I discovered an interesting thing about myself while I was away. Maybe I knew it along.
Have you ever worked in an old fashioned darkroom. With film, good old fashioned honest film. You expose your image with a light projector through the negative and onto the photo paper, then in your dark room you slide that blank paper into the developer, it is like water in a tray and gently you rock the developer tray up and down, up and down with the paper moving gently in the fluid until the image, like slow magic, begins to appear on the paper, it is distant and faded at first but soon it becomes clear and sharp. Soon you see exactly what you have and all the things you did not mean to have. Largely Un-edited. Complete.
Then you wash it through a tray full of water, working your way down your counter and then into another tray that holds the fixer. The fixer solution seals the image to the paper. Then you wash your finished photograph in water again, and dry it. Then you look at it and think about it.
Sometimes my thoughts are like this. I have to rock them for a while in the solution – letting the image slowly form then move these thoughts through all the steps until they are crystal clear and allowed out into the light to dry. And be considered.
I learnt that I am no longer afraid of being alone. In fact after days of normal family life this last week, I found myself floundering sightly. Unable to find the words. Resorting to the kitchen for my expression.
I almost always say the wrong thing. After years and years of saying the first thing that came into my head, I find myself choosing my words more carefully now that I live in a foreign country. Then slowly my words sigh back into the silence. I listen more. Wait. Nod. Watch.
I find I have lost the ability to join conversations. After the long hours of silence that accompanies my days I find that I need to search for a word. They will trip off my fingers but not my tongue.
I have become solitary. Or at least my ability to be solitary is clear now. It is something I am good at.
I find it easier to talk to animals. Though I seldom use actual language. Or even English for that matter.
I think many old fashioned farmers are like this. We move our cows, calling them through the gates, we walk about the sheep feeling their cool noses and watching them walk, we watch the pigs leaning on the fences saying good piggy, good fat piggy.
Except when the biggest fat piggie breaks into the chook-house. You forgot to put the barrier thingy back up, miss c. Hmm. Did you eat all the eggs Sheila? I ask. Never, says Sheila. Big, fat, liar piggie.
See you can’t talk to people like that – especially with an accent. But I can do it all day long with the animals because they don’t care what my words are they only listen to my tone. When they hear the laughter tone in the words – that is what they feel – laughter.
There is an etiquette for talking to people. I missed that page.I was absent that day. My gaze is just a little too direct. My answers just a little too considered. My articulation a little too precise as I feel about with my tongue for the word that would make sense. My silences just a little too telling. I take what people say at face value. My sense of smell is so precise that I have trouble controlling the flare of my nostrils and that little lift of my chin as I follow a scent. My hands are too busy. There is no delete button for my mouth. So I am careful with it.
This is why I am better out here on the prairies. This is why farmers like us have hair that sticks up all over, nothing but chapstick on our lips, we tie up our pants with baling twine, and wear odd socks and slop about in boots.. not fancy cowboy boots but mucky gumboots. Farm life is judgement free. Cows don’t care.
I have discovered that I have come a long way from my High Street life. And I am realising that I may never be able to go back. One thing I know for sure.. I eat well. But quietly. Lucky Our John is the Silent One. Lucky for me that I have you. When we write we can make sure our words are what we mean.
Left to myself.. would I become a recluse?
Would you?
Have a lovely day. I will. I do.
your friend on the farmy,
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
78 responses to “The lack of chatter in the box”
sorry I couldn’t resist 🙂
Maybe you have found somewhere and something into which you fit and fit well. I know I need a lot of time to myself, quiet time, just me and my thoughts or lack of. It’s a comfortable place. It sounds like you are comfy there too. Mind you I don’t have a big fat cow or cheeky pig to chat to!
Lovely post. Lovely words. Well thought out. I often speak too soon; the art of listening is so important. I love company, but I so treasure my quiet moments alone in the garden. On an unrelated note, your sweet piggies are so cute and fat! 🙂
You brought back a memory, of my mother once saying of my Gran (her mother-in-law) that it was an awful thing, all she’d ever done was be Somebody’s Mother or Somebody’s Wife, and how could she EVER be happy without a Social Circle to be a part of…You know what? She was quite happy to be by herself. Know what else? I’m just like her…it just took a while to be comfortable with that fact.
Thanks for a great post, C.
Beautiful thoughtful words. Thank you.
I read recently that as a writer when editing you should cut out every second sentence. I think since I’ve moved on to the farm I speak this way. When talking to people from my old life I feel less inclined to fill empty spaces. Or is it just age? Do we have less a need to impress? Like you I probably talk more to my animals (and make them talk, too, as if I’m writing a script for a cartoon). Great post.
