Silence
Seeds, berries and nuts fall to the ground. They bed into the forest floor. Birds carry them off in the four directions. Energy is stored inside plants. The earth enters a time of waiting. Involution. Deep silence.
The deep silence… a potential space.
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The mother was not people, nor was she nothing
nor something
she was the spirit of what was to come…
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For the Maori, this is Te Korekore,
‘the infinite realm of the formless and undifferentiated. It is the realm not so much of ‘non-being’ but rather of ‘potential being’. It is the realm of primal and latent energy from which the stuff of the universe proceeds and from which all things evolve.’
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For Plato, it is the chora.
‘neither sensible nor intelligible, neither inside nor outside. It is… the matrix, nurse, and mother of all space.’
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Our culture has become afraid of this fertile void. We fill spaces with things… silences with words. Understandably, we want to know what’s going to happen… if it’s going to be OK.
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But space can be full with potential.
The film maker Wim Wenders has written of the problem of knowing in advance about how a film may turn out, of how this can get in the way, and of the importance of letting things emerge.
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And silence can be full with healing.
The psychoanalyst, Edward Emery, writes of how healing comes from the ‘aliveness’ in the analyst’s silence and speaking from ‘a silent love that also respects the patient’s silence.’
From this silence, something that has never been seen or touched before can come into life.
