A Slight Trick Of The Mind Quotes

You know, I never did call him Watson – he was John, simply John.

How ... how fragile situations are. But not tenuous. Delicate, but not flimsy, not indulgent. Delicate, that's why they keep breaking, they must break and you must get the pieces together and show it before it breaks again, or put them aside for a moment when something else breaks and turn to that, and all this keeps going on. That's why most writing now, if you read it they go on one two three four and tell you what happened like newspaper accounts, no adjectives, no long sentences, no tricks they pretend, and they finally believe that they really believe that the way they saw it is the way it is ... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened? unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this ... all this ... Listen, there are so many delicate fixtures, moving toward you, you'll see. Like a man going into a dark room, holding his hands down guarding his parts for fear of a table corner, and ... Why, all this around us is for people who can keep their balance only in the light, where they move as though nothing were fragile, nothing tempered by possibility, and all of a sudden bang! something breaks. Then you have to stop and put the pieces together again. But you never can put them back together quite the same way. You stop when you can and expose things, and leave them within reach, and others come on by themselves, and they break, and even then you may put the pieces aside just out of reach until you can bring them back and show them, put together slightly different, maybe a little more enduring, until you've broken it and picked up the pieces enough times, and you have the whole thing in all its dimensions. But the discipline, the detail, it's just ... sometimes the accumulation is too much to bear.

Actually, it is amazing how much can be learned about people from the books they own.

So what is the truth?” Mr Umezaki had once asked him. “How do you arrive at it? How do you unravel the meaning of something that doesn’t want to be known?

Something has gone amiss with the world, he found himself thinking. Something has changed in the marrow, and I’m at a loss to make sense of it.

Without being too blunt – you are a bachelor who lived with another bachelor for many years.” “Purely platonic, I assure you.

Let us remove God from the equation, shall we?

And even now I wonder if creation is both too beautiful and too horrible for a handful of perceptive souls, and if the realisation of this opposing duality can offer them few options but to take leave of their own accord.

To comprehend yourself truly, which is also to comprehend the world truly, you needn’t look any farther than at what abounds with life around you – the blossoming meadow, the untrodden woodlands. Without this as mankind’s overriding objective, I don’t foresee an age of actual enlightenment ever arriving.

Without being too blunt—you are a bachelor who lived with another bachelor for many years.” “Purely platonic, I assure you.” “If you say so.

He was, after all, an avid reader, preferring the detached solace of a book above most human interaction. Yet

You know, we bungled a number of important cases – regrettably. Of course, who wants to read about the failures? I certainly don’t.

Is that true? Are you really him?” “I am afraid I still hold that distinction.” “You are Sherlock Holmes? No, I don’t believe it.” “That is quite all right. I scarcely believe it myself.

I am afraid I never wore a deerstalker, or smoked the big pipe – mere embellishments by an illustrator, intended to give me distinction, I suppose, and sell magazines. I didn’t get much say in the matter.

Lastly, it should be noted that the nostalgia which the reading public maintains for my former Baker Street address does not exist in me. I no longer crave the bustle of London streets, nor do I miss navigating the tangled mires created by the criminally disposed.

Not through the dogmas of archaic doctrines will you gain your greatest understandings, but, rather, through the continued evolution of science, and through your keen observations of the natural environment beyond your windows. To comprehend yourself truly, which is also to comprehend the world truly, you needn't look any farther than at what abounds with life around you—the blossoming meadow, the untrodden woodlands. Without this as mankind's overriding objective, I don't foresee an age of actual enlightenment ever arriving.

How amazing it was, Holmes mentioned, that such a powerful substance, the chemistry of which was still not completely known, could be produced by the pharyngeal glands of the worker bee –creating queens from ordinary bee larvae, healing a multitude of mankind’s ills.

But as of late, I have been consumed with the significant task of revising the latest edition of my Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, while alternately putting the finishing touches on my four volumes of The Whole Art of Detection. The latter is a rather tedious, labyrinthine undertaking...

