…and so it begins.

At the behest of numerous friends and colleagues, and in order to provide an outlet for musings or information that I feel might benefit the reader, I’ve decided to start this blog.  Due to personal preference, I will not use any real names in any of these posts, nor will I use my own real name - though undoubtedly those of you who have access to this blog will know who I am.  Perhaps a bit overambitious, but I’m hoping to provide a header for each post with relevant subcategories. The categories I have developed thus far are: On These Pages (goals of these writings, planned absences from writing), On Relationships (romantic, friendship, advice, with one’s self, one’s past/future, what is the goal of a healthy relationship? Is there any place for caution in love? What is love? friendship?), On Our World (Current Events, Finance, Fun Things to Do), On Text (Poems and Essays of others and of my own composition)… These entries will be clearly composed in one of two styles, the way I write and the way I talk.  This entry is the former.

As for the title of the blog, it is derived from Middlemarch:

[“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”]

“Roaring Silence” I believe is a sufficiently dynamic concept so as to mean many things.  To some, silence is the canvas for discussion, while for others it is a counterpoint to be utilized.  For example, one of the first lessons in international negotiations is that silence during heated negotiations is a highly effective tool causing those who have a cultural proclivity towards filling that silence (read: U.S. and phrases such as “awkward silence”, “pregnant pause”, “deafening silence”) to feel highly uncomfortable and weaken their own bargaining stance against those negotiators from other cultures that are more comfortable in silence either for thought or as an effective negotiation tool (read: Japan).  [For some more on such drastic consequences of communication, one could also explore the cultural acceptability of “staring”.]  Regardless, some perceive of silence as a thing, whereas others may perceive of it as the absence of a thing.

I prefer(red) to take the stance that silence is mutable as either an absence or a presence.  It’s all a matter of perspective: Peace and quiet for one is an opportunity for another to have their tinnitus act up and drive one mad.  Yet, Eliot goes a step further in her quote.  Silence becomes not a presence or absence of noise, but a border, a boundary beyond which the ineffable truth about human life pulsates and grows.  How does one glimpse that world? And even then, with what sense(s)?  Is it possible to have a foot in each world to become more, for lack of a better word, multidimensional?  I think it is, and that is what I hope this blog may be about.  In that fraction of a second when we recognize a new perspective; when we learn something that expands or changes the fundamental dynamics of our thought; when we fall in love; when we feel ourselves whole within our fractured existence; when our reality trembles - those are those moments I feel we get a glimpse of that world beyond silence.  When we truly recognize our gifts, our weaknesses, our personality, our core - we have that brief flash of our self-truth (no more lying to ourselves or letting any other perspectives interfere with our being).  It is that truth that lends us the but the briefest vision to recognize and traverse the silence in order to face the roar beyond it, until the next flash of thought returns us to our reality in our own dimension outside ourselves.  I don’t think, then, that one dies from the beautiful roar beyond the silence, but one must abandon all the interference one has accepted, stripping his or herself to the core in order to become the silence, pass through the silence, and recognize the roar as a heartbeat…and growth.

This blog is about struggling to move beyond our perspective to shake the foundations of our reality so that those things that do not stick, we learn to let go, and those things that do not tremble, we can recognize and cherish as our own.  I am not presumptuous enough to imagine that these words will shake reality, but perhaps they can sow seeds.  And hopefully, the more one comes to recognize what is at one’s core, he or she can be open to so many more perspectives to then be able to at least glimpse that roar beyond the silence, free of any insecurity, confusion or any of the fog into which we all too often voluntarily drift…