S. M.

“Night is the worst time. After the long regimentation of the day, the enforced silences, the men want to talk. At first it doesn’t matter what about: TV, movies, travel, jobs. I lie on my side on my mattress as the words pool around me, reciting to myself the botanical classifications for peach, cherry, apple. Magnoliophyta, Magnoliopsida, Rosales, Rosaceae… I smell the smell of other bodies: stale skin, flatulence, cologne. I long to open the windows and let the fresh air sweep the smells away, sweep the bodies away too. Gradually one man drops out of the conversation, then another. Soon there will be only two men left speaking. And these two—they are not the same two every night—will drop their voices, speak in an intimate murmur. Perhaps they are only gossiping about one of the monks. Perhaps they are complaining about the food. But no, there is a reticence that lets me know that they are trying, clumsily, to reach each other.”
― Pamela Erens, The Understory

“Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so”
― Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

“Their musical ability and performance seems to derive from the past collective experience and presents itself in the individual unconscious today. Through it we tap into something eternal and it is apparent even in how they approach their playing. Perhaps we relate to it because, of any other instrument, the cello has a range that matches the human voice.”
― Kytka Hilmar-Jezek, CELLOGIRLS: Identity and Transformation in 2CELLOS Fan Culture

“The true Renaissance person is endowed with panoramic attention.... The habit of noticing the ensemble of everything and its constituent parts is a matter of will, not of innate aptitude. It involves the conscious noticing of things and the gaps that separate and connect them.”
― Christy Wampole