Different types of silence (12/6/17)

At siësta time I have a drink on a little town square. I saw the same faces as a year ago, hanging around there. Mostly unemployed men, only  one young woman who has very long and emotional phone calls with her boyfriend just like a year ago. Two tourists probably not the same persons as year ago but very much the same in style and behaviour. It is very hot. There is no wind. You feel the breathless absence of time. There is the silence of nothing happening. The silence of all the people from different generations who left because there is nothing happening. The empty houses are still there. You feel people waiting for a miracle, a turn of their fortune, may be winning the lottery, but nothing is happening. "There is no future here", people say, no work. Life is standing still. There is silence.


That silence is so different from the silence later in the forest. Trees have a lifespan some are dying many others are newborn. There are traces of fire in the past. The forest has a history. But yet it is a repeating history. There is silence. No fundamental changes in this forest. You hear the wind in the leaves and the birds singing but no human sounds. Silence. But the silence feels fresh, nourishing, giving you a feeling of wellbeing and being alive amid a surrounding full of life. Breathing comes easily. The silence feels as a timeless source of rejuvenation.