Olsen’s Silences (Part One)

June 7, 2011 at 9:54 pm (Uncategorized)

I must write on this blog.  I must write on this blog.  I must, I must, I must…

I am so tired my eyes hurt and it is only 9:05.  Only.  I could be in bed by 6:30 most work days.  This year has been hard on me and I have often referred to myself as a slug.  (In fact, I think I did that in my last post.)  I have been completely sapped of energy.

Still, I am here.

I am here.

There is this book called Silences by Tillie Olsen.  It is dedicated “For our silenced people, century after century their beings consumed in the hard everyday essential work of maintaining human life…”

Olsen writes of her own silences:

In the twenty years I bore and reared my children, usually had to work a paid job as well, the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.  Nevertheless, writing, the hope of it, was “the air I breathed, so long as I shall breathe at all.”  In that hope, there was a constant storing, snatched reading, beginnings of writing, and always “the secret rootlets of reconnaissance.”

I am here.

And, I am not alone.

Perhaps, that is all that I can hope for tonight.  The beginnings of writing, the secret rootlets of reconnaissance.  Just being here if only for a moment.

Just one moment, literally, for I am drained and cannot think straight.  (These 253 words have already taken me 40 minutes to write.  My mind is that blurry.)

But, I vow to be back again tomorrow.  To conquer my own silence despite its many strapping fingerlings.

To create the circumstances for creation regardless of my obstacles.

I understand now.  That is my dream.

I leave you with Olsen’s words and with the wish that you, too, find your voice and shout.