Often I catch the Thistle & Shamrock on NPR coming home from closing the store Friday nights. Fun music, including recently a band with two wireharps, but I listen for the hostess. Thick accent and named Fiona; what more could you want?

I taught the river your name,
And it told the sea.
Now every fish knows of you,
And fossils in sandstone will speak
So the world will not forget.

You gave the wind your fragrance,
And it told me.
Now every cell listens for you,
And twitches of nerves will move
So the distance will not separate.

The stars sought out your eyes,
And they showed me.
Now every night feels like you,
And worlds afar will turn
So they may watch
Our meeting.

Though the instrument has some seven notes, four is all I need. One is one; two is one and another. Three is one and one superior, one inferior; but four allow a skein of permutations.

A simple pipe flared at one end can sing the rise and fall of kings. Four chapters; twice two coronations; sunset, night, morning, and zenith. The notes rise, fall, repeat, or are silent. In such simplicity hide all the shades of charge and retreat, flourish and taps.

Four seasons; four compass points; soul, spouse, and parents. Four notes cover the range of life: a yellow peal of joy, a red shout of anger, a green for all Neptune's moods, and finally a blue note. All are sounding, all the time, whatever we may hear at any moment. Be wary of the others or take comfort in their near company, but always know that they are there.

I travelled far and woke in Spring
In a stark and glorious land under dry sun
The very rock was a fanfare of
    staccato highs and lows
But I knew the season and missed the bloom,
    the bloom, the bloom
Of azaleas.

Three months of the year there's no better place--
Cool mountains, hot springs, teeming seas
The people emerge from
    caves of wood and glass
But hiking, biking, and skiing miss the lake,
    the lake, the lake
Where I swam.

For many the reward in the winter of life
Is shore and sun and palms
The smiles never fade from
    clear water and horizon
The smell is savory but is not the leaves,
    the leaves, the leaves
Of Georgia.

South of the Cumberland
There's water in the air and wind in the trees
Every year I stand on the riverbank
And whisper names I love.

This must be how madness begins.

There are voices in my headphones. It started with an amplifier that was picking up a radio signal intermittently, which makes musicians trying to record emit strange sounds while stomping their feet. Then, going through the recordings, you start to imagine that the radio was still coming through, just more quietly. Listening to music playing, I hear sounds in the house, but not clearly through the headphones. Voices? Footsteps? Appliances. Cats.

Meanwhile, the daylight hours are filled with whoops and shrieks from the elementary school playground. All are clearly audible through the plate windows facing my backyard. In the late afternoon it's the kids in the neighbourhood, through the plate windows facing the front yard, as they ride their motorized vehicles whose sole purpose is to make noise.

All those hours of listening for the minute differences in the attack or sustain of a note, the intonation, the noise between verses, whether the hiss reduction made a difference, EQ and reverb--all those hours train the ear to find patterns, to make sense of noise. Unfortunately, they don't know the difference between sound system and real world. The important thing is that *I* still do.

The cats have a lot to say, but all I get out of it is "We're unhappy about something", or occasionally "Purr, that's good." They also rub against me or get on top of me and stare, whatever that means.

I pay more attention to the house, because it has more capacity to affect me. The appliances make their noises, and I'm okay with them. There are the occasional creaks and pops that I dismiss as being some board somewhere adjusting to the temperature or some sensor noting a point. And then there's the oddest drip, about once every five minutes, landing in some sort of pool. From investigating, I think it's actually inside a pipe, which is fine. At any rate there's no puddle anywhere I can explore inside or out.

Instruments, as I think I've commented before, can speak with help. I finally got somewhere on the music for some lyrics. Being tired of the songs I've been playing, I was fooling around on the guitar and stumbled into the two chords I'd been seeking for the chorus. I had the sound in mind but was having difficulty identifying it. (Dmaj7 -> em/A, if you're intersted, in a high treble voicing) That and a newish strum pattern got me started on the chorus and verse, and finally I've got something. It isn't quite what I expected, and it still needs a bridge. Augmented chords, I think, but I'll let that percolate for a while.

