The thought-enhancing silence

The silence in the middle of the small town of Köyceğiz, in Southwestern Turkey, is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, though right now a cicada is trying to break it, or break its little heart trying.

Walking by the huge lake here, also called Köyceğiz, you can’t even hear the lapping of the waters, as they are becalmed a lot of the time, almost as if there is no organic beating heart within that huge expanse of water, when in fact there are, among many other sea creatures, a lot of massively huge turtles that one can see swimming just below the surface. But their heartbeats aren’t enough to break the mirror that looks back at me as I peer into its depths.

There are very few people around, since the peak of the Turkish summer season is gone, but the heat is still oppressive to the extreme and it sears the soles of your feet and the inside of your mind, almost toasting you alive as you walk, very slowly, along the lake’s very well curated banks, as sweat pours out of pores you didn’t even know you had.

The place is absolutely gorgeous. The lake itself, of course, is idyllic and the mountains that border its horizon rise and fall, having different levels and different shades, almost as if they were shot by a Disney Multiplane Camera. And there are trees everywhere, and every few steps water pouring out of pipes that compensates for the heat-driven dryness. And it’s almost as if I’m alone in this world so beautiful it was gifted to me by well-wishing friends, who, knowing how darkness has engulfed my world right now, cared enough about my well being to do something about it, trying to push a bit of light to dilute, even if very very briefly, the density of the black.

The beauty is just amazing and unique, but it’s the silence that predominates. It’s a solid wall that wraps you round in abstract cast concrete. And of course, thoughts just reverberate in it. Loud and harsh and clanging, like the inside of a bell-tower during the feast of the village patron saint. And thoughts aren’t exactly lacking right now. They keep me awake at night, they share my down time as I try to work, they fight back against my life-giving creativity, they punch me in the stomach and my heart and my mind, they engulf my very soul. Because, as I have already said in preceeding blogs, my world has been turned upside down by a sudden, intransigent decision I was helpless to overturn, but which in turn overturned me and all that I am and can be and will be. Demolishing the past, destroying the present, and annihilating the future.

I am, of course, working hard to get back on track, since this way lies total destruction of my mind and soul. It looks anything but hopeful as I write this, but I need to believe it is, because giving up leads to places I do not want to go. And Köyceğiz, that has given me so much by way of beauty, has also amplified the thoughts with its silence, though maybe, in so doing, has also helped me embrace them, and with them, the grief that is such an integral part of what has happened. Because only through embracing it will I eventually wear it out. I cannot get rid of it. I cannot ignore it. It will bore a hole in my heart and kill me. I need to hold it to me as it tortures me, grabs my stomach and twists, stops me breathing… like accepting the drill of the dentist during a root canal (but without anaesthetic!) knowing that, at some point in the future… potentially a very distant one… it will help ease the killer toothache. A psychologist friend of mine has actually told me I have to do this.

So, in a sense, thank you Köyceğiz for your thought-amplifying silence. I cannot not hurt right now… it’s like existing with half of every organ amputated, and needing to understand how to make do with half a heart, and half a liver… and, much worse, half a soul… but the pain writ large helps me put it in some sort of order. Still painful, but a tiny bit more acceptable.

If only there was just the beauty to be enjoyed in this wondrous place… shared with the only one who mattered to me to share beauty with! But therein lies the insanity in the excruciation that underlies the mess I’m in. So I will also need to learn how to appreciate the beauty alone, till sharing Köyceğiz with someone who can regrow the amputated half of my soul becomes again an option I can live with.

A silent silence

The silence runs deeper than the silence itself. Because there is no actual silence. There’s a gentle rustle as trees, as old as god knows what, are gently brushed by a very light wind. There is the lapping of waves… like lovers, waters kissing rocks, gently rocking over them, making love in ways that are only known to nature that has been untouched by the artifical hand of what we laughingly refer to as civilisation.

No, there is no actual silence, but yet, it is a silence deeper than any I’ve felt in vacuum, because silence is not the absence of noise, it is the intense pleasure of the lack of the humdrum familiar… the abject hum of everyday outside the window… the massive, overwhelming roar of life as it happens anywhere on my island home.

This too is an island, but so far removed from the familiar world of home as to be virtually another world. A world of green, and blue, and quiet red rooftops that feel like they’ve been lifted out of a northern crib. A world of rocks that love the waters that surround them, and in which even old boathouses enrich, rather than blemish the landscape.

Yes, it’s lifted out of a postcard, but there’s no printing, no paper… just the reality of the deep silence of the soul, an eternity of gentle sussuration as thoughts slowly drift out into puffs of non-existence. A disarming debilitating of the need to work… an antidote to tension and stress.

And it’s a permeating silence that creates a lethargic energy that dissipates softly into thoughtlessness, as the spirit hums gently to itself and eases the burden of life.