Subtleties Inside The Silence

Silence is not always silence. Or perhaps there are subtleties inside the silence that transform them. I think both statements might be true. I love to write. I don't even need to write for other people, I am, at times, completely happy writing for myself. It is a deep and abiding love of the written word that dwells inside of me. I would say that I was born in silence. I would say in the silence I heard a voice. That voice told me a story. I've been telling those stories ever since. There are stories I have never told. There are reasons for that. Some of them are too personal to tell. They are the echoes of events that should not be sullied by the voice. They are best in the silence of memory. There are other stories I have never told because they do not belong to me. Some of those stories I would love to tell because they are great stories and perhaps, someday, I can. There are yet other stories, the contents of which, possess the ability to hurt, the ability to bring about unintended consequences. Those stories are best handled very, very delicately. Then there are stories I cannot tell you because they were confided in me either in secrecy, with explicit wish for privacy. Both of which I understand. Stories are amazing things. I am fortunate to be able to tell a few.

The Stories We Rarely Tell

We are the sum total of our histories. When we tell the stories of our lives we tend to select them carefully. We select the ones that we think other people will find interesting. We select the ones that have meaning to us. We select the ones that are poignant or amusing or enlightening.

But we have other stories too. These are the stories we rarely tell. These are the ordinary stories. These are the secret stories. These are the subtle and simple stories. In many ways these stories, the untold stories of our lives, are our best stories. It doesn't matter whether we ever tell them. We know them. We know their significance. We know the place they hold in our lives, the quiet places, the secret places, the simple places.

Daily Life: Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

Okay, lunch was a Vietnamese Chicken Noodle soup. Except, uh, I have no clue what made it Vietnamese. It was chicken and noodles and vegetables. It looked like ordinary chicken noodle soup. It tasted like ordinary chicken noodle soup. Maybe there was magic in it that I just didn't see. Maybe naming it Vietnamese soup was a calculated marketing ploy. I guess it is just hard to say. It was good soup though and that is what matters.

My brain was refusing to settle into anything specific this morning. It was mostly just merrily jumping from topic to topic to topic, all with minimal intervention from me. I am going to blame a good night sleep, a vividly visual dream, and an early awakening into a beautiful California dawn.

I find that I often use the word beautiful to describe the weather here. I largely do that because it is true. This area has just astounding weather. Even our bad weather is beautiful. We have a tight and temperate weather range here, with the only real variation being the occasional hot spell and the occasional long drenching winter storms. Between the two of them though they probably only account for about two months of weather, maybe less. That leaves us with ten other months where, for one reason of the other, it's beautiful. It is a terrible burden, but I like to think we bear it with grace.

I came into work early this morning with the intention of leaving early and running a few small errands. I had planned on running them last night, but once I got home I came to the conclusion that I was done for the day and spent a very nice and very quiet evening at home. It was one of those evenings where I scarcely bothered to turn on the television and never turned on the stereo. I read deeply into "Royal Assassin" by Robin Hobb. I had a great telephone call with TR. Then I drifted deeply into sleep and dreamed the very vivid and visual dream.

I've been turning something over in my mind for the last couple of days. I am thinking about "telling other people's stories". Often, in my journal, I restrict the stories I tell to my own stories, in part because I am not really comfortable taking other people's business "onto the street". What people I know are experiencing or have experienced are some pretty great stories. I encourage them to tell them, to write them down, to surrender them to the world, but most folks decline for one reason or the other. What I have been thinking about and mulling over and may write more on later is this - is it appropriate to tell someone else's story? If so, what are the parameters within which it is appropriate? What are the protocols for telling other people's stories? I don't have any answer today, just mulling the thought around.