Absent From The Body Quotes

In different degrees, in every part of the town, men and women had been yearning for a reunion, not of the same kind for all, but for all alike ruled out. Most of them had longed intensely for an absent one, for the warmth of a body, for love, or merely a life that habit had endeared. Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendship—letters, trains, and boats. Others, fewer these... had desired a reunion with something they couldn’t have defined, but which seemed to them the only desirable thing on earth. For want of a better name, they sometimes called it peace.

In violence there is often the quality of yearning - the yearning for completion. For closure. For that which is absent and would if present bring to fulfillment. For the body without which the wing is a useless frozen ornament. ("A Short Guide To The City")

The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As though the clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dress in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight, the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the cloud returns. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

Catholicism From my perspective as a former follower of Santeria (which is the worship of saints), Catholicism is the worship of the saints, which are idols, and the worship of Mary. How is it that you can confess your sins to man and your sins are forgiven, or pray to statues and they take your prayers to the Lord? How is it that saying three Hail Mary’s and three Our Father’s forgives our sins? How is it that praying the rosary gets you closer to God? What is this place called Purgatory, as the Scripture says in 2 Corinthians 5:8: “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” As well, Jesus told the thief on the Cross, in Luke 23:43: “I assure you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (NLT). Jesus said Paradise, not Purgatory.

All infants and children require and deserve comfort in order to develop properly. Soft cooing voices, gentle touch, smiles, cleanliness, and wholesome food all contribute to the growing body/mind. And when these basic conditions are absent in childhood, our need for comfort in adulthood can be so profound that it becomes pathological, driving us to seek mothering from anyone who will have us, to use others to fill our emptiness with sex or love, and to risk becoming addicted to a perceived source of comfort.

In Plaster I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is certainly the superior one. She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints. 
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality -- She lay in bed with me like a dead body 
And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was 
 Only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints. I couldn't sleep for a week, she was so cold. I blamed her for everything, but she didn't answer. 
I couldn't understand her stupid behavior! 
When I hit her she held still, like a true pacifist. 
Then I realized what she wanted was for me to love her: She began to warm up, and I saw her advantages. 

Without me, she wouldn't exist, so of course she was grateful. 
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose 
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain, And it was I who attracted everybody's attention, 
Not her whiteness and beauty, as I had at first supposed. 
I patronized her a little, and she lapped it up -- 
You could tell almost at once she had a slave mentality. 

I didn't mind her waiting on me, and she adored it. 
In the morning she woke me early, reflecting the sun 
From her amazingly white torso, and I couldn't help but notice 
Her tidiness and her calmness and her patience: She humored my weakness like the best of nurses, 
Holding my bones in place so they would mend properly. In time our relationship grew more intense. 

She stopped fitting me so closely and seemed offish. 
I felt her criticizing me in spite of herself, 
As if my habits offended her in some way. She let in the drafts and became more and more absent-minded. 
And my skin itched and flaked away in soft pieces 
Simply because she looked after me so badly. Then I saw what the trouble was: she thought she was immortal. She wanted to leave me, she thought she was superior, 
And I'd been keeping her in the dark, and she was resentful -- Wasting her days waiting on a half-corpse! 
And secretly she began to hope I'd die. Then she could cover my mouth and eyes, cover me entirely, 
And wear my painted face the way a mummy-case Wears the face of a pharaoh, though it's made of mud and water. 

I wasn't in any position to get rid of her. She'd supported me for so long I was quite limp -- I had forgotten how to walk or sit, So I was careful not to upset her in any way 
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself. Living with her was like living with my own coffin: Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully. I used to think we might make a go of it together -- 
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close. 
Now I see it must be one or the other of us. She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy, 
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit. I'm collecting my strength; one day I shall manage without her, 
And she'll perish with emptiness then, and begin to miss me. --written 26 Feburary 1961

Two chemicals called actin and myosin evolved eons ago to allow the muscles in insect wings to contract and relax. Thus, insects learned to fly. When one of those paired molecules are absent, wings will grow but they cannot flap and are therefore useless. Today, the same two proteins are responsible for the beating of the human heart, and when one is absent, the person’s heartbeat is inefficient and weak, ultimately leading to heart failure. Again, science marvels at the way molecules adapt over millions of years, but isn’t there a deeper intent? In our hearts, we feel the impulse to fly, to break free of boundaries. Isn’t that the same impulse nature expressed when insects began to take flight? The prolactin that generates milk in a mother’s breast is unchanged from the prolactin that sends salmon upstream to breed, enabling them to cross from saltwater to fresh.

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord to those who love him and know him.

Language signifies when instead of copying thought it lets itself be taken apart and put together again by thought. Language bears the sense of thought as a footprint signifies the movement and effort of a body. The empirical use of already established language should be distinguished from its creative use. Empirical language can only be the result of creative language. Speech in the sense of empirical language - that is, the opportune recollection of a preestablished sign – is not speech in respect to an authentic language. It is, as Mallarmé said, the worn coin placed silently in my hand. True speech, on the contrary - speech which signifies, which finally renders "l'absente de tous bouquets" present and frees the sense captive in the thing - is only silence in respect to empirical usage, for it does not go so far as to become a common noun. Language is oblique and autonomous, and if it sometimes signifies a thought or a thing directly, that is only a secondary power derived from its inner life. Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense.

I have only one memory of getting here, and even that is just a single image: black ink curling around the side of a neck, the corner of a tattoo, and the gentle sway that could only mean he was carrying me. He turns off the bathroom light and gets an ice pack from the refrigerator in the corner of the room. As he walks toward me, I consider closing my eyes and pretending to be asleep,but then our eyes meet and it's too late. "Your hands," I croak. "My hands are none of your concern," he replies. He rests his knee on the mattress and leans over me,slipping the ice pack under my head. Before he pulls away,I reach out to touch the cut on the side of his lip but stop when I realize what I am about to do, my hand hovering. What do you have to lose? I ask myself. I touch my fingertips lightly to his mouth. "Tris," he says, speaking against my fingers. "I'm all right." "Why were you there?" I ask, letting my hand drop. "I was coming back from the control room. I heard a scream." "What did you do to them?" I say. "I deposited Drew at the infirmary a half hour ago," he says. "Peter and Al ran. Drew claimed they were just trying to scare you.At least,I think that's what he was trying to say." "He's in bad shape?" "He'll live," he replies. He adds bitterly, "In what condition, I can't say." It isn't right to wish pain on other people just because they hurt me first. But white-hot triumph races through me at the thought of Drew at the infirmary, and I squeeze Four's arm. "Good," I say.My voice sounds tight and fierce.Anger builds inside me, replacing my blood with bitter water and filling me, consuming me.I wantt o break something,or hit something, but I am afraid to move,so I start crying instead. Four crouches by the side of the bed, and watches me. I see no sympathy in his eyes.I would have been disappointed if I had. He pulls his wrist free and, to my surprise, rests his hand on the side of my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone.His fingers are careful. "I could report this," he says. "No," I reply. "I don't want them to think I'm scared." He nods.He moves his thumb absently over my cheekbone, back and forth. "I figured you would say that." "You think it would be a bad idea if I sat up?" "I'll help you." Four grips my shoulder with one hand and holds my head steady with the other as I push myself up.Pain rushes through my body in sharp bursts,but I try to ignore it,stifling a groan. He hands me the ice pack. "You can let yourself be in pain," he says. "It's just me here.

He was sitting in the back of the booth, and Lila on the outside edge, as far from him as possible. She couldn't shake the feeling he was watching her beneath that brimmed cap, even though every time she checked, his attention was leveled on the tavern behind her head. His fingers traced absent pattern in a pool of spilled ale, but his green eye twitched in concentration. It took her several long seconds to realize he was counting bodies in the room. "Nineteen," she said coolly, and Alucard and Kell both looked at her as if she'd spoken out of turn, but Holland simply answered, "Twenty," and despite herself, Lila swiveled in her seat. She did a swift count. He was right. She'd missed on e of the men behind the bar. Dammit. "If you have to use your eyes," he added, "you're doing it wrong.

I’ve been absent from you too long. I miss you so badly and yet this being apart makes me realise you’re not simply the faithful man who loves me so astonishingly well, but an angel, sent for some unfathomable reason to look out for me. I should have realised this truth years ago because you are so extraordinary, so unlike other men, so unlike me, this weak, vain, faithless creature you have been so intent on saving from himself. I should have realised from the first moment I saw you in that trench, when I fell so badly in love with you and hoped you wouldn’t notice. Or perhaps not then, but later, when you saved my life so often just by lending me courage when I was half-mad from fear. How much courage you had to spare – I will never forget. But angels are courageous, aren’t they? I should know. I have never understood why I deserved such grace. I don’t have your faith, Patrick, or your love of God. I am uncertain and afraid, I wish you were with me now, not just in spirit, as I know you are and always have been, but here in body. I need to cower behind you, because if God is real He might be kinder knowing you loved me. If angels need to pray, pray for me.

When she reached out to the little girl in her, nothing erupted but the dense muteness of her own children in her belly. She felt helpless, alienated from her mirror-image, perceiving her body as a shallow vessel, possessed by human beings that she never met, draining her energy and suppressing her proper self, which she considered absent again.

When she stands in its ribcage, she recalls how she had once placed her hands on the outside of its body, and now she is inside its body, in the space created by its absent life. When she looks up, she sees the bones arching over her head against the vast starry sky like roof beams, like the skeletal beginnings of a strange new home. Something she has made from what was washed up, unwanted; something created from what was left to her.

Or would you feel how my love is wrapped around by the richest, the wildest song? And, if I said my love for you is like the time when the nightingale is absent from our twilight world, would you hear it as silence? Nothing? No love? Or as anticipation of that rich current of music, which fills heart, soul, body, mind.

To rise to the level of any state is to automatically become that state in expression. But, in order to rise to the level that you are not now expressing, you must completely drop the consciousness with which you are now identified. Until your present consciousness is dropped you will not be able to rise to another level. Do not be dismayed. This letting go of your present identity is not as difficult as it might appear to be. The invitation of the scriptures, "To be absent from the body and be present with the Lord," is not given to a select few; it is a sweeping call to all mankind. The body from which you are invited to escape is your present conception of yourself with all of its limitations, while the Lord with whom you are to be present is your awareness of being.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transfiguration there, until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. And while some books, like steps, are left behind us by the very help which they yield us, and serve only our childhood, or early life, some others go with us in mute fidelity to the end of life, a recreation for fatigue, an instruction for our sober hours, and a solace for our sickness or sorrow. Except the great out-doors, nothing that has no life of its own gives so much life to you.

Through butchering, animals become absent referents. Animals and name and body are made absent as animals for meat to exist. Animals' lives precede and enable the existence of meat. If animals are alive they cannot be meat. Thus a dead body replaces the live animal. Without animals there would be no meat eating, yet they are abent from the act of eating meat because they have been transformed into food (51).

I am dazed by the beauty of my body. today I looked at myself with your eyes. discovered the soft curve of shoulders the tired round breasts which want to sleep and slowly roll down in spite of themselves. my legs unfolding offering infinitely up to the limits absent from what is me and what beyond me throbs in every leaf in every raindrop. I saw myself as if through glass in your eyes looking at me. I felt your hands on the warm tight skin of my thighs and obeying your command I stood naked before a huge mirror. and then I covered your eyes not to see and not to feel the loneliness of my body blossoming with you.

