Five Days of Silence Woke Me Up to Something I Never Expected
On boredom, sadness and finding excitement in the most unusual places.
Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence…
-Simon & Garfunkel
I’m sitting on a bed in a tiny studio, walls covered in nothing but white. Facing me are two windows lined with bars to keep out intruders and as I gaze out, several trees with their shiny green leaves turning matte yellow wave hello. I inhale the fresh breeze and am surprised how peaceful I feel in this bare space with its infrequent light.
I am living partially below ground (in what may have been servants’ quarters) of a white villa built in the 1890’s for two weeks. In the outskirts of Berlin, this old mansion sits on a small lake surrounded by the Grunewald Forest where I take a small wooden chair every morning to sip my coffee, the only conversation being with a red squirrel rustling through the trees wagging its furry tail, stopping on occasion to stare at the curious animal with a mug in her chair. In front of me is a still lake with swans floating gracefully. Every now and then, I catch one plopping its head down under.
This random plopping, it calms my nervous system. I admire one, her petite head and long sleek neck submerged in an underworld with her silky ass raised in the air. It seems like a good life, I think, as my nose dives deep into the mug. The swan’s head pops back up. She looks at me having read my thoughts through the water’s channel and says rather cavalierly, “You can plop anytime you want”.
Plop.
I do like the sound of it.
Whenever I need a reset or answers to questions plaguing me, I go to a place where I can shut everything off. Sometimes I travel to a foreign land and sometimes I stay near. Several years ago at a friend’s apartment only a few miles from mine, I discovered anything can happen anywhere, no epic nature needed to facilitate a transformation, reminding me of John Kabat-Zinn’s bestselling thought/book—Wherever you go, there you are.
Lately, I’ve been having the feeling that even though I’m on the right path, I haven’t been completely there for it. My feet aren’t fully grounded, I can’t always feel their movement. Do I even know they’re there? I’m more on a high-speed chase flying through space haphazardly even if in the right direction. This speed, this zigzagging motion, it’s shrinking my space, it's cramping my style. All my movements are blurring into one. I stand tall with the well carved pulp in my hand, yet have I really tasted its juice?
I’ve been feeling bored out of my mind. I want to get out of Berlin and find a new adventure (now!). I’ve been overindulging in food. My stomach is pissed at me. Under the weekly acid spills, I can feel a sadness lurking deep only I, with my whole being, can digest.
It’s time to move, I think again. Yes, I hear a voice say, but first—the adventure that requires being with yourself.
Stay.
I’ve been hearing this word for almost two years now.
In a bare white room without aesthetics to distract me as they sometimes do in my Alt-Bau flat which I’ve designed into my magical queendom, I plop onto my bed. I’m one day into the five days I’ve reserved for silence. My phone and computer are off. With me are a few books, my journal, postcards of 1980’s New York City from my boyfriend, a cheap digital clock, a book light, a candle and food.
Upon awakening, I do my meditation, one I’ve piecemealed together over the past year. It’s fifteen minutes long, six of which I engage in an exercise where I keep my arms up in a T-shape without dropping them. It’s brutal, but I breathe through the discomfort and each day it gets easier. I discover the power of my breath, how it holds the pain, how it clears the congestion clogging my head like the swan plopping hers, the deep inhale, the extended exhale, it too calms my nervous system.
After, I make sounds. Ohm-ing, ah-ing and eee-ing in weird and laughable combinations. The vibration of sound echoing through my inner chambers wakes my body up in less than one minute, quicker than the coffee. Sound is magic. I wonder what else I’m going to do with that voice of mine.
I brew my daily cup and bring it to my sweet spot on the lawn. The buzz of the morning brew as it joins with the silence of the morning air transports me to my dreams, the grand visions I have for my life and because I’m grounded by something stronger than the alchemy of the bean—nature and her elixir—I’m able to sit without jumping into action, action mode without rest being the movement cramping my style.
I return to my quarter and I write. Then, I read. When hunger arrives, I happily feed her, nothing more satisfying than eating when hunger is there for the feast and nothing more depressing than indulging when not. Food is my one temptation in this quiet space, the devil no longer in disguise after four decades of living, tempting me on cue to fill the many holes—the hole of sadness, the hole of anxiety, the hole where I get agitated, gripped by a frantic, restless noise that has no name.
To avoid filling the holes with a two-minute food induced dopamine hit which morphs swiftly and predictably into a day-long disappointment, I go on walks— through the forest but mostly around the neighborhood full of old villas, contemporary mansions and hidden pathways leading to mini lakes and fairy tale cabanas. This time aesthetics are serving the present moment. I am with the silence, myself and these marvels of architectural beauty rather than being swept away through an aesthetic into an illusory land where I forget to bring myself back.
I return home and plop back on my bed, I pick up my book. The words entering my head, instead of transporting me, feel more like that frantic, nameless noise. They agitate. I’m distracted rather than present, gobbling words by habit to fill a space that needs no filling. The silence is calling and the proposition to answer feels boring at first. I sit anyway and after breathing for once, feel the noise dying down and the stillness which has surfaced in its place, a warm blanket beginning to embrace me. Deeper in, I’m in an ocean enchanting me with its sound.
Being only able to stay for a few minutes at a time, long enough though to feel the center, I end up somewhere I don’t know. A place so peaceful, a quietness so pure it must be the breath of God. It feels I have reached the place from which all things come forth. Sunyata—nothingness. Pure consciousness. The silence morphing into an all-consuming feeling, a state of being giving rise to sensations more beautiful and profound than the sight of the forest and the smells of her pines.
I’m preparing for enlightenment.
