Times To Keep Silent

“For the next 36 hours, until my son arrives with the restored ear trumpet, we will be Trappists; two anchorites without a devotional vocation, one locked in silence yet able to speak, the other in a noisy world whose few words join the blustery wind and scoot out to sea.”—Diana Farr Louis

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

By Diana Farr Louis

ANDROS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—(8/1/2016)—The cicadas are clattering, a shutter is banging, the cat who pretends we are hers is meowing, yet we are having a quiet lunch. The worst has happened—well, maybe not the worst, there’s always something more dire—my husband’s second hearing aid has self-destructed without warning. It’s brand-new and we are a two-hour boat ride and an hour’s drive away from the fixer. His other apparatus, which went kaput on Monday, is already there being repaired.

We look at each other over our gazpacho, smile, and concentrate on the next spoonful. By evening, he will be able to catch about 50 percent of my words but, for now, comprehension remains nil. He actually still talks, of course; the cat has not got his tongue. But I, whether I answer or not, cannot be heard.

For the next 36 hours, until my son arrives with the restored ear trumpet, we will be Trappists; two anchorites without a devotional vocation, one locked in silence yet able to speak, the other in a noisy world whose few words join the blustery wind and scoot out to sea.

And so I begin to think about language. We always talk about the speakers, but what about the listeners? Both need to be present for communication to take place. “H” is reading a book, Anthony Beevor’s The Ardennes, about Hitler’s mad attempt to push back the Americans during Christmas of 1944. Beevor describes the Nazis’ desperate brutality, the merciless killing of civilians, the throwing into battle of untrained 16-year-olds, but also the shocking behavior of some of the “good guys.” I want to reply, add something to the story, find out more details, but I’m reduced to looking dismayed or aghast.

I remember a sign spray-painted onto the façade of the Athens Odeon years ago, presumably by a music student: “The ears have walls.” Instead of the world being full of eavesdroppers, spies, busybodies, it suggested a place where no one listens, really listens, to what’s being said, by a friend, by a teacher, by a politician.

We might hear, but we do not digest or process the messages and we do not question. Especially when a politician—whether Boris, the Donald, or our own Alexis Tsipras—appeals to a segment of the population’s fears and lures them with lies into voting against their own interests, the ears of applauding crowds plugged against reason.

Last summer, we had to go back to Athens and vote in our own, ambiguously phrased, referendum, when we were asked to choose between YES we want to stay in the European Union or NO we do not want to stay. During a short visit to downtown Athens, I had a revealing conversation with a young cashier in a small bakery. Obviously intelligent and articulate, she said, “I can’t believe my customers. Almost all of them are swallowing whatever Tsipras says, when it’s obvious that he’s spouting promises that cannot be kept. How can so many people be so naïve and gullible?”

By the end of our chat, she revealed that she herself was from Albania and therefore well equipped to spot the flaws in a politician’s polished discourse. She’d had practice listening with her mind.

Back in our Trappist hermitage, I’ve been thinking of other times when language escaped me: in Cairo, surrounded by signs in Arabic and able only to distinguish the graceful curves and swoops of Coca-Cola ads; in Madrid, when enough of my high school Spanish had remained to pose a question but not enough to understand the jackhammer response; in Istanbul last October, when a gypsy beggar squatting in a corner off Istikklal gestured to me and then pointed excitedly behind me to where a dear Turkish friend from out of town was trying to get my attention: “Diana,” she said!

You will say there are always means of communicating, with a smile, a caress, a rose or a jab, a scowl, a finger. But there are also times when you admit defeat and say, “Words fail me”; when you have to express grief or sympathy, and conclude, “There are no words to convey . . . ”

And then I think of what must be the most beautiful language of all, sign, especially as described by Oliver Sacks in his book Seeing Voices. There he gives a history of Alexander Graham Bell and his work with the deaf and mute, the wonderful tongue of the hands that gives those who cannot hear or speak a voice, enabling them to express themselves and listen. He recalls a village on Martha’s Vineyard, where a quarter of the residents were deaf from birth. Thanks to sign, some of them had married hearing people but, even when the spouses with hearing were on their own, they still used sign to communicate. Apparently, sign is a hundred times more eloquent than any spoken language and, once learned, may be easily adapted to another language, whether Japanese or Finnish, because the concepts are universal.

The next day, “H” and I were driving down to the port in companionable but enforced silence to do some shopping, the only sound the purr of the car’s a/c,  when we had to slow behind a couple on a motorbike. The girl’s long, dark hair was being flipped this way and than by the wind and I thought what tangles she’d have when she tried to brush it. Her guy, the pilot of the put-put, was in the throes of telling a story that couldn’t wait the three minutes till they’d sit down for a frappé in a waterfront café. We watched, dumbfounded, as his left hand gesticulated wildly, up and down, back and forth, while he guided the bike with his right. I wondered whether she heard a word and might not have been a wee bit alarmed by the agitated windmill her driver had become.

Whatever. He made us laugh, his comic behavior bringing us together in shared amusement.

As I’ve been assembling these ruminations, more thoughts have come to me: lessons from friends who can communicate with animals and plants, one who told me about a scientist who “talks” with molds in a cheese factory in Holland, others who have mentors, spiritual healers, send them messages from beyond the grave or across the ocean without electronic means; the wonderful book, Kinship with All Life, by J. Allen Boone, which describes meaningful encounters and conversations with creatures ranging from Strong Heart the German shepherd film star, to Freddy the housefly, or Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of the Octopus, and Stephen Harrod Buhner’s The Lost Language of Plants.

Rather than listening to demagogues or even loved ones, had we not better spend a little time and effort listening to the other beings sharing this planet? We might have to be silent more often and for longer, but we could learn a lot and our lives might just depend on it.

Recipe

I considered giving you a recipe for Tongue, either beef or lamb, but since I neither eat nor cook it, that was a non-starter. Or for sole, which is glossa, or tongue, in Greek. Instead, I offer this summer’s staple, Pasta al Limone, since we have an embarrassment of lemons, so many on Spetses they were collecting in rotting mounds under our five trees, and here on Andros, where our single tree thoughtfully produces ripe lemons while nurturing green fruit of every size.

This is a remarkably easy, utterly delicious sauce that involves no cooking, apart from the pasta itself. The amounts here are for two diners, but don’t fret about them and double or triple the recipe for more servings.

Pasta al Limone

Ingredients

The pasta of your choice, fine spaghetti (no. 10) or linguine would be mine, boiled in salted water till al dente (I find 100 g per person works well).

The Sauce

Lemon zest, 1 heaping tablespoon from organic, un-waxed lemons

Lemon juice, 2 tablespoons or more

Basil, a good handful of leaves, tough “backbones” removed, chopped or

Parsley if you have no basil

Garlic, four big cloves or more, finely chopped

Chili pepper flakes, 1 teaspoon or as desired

Extra-virgin olive oil, ¼ cup or more

Grated Parmesan or other hard cheese, for sprinkling

Mix together the sauce ingredients, pour the sauce over the hot pasta, and serve. We found the pasta even tastier with an extra splash of olive oil on our own plates.

To order copies of Diana’s Farr Louis’ newest book, A Taste of Greece: Recipes, Cuisine & Culture, from Amazon, click on the book cover below.