Reunion

     Once upon a time, there was a restaurant in New York City called Saloon. It was conveniently situated across from the Metropolitan Opera -- one could go there for a late supper after a show, if one was not especially particular, just hungry. Since I've never lived in New York, but have only gone there to play auditions for the Houston Grand Opera and the HGO Studio, or to see a show at the Met once in a blue moon, I've actually eaten at Saloon more often than at any other New York restaurant. I realize Saloon is long gone, but then I've only been to New York twice since I left HGO. So I'm really waxing nostalgic right now.

     Back in my pre-monastery dark ages, when I was still secular and pagan (!), I was watching an episode of Sex and the City, in which Carrie goes to Saloon after a long absence to see if a particular waiter with whom she had a tryst was still working there. As I watched, I realized she was sitting at the very table where I had a post-opera supper with a singer friend some years earlier. This friend is one whom I rarely see, and when I do, it's usually only for a few hours or a couple of days, so each reunion is very precious. Consequently, I remember almost every detail of every one. It wasn't difficult, therefore, to write a poem about that late supper at Saloon.

     REUNION

     Tonight, at least,
     I see you -- in a candle's light suffused
     by ruby glass, the undulating arc
     cocooning us while headlights pierce the streets.
     The noisy years between remembering
     and living flesh are silenced by the voice
     I hear this moment, and I catch its words
     like colored moths, to pin them in a frame
     when daylight comes.

     Tonight, at least,
     you know me -- not the ink of written word,
     the masquerader hiding in plain sight,
     but sound and breath that waited out the page
     for temporary incarnation.  Yet
     what I intend to say is left unsaid,
     gray fumes dispersing in the wavering light.
     I only say the words that can survive
     when daylight comes.


     INCONTRO

     Stasera, almeno,
     ti vedo - nella luce di una candela soffusa
     da un vetro rubino, l’arco ondeggiante
     a proteggerci mentre i fari trafiggono le strade.
     Gli anni rumorosi tra il ricordo
     e la carne vivente sono zittiti dalla voce
     che ora sento, e ne catturo le parole
     come falene colorate, per appuntarle in una cornice
     quando la luce del giorno viene.

     Stasera, almeno,
     mi conosci – non l’inchiostro d’una parola scritta,
     la maschera che si nasconde in piena vista,
     ma suono e fiato che attendevano fuori alla pagina
     per provvisoria incarnazione. Finora,
     ciò che ho inteso dire è lasciato non detto,
     fumi grigi che si disperdono nella luce vacillante.
     Solo pronuncio le parole che possono sopravvivere
     Quando la luce del giorno viene.

     Italian translation by Federica Galetto
     © Leticia Austria 2011
     [first published in Italian and English in La Stanza di Nightingale]

The Quest for Silence

     This world is inundated with noise. So much so, that we have grown uncomfortable with silence. But it is in silence that we can speak more clearly to God, and in silence that God's voice is most clearly heard.

     When I was a professional musician, my days were filled with sound—making it, hearing it, evaluating it, refining it. When silence did, in rare moments, emerge like a sudden sun ray through storm clouds, its "noise" was deafening and discomfiting, a waste of the aural sense, a mere blank space. A mockingbird's recital, the tiny tapping of rain, even the distant hum of traffic— anything was preferable to that most uneasy of companions—total silence. Quiet was easier; quiet was the soft white blanket I could lay over sound, muffling it, but never banishing it altogether.

     Total silence became important to me when I recovered my faith and needed to communicate with God in the depths of my soul. I didn't want the silence that is simply a void; I didn't want the mere emptying of distracting or negative thoughts which is its own end and which has become so popular in recent decades. I wanted to meet God in the silence and allow him to fill the void, to let him become my thought and my very conscience. This is the goal of Christian meditation, the goal of the Christian contemplative, whether in the cloister or in the world.

     I have been to New York City many times, but I especially remember the first time I went there after leaving the monastery. Granted, I had been back in San Antonio for some months; but San Antonio, and the kind of life I live here, is calm and quiet compared to Manhattan (then again, most cities are). Just before that particular visit to New York, I had spent ten days at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut, a period of peace in the company of people whose daily goal it is to maintain a state of prayerful recollection. Arriving in Manhattan literally straight from the abbey, my senses were assaulted by the cacophony of traffic, the scurrying of crowds, and, I have to say, general rudeness and lack of simple consideration. On nearly every face was that focused yet unseeing gaze of someone completely absorbed in his own teeming thoughts and the business of the day. Not one looked happy or at peace.

     Now, before you bombard me with objections and arguments, I realize that I'm making a huge generalization and that my impressions were strongly colored by my stay at the abbey; there are many things I love about New York, and I always look forward to my visits there; but I couldn't help being struck by the disheartening realization that God is becoming more and more drowned out by noise everywhere—the noise, both actual and metaphorical, of "living," and the noise inside our own heads. For nearly two and a half years in the silence of the cloister, God was at the center of my consciousness, my pulse, my speech. I mourn the loss of that silence, as I sit here typing this with the television on not three feet away (not my choice, my parents'). It has become a struggle, day to day, to find those precious pockets of silence in which to still my mind and body and listen to the deep stirrings of the Spirit. I strive for prayerful recollection while going about the business of my day, but I know how essential silent prayer and contemplation are, if only for fifteen minutes a day, to one's spiritual growth and health. The quest for silence will and should never end.