“I have not said a word
aloud all day.
Sounds cease.
Silence, solitude,
Peace.”
                -Ursula K. Le Guin, from “At Cannon Beach”

                I want to make room for quiet, for not doing, for peace. Over the last year I’ve tried describing this space as a pot of soil on my windowsill. Carefully tended. Watered every now and then. Rich damp loam, rich to my fingers, in which I plant no seeds. Caring, instead, for the soil that is already there.
                Today I had several Tasks, and I did most of them. Not quite as many as I’d planned. It usually goes that way. Then I had five-ish hours on zoom for different commitments, and by the end, the noise of the screen and the speakers had me buzzing till I wanted to close my eyes. Don’t get me wrong: I liked the meetings I went to, and the people I met with. And I’m not sure I’m looking (like Le Guin) for sounds to cease. But after the last meeting, and after sitting for a little while, I went for a walk with my partner. Some of the maples are still holding their bright yellow leaves, flickering like bright currents of water washed up into the sky. Other trees have dropped all their leaves. Dark silhouettes. A couple talked on their way to the same park bench I’d been thinking of sitting on with my partner. We chatted a bit, my partner and I. We walked quietly. Cool evening air. Footsteps. A sky so deep, beneath the clouds, that you could swim in it. Maybe we did. I have a habit of filling my life with this and this and this, the trees and the bench and the clouds. Now I remember the and, the and, the and. The places between where I’d been looking. These openings. These presences. Peace.