There's something so genuine about silence. It pretends to be nothing. One could read that sentence in two quite different ways. I believe both inferences are accurate. It is itself, it has no pretense. It says nothing, but communicates volumes. I've spent a lot of time by myself, speaking very little, for the past two months.

What's surprised me more than anything (for someone who defines herself so much through her words and humor) was how little I minded it. It's not expected that I reply, so I am free to watch, to listen, and to feel. I don't immediately begin devising a witty remark, or an intelligent opinion, whenever the other students are talking around me or when I'm in a lecture. I don't explain myself when I make a mistake, consequently I focus all my efforts on correcting it for the next time. I don't look for a way into a conversation. I no longer half-ignore what's being said because I'm trying to figure out where, how, and what I can contribute to the dialogue.

Haystack Rock - Cannon Beach, Oregon — Haystack Rock - Cannon Beach, Oregon

When we're children, too young to be a part of the grown-up's conversation, we notice things that the adults are too busy to see. They're talking too loudly to hear what's being whispered, underneath all those words. A small crease between the brows, a nervous twitch of the fingers, the smell of cigarette smoke intensifying on clothing as exams approach.

We forget a part of ourselves when we become Talkers. We associate so strongly with what we say, with who we claim to be every time we open our mouths - even if we don't mean it, or don't know what it is we really want to say.

Silence offers us peace, and a return to what we are when we're pretending to be nothing.

Being with a quiet person is catching. Soon, you too fall under the silent spell. You are reduced to sitting with them, awkwardly, as one does when handed a stranger's baby or when bid to wait at the bedside of a very ill person.

At first, I thought the other dancers would eschew my company because of my lack of interesting conversation or humor. I consoled myself with thoughts like, "When I can talk to them, then they'll really know who I am, what I think, and what I love. Then we'll be friends." .

I've discovered that they know me better for our having met in silence. Instead of speaking to each other, we listened, and found that we understood each other all the more for it.

Feb 13, 2020

Sharon Tate for Stone Tulips, Los Angeles

It was August 9th, 1969. The heatwave of the past three days had finally broken, but a dazed silence hovered in Benedict Canyon. The residents floated languorously in their pools, or hid in their houses from the relentless sun. There was talk of wildfires, expected to break out across Beverly Hills any day. Later, one of the killers would remark that “you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon”. The events of that evening, which took place at 10050 Cielo Drive, were to become one of the most publicized killings in American history.