Fluff. Like on toast.

 Silence is a beautiful obsession. When we strain to feel the silence, as often our minds beckon us to do, our efforts cause angered ears that clamor to be left alone. We tire of trying. We tire of twisting ourselves in directions we cannot find for the simple order of sacred silence. We know it’s there. We know that silence is that ominous simplicity that finds itself always just beyond the reach of our tired fingertips. Somehow, in the depths of our messy, bottomless, sinking hearts, we know full well that we cannot contact silence; for to contact it would be to shatter the very place we seek. To contact the sacred silence would be to invite it into our chaos, rather than allow ourselves to be invited, and drawn, into its solace. 

But we summon the silence until it finally agrees to show up. 

We have insisted that it come. We have stomped our feet and balled our fists and crunched our brows in biding its company. We wait in busy convulsions for silence to make itself known. If we can’t get to the silent place, then it must come to us. The sense of entitlement is intoxicating, for the more we desire the touch of silence, the further it seems to crawl into its unreachable shadows. The more our minds scream for the silence, curiously, the less silent everything becomes. 

But when it finally comes (and it does come, for it seeks those most desperate for it), we completely ignore it, and then entirely taint it. We completely shun the moments alone in the shell of a vacant car, solitary in our own thoughts, left to our own intentions. We intend the silence – but when it presents itself, we drive faster to get there sooner, or put music on to drown the space, or shove four more kids in the backseat who belong to another set of parents who need a ride home because it’s almost dark out and their dad was late and you live right next door and their dog needs to be fed because he is a carnivore who is lonely and has been in the drippy basement all day ……… 

At the end of a day, could it be possible that we fear silence? 

For to be silent means to be still. And we run from stillness as though faced with a pillow fight against a boulder. 

I have had three consecutive days entirely to myself. Hours upon hours with nothing scheduled for me, nothing being asked of me, and nothing being told to me. Right now- a half an hour ago- is the first time in these past few days that I have found myself truly, and fully, responding to the invitation of silence.

It began snowing. Glorious slivers of sky whispering as they were magnetically drawn to the bare branches of night trees. A match made in heaven. White on the silhouetted black of the sleeping street, creating the untouched glaze that makes all things dormantly new. 

I was ready. I was going to give up this day and go to sleep along with everyone else in the house. All the teeth had been brushed; everyone had sipped their last tastes of night tea and rounded off their comments on a days’ work. There was nothing else left to be done or said, really, as the lights were turned off, one by one. Check another day off the list of hours to graciously annihilate before I die. And there it suddenly was: The invitation. 

Silence. 

The snow had not stopped falling simply because we were done acknowledging it. Everything perfect and gloriously breathtaking outside continued whispering its purity, asking nothing in return. Requiring nothing in exchange. Tangible silence inviting a non-active response. Stillness. 

It was terrifying. 

I think I quickly tried to shove a couple more things in, to pretend like I wasn’t being told by my unstable mind that I should sit and watch snow for a few minutes. Watch … the snow? As in … “Yup, it’s still falling. Has been for a while now. Will keep doing so into the Yonder. Are we done yet, brain? Have you had your fill of nonsense? It’s …. Just … fluff. Like Winnie the Pooh. Or the stuff you spread on toast. It’s …. Just … snow. I’m from it’s-colder-here-than-Neptune-being-stuck-in-a-snowcone Chicago, for Heaven’s sake.”

And as I sat here,  just simply allowing the sight of the falling snow to saturate my senses, I could feel the silence like none other. I was in its territory now… being drawn into its presence. And what a beautiful obsession I’ve found. 

I am listening to the secondhand tick on a clock that is never quite on time. I heard a slight crumple, and realized this was the sound of the white being too cumbersome for skeletal branches. The heater in this old house yawns in spurts to no one in particular. I am willing this place of silence to go on for hours, scolding my head for its attempts to get me to sleep for the mere purposes of being able to wake up at the proper time tomorrow. How I loathe time. 

So as the snowfall slows, I follow it as one would a serenade; It draws to a close, and, silently, so must I.