Second, don’t ask me why I chose “Lady of Silences.” Well, you can ask if you must, but I don’t have any good answers. Whenever I have to pick an online name or identity, I’m stumped. I have eclectic tastes and interests and am something of a chameleon. For all my passion and strongly voiced opinions, my viewpoint shifts frequently, not the core of what I believe but rather the angle at which I approach things. I chalk it up to the lawyer part of me who always has to try out different arguments and look at things from as many perspectives as I can.
While I realize there is far more to Ash Wednesday and other Eliot poems than his dense paradoxical language, something about “Lady of Silences/ Calm and Distressed/ Torn and most whole” struck me. T.S. Eliot has always appealed to me that way - viscerally. I first read him in jr. high. after seeing part of Burnt Norton printed in a ballet programme (“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, ….). And years later, as an English major in college, where I found T.S. Eliot scorned as anything but a literary critic, I defiantly kept on reading his poems as word-music without deep thought or, at least, murder-to-dissect comprehension. Now Ash Wednesday is ringing in my ears and I don't begin to know what it all means, but I embrace Our Lady, in her silences and the images of her as spirit, sylph, and the mother at the foot of the cross, as my guide and muse.
Which brings me to my third point: Those who know me know that silence is not one of my virtues. While I’m an introvert by nature, when I write or engage in one-on-one conversations, it’s hard to get me to shut up. Words tumble out haphazardly in great proliferation. Tangents lead to tangents, circle back, and end up in unexpected places. Once upon a time, before I became a lurker, I used to spill cyber ink in great quantities at other kinds of online communities (discussing politics, philosophy, psychology, conservation, etc. – sometimes even religion with fervent atheists). Some liked what I wrote; others tolerated it.
So… as I’m finding it more and more difficult holding back the flood of thoughts, words, and feelings that hits me daily when I read Jake, grandmère, and others, I decided to launch this blog so I’ll have a place to runneth over that will not try the patience of fellow posters or the space limits of Haloscan. Don’t know where it’s going, so please bear with me as I experiment and try to find words that will give back even a fraction of what so many others online give me daily.
