“how delightful it would be to find a few people or even one person unconditionally thrilled by what one had to say”


"I could not longer hear him as he had stopped shouting"


“I hold my peace in order to reserve energy” not laziness but tactical for survival - physically cannot talk anymore - need to catch your breath


“Recently I do not go in for much coherent thought - however on that occasion I actually made a plan of action” - switching on coherent thought when it is necessary - rather than it being the dominant excepted mode of thought


“with age one becomes rather less sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of others” - disregard for conventional expectations


“Galahad considers kindness to inanimate creatures a waste of time. He may be right, but on the other hand the maguey cactus seems alive to me, so I feel I can also make claims on existence”

Marian lists everybody in the backyard, everything alive is involved - listing some flies, cactus plant called maguey, refer to the plant by its name


“we are elements of the landscape and are accepted as such”

(Marian is not put in a human category by others and is instead in category with things that occupy the backyard)


no one ever replies to Carmella's letters- “this is the really incomprehensible side of humanity people never have time for anything” - creating time


"Souvenirs from the far past rose like bubbles in my mind and things I thought were long forgotten came back as clear as if they had just happened"


rejecting and rewriting conventional behaviour, expectations of people over 70, what is alive worthy valuable “over 7 and under 70 cannot be trusted unless they are cats”


Maude - Dear old lady of tradition - the only one of them that had in any way resembled that - find out later Maude's birth gender is male

some quotes and thoughts from Leonora carrington - The Hearing Trumpet
I read in summer and re-read in oct/nov time and think i need to get it down as keeps revisiting me and linking up when thinking about other things,
an exploration of people who cannot hear, hear things differently and those who choose what is heard and when not to listen