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Transcript

Hermione's The Art of Stillness: The Passage Beneath the Moon · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Pull a blanket up a little higher. Tuck the edge
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: beneath your chin, the way you would tuck a letter
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: into an envelope. Carefully, because what is inside matters.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: You are safe.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: You are welcome.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: You are held. And tonight, I am going to take
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you somewhere you have never been. Down a passage beneath
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the moon, through the quiet heart of the castle. to
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a place so still that even the candles have forgotten
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: how to flitter. Let me tell you where we are.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: It is late. Later than you think.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Later than the portraits think, though a few of them
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: are still awake. Old Finn is nagelous, leaning back in
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: his frame with his arms crossed and his eyes half closed,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: pretending not to watch. The fat lady who has long
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: since stopped asking for the password because everyone who passes
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: at this hour clearly belongs.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: The torches in the corridor have burned down to their
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: last inch and their light has gone from gold to
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: a deep, sleepy amber, the colour of honey held up
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: to a sunset. The stones of the wall are warm,
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: not from the torches, but from the day which has
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: left behind its heat the way a cat leaves behind
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: its warmth on a chair.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I am walking slowly, you are walking with me. I
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: can feel your footsteps beside mine, matching my pace. And
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: our footsteps together make the softest sound. A whisper on stone.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: A breath on glass. The corridor curves to the left
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and then opens, just slightly, into a small alcove that
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: most students walk past without ever seeing. I stop here.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I place my hand against the wall. And I feel it.
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: A seam in the stone, a hairline crack that runs
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: from the floor to just above my shoulder. And behind
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: that crack, a hollow space, a breath of cooler air,
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: the faintest suggestion.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Of a passage. Is this the entrance?
• 2:20
  Speaker 6: I push, very gently, and the stone gives. Not the
• 2:25
  Speaker 6: way a door gives, swinging wide and announcing itself. This
• 2:30
  Speaker 6: stone moves the way a leaf moves in a breath
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: of wind. It slides inward, a few inches, just enough
• 2:37
  Speaker 6: to show a narrow opening, and from that opening comes
• 2:40
  Speaker 6: a smell I have not smelled in years. It is
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: the smell of night air filtered through earth and old magic.
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: It is a smell of stone that has been underground
• 2:51
  Speaker 6: since before the castle was built.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: It is the smell of patience itself, if patience had
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a scent, mineral and cool and faintly sweet, like rain
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: on limestone.
• 3:10
  Speaker 7: I stepped inside.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: The passage is narrow, not dangerously narrow. You could stretch
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: your arms and your fingertips would almost touch both walls,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: but not quite. The ceiling is low enough that I
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: duck my head and the stone is different here, older, rougher,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: not the dressed and fitted stone of the castle corridors
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: but something more primitive, more honest, as though it were
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: placed here not to impress but to endure. The floor
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: is once smooth by centuries of footsteps and under my
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: shoes it feels like a river stone, cool and rounded
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and somehow trustworthy. The way something that has been touched
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: by so many people becomes trustworthy through the accumulated weight
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: of their passing. And the light....
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Closed.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: The light is coming from the ceiling. Not from torches,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: not from candles, but from the stone itself. The ceiling
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: is embedded with small, pale fragments of moonrock, a spell
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I have read about but never seen elsewhere, a spell
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: that captures moonlight and holds it the way ember holds
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: an insect. Except that moonlight does not die, it simply waits,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and when you enter a passage like this one, it
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: wakes up, it stirs. It lits its head and looks
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: at you with a soft, silver gaze, and the passage
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: fills with a light that is not bright, and not dim,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: but somewhere between. The light of a cloudy night when
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the moon is behind thinned cloud and the whole sky
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: seems to glow from within. Like a lantern made of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: milk glass. The light falls on the walls and the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: walls become a light with shadow. Every bump and ridge
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: in the stone casts its own small shadow. And these
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: shadows are not dark but grey. A hundred shades of grey.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: The colours of folk. the colors of a British November
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: afternoon when the sky cannot decide between rain and mist
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and settles for both. I walk deeper. The passage bends,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and as it bends, it narrows further, and the ceiling
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: drops until I am walking with my head slightly bowed,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: as though in.
