Too Quiet?

Camilla was up at her cave all day yesterday and none of the monks were around, so I had the day to myself.

It's funny. After the trip to the City, it almost seemed too quiet out here!

I hadn't realized it until late last night, but I needed a day to reconnect to this place, these things, this pattern of life.

I spent the morning checking over Camilla's smokehouse a little more closely - to make sure she didn't mess anything up. (Then I felt bad about doing it.)

I gardened some, though everything was in great shape.

I fished for a while, but could not get into the zone.

After that, I couldn't think of anything I really wanted to eat for lunch so I just tore off a piece of bread and hiked up the foothill trail. I fiddled with the Richelieu sculpture a bit, but I'm at the point with it that I don't want to do anything to mess it up, and I didn't have the mental focus to really devote to sculpting.

So I came back down and sat on the porch for the afternoon, reading Hayek off and on, smoking my pipe, watching the birds. I saw a couple of scarlet tanagers and several Bohemian waxwings - but even those did not stir in me the usual wonder.

At this point, I was in a bit of danger from the Boredom. Throughout the afternoon I was edgy, missing the City, looking for something to do; but without consciously trying I settled eventually into the silence - letting it flow over me, around me, through me. There was still nothing but the silence. Nothing to do. Nothing to contemplate. Nothing even to approach apophatically. Nothing.

It was an afternoon of absence.

But when the silence and solitude grew unnervingly vacant of meaning, I realized that it is this very state that had allowed me to gain a new perspective on all of human society - for that was certainly what my experience in the City represented. Only having somehow transcended or escaped the background noise of life in the City can one see the City for what it is and enter into the joy. I believe this could be done in the City though it could never be done without 'silence' in the truest and deepest sense - silence in which meaning must be for the time being absent.

I wonder if this is why Jesus often went into the wilderness alone to pray.

Camilla is coming by for dinner this evening and tomorrow we are going to set off to check out that new settlement.