I surround myself with silence. The silence is within me, permeates my house, reaches beyond the surfaces of the outer walls and into the bordering woods. It is one silence, continuous from within me, outward in all directions: above, beneath, forward, rearward, sideward. In the silence I listen, I watch, I sense, I attend, I observe. I require this silence. I search it out. The finely drawn treble song of a white-throated sparrow is part of it. Invasions of it by the noise of engines are a torment to me. This is my solitude.
It was architect Mies van der Rohe who said, "God dwells in the details". Scientists study fractals to find order hidden within chaos, the details of our world. Fractals -- we are finding that they suggest an underlying order in things as diverse as stock market fluctuations, flooding ... and the order hidden within the chaos of a running stream. I catch hints and whispers of a beneficent universe... Our familiar, intimate environment is a universe in itself -- and one full of delightful revelations.