• 5:29
  Speaker 7: Prayer, as in respect.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Are in the simple recognition that some spaces ask you
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: to lower yourself in order to enter them. The light
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: on the ceiling is thinner here, gathered in the cracks
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: between the stones rather than embedded in them, and it
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: casts a light that is more silver than white, a
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: light that makes the shadows on the walls look like
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the roots of trees, reaching and branching, and spreading into
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the stone itself.
• 6:05
  Speaker 8: I trail my fingers along the wall as I walk.
• 6:09
  Speaker 8: The stone is different now, smoother, almost polished, as though
• 6:14
  Speaker 8: many hands have done this before me, as though the
• 6:18
  Speaker 8: passage remembers every person who has walked through it and
• 6:21
  Speaker 8: has worn itself smooth by the accumulated warmth of their passing.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I can feel the texture of it, the tiny ridges,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: the occasional bumps, A groove that might be a vein
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: of harder mineral or might be something else entirely, something deliberate.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: A mark left by the passage's builders to guard the way.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I follow the groove with my fingertip and it leads
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: me around the bend and the passage opens up again, wider.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And the ceiling lifts and the air changes. It is
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: cooler here and wetter. And there is a sound. The
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: sound is water. Not running water, not the babble of
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: a brook or the rush of a waterfall, but a slow,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: patient trip. Somewhere in the dark ahead of me, falling
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: from a stalactite or a crack in the ceiling into
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a small pool that I cannot see but whose presence
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I can feel. A coolness on the air, a mineral freshness,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the faintest echo of each drop landing a sound so
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: small and so regular that it becomes a kind of music,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: a percussion instrument played by gravity itself, keeping time for
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the passes the way a heartbeat keeps time for a body.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: But every step the castle above us grows more distant.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I can feel it, the weight of the towers, the
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: weight of the rooms and the corridors and the staircases.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: All that architecture of stone and wood and glass pressing
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: down gently, the way a hand rests on a sleeping
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: child's forehead. The castle is above us, around us, but
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: here in this passage, we are beneath it, inside it,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: at the very bottom of its heart. We are in
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the foundation. We are in the place.
• 8:09
  Speaker 9: Where the castle began.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And in the foundation it is still. This is the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: stillness I want to talk to you about tonight. Not
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the stillness of emptiness. Not the stillness of absence. This
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: is the stillness of depth. The stillness you find when
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you go down far enough that the noise of the surface,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the noise of thoughts, the noise of plans, the noise
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of tomorrow and yesterday simply cannot reach you. The noise
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: is still there. You have not destroyed it. You have
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: not escaped it. You have simply gone somewhere deep enough
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: that it is, for now, muffled, the way sound is muffled,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: when you sink below the surface of water and the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: world above becomes a green blur and a distant rhythmic pulse.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: I stop walking. I stand in the middle of the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: passage and I close my eyes. Listen. If, um....
• 9:11
  Speaker 10: Can you hear it?
• 9:12
  Speaker 11: The passage has its own sound, or rather, its own
• 9:16
  Speaker 11: absence of sound. It is not silent. True silence is
• 9:19
  Speaker 11: a theoretical thing. It does not exist in nature, but
• 9:22
  Speaker 11: this is close. This is the sound of a place
• 9:25
  Speaker 11: that has almost nothing to say. There is a faint
• 9:28
  Speaker 11: drip somewhere, far ahead, where the passage dips and a
• 9:31
  Speaker 11: tiny trickle of groundwater makes its way through a crack.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: There is the sound of my own breathing.