No longer perceived across a distance, the world dissolves into my own blood, sustaining me from within via its nutritive powers. I am not just a gazing upon the world but one who feeds on it, drinks of it, breathes it in.

This was what Ditlev loved: ceaseless gunfire, ceaseless killing, flapping specks in the sky terminated in an orgy of color. The slow drizzle of birds' bodies falling from above. The eagerness of the men to reload their weapons.

Standing in the courtyard with a glass eye; only half the world is intelligible. The stones are wet and mossy and in the crevices are black toads. A big door bars the entrance to the cellar; the steps are slippery and soiled with bat dung. The door bulges and sags, the hinges are falling off, but there is an enameled sign on it, in perfect condition, which says: “Be sure to close the door.” Why close the door? I can’t make it out. I look again at the sign but it is removed; in it’s place there is a pane of colored glass. I take out my artificial eye, spit on it and polish it with my handkerchief. A woman is sitting on a dais above an immense carven desk; she has a snake around her neck. The entire room is lined with books and strange fish swimming in colored globes; there are maps and charts on the wall, maps of Paris before the plague, maps of the antique world, of Knossos and Carthage, of Carthage before and after the salting. In the corner of the room I see an iron bedstead and on it a corpse is lying; the woman gets up wearily, removes the corpse from the bed and absent mindedly throws it out the window. She returns to the huge carven desk, takes a goldfish from the bowl and swallows it. Slowly the room begins to revolve and one by one the continents slide into the sea; only the woman is left, but her body is a mass of geography. I lean out the window and the Eiffle Tower is fizzing champagne; it is built entirely of numbers and shrouded in black lace. The sewers are gurgling furiously. There are nothing but roofs everywhere, laid out with execrable geometric cunning.

In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the “endo-whatever,” had stained so much—my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn’t take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made. I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive system was a liability. The disease, developing part and parcel with my womanhood starting at puberty with my menses, affected my own self-esteem and the way I felt about my body. No one likes to get her period, but when your femininity carries with it such pain and consistent physical and emotional strife, it’s hard not to feel that your body is betraying you. The very relationship you have with yourself and your person is tainted by these ever-present problems. I now finally knew my struggles were due to this condition. I wasn’t high-strung or fickle and I wasn’t overreacting.

They all knew this was coming. They all knew war would reach into the pools of kinship between countless people and gut the innards of it like emptying out a pumpkin. So many seeds torn away and crushed into nothing; seeds of friendship, seeds of romance, seeds of family. All of them planted and ruined in various stages, left with nothing but growing pains and, worse than that, the pain of absent growth altogether. War is cruel. It's cancerous. The end of the world is always tied to war, isn't it? Maybe this is why; because war is so much more than just war. It goes beyond bullets and blood and bodies. War comes in like a flood, like a disease, and it claims anyone who comes in contact with it. Even the living can't get free from it; they're as claimed as the dead are. Once war touches them, they're branded to their last breath. In this world, most people have been branded for a lot longer than they stepped on their first battlefield.

You will never again threaten Magdelegna, or any other Demon, with your ignorance and avarice. Your death is too easy a punishment, necromancer. Be grateful for that.” A last breath rattled out of the necromancer, and Gideon released him with an absent shaking of his hand, as if flinging off some vile contaminant as the body fell to the floor. He turned his back on it without the slightest regret. His mercury gaze sought out Legna, settling on her just as she rose from her position over the female necromancer. She threw back her head and shoulders, taking the deep, cleansing breath of a female predator satisfied with her kill. She’d always been the most beautiful female he’d ever seen, but now, in this victorious moment, she was utterly stunning. Gideon felt a savage response within himself, an urge so vital that it took nearly every ounce of his formidable control to tamp it down and lock it out of his thoughts so she wouldn’t become aware of it.

In Berlin, Stauffenberg and his confederates had at last perfected their plans. They were lumped under the code name “Valkyrie”—an appropriate term, since the Valkyrie were the maidens in Norse-German mythology, beautiful but terrifying, who were supposed to have hovered over the ancient battlefields choosing those who would be slain. In this case, Adolf Hitler was to be slain. Ironically enough, Admiral Canaris, before his fall, had sold the Fuehrer the idea of Valkyrie, dressing it up as a plan for the Home Army to take over the security of Berlin and the other large cities in case of a revolt of the millions of foreign laborers toiling in these centers. Such a revolt was highly unlikely—indeed, impossible—since the foreign workers were unarmed and unorganized, but to the suspicious Fuehrer danger lurked everywhere these days, and, with almost all the able-bodied soldiers absent from the homeland either at the front or keeping down the populace in the far-flung occupied areas, he readily fell in with the idea that the Home Army ought to have plans for protecting the internal security of the Reich against the hordes of sullen slave laborers.

A gene is not indivisible, but it is seldom divided. It is either definitely present or definitely absent in the body of any given individual. A gene travels intact from grandparent to grandchild, passing straight through the intermediate generation without being merged with other genes. If genes continually blended with each other, natural selection as we now understand it would be impossible.

Who are you?" she said, barely able to hear her own words as her heartbeat thrummed in her ears. He froze at her question and darted his eyes from her gaze, taking in, memorizing, her face and neck, the lines of her collarbone. He reached for a lock of hair that had spilled over her breast. "This is your dream, remember? Tell me who I am," he said smiling, absently coiling the long brown tendril around a finger. She narrowed her eyes at him, her tone firm. "If this is my dream, oneiroi, then answer my question. Who are you?" He was hearing her true voice- that of a natural ruler. His smile widened at her fearlessness, even though he was twice her size and loomed over her, caging her body with his. "I am not an oneiroi, sweet one." "What are you, then?" "Deathless," he said simply. "Like you." "Wh-who are you?" she whispered. He slowly lowered himself to her, hovering just above her, the heat of his chest making contact with her, making her quiver, making her want to pull the weight of his body down to cover hers. He whispered in her ear. "I am your lord husband.

Better beware of the newly dead Of the white-handed ghost And the brightness of these lamps . . . wrote Luc Berimont in 1940, in Reign of Darkness. I’ve always felt the greatest reluctance to go anywhere near, to touch, a fresh corpse. For me, it’s an unseemly thing. Useless. Hostile. Cunning. Dangerous. The ‘presence’ is much stronger, more perceptible one hour after death than one hour before. By my observation, this was not the case with Heisserer. He was entirely absent from his head, his hands,his quivering body. He was gone instantly, unburdened of his absurd life, released.

The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As though the clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the clouds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream. A

Every relation between forms in a painting is to some degree adaptable to the painter's purpose. This is not the case with photography. Composition in the profound, formative sense of the word cannot enter into photography. The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time. One might argue that photography is as close to music as to painting. I have said that a photograph bears witness to a human choice being exercised. The choice is not between photographing X and Y: but between photographing at X moment or at Y moment. The objects recorded in any photograph (from the most effective to the most commonplace) carry approximately the same weight, the same conviction. What varies is the intensity with which we are made aware of the poles of absence and presence. A photograph, while recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not seen. It isolates, preserves, and presents a moment taken from a continuum. The only decision (the still photographer) can take is as regards the moment he chooses to isolate. Yet this apparent limitation gives the photograph its unique power. The immediate relation between what is present and what is absent is particular to each photograph: it may be that of ice to sun, of grief to tragedy, of a smile to a pleasure, of a body to love, of a winning race-horse to the race it has run.

Violet felt so free. She could hear Jay laughing from behind her as he held on tight. She spun the craft first sharply to the right and then quickly to the left. He knew she was trying to buck him free, testing him to see how long he could hold on to her before being tossed into the frigid water of the lake as she maneuvered the miniature speedboat back and forth. But he was stronger now than ever before, and his reflexes were sharper. He seemed to know which way she was going to go even before she did. After a while, Violet slowed down near a floating dock in the lake and parked the Wave Runner. “Do you want to jump in?” she asked as she pulled the key from the ignition without waiting for an answer, making it more of a statement than a question. Jay stood up and hopped from the Wave Runner onto the dock. Violet joined him and instead of diving into the water, she sat down and dangled her feet in. “It’s quiet here,” he commented absently. He sat down beside her. “Mm-hmm,” she sighed, kicking her feet and splashing up water. “How are your knees?” He reached out and brushed his fingers across the damp bandages. Violet shrugged. “They’re fine . . .” and then she added with mock adoration, “. . . thanks to you, of course.” And to show her gratitude, she kicked water in his direction. He nudged her with his shoulder but didn’t say anything. They stayed like that for a while, enjoying the silence of being alone and enjoying each other’s presence. It was easy . . . and comfortable.

Every limb [of my body] sees him, even if he be absent from me, in every delicate, clear, joyous essence, In the tune of the melodious lute and flute when they blend together in trilling strains, And in luxurious pasturage of gazelles in the coolness of twilight and in the first rays of dawning, And in misty rains falling from a cloud on a carpet woven of flowers, And where the breeze sweeps her train, guiding to me most fragrant attar at sweet dawn, And when I kiss the lip of the cup, sipping the clear wine in pleasure and joy. I knew no estrangement from my homeland when he was with me: My mind was undisturbed where we were— That place was my home while my beloved was present; where the sloping dune appeared, that was my halting- place. (Ibn al-Fārid)

No, I’d open a refuge for mothers. A retreat. Concrete 1970s brutalism, an anti-domestic architecture without flounces. Something low with big windows and wide corridors, carpets to deaden sound. There will be five or six rooms off the corridor, each with a wall of glass and sliding doors looking on to a cold, grey beach. Each room has a single bed in the corner, a table and chair. You may bring your laptop but there is no internet access and no telephone. There are books with a body count of zero and no suffering for anyone under the age of eight. A cinema where everything you wanted to see in the last eight years is shown at a time that allows you to have an early night afterwards. And the food, the kind of food you’re pleased to have eaten as well as pleased to eat, is made by a chef, a childless male chef, and brought to your room. You may ask him for biscuits at any moment of the day or night, send your mug back because you dislike the shape of the handle, and change your mind after ordering dinner. And there is a swimming pool, lit from below in a warm, low-ceilinged room without windows, which may be used by one mummy at a time to swim herself into dream. Oh, fuck it, I am composing a business plan for a womb with a view. So what? I’ll call it Hôtel de la Mère and the only real problem is childcare. Absent, children cause guilt and anxiety incompatible with the mission of the Hôtel; present, they prevent thought or sleep, much more swimming and the consumption of biscuits. We need to turn them off for a few days, suspend them like computers. Make them hibernate. You can’t uninvent children any more than you can uninvent the bomb.

