Universal Voice
Fisherman’s Wharf Hostel
San Francisco
Copyright Diane Ludeking 2009
One of my favorite writing exercises to give my Soulful Journaling participants is Circle Writing. I write one prompt at the top of a loose leaf piece of paper – a different one for each participant. Then they choose from the stack of prompts and pass the rest around until everyone has a unique prompt. They write for two to three minutes, practicing fast writing to get beyond the thinking mind. Then the piece of paper is passed to the person next to them. When this new piece of paper is in their hands, they are to read only the last sentence, or better yet, the last few words, and then begin fast writing again. Write for two to three minutes, pass the paper and so on. I participated in this exercise last week and wanted to share the results with you. See if you can tell where someone else picked up the writing (there were five different people that wrote this piece). My prompt was: There is no silence without…
There is no silence without…
NOISE!
Too much noise!
I grit my teeth and flex my bowels when there is too much noise. But without it, I would not know what silence is. And how precious and kind and nurturing silence is without all that noise. The TV with a volume that seems to start at 90 and go easily to 100. Ahh. My silence. My long lost friend. A silent lover. The still and quiet part within myself. A shelter from the chaotic, buzzing, craziness of the days. The silence envelopes me most in the morning. When I can curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee.
Gradually, the world seems to wake up with me – or am I just then becoming aware? Was I just then becoming aware of loss and pain? I suppose that awareness does come at a certain age. Like my daughter, who is almost four. She talks about death, but it is clear that she doesn’t understand the loss, the gravity of the loss, that comes with death or does it have to come along with death?
Maybe we/I have just been taught that death is a loss, an ending. But it does seem that way with death, the physical person/animal/plant/whatever is not with us in the same form anymore. Gone to a place that everything journeys to. A place unseen and unknown.
In the society we live in to talk of death seems unnatural and uncomfortable. Strange when we become aware that is cannot be stopped. Death scores us, it surprises us, it is something we never fully prepare for. Yet it’s as universal as life.
And as necessary.
I have played a game with death since I was thirteen years old. I’ve thought I could cause my death by welcoming it. I have never really tested my theory.
Could you tell where one writer ended and the other began? Can you hear the universal voice written by five different people? Remember, these writers only knew the sentence – or even just a few words – prior to adding their own ink. What is the theme? Is there an antidote to too much noise?
Soul Places 