Aug 31, 2021
“Every butterfly too has its own special silence. For sometimes a sound is more easily grasped as a silence, just as a presence, a visible presence, is sometimes most eloquently conveyed by a disappearance.
Who does not know what it is like to go with a friend to a railway station and then to watch the train take them away? As you walk along the platform back into the city, the person who has just gone is often more there, more totally there, than when you embraced them before they climbed into the train. When we embrace to say goodbye, maybe we do it for this reason—to take into our arms what we want to keep when they’ve gone.”
— John Berger, from “Will It Be a Likeness?”, in The Shape of a Pocket