-Parece, ou melhor, é que às vezes as coisas acontecem para lá da nossa compreensão, minha querida, e a realidade injusta é que esses eventos, sendo tão ilógicos para nós, destituídos de qualquer razão que lhes possamos atribuir, são exactamente o que são e infelizmente, nada mais, e acredito, acredito mesmo que essa é a ideia mais difícil com que todos nós temos de viver.

Ultimately, Roger learned only of the encounter with the urban bees. The boy remained thoroughly fascinated by what he heard nonetheless, his blue-eyed stare never once straying from Holmes; his visage passive and accepting, his eyes wide, Roger's pupils stated fixed on those venerable, reflective eyes, as though the boy were seeing distant lights shimmering along an opaque horizon, a glimpse of something flickering and alive existing beyond his reach. And, in turn, the gray eyes that focused sharply on him - piercing and kind at the same instant - endeavoured to bridge the lifetime that separated the two of them, attempting to do so as brandy was sipped, and the vial's glass grew warmer against soft palms, and that seasoned, well-lived voice somehow made Roger feel much older and more worldly than his years.

She started shaping the face, using a wire loop to gently carve the slope of the strong forehead and brow, then the nose and the lean angle of the cheekbones. In little time, her fingers were moving on automatic pilot, her mind disengaged and gone into its own flow, her subconscious directly commanding her hands into action. She didn’t know how long she’d been working, but when the hard rap sounded on her apartment door some time later, Tess nearly jumped out of her skin. Sleeping next to her feet on the rug, Harvard woke up with a grunt. “You expecting someone?” she asked quietly as she got up from her stool. God, she must have been really zoned out while she was sculpting, because she’d seriously messed up around the mouth area of the piece. The lips were curled back in some kind of snarl, and the teeth . . . The knock sounded again, followed by a deep voice that went through her like a bolt of electricity. “Tess? Are you there?” Dante. Tess’s eyes flew wide, then squeezed into a wince as she did a quick mental inventory of her appearance. Hair flung up into a careless knot on top of her head, braless in her white thermal Henley and faded red sweats that had more than one dried clay smudge on them. Not exactly fit for company. “Dante?” she asked, stalling for time and just wanting to be sure her ears weren’t playing tricks on her. “Is that you?” “Yeah. Can I come in?” “Um, sure. Just a sec,” she called out, trying to sound casual as she threw a dry work cloth over her sculpture and quickly checked her face in the reflection off one of her putty spatulas. Oh, lovely. She had a slightly crazed, starving-artist look going on. Very glamorous. That’ll teach him to do the pop-in visit, she thought, as she padded over to the door and twisted the dead bolt.

…the two chatting surreptitiously as a procession of priests, musicians, and locals dressed like demons paraded down the street: the men hoisting erect wooden phalluses, the women embracing smaller carved penises swathed in red paper, the spectators touching the tips of passing phalluses to ensure good health for their children. “How remarkable,” commented Holmes. “I thought you might find this of interest,” said Mr Umezaki. Holmes grinned slyly. “My friend, I suspect this is much more to your liking than mine.” “You’re probably right,” agreed Mr Umezaki, smiling while his fingertips reached out for an oncoming phallus.

That you cannot distinguish between the able and the incompetent shows that your eyes are corrupt. Your failure to chant the Odes and the Documents shows that your mouth is corrupt. Your rejection of loyal advice shows that your ears are corrupt. Your ignorance of past and present shows that your whole being is corrupt. Your conflicts with the lords of the realm show that your stomach is corrupt. Your dream of usurpation shows that your mind is corrupt. To make a renowned scholar like me serve as drum master is a poor imitation of the tricks of such villains of old as Yang Huo who slighted Confucius, or Zang Cang who tried to ruin Mencius. Do you think you can hold men in such contempt and still become the leader of the lords of the realm?

