16.7.25

A Topography of Silence, by Marina Burana

‘I still write books. Perhaps they are silent.’
—Leïla Sebbar, Arabic as a secret song.


I walk hand in hand with silence. The words that emerge from me are the offspring of a silence that has swallowed my innermost self. A silence I prefer to view as transformative, one that allows these words to take shape from its depths and, in doing so, dissolve it. Yet, perhaps it is a different kind of silence—one that quietly haunts the borders of meaning, lurking in the subtle folds of symbolism, waiting for the words to fade, allowing itself to sink back into the comforting realm of perplexity and incomprehension.

Silence sometimes feels like a creature with an undeniable presence. A presence that breathes out a secret world of meaning that wants to be discovered. This makes it complex and incomprehensible. There is nothing quite like a room filled with a lonely silence, that is, a silence shared only with one’s mind. It doesn’t need any thoughts or any words; it just needs to be. And by being, to fabricate the reality around it—a quiet dog, an alluring piece of furniture, a discreet lamp. Do they all come from the same silence? Or do they have a silence of their own? Does my silence shape the foundations of being, or is it merely a witness to the unfolding significance that emerges in the quietest forms?

As a child, I was often silenced, not literally, but emotionally. What my mind craved had to be suppressed, forced to find alternative paths, diverting its energy into nurturing new ways of being. I often feel my silence is an orphaned child, still preoccupied with an existential quest. I am comfortable in it. I thrive in it. I actually like silence, my silence. Perhaps I have grown accustomed to it. Perhaps this silence of mine has become an extension of a self I aspire to. 

Silence can also be seen as the suppression of words—a hesitance to articulate, to shape an ‘organized’ ontology in favor of embracing that other realm of secret, perhaps elusive, significance. A mental cowardice? Be it as it may, it is here, like a blanket covering things, spreading in time and space.

*

These past few years of my life, I started connecting silence with unexplored emotion. I tend to now see it as a hiding place. A locus where things take place and of which I am completely unaware. When my mind wanders like this, I go back to my mother and how she kept my biological father a secret until I was 28. Her silence throughout the years, as a vigilant witness, piled up strata of meaning that slowly built this very personal reality of the unsaid. When she told me the truth about my origins, my first reaction was, of course, silence.

Five years after the revelation, I met my father. I had been raised by another man who died when I was 24, so I never got to listen to his side of the story, if there was any he could comment on—I was what we call ‘an illegitimate child.’ Meeting my biological father and accepting this idea of a ‘new dad’ was joyous at first. Then, hidden in that silence that haunts me, it lingered as a betrayal. A betrayal to the man who had always been my dad. The man who had lived and died as my father. I was suddenly robbing him of his right. I was allowing the silence that had long veiled a lie to further shroud his silence, his eternal silence. 

This new father looked a lot like me, or I should say, I looked a lot like him. We had many things in common: our eyes, some gestures, even the way we walked. Lots of things, but our skin. His skin was dark, much darker than mine. He would explain to me this had something to do with our Algerian ancestry, which was not directly evident in my body. That summer I read Le Premier Homme a second time.

*

I imagine silence, sometimes, as a tree. A tree whose branches grow in time toward a destination that escapes me. If I close my eyes, silence becomes those branches that move quickly—in a fast-forward fashion—with arachnid intensity. When I open them, it is already there, surrounding me and looking at me with its nonexistent eyes. It touches me, and then it stops being a tree to become the creature I cannot see. Its presence is monstrous but unassuming. Therein lies its strength and its fragility. The power of silence is it can be without really existing. It can speak volumes and yet remain unaltered, passive to the fluctuations of life. This power is also its doom, its condemnation. 

Some people are afraid of its monstrosity, of its elegant and subtle way of making itself present. They do everything in their power to banish it, to fill the void with noise, unable to endure the stillness. But silence, like death—its close friend—is unavoidable, and it comes and goes as it pleases. 

*

Silence sometimes surfaces populated by faraway noises. That is another kind, I guess. It is not whole and it doesn’t achieve a mischievous grin. It is the one that allows our mind to roam with certain safety and to believe that everything in the world is immediate, palpable, and ever-present; that is, it makes us feel we are not alone. We will never be alone. Silence has garnered for us this tiny spot of disguised solitude. We hear the thud of a hammer against metal, a baby crying somewhere for a little while, an alarm going off and then suddenly disappearing, someone shouting something to someone else, all part of a consistent sound that carries a sense of survival and perpetuity. Life goes on around us, not in its most expansive way, but still, somewhere, periodical, flowing like the blood in our veins. We are never afraid of this type of silence. This is the one we tolerate the most. The one that reminds us that we can still live and feel alone. All good. Nothing happens. 

