Reading Pico Iyer, Appreciating Silence

Since my last post, in which I listed all the books I’ve read since the New Year plus two I had not yet finished, I became distracted by a new book that pulled me away from everything else I was reading: Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer.

I read a review of the book somewhere (New York Times?) and was intrigued with the story of Iyer’s visits to the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur. He began visiting the hermitage in 1990 after the Santa Barbara house he lived in with his mother burned down. Quiet, contemplative spaces have always attracted me, as has the idea of what would happen if I had to start all over collecting what makes a home. Big Sur’s wild beauty, its space to disconnect from a nonstop-busy world, is a place I love. I immediately ordered the book from my favorite independent bookstore in St. Paul. 

It turned out to be exactly the book I needed to read right now. From the first pages of Aflame, where Iyer stands outside near the hermitage talking with two of the monks about how you pay for your blessings (as in the beauty of fire is stunning, but burns everything in its path), I knew I’d find many lessons in this book. I also found affirmation when Iyer told how a friend asked if he believed in God and he replied that it hardly matters. This hit me as how I’ve felt for a long time but never put into words. 

But it’s the silence that Iyer seeks out, and silence that soothes and restores him. Silence has always been part of my life in some way; being raised Catholic taught me that silence allowed prayer and contemplation from the time I was a baby. Even though I’ve left that tradition, I still appreciate the restorative power of silence. That early exposure helped form my inclinations to travel to Tassajara Mountain Zen Center, embrace yoga practice, enjoy solitude in my own garden, take long hikes in the woods. Silence can fill me up. It is the buffer between me and world when everything feels like too much; I’ve called upon quiet more and more in the past few years. Mick and I sought out silence last fall when we went to Big Sur ourselves – not to visit the hermitage, but to visit Deetjen’s and hike among the redwoods. We found ourselves without cell service, television, and internet; it was glorious.

Iyer’s book is full of wisdom that slows me down, makes me pause. Instead of gulping this book down the way I do novels, I wanted to let it unfurl in its own time. A little bit every day. It is, after all, a contemplative text. However, I read faster and faster the further I got into the book. The result is that I am reading it again. I can’t remember the last time I read a book for the second time immediately after finishing my first read-through. But I felt like I missed things in my excitement over how much this spoke to me. Passages I love are getting underlined in pencil this time around, and I appreciate the poetic lilt of Iyer’s writing. Research into some of Iyer’s essays in Time Magazine have filled in some of the background that led to the creation of Aflame. And I’m considering what I would truly miss if my own house went up in flames. 

The answer is almost nothing. There is artwork by my children in this house that I treasure. There are mementoes from travels with Mick, old photos of my parents. Everything else is replaceable. Not that I would replace everything. I see the value in living a pared-down life, one in which there is less stuff to cram into my living space. In that pared-down life is more room for the silence that lets in possibility. 

In fact, the urge to pare down what I have right now needs to be welcomed. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. I can be my own quiet flame.