• 9:41
  Speaker 12: Slow and even and i imagine your breathing matching mine
• 9:46
  Speaker 12: falling into rhythm the way two pendulum clocks in the
• 9:49
  Speaker 12: same room will given enough time synchronize and beneath both
• 9:55
  Speaker 12: of these there is a hum so low it is
• 9:58
  Speaker 12: more felt than heard the vibration of the earth itself turning.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: This hum is the passage's heartbeat every place has one
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the library has one a warmer busier hum full of
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: paper and dust and the half-remembered thoughts of every scholar
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: who has ever read there the greenhouse has one green
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and wet and slow. The astronomy tower has one, high
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: and thin and almost electric like the hum of a
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: wire in a wind. But the passes beneath the moon
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: has the oldest hum of all. It is the hum
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: of the ground.
• 10:34
  Speaker 13: It is the hum of stone that was here before
• 10:38
  Speaker 13: the castle, before the wizards, before the first person looked
• 10:42
  Speaker 13: at this hill and thought, yes, here, let us build
• 10:47
  Speaker 13: something here.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I open my eyes. The moonlight in the ceiling has shifted,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: or I have shifted, and my perspective has changed. And
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: now I can see that the light is not evenly distributed,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: but gathered in patches, the way sunlight gathers in pools
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: on a forest floor. Some patches are bright and round,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: almost like actual moons, and others are faint and stretched.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: like the last light of evening. He knit the hole.
• 11:35
  Speaker 14: I walk toward the brightest patch, and, as I do,
• 11:37
  Speaker 14: I notice something else. The walls here have been touched,
• 11:40
  Speaker 14: not recently, not in this century, but long ago, when
• 11:44
  Speaker 14: the passage was new, someone pressed their hand against the stone, here,
• 11:49
  Speaker 14: at shoulder height. and the stone remembers. There is a
• 11:52
  Speaker 14: depression in the wall, a shallow hollow, exactly the size
• 11:56
  Speaker 14: and shape of an open palm.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I place my own hand inside it, and it fits perfectly,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and for a moment I'm holding hands with someone who
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: lived 300 years ago, and neither of us has anything
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to say to the other, because what is there to
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: say when you can simply stand together in a passage
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: beneath the moon and breathe? This is the art of stillness.
• 12:24
  Speaker 15: It is not a technique. It is not a trick.
• 12:28
  Speaker 15: It is not a meditation exercise or a breathing pattern
• 12:31
  Speaker 15: or a mindfulness app with a soothing voice and a
• 12:34
  Speaker 15: progress bars. It is the simplest, oldest, most human thing
• 12:39
  Speaker 15: in the world. It is the act of stopping, of
• 12:43
  Speaker 15: being in a place without needing to be anywhere else,
• 12:47
  Speaker 15: of breathing without needing to go anywhere. of letting the
• 12:51
  Speaker 15: hours pass the way clouds pass, slowly, silently, without any
• 12:56
  Speaker 15: intention whatsoever.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Most of us have forgotten how to do this. We
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: have been taught that time is a resource, that every
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: minute must be spent wisely, that to waste an hour
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: is to lose something valuable. But what if an hour
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: is not a resource? What if an hour is a place?
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: What if you do not spend an hour but visit it?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: The way you visit a room? The way you visit
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: a garden?
• 13:26
  Speaker 9: What if an hour is a small house with a
• 13:30
  Speaker 9: fireplace and a chair and a window and all you
• 13:36
  Speaker 9: have to do to visit it is sit down?
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I walk on. The passage widens. The ceiling lifts. And
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: ahead of me I can see a change in the
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: quality of the light. The moonlight gives way to something warmer,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: something softer, something with a faint gold edge, like the
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: rim of a cup seen against a candle. Around a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: gentle curve in the passage, and I stack through an
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: archway carved from a single piece of stone, and.
