Natural Silence

I made a new friend on the walk home from the library.Since I got back from Squam I've been feeling really connected with nature--even more so than usual. I picked up this hammock in Colombia (thank you, thank you, Sierra, for nudging me to buy it), and while it took me way too long to put it up, I've been making up for lost time on these sunny autumn afternoons.I'm reading Tiziano Terzani's A Fortune-Teller Told Me, which I highly recommend. Here's one of my favorite passages, from a Buddhist meditation retreat in Thailand:

This silence was a great discovery. Without the foreground of other people's words, I realized that the glorious beauty of nature was in its silence. I looked at the stars and heard their silence; the moon made no sound; the sun rose and set without a whisper. In the end even the noise of the waterfall, the birdcalls, the rustle of the wind in the trees, seemed part of a stupendous, living, cosmic silence which I loved and in which I found peace. It seemed that this silence was a natural right of every man, and that this right had been taken from us. I thought with horror of how for so much of our lives we are pounded by the cacophony we have invented, imagining that it pleases us, or keeps us company. Everyone, now and then, should reaffirm this right to silence and allow himself a pause, some days of silence in which to feel himself again, to reflect and regain a degree of health.

Personally, I think we'd all be a great deal happier if we looked for that silence not just "now and then," but on a daily basis. I've been meditating regularly, and it really is changing my life.I love watching the shadows of the trees dancing along the stripes.You can probably tell I'm still not feeling the blogging, but I think that might change soon. There are exciting things in the works!