Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation

I have a weakness for puns. I am a writer, and writers play with words and puns are one form of wordplay. Alliteration is another: I have an addictive attraction to alliteration! With puns, it’s even worse. I trained myself to make puns, until the habit took over and became obsessive-compulsive. Then I had to de-program myself. Once I had the habit under control, I could let myself make puns to a reasonable degree.

An artist once told me that it was only when she saw a still life with onions by Cézanne that she realized that she had never seen an onion. Now, this doesn’t mean that she had never met up with onions. She had peeled onions, sliced and chopped onions, cooked and eaten onions, but she had never SEEN an onion. She had never perceived an onion with that fresh, clear, first-time-in-my-life vision that allowed her to go out of her own thoughts, ideas and memories and stand in awe before the reality of something new and unknown.

There is a story about the renowned symphony conductor, Arturo Toscanini. It is said that during the rehearsal with a symphony orchestra, Toscanini suddenly stopped the whole orchestra in mid-measure and announced accusingly, “I cannot hear ze second floot!” In the flood of music of a hundred-piece orchestra, Toscanini’s refined ear had perceived that a sound was lacking: the sound of a secondary instrument. Those missing notes of one line of music distorted the whole harmony. It was not that the second flute was playing the wrong notes. There was nothing incorrect in its line of melody. It was simply not bearing its part of the harmony, and it is the harmony that makes the symphony.