Thursday, January 25, 2018

Kinds of silences by Beryl Markham


There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing.
There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is
different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after
a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same.

There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt.
There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from
a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from
anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work.

This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not
always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last
notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or
the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence
that follows. It is a soundless echo.
Beryl Markham

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