The opponent seemed to shift slightly in the seat. His index finger tapped a card, just a couple strokes. There it was the card that ruined his hand. Her hazel eyes release the player across from her to steal a glance registering the emotion of observers around the table then to her best friend. Sophie looks like a Nervous Nelly-she, always worries. She knows the girl will put too much emphasis on a lost hand. The striking man with his lusty brown eyes tries to draw Sophie closer. Now that he has folded and left the game, he is unnecessary, and the seasoned flirt easily escapes his reach. He leaves with a scowl; Sophie turns and issues knowing wink. Ell’s focus is now unfettered, freeing her again to bring down the last player. When she wins this hand, she will smile sweetly, thank the boys for their indulgence, and walk away $700 ahead. The men never suspected her; she’s no high roller. She realizes she and Sophie will have to stay just a bit. Mill around and pay homage to the boy’s egos. The real trick will be leaving this joint alone without one of them trying to tag along. Her opponent is taking his time; he is still undecided as to what card to keep—tap, tap. He may not know, but she has an idea which one he will choose. He attempts to appear nonchalant, but she knows she has him cornered. She makes a quick glance for Mr. Lusty Brown-eyes; he has found a new dame who is much more receptive than Sophie had been. Good, that small problem resolved itself for them. She returns her focuses on the cards once more and notes, her opponent’s eyes have dilated a bit. She has him, but she cannot let the gathering of onlookers know. She wants them to believe this was just a lucky night for a pretty girl. Her mirth finds her eyes as she accepts his bid. From a back table, there is a ruckus indicating the crowd’s appreciation of a well-played game as it ends. Reggie knew a table was freeing up, and just in time, he did not want to waste this evening on the painted and perfumed blonde dish vying for his attention. He glances the way of the table that slowly broke up. He recognizes most of the players and searches out the winner amongst them. He likes to take on the victor, and through the crowd, he catches a glimpse of his goal, surprised that he had not noticed her before. The women who frequent the back poker rooms in speakeasies all dress to compete – loud colors, low bodices, jewelry which flashes in the low light. This dame faded into the backdrop nicely, wearing a deep gray understated yet flirty gown. The minx deliberately blended into the room filled with dark men’s suits. He chuckles, thinking she is just as unassuming as can be playing the room as she just played those patsies at the table. He bet she had sat down all wide-eyed with some story about how she always wanted to play cards. He imagined she offered up a stake that wouldn’t be large but at the same time, substantial enough. Gauging her demeanor, she would have been bold enough to have the money tucked in her bodice. Those boys would be eager after she teased them by retrieving her stake. He smiled a slow smile; he would not mind watching that himself. He knew gamblers; this one was careful not to call in the hard players, just a couple of marks, which would keep the pit bosses off her. He wants to play her; however, before he can reach his goal, the skirt slips away again, using her gray camouflage to aid her. Hell, it is just as well, Reggie considered she would only serve as a distraction and what he really needs is the mental challenge of the game not the hot release of some dame–good or not. Off in a corner, the pit boss takes out a worn notepad, his meaty hands deftly use a stub of a pencil to enter the notation. The date and short description of the two broads quickly jotted down for his boss Mr. Deluca. He has seen the pair before, and they are winning too often for it to be accidental or to be healthy.

As a boy, I sometimes sat down from my wandering only to wake up an hour later, surprised to find I had fallen asleep in a warm patch of grass. That wouldn’t happen in bear country. When I walk in a place like Yellowstone, it’s always with a slight but solemn recognition of the slender possibility that I will die, that some wild animal will kill me. My senses come alive: I taste the air, listen for sounds beneath the wind. Suddenly, nature is not the backdrop to life, it is life itself, and I am no longer myself, but myself in nature. I note and classify even small changes: a shrew darting across the path, an updraft twisting a fern frond, a hummingbird gathering spiderweb for its nest. Light and form take on greater clarity, and given enough time to sink into these sensations , visual tricks will arise that are somewhere between vigilance and hallucination, such as seeing clearly every trembling leaf on a tree while in the same moment watching a bumblebee pass by in slow motion. As my senses reach outward, I spread away from myself. The world expands. It’s the closest a person can feel, I think, to being a flock of birds. The naturalist John Livingston described this perspective as a participatory state of mind, and speculated that among wild animals it is the ordinary form of consciousness. It would seem to have to be.

