One of the things he liked most about his hermitage, he said, was
the silence: "Silence is my music now." He could pick up the small
sounds of the wind in the leaves, the sounds of insects and animals.
Sometimes when the wind was strong, it blew the sound of the traffic on
the autoroute to him. He liked it. He liked to think of all the people
going on with their lives and to think of himself as in a sense staying
where he was for their sakes, "like a lighthouse keeper."
He said he had done a little writing, but he was wary of it. It becomes gargarisme--
throat-gargling. You begin to think you're important. You write things
up, inflate them. You moussify inside -- that is, I guess, foam up like
egg whites... The point of passing time in solitude is to strip yourself bare, to
discover what is essential and true. When you're stripped down to this
point, you see how little you amount to. But that little is all that God
is interested in. He doesn't give a damn about the rest.
Phyllis Rose
