THE POWER OF THE NON-DIT

Silence can be a plan

rigorously executed

the blueprint to a life

It is a presence

It has a history of form

Do not confuse it with any kind of absence (Rich 1980).

(PDF) IMAGINARY EVIDENCE: FINDING THE NON-DIT IN FICTION. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266882989_IMAGINARY_EVIDENCE_FINDING_THE_NON-DIT_IN_FICTION [accessed Aug 27 2018].

Ever since I first heard the term NON-DIT I have been fascinated by it.  What is not said. As a student and teacher of drama and playwriting for  almost fifty years, I have been well aware of the presence and power  of the SUB-TEXT when  discussing a play.  The sub-text is the text that lies under  the spoken text. It  may be the unspoken thoughts of the character--what he or she could say. and it can be the web of those unspoken thoughts that actually  drives the engine of the play's thought and development.

Oftentimes, the contrast between what is said aloud and what is said to oneself has been the source of comedy--"what he said" vs.
"what he was thinking"Or animal humor--"what the owner says" vs  "what the dog hears'.
The playwright  Eugene O'Neill  made use of that divide in his play
STRANGE INTERLUDE in which characters get to express in soliloquies the exact thoughts they are having while saying other words.  It is very effective in showing the divide between what people say and what  they think. It demonstrates that there is always  a mask on the human face that prevents any real intimacy.  Mask meets mask, souls and hearts do not know each other.

I have come to understand how the web of what was not said to me shaped my personal life and fate. The silence conveys  not absence but a strong sense of aversion or taboo.  Silence about my father's life before he met my mother; silence about my mother's romantic life  before she met my father. Silence about my sisters and silence about things that might shame us.

Dig at the roots of that silence -- especially amidst the IRISH -- and  you will always  find SHAME. The  ME TOO movement is  uncovering  whole populations of women who have been silenced. 
The BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT  uncovers the rage of another silenced group. 
To go back to the  warning in the poem by Rich that I placed at the top of this entry: Silence is a presence.... never mistake it for an absence.
Where are the  voices of Native Americans in American Life?
The voices of the slaves snatched from Africa have been silenced and their  culture, languages and religions erased or rarely acknowledged.
So never mistake SILENCE  for consent--it is not Golden--it is the bitter iron of chains and the "Mind-forged manacles" that prevent each and every one of us --women, Irish, Catholics, gays, Asians, Africans. those born in places that others call  "SHIT HOLES"  of the World  from telling our stories.

The NON-DIT --the word left unsaid --sticks in our throats and will choke us and our children. We are here for such a brief time on earth.  
Why should we waste any of our finite time or  measured breaths telling lies??