The end of the Midwinter conference was significant. Since Thursday night I have attempted to write about it. This is a post from my silence, from this moment of being alone. This is an articulate silence.
There is a limit, that I have placed on my self, a limit that I have long practiced: That which is inchoate in myself, things yet still in formation I do not speak except in the safest and most private of spaces. And even at times even then I keep silent.
Last Thursday I met with a spiritual director at Midwinter. It was a good session, a needed session. The spiritual director told me I was not being in the moment. Not necessarily the general moment of the now, but a particular moment in my own self, a moment I usually try to avoid at great cost. In this moment I have few words. It is a moment of isolation, of being alone (even if in a large group of people) of being myself before others and the Other. I avoid this moment for in it I am consumed by my own awareness of my otherness, of difference, of distance. I read Derrida in part because in his philosophy I find a companion in this distance.
This moment is being alone with others, at this moment being in this moment is to allow myself to be other, even to myself.
This was my experience of the end of the conference. An experience of being alone, standing out, being other. In this moment thoughts swirl and then are silenced. A sense of movement forward, and yet standing still. In this moment I wait. I Wait alone, in silence, and the rush of thoughts, and possibilities. I wait here alone for the other, wait to speak, wait to write, waiting for the other to speak that we may write between each other, and speak our difference together in the space between us and the Other. I Wait to take in what will rewrite our very thoughts, showing us that it is in the other that we are, and in our otherness that we speak truth.
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