The End-Game ("Silence")
At one time I had nearly five thousand books in my private library. Last year I began listing them in a virtual storefront I set up on eBay and sold more than half. The rest I've decided to donate to charity. I've also started getting rid of knick-knacks and collectibles gathered over the years (souvenirs, mementos, keepsakes. etc). I've already eliminated my vinyl LPs and CD collection. Most of my clothes and jewelry have been given away. I'd also like to start donating as much furniture and household items that TJ and I can live without (she isn't as ready to adopt minimalism as I am). My 'end-game' basically is to pare down to next to nothing over the next few years. In 2012 the house will be paid off and hopefully will have become mostly empty by then. Being empty it'll be easier to sell, even easier for TJ and me to move to a less artificial environment. We can go anywhere in the world, do anything we want, live the rest of our lives engulfed in unmediated reality, smack dab in the real world. What a long strange trip it's been, my struggling to plant my feet on the ground, pull my head out of the clouds, to rid myself of those trillion counterfeit words that plagued me for decades and which never had anything to do with where I've always already been all along. So, now, at last, silence is upon me. There's nothing more I need to say, want to say, can say, will say. The desire to read and write is gone, the need to remonstrate, to argue, to preach, all of it receded or retreated or simply melted away to who knows where. Now there is only quiescence. I stand in silence. I can hear wind in the trees, smell the rain on the pavement, feel the hot thrum of my still beating heart, and experience what my sweet little dog has known all along: reality is voiceless and wordless, and the meaning of life isn't located in language. And so with that I close the book, all books, every one of them. It might just behoove you to do the same. Craig Lee Duckett |
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