There are gaps, of course, moments in that continuum in which silence creeps in with an unexpected, almost debonair quality. It signals something we are not ready to pay attention to. It whispers (but how could it?) that there it is, waiting. It reminds us that it is and will always be the architect of form. The master of beginning and endings. The only one who knows something we don’t. 

But we brush it all aside and keep on going, hiding under the illusion of eternity, thinking that if there is something of which we should be aware, it’ll come to us in a shimmery pose, and, of course, with a colorful conversation.

*

All I have said so far (and will go on saying) only concerns a very personal silence. The one that travels in one’s mind and establishes a body in space. At times, what that kind of silence does is refract its possibilities. It alters the multiplicity of thought and reconfigures a state of the world according to its own rules, only acquiescing to its own judgment. And so, everything is consumed by it. Everything falls into its metaphysical mirage. There is no escaping the sinister glow of the dust that settles quietly on the windowsill or the slow descent of velvety specks beneath a beam of light.

These are the most terrifying moments of silence. This is when I feel my existence stretch to its fullest. As if something were beckoning me over, and all I could do was observe—my heart full of deep awareness. This is the only time I am not that comfortable with it. The only moment in our long relationship in which my body feels uneasy, pushed into a sense of levity, suddenly lifted into a state of weightlessness that drains the reality from everything around me.  

This is the darkest kind of silence. There is a psychological displacement within a physical space. The soul of the unsaid is so strong it becomes capable of dislocating my sense of being in this greater picture where silence is. We are one by coercion, if you like. The pull is relentless and absolute. The mind vanishes or seems to vanish, and the materiality of form becomes a supple indication of existence. Only when interrupted by a sudden noise or by words does this type of silence disappear into a temporal exile.

*

And so, at some point then, words do come along. 

I have been erecting a kingdom of silence for a long time. In it, everything that is born wants to find a home of solitude and peace. The natural inclination of my words is to settle down, to understand the anatomy of their ‘self’ as an anatomy of repose. All my writing endeavors seem destined for concealment as if they might find refuge within it. Yet, in truth, they often ignite the opposite—a restless urge to know, to push beyond what is written, and to tear away the veil that obscures their innermost substance. 

Silence then amplifies, carving channels through which a want, too cryptic to decipher, makes its way and expands this land of everlasting quietude. It becomes a prerequisite to my thoughts. There is no multiverse of silence. There can only exist one dimension in which silence acts as the purveyor of a promise, a demiurge that reigns over a territory.  

Words flow effortlessly, unrestrained, and free. They find their momentum, and as they locate their contrapuntal intensity, their mere appearance institutes a sense of eternity. Although there is no time to really think about it, there is this motion in their might that indicates that they ‘are here to stay’ (even if that is not possible). And when silence comes along again, out of the blue, I actually get it. It is never a matter of opposition but of harmony, of consonance. Of yin and yang, of course. 

Still, words seem to fight, not comfortable enough to understand the minute vibrations of biological (ontological?) solidarity. They have a way of their own, and in their mindless effort to find peace, they carve out a barren landscape for their own success. In this back-and-forth, compensation comes, at least, in the possibility of nurturing time. That is, in the magical, unique experience of delving into the depth of an existential game: my body alone in a room, settled in an exploration of solitude and self. A useless endeavor, perhaps. 

We could say words are still scintillating in the incorruptible silence that fills every crack and knows every corner. Silence somehow completes them, and there it is, the harmony I was referring to. Except that it sometimes feels anticlimactic. Why does it seem as if silence says it all? Why is it that a room full of unspoken reality is a room that could rob the integrity of words? Is this just a superficial account of the being of silence? Is it just an analysis of the surface of what actually goes on in the real depth of any silence, always built to actually expand words and make them live in their pristine origin? A step away from their first indentation?

There is always an element of trouble. An element that, at the end of the day, will speak to us about a false reconciliation, a wrongful move. 

 

And, thus, silence has one final quality. Perhaps, for me, the scariest one: it makes me think that no matter what I say, no matter how many words I utter, how many words strive to escape the grasp of oblivion, doing their most to reach out and create bridges, they still become—as soon as they are read/heard—trapped in a terrible cycle of solitude. Forever forgotten, forever silent.


