duration: a quarter hour· place: any room with a clock· surrounds: two equal sounds
it begins when the last quarter has finished, and it ends when the next begins. it is the longest silence a house with a clock can hold — fifteen minutes — and it is one of the few silences whose length is known exactly. that is its quality: it is a measured silence. you can count it without spoiling it, which is rare.
it is the silence of two equal sounds bracketing a hollow, the way two stones at the end of a string make a span. without the chime there is no silence between chimes; there is only an ordinary quiet, which is a smaller thing. the tick continues underneath, but the tick is not the silence. the tick is the silence's furniture.
this is the only silence in sometemple with an opposite that is also musical. its opposite is the chime itself, which arrives just as you have begun to settle. the building is teaching you how to attend.