Silence, like the layers of fine grit and dust of the dry season, has settled on everything. The streets outside are empty save for the occasional street dog. A spray bottle and a roll of paper towels sit undisturbed on a table outside the corner tienda. The heat rising off the cobblestones shimmers in the afternoon sun, and the horses in the field across the street seem unaware of the calamity that's overtaken the world.
I hear a piano – it sounds like a child learning to play the scales, or perhaps learning to play inside - but like the insects buzzing in the sunlight, it seems only to highlight the solitude and the silence. The bodega around the corner is closed and an empty bus churns up enormous clouds of dust as it rumbles down the cobblestone street.
Silence and solitude have always been inseparable companions. This is the realm of poets and writers and never has so much been said about saying nothing. I’m reminded of Wendell Berry’s instructions on How to Be a Poet. “Make a place to sit down.” he begins, “Sit down. Be quiet.”
We are all bi-lingual. We all communicate in our native language, and also in silence. But language is a barrier as well as a bridge. Language highlights our differences, silence celebrates our similarities. Paul Goodman, the great novelist, poet , and playwright famously wrote about the nine different types of silence; the dumb silence of apathy, the fertile silence of awareness, the silence of peaceful accord and communion with the cosmos. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote about the 100 Chinese silences: the silence of the lotus, the silence of the night boat, the silence of the temple bell. We're all familiar with silence in our own lives; the silence of the first snowfall, the silence of the baby sleeping, the sudden, awful silence that follows the slamming of the door. I've become increasingly familiar with others; the silence of forgetfulness, the silence of regret, and now, the silence of the doorbell. I've also come to long for a different silence; the silence of the evening news.
“Keeping Quiet” is a poem written by the Chilean poet, diplomat, and Nobel Laureate, Pablo Neruda. He first asks us to count from one to twelve - a method we are all familiar with to quiet ourselves down. He then requests everyone not to speak. The moment when everyone sets aside whatever they were doing and becomes quiet, he says, would be a moment such as the world has never experienced before; fishermen would lay down their nets, soldiers would lay down their arms, everyone would unite in contemplation of the repercussions of how they spend their lives.
This was personal for Neruda. He was an ardent environmentalist, keenly aware of the fragility of this earth. He was also no stranger to war. Neruda had been a witness to the atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War under the regime of dictator General Franco. He had seen war in close quarters and very well knew what “victory with no survivors” looked like. Neruda had this to say about the Spanish Civil War: “The war began for me when my friends started disappearing.”
Pablo Neruda is not asking that we stand idle, but to pause from the frantic pace and the mad rush to achieve all that we can in the limited time we all have on this earth, and to reflect for a moment on what we are really achieving, and what we have lost in the process. As our streets are filled with protests and violence, our world torn by political unrest, and our personal lives upended with the uncertainty of the pandemic, perhaps a little solitude and a little quiet will cause us all to rethink those things that are truly important in our lives.