April 20 MORNING “That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death.” — Hebrews 2:14 O child of God, death hath lost its sting, because the devil’s power over it is destroyed. Then cease to fear dying. Ask grace from God the Holy Ghost, that by an intimate knowledge and a firm belief of thy Redeemer’s death, thou mayst be strengthened for that dread hour. Living near the cross of Calvary thou mayst think of death with pleasure, and welcome it when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die in the Lord: it is a covenant-blessing to sleep in Jesus. Death is no longer banishment, it is a return from exile, a going home to the many mansions where the loved ones already dwell. The distance between glorified spirits in heaven and militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not so. We are not far from home — a moment will bring us there. The sail is spread; the soul is launched upon the deep. How long will be its voyage? How many wearying winds must beat upon the sail ere it shall be reefed in the port of peace? How long shall that soul be tossed upon the waves before it comes to that sea which knows no storm? Listen to the answer, “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” Yon ship has just departed, but it is already at its haven. It did but spread its sail and it was there. Like that ship of old, upon the Lake of Galilee, a storm had tossed it, but Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” and immediately it came to land. Think not that a long period intervenes between the instant of death and the eternity of glory. When the eyes close on earth they open in heaven. The horses of fire are not an instant on the road. Then, O child of God, what is there for thee to fear in death, seeing that through the death of thy Lord its curse and sting are destroyed? and now it is but a Jacob’s ladder whose foot is in the dark grave, but its top reaches to glory everlasting.

The science of Raja-Yoga, in the first place, proposes to give us such a means of observing the internal states. The instrument is the mind itself. The power of attention, when properly guided, and directed towards the internal world, will analyse the mind, and illumine facts for us. The powers of the mind are like rays of light dissipated; when they are concentrated, they illumine. This is our only means of knowledge. Everyone is using it, both in the external and the internal world; but, for the psychologist, the same minute observation has to be directed to the internal world, which the scientific man directs to the external; and this requires a great deal of practice. From our childhood upwards we have been taught only to pay attention to things external, but never to things internal; hence most of us have nearly lost the faculty of observing the internal mechanism. To turn the mind as it were, inside, stop it from going outside, and then to concentrate all its powers, and throw them upon the mind itself, in order that it may know its own nature, analyse itself, is very hard work. Yet that is the only way to anything which will be a scientific approach to the subject. What is the use of such knowledge? In the first place, knowledge itself is the highest reward of knowledge, and secondly, there is also utility in it. It will take away all our misery. When by analysing his own mind, man comes face to face, as it were, with something which is never destroyed, something which is, by its own nature, eternally pure and perfect, he will no more be miserable, no more unhappy. All misery comes from fear, from unsatisfied desire. Man will find that he never dies, and then he will have no more fear of death. When he knows that he is perfect, he will have no more vain desires, and both these causes being absent, there will be no more misery — there will be perfect bliss, even while in this body. There

Elizabeth,” he interrupted in a husky whisper, and suddenly his eyes were smoldering as he held out his hand, sensing victory before Elizabeth ever realized she was defeated. “Come here.” Of its own accord Elizabeth’s hand lifted, his fingers closed around it, and suddenly she was hauled forward; arms like steel bands encircled her, and a warm, searching mouth descended on hers. Parted lips, tender and insistent, stroked hers, molding and shaping them to fit his, and then the kiss deepened abruptly while hands tightened on her back and shoulders, caressing and possessive. A soft moan interrupted the silence, but Elizabeth didn’t know the sound came from her; she was reaching up, her hands grasping broad shoulders, clinging to them for support in a world that had suddenly become dark and exquisitely sensual, where nothing mattered except the body and mouth locked hungrily to hers. When he finally dragged his mouth from hers Ian kept his arms around her, and Elizabeth laid her cheek against his crisp white shirt, feeling his lips brush the hair atop her head. “That was an even bigger mistake than I feared it would be,” he said, and then he added almost absently, “God help us both.” Strangely, it was that last remark that frightened Elizabeth back to her senses. The fact that he thought they’d gone so far that they’d both need some sort of divine assistance hit her like a bucket of ice water. She pulled out of his arms and began smoothing creases from her skirt. When she felt able, she lifted her face to his and said with a poise born of sheer terror, “None of this should have happened. However, if we both return to the ballroom and contrive to spend time with others, perhaps no one will think we were together out here. Good-bye, Mr. Thornton.” “Good night, Miss Cameron.” Elizabeth was too desperate to escape to remark on his gentle emphasis on the words “good night,” which he’d deliberately used instead of “good-bye,” nor did she notice at the time that he didn’t seem to realize she was correctly Lady Cameron, not Miss Cameron.

Also enraged at myself. Or not at myself - at this bad turn my body has done me. After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken. It's an affront, all of that. Weak knees, arthritic knuckles, varicose veins, infirmities, indignities - they aren't ours, we never wanted or claimed them. Inside our heads we carry ourselves perfected - ourselves at the best age, and in the best light as well: never caught awkwardly, one leg out of a car, one still in, or picking our teeth, or slouching, or scratching our noses or bums. If naked, seen gracefully reclining through a gauzy mist, which is where movie stars come in: they assume such poses for us. They are our younger selves as they recede from us, glow, turn mythical.

It takes the better part of those months for Herr Thiessen to complete the clock. He works on little else, though the sum of money involved makes the arrangement more than manageable. Weeks are spent on the design and the mechanics. He hires an assistant to complete some of the basic woodwork, but he takes care of all the details himself. Herr Thiessen loves details and he loves a challenge. He balances the entire design on that one specific word Mr. Barris used. Dreamlike. The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As thought clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actually paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that our into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the hour chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the colds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

Tides and the 2,000-Mile Man What causes the seas to rise and fall as if they were breathing two big breaths every day? It’s the Moon, of course, but how does it do it, and why twice a day? I will explain, but first let me tell you about the fall of the 2,000-Mile Man. Imagine the 2,000-Mile Man—a giant who measures 2,000 miles from the tip of his head to the bottoms of his feet—as he falls, feet-first, from outer space toward the Earth. Far out in outer space, gravity is weak—so weak that he feels nothing. But as he gets closer to the Earth, strange sensations arise in his long body—sensations not of falling but of being stretched. The problem is not the giant’s overall acceleration toward the Earth. The cause of his discomfort is that gravity is not uniform throughout space. Far from the Earth, it is almost entirely absent. But as he draws closer, the pull of gravity increases. For the 2,000-Mile Man, this presents difficulties even while he is in free fall. The poor man is so tall that the pull on his feet is much stronger than the pull on his head. The net effect is an uncomfortable feeling that his head and feet are being pulled in opposite directions. Perhaps he can avoid being stretched by falling in a horizontal position, legs and head at the

Have you met my new dancer?" The girl approached and he was able to dink in the sigh of her with a slackened jaw. Her short, icy-blonde hair wisped around her face, drawing him in to her deep brown eyes. Her brows had a strong arch to them that made her look as though she was either intrigued or annoyed. Beau didn't care so long as she was looking at him. He liked his lips absently, letting his gaze sweep over her face for a moment more. He couldn't stop his brain from picturing her smearing the shimmering pink gloss from her perfect mouth all over his body. Leaving her mark. He cursed in his thoughts again. Who the hell was this girl and what was she doing to him? He cleared his throat and extended his hand toward her coolly. "Beau Harris, nice to meet you," he said. The corner of the young woman's mouth twitched and she took his hand before her eyes darted to Vanessa. "Beau!" Vanessa barked. He glanced at her and reluctantly dropped the dancer's hand. He looked between the two woman for a moment and tried to keep his gaze up and off the stranger's tight, tanned stomach. "What?" He bit back. Vanessa huffed and a cackled cracked out of her throat. "You losing eyesight in your old age? That's Whitney. My little sister," she said, drawing out her words out like he was an idiot.

Elizabeth’s concern that Ian might insult them, either intentionally or otherwise, soon gave way to admiration and then to helpless amusement as he sat for the next half-hour, charming them all with an occasional lazy smile or interjecting a gallant compliment, while they spent the entire time debating whether to sell the chocolates being donated by Gunther’s for $5 or $6 per box. Despite Ian’s outwardly bland demeanor, Elizabeth waited uneasily for him to say he’d buy the damned cartload of chocolates for $10 apiece, if it would get them on to the next problem, which she knew was what he was dying to say. But she needn’t have worried, for he continued to positively exude pleasant interest. Four times, the committee paused to solicit his advice; four times, he smilingly made excellent suggestions; four times, they ignored what he suggested. And four times, he seemed not to mind in the least or even notice. Making a mental note to thank him profusely for his incredible forbearance, Elizabeth kept her attention on her guests and the discussion, until she inadvertently glanced in his direction, and her breath caught. Seated on the opposite side of the gathering from her, he was now leaning back in his chair, his left ankle propped atop his right knee, and despite his apparent absorption in the topic being discussed, his heavy-lidded gaze was roving meaningfully over her breasts. One look at the smile tugging at his lips and Elizabeth realized that he wanted her to know it. Obviously he’d decided that both she and he were wasting their time with the committee, and he was playing an amusing game designed to either divert her or discomfit her entirely, she wasn’t certain which. Elizabeth drew a deep breath, ready to blast a warning look at him, and his gaze lifted slowly from her gently heaving bosom, traveled lazily up her throat, paused at her lips, and then lifted to her narrowed eyes. Her quelling glance earned her nothing but a slight, challenging lift of his brows and a decidedly sensual smile, before his gaze reversed and began a lazy trip downward again. Lady Wiltshire’s voice rose, and she said for the second time, “Lady Thornton, what do you think?” Elizabeth snapped her gaze from her provoking husband to Lady Wiltshire. “I-I agree,” she said without the slightest idea of what she was agreeing with. For the next five minutes, she resisted the tug of Ian’s caressing gaze, firmly refusing to even glance his way, but when the committee reembarked on the chocolate issue again, she stole a look at him. The moment she did, he captured her gaze, holding it, while he, with an outward appearance of a man in thoughtful contemplation of some weighty problem, absently rubbed his forefinger against his mouth, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. Elizabeth’s body responded to the caress he was offering her as if his lips were actually on hers, and she drew a long, steadying breath as he deliberately let his eyes slide to her breasts again. He knew exactly what his gaze was doing to her, and Elizabeth was thoroughly irate at her inability to ignore its effect. The committee departed on schedule a half-hour later amid reminders that the next meeting would be held at Lady Wiltshire’s house. Before the door closed behind them, Elizabeth rounded on her grinning, impenitent husband in the drawing room. “You wretch!” she exclaimed. “How could you?” she demanded, but in the midst of her indignant protest, Ian shoved his hands into her hair, turned her face up, and smothered her words with a ravenous kiss. “I haven’t forgiven you,” she warned him in bed an hour later, her cheek against his chest. Laughter, rich and deep, rumbled beneath her ear. “No?” “Absolutely not. I’ll repay you if it’s the last thing I do.” “I think you already have,” he said huskily, deliberately misunderstanding her meaning.

Was that not the effect behind my daily reading of the paper? In their businesses and politics, their taverns, movies, assaults, divorces, murders, I tried continually to find clear signs of their common humanity. It was undeniably to, my interest to do this. Because I was involved with them; because, whether I liked it or not, they were my generation, my society, my world. We were figures in the same plot, eternally fixed together. I was aware, also, that their existence, just as it was, made mine possible. And if, as was often said, this part of the century was approaching the nether curve in a cycle, then I, too, would remain on the bottom and there, extinct, merely add my body, my life, to the base of a coming time. This would probably be a condemned age. But... it might be a mistake to think of it in that way. Mists faded and spread and faded on the pane as I breathed. Perhaps a mistake. And when I thought of the condemned ages and those unnamed, lying in their obscurity, I wondered. How did we know how it was? In all principal ways the human spirit must have been the same. Good apparently left fewer traces. And we were coming to know that we had misjudged whole epochs. Besides, the giants of the last century had their Liverpools and Londons, their Lilles and Hamburgs to contend against, as we have our Chicagos and Detroits. And there might be a chance that I was misled, even with these ruins before my eyes, sodden, themselves the color of the fateful paper that I read daily. I have spoken of an "invariable question." But the fact is that it had for many months been not in the least invariable. These were things I would have thought last winter, and now, in their troubled density, they served only to remind me of the sort of person I had been. For a long time "common humanity" and "bring myself to concede" had been completely absent from my mind. And all at once I saw how I had lapsed from that older self to whom they had been so natural.

