Silence and quietness

It has been a long time since I have written anything in this blog. put is down to busyness or distraction. I started one but the computer "froze" and I lost it, that was a couple of weeks ago. One of the guys who has come to live in community with us is really into words. He will sometimes ask what a word means, not a long complex word but a pretty everyday one. Always it makes me think, "yes what does it mean?"

Take the two words at the top for example. They mean the same thing don't they? Not when you start to think about it, they can be used to say the same thing but that is a different thing. Is not one of the beauties of language the fact that nuances exist. Silence is the absence of sound. To me it can carry the air of menace "what is there hiding from me waiting to burst in". Quietness is a state. A quiet man is not always silent but he is never loud.

Enough! What else has been going on? Well I have recognised more traits of the middle aged in my personality. When you regularly talk about the old days and berate the young it means that you are into the world of Victor Meldrew (who?),  in other words in danger of becoming a miserable old git. What stops me going going too far down that road is the fact that I have no desire to become old. Maturity has it's pluses, for example for some reason I can get up in the mornings now when I want to. (That laying in bed thing that young people do isn't laziness you know, they are actually incapable of fighting their way out from under the covers). When I became able to get out of bed in the morning, when I ceased to be the object of critical "vibes" from those who had been impatiently waiting for me, I thought it was a miracle; it certainly took the heat off me. The under 40's have this to look forward to (I was about 40 when it happened). It isn't all bad.