The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.
As far back as half-a-century ago, the Swiss philosopher Max Picard warned: “Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence,” once as natural as the sky and air.
As fiendish little gadgets conspire to track our movements and record our activities wherever we go, producing a barrage of pictures of everything we’re doing and saying, our lives will unroll as one long instant replay.
There will be fewer and fewer of what Virginia Woolf called “moments of being,” intense sensations that stand apart from the “cotton wool of daily life.”
“In the future, not getting any imagery or story line or content is going to be the equivalent of silence because people are so filled up now with streaming video,” said Ed Schlossberg, the artist, author and designer who runs ESI Design. “Paying attention to anything will be the missing commodity in future life. You think you’ll miss nothing, but you’ll probably miss everything.”
Schlossberg said that, for a long time, art provided the boundary for silence, “but now art, in some cases, is so distracting and intense and faceted, it’s hard to step into a moment. Especially when you’re always carrying a microcamera and a screen all the time, both recording and playing back constantly rather than allowing moments of composition and stillness when your brain can go into a reverie.”
I wish I had written this, but whoever did is lost to memory (especially since I didn’t write it down.) So, if anyone recognizes it, please let me know and I’ll add it here. Thanks.
It is raining. I look out on the maple, where a few leaves have turned yellow, and listen to Punch, the parrot, talking to himself and to the rain ticking gently against the windows. I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my “real” life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone…
My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there.
The value of solitude — one of its values — is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression.
Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
Evelio’s Garden continues to garner wonderful reviews:
“Why isn’t this book a best seller?Wonderful! A favorite book by a naturalist-humanist. Want to understand Costa Rica? Read this book.”
“After reading the first few pages of Evelio’s Garden, I understand the nature, the people and the heart of Costa Rica deeply, almost as if I had lived there instead of just visiting as a gringo tourist.. The author, Sandra Shaw Homer is a very gifted writer who takes you into her world, living in rural Costa Rica, near the great Arenal Volcano. With sharp observations of nature, people, and a warm and caring heart, she takes you on an intimate journey into her world, where you will love the people, the joys and struggles of her daily life, and what it is like to live in her part of the world. I think you will agree and love this book as much as I do.”
“The original and memorable memoir of an expatriate to Costa Rica who finds perspective as a writer and organic farmer. . .Well-written, with languid prose featuring occasional lushness that mirrors the Costa Rican…setting. The writer has a keen eye for detail, and merges adeptly the physical with the thematic…with a relaxing narrative pace and setting that carefully opens itself up to moments of darkness and vulnerability.”
“Sandra Shaw Homer is a profoundly gifted writer. Her prose is lyrical, evocative and at times borders on poetic. Her account of the ups and mainly downs of a year’s project with an organic vegetable garden created by her Costa Rican worker is seamlessly intertwined with recollections from her past. The descriptions of her long residence in rural Costa Rica bring to life the incredible natural beauty around her and the wildlife she sees and hears on a daily basis. I highly recommend this book.”
“Sandra’s latest book is a compelling read. She taps into all aspects of living in the tiny foreign country that we share and the obstacles, complexities, discoveries and rewards that coexist within the culture and biodiversity of the land. Her relatable story delves into the common challenges that we, who live in this particular part of Costa Rica, are very familiar with: high winds, heavy rains, roaming livestock and the plethora of insects…As we come to find out, Evelio’s chosen task of growing an organic vegetable garden is a battle against the odds. Wrought with frustration, misunderstandings, humor and awe, the author also bravely reveals and shares some of the shadow areas of her personal life. A very thought-provoking book i would enjoy reading again.”
“I love trying to spin the world into a web of words. And I love those times when it feels like those words turn into a world of their own.” — Rose Auslander
I am seventeen and practicing the piano. I go at it two hours a day, and no longer need the nagging of my parents, when I used to prefer playing softball after school. The work itself is its own reward, playing a passage over and over at different rhythms, until it comes out smooth as silk.
I rarely practice after dark, since I don’t want to disturb my father, who may have brought work home. But now that I’m on the yearbook committee, there are days when I simply have to. It’s winter and the room is dark except for the light over the piano, and I feel my father’s entrance and his quiet sigh as he sits down well away from the piano and me.
It is near the end of my practice session, when I play something for pure pleasure, and tonight it’s a Schubert impromptu, a piece I love to play, complex and romantic. I am aware that my father is in the room; I am aware of all the ambiguities of our relationship; I know, however, that my ability to play so well has pleased him, and that falls into the complexity of Schubert, me, my father, the abuse, all the pain of never knowing if he has loved me or not.
Somehow, I throw myself into the music, I become the music, the music — Schubert — is playing me. It’s transformative. I am no longer in this darkened living room. My father is still here, because there is a musical line connecting us, and I thrill as the phrases and chords and notes become a world of their own — a world described by incredible beauty and freedom. And at the end, I bow my head over the keys and feel full of the act of love I have just performed.
Once again, I have run across a fragment that long ago I stashed in a dark corner of my computer for future use, and I failed to attribute it. I like this piece because it fits so well with my focus on the natural world, both in Evelio’s Garden, and in my daily life. If anyone recognizes this piece or its writer, please let me know so I can attribute it properly. Thanks. SSH
Hello chatter, my old friend.
The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.
As far back as half-a-century ago, the Swiss philosopher Max Picard warned: “Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence,” once as natural as the sky and air.
As fiendish little gadgets conspire to track our movements and record our activities wherever we go, producing a barrage of pictures of everything we’re doing and saying, our lives will unroll as one long instant replay.