Uh, hello? Hello, hello! Uhm, there has been a slight change of company policy, concerning you and the suits. Uhm, so, after learning of an unfortunate incident at the sister location involving multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures, the company has deemed the suits temporarily unfit for employees. Safety is top priority at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, which is why the classic suits are being retired to an appropriate location, while being looked at by our technicians. Until replacements arrives, you'll be expected to wear the temporary costumes provided to you. Keep in mind, they were found on very short notice, so questions about appropriateness/relevance should be deflected. I repeat, the classic suits are not to be touched, activated or worn. That being said, we are free of liability, do as you wish. As always, remember to smile. You are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.

Rolling my eyes, I took Dylan’s hand and followed Harlow inside. Jace sat in the front of the TV. I knew he was grumpy based on the way he didn’t look at me. When I flopped next to him on the couch, he did smile. “You smell like a strip club,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “How would you know?” “I’m not telling you my secrets.” Shaking my head, I sighed loudly. “Why do you make me do this to you? It’s like you want to suffer.” Jace knew what was coming, but his escape came too late. I pinned him on the couch and tickled him. Despite his efforts to seem unfazed, he couldn’t withstand armpit tickling. While I tormented my laughing brother, Dad and Mom walked out from the kitchen. “He missed you,” Mom said as I finally let Jace up. Catching his breath, my brother leaned next to me on the couch. “I miss beating you at videogames.” “I miss you beating me too,” I said, kissing his head. Harlow flopped on the couch next to us and I smiled at the familiar comfort of my family. Dylan watched us with a slight grin. When he caught Tad and Toni’s gazes, his smile grew. Suspicious now, I glanced at Harlow who was busy gluing herself to me. “Are they up to something?” I whispered. “Am I going to be embarrassed?” “I don’t know. If you feel embarrassed, I’ll punch Dylan in the crotch and distract everyone.” Rolling my eyes at her threat, I studied Dylan who grinned at me. “What?” I asked, nervous now. “She’s on to you,” Dad said. “Better ask now before she gets squirrely.” “Squirrely,” Jace snorted. “She gets batty too.” Harlow laughed. “Winnie can do so many animal impressions.” Ignoring them, I stood up and walked to a still smiling Dylan. “What?” “What happened to patience?” Without thinking, I reached to pinch my hand. Dylan took both hands then knelt on one knee. “Don’t,” Harlow blurted, grabbing for me. Everyone frowned at her. A moment passed where she stared at me in horror. Suddenly, she shrugged. “I meant don’t stop. Go ahead, Dylan.” The mood in the room shifted back to anticipation. Our gaze focused on Dylan who smiled up at me. “I know it’s been a few weeks. I don’t care. I love you and you love me, right?” “I love you so much.” “I’m not stupid. I know we’ll have problems. We run into issues. When we do, we’ll work them out. We’ll figure them out because we belong together. You believe that, don’t you?” “Yes,” I whispered, staring into his beautiful dark eyes. “Winona Todds, you are perfection and I refuse to live without you. Will you marry me?” My legs turning to jelly, I knelt down too. “Yes,” I whispered, afraid he was about to change his mind. Maybe it was a trick. All these awful things rushed through my mind. I wasn’t good enough for Dylan. He was going to leave me one day. I didn’t deserve to be happy when I was so weak. “You love me,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine. “You want me to be happy.” “Yes,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks. “You’re what I need to survive.” “I’m not really strong yet.” “I love you now. I don’t want to wait. Do you want to wait for me?” Shaking my head, I looked at my smiling parents then back at Dylan. “We’re in love and planning to live together. We need to make our relationship official, so your daddy won’t kick my ass.” Even laughing, I asked, “You want this?” “I can give up everything else in my life, but never you. Married or not, you belong with me.” I exhaled uneasily then smiled. “Yes, I will marry you.