Nobody chooses to experience trauma. Whether it’s a natural disaster, a devastating accident, or an act of interpersonal violence, trauma often leaves people feeling violated and absent a sense of control. Because of this, it’s vital that survivors feel a sense of choice and autonomy in their mindfulness practice. We want them to know that in every moment of practice, they are in control. Nothing will be forced upon them. They can move at a pace that works for them, and they can always opt out of any practice. By emphasizing self-responsiveness, we help put power back in the hands of survivors. The body is central to this process. Survivors need to know they won’t be asked to override signals from their body, but to listen to them—one way they’ll learn to stay in their window of tolerance. We can accomplish this, in part, through our selection of language. Rather than give instructions as declarations, we can offer invitations that increase agency. Here are a few examples: • “In the next few breaths, whenever you’re ready, I invite you to close your eyes or have them open and downcast” (as opposed to “Close your eyes”). • “You appeared to be hyperventilating at the end of that last meditation. Would you like to talk to me for a minute about it?” (versus “You looked terrified. I need to talk to you”). In all of our interactions, we can tailor our instructions to be invitations instead of commands. Another way to emphasize choice is to provide different options in practice. We can offer students and clients the choice to have their eyes open or closed, or to adopt a posture that works best for them (e.g., standing, sitting, or lying down). Any time we are offering different ways people can practice, we can also work to normalize any choice they make—one way is not superior to the other.17 While we can encourage people to stay through the duration of a meditation period, we also want them to know that leaving the room—especially if they are surpassing their window of tolerance—is an option that is always available to them.

...literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind ; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null , negligible and nonexistent. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane—smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write always about the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how it has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher's turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which it wages by itself, with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. Short of these, this monster, the body, this miracle, its pain, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of the wings, into the raptures of transcendentalism. More practically speaking, the public would say that a novel devoted to influenza lacked plot; they would complain that there was no love in it—wrongly however, for illness often takes on the disguise of love, and plays the same odd tricks, investing certain faces with divinity, setting us to wait, hour after hour, with pricked ears for the creaking of a stair, and wreathing the faces of the absent (plain enough in health, Heaven knows) with a new significance, while the mind concocts a thousand legends and romances about them for which it has neither time nor liberty in health.

literature does itsnbest to maintain that its concern is with the mind ; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null , negligible and nonexistent. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane—smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write always about the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how it has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher's turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which it wages by itself, with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. Short of these, this monster, the body, this miracle, its pain, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of the wings, into the raptures of transcendentalism. More practically speaking, the public would say that a novel devoted to influenza lacked plot; they would complain that there was no love in it—wrongly however, for illness often takes on the disguise of love, and plays the same odd tricks, investing certain faces with divinity, setting us to wait, hour after hour, with pricked ears for the creaking of a stair, and wreathing the faces of the absent (plain enough in health, Heaven knows) with a new significance, while the mind concocts a thousand legends and romances about them for which it has neither time nor liberty in health.

Jackaby was still engrossed in his examination when I came back inside. “Books. Books. Just books,” he was muttering. Jenny was hovering by the window. I joined her. “How did you manage it, by the way?” I asked. “All those Bibles, all across town? It is a remarkable feat.” “It looks more impressive than it is,” she said, still not meeting my eyes. “I borrowed Jackaby’s special satchel, the one that holds anything. The whole pile took just one trip. The real trick was keeping myself solid all the way home. That’s the bit I’m really proud of—” She turned to face me. “Oh, Abigail, it was amazing. People saw me!” “People saw you?” “I was in disguise, of course. I wore my long coat and gloves, and I had that floppy white hat on, so they didn’t see much, but still—people saw me and they didn’t gasp or make a scene. Someone even mumbled Good day to me as I was crossing the footbridge! It was exhilarating! I have never been so excited to have somebody see me—actually see me—and not care at all!” She glanced at Jackaby. “Although you would think I would be used to it by now.” “Jenny, that is absolutely amazing!” I said. “It is, isn’t it?” she said wistfully. “Just a little bit, at least? Oh, Abigail, I’m exhausted, I’m not ashamed to tell you. I had planned on setting my spoils out in nice triumphant rows when I got back, but it was all I could do to hold myself intact by then. Solidity is sort of like flexing a muscle, except the muscle is in your mind, and your mind is really just an abstract concept. I was basically flexing my entire body into existence the whole way home. But did it merit so much as a Good job, Jenny from that infuriating man?” Jackaby surfaced from his perusal and looked up at last. His cloud gray eyes found focus on Jenny. From his expression, I couldn’t tell if he had been following our conversation or not. “Completely unexceptional,” he said. “Nothing at all in this batch. We will need to scrutinize them more closely, of course, just to be sure. Oh, and Miss Cavanaugh . . .” She raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You performed . . . quite adequately,” he said, “despite expectations.” Jenny opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it again. Her face fluttered through a series of potential reactions. Finally she just threw up her hands and vanished from sight with a muffled whuph of air closing into the space where she suddenly wasn’t. “What in heaven’s name was all that?” said Jackaby. “Exquisite frustration, I believe, sir.” “Ah. Right.” He slumped into the desk chair and began to fidget absently with the spine of one of the Bibles. “Miss Cavanaugh is a singular and exceptional spirit, you know.” “Only a suggestion, sir, but that is precisely the sort of thing you might consider saying when she is still present and corporeal.

What can he tell them? He, who knows nothing. Ibn al Mohammed has not planned atrocities nor committed them. He has never been in the presence of terrorists. Yet Satan’s agents suspect him. He is dark-complected. His hair and beard are black. His name is Muslim. Body tall and slender, hands large, their fingers long and tapered. Dark eyes sunken in a narrow face. Irises like obsidian. He prays on hands and knees, forehead touching the floor. Thoughtlessly aligned, his cage obliges him to face a white plastic wall to bow toward Mecca. No matter; Ibn al Mohammed requires no sight of ocean or sky to know his place in the universe. He knows himself as one chosen, beloved of God. A man whose devotion will allow him to be saved. Standing at the bars, he stares at the plastic wall. Modesty panel, they call it. The detainee wills nothing, attempts nothing, merely stares at blankness as his mind opens toward such signs as might appear. Something, nothing. However little, however great, whatever God vouchsafes is sufficient. The least sign is enough. A crease in the plastic. A shadow cast against its insensate skin, then fleeing, gone. A raindrop: trickling through the roof, one small drop might touch the wall, leave a transparent streak, a tear without sorrow to confirm his understanding of what is and must be. Recognition. Acceptance. By such a sign he will know he is not forsaken. That God notices and prepares a place. He will not serve in the harvest. He will eat the food, drink the water, ride the bus. He will not pick the berries so prized by his captors. Droids will cajole and threaten; perhaps they will beat him. If so, they incriminate themselves. He relishes their degradation together with God’s tasking, this new test of will and faith. To suffer in silence, as meek as a lamb. Ibn al Mohammed will remove himself from himself. Self fading into background, his presence will diminish. His body will persist; corporeally, he must endure. But his self will become absent. Mind and its thought, heart and all emotion will disperse smoke-like into nothingness and in its vanishing forestall injury, indignity, all pain. Does God approve? Does God see? A mere token will assure Ibn al Mohammed for a lifetime. Standing at the bars, he watches. Minutes pass. How long must he wait? God speaks at His leisure to those with patience to attend. What does it mean, to have enough patience to attend to God? It is a discipline to expect nothing because you deserve nothing and merit only death. Ibn al Mohammed has waited all his life. What has he seen? His father taken away. His mother and sisters scrounging in a desert. He himself is confined in-cage. Squats on a stool, shits in a pail. Rain rattles across sheet tin, pock-pock-pock-pock. Food is delivered on a tray. A damp bed beneath his body, a white wall before his eyes. What does Ibn al Mohammed see? He sees nothing. [pp. 203-204]

I’m first up, love,” Arion says as he starts invading my space again. “I thought the only thing holding you back was your fear. Clearly the fear is absent if you’re willing to turn yourself over to the very darkest part of me. It’s amazing you’re in one piece, so clearly you played submissive very well, Violet. It’s because you were ready for me to save you and overcame your fear of me. Now we can be together.” When I say nothing and simply stare at him like he’s forever losing his mind more and more when we speak, he frowns like he’s genuinely perplexed. “Arion, no matter what you did, I couldn’t have endured another second of those cries. And you were at Abby’s mercy while in that state. You ripped my throat out and told me to put on some healing potion so you could sit down and watch the fight.” Apparently, I guess right, because his pupils widen marginally. “I held your hand when you finished,” he says like he’s defending himself. “So you could watch the fight.” “Vance was focused. It’s been ages since he focused. Thing of beauty while it happens,” he says as if that’s important information. I gesture between us. “That’s sort of the problem. I feel like the conduit for your feelings for them because you have heterosexual body parts with a homosexual mentality. I’m not sure I’m okay with simply being a conduit,” I carefully explain, causing his eyes to widen a little more, as several muffled sounds of amusement spring from somewhere else in the room. “I’m sorry, love, but you’ve really lost me,” Arion says very seriously, brow crinkling. “You want this to be a thing between you and me, even though Idun is returning, because you want them back. It looks like you’re getting that without me, so we can be friends,” I suggest, completely rambling. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well, since they’re all muffling laughter down the hall. Even Vance makes a choked sound of amusement. Or they’re just really immature about these things… That’s definitely possible. Arion scrubs a hand over his face, as someone struggles to cover a surprise laugh with a cough. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be having this conversation right now. It’s inappropriate to do with an audience,” I babble. “But you’re really intense. And I’ve just survived an apocalyptic wolf storm with your mostly naked beta, whose threads are still in my bra because one set of clothes ended up being enough.” The look of frustrated confusion on his face doubles. “I could use a small break before we discuss curses, some really confusing relationship statuses, and the somewhat terrifying woman you’ve all loved rising very soon. And those wolves stole my oranges, so I need to go back and get all of them.” “I’ve already returned them to your cellar,” Emit says from somewhere behind Arion. “Then I need to go start using them while they’re useable,” I say as I quickly disentangle myself from Arion and attempt to escape. “I’ll return the shirt.” “Keep it,” he says quietly from behind me, as I finally take in the other three all standing somewhat close together, smirking at me. “I’ll drive you home,” Damien says with a slow grin. “I’m not talking to you, and if you’re a smart man, you’ll figure out why,” I state firmly. “Only when you figure it out will we discuss it.” “I’ll take you—” “I don’t want to talk to you right now, because I need to get my cool back,” I tell Emit, whose eyes immediately flick away, as his jaw tics. He’s had multiple opportunities to explain to me why he told Damien I was a monster, and yet didn’t even bother telling me what I was. All this time, I’ve been patiently waiting, refusing to get too angry. Now…I’m getting sort of freaking angry, because he still hasn’t said one word about it. “Guess that just leaves me,” Vance says as he puts his hand at the small of my back and starts guiding me out.

