Every Thing Speaks

The conversational nature of reality is not to be taken for granted. Nor is this mere metaphor. A vexed spirit settled by the setting sun. The rain to wash away our worries for a spell. A mellowing mood offered by a meadow for the mind to meander and so find a measure of freedom from the known. When we rush through our days we seldom notice the gratuitous volume of our surroundings, our hearing muffled by the mayhem of the world and the unmanageable pace so many of us set for ourselves, as we gradually go deaf to the most delightful of discourses offered around every corner, barely hidden in the hills, on the horizon, and softly tucked away in a cerulean sky. Instead of looking up to the heavens much, as our ancestors did, we are more likely to be looking down at our devices, the machinations of our doing, doing, doing and, ironically, undoing. We are both more connected and disconnected than we have ever been before, although a hallowed moment is never very far, when we feel empty, or think we are alone. Conversation is commonly pigeonholed as an audible exchange of words between two people, for instance, but this could not be further from the truth. Everything speaks. There are innumerable interlocutors, of every sort, suffused in our surroundings, and not only of the lovely or natural variety. A prison gate might be nothing but hell on earth and punishment for one person, and, for another, a gateway to new beginnings, an invitation to a conversation with the fragmented parts of one’s battered sense of belonging, and broken sense of being, a dialogue of discovery that might never begin save for a sentenced opportunity to finally slow down and listen behind barred doors. In less severe circumstances, too, beyond gates, and for any of us, there is speech pouring forth, a dialogue to be had, and insight to be gleaned even within something as little as a leaf, speaking to us in the most subtle of languages, and unraveled with surprising ease amidst a rediscovered relationship with the beating heart of everything.