mysteryoriley

Most of the time, what we know is so little, it’s hardly worth mentioning.  Yet, many of us are self-absorbed to the point we feel the need to talk in spite of our vaporous words.  I’m spending more time listening to others these days, and less time listening to my self-talk while someone else is trying to tell me something important.  Thank god.  I’m sick of listening to me. 

Instead, I’m listening to vibrations.  (Okay, so that sounds a little too much like my youth, but it’s true, so I wrote it down.)  Vibrations.  What are they really?  Are they those things that we hear/feel when the words don’t match?  Yes, in my experience, anyway.  It appears these vibrations are more accurate than any words I can speak, or write.  I can’t write the vibrations, so I have to ask, “What do we know?  How can we communicate those things?”  Very little.   And, not well.  Those are my answers tonight. 

I think we make up a whole bunch of stuff to satisfy what we don’t know, and fill in the blanks with words that simply take up space.  I reread things I’ve written and ask why?  Why did I bother?  Then I remember that I can’t turn off my brain, and I need a place to dump my thoughts so I can function in the world.  Not unlike what I observe in my family and friends.  I think that’s why Owen and I kept journals all these years.  Nat has kept a different kind of journal, a journal all the same, but he keeps his bits of paper in a box, the things he thinks are funny, poignant, sad, absurd.  Recordings, all.

I don’t know what this has to do with tonight’s song.  Maybe this:  Owen loved the movie Braveheart.  He was a romantic, and was enamored with stories of political injustice, star-crossed lovers, and warriors fighting a cause – any cause, a bunch of causes.  He often ended these stories with questions.  Questions he asked of us, his family and friends.  He didn’t let go of his questions easily.  He wanted answers.  He often found out how little we knew, and how much there was for him to learn, if he was willing to do the research.  He did the research.  He loved to read.  And, I think he often found out, that like so many of us, the more we know…the more we know nothing.

Owen listened to vibrations when words failed him.  Words often failed him…and he was a practiced wordsmith.  On the mat surrounding Grete and Eddy’s wedding picture, he wrote “Positive vibrations.”  I think that’s what he wanted them to feel as his wedding wish for them.  No other words could have said it better.

Song for the night: The Princess Pleads for Wallace’s Life, James Horner

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SXfSXi8TT0w&feature=related

~ by Linda on December 4, 2007.

Posted in child loss, children, death, family, friends, grief, learning, Life, literature, mothering, music, mystery, parenting, theater, writing
Tags: Braveheart, Emmitt Owen Riley, Linda Siniard, listening, Nat Riley, romantics, William Wallace, words