Is silence golden?

Friday 11th September, 2020.

After an eight hour train journey yesterday I have needed to be quiet and to rest. As I am in a new place and in holiday mode it has not been difficult to relax. I am about to be alone. Tomorrow my two friends depart and I will be in my silent retreat with simply a dog, two chickens, a tortoise and fourteen sheep. A list of feeding times, medical needs, apposite foods as well as emergency telephone numbers has been written and explained. I will have no transport and the nearest building is a mile up a drive. The nearest shop in three to four miles away. I will be cut off unless I walk and the initial half mile is a steep hill.

In one sense today has been a preparation also. Emergency letters to be posted, a few provisions to be bought and then watching the packing of departing friends.

I am excited...to learn the art of being alone, being out of contact physically, of being dependent on a telephone alone if communication needed...I will need to face the hermit's dilemma. The dilemma is knowing silence and solitude is a gateway to new and numinous experiences yet also aware that cut off from human intercourse can lead to very demanding endurance and courage.

To celebrate the impending period a special meal of slow cooked lamb and of lime infused rice was prepared. A meal is a sacred action and this was a farewell last supper  of a sort. It was delicious, enriching and mutually enhancing.

Now to sacred sleep, ' to dream, perchance to have visions' to abuse a quotation.

Strangely I picked up a biography of Yeats and came across his poem 'The second coming'. Can the centre hold? Can I face myself and the silence and the aloneness without diversion?