Streaming in through the window, the moonlight cast long shadows and splashed the walls with a touch of diluted Indian ink.

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.

All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh.

no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.

Thelonious Monk playing “Honeysuckle Rose”.

androgynous

that we are in here not to correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities.

and she looks into my eyes as if trying to catch the image of a minnow that has darted across the pool of a limpid spring.

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.