You talk about silence as a tangible, but what if silence is another way to recognize time?  When I think of silence, I think of reflection, a moment to take a step back from a situation to observe, or, in the case of a heated negotiation, how long the pause will last until the desired action is taken. In the same way a hunter must know how long to crouch in silence before a kill, an actor pauses before a word, or how many spaces a poet chooses in his/her stance doesn’t time play any part in how or when you come across these realizations? 

The silence you speak of in that quote recognizes that what we think of as a pause, is really recognizing that the rest of nature is in motion. What if the recognition is always there, but time is what tells us we are ready to see it?