In the Stillness Before the Letters

Reflections that grow behind Otto & Bear’s Letters

As the season has shifted, the days feel slow now. The hearth is built, the letters waiting, like the breath before breaths,  Outside, the air is still, that kind of quiet before dawn, when everything seems to listen.

I keep finding myself pausing mid-task: a hand resting on a cup, a breath held a moment too long. It isn’t hesitation; it’s the kind of stillness that hums beneath all beginnings.
The stories have gathered, slowly arriving to those ready. They are beginning to move outwards in pulse; a soft vibration at the edge of awareness.

This stillness is often mistaken for absence, but it’s the opposite.
It’s fullness. Full of what already is, yet not yet formed into awareness. It is the potential of creation. Already there, waiting to take form.
It’s where tone gathers before it becomes sound, and where ink breathes before it touches paper.

Sometimes the work is to do nothing but listen and to let the quiet tell you when the next note is ready. To trust that the pause is part of the rhythm.

So I sit here, letting the stillness speak. The fire turns to embers, the moon rises behind clouds as the light moves into darkness.
And I remember that every letter began this way.  In silence, in listening, in the moment before breath becomes story.

Let the hum of stillness settle into your roots, the shimmer fold around threads waiting to be woven and the breath become quiet like glowing embers around a hearth. And somewhere beyond the window, the new moon waits unseen; the quietest of lights, teaching us how to begin again.