Even if I ultimately do not know this stone absolutely, even if knowledge about the stone gradually approaches infinity but is never completed, it is still the case that the perceived stone is there, that I recognized it, that I named it, and that we agree upon a certain number of claims regarding it. So it seems we are led into a contradiction: the belief in the thing and in the world can only signify the presumption of a completed synthesis--and yet this completion is rendered impossible by the very nature of the perspectives to be tied together, since each of them refers indefinitely to other perspectives through its horizon. There is indeed a contradiction, so long as we are operating within being, but the contradiction ceases...if we operate within time, and if we succeed in understanding time as the measure of being. The synthesis of horizons is essentially temporal, that is...it does not suffer time, and it does not have to overcome time; but rather, it merges with the very movement by which time goes by. Through my perceptual field with its spatial horizons, I am present to my surroundings, I coexist with all the other landscapes that extend beyond, and all of these perspectives together form a single temporal wave, an instant of the world. Through my perceptual field with its temporal horizons, I am present to my present, to the entire past that has preceded it, and to a future. And at the same time, this ubiquity is not actual, it is clearly only intentional. The landscape that I have before my eyes can certainly announce to me the shape of the landscape hidden behind the hill, but it only does so with a certain degree of indetermination, for here there are fields, while over there might be a forest, and, in any case, beyond the next horizon I know only that there will be either land or sea, and beyond again, either open sea or frozen sea, and beyond again, either earth or sky, and, within the confines of the earth's atmosphere, I know only that there will be something to see in general. I possess no more than the abstract style of these distant landscapes. Likewise, even though each past is gradually enclosed entirely in the more recent past that it had immediately succeeded--thanks to the interlocking of intentionalities--the past degrades, and my first years are lost in the general existence of my body of which I know merely that it was already confronted with colors, sounds, and a similar nature to the one I presently see. My possession of the distant landscape and of the past, like my possession of the future, is thus only a possession in principle; my life slips away from me on all sides and it is circumscribed by impersonal zones. The contradiction that we find between the reality of the world and its incompleteness is the contradiction between the ubiquity of consciousness and its engagement in a field of presence...If the synthesis could be actual, if my experience formed a closed system, if the thing and the world could be defined once and for all, if spatio-temporal horizons could (even ideally) be made explicit and if the world could be conceived from nowhere, then nothing would exist. I would survey the world from above, and far from all the places and times suddenly becoming real, they would in fact cease to be real because I would not inhabit any of them and I would be nowhere engaged. If I am always and everywhere, then I am never and nowhere. Thus, there is no choice between the incompleteness of the world and its existence, between the engagement and the ubiquity of consciousness, or between transcendence and immanence, since each of these terms, when it is affirmed by itself, makes its contradiction appear. What must be understood is that for the same reason I am present here and now, and present everywhere and always, or absent from here and now and absent from every place and from every time. This ambiguity is not an imperfection of consciousness or of existence, it is their very definition.

AJ huffed a heavy sigh. “I’m not good at this.” She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands tucked under her legs. “Good at what?” “This…” he motioned between them “…this relationship stuff. I should care enough to ask you more about your past, the blood thing, the ridiculous profession you’ve chosen, the reason why you’re living with your brother … but I’m too fucking selfish. I can barely deal with my own pathetic life, I just—” She shook her head. “It’s fine. I have nothing to tell.” His head jerked back a fraction as his eyelids fluttered with rapid blinks. “What is that supposed to mean?” Jillian lifted a single shoulder. “You act like I’m on a cliff’s edge just waiting, begging you to ask me about my past and my ‘issues,’ but I’m not. The fact that you don’t ask me about it is why this…” she mimicked his motion between them “…relationship works.” He nodded with an absent stare. She’d gone too far. It was a slippery balance between too much and not enough. It’s human nature to desire what’s perceived as the unattainable. Was she making her past seem too unattainable? “Don’t.” AJ’s gaze snapped to hers. “Don’t what?” “I was simply stating a fact. Don’t interpret it as a game. I’m not playing hard to get with my emotions. It’s not a trap.” He rested his hands on his hips and stared at his feet. “It’s a gift, AJ. You will never have to be my gallant knight on his trusty steed, drawing your sword to defend my honor. I will never gawk at sparkly diamonds in the jewelry store window or ask you where you see our relationship going.” “You sound callous, but I know you’re not. I’ve experienced your compassion.” “That’s a gift too. I’ve never been compassionate toward you with an ulterior motive. I’m not callous. I’m strong. It takes a lot of strength to give unconditionally because the ego is a savage, demanding beast.” He narrowed his eyes a bit. “So nothing … you don’t want anything from me in return.” Jillian smirked, prowling toward him. “I’m compassionate, not a saint.” She slid her hands under his shirt, tracing the definition of each firm plane of muscle. He quirked a brow. “So you want me for my body?” A provocative smirk stole her lips as she pushed up his shirt and teased her teeth over his skin. “I think we both know it’s not for your stellar personality.” “You’re such a bitch,” he growled, grabbing her ass and lifting her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and laughed. “But an honest bitch.

What's even more breathtaking is that all electron-those in your body, those in stars, and those distributed across the universe-arise as vibrations from one universal electron field that permeates the vacuum. So if this picture is true, then why isn't the universe completely filled with electrons, photons, and other particles everywhere? Well, one immediate surprise is that the universe can be filled with fields but be absent of particles. Something has to trigger all that potential energy in the fields to become particles, just like a push can make a ball roll down a hill to accumulate kinetic energy.

By April 23, 2014, thirty-four cases and six deaths from Ebola in Liberia were recorded. By mid-June, 16 more people died. At the time it was thought to be malaria but when seven more people died the following month tests showed that was the Ebola virus. The primary reason for the spreading of the Ebola virus was the direct contact from one person to the next and the ingesting of bush meat. Soon doctors and nurses also became infected. On July 2, 2014, the head surgeon of Redemption Hospital was treated at the JFK Medical Center in Monrovia, where he died from the disease. His death was followed by four nurses at Phebe Hospital in Bong County. At about the same time two U.S. health care workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and a nurse were also infected with the disease. However, they were medically evacuated from Liberia to the United States for treatment where they made a full recovery. Another doctor from Uganda was not so lucky and died from the disease. Arik Air suspended all flights between Nigeria and Liberia and checkpoints were set up at all the ports and border crossings. In August of 2014, the impoverished slum area of West Point was cordoned off. Riots ensued as protesters turned violent. The looting of a clinic of its supplies, including blood-stained bed sheets and mattresses caused the military to shoot into the crowds. Still more patients became infected, causing a shortage of staff and logistics. By September there had been a total of 3,458 cases of which there were 1,830 deaths according to the World Health Organization. Hospitals and clinics could no longer handle this crisis and patients who were treated outside died before they could get help. There were cases where the bodies were just dumped into the Mesurado River. The Ivory Coast out of compassion, opened carefully restricted humanitarian routes and resumed the previously suspended flights to Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the president of Libera sent a letter to President Barack Obama concerning the outbreak of Ebola that was on the verge of overrunning her country. The message was desperate, “I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us.” Having been a former finance minister and World Bank official, Johnson Sirleaf was not one for histrionics however she recognized the pandemic as extremely dangerous. The United States responded to her request and American troops came in and opened a new 60-bed clinic in the Sierra Leone town of Kenema, but by then the outbreak was described as being out of control. Still not understanding the dangerous contagious aspects of this epidemic at least eight Liberian soldiers died after contracting the disease from a single female camp follower. In spite of being a relatively poor country, Cuba is one of the most committed in deploying doctors to crisis zones. It sent more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa. In October Germany sent medical supplies and later that month a hundred additional U.S. troops arrived in Liberia, bringing the total to 565 to assist in the fight against the deadly disease. To understand the severity of the disease, a supply order was placed on October 15th for a 6 month supply of 80,000 body bags and 1 million protective suits. At that time it was reported that 223 health care workers had been infected with Ebola, and 103 of them had died in Liberia. Fear of the disease also slowed down the functioning of the Liberian government. President Sirleaf, had in an emergency announcement informed absent government ministers and civil service leaders to return to their duties. She fired 10 government officials, including deputy ministers in the central government who failed to return to work.

Wherefore, O ye who fear the Lord, praise Him in the places where ye now are. Change of place does not effect any drawing nearer unto God, but wherever thou mayest be, God will come to thee, if the chambers of thy soul be found of such a sort that He can dwell in thee and walk in thee. But if thou keepest thine inner man full of wicked thoughts, even if thou wast on Golgotha, even if thou wast on the Mount of Olives, even if thou stoodest on the memorial-rock of the Resurrection, thou wilt be as far away from receiving Christ into thyself, as one who has not even begun to confess Him. Therefore, my beloved friend, counsel the brethren to be absent from the body to go to our Lord, rather than to be absent from Cappadocia to go to Palestine; and if any one should adduce the command spoken by our Lord to His disciples that they should not quit Jerusalem, let him be made to understand its true meaning.

Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord--for we walk by faith, not by sight--we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.

you view the current status of the human body as a whole, many countries, like the United States, now confront a novel paradox. On the one hand, more wealth and impressive advances in health care, sanitation, and education since the Industrial Revolution have dramatically improved billions of people’s health, especially in developed nations. Children born today are far less likely to die from infectious mismatch diseases caused by the Agricultural Revolution and they are much more likely to live longer, grow taller, and be generally healthier than children born in my grandfather’s generation. As a consequence, the world’s population tripled over the course of the twentieth century. But on the other hand, our bodies face new problems that were barely on anyone’s radar screen a few generations ago. People today are much more likely to get sick from new mismatch diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and colon cancer, which were either absent or much less common for most of human evolutionary history, including most of the agricultural era. To understand how and why all this happened—and how to address these new problems—requires considering the industrial era through the lens of evolution. How did the Industrial Revolution along with the growth of capitalism, medical science, and public health affect the way our bodies grow and function? In

Paul said in II Corinthians 5:8, "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." Every saint who is absent from the body is present with the Lord Jesus in Heaven. At death the soul of the Christian is carried by the angels of God straight Home where Christ and the Father are.

Master Daie (Ta-hui) says this about kufu: In training ourselves to solve koan, we should neither make guesses or comments nor try to understand them. It is unnecessary to know the meanings of the words or justify our attitudes toward the koan presented to us. On the contrary, we should neither be empty and tranquil nor expect to be enlightened. It is still worse to be absent-minded. Whether we walk, dwell, sit, or lie down, we should always be one with the koan and try to keep in touch with them all the time.17 In the Mumonkan, Master Mumon Ekai (Wu-men Hui-k’ai) states, Arouse your entire body with its three hundred and sixty bones and joints and its eighty-four thousand pores of the skin. Summon up a spirit of great doubt and concentrate on this word “mu.” In order to do so, hold to the problem from morning to night without letting it go even for one second, and become one with the word “mu” (void) with all your strength.

