I owe much to silence and simplicity. These days I spend most of my free time reading in silence and now writing about the silence. So much can be taken from something so simple. So honest. It's almost empowering how this time allows my brain room to think and breathe. Room to stretch out and relax, float and travel.
I've become increasingly more of a minimalist. Most of what I have is tucked away, though still knowing it's all there annoys. It all sits and waits for me to donate the last lot. The last collection of things I have no use for.
Things. The hangers on that have no emotional value, no real purpose other than to remind me that I have a lot of things. How many bowls does a single guy need? It's not that they make noise it just seems as if they do. As if their mere presence stacked in drawers vibrates an S.O.S. Reminding me of their neediness. My need to fill a hole, which now I fill with simplicity and silence.
Simplicity for me is the counter to the ever growing noise. The growing worry and complexities of our contemporary world. It is the boiling down to what for me feels right. What matches my emotion and supports my belief system. Simplicity then for me is a mirror. A grounding.
Silence within simplicity is a magnifier. It accentuates physical space, almost to a density. It can have a heaviness or it can uplift. Either way, you know it's there. We know its presence. We feel it. Much like love, we feel the ache or exaltation.
In this time of mass consumption, mass production and black screens, I crave the opposite. I crave intimacy of space, objects of the hand created. The intimacy of body and thought. This for me is the continual sifting of what matters. Life. To surround myself with the sensuality of connection. The intimacy of beauty and all it entails. The magnitude and magic of a simple moment. The desire for more from less.
CB 04/14/18