CHASING DOWN THE MUSE:Seeking the silent voice

Don’t use your voice for three days.

At first, this doesn’t seem like much of a challenge. Then, I remember my meeting with Rebecca this afternoon. We are to brainstorm ideas. I pick up the phone “¦ wait! I can’t do that. I e-mail her instead, all the while giggling (silently, of course) over the image that has popped into my head of the two of us sitting at Zinc Café.

Bubbly, voluble and loquacious Rebecca would be flowing forth with ideas. Ponderously, pad and pen in hand, I would be eking out my own thoughts, passing them across the table, mere brain-puffs. It completely ruins the concept. Needless to say, I suggest we postpone this meeting. It is hard. I am eager to start this positive, forward-looking action after my six weeks in Brooklyn.

The return from New York was uneventful. As usual, writing had centered me and I was ready to jump into two wonderful, sun-drenched days of teaching a mixed-media workshop at Spring Into Art on the Sawdust Festival grounds. (If you are not familiar with this event, check it out at www.sawdustartfestival.org)

I can only look back now and be thankful that the edict to go voiceless was not issued then. But that was long before I started the hacking cough, too. So I am able to cherish the joys of laughter and good people, good food, birds singing, and sunshine amongst the trees from those first days back. B.C.””before cough.

In fact, the table of life was cleared and ready for the excitement of creative time B.C. It seemed everything even remotely distasteful (taxes and all) had been handled and cleared from my slate. Whoopee! I was ready.

And then that old “sacred messiness” showed up, once again, to remind me I cannot always be in charge. Worse yet, it is what you do with what you are given. Oh, darn!

So for what have I been given these long days of silence (dry-erase board at the ready for personal encounters)? Neutral stillness? Time for regeneration of more than my throat? Something deeper inside?

I think of the admonition to “Sit quietly for a little while each day” that I have posted over my computer. “Simply sit and empty yourself.”

Haven’t I been doing this? Does it, perhaps, sometimes take more than “a little while”? Maybe. I sit in my own silence. I strive to listen. I ponder.

I hear the cawing of crows, the screech of a hawk they are chasing and harassing, and I consider the possible metaphors, deciding simply to hear the sounds themselves “” both harsh, the raspy caw-caw of the crow is hardly song-like though it is classified as a “songbird.”

Their vocal qualities return me to thoughts of my own lack of voice at this time and I am reminded that I do still have “voice” through writing.

Whether via e-mail, dry erase board, letter writing, a postcard, this column ... I do have voice. Perhaps not enough for brainstorming with Rebecca today, but that can wait.

I return to listening “” to the differences as air passes through the trees, first as light breeze and then picking up to a light wind, rattling wind chimes; to the songs of the sparrows and goldfinches, the chattering hummingbirds, the whir of wings.

There is much to hear. I will just give my brain a rest, along with my body. The rest of the quoted admonition to silence is that “the neutral stillness of the mind renews the tired soul and this is regeneration.”

Even the good things of the past weeks for which I feel intense gratitude have taken their toll. Now I will rest and receive the blessings of springtime.

---

CHERRIL DOTY

is a creative living coach, writer and artist who lives and works in Laguna Beach. She can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at (949) 251-3883.