• 14:07
  Speaker 14: I am in a chamber.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: The chamber is round. It is not large, perhaps ten
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: pieces across. but it feels vast, the way a small
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: room can feel vast when it is empty and quiet
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and lit by something that is not quite fire. The
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: walls are smooth, polished by time and touch, and set
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: into them at regular intervals are alcoves, six of them,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and in each alcove sits a candle. Not a torch,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: not a lantern, a candle. single fat beeswax candle the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: color of cream burning with a steady unwavering flame that
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: casts a light so gentle it seems to apologize for
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: existing as though it knows it is intruding on the
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: darkness and is trying very hard to do so quietly
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: The floor is stone, but different stone from the passage.
• 15:08
  Speaker 16: Darker, smoother, almost warm to the touch. And in the
• 15:13
  Speaker 16: centre of the chamber, there is a chair.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: One chair.
• 15:19
  Speaker 14: It is wooden, old.
• 15:22
  Speaker 16: Its arms worn smooth by centuries of resting hands. Its
• 15:27
  Speaker 16: seat shaped by the bodies of all the people who
• 15:30
  Speaker 16: have sat in it before me. The wood is dark,
• 15:35
  Speaker 16: almost black, and it smells of beeswax and.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Something else, something herbal, something like lavender and thyme.
• 15:46
  Speaker 14: And the memory of summer.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: I sit down.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: The chair receives me the way a good chair always does,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: not with enthusiasm but with a kind of quiet recognition,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: as though it has been waiting for me, as though
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: it knew I would come tonight. and it has been
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: holding this seat, this exact posture of comfort, for as
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: long as it has existed. My back rests against the back,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: my arms find the arse, my feet settle flat against
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the warm stone floor. I want you to sit with
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: me now, not in a chair.
• 16:26
  Speaker 17: You may already be in a bed in a hammock
• 16:28
  Speaker 17: in a place that is not a chair at all,
• 16:31
  Speaker 17: but in the spirit of sitting. In the spirit of settling,
• 16:35
  Speaker 17: find the place in your body where you can settle
• 16:39
  Speaker 17: and settle there, like your shoulders drop, like your jaw unclench.
• 16:45
  Speaker 16: Let the muscles around your eyes soften, those tiny muscles
• 16:49
  Speaker 16: that have been working so hard all day, squinting at screens,
• 16:53
  Speaker 16: reading fine print, watching for danger.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Let them rest. They have earned it. The six candles burn,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the chamber is warm. And between the candles and the
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: chair and the smooth stone floor, something begins to happen
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: that I can only describe as a gathering. Not a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: gathering of people, not a gathering of things, a gathering
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of quiet. The quiet is collecting in this chamber the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: way water collects in a bowl, slowly, inevitably filling every corner,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: rising to the brim. I can feel it against my skin.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I can feel it in my lungs. The choir has
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: a texture and the texture is soft and the temperature
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: of it is warm and the weight of it is
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: exactly the weight of a hand on the back of
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: your neck pressing gently saying be still be still be still.
