Silence Is Deafening

It's amazing to me how loud silence can be.

Last night the power went out. It's not surprising that it did since there's well over a foot of heavy, wet snow coating the world right now. As the power went out, so did the noise. There was no refrigerator humming, no heat pump blowing out reassuring warm air...nothing. Just pure silence.

It's a bit disconcerting to be suddenly standing in total silence. We live in a world where we have a constant background of reassuring noise. Technology has settled so deeply into our lives that we call silence is really filled with a lot of background noise that we have become accustomed to tuning out.

Our situation last night was by no means dire, but it makes you think. Completely snowed in, more snow falling, no electricity, no heat...no sound... And oddly, it was the lack of noise that made me take notice. It gives you a taste of just how uncaring the world truly is. It also makes you think of how far we've come since the days of wooden sailing ships and colonies struggling to survive on a new and strange continent.

Before the darkness settled heavily over us last night I made quite a bit of headway into Blood & Steel. The story's really starting to flow and get its feet on the ground. I've topped the handwritten 30-page mark and I have no idea how that translates into being typed and I figure I'll need to start working on getting some of it typed up soon.

I heard from Devan briefly yesterday. My Sixth Sword coauthor is Mississippi training to be deployed to Iraq later this month. Surprisingly, he is finding some time to get a little authorial work done in the midst of all that and hopes to be able to continue that work while deployed.

As I write this, the snow is still falling and the power is flickering pretty frequently. I think that I'll get this posted and see what, if anything, needs to be done against the possibility of being powerless the rest of the day.