I tore the label off of a pint bottle of water to write down the title for this column. On a recent hike I had a pen in my pocket but no paper, and I wanted to keep the sentences that seemed to bob up from the current of my thoughts like a cork that won’t sink. I like to take the cork from dinner’s wine bottle along when I walk by the rivulet at Schultz Pass or sit on the blue granite at Badger Springs. I toss and retrieve the cork awhile and let its dance in the currents show me what resilience looks like. A cork bobbing and sluicing, floating the invisible current, making movement visible, showing a way through gushes and flat water. I try to remember that effortless dance when I’m feeling overwhelmed by commotion, or find myself stranded in an emotional eddy with my arms limp at the oars.
It could be my elemental nature is more like a rock in a stream, more like a bony shoulder stiff against the current.
Recently I described to a gathering of poets how I like to read my words aloud to trees. At Grandview, at Turkey Butte, at four other fire lookouts where I’ve spent summers, I would lean out the non-windy window and speak lines to treetops, sentences launched like bubbles tossed to the wind. I trust the audience of trees and mountainside, clouds and cloud shadows. The occasional swallow would dart through my reading, chasing flying ants, or maybe snatching a verb out of the air.
Perhaps it is also my rock nature, not having much to say to live people.
It could be it is effortless for me to be quiet because I entered this life with a twin sister. My mother tells others the two of us had our own language as toddlers, a “gobbledy gook” we shared with obvious pleasure. I don’t recall those syllables. That we spoke with our faces is clear to me. It is still the first language I attend in any given room. For me this makes most rooms too loud with nonverbal talk. Outdoors I’m a twin again, at ease with the silence of rocks and sky. Water murmurs sense to me, like those chortles and glugs and quiet swishes where a cork from a wine bottle bobbles. Outside I delight in the sound of bird wings passing.
That I don’t have much to say doesn’t mean that I don’t notice or don’t care. But I don’t sort what I mean to say by speaking out loud. Nor do I talk aloud to soothe myself. During the dozen years I had a massage practice, my clients did not mind that I was not chatty. When responding to a subtle shift in muscle between shoulder and ear, my hands spoke kindness and presence without words aloud.
Permission to not respond by talking is what I treasure about modern dance. While my dancer friends might be curious what I see, they know that if I say little it doesn’t mean I wasn’t moved; dancers trust the wisdom in bodies. This weekend the Fringe Festival brings a marvelous flood of dance and performance: 12 companies and 19 events over two weekends. (See the Flagstaff Performance Arts Festival at www.fpaff.org.) The opening gala is Fri, April 30 at 6:30 pm at Coconino Center for the Arts; I look forward to permission to be speechless.
Perhaps I should have called this column, “The Non-talker’s Lament.” I know my nonspeaking habits incur costs. Too often taciturn is mistaken for indifference. And I know intimacy asks one to speak multiple languages to be clear. Actually, I remain confused about intimacy for “singletons.” How do you folks born alone come around to sharing speechless connection with another? We twins know our faces offer language enough for many occasions: follow me! Look at that! I’m glad you’re here! And without chatter, one easily hears the wings of birds and the coursing of streams chime in with the whooshing and gurgles of “I am alive, I am alive …”
But I do sometimes feel lonely preferring wing sound to small talk.
Perhaps I am a rock that would rather be a feather.
