I go slowly through the beloved clutter in my trailer. There are photos of people I don’t know; letters from people I
treasured and treasure; constant reminders that a past I loved more than I love Now is gone; magazines no longer in print (part of why I do not love Now comes from that attrition.); objects not made of pixels, objects that have traveled with me for at least forty-seven years. And, there are scraps of poems – one of Rilke’s written in my hand on purple paper. (Remember when some of us were in love with purple?):
Be patient with all that is unsettled in your heart
and try to love
the questions themselves.
Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given,
for you would not be able to live them. And the point is
to lie everything. Live
the questions now and perhaps without knowing it,
you will
live along
some day
into the answers. —Rainer Marie Rilke
How are you living your questions? How are you trying to forget them? When is Now? When is Some Day? We welcome your writing.
Here is Cin Norris on being heard 0r more accurately on not being heard, response to our 4/10 prompt
Where have all the quiet places gone? Forced from place to place, I am chased on by diesel engines, dissonant music and the percussions of human speech. Sounds I am ready for break over me like sanded and salted waves, but the unexpected strike me with the blows of baseball bats by malicious teenagers. Faulty mufflers stagger me, high speed tires splashing through puddles shake me, but it is the horns and sirens that send me to my knees. It must look like I’m praying, crouched on the ground with my hands over my ears. Perhaps I am.
The traffic light turns red and there is a momentary lull, long enough for me to sway to my feet and be somewhat certain that I won’t stagger in front of traffic.
Where is the quiet? The bookstores are no good except for their restrooms and even they have their own challenges. Library? Too far to walk, especially under the circumstances. Especially knowing I would have to walk back. Coffee shop or fabric store or gun store or auto shop? No. Beep beep beep, someone has come in. Beep beep beep, someone has gone again. Crash of dishes or merchandise being dropped or broken. Running water and voices. Always the voices.
Everyone wants to be heard right now. In some cases it’s a need, but more often an egotistical chest-beating: “I am alive!”
Yes. I can hear that.
The vibrations of the bass shake the car windows and my brain. “I am alive!”
My needing to be heard days have passed, or so I would like to believe. I will admit that the days blazed as they went; a riot of color and noise that few people in a 500 mile radius could have missed. Being heard is not as important to me now, partly because I now choose my battles and partly because too much noise outside my head scrambles my air waves.
For the most part, I have very little interest in peoples’ outbursts of self-declaration; you’re alive? I’ll take your silence for it.
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