Originating from weekly talks given to a contemplative community of monks and nuns, the meditations in this book aim to help people surrender their lives to God.
No TV, no cell phone, no social media, no family or friends. Just alone in silence for sixty days. Written from a small cabin in the mountains above Santa Cruz, California, Bok's diary recounts his retreat into solitude and his search for a return to the simplicity of pure being. Without distraction, he has no choice but to face whatever comes—whether it's the incessant chatter of the mind, the arising of overwhelming emotions, or the simple observations of running water and birdsong. We say it's Bok's diary, but he draws us in so intimately that these sixty days become our own. Through this intense and immersive process, both for Bok and the reader, a deeper place is found within, a place of stillness and well being. You may be surprised what Bok finds, or more importantly, what he doesn't find. Alexandra Burda’s illustrations are a perfect compliment to the sparseness, sensitivity and beauty of the text.
Poet Veronica Golos has created a conundrum--a vocabulary of silence that acts as a kind of Zen koan for the reader: a negative space, an echo chamber, a mirror. Witnessing from afar the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan conducted by the country in which she lives, the poet also witnesses herself, and struggles to find words to carry the weight of her felt responsibility. Ms. Golos then empties her beautifully wrought poems into the vast silence, filling it with the names of the dead and the living.
In A Silence of Words, Olivia Dresher's poetic aphorisms and other brevities, taken from her first few years at Twitter beginning in 2009, express her devotion to short forms that she also explored in her book In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing. Ten years later, in 2019, she has a significant following at Twitter and has written over 58,000 tweets, of which 874 appear in this book. As one of her followers noted, "You write as you breathe, shaping everything with some sort of second nature." Published by Impassio Press, www.impassio.com
These are a collection of poems. From raging hiccups that destroy worlds to feeling the silence of nature. When you open this book, you will visit beautiful sunrises in the sky and travel to the surface of the ocean, visiting dreams, unfolding the future. Difference in having friends and being alone, as we grow older. Observing the life of a seed, and feeling hope even when all seems to be lost. Travelling from generation to generation, summer to winter and seeing the beauty of nature. Delve into this colourful world, all here in black and white.
John Cage is the outstanding composer of avant-garde music today. The Saturday Review said of him: "Cage possesses one of the rarest qualities of the true creator- that of an original mind- and whether that originality pleases, irritates, amuses or outrages is irrelevant." "He refuses to sermonize or pontificate. What John Cage offers is more refreshing, more spirited, much more fun-a kind of carefree skinny-dipping in the infinite. It's what's happening now." –The American Record Guide "There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. Sounds occur whether intended or not; the psychological turning in direction of those not intended seems at first to be a giving up of everything that belongs to humanity. But one must see that humanity and nature, not separate, are in this world together, that nothing was lost when everything was given away."
A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).
Silent reading is now universally accepted as normal; indeed reading aloud to oneself may be interpreted as showing a lack of ability or understanding. Yet reading aloud was usual, indeed unavoidable, throughout antiquity and most of the middle ages. Saenger investigates the origins of the gradual separation of words within a continuous written text and the consequent development of silent reading. He then explores the spread of these practices throughout western Europe, and the eventual domination of silent reading in the late medieval period. A detailed work with substantial notes and appendices for reference.