You are not who you become when life throws the most difficult situations at you. You are not timid, faint-hearted, or sunk in gloom. You are not absent from this world, disinterested, or discouraging. You are what swells within you when you are joyful, spirited, and hopeful. You are what roams within every crevice of your body when you are most inspired. You are who you are when you are most at peace and ease. You are what makes your belly ache when you laugh alongside your favorite people. You are not who you are during the most turbulent periods of your life. You are meant to feel discomfort when life facilitates your growth and expansion. You are meant to feel alarmed and pulled out of your natural element during your evolution. Please don’t gloss over all that you are during your transformation.

...And looking back, at least we got to state our love...before our world in Orleans ended in a symphony of broken glass. Earlier that evening, I had sat on the porch with Matthieu-Michele, as Cross and Christy watched over their Grandpa Timothy's comatose body in the back bedroom. I looked down into Timothy's face and wept. Timmy already looked dead. He was deathly pale, and his hair was heavily streaked with grey. "Don't cry, Uncle Obadiah," Matthieu-Michele said tenderly. "Just have faith, and love Him. Believe in Him, and keep preaching His Word." "And here I thought that you were a man of science, like your Daddy Matt." "I cannot be both?" he smiled gently, as he took my hand and led me out on the back porch. He lowered me into a chair, and seated himself beside me. "Look at the stars," he said softly. "However could I believe in the vastness and the great wonder of the universe itself, and not in He who created it? Science and Theology go hand-in-hand; they are not polar opposites. We must remember, the Holy Bible is only a guide. God isn't just a quick-fix solution for all of our problems. He isn't a pill that we pop to make everything go away. Instead, He is a shepherd, looking out for us...loving us from a great distance and calling out to us constantly...and sometimes, things get lost in the translation. We, for example, as men, will try to weave our own selfish desires and prejudices in with His. That is the greatest sin of all, the great sin of mankind. It frightens people away from His Word and His Grace. They believe that He hates them, that it’s the voice of God condemning them, rather than the blackened hearts of the misguided men who twist His words to suit their doctrine of anger and misunderstanding. Their words are straight from the evil core of mankind, who, in their foolishness, try to take on the guise of God." I leaned upon him heavily, the tears wet upon my cheeks. "And to think that there were times when I wondered if I did any good at all," I sighed, "But His Word lives in your heart." Matthieu-Michele embraced me in his wings. "Uncle, you are a wonder!" he smiled. "Never doubt it. My father couldn't ask for a better vessel for His Word." "I love you, Boy," I whispered. "You and Croccifixio and Christophe...we will always be family, and nothing will ever part us--" ~*~*~*~ ...And it was over, just like that. It happened so quickly. The window in the front room exploded in a rain of glass, and two soldiers seized Arik. Two came for me as well, and I surrendered. Arik struggled, and was silenced with a blow to the back of the head. Matthieu-Michele--who had been behind me--was mysteriously absent, and Cross, Christy, Morgan and Simone were nowhere in sight. Matthieu-Michele must have thrown up a psychic bubble around them, and around Timothy's body, as Arik and I were manacled and taken out into the street. A barred wagon awaited us there, and we were roughly forced into it...

Mirroring My Mate 15 MIN 1. Think about a moment from your day when you felt peaceful, then think of another moment when peace was absent. These examples should be short and simple. 2 MIN 2. Once you have two examples in mind, briefly review: My body: What was my body feeling? My emotions: What emotions were present? 2 MIN Here are two examples: Peace: While enjoying my cup of coffee this morning, I felt joyful, calm, and peaceful. No Peace: Driving to work, I was stuck in traffic. At that point I felt anxious and restless; my stomach twisted into tight knots. 3. Now, take turns telling your stories including body sensations and emotions. Listener, once your spouse finishes telling one story, tell the story back to him or her nonverbally (using your body gestures, facial expressions and acting-out movements) based on what you observed and heard. Do this for both stories. (This step improves mindsight.) 8 MIN REMINDER: The elements of a nonverbal story include eye contact, facial expressions, vocal expressions, posture, gestures, timing, and intensity. 4. When you both finish your stories, discuss what you noticed from this exercise, then close with some quiet cuddling and resting together. 3 MIN

There are beatings, murders, summary executions, mutinies; only the progress of the pestilence prevents complete anarchy. Men become too ill to kill, then too ill to work. A helmsman with a neck bubo is strapped to the helm; a ship’s carpenter with a bloody cough, to his bench. A rigger shaking with fever is lashed to the mast. Gradually each escaping vessel becomes a menagerie of grotesques. Everywhere there are delirious men who talk to the wind and stain their pants with bloody anal leakages; and weeping men who cry out for absent mothers and wives and children; and cursing men who blaspheme God, wave their fists at an indifferent sky, and burble blood when they cough. There are men who ooze pus from facial and body sores and stink to high heaven; lethargic men who stare listlessly into the cruel, gray sea; mad men who laugh hysterically and dig filthy fingernails into purple, mottled flesh; and dead men, whose bloated bodies roll back and forth across pitching decks until they hit a rail or mast and burst open like piñatas.

Kiara rubbed her bruised throat and slid from the table. She jumped in reflex as Pitala moved his weapon toward the pair standing in the doorway. Before he could aim it at either man, two blasters came out of nowhere to balance their sights on his body. Two red targeting lasers hovered without shaking-one between his eyes and one over his grain. "Think," Nykyrian said ominously, clicking back the release of his blaster with his thumb. Pitala gave a nervous laugh, and held up his hands. "I wouldn't actually try to shoot you. I just wanted to see if you were as good as they say." "Better." Syn moved forward to pull Pitala's blaster from his hand. "And that's with me drunk off my ass. Imagine what I'd do to you sober." It was only after he was disarmed and Syn stood between her and Pitala that Nykyrian's red light vanished from Pitala's forehead. With an amazing nonchalance, Nykyrian holstered his weapon. "Apologize to Tara Zamir for ruining her night and you can leave." Angry black eyes focused on Kiara with an unspoken promise he would be back. "My apologies, princess," he rasped. "It was nothing personal." Cold sweat beaded on her body as Pitala bent and slapped his partner awake. Within seconds, the pair of assassins were gone. Her relief at their departure gave way to suspicion over the two of them and their intentions. "What are you doing here?" "Saving you," Nykyrian said absently, looking down the corridor with his back to them. -Nykyrian, Pitala, Syn, & Kiara

I want her, but not just for her body,” he admitted. He glanced at his drink, watching the napkin around it soak up the perspiration from the bottle. “She’s the one.” “She is?” Luna asked, her eyes wide, excitement sounded in her voice. “This is wonderful! You’ve finally found your mate.” He nodded absently. “If only she’d give me the time of day.

The whole idea of woman as temptress, or woman as subordinate to man, is absent from the Barbie cosmology. Ken is a gnat, a fly, a slave, an accessory of Barbie. Barbie was made perfect: her body has not evolved dramatically with time. Ken, by contrast, was a blunder: first scrawny, now pumped-up, his ever-changing body is neither eternal nor talismanic.

high he led a multitude of captives." It is immediately added that He had previously "descended first into the lower parts of the earth," i.e. the paradise division of Hades. during the present church-age the saved who died are "absent from the body, at home with the Lord." The wicked dead in hades, and the righteous dead "at home with the Lord," alike await the resurrection # Job 19:25 1Co 15:52 ¯ See Note "Mt 5:22

Clear blue eyes settled on me.  My body moved of its own accord.  My fingers played with the ends of his hair, absently noting that it was longer and softer than any man should have, and then my hands moved to stroke the stubble on a chiseled chin, up to a pouty bottom lip.  I grazed that lip with two fingers, and the end of his tongue poked out and licked my skin. Electricity flowed from the tips of my fingers down to the soles of my feet. 

At some point I must have fallen asleep on the couch I’d been sharing with Chase because an explosion on the TV jerked me awake. “It’s just the movie,” he whispered in my direction and ran his fingers over my cheek, “don’t move yet Princess.” “Don’t move? Why?” “I’m almost done, give me another minute or two.” I heard his hand moving back and forth across the paper slowly and waited until he kneeled down in front of the couch so his face was directly in front of mine. My breath caught and his electric blue eyes glanced down to my barely parted lips. His tongue absently wetted his lips and his teeth lightly bit down on his bottom one as his gaze roamed my face. “Why couldn’t I move?” I managed to ask when he started closing the distance between us. He abruptly stopped and blinked a few times, “Oh, um. Well … here. Just don’t freak out, okay? I wasn’t trying to be creepy.” “You’re not supposed to tell someone not to freak out, those words alone cause them to freak out.” Chase smirked, “Okay, well then don’t hit me or use your pressure point training on me again.” Before I could roll my eyes at him, he brought his sketch pad up in front of me and my jaw dropped. I felt my cheeks burn and he took that the wrong way. Snatching the pad of paper back up, he cursed softly. “I knew it was creepy.” “Chase,” I breathed and shook my head in an attempt to clear my thoughts, “that wasn’t creepy. Can I see it again?” When he didn’t make an attempt to move I reached my arm toward the book, “Please.” He handed it over with a sigh and looked at me with a sad smile, “I’m sorry, but you looked too perfect. I couldn’t let that opportunity pass.” My stupid blush came back with force when he said that and I focused at his drawing. It was amazing, somewhat embarrassing, but remarkable none the less. With the shading and the detail he’d captured of my upper body and face, it almost looked like a black and white photo. It was perfect. From my chest, throat and slightly open mouth to the way my hair fell around my face and my eyelashes rested against my cheeks, it was one hundred percent me. He even had my hand clutching the pillow under my head that was resting on his leg, as well as the blanket that had been pulled up to the swell of my breasts. Goose bumps covered my body as I realized he’d spent however long staring at, and replicating, every part of me while I’d been completely unaware. He was wrong, it wasn’t creepy, it was beautiful and strangely intimate. “Chase, it–” I cleared my throat and tried again, “It’s incredible.” Incredible didn’t cover it. “Yeah?” I looked up into his eyes and smiled, “Yeah.” We stayed there staring at each other, my mind and heart completely torn in two. One half desperately wanted to act on the feelings his drawing had stirred up in me, and the other was screaming at me to sit up and scoot away from him. Before I could try to make a decision, another series of explosions came from the TV and we both jolted away from each other. My

If you looking for Rafting Company in Rishikesh? Then we are the people to call because we have it all. If you are looking for camping in Rishikesh, adventure, fun, anticipation and family bonding then your one weekend with us is awaiting. As in this weekend we give you all kind of rafting in Rishikesh like river rafting, bungee jumping and trekking, if you are the daring kind. And you can dare to paint the town red then paintball is your thing. Diffidence prevents us from audacity, but we do have the best camps for hosting your family weekends. So what are you coming up for Pack your bags as Uttarakhand Adventure is calling. If adventure runs from side to side your veins and you dare to ride high on the wild waters of the Ganga then head to Rishikesh for a rejuvenate and exciting holiday journey. Revitalize your drained body and mind in the good-looking surroundings of this holy town and let the thrill of white water rafting take you absent from the rest of the world. Offering a synthesis of chilly conditions and gorgeous sand beaches with Garhwal Himalaya Mountains in the background, Rishikesh is one of the most important rafting destinations in India. It is a place that continues to strike the thoughts of city dwellers who want to escape from their work routine and droning lifestyle. The best element of river rafting company in Rishikesh is that it can be enjoyed by anyone; you don’t need to be a swimmer or a specialized rafter to enjoy this sport. The strong present of the Ganga flowing down from a very high height through the Himalayan Mountain Range makes it one of the best rivers in India to enjoy rafting adventure. Wash away your fears and go in front and sail crossways the river awash with demanding whirlpools and rapids. If you manage to successfully man oeuvre through the stretch with little help from the guide, you positively deserve a pat on your back for your skirmishing spirit. Most of river rafting packages in Rishikesh are incomplete without experiencing the rustic charm of beach camping under the open sky. The best instance for white water rafting in Rishikesh is from February to May and as of September to November. River Rafting is best enjoyed in the consecrated valley of Rishikesh which boasts of the Great Ganges River downward with an ultimate force and existing precisely as the originator intended her to be- Wild and Free. The attendance of numerous rapids and troughs along the make bigger of the river fortifies the stand of Rishikesh as the River Rafting capital of India. Once here; you will be given a crash course on the sport, its navigational technique, and how to make it safer. Following the briefing, the organizers will hand you gear like rafts, paddles, helmets and life jackets.