We are kindred spirits! I, too, have a problem with being around people. I always say the wrong thing and speak too gruffly. I call a spade a spade and it seems that is the reason that I am no longer close to my family. Thank God my husband understands me and he is reclusive as well. We get along very well – just us and the dog!
A great introspective piece. It’s about what satisfies your soul, not about what a world expects. We each need to find our niches of happiness, whether in a cubicle or in a corner of a barn. You have clearly found yours.
Oh Celi you hit so many nails on the head with this post! All though i love ‘words’ I am not very good at actually speaking them! If there is a wrong way of saying something I will find it. Once I was in a group talking about the ‘rich’ people and I called them ‘effluent’ instead of ‘Affluent’ and everyone couldn’t stop laughing for ages! That’s not saying that in the past I haven’t held my own in front of large audiences on stage’s and in board rooms. But I am so much happier now that I don’t have to speak if I don’t want to. Also like you I found it so hard when I first came to America, probably because I am blunt in my approach to things too.I couldn’t get over how many times the word ‘love’ was used an obviously not for just people that are close to us. The first time a fellow worker said “Love you Girlfriend” I almost died!! Had to have it explained to me that she was not hitting on me LOL. Then there is the British sense of humour – sigh got me into a lot of trouble many a time. No I am happier with the four legged friends that understand me so well!
A really lovely post. Enjoying solitude is a topic my sister and I visit often often over the phone, me on the East Coast, and her in the West. Its been a life-long conversation. At first as young mothers we were hardly able to go to the bathroom by ourselves, and all we really craved at the time, we said, was to have one precious second by ourselves. These calls often took place from a closet, or said bathroom, hiding from said children for just those few precious seconds…Now that the children are grown, we both have found our bliss in the arts. She paints, I do jewelry. I am still surrounded by people three quarters of the year on my farm (vegetable don’t talk, but it takes more people to grow them on the scale that we do, and customers we sell to have to be talked to as well. Come winter, ahhh, that is when I get to enjoy great swathes of time to myself and oh boy, do I treasure every Single moment. I too, find that I am learning to do more listening these days. I am very opinionated, and too often get myself into trouble when I speak too hastily.
So wonderfully articulated! I have many friends and enjoy being out and about, but am generally a solitary person. I’m an only child, have worked by myself from home for 26 years all day without a radio or music, sometimes never speaking to another human being until my husband gets home or passes through. And yet I never feel alone nor do I miss the workplace environment. In fact, it took me a while to get used to living with my husband and having another soul in the house with me, other than my cats which I have always had and we do chat. I think it does make me different from many people out there, and my approach towards communicating in business with people is more reserved because of it, but it’s me and the older I get the more comfortable I am with it all. 🙂
Dear Celie – what a lovely post as always. Although I talk a lot at work it’s easy to fall into the same banter so last weekend when we went out for dinner with an friends of (my) Irishman and their neighbours it was suddenly weird to have an adult conversation with near strangers who I didn’t quite have a test of political views etc. Suddenly I found myself talking about things that I know nothing about with a lawyer and a writer after a few glasses of wine – oh dear. Didn’t quite say affluent in my socialist rant, but it was pretty bad.
There’s a feeling here, and I’m no expert, like the feeling I get when I leave England after months and try to settle into Vancouver life and vice versa. Like I don’t belong, like people don’t speak my language and my mannerisms and expressions are foreign. The I realise I’m missing the people and the other country and have a hard time fitting in with the country I’m currently in. Maybe you’re feeling a little something of that mixed with missing family. Whether or not, big hugs Celi.
I learned long ago how to be alone and not be lonely! And I have learned that when you are alone, you are in good company! Like so many others commenting here, when I am with others, I tend to talk too much, And, for some strange reason, I tend to draw folks to me who, when trying to have a conversation with them … they never let me finish a sentence before they are talking over me … so I just clamp my mouth shut! I guess they just assume that what I have to say is never as important as what they have to say! After a while, it becomes so rude and aggravating that I just go silent! More often then not, silence is golden! Love & Hugs from Colorado!!
Now here’s a lovely introduction/opening for that book of yours that will be written.
Left to yourself, you don’t become a recluse – you become whole.
People giggle over the silent “hayseeds” but don’t realize farms reveal life, what’s important, and who you are – words aren’t really needed in that equation.
Love these lines (and the comparison at the first: thoughts and dark room)
” When they hear the laughter tone in the words – that is what they feel – laughter.”
“There is an etiquette for talking to people. I missed that page” (great paragraph)
So much good writing.
C. This is really good. Seriously. Really good.
I love this.