Thirty seconds later, the machine revs up. All at once, I’m sky rocketing into a storm of sentences forming thoughts morphing into the same old stories and their mediocre sensations — the bills, the boyfriend, the body, the bugs on the floor, the family, what next, what if, what the—, conversations with people I’ll never have. I’m off indeed, into the great void split off from everything that is moving through me now.
The memory of silence is near however, its palpability reminding me I have a choice. I’m fluid, inhabiting many worlds simultaneously moving between them, half human, half god, half something I have not begun to even imagine. I’m able to choose, at least on some days, where I direct my ship.
I’m hungry now after all that. I whip out the goods. It’s fried mushrooms and onions in butter, lemon garlic chicken, fresh sprouts. (The Rioja will have to wait). For dessert, dark chocolate, dashed with chili and cherry. I engage in what is utterly and only human — carnality, the reason God became man. Pleasure, indulgence, the five senses taking me to another dimension. Our dimension — Earth. I try to be there for it.
I wash dishes. I write, I read and I go to sleep.
On the third morning, I peer out and find a dead bird lying outside my window. It’s stunning. Jet black with white specks, feathers fanned out, resting there in peace. The day before I spotted a baby bird, also dead outside the villa’s entrance. I begin to wonder about omens and if this is a bad one. Death is a sign of rebirth, I hit back. Then almost immediately—No, we are not going to make meaning at all.
A dead bird is a dead bird on this crisp autumn day.
Also on this day, I decide to meet another kind of silence one where I make space for a dialogue to happen. An inner child meditation, a visualization where you get in contact with your younger self. Often it’s a part of you, you may have forgotten. Living buried within our minds and bodies, it’s where we carry our unmet needs, suppressed childhood emotions and memories, our creativity, intuition and playfulness. I’ve done plenty of these in my life, my five year old self showing up most often feeling alone, sad and abandoned.
This time to my surprise, I find a happy child who is excited to be there with me. I ask her how she is, if there’s anything she needs and she tells me, “You’ve done more than enough for me. I’m going to help you now. You need to play more. You’re taking life too seriously.”
This I’m not surprised to hear but it relieves me. I can give myself a break and do nothing for once. Relax…into the silence. I realize my playful spirit helped me survive many difficult moments in my life, when I had to carry the emotional burdens of others at too young an age. Caretaking is a serious business and managing the emotions of adults, an exhausting, unnecessary one. It’s not a job I want anymore.
A few months ago when I was visiting family and friends in New York, I took a trip to an arcade. I played games with my adult friends, ones where we had to get physical and compete. How had I forgotten about the simplest, most powerful antidote to the daily grind? I immediately buy corn hole for my parent’s backyard, playing it to lighten the heaviness I feel when I’m home.
Play more.
Yes, please.
I walk up the basement steps and reach the front door of the villa. It’s time for a walk. I see a child’s toy bird lying there all frazzled, looking quite dead. Nothing to do but laugh.
I have no desire to turn on my computer or phone during my mini silent retreat but in twelve hours I will have to, the time in this other world nearing its end. This fact makes me anxious. I access the silence, the swan, the breath, my younger self to ground me.
I have plans to meet with my boyfriend after work but he’s sick. With only a few days left at the villa, I make my way back. I turn the key and upon entering my cave, I’m greeted by an energy which takes me off guard. I feel I’m being embraced.
After settling in it occurs to me I had entered a relationship with the space, a deep one, its four walls and the little it contained, the act of being there, me with the space and the space with me in communion through the silence, had animated it. My cave had come to life and upon my return, she was just as happy to see me as I was to see her. A deep respect and gratitude, on par with the sentiment I would extend to the woman who let me stay there, washed over me.
The first day back, I did what I promised myself I wouldn’t do. My phone received too much of my attention, the mindless and incessant checking of emails and accounts. Rarely on social media, even more of a reminder of the workings of technology in general, how subtle they operate, the power to corrupt without setting limits with the double-edged sword. On the metro, a half a day into my reentry half tranced out, I start to feel completely and utterly bored.
So bored, it’s beyond me.
Then, I start to feel sad.
I want to jump, explode, to do something impulsive. I want to go, go, go. And I do.
I enter my alt-bau flat. My petrol green sofa which friends call my Mercedes-Benz greets me. It’s elegant, its comfortable, it’s strong. In front of me, my sleek and sexy Mid-century modern sideboard covered with books, cheap old gin, a peach vase sculpted in the shape of a nude woman well fed, an old clock out of time, a green and yellow lava lamp, a violet Hydrangea, a blue vintage lamp. Hanging above, a friend’s painting that reminds me of the jungle, the famous photo of Einstein sticking out his tongue. I have entered my queendom.
My mind is a circus, my body is revved from a day of doing things I needed to do, some mundane, others I enjoyed. I don’t know it yet, but I haven’t stopped all day and I’m about to b-line into another activity, my nervous system firing away by habit thinking it needs to keep firing, giving me the misguided advice I need to be in motion—doing, moving, creating—in order to exist and feel alive until I catch that feeling I know so well.
I am agitated. I feel empty. I am sad. I am making the descent.
I haven’t stopped once on this warm autumn day.
The lake flashes before me. I feel the swan, I remember the silence. The place where I didn’t do much and not much “happened”. It hits me like a ton of bricks how interested and alive and engaged I felt during those five days.
Just stop.
I plop onto my Mercedes Benz and I take ten long breaths. In two short minutes, I begin to feel a shift, a small yet profound one that even takes my nervous system off guard. We get tricked into relaxing together.
The dial is turned down low enough for me to feel it—
I am here.
The agitation, the emptiness, the sadness, the boredom begin to melt as I come back—to myself that is now and to that ocean which is nearer than I think. I feel the miracle of rest, something beginning to resemble inner peace and something I hadn’t imagined before—an excitement in the silence.
I am alive no matter what.