Irony Becomes Her

Golden winter

It was almost exactly a year ago that I mentioned here how my voice leaves me once a year. Yes, it's that time again. I am glad I came down with a cold this week, because later would have been far less convenient. Work is slow, Christmas is weeks away, and the beauty of the winter's first snow still draws my silent gaze through the window.

"Think before you speak," someone once said (following, presumably, quite a session of meditation). For a person from whose tongue words quite readily spill, this is an admonition not to be discarded. As with most endeavors, however, having no other choice is the only surefire way to give it one's best shot. This week I had to think before every word -- not just about the signification attached to it, but about how to contort my throat so as to extract enough vibrations to produce adequate English phonemes.

It was a mercy to my relatives, co-workers and bus drivers, I imagine. They got a "Best of Lynn" show rather than the general daytime fare.

It was a mercy to me, too. We all need reminders, seasons of difference in the sameness of being, to show us the amazing resilience of which all humans possess some measure. In my case, I needed to know that the world would go on, and not too badly, if I failed for whatever reason to say my piece.

It was in silence that I sat in the car and watched the first real snow of the season land on my windshield and take a few seconds to melt. In silence I discovered that snowflakes really do have six points and look different from one another. And I thought to myself, "What a wonderful world."

Maybe Louis Armstrong should have given those scratchy vocal cords a rest, too. But I'd say there are exceptions to every rule.

posted by Lynn @ 5:18 PM