Yes, I can hear the clowns in the back row whispering, “Yay, the old duffer’s finally going to shut up.”

Not happening.

Yet, there are days when a writer is stuck in pure nothingness, a place where–counterintuitively–there is room for everything. And that’s the problem. Like many, I’m overwhelmed by the scope of everthing. Everything has simply become too large and that tends to make us feel too small. One can hide from the size of everything and how small s/he feels by talking constantly or running off at the thunbs, i.e., texting.

I’d rather just be quiet and think of nothing. When I clear my mind and think of nothing, I begin to relax, to go with the flow (as we used to say), and soon I am coping with everything without the angst and the smallness that usually go with it (everything). I’m amazed at how few people have discovered silence, or how wonderful it feels when you feel no need to fill that silence with talking.

And, as we see, the old song is right, that people are talking without speaking and hearing without listening, so I have come to believe that silence is safer and more sane and a more effective method of coping with everything on our figuratively plates than talking/texting ourselves into oblivion (real or imagined).

There are days, and this is one of them, where I think those who follow this blog will be better off keeping quiet rather than contemplating anything I could possibly say there.

As an older generation read in Desiderata, “GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

—Malcolm