Orts #856

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places, and if we will we may always hearken to her admonitions.
     — Thoreau, Some Scraps from an Essay on “Sound and Silence” Written in the Latter Half of . . . December, 1838



. . . trees . . . [are] the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone.
     — Hermann Hesse, in Baüme: Betrachtungen und Gedichte  (Trees: Reflections and Poems)



Mormons are forbidden to use tea or coffee. But on their long march along the Mormon Trail to Utah, the pioneers who were to found Salt Lake City, the new Zion, noticed a simple herb by the roadside, an infusion of which (“Mormon tea”) refreshed and stimulated the weary pilgrims. The herb was ephedra, which contains ephedrine, chemically and pharmacologically akin to the amphetamines.
    — Oliver Sacks, in a footnote in Hallucinations
 

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A Few of Life’s Many Little Disappointments:

 https://kottke.org/16/11/video-of-the-most-unsatisfying-things-in-the-world