One of the methods that he and Bowie used on Low was the “Oblique Strategies” he’d created with artist Peter Schmidt the year before. It was a deck of cards, and each card was inscribed with a command or an observation. When you got into a creative impasse, you were to turn up one of the cards and act upon it. The commands went from the sweetly banal (“Do the washing up”) to the more technical (“Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation”; “The tape is now the music”). Some cards contradict each other (“Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities”; “Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics”). Some use Wildean substitution (“Don’t be afraid of things because they’re easy to do”). And several veer towards the Freudian (“Your mistake was a hidden intention”; “Emphasise the flaws”). The stress is on capitalising on error as a way of drawing in randomness, tricking yourself into an interesting situation, and crucially leaving room for the thing that can’t be explained—an element that every work of art needs. Did the Oblique Strategy cards actually work? They were probably more important symbolically than practically. A cerebral theoretician like Eno had more need of a mental circuit-breaker than someone like Bowie, who was a natural improviser, collagiste, artistic gadfly. Anyone involved in the creative arts knows that chance events in the process play an important role, but to my mind there’s something slightly self-defeating about the idea of “planned accidents.” Oblique Strategies certainly created tensions, as Carlos Alomar explained to Bowie biographer David Buckley: “Brian Eno had come in with all these cards that he had made and they were supposed to eliminate a block. Now, you’ve got to understand something. I’m a musician. I’ve studied music theory, I’ve studied counterpoint and I’m used to working with musicians who can read music. Here comes Brian Eno and he goes to a blackboard. He says: ‘Here’s the beat, and when I point to a chord, you play the chord.’ So we get a random picking of chords. I finally had to say, ‘This is bullshit, this sucks, this sounds stupid.’ I totally, totally resisted it. David and Brian were two intellectual guys and they had a very different camaraderie, a heavier conversation, a Europeanness. It was too heavy for me. He and Brian would get off on talking about music in terms of history and I’d think, ‘Well that’s stupid—history isn’t going to give you a hook for the song!’ I’m interested in what’s commercial, what’s funky and what’s going to make people dance!” It may well have been the creative tension between that kind of traditionalist approach and Eno’s experimentalism that was more productive than the “planned accidents” themselves. As Eno himself has said: “The interesting place is not chaos, and it’s not total coherence. It’s somewhere on the cusp of those two.

Someone once said that education was knowing what to do when you don’t know,” said one of his students. “Danny took that idea and ran with it.” One day Danny brought in a stack of those games in which the object is to guide a small metal ball through a wooden maze. The assignment he gave his students: Teach someone how to teach someone else how to play the game. “It would never occur to anyone that you could teach this,” recalled one of the students. “The trick was to break it down into the component skills—learning how to hold your hand steady, learning how to tilt slightly to the right, and so on—then teach them separately and then, once you’d taught them all, put them together.

So you'll let Lucien take you on hunts and-' 'Lucien,' I interrupted quietly but not softly, 'doesn't pretend to be anything what he is.' 'What's that supposed to mean?' he growled, but his claws stayed retracted, even as he clenched his hands into fists at his sides. I was definitely walking a dangerous line, but I didn't care. Even if he'd offered me sanctuary. I didn't have to fall at his feet. 'It means,' I said with that same cold quiet, 'That I don't know you. I don't know who you are, or what you really are, or what you want.' 'It means you don't trust me.' 'How can I trust a faerie? Don't you delight in killing and tricking us?' His snarl set the flames of the candles guttering. 'You aren't what I had in mind for a human- believe me.' I could almost feel the wound deep in my chest as it ripped open and all those awful, silent words came pouring out. Illiterate, ignorant, unremarkable, proud, cold- all spoken from Nesta's mouth, all echoing in my head with her sneering voice. I pinched my lips together. He winced and lifted a hand slightly, as if about to reach for me. 'Feyre,' he began- softly enough that I just shook my head and left the room. He didn't stop me. But that afternoon, when I went to retrieve my crumpled list from the wastebasket, it was gone. And my pile of books had been disturbed- the titles out of order.

