Just Is.

We've started a new kasen over on the Renga Writing blog. For this new kasen, we chose the theme "All About Us is Noise" which came from a line in Elizabeth Alexander's poem which she read at President Obama's inauguration. Below are two stanzas:

"All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues."

AND

"We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider."

I originally suggested this theme/meme because I wanted to think about the kinds of noises that we hear or don't hear each day of our lives. I especially love the first line of the first stanza that I posted above:

All about us is noise. All about us is

Look at how she teases us, reminds us, chastises us with the line break. All about us is... empty white space. After the To Be verb, the rest of that line is followed by emptiness. Or, to see it another way, the rest of that line after the word "is" fills up with the quiet space that you need to absorb before moving onto the next line.

But feel how we so quickly, easily, naturally, fall into the next line. We, or mainly just I, too hastily push past the silence of that space, completely ignore the pause, in order to move onto the next line which is filled with "noise and bramble, thorn and din," and we don't even know it.

All about us is. Just is. Imagine that: Just is. To be.