Thursday, March 11, 2010

Thoughtful Thursday

Sometimes, my source of the quote I want to share with you on Thoughtful Thursdays is written word; it leaps out at me from the page.

Sometimes, it's the once-neglected lyric of a song - it will lazily meander through the air and tug at my ears.

And sometimes, it's a bumper sticker.

A seemingly trivial adornment - but in this case, as in many of my discoveries, it opens yet another door to yet another place that I had no idea existed, up until that very moment.

It is synchronicity at its finest.

I caught this at first, just as a glimpse in my peripheral vision. But its words were enough to trigger something quite visceral, and I had to have the Baron edge up towards the car in the next lane, like some cliched 70's TV cop show, as I practically hung halfways out the open passenger window.

"A little closer!"

"Hurry, the light's turned green - they're getting away!"

"I can almost see the author - HURRRRRR-YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY".

With a vroom and a sweet puff of gasoline, away they went, lost in the downtown traffic.

But I found it.

And at a time when I'm starting to finish what seems a lifetime of suppression, here it is.

In all its simplicity and its profundity:

"Your silence will not protect you."
Audre Lorde






[go here for more]

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

A stronger case I have never heard... for UnSilencing.

Chesapeake Bay Woman said...

Or, silence isn't golden and it will not embolden.

wv: ingular, which means of or relating to the present participle.

abb said...

How many of us do that! Me especially. I think for me it's avoiding possibly ugly situations. And my silence certainly doesn't protect me!

wv: shichips. I'll just sit here and eat my shichips while I try to teach myself to SPEAK UP!

formerly fun said...

Silence is too close to acquiescence for me, and acquiescence is how we get things like George W and the Holocaust.

Shelley said...

Countess Ti: UnSilencing; easy enough to say, but so much more difficult to articulate.

Countess CBW: Embolden - what a marvelous word!!

Countess TSA: I'm all about the avoidance, too. Not a fan of confrontation. But I'm learning that one can say their piece, and if a blowout ensues, it ensues. It's not always my fault.

Countess FF: Acquiesence - another great word. Not to do, but as a description.

Mental P Mama said...

Oh I love Audre Lord...she was gone way to soon.

 
Blog Designed by Rita of CoffeeShop