There will be fewer and fewer of what Virginia Woolf called “moments of being,” intense sensations that stand apart from the “cotton wool of daily life.”
“In the future, not getting any imagery or story line or content is going to be the equivalent of silence because people are so filled up now with streaming video,” said Ed Schlossberg, the artist, author and designer who runs ESI Design. “Paying attention to anything will be the missing commodity in future life. You think you’ll miss nothing, but you’ll probably miss everything.”
Schlossberg said that, for a long time, art provided the boundary for silence, “but now art, in some cases, is so distracting and intense and faceted, it’s hard to step into a moment. Especially when you’re always carrying a microcamera and a screen all the time, both recording and playing back constantly rather than allowing moments of composition and stillness when your brain can go into a reverie.”
I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, or whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man’s spiritual growth.
I believe this affinity of the human spirit for the earth and its beauties is deeply and logically rooted. As human beings, we are part of the whole stream of life. We have been human beings for perhaps a million years. But life itself — passes on something of itself to other life — that mysterious entity that moves and is aware of itself and its surroundings . . . . Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity.
There’s a big difference between writing stories and telling them out loud. This is something I’ve discovered as, over the years, I have recorded bits and pieces of various things I have written. Somehow, the spoken word is infinitely more powerful. Recently I was invited by an interviewer to record a story from Evelio’s Garden, and since her website focused on finding joy in our lives, I picked robins and sea lions. Well, listen and you’ll see how they’re related.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Red Canna, 1924 (Georgia O’Keeffe Museum)
In a passage originally published in the exhibition catalog An American Place, she writes, “A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower — the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.
“So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
“Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don’t.”
Sandra Shaw Homer has lived in Costa Rica for almost 30 years, where she has taught languages and worked as a translator and environmental activist. For several years she wrote a regular column, “Local Color,” for the English-language weekly, The Tico Times.
Her creative nonfiction, fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of print and online travel and literary journals, as well as on own blog, WritingFromTheHeart.net.
Her travel memoir, Letters from the Pacific, received
excellent Kirkus and Publishers Weekly reviews; a brief inspirational memoir,
The Magnificent Dr. Wao, is available as a Kindle Book; and a second travel
memoir, Journey to the Joie de Vivre, details two Atlantic crossings on cargo
ships as well as a swing through Europe.
I’m so excited for you to connect with Sandra, check out her writing and her books, and follow along as she continues to remind us of our connection to nature, and its power to transform our experiences.
I’d love it if you’d introduce
yourself, what you do, and what you’re working on.
Having lived in Costa Rica for almost 30 years has given me
an opportunity to discover what I value most. At one point I helped
found and worked with three environmental non-profit organizations and headed
the county environmental commission. This was long before the climate crisis
was on anybody’s radar, and our efforts were directed at saving the Lake Arenal
watershed from illegal development. We had some important successes,
and I realize now that what we were doing did have implications for our climate
future.
How did you get started?
But I’m really a writer! And that’s one of the
reasons I moved to Costa Rica – to find a quiet place where I could start
looking within to my creative self and do what I had always wanted. I’ve
always been a writer – for other people, clients,
environmental causes. But I knew that somewhere my own story was
percolating inside, and I wanted to get at it.
What inspired the work that you’re
doing?
Interestingly, the environmental work I did inspired my
writing, so that my book, Evelio’s Garden, is a lyrical exploration
of the environment as well as a memoir, my personal story.
What is your biggest passion? Do you
feel like you’re living your passion and purpose?
My biggest passion now is to help others connect to the
natural world in ways that will move them to work to save it. And,
yes, after a lifetime of work and discovery, I feel as if I’m living my dream.
What is your joy blueprint? What
lights you up, brings you joy, and makes you feel the most alive?
A good first sentence. Whatever you’re writing has to start
with a good first sentence. For me, they usually come out of the
ether – I may not even be thinking of a particular poem or writing
project. But once that first sentence lights up, the joy of it
carries me forward. There are lots of things that bring me joy:
water, mountains, clouds, trees. But that first sentence taps into
an inner creative self that just wants to sing.
How do you live intentionally? Are
there tools/resources/practices that you rely on to help you stay mindful and
grounded?
Weather permitting, I always sit outside at the end of day
to watch the sunlight climb up the eastern trees, the vultures swooping as high
as the clouds, the wind singing, my cat trying to squeeze into my car through
the partially open window. These are precious moments in which I am
conscious of how grateful I am.
What would your younger self think
about what you’re doing now?
She’d probably understand, since those sunset moments were
special to her too. But she was too angry to feel grateful.
Do you have a go-to mantra or
affirmation?
A simple “thank you,” directed to the universe for whatever
moves me. I read once that the only proper prayer is one of gratitude, and
I’ve taken that to heart.
What is your biggest dream?
I hardly dare to think of finishing the novel I started so
many years ago. I’m old now. I want to continue to live in peace in this
beautiful rural setting in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I
want to feel that I’ve led a useful life and be grateful for all the many gifts
I experience every day. A Laughing Falcon calling in the wee hours just before
dawn. The monkeys howling in the sunset. The stray cat that’s showing up every
day for dinner. My loving friends. My sister and her family. Too many gifts to
count. My dreams are simple now, things to be grateful for, that’s enough.
To learn more about Sandra and her work you can visit her on Facebook, Amazon , on B&N and on Powells.com.
Joy Corner is an interview-style blog series brought to you
by Seek The Joy Podcast. Our mission
continues to be a desire to share your stories, truths, joys and inspiration in
your words. We invite you to join our corner, and share your joys, passions,
and moments of inspiration as we continue to seek the joy, together. Join this
series here
