I hope to do so again. Soon. The silence was surprisingly welcome. I didn’t realize just how welcome until I was steeped in it. For those ten days, I enjoyed the constant presence of three very rare and beautiful things, the combination of which is even more rare and beautiful:
silence, stillness, space.
Silence: we took a vow of silence, broken only to receive guidance in meditations or be called from bed by a small, richly reverberating bell. This included silencing other things: phones, books, music, even the pen itself.
Stillness: we passed most of our time sitting as still as we could. Even between these sits, a slowness of movement was encouraged. I found myself (and others) pausing mid-walk for no reason other than the pace of the trees felt like the right one to follow.
Space: we were deeply lucky to spend those ten days on the side of a humble mountain, graced by snowfall and slender trees. Physical space tumbling away in all directions, especially up. Straight lines few and far between.
This was no sensory deprivation tank. By silence I do not mean pin-drop and by space I do not mean the infinite mind void of seemingly every brainy character to appear on screen. Even when I emerged triumphantly from two hours of meditation in which I “sat still” the whole time, I had no claim to stillness.
The completeness or purity of these three is not what matters.
What matters is that for those ten days, I perceived them to be true. Within reach. Deep, rich, and continuous. Something magical shifted around my eyes when my vision was finally allowed to spread out and stay spread out. The musculature softened so deeply I wondered how I could possibly have been holding so much tension there. The quiet, and the hints of sound woven into it, nourished my mind in a way that sound writ large never has. And approaching the stillness of our surroundings in my movements — that was a bone-deep sigh of relief that stretched for ten days.
I can’t remember the last time I intersected the magical plane formed by these three points for more than a couple minutes. It struck me just how difficult this plane is to find, let alone maintain. There’s simply no time for stillness, space is for the rich or the rural, silence is so fragile that it’s constantly being broken. Since March of 2023, I’ve only managed to find my way back to the plane for an evening here and there. (I find some success in lone walks along the beach on a chilly non-beach day.)
Yet to bask in the goodness of silence, stillness, space for an extended period of time is nothing short of luxury. Ten such days I ache to spend every year, leaving aside even the soul-deep benefits of rigid routine and an age-old meditation technique so simple it requires both nothing and everything of you.
During the other two hundred and sixty-five, I try to find each of the three in any pocket I can. I have a newborn appreciation for stillness in music and space in dance. I am more and more starting to enjoy silent companionship. Planting feet firmly on this plane is nothing short of rebellion. What is it like to fold the laundry without shuffle play in the background? What is the longest line of sight I can find between edges of our beloved concrete jungle? What if I just stopped here, on the side of the road, like this gingko tree has been doing for half a century?
Can I be silent in my own head? Still in my own body?
Must space always mean emptiness?