And there too was the cause of his happiness. Never far away, when I glanced over, he was standing in the full sun, and he looked bored, picking up small stones from the track and skimming them at a small bird, then absently rubbing a groove in the sand with the toe of his foot. The new boy, same as the old boys – healthy, young, beautiful and almost certainly stupid. Or clever enough to keep his mouth shut and know that opinions are not required of the emperor’s intimate companion. Those who talked least lasted longest. This one, with his thick, light brown hair, the tall fit body, the averted eyes, looked promising. I suppose he was the age Hadrian’s son might have been. Harmless enough. He had walked to the horses where they stood in their shelter and he was suddenly animated, rubbing their muzzles, letting the beasts lower their heads and push against him, taking a handful of grain which he scooped from the bucket, straight from his hand. Sabina said he had been a groom. He was smiling now, the ordinary beauty of youth transformed into something more special, so perhaps it was true. It was a good thing he liked horses; he would need some friends. At that moment I saw the emperor’s head turn across the earnest group of advisers and his eyes watch the boy as he stroked the animals. Perhaps this boy would do; would keep the emperor happy and occupied while they coped with Egypt.

It's an axiom of science that the better an experiment is, the more new questions it raises after it has answered the one you asked. By that standard my first simple test had been pretty good. The new problems branched out like the fingers on those restored limbs: Where did the injury currents come from? Were they in fact related to the nervous system and, if so, how? It seemed unlikely that they sprang into action only after an amputation; they must have existed before. There must have been a preexisting substratum of direct current activity that responded to the injury. Did the voltages I measured really reflect such currents, and did they flow throughout the salamander's body? Did other organisms have them? What structures carried them? What were their electrical properties? What were they doing the rest of the time,before injury and after healing? Could they be used to provoke regeneration where it was normally absent?

Forty-nine years of age. Left-handed. Limp originating from the left knee. Multiple hidden knives in his moth-colored light armor. Lack of ego projection, indicating absence of insecurity in body and deeds. Sociopathy? Delusions of heroism? No. That's usually supported by zeal. Why so distant? Extremely lonely? Tired? Bored? Distracted? Absent in his personal presentation is the theatricality o this public work. Which suggests a sophisticated system of operation, likely supported but he books in his library, and perhaps a personal philosophical treatise. This is philosopher-torturer with practical detachment of a pug butcher.

Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences,” they proclaim, and go on to note that these memories are not subject to the “wearing away process” of normal memories but “persist for a long time with astonishing freshness.” Nor can traumatized people control when they will emerge: “We must . . . mention another remarkable fact . . . namely, that these memories, unlike other memories of their past lives, are not at the patients’ disposal. On the contrary, these experiences are completely absent from the patients’ memory when they are in a normal psychical state, or are only present in a highly summary form.”21 (All italics in the quoted passages are Breuer and Freud’s.)

When I am gone, release me, let me go, I have so many things to see and do. You mustn’t tie yourself to me with tears. Be thankful for our beautiful years. I gave you my love, you can only guess How much you gave in happiness. I thank you for the love you each have shown, But now it’s time I traveled alone. So grieve a while for me, if grieve you must, Then let your grief be comforted by trust. It’s only for a time that we must part, So bless the memories within your heart. I won’t be far away, for life goes on, And if you need me, call and I will come. Though you can’t see or touch me, I’ll be near, And if you listen with your heart, you’ll hear All my love around you soft and clear, And then, when you must come this way alone, I’ll greet you with a smile and say “Welcome Home”— Absent from the body; present with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:8, about being absent from the body and present with the Lord.

All forms of orgiastic union have three characteristics: they are intense, even violent; they occur in the total personality, mind and body; they are transitory and periodical. Exactly the opposite holds true for that form of union which is by far the most frequent solution chosen by man in the past and in the present: the union based on conformity with the group, its customs, practices and beliefs. Here again we find a considerable development. In a primitive society the group is small; it consists of those with whom one shares blood and soil. With the growing development of culture, the group enlarges; it becomes the citizenry of a polis the citizenry of a large state, the members of a church. Even the poor Roman felt pride because he could say 'civis romanus sum'; Rome and the empire were his family, his home, his world. Also in con-temporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union in which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the herd. If i am like everybody else, if i have no feelings or thoughts which make me different, if i conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, i am saved; saved from the frightening experience of aloneness. The dictatorial systems use threats and terror to induce this conformity; the democratic countries, suggestion and propaganda. There is, indeed, one great difference between the two systems. In the democracies non-conformity is possible and, in fact, by no means entirely absent; in the totalitarian systems, only a few unusual heroes and martyrs can be expected to refuse obedience. But in spite of this difference the democratic societies show an over-whelming degree of conformity. The reason lies in the fact that there has to be an answer to the quest for union, and if there is no other or better way, then the union of herd con-formity becomes the predominant one. One can only understand the power of the fear to be different, the fear to be only a few steps away from the herd, if one understands the depths of the need not to be separated. Sometimes this fear of non-conformity is rationalized as fear of practical dangers which could threaten the non-conformist. But actually, people wantto conform to a much higher degree than they are forced to conform, at least in the Western democracies.

All forms of orgiastic union have three characteristics: they are intense, even violent; they occur in the total personality, mind and body; they are transitory and periodical. Exactly the opposite holds true for that form of union which is by far the most frequent solution chosen by man in the past and in the present: the union based on conformity with the group, its customs, practices and beliefs. Here again we find a considerable development. In a primitive society the group is small; it consists of those with whom one shares blood and soil. With the growing development of culture, the group enlarges; it becomes the citizenry of a polis the citizenry of a large state, the members of a church. Even the poor Roman felt pride because he could say 'civis romanus sum'; Rome and the empire were his family, his home, his world. Also in con-temporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union in which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the herd. If i am like everybody else, if i have no feelings or thoughts which make me different, if i conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, i am saved; saved from the frightening experience of aloneness. The dictatorial systems use threats and terror to induce this conformity; the democratic countries, suggestion and propaganda. There is, indeed, one great difference between the two systems. In the democracies non-conformity is possible and, in fact, by no means entirely absent; in the totalitarian systems, only a few unusual heroes and martyrs can be expected to refuse obedience. But in spite of this difference the democratic societies show an over-whelming degree of conformity. The reason lies in the fact that there has to be an answer to the quest for union, and if there is no other or better way, then the union of herd con-formity becomes the predominant one. One can only understand the power of the fear to be different, the fear to be only a few steps away from the herd, if one understands the depths of the need not to be separated. Sometimes this fear of non-conformity is rationalized as fear of practical dangers which could threaten the non-conformist. But actually, people wantto conform to a much higher degree than they are forced to conform, at least in the Western democracies.

Through decades of research, Cook and her colleagues consistently found evidence of tendinosis (breakdown of the tendon) where inflammation was absent.

Microscopic analyses of tendon surgical patients show fraying of collagen fibers, weakened collagen cross-links, and scar tissue–like disruptions in the collagen matrix. Tendon repair cells are present, and inflammatory cells are typically absent

Praise the miracle body The odd and undeniable mechanics of hand Hundred boned foot, perfect stretch of tendon Praise the veins that river these wrists Praise the prolapsed valve in a heart Praise the scars marking a gallbladder absent Praise the rasp and rattle of functioning lungs Praise the pre-arthritic ache of elbows and ankles Praise the lifeline sectioning a palm Praise the photographic pads of fingertips Praise the vulnerable dip at the base of a throat Praise the muscles surfacing on an abdomen Praise these arms that carry babies, and anthologies Praise the leg hairs that sprout and are shaved Praise the ass that refuses to shrink or be hidden Praise the cunt that bleeds and accepts, bleeds and accepts Praise the prominent ridge of nose Praise the strange convexity of rib cage Praise the single hair that insists on growing from a right areola Praise the dent where the mole was clipped from the back of a neck Praise these inner thighs brushing Praise these eyelashes that sometimes turn inward Praise these hips preparing to spread into a grandmother’s skirt Praise the beauty of the freckle on the first knuckle of a left little finger We’re gone in a blizzard of seconds Love the body human while we’re here A gift of minutes on an evolving planet A country in flux, give thanks For bone, and dirt, and the million things that will kill us someday Motion and the pursuit of happiness, no garauntees, give thanks For chaos theory, ecology, common sense that says we are web A planet in balance or out That butterfly in Tokyo setting off thunder storms in Iowa Tell me you don’t matter to a universe that conspired to give you such a tongue Such rhythm or rhythmless hips Such opposable thumbs Give thanks, or go home a waste of spark Speak, or let the maker take back your throat March, or let the creator rescind your feet Dream, or let your god destroy your good and fertile mind This is your warning This your birthright Do not let this universe regret you

They get their resurrected body at the Rapture.  When you die your spirit goes to Heaven, “to be absent from the body is to be present with

In medical science most if the progress comes from three sources with their multiple specialisations. First>/i> is the specific knowledge about a part or a system of the body. Second the knowledge to assess wether some part or system of the body is malfunctioning or defective, 'broken' . Third is how to repair what is not functioning well or no longer functioning well or is even absent. But there are other sources of progress. Naturally, after discovering a part of the body and starting to understand its function and malfunction, the next step would be to focus on the prevention of malfunction of that part of the body. This presents a fourth source still in full development which is preventive medicine. Then there is a fifth source about the interactions between all parts and systems of the body together, which is slowly developing.

In Surrealism and Sufism, ‘the one-the human’ takes the place of ‘the one-the absolute’. Thus the absolute is no longer the sole subject of love, but the beloved is the woman. The beloved’s body is equivalent to the divine words. God in Sufism is a constant mystery; at that moment he is a constant presence. ‘The beloved-the woman’ is a mystery in the Surrealist experience. The language of love in Surrealism is the language of mystery. The woman is what cannot be obtained. She is secret or magical. The relationship of the lover to God is transformed into the relationship between lover and beloved. Love becomes a revelation, like the revelation that is realized through the divine words. The truth can be reached through the body of the beloved, as the truth can be reached through divine words. ‘The beloved–the woman’ is, like God, a mystery, an invisible being, who, in spite of being near, remains far off and eludes capture the moment someone is about to grab hold of her. The Sufi is fascinated by what he has not obtained and by what he has not realized. This is not because he is against what he has realized but because what he has realized is only a shadow or an image of a meaning that has not been enjoyed to the full and cannot be contained. He cannot realize what he wants. It continues to be a mystery. Subsequently death is absent from the image and present in the meaning, the faculty, by which he realizes what cannot be realized. In this sense, death is a second life; rather, it is a life that has no death after it.

