June 25
It is not the place that creates peace, but the gathered soul; solitude gives you back to yourself.
The Life of Solitude (freely rendered)
Listening mode
It is not the place that creates peace, but the gathered soul; solitude gives you back to yourself.
Being alone is not yet the same as being with yourself. Often the room is empty and your head is full. You finish a conversation from yesterday, at last find the better reply and explain to someone who isn't there what you actually meant. The others have left, but you keep talking in their direction.
Only when this inner talking lets up does it grow strangely quiet. Then you notice how much of what you took for your thoughts were replies. Without anyone across from you, they have no occasion. What remains is quieter and less orderly: an interest you haven't pursued in a long time, a tiredness you had been covering up, a question addressed to no one.
This is not necessarily pleasant. The person handed back to you there is not quite someone you know, precisely because they have nothing to prove to anyone. You can easily mistake them for emptiness.
Later the phone rings, and you hear yourself answer, quick and fluent. For a moment your own voice sounds a little like a translation.
