Silence
silence can be a scary TV monster
a gaping hole where a friendly word is wanted
but mostly
silence is a relief
alone or a cosy companionship
where words are optional
where scattered ideas can come into alignment
where peace can be entered
like walking into a diamond
and all is light and order.
silence can be
the sound of traffic
as it passes or engulfs
silence can be the blast of my own earbuds
in the bus
and in all of this
the silence is me
I am the stillness
for my words are few.
Am I then nothing?
like the void of space
but bursting with life.
a gaping hole where a friendly word is wanted
but mostly
silence is a relief
alone or a cosy companionship
where words are optional
where scattered ideas can come into alignment
where peace can be entered
like walking into a diamond
and all is light and order.
silence can be
the sound of traffic
as it passes or engulfs
silence can be the blast of my own earbuds
in the bus
and in all of this
the silence is me
I am the stillness
for my words are few.
Am I then nothing?
like the void of space
but bursting with life.
Grace Bridges lives and writes from the beautiful island chain called New Zealand. She's published 2 novels and multiple short stories, and has just been contracted by Port Yonder Press for a 2-novel deal plus an omnibus edition of the two. She also owns a small press: Splashdown Books.
Fragments, Reflected: ii
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Here's the entire text of the four sections:
On weddings: I recently went to a beautiful beachside marriage ceremony and festivities. These days it seems more and more at every wedding I go to that my attention is on the parents of the bride and groom—two couples, of which all four generally give speeches. It makes me suddenly sad that should I ever marry, this will not be the case for me. I’m ambivalent about the marrying itself, but the fact that if it happens my Dad won’t be there to take his rightful place in the celebration—that leaves me a wreck every time. Even though it might never actually happen…I don’t care about that one way or another. But I do miss my Dad.
On creativity: It comes from a wonderful place somehow just outside myself, where I can go if my mind is at peace. Rather like the balcony on my room, really. I’m still at home, but if I take a moment and step outside, I’m in another world altogether. The wind sweetens my eager breaths, the trees wave just beyond my reach, the birds zip by sometimes so close I can feel their wingbeats—especially the giant green wood pigeons, or the calling gulls when a shoreward storm drives them in my direction. Or at night, city lights twinkling and the now-invisible sea still calling out in its blackness. That is what it is like to create, but I must get out of the box I live in. Quite literally.
On the selecting of words: Even if the daily drag seems more like hammering out whatever words come into my hands first of all, there is a process I go through since realising I have a propensity to unusual choices in this regard. When I have written a sentence, I read it over sometimes and think, No, that’s not me enough, it’s still too mundane. So I might take out a tiresome utterance and refashion my prosistry with more intriguing items. (See what I did there?) Yes, that’s overdone, but you see what I mean. One of those flicks of the literary here and there keeps me mindful of my own style and who I am as a writer.
On writing about worlds that don’t exist: Well, actually, who’s to say they don’t, in some parallel reality—of which there may be an infinite number? I like to see stories as the thin places where one reality spills over into another. Windows on another universe. Endless possibilities, each representing a tiny choice in one person’s life, vast intricacies of branches in a network of potential. Whichever path we choose, there are myriad others where in fact anything can happen—and does! So when I write, I think of these “unreal” places and happenings as real, in one of those plenteous other pathways of choosing. Somewhere in the multiverse, some fork in the road could have led to these events. And that’s the strength and the draw and the magnetism of fiction.
Here's the entire text of the four sections:
On weddings: I recently went to a beautiful beachside marriage ceremony and festivities. These days it seems more and more at every wedding I go to that my attention is on the parents of the bride and groom—two couples, of which all four generally give speeches. It makes me suddenly sad that should I ever marry, this will not be the case for me. I’m ambivalent about the marrying itself, but the fact that if it happens my Dad won’t be there to take his rightful place in the celebration—that leaves me a wreck every time. Even though it might never actually happen…I don’t care about that one way or another. But I do miss my Dad.
On creativity: It comes from a wonderful place somehow just outside myself, where I can go if my mind is at peace. Rather like the balcony on my room, really. I’m still at home, but if I take a moment and step outside, I’m in another world altogether. The wind sweetens my eager breaths, the trees wave just beyond my reach, the birds zip by sometimes so close I can feel their wingbeats—especially the giant green wood pigeons, or the calling gulls when a shoreward storm drives them in my direction. Or at night, city lights twinkling and the now-invisible sea still calling out in its blackness. That is what it is like to create, but I must get out of the box I live in. Quite literally.
On the selecting of words: Even if the daily drag seems more like hammering out whatever words come into my hands first of all, there is a process I go through since realising I have a propensity to unusual choices in this regard. When I have written a sentence, I read it over sometimes and think, No, that’s not me enough, it’s still too mundane. So I might take out a tiresome utterance and refashion my prosistry with more intriguing items. (See what I did there?) Yes, that’s overdone, but you see what I mean. One of those flicks of the literary here and there keeps me mindful of my own style and who I am as a writer.
