Quiet

I welcomed the strong winds that accompanied the storms over the last few days. Usually I curse their arrival as they litter my property with sticks and branches that hail down from the large trees covering most of the acreage, leading to hours of bending and clearing and hauling. I have always called my gardening philosophy “controlled chaos” as I embrace nature, by and large, to wisely proceed with limited interference by my ignorant and fumbling attempts to manage its intricacies. 

The first few weeks of compliance with the stay-at-home orders issued by the state of Virginia felt maddeningly quiet to me. I can only compare it to being blanketed by a heavy and deep snowfall in Upstate New York when the snow absorbed and muffled every audible sound. In both instances, human activity grinds to a halt, but under current circumstances the winter storm like quiet has gone on for days and days as if no one bothered to plow the streets and the snow refused to melt. 

My neighborhood is still. The school buses aren’t running. The planes aren’t flying overhead periodically as they take off and land at the airport just seven miles from here. My neighbors aren't chasing the clock in and out on their way to and from work with garage doors opening and closing, opening and closing. The refuse vehicles still appear periodically, the leaf blowers are making an appearance, and the delivery trucks run filled with necessities and comfort taped in a cardboard box. The overarching quiet seemed to sound an alarm of impending doom.

In the midst of the deafening silence, I realized that my mind began to fill the void with fear and negativity. I like to call this the psychological form of the first law of thermodynamics which states energy is conserved, but it can be converted. As we were inundated with constant changing information about the pandemic, I was converting the quiet to a running reel full of questions, worry and “what ifs.” Random and disparate thoughts were sapping me, converting my energy from serenity to frenzy in an attempt to control when things were starkly out of my control. I don’t know about you, but I like to control things, a ruse that serves the useful purpose of keeping anxiety and panic at bay, especially in a crisis.

Unfortunately, this crisis isn’t passing anytime soon, and I had to get a hold of that downward spiral and find a way to live more in the present again, to fill the quiet with productive thoughts through productive activity. My family and I discussed strategies from the very beginning, but it has taken me a while to implement a new healthy routine that felt like an authentic replacement of my accustomed everyday living. Taking control of my news intake helps. Reading that inspires the soul and feeds the imagination helps. Writing and gardening help significantly, too. 

Somehow the windy days blew away my sluggishness, the scattered thoughts, the unease. Stillness remains the overarching sound sensation as I sit at my desk in my window-lined office with the green of spring as bright as an over processed photo. I still feel sadness and worry and anticipate plenty of ups and downs in spirit, but gratitude and hope are in the mix, too, as birdsong breaks the silence and I swear I can practically hear a chorus, blades of grass growing at breakneck speed in soil saturated by the heavy rains. No music has ever sounded so sweet as the hum of silence I now hear. 

Citizen of Dark Times
by Kim Stafford

Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.
When things go wrong, do right.
Set out by the half-light of the seeker.
For the well-lit problem begins to heal.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.
We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.
Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.
Prune back regret to let faith grow.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.
Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.
Keep seeing what you are not saying.
Plunder your reticence.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.