The above photograph is from Guy Dickinson’s tracing silence. I thank him for permission to use it.
I’ve written about the site before, and upon visiting yesterday found several elements have been added since I was there last. I’m not sure exactly what to call them, slide shows seems inadequate, any more than I know what to call the site which blends words and photographs in a way that conveys silence, except for the sounds of wind and water, natural to the uninhabited landscapes through which Guy walks. Uninhabited and mostly untouched by man.
What is not said on the site is as important as the minimalist amount that is said. I had to google to locate Alftavatn—Iceland, and Rubha Hunish—The Isle of Skye, but that doesn’t really matter. The lack of detail and explanation moves the images beyond place and time. They look much as they must have done a thousand years ago, and, I hope, will a thousand years from now.
Guy has coupled the above image with a few of my words:
my silence
is like glass blown by an apprentice
flawed and cracked
but now I have learned to form silence
and next time I will do it right
perfectly
I wrote that more than forty years ago and unfortunately I was too optimistic. I never have made a passage in perfect silence. Maybe this year. I like having goals. And that is as good a one as playing Bach again off Cape Horn.
I trust you understand I don’t praise Guy’s site because he has included my poem, though I am pleased to be in such good company, but because Guy enters the monastery of the land as I enter the monastery of the sea.
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Another site I visit from time to time is Mark McGuire’s, an entrepreneur I know through sailing. I find Mark’s site interesting because it is a view into a world foreign to me, though artists are entrepreneurs, if on a very small scale.
In his most recent entry, which I read when it was first posted but only really saw when I went back recently, Mark quotes Jim Rohn, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
I have been thinking about that. I don’t know that it is true, but it is an interesting theory.
I spend most time with Carol, and she doesn’t bring anyone’s average down. Next with J. S. Bach. Neither does he. But there really isn’t a solid third. So I don’t know how to figure my average. And soon the five people I spend the most time with will all be me.
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I seldom drive and I never had a love for cars, but today I came across a well written piece about what it is like to drive at 200 miles per hour.
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From the NEW ZELAND HERALD this morning I learned that two tropical storms, one in the Coral Sea, the other in the Pacific Ocean near Vanuatu, are expected to combine into one big cyclone and head directly for the north end of New Zealand’s North Island, arriving Monday New Zealand time, Sunday in the United States.