Marina Burana

11.7.25

Five Poems by Glenn Bach

from Atlas


the triumph of the idea

that breaks the water



something useful: do the houses

touch for cities building up



Mulholland and disintegration

in greater detail / in our collective memory

of Los Angeles who occupies

a central place



do the trees provide the shade

we need



do the garden shadow homes become



do the mockingbird / is singing



severe

like a stone in the sea as the story

takes a turn: disaster looms large

disaster be free

 

 

 

+++++

 

 

 

and is quiet at night.



The first to be discovered

Mandalay: within the anticline

the sand units pinch out



but you don’t)

can walk past them along the

beautiful empty beach is a short walk

the terrain save for berms

and dunes at shoreline



freezes occur

rarely (signs say you need



have a view of the ocean

because of the dunes

several littered items and evidence

of last night’s parties

(and less private) the talk

was on bats



and the sand so clean.

 

 

 

+++++

 

 

 

For light and by bark. After

native shade for the thorns for the

dappled road. Consider the soil



or any plant that suffers

from stress. With rays of lavender

and yellow centers. Disorder



to keep in mind. In bloom

growing white woodland

pictured on a soft-focus

background. Starved or side-



flowering. With staking a rich

backdrop to shorter plantings

in the dappled shade



by thick rhizomes. Like yarrow

and anise hyssop near



stems to the ground. Sets

of true leaves work the soil

down. New growth is the signal



to keep the rooting stem. Deepens

to bronze. To seed. To tufts

by the wind dispersed.

 

 

 

+++++

 

 

 

Sand-borne down foothills of wool those great days of sheep.


The hungry maw of that canyon clay of the ground. Artesian

wells in this village cascade of drought or true spirit.


A striking appearance from the sea. In the shape of good

words and wishes for the greater part of the year.


Plenty to brag of surprises by our city’s land through miles

of beach fronting. Who swelters in the dry atmosphere

of the West. Post littoral striking in a city on its fringe.


Barring an exceptional year of a cruel frost. Edge of edges

in diagonal evidence of the community’s proof of railways.


Reach for the pure air when survivors mute of some intimacy.


Newly wed and the nearly dead upon these parcels of change.


The shore fringed with a haze the only break in the vista.

 

 

 

+++++

 

 

 

aground) of fill and paved

thick with piers

in a contested space like the coast

otherwise be swept out

or surfacing beneath



the incoming

ice rapidly melting. The surest sign

to mirror the outline

of the island (there are



so many dead trees). To invest

in shorelines

that embrace the tides




Glenn Bach

6.7.25

Four Poems by Mark Young

They signed both documents

 

I like to eat either chicken or beef.

Neither is grammatically correct.

Which of those fur coats is yours?

 

This homemade chicken liver pâté

is a real hit. The mink style is often

associated with Hollywood. Mari-

 

lyn Monroe adored wearing real fur

coats, but wearing vintage fur can

be controversial. Consider getting a

 

coat in nutria (Myocastor coypus Mo-

lina), made from the fur of an intro-

duced noxious pest that is destroying

 

thousands of acres of southern US

wetlands. Have you asked about

the fur coat scam out of the trunk of

 

a BMW? Pâté is a French terrine of

seasoned ground meat. Some see it

as a way to honor the animal. Others

 

find it unethical & fill their capsule

cosy wardrobe with the new faux fur

line. Just $734, but often out of stock.

 

 

 

The beguine begins

 

In his lonely room

he sings the songs

of Cole Porter to

the wall. 24/7 in the

modern tongue, in

the old, night & day.

 

 

 

Promenade

 

oblivious to          he walked

       absorbing

fragments      aspects of

 the street  sk  stars  y

             without pause

     without pausing to

look                       listen

           content

    to take everything in

                  osmotically

   potsherds        to be

    putbacktogetheragain

later        into            shapes

          they never were

 

 

 

A line from Samuel R. Delany

 

There is a  link between societal cri-

sis situations & belief in conspiracy

theories. Stresses in the earth's outer

layer push the sides of the fault line

 

together. Sensory overload is real.

It's a subject they kept on talking

about, considering it an area that

shouldn't be neglected. Believing in

 

something paranormal is no longer

rare, if it ever was. Radio silence can

trigger insecurity; there is no articu-

late resonance. The one escape, the

 

populist belief that only politicians

still use it to mock & dismiss allega-

tions against them & draw attention

away from the inner corners of their

 

eyes. We mere mortals use a brown eye-

liner that blends in much better with skin.

The politician, however, who feels loss

more profoundly than we experience an

 

equal gain, settles only for an ultra creamy,

dual-ended, & intense pigment gel-feel hybrid

eyeliner pencil that delivers 24hr smooth,

smudge-proof wear, in just one stroke.