Poetics of communication
“How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how insulting to the other beings — to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses — that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present in our world…Small wonder that rivers and forests no longer compel our focus or our fierce devotion. For we walk about such entities only behind their backs, as though they were not participant in our lives. Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us — and if they still try, we will not likely hear them.”
― David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
There’s an issue that needs addressing, like a PO-box of understanding, of enthusiastically awaiting new mail to arrive, like the birds of yesterday in harmonic screeches of today’s fairy tales.
There’s an issue that needs addressing, deeply listening to what is not being said. For ages, I’ve listened to the silences and thought them to be true, and have focused my efforts on understanding the bridges of what is sound.
Relatability is found in this issue that needs addressing.
Are we listening? Truly listening? Or do we need to be heard most of all? The cacophony of human opinion laid bare to the understanding of the compassion needed for the lack of understanding. Trying to explain this stands between language structures and dialectics.
Truth stands and is called arrogant, those lettuce eating hippies of an idealistic tomorrow, being swallowed by the prepotency of the decaying narrative of an ever-evolving, ever regenerating world in which we stand tall not to hear the truth that shakes the lies in which we sit comfortably so not to disturb the apparent peace that we created — the monotonous monologue of humanity, speaking of the world as it is not listening.
But some of us stand silent and truthful. In the silence we meet the peace of knowing that everything will be okay; and if it’s not a God holding us, we’ve forgotten eternity: If it’s not nature who is speaking, we have no voice.
This comparative dialectics of behaviorism in a stand all brute force of fundamentally different, unique, beings, who think suffering is life itself, who think life is about being found in suffering and met in blame.
But some of us stand silent and truthful. Speaking has become a manner of reaching to the depths of what is possible to be spoken of without sounding like a lunatic who has too much free time to think of the impossible.
This monologue of humanity, which speaks of the world as the world is not listening — I ardently wish to not be a part of it, and always speak of the world with the utmost respect.
There is a pain to be told, and questions to be asked, and answers to be understood. The world is listening.
We lose our tempers, it’s something unexpected, like being blindsided by unexistent blame for whatever happening that hurt someone unintendedly. In a backtalk in my mind, I found I’ve never truly hurt anyone by intention — it has been a matter of feeling defensive about a perceived or real aggression, or a tone, or a gesture. And in here lies my fault, the so unforgiving to those who have been in confrontation — my boundaries are seen as prepotency, my inherent need for respect as a valid human being needs acknowledging. Because the world is listening, and I need to be truthful and care about myself if that care is not found elsewhere.
So I speak to the trees, who give me the same, ever-patient, advice: be kind and forgiving, love everyone for everyone deserves acknowledgment of their good inside. And I do, I really do.
That’s probably the most resilient fact about all of this, the love we carry, that soothes the pain of not understanding humanity’s monologue as if the world wasn’t listening.
“The trees carry information” — as if computer data permeates our smartphone-centered minds with the dialectics of misunderstanding. The constant comparison of fundamentally unique and different, the etnocentrism of the human family life.
So I keep listening to the silence as if what is not said rests on the souls of the unforgiving. What is not said, lays dormant to be spoken after the pain of feeling the abandonment is felt and forgiven. What is not said, is reminded often as something to be understood and deeply comprehended and not brushed as something wrong, to our perceived notions of what is different is inherently evil.
There is evil, but it’s such a minority of all the good in the world. Because the world is listening, and it shows us time and time again how much good is in everything — if we just stop the incessant monologue and speak to those who we’ve subtracted from the conversation.
The more connected to that conversation we are, the less we feel part of humanity’s monologue, and to deal with that loneliness is to remember who we are and why we are here.
Love holds no boundaries, is freedom in itself in every step. Like the master Thich Nhat Hahn so eloquently explains, to be free is to walk in freedom, to act in freedom in everything we do. To have a dream is to live that dream in every action, step, or word. It’s not at the end of the journey, it is the journey itself.
There is an issue that needs addressing, the world is speaking to us. Not in pleads for help but in helping us responding to our pleads.
By subtracting the rest of the living world from this conversation, it does not mean they aren’t compassionately and lovingly listening to what is being said. In words and silence, the absolutely’s and the never’s, the feeling less than and the feeling more of. This comparison dialectics has come to a consensus of cooperation, it is needed to survive our commodity of the decaying narrative which is naught more than not being part of the largest inclusive conversation that is happening everywhere.
By deeply listening to what is silent, we understand that the true narrative is life itself, there’s a resting place in that silence and we flow as part of it, not against it, and not subtracting it from our monotonous dialogue.
