Ultimately what I like about reading together is that we all make it happen together. Of course even amid shared experience we’re still alone… each reading of each book is unique. But what a comfort it is to share readings and experiences. How lucky we are when we get to be alone together.
Benches and books have things in common beyond the fact that they're generally to do with sitting. Both are forms of public privacy, intimate spaces widely shared.
Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?
Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together.
a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
We can be lonely together
I love museums, but I always thought there was something funny about a group of strangers silently staring at works of inanimate objects together. Each person is having a very personal and maybe even emotional experience, but it's in the confines of an extremely quiet and sterile room.
Both looked back then on the wild revelry...and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude.
