The only fireworks going on here tonight were of the Creator’s design, not mine. Some thunder muttered outside my window as the storm passed overhead and receded in the distance. That was all. There was no theme music swelling up to mark the moment I posted the very first blog I ever wrote. I actually stopped and listened for it. The moment seemed significant enough to me to warrant at least a trio, but there was no soundtrack filtering into my office. Raised as I was in the era of television and movies, it didn’t feel quite right. There should have been music. Maybe I was doing something wrong.
Silence has a quality. It is not so much an absence of sound as it is a texture. It is something you feel, something like fine old velvet – the very, very, very soft kind crafted in the 1920′s or earlier. Silence is inexpressibly heavy, and thick. I have never yet successfully computed just how large silence is, but I know it stoops down to keep from bumping its head against heaven.
There was no soundtracked commemoration of this important moment of my life tonight, but there was no silence, either. My hard-drive has a song to it, a nice pitch that drones in and out of my consciousness as I write. It has a vibration and a warmth to it, too, apparently, because every time I turn it on, Stars, the ninja cat, curls up on top of it in great contentment. His twin brother, Stripes, finds his spot under my feet. I don’t hear any theme song playing for me just now, but I can listen in on a duet called “Black Cats Purring.” The birds have rustled in their cages as they put their feathers in order, and now they are sleeping. The aquarium burbles happily to itself behind me. My desk chair squeaks every time I move. The thunder and the night wind, the cats and the computer — these make up the orchestra of my life.
I’ve done nothing wrong tonight. I’ve known for quite some time that I was to write a blog, as soon as I could figure out what blogs were and how to do them. I’ve known what the title was supposed to be for ages. I knew that if I found the right place to post it tonight, then I was to start it tonight without further delay. My only mistake was in thinking that there should be music, and that it should be grand, and important, and all about me. It’s silly, really, when you think of it. Your mind gets conditioned to think that the world centers around you, and that all creation watches you, agog, to see what you will do next. I’m only doing what I know I am supposed to be doing. The importance of the moment, then, is not on the one obeying, but on the Boss giving the assignment.
One of the characters in Louis L’Amour’s book, Conagher, is a woman who writes down what she sees and thinks, then ties the pages to passing tumbleweeds. It doesn’t matter if anyone sees them or reads them; she writes because she must. I relate to that woman.
Welcome to my blog. Put up with me as I learn the mechanics of this new procedure of launching tumbling thoughts out onto the winds of cyberspace. I will write as often as I can, and as concisely and as clearly as I can. I make no arrogant promises. Sit around the table at any of my family’s reunions and you will find deeper thinkers, more creative observers, and better storytellers. I’m not even a very good nun.