The voice I like most is quiet and emptiness--not emptiness in terms of feeling personal unfulfillment, but a room to fill, a canvas to paint, music playing on an empty dance floor. It lets the little sprites inside get out and separate, stretch their legs, and eventually start talking. That's when it ceases to be static in the background and becomes a meaningful conversation. One writer called it "felicitous space."

This happens fairly often, because I cultivate the experience. And then I tell other people the good parts. In short, inspiration.

Rajneesh said: Consciousness is like a lake. With waves, it becomes the mind. Without waves, it becomes the soul.

There is fascination in hydrodynamics, beyond the joyful dances and the small patterns; it is beautiful in its dichotomy, unimaginably complex and unbelievably simple. My mind has been a-babbling. There are a hundred things I am ready to say, and I have put a hundred more into words against some future need.

But in the moment I see you, I become standing water, waiting for you to toss a pebble. I have nothing to say and everything to be. It is your time now to speak.

The princess lived in a land of snow
Clouds low'red o'er the tower
Her dress swept the hallway
From her chamber to the library
She debated with courtesans
Maidens gathered in stone walls
Where threnody reverberates
The wind picks up the tune
Blows it through the trees
Whose leaves turn, fall, crumble--
Like a ghost across the hungry beasts
Whose coats turn white and hide--
Into the creaking houses of the village
Where the craftsman stops
Listens and shakes his head
But the tune is caught in his hair
It whispers to him as he sleeps
And plays and works
Snatches sneak into his fingers
The song echoes in his art
A note here, a word there
Until the whole may be
Reconstructed from his oeuvre
He reminisces on his mysterious muse
While the dowager princess still sings
With birds in the tower

The Worf hypothesis: Not only does the situation inform the language a people speaks, the language influences the culture.

Although we first learn letters, we soon begin to read entire words in a single apprehension, and later entire phrases. Words are the building blocks of our complex thoughts.

But there are words outside of written or spoken languages, separate from cognemes; and I'm not aware of a name for the something that gets lost in translation from a language that can express an idea to one that can't.

I do know words in unspoken languages. There is superlingual elegance in programming languages; and the poetry of ASL is wholly alien to tongue-and-ear thinkers. The kinesthesis of the body has many words, as does the weather of biochemistry. Every musical instrument has its own vocabulary. A paintbrush has thousands of thousands of words.

Can we learn to borrow words from one world to another, like the instruments in an orchestra take different approaches to the same rhythmic figure? Somewhere, between the unspoken words, are threads of meaning. Is the silence between notes the music of Creation?

Your voice made an impression early on, even before your beauty. But before that it was your smile, gentle, distant, and sadness was the impurity that gave the crystal its beauty. Yet still that was not first. First it was your silence that you wore like a winter cloak in the cold human world.

You seem to like people and to believe in them. But we each have a part that is apart, the soul in solitude; it takes quite a spirit to venture away from society, and yet a greater one to return.

What little I know is fodder for fantasy, but it is little indeed. Yet I keep coming back to the sound of your voice, and the uncanny sense that tells me you are coming before I can see. Are you persuaded by duets, or shall I simply listen to your unaccompanied melody, heard in the silence, seen in the dark, felt in the distance...

One of the joys of camping and hiking is taking a moment, often at night, to close your eyes and listen. There are sounds--crickets, the breeze, running water--but what a citydweller hears is the quiet.

That is the art of listening, to hear sounds with one character and understanding the meaning behind them. It is also playing a symphony and learning to identify each individual part, thence to see them fit together. One cannot listen without hearing. Unfortunately, it can be hard to detect loss of this sense.

Cars are loud, buses louder; and trains, airplanes, rockets and things yet unknown are worse. It's so hard to hear somebody talking over the engines that it just isn't worth the effort. People's voices get louder, but when you lose the ability to listen, you disappear because you can't relate to the world. I've heard people say things that don't make sense, not because they are stupid, but because they could not hear clearly and had to guess at meanings.

On the other extreme some people--notably my mother--tend to just fade into murmured sussurations that resemble language in the way a shadow cast by moonlight through clouds resembles its source. She calls me on the phone, and when we hang up I only know a fraction of what she tried to communicate.

I must protect my hearing. I must train my ears to recognize the subtleties. I must guard against the forms of things unknown when I read between the lines.