• 18:00
  Speaker 10: I close my eyes again And this time, I do
• 18:04
  Speaker 10: not need to listen for the passage's heartbeat, because the
• 18:08
  Speaker 10: chamber has its own. And it is slower and deeper
• 18:14
  Speaker 10: and more rhythmic, like the breathing of someone in a
• 18:18
  Speaker 10: very deep sleep.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: About stillness.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Stillness is not the absence of motion. The earth is still,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: but it spins. The ocean is still, but it moves.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: A tree is still, but its roots are reaching, and
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: its leaves are breathing, and its sap is rising and
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: falling with the seasons. Stillness is not stopping. Stillness is settling.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: It is the act of arriving at a place inside
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: yourself where everything is in motion, but nothing is hurried,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: where everything is happening, but nothing is urgent. Where the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: noise of the world is still there. like traffic outside
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: a window, but the window is thick and the room
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: is deep, and the noise has become a kind of music,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: a background hum, a texture, a thing you can lean against.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I think about the people who have sat in this
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: chair before me, students, centuries of them, coming down to
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: this chamber the way I have come, seeking something, not
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: knowing exactly what, finding instead of an answer.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: A space.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: A space that does not demand. A space that does
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: not judge. A space that simply holds. The way a
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: glass of water holds the water. The way the sky
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: holds the stars. Some of them, I imagine, came here
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: after an argument. Some came here after a loss. Some
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: came here... after a triumph. Wanting to celebrate quietly. Wanting
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the joy to land gently rather than crash. And some,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I think, came here for no reason at all. The
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: best reasons. The reasons that are not reasons but simply
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the pull of a place that has something to give
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: and the willingness of a person to receive it. I
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: sit in the chamber for a long time. I do
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: not know how long. Time passes differently here. Minutes become soft.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: They lose their edges. They melt into one another the
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: way colors melt in a watercolor painting. the blue of
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: one minute flowing into the grey of the next, making
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: a colour that is neither blue nor grey, but something new,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: something that has no name, something that exists only in
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: this chamber, only at this hour, only for the person
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: who is sitting in this chair, with their eyes closed
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and their hands on the arms and their breathing slow
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and even and deep. The candles burn down, The wax
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: forms small, soft pools at their bases, and the pools
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: harden into shapes that look, if you look closely, like
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: tiny landscapes, valleys and hills and the suggestion of rivers.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: The light changes. It deepens.
• 21:28
  Speaker 16: The shadows in the corners of the chamber grow longer
• 21:31
  Speaker 16: and softer, and the chamber itself seems to grow smaller.
• 21:34
  Speaker 16: as though the walls are moving inward, not to trap
• 21:38
  Speaker 16: me but to hold me, the way a shell holds
• 21:41
  Speaker 16: a pearl, the way a nest holds an egg, the
• 21:44
  Speaker 16: way a cup tanned holds water without spilling a drop.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I open my eyes. The chamber is the same, the
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: candles are the same, the chair is the same, but
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I'm different. Not dramatically different, not transformed or enlightened or reborn,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: just settled. like sediment in a jar of river water, slowly,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: slowly sinking to the bottom, and the water above growing
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: clearer with every minute until you can see all the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: way through it, all the way to the light on
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the other side.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: This is what stillness does. It does not fix you.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: It does not solve your problems. It does not make
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: the difficult things easy or the sad things happy.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: What it does... is clarify. It lets the marks as
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: though it lets the noise quiet. It lets the water
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: of your.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Mind become for a few minutes transparent.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: And when the water is transparent, you can see yourself,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the real self, the deep self, the self that exists
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: beneath the worry and the hurry and the weight of
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: every obligation you have ever carried. That self is still there,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: it has always been there. It is as old as
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the passage beneath the moon and as permanent as the stone.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: It is the part of you that does not hurry,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: does not worry, does not need anything at all, except
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: to exist. To sit in a chair in a chamber
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: beneath a castle and breathe. To watch the candles, to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: feel the warmth of the stone. To listen to the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: silence that is not silence, but something deeper. conversation between
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: you and the earth, conducted in a language that has
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: no words, and needs none. I stand up. The chair
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: sighs softly beneath me, the way old wood sighs. I
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: place my hands on the arms for one last moment,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: feeling the smoothness, the warmth, the history, and then I
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: step away. I look at the chair one more time
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: before I leave. It sits in the center of the chamber,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: empty now, but not vacant. An empty chair in a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: quiet room is never vacant.
• 24:12
  Speaker 11: It is waiting.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: It is patient. It will hold the next person who comes,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and the next, and the next, long after I have
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: gone back to my dormitory and fallen asleep. long after
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the candles have gutted out and the moonlight has faded
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and the passage has returned to its own deep silence.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: The chair will still be there. It will always be there.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: And that, I think, is one of the comforts of stillness.
• 24:44
  Speaker 18: The knowledge that the place you have visited will still
• 24:48
  Speaker 18: be there when you return, unchanged, undisturbed, as though no
• 24:53
  Speaker 18: time has passed at all.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: The return journey is slower than the coming.
