TINY PACKAGES
Tuesday Dec. 23, 2014
Life is an emotional state.
If only in our minds.
Mostly there.
In quiet rooms.
This room.
Only quiet here.
Except for Joe Cocker tunes [gravel-voiced idol of bad shower singers] playing. Joe died yesterday.
Silence for Joe.
Back to silence for me.
Gusta at her kennel, I’m alone.
In this creation space where I cook, eat and sleep.
Silence is inert.
Sits, there.
And here, not making a sound.
Not like a person or pet, no possibility of movement or noise sitting on pause or paws.
More than sitting, it hangs.
Like mist in the air aching to be broken.
Soon after I publish this piece I’ll be off – driving to Edmonton so afternoon appointments can be kept, then check in to my hotel with gifts not yet wrapped and some work I’ll take. Some reading too.
Next few days will be noisy happy ones, family gathered to make Christmas memorable for Alex (at 11 months, it’s his first) and for Isla (at 2½, her third).
They won’t remember as well, or as long, as will parents and grandparents.
Who knew life’s greatest joy comes in such tiny packages?
There is magic here in this silence, as in Cocker’s haunting voice.
If gravel could sing, it would sound like him.
Then the quiet again.
Silence it seems, is not absence of sound as much as it is absence of joy – the times that lets aches and hurts leak in, unless we resist that easy temptation. Resistance is everything. Silence is to be saved, revered. Silence is for smiling so privately.
Beauty and truth lives in the silence – as it does in the noise made by our children and grandchildren. Joe sang it so well …
Silence, it seems, is to be broken.
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: -3C/27F, clear and calm; strange to walk a straight line without Gusta’s tugs pulling me hither and … quiet, dark but feeling so light on my feet. No white Christmas expected here – so I’ll head north in search of snow and family …
Reader feedback:
Mark, you have always marched to the beat of a different drummer – have a great break and enjoy your family. KK, Calgary, AB
Merry Christmas Mark. May your time spent with family be as wonderful as mine. Hope you are able to cook less though – ha ha. All the best for 2015. Keep those daily words of inspiration/thought provocation coming. You probably have no idea that some days you just hit the nail on the head for me emotionally. I had to put down my darling dog 2 weeks ago and I cried more that when the hubby hopped out the door. In fact ... , DB, Calgary, AB