isn’t just the words he chose but how he used them that make the language of Hamlet so challenging. Shakespeare clearly wanted audiences to work hard, and one of the ways he made them do so was by employing an odd verbal trick called hendiadys. Though the term may be strange, examples of it—“law and order,” “house and home,” or the Shakespearean “sound and fury”—are familiar enough. Hendiadys literally means “one by means of two,” a single idea conveyed through a pairing of nouns linked by “and.” When conjoined in this way, the nouns begin to oscillate, seeming to qualify each other as much as the term each individually modifies. Whether he is exclaiming “Angels and ministers of grace defend us” (1.4.39), declaring that actors are “the abstract and brief chronicles of the time” (2.2.524), speaking of “the book and volume of my brain” (1.5.103), or complaining of “a fantasy and trick of fame” (4.4.61), Hamlet often speaks in this way. The more you think about hendiadys, the more they induce a kind of mental vertigo. Take for example Hamlet’s description of “the book and volume of my brain.” It’s easy to get the gist of what he’s saying, and the phrase would pass unremarked in the course of a performance. But does he mean “book-like volume” of my mind? Or “big book of my mind”? Part of the problem here is that the words bleed into each other—“volume” of course is another word for “book” but also means “space.” The destabilizing effect of how these words play off each other is slightly and temporarily unnerving

For the better part of a decade, I figured I was better off being slightly unhealthy and leaving the active pursuit of body-related matters alone. This all changed once I joined the Peace Corps, where it was impossible to think too much about my appearance, and where health was of such immediately importance that it was always on my mind. I developed active tuberculosis while volunteering and, for some stress- or nutrition-related reason, started to shed my thick black hair. I realized how much I had taken my functional body for granted. I lived in a mile-long village in the middle of a western province in Kyrgyzstan: there were larch trees on the snowy mountains, flocks of sheep crossing dusty roads, but there was no running water, no grocery store. The resourceful villagers preserved peppers and tomatoes, stockpiled apples and onions, but it was so difficult to get fresh produce otherwise that I regularly fantasized about spinach and oranges, and would spend entire weekends trying to obtain them. As a prophylactic measure against mental breakdown, I started doing yoga in my room every day. Exercise, I thought. What a miracle!

To a fault, Ann has always been a very sensitive, trusting woman. It's as if she was born to feel and experience the world more acutely than the rest of us. It is both her greatest strength and weakness; if recognized by someone with devious intentions, this delicate quality can be easily exploited...

