Silent Pages, Loud Heart

A fellow Chronodex user just told me, “I did a three‑month meditation retreat that ended Tuesday, so I have many ideas to put into my new Chronodex!”

That stopped me.

Three months.

The Vipassana meditation camp I’ve always wanted to attend here in Hong Kong is only ten days, and even that is intense. Yet circumstances kept blocking me each time. I’m honestly sad about it. So for now, my retreat is my small home, my desk, my pages, my pauses.

POSCA on black paper on Traveler's Notebook

“Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.” —Carl Jung

Lately, this hits too close.

When emotions are stirred, even sitting still feels impossible. The body is restless, the breath shallow, the mind like a crowded station at rush hour. Messages, noise, memories, worries. An overthinker escapes one cage only to wake up in another. There were years I was good at meditation. Then last year, some hidden floodgate opened, and the water just kept coming.

Right now, what I long for is simple: complete silence. Not just around me, but inside. At the very least, a day where I don’t talk with my mouth, and my mind doesn’t comment on everything like a sportscaster.

Strangely, in the middle of all this, two friends appeared out of nowhere. Different countries, different lives, same timing. A few simple lines from them felt like shelter. The kind of people you understand even when nothing is said. That quiet recognition was a kind of prayer answered.

So here is the practice:

• Journal not only on screens, but with pen and paper.

• Let the hand move almost on its own, the way automatic writing once flowed for me.

• Accept that I’m rusty, and write anyway.

Writing like this, in a blog again, feels like returning to a room I loved and forgot. The walls are the same, the light is familiar. Maybe this is my small retreat for now. A Chronodex, a notebook, some silence, and the hope that on paper, the heart can unclench, slowly, one line at a time.