Solitude.

The word is like susurant wind in the pines. It's the sound I've heard alone in the mountains, in a shady, fragrant grove on a hot day. It's the sound of small, slow Gulf of Mexico waves.

In my last blog, I wrote of having gone off by myself into the Ozark mountains, and the yearning to go off by myself hasn't left me. As much as I need friends, and family and society in general, these days I would give my eyeteeth for silence. (Aaah, there it is again: SILENCE. Another balm of a word on a day like heat rash.)

How hard it is sometimes to quiet my mind, or even to hear my own voice in my mind. All day, every day my brain gets filled with voices. I'm suffering from a kind of spoken-word poisoning.

And, so here's my promise to myself: I will, one day soon before the sun gets too hot, drive away alone. I will find a quiet place. I will walk from the car and not take a book, and not take a cell phone, and not take the dog. And I will sit alone. Quietly. And when I get back in the car, I will not turn on the radio, but if the antidote is effective, I will quietly hum.