Peace and quiet

Fog blanketed the landscape as I walked across the lawn and down to the narrow dock. There is nothing as calming as watching the mist rise from a lake in the early morning. Sitting on the edge of the dock I dangled my feet in the water and listened to the quiet. There were no distractions. A beaver swimming through the water isn’t a distraction. A few loons in the distance defined the horizon line.

I was in Rhode Island visiting a friend who lives in a home on the lake and just a few minutes from the ocean. On Sunday, we walked on the beach watching and listening to the waves as they pounded onto the sand. Cars with license plates from Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts filled the parking lot as the weather, impacted by the tail end of Hurricane Irma and in anticipation of Hurricane Jose, had resulted in ideal surfing waves. There they were, the surfers, lined up in a row like penguins bobbing in the water in their black wetsuits waiting for the perfect wave. We were the audience watching as we might watch a dance performance.

The calming sound of the waves rolling onto the beach, the silence sitting next to a lake fills one with a feeling of peace. It is difficult to imagine, in this setting, the noise that violence can cause. I began to think about the recent racial incident in Claremont, New Hampshire and wondered why? Why? Why is the noise of hatred, conflict and violence so strong? Our lives are filled enough noise as it is. The noise of construction. The noise of traffic.

Jesmyn Ward’s new book, Sing, Unburied, Sing (Scribner, New York, 2017) written in the first-person narrative with local dialect, paints a vivid landscape that helps us understand what it means to grow up black in Mississippi. We can feel the pain, the sadness and the pure love as the story unfolds. “If the world were a right place, a place for living, a place for men like Michael didn’t end up in jail.” … “But the world isn’t that place.” Looking at the world through Ms. Ward’s lens helps us to understand the world from a different perspective. This understanding could help us stop the violence toward another race, another religion, another political party, another individual.

New York City is undergoing a major building boom now, in addition to everything else, and the noise is unrelenting. Helicopters hovering in search of drug dealers, drilling to replace the infrastructure, streets, subways and rails. Apartment renovations that result in hammering, drilling and banging for days. Buildings are taller and taller. Glass cubicles in the sky that will do nothing to end the problem of homelessness, low income or middle class housing.

Today, Thursday, 21 September, is the International Day of Peace, inaugurated in 1981 by a United Nations resolution. Peace Day is meant to encourage everyone to come together around the globe. The date was selected to coincide with the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York when all the world leaders gather in a spirit of unity.

We can’t spend our days sitting on a dock listening to the silence. There are, however, many ways we can work together to lower the volume in our lives. How often we hear people say: “All I want is some peace and quiet.”