I’m road tripping. My phone is loaded with podcasts and I’m listening to wise words and thinking deep thoughts in the sanctuary of my Ford Escape. Sometimes I turn the audio off, listen to the silence and let wisdom saturate. I’m free. Constrained by the vehicle, and gravity, and other natural laws that keep me
Another gray day with wind and rain. I stay inside, dry and warm, and listen to silence. I brew tea, and read books; wash floors and dust furniture. And talk to the Yorkie now and then. Peace.
It starts to feel like it has always been winter. Cabin fever sets in. I bring some tulips home and arrange them in a vase. A bit of spring on my table. In silent solitude I sit with my camera and find peace among the waxy petals. Later, when I take the Yorkie outside I
It’s too loud. The cacophony has risen to such a level that I struggle to hear. There’s just too much. Of everything. Snow falls, unwelcome on this last day of February, but with it comes a whisper. And a beckoning. I step outside with the Yorkie and, as white feathers fall around me, a blanket of
We’re home for a few weeks, and I intend to settle comfortably into a rut lined with words. Reading and writing, the necessary things that call for attention as winter gives one final roar before melting into spring. I pull out my manuscript and reorient myself in the work. I pull out the copyedited manuscript of
But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths. Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet We decide to take advantage of another warm and sunny afternoon to clean out the front flowerbed. I take
Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart Suddenly the world seems to assault with its noise and I realize it is deafening me. So I turn it off. And I