“So did you like it or not? Should I or shouldn’t I?”

                  My interlocutor was smart, quick, glib, in a conversational hurry.

                  “I, uh, well,” I stumbled, “it depends.” 

                  She turned away impatiently, scornful of this alleged word guy who didn’t know his mind.

                  Never adept at small talk, I’m getting worse. Without something to say, I gasp like a decked fish. At the rating game – best, worst, favorite, top ten – I flounder. Like it or not, thumbs up or down, I can’t say, because IT DEPENDS!

                  The poet Philip Larkin grumped, while he enjoyed company he hated society. In company you can try to say what you mean; in society, only what you’ve time for. I’ve got plenty of opinions, but few I can encapsulate in a few-second soundbite. If I try to explain myself, I’m accused of giving a speech.

                  One of the funniest comedy routines ever was Bob and Ray’s “Slow Talkers of America.” If you don’t know it, click the link – I’ll wait. Just recalling it gets me chuckling. We share the exasperation of both the hurried interviewer, antsy for his soundbite, and the slow talker, who won’t be rushed. Here is headlong urban modernity up against a slow-drawling rural yesteryear, when folks had time to hear each other out.

                  I am a slow talker. I write to be read slowly. I favor writing that pleads to be reread. The miracle of Shakespeare is that what he wrote to be heard lickety-split – snooze and you lose – can be lingered over indefinitely. Fast or slow, instant or endless? I, uh, well – both!

                  Our epoch is too busy to think. Incessant actuality gushes out of our screens, swamping us. Non-stop emergencies command our attention. Countless entertainment options clamor for our time. In America, we twice elected a leader whose MO is to keep us on edge. We’re so occupied sorting our input we’ve no time to study it. The excess dazes, till we say to hell with it.

                  Stupefied by day, I can only be smart at night, in the we hour, or after a nap, with my door shut. I must think to know what I think. And what I think invariably varies from what I thought I thought. Timidly, my words creep out of their hiding places like squirrels after a storm. One blurt of electronic noise and they scurry back into hiding.

                  One tragedy of our age is a paucity of thought. Thought takes silence, stillness, solitude, which are in short supply. We’re too busy coping to know what to keep. Up to date is a synonym for out of our minds – and out of sorts. My goal is to know more about less, talk slow, but it’s not easy, feeling threatened all the time.

                  How do we rescue equanimity from the maws of our moment? Practice stillness. Seclude oneself from the gabble. Silence your devices. Lock the door. Pray. There is no one right way, to each his own. By whatever means, permit yourself the therapy of silence, where you can hear what you have to say.

                  These missives are my chapel. Shapely phrases quiet me like hymns. I envision us together here hushed, not as in a theater, absorbing what we’re being shown, but each involved in our own thoughts. Soon enough we must return to the hubbub – we have cause to panic – we cannot flee like Thoreau to his cabin by the pond, there is too much at stake. But we can take a breath, talk slow – or not at all, remind ourselves it is OK not to be sure.