Response to Prompts on Silence

Shia the Cat being silent

The “Hands Arts for Humans” (HA4H) livestream has started encouraging daily writing exercises. Common prompts are being shared. This has actually motivated/inspired me, so yay! See M’s Patreon or Vi’s Patreon if hand arts sound good to you.

in response to prompts on silence,
from Anne West’s "Mapping the Intelligence of Artistic Work" pp 28-31

Silence is a rejection of the modern world.
A friend stayed through Hurricane Ike;
In its wake there was no power, and no cars.
The world she knew was quiet
and another world was loud in its place.

I remember being seasick in the Gulf of Mexico.
Limp in a bunk, resting against the hull.
I sloshed inside while the ocean crashed outside,
newly pendulous.
Without worries or bother,
silent inside for the first time in ages.
I look back to this when I need peace.

DOES YOUR WORK BREAK SILENCE?
It surely does for me!
How can I not hear this text as I try to pour it through me
The silence is ABHORRED
itself loud, a siren, damning! another voice in legion
exclaiming "you thought you could do this?"
AND I CAN'T STAND IT.
I want the work
The Work
to fill me, consume me, falling from beyond and through me
Clarion clacking, from soul to screen and thence beyond

This comes and goes.
Will the silence break me?
A simple inversion, an exercise, trite
Shame. Delete delete delete delete *what do I do instead*
No, leave it. Maybe this feeling is fleeting, misleading
Maybe later these words won't seem to condemn
Or maybe at least there will be SOMETHING I value in them
Swallow. Breathe. in silence again

To shout! But what?
And in my own voice?
Or hope that another could speak these things
And feel a thing I'd hope they'd feel
instead of just the what-the-fuck
what a waste
those moments I put--they put--
into this
Could they have been better spent in silence?

Boredom
contemplation
Free-associating
Stretching out over a lifetime's graph
Such node, such edge, a novel one?
It breaks, it's gone, it's silent now.

The repetition
itself empty
the familiar silent
pattern found, ignored.

Silence yearns to be filled.

Silence is dark, fine, permeable, coating. Boundless.

Silence, I know I need you, but it hurts less when you're not there.