Thunder, earthquake, flames
but rather whisper within:
beat of my heart.
In
this Sargasso Sea of fantasy and fraud, how can I or anyone else hope to
swim unencumbered? How can I learn to see through, not with the eye?
Take off my own motley, wash away the makeup, raise the iron shutter,
put out the studio lights, silence the sound effects and put the camera
to sleep? Watch the sun rise on Sunset Boulevard, and set over Forest
Lawn?
Find furniture in the studio props, silence
in a discotheque, love in a strip tease? Read truth off an auto cue,
catch it on a screen, chase it on the wings of muzak? View it in living
color with the news, hear it in living sound along the motorways? Not in
the wind that rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks; not in
the earthquake that followed, nor in the fire that followed the
earthquake. In a still, small voice. Not in the screeching of tires,
either, or in the grinding of brakes; nor in the roar of jets or the
whistle of sirens, or the howl of trombones, or the rattle of drums, or
the chanting of demo voices. Again, that still, small voice - if one
could catch it.
--Malcolm Muggeridge, The Green Stick: A Chronicle of Wasted Years.