On writing about worlds that don’t exist: Well, actually, who’s to say they don’t, in some parallel reality—of which there may be an infinite number? I like to see stories as the thin places where one reality spills over into another. Windows on another universe. Endless possibilities, each representing a tiny choice in one person’s life, vast intricacies of branches in a network of potential. Whichever path we choose, there are myriad others where in fact anything can happen—and does! So when I write, I think of these “unreal” places and happenings as real, in one of those plenteous other pathways of choosing. Somewhere in the multiverse, some fork in the road could have led to these events. And that’s the strength and the draw and the magnetism of fiction.
Fragments: Reflected
On living in a fantasy land: Of course they had to film Middle Earth in New Zealand. Sure, they could maybe have found similar landscapes elsewhere, but not concentrated within such a reasonably small area. America’s Rocky Mountains look a little like the Southern Alps of New Zealand, but they do not sit above a rolling green plain suitable for epic battle scenes and suchlike. I have stared at the Rockies and they do not feel the same as the Remarkables, even though it would be hard to tell them apart if they were framed in similar photographs.
On anti-linear storytelling: The initially baffling non-linear chronology of Witi Ihimaera’s seminal novel Tangi becomes a thing of brilliance when you have fully entered into it, in much the same way as a time-tangled episode of Doctor Who where things happen in a mixed-up order. With the Doctor it's all mind-blowingness and a good deal of hilarity; with our Witi it's a tale of a young man whose father has died. It’s not time travel. It’s not even science fiction. So its being out of chronological order is more a reflection of the confusion of grief, and well I know it.
On the fulfilment of chocolate: The richest and most decadent thing I have ever eaten is probably the French truffle served to me by a good friend in Kansas City. It is comparable to the sauce hidden inside a 1990’s-era Triple Chocolate Tip-Top Trumpet ice cream (a New Zealand icon—the Trumpet that is), and that is not something to be said lightly. Then again, I hit the jackpot yet once more with local dark chocolate ice cream in Utah. Do you understand the significance? I have spent much time searching for the ultimate chocolate experience, that explosion of richness with a hint of bitter to back it up. Since they don’t make that version of the Trumpet any more, I am glad to have found alternatives, even if they are in the wrong country.
On the paradox of writing: Too often I hate to compose words. I’m not in the mood, prose comes slowly or not at all, and then I read something beautiful someone else wrote and wonder why I bother in the first place. I’ve had times in my life when I’ve lived and loved writing, and I want to get there again. Trouble is, it seems the only way to enjoy it is to do it more, and that is hung up with all the unpleasantness of forcing myself to do it until it flows, until the stoppages are unblocked and unbridled creativity can have its way with me. That is when I love words the most. I have to make a habit of it; make it a daily thing, a part of myself as close as breathing. It’s an enormous paradox to feel like I hate writing and know that I have to push through and do it before I can come to love it again. So what do I do? I write about it…
On anti-linear storytelling: The initially baffling non-linear chronology of Witi Ihimaera’s seminal novel Tangi becomes a thing of brilliance when you have fully entered into it, in much the same way as a time-tangled episode of Doctor Who where things happen in a mixed-up order. With the Doctor it's all mind-blowingness and a good deal of hilarity; with our Witi it's a tale of a young man whose father has died. It’s not time travel. It’s not even science fiction. So its being out of chronological order is more a reflection of the confusion of grief, and well I know it.
On the fulfilment of chocolate: The richest and most decadent thing I have ever eaten is probably the French truffle served to me by a good friend in Kansas City. It is comparable to the sauce hidden inside a 1990’s-era Triple Chocolate Tip-Top Trumpet ice cream (a New Zealand icon—the Trumpet that is), and that is not something to be said lightly. Then again, I hit the jackpot yet once more with local dark chocolate ice cream in Utah. Do you understand the significance? I have spent much time searching for the ultimate chocolate experience, that explosion of richness with a hint of bitter to back it up. Since they don’t make that version of the Trumpet any more, I am glad to have found alternatives, even if they are in the wrong country.
On the paradox of writing: Too often I hate to compose words. I’m not in the mood, prose comes slowly or not at all, and then I read something beautiful someone else wrote and wonder why I bother in the first place. I’ve had times in my life when I’ve lived and loved writing, and I want to get there again. Trouble is, it seems the only way to enjoy it is to do it more, and that is hung up with all the unpleasantness of forcing myself to do it until it flows, until the stoppages are unblocked and unbridled creativity can have its way with me. That is when I love words the most. I have to make a habit of it; make it a daily thing, a part of myself as close as breathing. It’s an enormous paradox to feel like I hate writing and know that I have to push through and do it before I can come to love it again. So what do I do? I write about it…
