A Pine Tree’s Triumph by Jim Dollar Photography
We don’t know where she comes from and we don’t know who took her voice. Sure, there have been times when not-speaking was the answer. There have been times when opening the mouth was the exact wrong thing to do. Did she come to help? Did she come to keep shut the mouth of a stubborn and willful child whose utterances would have subjected us all to extreme punishment?
Why does she come now? Why is she here today? Is she simply memory-echoes of an old muscle that forgets it’s no longer needed? That the pulling of the proverbial cart has been replaced by no need to move things? Has our stability in life not been acknowledged? Is it not believed? Or does she have needs and desires outside our system? Are her needs not being met?
This time of “quietâ€, is it the energy of our original introversion rebelling, needing recovery from the life that we’ve given ourselves to live? The tasks we must do require interaction with other entities. Entities who can’t be trusted. Who might cause us harm. Entity interactions that call up the defense of our system in the Smiling, in the Measuring of Reactions, in the Negotiating, in the Talking, in the Intellectual Unraveling of “Socialâ€.
The tired seeps into our bones and the heaviness lays a weighted blanket in our arteries. Our heart slows, so tired of maintaining the steeled defenses that surrounded it in futile hopes of protection—our higher selves recognizing those walls as a colander.
If we refuse rest, she makes us. We cannot work if we cannot speak. Writing? This we are allowed, but only in certain forms, the ingredients of the recipes being kept from the whole of us.
She visits and we’re sure that it’s the omen of a silent life to come, that no sound will ever cross our lips, no new friendships made, no old ones retained, familial ties falling by the way-side in the wake of our quiet resolve. Our lips sealed forever, the muscles surrounding our speaking-box forged from the same metal that fills our veins.
But a shift comes and the metal was but gold leaf, a thin covering to keep out the storm, preventing corrosion and erosion of our base selves. The layers peel back and we will bloom again into the noise, into the speaking…into life.
Until them? Today? There is The Mute.
Our thanks, as always, to the wonderful Jim Dollar at Jim Dollar Photography.
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