Let the Silence Speak

Early January can be dreary – it starts to get dark almost as soon as we’re up, the wind howls past our windows and snow piles up outside, making travel hazardous.

Not that I can complain this winter. Once more, Montreal is being spared. Another storm raging in NY State (south of here) shifts eastwards to the Maritimes and leaves us alone.

Still, the holidays are behind us and spring nowhere in sight. It’s a quiet time, a period when creatures hibernate and even party goers lose their steam.

Needing a diversion, I head downtown. For months, a mammoth Christmas tree filled the center of an indoor mall at Place Montreal Trust. All the decorations have now been stripped away. I hoped that the giant fountain beneath the artificial tree would again be visible and it is.

Bone dry.

I can almost hear the rush of water as it gushes twenty feet into the air only to cascade down like the musical notes on a harp. Is that the echo of children's laughter as they splash coins into the fountain? Soon the water will flow once more and these ghostly sounds will be real.

Right now, a pool of silence fills my inner landscape. It’s the perfect time for me as a writer to let new characters populate my mind and fill it with their voices. In the stillness I can become inspired.

The world of imagination never sleeps; all I have to do is tune in.