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Sometimes, I leap before I look.
Sometimes, searching for silence, I get het up instead about things I dislike: hypocrisy. Ignorance. Intolerance.
Sometimes, I get strident.
That's not what I'm trying to do with this blog. Or at least, not most of the time. (I reserve the right to fly off the handle occasionally. As when Obama opens up the continental shelf to oil drilling instead of doing something useful, like boosting the mpg requirements for cars way up--ah, stop!)
Instead of getting het up again, this time I have led you straight to one of the chief sources of quiet in my house.
The cat.
He's a Maine coon called Pippin. All I have to do is look at his face (see image) to get a sense of the deep stillness of which all felines seem to know the secret.
OK, cats are not as smart as chimps. They can't even do the tricks dogs can.
But in Pip's ability to find stillness, and an apparent peace, on any convenient couch or patch of sunlight, he wreaks a certain magic on every member of my often turbulent household.
Sometimes, just watching the cat makes me understand more about how to find silence, and a resultant balance, than all the research into sound and fury that I have ever done.
Check him out.
