Silent retreats fill me with dread.
Still bodies make loud minds. Plenty of space for garbage and clutter. American society conditions us to be occupied, busy, hurrying. For most of us, leisure time is even tightly planned.
On the flight to Iceland, I read the January/February print issue of The Atlantic to fill my maddening day of pandemic travel with non-screen-driven entertainment. In it, the writer Derek Thompson probes how civilization breaks our brains. He wonders whether hunter/gatherers had such a warped attachment to leisure, a state I also define as still and silent. He studies the writings of anthropologist James Suzman to provide insight. You can find the article at The Atlantic.
Thompson’s article made me consider the value of being silent.
I sit on my quarantine sofa in my Reykjavik apartment. Day One. Today, I don’t much mind silence. Pandemic flight disruptions mean several short flights from cities like Charleston versus plentiful direct flights. When I got to Atlanta, an airport I’ve probably spent at least a thousand hours roaming, I walked from Terminal D to Terminal T in about ten minutes. A few masked souls rode trains between concourses, but I stuck to my habit of walking the tunnels. Everyone (as in maybe twenty people) gave me space.
Two people made eye contact with me, a woebegone scene I repeated in Boston. Thirty people boarded my IcelandAir flight. Almost an hour early, we touched down in Reykjavik just after 5am.
Paperwork reviewed. Negative covid test evaluated. Passport stamped. Nose and throat swabbed. Luggage gathered. I made it through customs in fifteen minutes, met my driver, and was asleep in my apartment before sunrise.
People dread quarantine because of boredom. Monotony. But mostly I think we dread enforced silence. How does one entertain herself for six days between four foreign walls? I can’t see another human until Sunday, when I walk to the Reykjavik clinic for my second covid test.
Six days is a staggering run of silence.
I can hear some of you now. I’d give my firstborn for six days to be silent. I dream of six days of nothingness. But do you? Do you really? Because I’m not using this time to binge on Netflix. (I can’t figure out how to work the TV here.) I’m not cleaning out my inbox or making new social media content. I’m not even engaging in my favorite pastime when things get too silent by talking to myself.
We have endured a year of unspeakable cruelty, callousness, and death. I will use this silent retreat to evaluate how I contribute to our national dysfunction, to listen to what comes up, to release it. I can’t list a set of tasks I’m undertaking because I have no plan.
You won’t find me on social media. I let my remaining feeds go dark because they encourage the opposite of silence. Once this silent week is over, I will evaluate whether to return to social media during my residency or exclusively chronicle my time in Iceland here.
6 Comments
Aye, Lassie…I’ve been thinking about silence lately…and rereading Brian’s “The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be.” His notions of caring for people have a theme of silence, when there are no words to express how you feel or what you feel. Somehow, he makes the reader know exactly what he’s talking about. To me, as you well know, he is the Aurora Borealis of literature. I have a good feeling about your time in Iceland.
We humans have an instinct to fill pauses with noise. I’m one of society’s worst offenders. I learned something valuable in Iceland last fall, and in my better moments, I still remember. One of our residents was Australian. Her mum had been ill, and Sophie braved the 14-day quarantine to spend months with her before coming to Iceland. She was with us a week when she got the news that her mum was rushed to hospital. I was at the studio checking email and saw her come in. Clearly upset. Trying to hold it together in front of strangers. I caught her eye and mouthed, “Are you okay?” She shook her head NO, her eyes brimmed over, and I opened my arms to hug her (because we can do that here.) I took her into the library, sat with her on the sofa, and didn’t say anything. She cried, and I sat. She raged, and I sat. She questioned and worried and cried some more, and I sat. I gave her exactly what she needed.
A powerful lesson for one who has a tendency to fill every silence with talk talk talk.
I’m grateful to have met Brian when I did and to have found his work before he died. A thread of silence, of really listening and observing, runs through his work. Maybe I finally read enough to deploy a few new tools in my life.
I find that dealing with silence,as I am retired and alone most of the time, is not quite the challenge as for many others…I read voluminous amounts of material(mostly medical articles on treatments for diseases and conditions which affect my family and friends, although I am also a wanderer of information on Science, and Military endeavors). Occasionally, I relax with a book that piques my interest(I have read several of yours, having met you at A Rotary meeting, and accompanied you on a trip to the “Little White House”, in Georgia some time ago.) Dealing with silence comes a little easier for me than most as I spent 30 years collecting books I intended to read one day when I retired. Now that those days are here, I treat every day as Saturday.
I usually have a chore or two to accomplish, then spend the day on whatever strikes my fancy.I manage to stay busy enough to never quite finish all the chores I schedule, which leaves me always something for tomorrow.Remaining in contact with friends(some old, some new) keeps me getting up early and always looking for answers to questions these friends bring me. I like to think it keeps me “relevant”.
Stephen! It’s lovely to see you! I’m glad you’re keeping busy and finding ways to occupy your time. Do you read a book a day? Impressive goal at any point in life.
Sending you love and writing blessings from my silent mountain in Ecuador.
So great to see your smiling gravatar, Lynne! xo
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