Essentially neuter, silence, like light or love, requires a medium to give it meaning, takes on the color of its host, adapts easily to our fears and needs. Quite apart from whether we seek or shun it, silences orchestrate the music of our days... If it's true that all symphonies end in silence, it's equally true that they begin there as well. Silence, after all, both buries and births us, and just as life without the counterweight of mortality would mean nothing, so silence alone, by offering itself as the eternal Other, makes music possible.
~ from "Listening For Silence" by Mark Slouka with thanks to Alice Spicer
Silently a flower blooms, In silence it falls away; Yet here now, at this moment, at this place, The world of the flow, the whole of the world is blooming. This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom; The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
