“Entering detachedly, observing a person, you can sometimes so travel down the filament that you might wake up to find yourself walking off inside them, become them, so much by sympathy, yourself forgotten, and seeing the world from where they stand. Or looking more personally you catch the gleams of response to you and break into flower, building the arches of which our human life is made. A gleam from them gives you a foothold, one from you gives them more root, till the branches can grow and each stands, a tree, in the other’s atmosphere. This between you is an arch, by which each is drawn out upright; beneath which the heavenly bird flies, whose roost is not on this sphere.
“Held in your hand a person may blossom, break open and become transfigured. If everyone knew how ravishing they were the street would be blind with light.”
@jalefkowit I love the book cover art, too.