Nice work, thenewgreen! I really enjoyed listening to everyone's thoughts, and the thread of the program led me along a really enjoyable and insightful path. I think the observation about the unbearable nature of true silence is instructive, although I guess you could say the same about most things we crave. We often voice cravings for things that we want in partial measure. We might crave light or darkness, heat or cool, water, coziness or some space to breathe, but the totality of those things would mean, respectively: blindness; blindness; immolation; freezing; drowning; claustrophobia; agoraphobia? Or something like that. It intrigues me though that much of what we seem to want in "silence" is actually clarity and articulation for those things we _can_ hear, the desire for sensation not to become an overwhelming tangle, therefore unintelligible and assaulting to the senses and the mind, the sound and fury which signifies nothing. Anyway, it's been a most intriguing and illuminating contemplation, and thanks to everyone who contributed!