One winter evening in Milan as the sun was setting, while walking from Piazza del Duomo toward Porta Ticinese and my shabby apartment, I wandered into a gray stone church hoping to find some warmth there. I wondered how the church had escaped my attention, and noting at once that it was as cold and gray inside as out, I soon turned to leave. As if on cue, a choir of monks began to sing vespers and a column of dusky-orange light fell from a high window to make a bright patch on the previously darkened floor. So I stopped to listen to the peculiar harmonies, the even drone of men’s voices in perfect unison echoing through the cold chapel. The vapor of their joined breathing hung around them in a haze as their evening cantata seemed to warm the church and me. The music rose and fell in waves. It washed through me, feeling gently amplified inside me, humming in my face, purring in my gut, legs, and arms down to my toes and fingertips. “That something as hard as stone can be softened…,” I thought, looking around the dull cavern for possible others sharing the experience, “…by something unseen.” There was no one. I continued listening until I lost track of time—until the last reverberation was abruptly swallowed by the cold, and the last ray of sunlight filtered down through a colored glass window. With bowed heads, the men quietly filed out through a door in the back. The gray returned. And I left. p 192, TTT
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 16:45:19 +0000
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