desert people

Twice a month , I have to take my fluffy white quilt to the laundromat to be washed with anti-dust mite solution.I dread those days.The 20 x 20 room where the washing machines are has 3 televisions.Three!All blaring, at a deafening volume, the trials of the demented as they appear before a screaming judge.It is a horrible experience.We tried another laundromat down the road and it was the same.I have to sit in the car ,in the cold ,to get away from the noise.

If I pump gas at Wal-mart, there is a small screen at the top of the pump that is loudly telling me about the cigarette deal inside the booth or the cheap coke.I feel assualted.

Maybe I am super sensitive to this because once,unexpectedly, I found myself in the presence of complete silence and it felt like I had met an unforgettable person.

In the 80s, my family drove out West to visit relatives and we stopped along the barren highway in Arizona at a sign that said,Painted Desert.We got out of our old VW van and went to the railing and looked stunned at what lay before us.You could see infinity.No trees, just a land of colored sand.This is not the grey,hilly Sahara of the movies;this is red,grey,bronze,cooper, undulating ,rippled land that stretches out forever.And then I was embraced by a quiet that I cannot describe.Deep,thick silence and in my spirit I heard this;"This is Who I am."Those exact words.This was an emptiness that was somehow full,complete.I could spend the next hundred years trying to discern the meaning of this.

"God's poet is silence.His song is unspoken,
and yet so profound",.....
Joaquin Miller

One of my many New Year's resolutions is to find silence a few times a week for at least a half hour.I have ignored what happened in Arizona for too long.There is something more I need to learn and I have to take my pen and journal and find out what it is.