I wish that my heart could speak
And not my mouth
It would say nothing.
Instead, letting the silence expound until all of existence fell silent too
Until all the cars stopped
The sounds of machinery and labour stilled
Until every clock on every wall and in all devices
Ceased their infinite tick
Until the only sound was the sound of two hearts beating
Long distance
In braille
And then all that needed to be said would simply be breath breathing
For long drawn out minutes
And it would be perfect
Afterwards the wind could blow again
And the smell of orange blossoms would make me smile
Instead of wishing I could have said something different
Or more
Or less
Or just better
But we’re human, and so there’s that
*being a human can be a handicap. Dogs are perfectly normal, mostly. Hogan is covered in prickles and dreadlocks, frequently jumps all over me, forgetting I will bang him on the head if he does it, eats logs of firewood instead of the expensive dog toys I buy and then comes to me with splinters in his tongue. I roll my eyes and gently pluck them out and he puts up with me telling him “I told you so” again and again.
Because that is the futility of words to someone who doesn’t understand them.
All of this writing and my deep love of words, their complexity and their applicability and how amazing they can be – and Hogan keeps getting splinters in his tongue and I can’t form coherent conversation at times.
The most important things go unsaid but then – with the truest of connections it probably doesn’t matter – they just get you anyway. Those folks read in the spaces and the blank spots, and you could be reciting the Bhagavad Gita whilst making a cake, and they know, they just know, exactly where your mind is at.
Who we talk to and what about, both matters, and doesn’t. Once out of the mouth, words are on their own – we can’t bring them back, can’t change them, can’t make them more or less or better. Those things are gone. We just have to hope time makes us wise enough to say the right things in the right moment. And if not, well we’ll keep growing, learning, becoming.
The important thing is – we’re all living, which means we are capable of, at any minute – dying. If something needs to be said – pick up a phone. It can make all the difference in the world. There are people I can’t call anymore, though the date for their birthday continues to come up on my device like clockwork. We live, until we die. In between those two goal posts, what we say doesn’t matter so much as that we made the attempt.
The header photo is from a camping trip to Lake Nuga Nuga last year – the silence at dawn, being the only person in the entire park, instead of being lonely, I was deeply connected. I only get that in nature and when alone. It was perfect. And not a word needed to be said. Mainly because there was no one else there, but also because it was patently obvious…that nothing needed to be said. We are heard in our silence, the voices of our hearts are received. And to know that, to truly understand it, is to be at peace.
Blog post written 23/3/22
