Down to words (67)

But things, little things, can cause a big silence.

Now what?

Things that can go wrong to cause silence.

A moment of silence: she dropped her purse.

More than a moment:

It spilled forth condoms at a baptism.

Down to words (66)

So when to talk and when not to? What to say and what not to.?

Some people can learn conventions but are at a loss as to contexts.

One can be at a loss as to both at one time.

One can know the way to ask and forget the time to ask; and vice versa.

One can be clueless.

Sometimes there is simply no prior common ground.

No telling if one is interrupting or not.

One can inflate the whole business into a transcendence as Emerson.

Beyond religion, it is as good a transcendence as any.

It becomes nicely secular without doctrine to limit it.

 

 

Down to words (65)

Following Emerson:

The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation.

There is a silence that does transcend the last word.

Should it have been the last?

 Or the first, when coming upon the fisherman.

What should I say? Will I disturb the fish?

De minimis: when it comes to river bank, bobber-fishing.

De maximis: when Emerson gets to writing.

But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be quenched. Behold these outrunning laws, which our imperfect apprehension can see tend this way and that, but not come full circle. Behold these infinite relations, so like, so unlike; many, yet one. I would study, I would know, I would admire forever. These works of thought have been the entertainments of the human spirit in all ages.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/divaddr.htm