He couldn’t spot them, and the minor foot traffic on the sidewalk was not enough to hide. They must have entered a building or alley. Rather than searching all of them, he let his nose do its job. Big breath in. Filter the smells. Aha. There, up the sidewalk a few more storefronts then into an arcade. The wolves that dragged her probably hoped to hide their scent and sneak out the back. Except Hayder knew this place. He knew where the door to the alley was, thus, when the steel door swung open, he stood there, arms crossed waiting for them. “Shit, he’s here. Get back inside,” the chubby one grunted. “Oh, don’t leave on my account. I insist you stay.” And to make sure they did, he kicked the door shut. The two thugs backed away from him, the one who needed to invest in a treadmill holding Arabella, who hung limp in his grasp, before him as a shield. She was alive. However, her eyes bore a resigned expression Hayder didn’t like at all. “Baby, are you all right? Did they hurt you?” The answer was moot. At this point, he was going to punish them no matter what, violently. They’d done the unforgivable when they’d taken Arabella and scared her. However, if they’d actually hurt her, or if she cried… We’ll make them wish their mother had a headache the night they were conceived. Rawr. Her reply emerged so soft he almost missed it. “I told you this would happen. They’ll never let me be free.” How utterly convinced she seemed and miserable. Totally unacceptable. “Don’t you dare take this without a fight,” he growled. The chubby one should have spent more time on expanding his mind instead of his waistline because he showed no sense at all when he said, “Bella here knows her place, and after the next full moon, it will be on her knees, serving the new alpha of the pack.” Hell no. Hayder didn’t even think twice about it. His fist shot out, and it connected to the idiot’s nose with a satisfying crunch, and that left one wolf. An even dumber wolf that seemed to think the switchblade he’d pulled out of a pocket and waved around would really make a difference. “Are you stupid enough to think you can take me with that puny knife?” Hayder couldn’t stem the incredulity in his query. “Stay back, cat, or else. It’s silver.” Silver, which meant painful if he got sliced with it. Harder to heal, too. But a three-inch blade wasn’t going to keep Hayder away from his woman. As beta, though, he did try to give the idiot a chance. Show patience before acting, or so he’d been taught as part of those anger management courses Leo made him take. Hayder employed one of the tricks to control impulsive acts. He counted. “Three.” “I’ll cut you.” Slash. Slash. The knifeman sketched lines in the air. “Two.” “I mean it.” “One. You’re dead.” Hayder took a step forward even as the last dumb wolf took a step back, one hand clamped around Arabella’s arm. Lightning fast, Hayder shot a hand out to grab the wrist of the guy wielding the knife. This fellow had slightly faster reflexes than his pack brothers and actually managed to score a line of red across his palm. The blood didn’t bother Hayder. ’Twas but a scratch. However, the coppery scent did something to Arabella. Up snapped her head. Her nostrils flared. Her brown eyes took on a wildness. Her lips pulled back in a snarl. “Don’t. Touch. Him!” With a screech, she turned on her captor and then proceeded to go rabid on his ass. How cool.

The spinothalamic system, on the other hand, runs through the “grey matter” of the cord, so named because it has no white fatty insulation sheaths around its axons. Their spatial orientation is not nearly so carefully preserved at all levels, and they make many more internuncial synaptic junctions on their way up the cord. Their transmission speed is roughly one-fifth of that of the dorsal tract. This system carries impulses which announce pain; thermal sensations, both hot and cold; crude touch sensations that are not acutely localized; pressure sensations that do not rely upon fine distinctions; kinesthetic sensations having to do with chronic conditions, or the body at rest; tickles and itches; and sexual sensations. It is a fact of considerable significance to our reflex responses that pain sensations are carried exclusively by the slower spinothalamic pathway. This means that more neutral and at the same time more detailed sensory information will always reach the spinal circuits and the cortex slightly before the stab of pain arrives. This gives us a brief moment to assess the location and the cause of the pain before we react, so that our reflex withdrawal can be more appropriately tailored to the actual source of the pain and more effectively directed; that is, so that we will be able to assess the intensity of the burn, and will be sure to jerk away from the flame rather than towards it, and will arrest our jerk before we crash into the wall. This time lag gives a special role to general tactile sensations—including body work—when we are in pain. It means that it is possible to bombard the consciousness with more rapidly transmitted and more detailed touch sensations which tend to displace the pain response from the foreground. This is why rubbing the spot that hurts, or jumping up and down, or shaking the injured hand are often effective for alleviating pain. This is the principle behind the mother’s instinctual rocking and stroking of her hurt child, and it is a principle that can be turned to great advantage in bodywork. If the rest of the body can be inundated with touch sensations, particularly pleasurable ones, the part that is in pain can be shifted away from the mind’s central focus. On the other hand, this very same mechanism presents a danger: By keeping ourselves busy, and by forcing our attention onto other matters, it is possible to suppress pain signals which may be very important, possible to bury our awareness of threatening conditions beneath a layer of faster, more acute, but more trivial sensations. The mind’s mechanisms of selection and focus can play tricks that are nasty as well as ones that are helpful. One of the principal strengths of bodywork is that it can generate the sensory information—the self awareness—that is necessary for the individual to identify and gain control over conflicting tendencies of this kind.