• 25:02
  Speaker 19: I'll hop back through the archway.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: The moonlight on the ceiling is dimmer now.
• 25:08
  Speaker 19: The moon has moved high overhead and then past, sliding
• 25:12
  Speaker 19: toward the western horizon, and the fragments of moon rock
• 25:15
  Speaker 19: are holding less light, giving back what they have stored.
• 25:20
  Speaker 19: The passage is darker. The darkness is a kindness. It
• 25:24
  Speaker 19: asks less of my eyes. It asks less of my attention.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: It simply carries me. The way a river carries a leaf.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Without effort, without urgency, without any need for me to
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: do anything at all except float. And as I walk,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I notice that the passage has changed. Or rather, that
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I have changed. and the passage looks different through my
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: new eyes. The shadows on the walls are softer. The
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: stone beneath my feet is warmer.
• 26:06
  Speaker 20: The air tastes of something sweet that I did not
• 26:09
  Speaker 20: notice on the way in, perhaps the faintest residue of
• 26:13
  Speaker 20: the candles in the chamber, or perhaps the memory of them,
• 26:17
  Speaker 20: carried on the stones themselves, a scent so subtle that
• 26:21
  Speaker 20: only a person who has been truly still could possibly
• 26:24
  Speaker 20: detect it.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I walk past the handprint in the wall. I do
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: not stop this time.
• 26:29
  Speaker 8: I do not need to.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: The handprint is there. It will always be there.
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: And whoever made it, whatever wizard, what year, what reason,
• 26:39
  Speaker 6: they left it behind as a kind of message, I think.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Not a message with words, a message with a shape.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: The message says, I was here. I stopped. I placed
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: my hand against the stone. I felt the cold of
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: it and the warmth of it at the same time.
• 26:55
  Speaker 8: And then I went on.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: That is all.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: That is enough.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: The passage narrows, the ceiling lowers, the smell of night
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: air and old magic grows stronger. Because we are approaching
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the exit, and beyond the exit the castle corridor waits,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: with its amber torches and its sleeping portraits and the
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: faint distant sound of someone somewhere turning a page. I
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: step through the opening. The stone slides back into place
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: behind me, and the corridor is exactly as I left it, warm, quiet,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: lit by the last inch of torch flame. The fat
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: lady is asleep in her frame, her mouth slightly open,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: a thin line of drool catching the light. Phineas Nigellus
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: has not moved. The stones are still warm.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: And you are here. You are beside me, where you
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: are in your bed. Or you're in whatever place you
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: have chosen to listen tonight. But the passage is still Benici.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: The chamber still ever with its six candles and its
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: one chair. And you can return to it anytime. You
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: do not need a door. You do not need a password.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: You only need to close your eyes and breathe. And
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: remember the feeling of the stone. beneath your feet and
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the moonlight on the ceiling and the warmth of the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: chair holding you, the way you deserve to be held.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Let me say goodnight now. The candles in the chamber
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: are burning lower. The moon is sinking. The castle is
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: breathing its long, slow, nighttime breath. And you are part
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: of it. You're breathing. Your heart beat. the small, warm
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: weight of your body against whatever surface holds you.
• 28:56
  Speaker 10: You are part of the castle now.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: You are part of the passage.
• 29:01
  Speaker 21: You are part of the stone and the moonlight and
• 29:07
  Speaker 21: the silence that is not silence, but something deeper and
• 29:13
  Speaker 21: kinder and more endearing than silence.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Sleep well. sleep deeply sleep the way the passage sleeps
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: held by stone lit by moonlight breathing the slow breath
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: of something that has been still for centuries and will
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: be still for centuries more.
• 29:39
  Speaker 7: I am Hermione, and this was the Quartz Hour in
• 29:47
  Speaker 7: the passage beneath the moon in the deep, still, hard castle.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Good night, dear listener. Good night, dear listener.
• 30:04
  Speaker 14: Good night.