a deep darkness around me that made the many stars above visibly available. I was seeped in a deep abiding peace, a fullness of silent exquisiteness. Interesting how darkness is the background that makes light visible, how silence makes sound possible.
Julie,
Your recent experience in the desert seems sublime and a re-enchantment of being. May it be food for you for some time. And I echo you that we are avoidant of these 'absences' so pregnant with potentia: light, sound, movement. The question, in response, tends to be: what are we afraid of? Which is a valid question. Increasingly, I wonder more about the unbearable yearning we touch in silence, in darkness. The closer we come to the peace you share here (so hard to access in the buzz and hum and flooding house lights), the closer we seem to come, too, to the void of the eternal, and the more breathtaking the moment, even as it may be washed through with "the peace that passeth all understanding." We are an enigma to ourselves!
'Nothing does not mean that nothing was not there.'
This winter I went out on our lake. It was very early in the morning, a dark clear, very cold night. I was the only creature stirring and I heard the hiss. That moment has lived within me, offering nourishment, every moment since.
I could feel the silence in your words Renee. I know you have carried it with you and it molds both your heart and your work. Thank you for this excellent essay.
Donna,
Thank you for sharing this experience.
It brings me such gladness, such profound gladness, to know that you have heard this hiss. It does not go away. Does it?
To your reflection on the silence in my own life, it is true that the silence 'keeps' close now. In one manner unintended when I began, those thirteen months were a deepening inquiry into silence.
Ecstatic, always. I especially homed in on your point about silence requiring stillness. This one is a particularly unique one for me since neurologically I no longer “perceive stillness.” And for years it was the deepest source of my angst. But out of necessity/adaptation, my awareness eventually opened up to a stillness that exists within and around the perceived motion. It’s hard to describe, perhaps more a steadiness of spirit than a steadiness of the physical experience, but powerful nevertheless, and also unconditional.
Kimberly,
I have thought of you as I have reflected on stillness these several weeks.
Thank you for sharing your experience of opening up to . . . the stillness that exists within and around perceived motion.
I do not have this neurological condition, and so I do not know your experience, of course. But of this exploration here, my unintentionally minimalist response is: Yes.
I imagine in the stillness, there is a profound sense that the stillness has no end. . . .
absolutely...I think that's the biggest gift of this condition, that my experience of stillness now doesn't depend on "perceived stillness" if that makes sense!
Kimberly,
I missed this reply from you earlier.
What you share makes perfect sense.
In this, you have transcended perception. . . .
Fascinating exploration. I had both 'silence' and 'stillness' lined up a few weeks ago as themes for Symbiopædia but put them on hold in view of your project. Your firsthand account of an actual visit into the arctic circle of silence is extremely moving
Absolutely stunning piece, Renée.
The phrases that kept coming to me (before reading this) were 'silence is a sound' and 'stillness is a movement'. I love how you unravelled the listening into the silence. How the absence of something awakens our awareness of it. (I'm thinking of the phrase "deafening silence")
Thank you for making the connection between void (vacant, vacare) and voice (vocal, vocare).
Of course, in the word 'want' we have both ~ wishing and lacking ~ rolled into one. Waning (vanishing) until the sense of need (or desire) kicks in.
Desire ~ desiderare ~ one of my favourite words. It describes the whole (human) being listening to the humming (or hissing) of the spheres...
Veronika,
We seem to be weaving a cloth with similar threads so often. I'm stirred every time this recognition comes alive. Reading about your inclination to explore 'silence' and 'stillness' in Symbiopædia, then waiting for me to go first brings an image. Perhaps you have played this wordplay before.
On a theme, such as desire.
*I write a phrase, sentence, or poem on a line of the page, then fold the page and hand it to you. You do not see what I write.
*You write a phrase, sentence, or poem, then fold the page and hand it back to me. I do not see what you write.
*Again I write, and same thing, hand it back to you.
*You write . . .
This goes on until the page is full.
Then, we read the words as one piece.
How rich this exploration on a theme would be!
Were you an etymologist before Gebser entered your world?
What a fun game! The rules sound familiar. I'm sure I have played it before...
Yes, my first university degree is in 'applied linguistics and cultural studies', and reading histories of words was my 'bedtime reading' 😅
Hahaha!
What a fascinating foundational degree!
I was reading Latin (and a wee tiny bit of Greek).
I came to this reading today silently reflecting on a quote from the cult classic film, The Big Lebowski. The quote: “The dude abides”. Not to attempt to ground your offering here in popular culture, I think perhaps you and the Coen brothers may be pointing to an Eternal beneath the silence. That which remains unchanged, enduring…the sound between the notes, the buzz in the atmosphere, the steady honing beat, the harmony of the spheres, the gentle hissing.
Renee thank you for turning me on to Peter Kingsley and through him Parmenides…these dudes abide.
Happy Father’s Day to all those good dads that abide.
Megan,
"The dude abides": Peter Kingsley brings Parmenides to us in magical, mysterious ways. It delights me to imagine you reading In the Dark Places of Wisdom. He is a brilliant storyteller and phenomenal scholar. He doesn't muddle the story with scholarship. That's left for the end. In Catafalque, about Carl Jung, his notes are an entirely separate volume.
Thanks dear to make it available to read. That’s so kind of you!
Raed,
Thank *YOU* for reading and commenting!