Silence is so accurate.

This according to Mark Rothko, who himself was rarely silent, especially in the matter of his own work; extremely conscious of his path of intent, he dedicated thousands of words and multiple manifestos to it, going so far as to insist upon the exact distance from which it should be viewed and the dimensions of the rooms in which it should be hung.

But he said this nonetheless, and on this we agree. There is no mistake in silence, and there is no mistaking what is meant when one chooses to maintain it. The act of speaking is riddled with errata, and the intent that inspires it is often a riddle to the speaker. What's worse is the awareness of being just wide of the mark with every attempt, the almost-right word we must hang our hopes on in the absence of the one we really meant. And what's worse, being unable to speak at all, or feeling an urgent need to speak and having nothing to say?

This is what preoccupies me. I've been silent, and so have remained errorless. But I'm not good at silence; I don't rest there willingly. Something itches, but I can't figure out where to scratch. I look around intently, I observe, in the hope that observation will provide me some insight into how others manage to speak, or at the very least that looking will satisfy the need to feel engaged with something outside my own silence. Occasionally I'm lucky enough to be in the company of others whose voices please me more than my own ever could; at those times I'm happy to listen, and there is some comfort in knowing that my silence is understood. But comfort is another state of being I find strange and disagreeable in large doses--too easy, the slip into a life of quietude and simple contentment, deciding that the work is finished, and nothing to do but wait for the long, slow scrape of years to bring an end to the waiting. It's probably a failing of mine to view things this way; people seem to do just fine following that very plan of action, that gradual yielding to inertia. But it's the just part of the equation that worries me.

And in the midst of all this hand-wringing I allow myself, the irony of the situation doesn't escape me, in that my intent consists of doing away with words entirely. Avoidance of them isn't the answer, nor is a the panicked flood that so often stems from the fear that silence is a kind of disappearance, that if we aren't heard, we've made no sound. Both of which are, a little bit, what I'm doing right now.

And then I floated.

The question for me lately is one of strength. It's gone elsewhere, or I have, and in its absence I've been mutely considering how much time is wasted waiting for its return, and how to make use of the frustration I'm left holding like a wet book of matches. I locate my own worth in work, and more specifically in working with words, in what the mind can hope to do; the issue at hand is that the mind is dependant on the body for its subsistence.

I've always struggled with the reality of inhabiting a body. I'm certain there are people who live their lives without ever seeing this as a problem, but once you've made that distinction and seen the two as mutually exclusive entities, once a divide has been located and one half found superior, I don't think there's much chance of reuniting them. And when the body fails, the mind bound to it tends to follow.

That's where I am right now; right now, I'm an empty set. I also happen to be a child of the 90s, and our default emotion is rage, accompanied by a large helping of self-sabotage and an excruciating awareness of our own inadequacy.

The question, again, is one of finding a use for this. I'm working on that. Nothing is so honest as the body and its demands, unless it is a mind that realizes those demands must be met.

There will be a short intermission, and then we'll return to the program, already in progress.

You'll have no need to exist / And wake up refreshed.

Recently I mentioned an individual who's been very influential in my life--a fellow seeker, and though his methods and the avenues of inquiry he travels diverge a bit from mine I believe we're both in pursuit of the same brand of truth. He knows things, and that's not a small achievement in this era of mindless surfaces and short attention-spans. He's always shared what he knows; his work focuses on the creation of a dialogue, and he'd like you to join him.

The conversation begins here. Please visit, listen, and contribute your comments and ideas. Tell us what you know, what you agree with, and what you think we're dead wrong about. There's a rapidly disappearing bottle of whiskey on the table, and smoking is allowed.

George Orwell tells us that "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." It's time.

What lie must I keep?

I don't see myself anywhere but in that past...
I'm no prisoner of reason. I said: God. I want salvation to bring freedom: what do I do?...
If only God gave me heavenly, aerial calm, and the power of prayer--like ancient saints. --Saints! What strength! The anchorites were artists abandoned by the world...
Ah, to rise back to life! To look once again upon our deformities...
--But it seems my soul sleeps.
Were it truly awake from this moment forward, we would be approaching a truth that, even now, may be encircling is with her weeping angels!...

Finally, I ask forgiveness for feeding on lies. Okay: let's go...

It seems that in order to survive, we tell ourselves stories. We soothe ourselves with tales of how we became who we are, pore over the minutiae of our pasts as if they would point a way forward, arm ourselves against uncertainty with the names we've established and the possessions that tell us we've achieved something real and lasting, a comfort and a legacy we can rest in.

The religious have the promise of salvation, a simple plotline to follow that assures them of a satisfying ending; turn away from the temptations of the world, strip yourself of pride and face up to the multitude of sins that cling to you, and you'll find a place made for you at the side of God. The secular are mostly concerned with the image they've worked all their lives in the service of, the belief that there is a just reward waiting for them if they stick to the plan society recommends as the right one clung to just as fervently as any spiritual decree.

We tell ourselves stories, as children are told fairytales that order a world too large and frightening; the good prosper, sacrifice is rewarded, evil will always be caught out and punished by the righteous hand of justice. We'll be safe and happy, protected in the arms of a family and leaders that want us to succeed. If we follow the example of the hero and steer clear of the shadows, if we drop a trail of breadcrumbs so we'll always remember who we are and where we came from, we'll never get lost. There's no such thing as monsters, it's just your eyes that deceive you. Anyone who has reached the age of majority with their wits intact knows in their heart that the truth is not so simple, and never easy to recognize.

More often than not we suffer, and we walk around pregnant with our own shortcomings, carrying the suffering to the end as a badge of honor because there seems to be no other way of coping. Victimhood as a coat-of-arms is the extreme example of this; giving in to the comfort of admitting oneself powerless means there is no more need to keep trying. The Queen of Swords is traditionally viewed as a widow, a spinster, a woman without a partner, and of all the tarot queens she's the only one defined by a loss or what she lacks as opposed to her own personal characteristics. And here, she appears wary of anyone stripping her of that mantle; she isn't quite powerless, but she's resolutely turned away from the future, seated, and has no apparent interest in being otherwise. She looks to the shield, her name, her defenses, centered in the four coins that mark the boundaries of a life.

The Hermit seems to have a different approach. He's always been identified as some kind of seeker, and here he raises his lamp to Judgement; is it his own resurrection he's looking for? The Hermit is, as his name tells us, solitary, and the work of revising a life, of re-vision in the service of moving forward, is of necessity a solitary act. No one can know what's in our hearts but ourselves, and much as we might try we cannot hide what is buried there from ourselves. The Hermit is wise, to a point; he works in the service of illumination. But the act of looking backward to see what has already died, digging up the corpse of the past again and again to inspect the wounds, doesn't necessarily show us a way to avoid suffering them in the future. Too often we stop at recognizing that the moment for a profound upheaval has arrived; and too often we acknowledge it only because it blares in our ears and we can hardly ignore it any longer. The truth presses upon us, and we can sit in the coffin waiting for the revelation, or we can climb out on our own.

The lies others tell us, the lies we're expected to collude with in order to be received into society, are easy to see and resist if we choose. It's our own lies that are so insidious; it's the stories we tell ourselves as we wait for someone else's permission to begin the climb out of the hole we've dug that are so hard to resist. Seeking forgiveness from a god to whom we hand the reins of authority and resting our hopes for the future on the illusions of the past, buying in to the role we're expected to perform or becoming a reliquary that forever exhibits our own failings; these are comforts we can't afford to keep.