While Max inspects one of the plants, I make my way to the bed of roses at the center of the garden, encircled by the long brick bench Mum used to occupy. I sit down, my hands absently skimming the flowers as I let myself remember her. And then I freeze, my body seizing with terror, as the same vibrating energy from long ago fills my fingertips. I cry out, springing off the bench in alarm. But I can't stop myself from glancing back at the flower bed, and what I see renders me speechless. Little cracks are forming in the dirt where my hands just were, moving before my eyes and creating space in the flower bed. From the cracks a new rose suddenly bursts forth, more vivid and more frighteningly beautiful than all the others.

If for whatever reason your mother was not ready to be a mother, or if, like many, she was unaware of the concepts we will cover here, science suggests that you may carry the ambivalence, fear, or anger that she felt. Her responsiveness to your needs and her physical presence may have been inadequate. Although you have no clear memory of her early care, your body does. When essential elements of maternal care were absent, the result is an attachment injury that becomes the foundation of future thinking and feeling.

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that when we’re absent from our bodies, we’re present with the Lord.

It took an unprecedented storm to rescue me. A miraculous rainfall not seen in Anshan for over a hundred years.” She still felt awed at the thought. “A shepherd found me half-conscious in the field and carried me home. After some days, when my body had recovered from its ordeal, I began to understand the significance of that deluge. God had appeared absent in the rain. Instead, he had been with me through every hour, working toward a miracle. The whole time I accused him of faithlessness, he was busy raising me up so I could escape.

The mindset in the Way of combat must be no different from one’s normal state of mind. In the course of your daily life, and when engaged in strategy, there should be no change whatsoever in your outlook. Your mind should be expansive and direct, devoid of tension, but not at all casual. Keep your mind centered, not leaning too much to one side, swaying serenely and freely so that it does not come to a standstill in moments of change. Consider this carefully. The mind is not static even in times of calm. In times of haste, the mind does not rush. The body does not carry the mind and the mind does not carry the body. The mind should be vigilant when the body is exposed. The mind must not be absent nor be excessive. Both the high-spirited mind and the lethargic mind are signs of weakness. When the mind’s exterior is weak, its interior must be strong so that the enemy cannot gauge your condition. A small man should be aware of the spirit of a larger man and a large man must know the mind of a small man.1 Both big and small must keep their minds straight and not become trapped by preconceived notions of size.2 Be sure to maintain a spirit that is untainted and extensive. Wisdom will settle in the seat of a broad mind. It is crucial to enrich your mind and your wisdom. By enhancing your wisdom, you will be able to sense what is reasonable and unreasonable in the world and will learn the difference between good and evil. You can then see commonality in the Ways of different arts and you will not be open to deception. This is when one can be said to possess the wisdom of strategy in one’s heart. Wisdom that is fundamental to the Way of combat strategy is distinctive. When you face adversity in the midst of battle and find yourself completely engaged, never forget to focus your mind on the principles of strategy as this will create within you a steadfast spirit. Study this carefully.

(1) About the Mindset of Combat （一、兵法心持の事） The mindset in the Way of combat must be no different from one’s normal state of mind. In the course of your daily life, and when engaged in strategy, there should be no change whatsoever in your outlook. Your mind should be expansive and direct, devoid of tension, but not at all casual. Keep your mind centered, not leaning too much to one side, swaying serenely and freely so that it does not come to a standstill in moments of change. Consider this carefully. The mind is not static even in times of calm. In times of haste, the mind does not rush. The body does not carry the mind and the mind does not carry the body. The mind should be vigilant when the body is exposed. The mind must not be absent nor be excessive. Both the high-spirited mind and the lethargic mind are signs of weakness. When the mind’s exterior is weak, its interior must be strong so that the enemy cannot gauge your condition. A small man should be aware of the spirit of a larger man and a large man must know the mind of a small man.1 Both big and small must keep their minds straight and not become trapped by preconceived notions of size.2 Be sure to maintain a spirit that is untainted and extensive. Wisdom will settle in the seat of a broad mind. It is crucial to enrich your mind and your wisdom. By enhancing your wisdom, you will be able to sense what is reasonable and unreasonable in the world and will learn the difference between good and evil. You can then see commonality in the Ways of different arts and you will not be open to deception. This is when one can be said to possess the wisdom of strategy in one’s heart. Wisdom that is fundamental to the Way of combat strategy is distinctive. When you face adversity in the midst of battle and find yourself completely engaged, never forget to focus your mind on the principles of strategy as this will create within you a steadfast spirit. Study this carefully.

He told Hermogenes of his realization that the spirit to whom he had always listened might be offering him a way out of life, in a manner “easiest but also the least irksome to one’s friends,”126 with “sound body and a spirit capable of showing kindliness”127 and absent the “throes of illness” and vexations of extreme old age.128 Socrates’ decision to accept his fate allowed him to put away mortal terror in the face of death itself, prior to and during the trial, after the sentence was handed down,129 and even later, during his execution.130 He saw that his life had been so rich and full that he could let it go, gracefully. He was given the opportunity to put his affairs in order. He saw that he could escape the terrible slow degeneration of the advancing years. He came to understand all that was happening to him as a gift from the gods. He was not therefore required to defend himself against his accusers—at least not with the aim of pronouncing his innocence, and escaping his fate. Instead, he turned the tables, addressing his judges in a manner that makes the reader understand precisely why the town council wanted this man dead. Then he took his poison, like a man.

I gasped, torn from my absent-minded thoughts by a sudden, sharp pain. My bones were creaking under the fresh strain placed upon them, while my muscles were crying out as if someone were grabbing and stretching them. My body was starting to change!

Living taught me selfishness, it has taken so much from me, in spite of having nothing afterward, it sustained the habit of taking, going so far as to steal what I had left of myself.” “I don’t understand, are you saying that life stole your will to live? Doesn't that contradict the meanings?” “Living and life are not the same. Living is breathing, something you pave, dragging around a body absent of life until we run out of ways to cope with the exhaustion. Life kills the living, and death cleans the remains.” —Theatre

That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death." Hebrews 2:14 O child of God, death hath lost its sting, because the devil's power over it is destroyed. Then cease to fear dying. Ask grace from God the Holy Ghost, that by an intimate knowledge and a firm belief of thy Redeemer's death, thou mayst be strengthened for that dread hour. Living near the cross of Calvary thou mayst think of death with pleasure, and welcome it when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die in the Lord: it is a covenant-blessing to sleep in Jesus. Death is no longer banishment, it is a return from exile, a going home to the many mansions where the loved ones already dwell. The distance between glorified spirits in heaven and militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not so. We are not far from home--a moment will bring us there. The sail is spread; the soul is launched upon the deep. How long will be its voyage? How many wearying winds must beat upon the sail ere it shall be reefed in the port of peace? How long shall that soul be tossed upon the waves before it comes to that sea which knows no storm? Listen to the answer, "Absent from the body, present with the Lord." Yon ship has just departed, but it is already at its haven. It did but spread its sail and it was there. Like that ship of old, upon the Lake of Galilee, a storm had tossed it, but Jesus said, "Peace, be still," and immediately it came to land. Think not that a long period intervenes between the instant of death and the eternity of glory.

Only a dozen or so of the Fae who had been gathered in the Court when she arrived waited on the green. Most held the reins of creatures so incredible that even Delphine, subsumed with sick fear about Emily, was momentarily transfixed. The Fae man with the golden eyes stood next to a salamander on legs like tree trunks, its ink-black body spotted with brilliant yellow. It opened its maw for a treat from the man, revealing a row of terrifying gilded teeth. A woman with dark blue eyes and a faint blue tinge to her complexion absently stroked the head of a white chicken whose comb bloomed with crystalline roses and whose dark red talons raked the earth. A dark-haired Fae woman with sinewy arms and strong shoulders bare had turned a black-and-white goat into a unicorn by twining its horns into a single ivory-hued spiral, as well as giving it a generous increase in size. Emily clapped her hands in delight. "Would you like to pet one, love?" the Fae woman asked, guiding her toward a bronze-furred creature that Delphine slowly appreciated had once been a squirrel, its size now outstripping a large dog. "That one cannot be ridden, but he is as good a scent hound as any earthbound canine." "Where did they come from?" Delphine gaped. She didn't expect a reply, but the man with the salamander laughed. "The same place you do. They wander in, rarely. When the door is opened, whether we mean it to be or not. Occasionally, they are bargained. But mostly they are just strays." She opened her mouth to ask how, and he cut her off with an abrupt wave of his hand. "We do not know how it works or why the doors open of their own accord any better than you, and we wish they would not." "Why, when they become wonders like these?" She reached tentatively toward the squirrel, who butted her hand with his enormous velvet head.

Whenever I try to understand myself the whole fabric of the perceptible world comes too, and with it come the others who are caught in it. Before others are or can be subjected to my conditions of possibility and reconstructed in my image, they must already exist as outlines, deviations, and variants of a single Vision in which I too participate. For they are not fictions with which I might people my desert—offspring of my spirit and forever unactualized possibilities—but my twins or the flesh of my flesh. Certainly I do not live their life; they are definitively absent from me and I from them. But that distance becomes a strange proximity as soon as one comes back home to the perceptible world, since the perceptible is precisely that which can haunt more than one body without budging from its place.

Will We Become Angels? I’m often asked if people, particularly children, become angels when they die. The answer is no. Death is a relocation of the same person from one place to another. The place changes, but the person remains the same. The same person who becomes absent from his or her body becomes present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5: 8). The person who departs is the one who goes to be with Christ (Philippians 1: 23). Angels are angels. Humans are humans. Angels are beings with their own histories and memories, with distinct identities, reflected in the fact that they have personal names, such as Michael and Gabriel. Under God’s direction, they serve us on Earth (Hebrews 1: 14). Michael the archangel serves under God, and the other angels, in various positions, serve under Michael (Daniel 10: 13; Revelation 12: 7). In Heaven human beings will govern angels (1 Corinthians 6: 2-3). The fact that angels have served us on Earth will make meeting them in Heaven particularly fascinating. They may have been with us from childhood, protecting us, standing by us, doing whatever they could on our behalf (Matthew 18: 10). They may have witnessed virtually every moment of our lives. Besides God himself, no one could know us better. What will it be like not only to have them show us around the intermediate Heaven but also to walk and talk with them on the New Earth? What stories will they tell us, including what really happened that day at the lake thirty-five years ago when we almost drowned? They’ve guarded us, gone to fierce battle for us, served as God’s agents in answer to prayers. How great it will be to get to know these brilliant ancient creatures who’ve lived with God from their creation. We’ll consult them as well as advise them, realizing they too can learn from us, God’s image-bearers. Will an angel who guarded us be placed under our management? If we really believed angels were with us daily, here and now, wouldn’t it motivate us to make wiser choices? Wouldn’t we feel an accountability to holy beings who serve us as God’s representatives? Despite what some popular books say, there’s no biblical basis for trying to make contact with angels now. We’re to ask God, not angels, for wisdom (James 1: 5). As Scripture says and as I portray in my novels Dominion, Lord Foulgrin’s Letters, and The Ishbane Conspiracy, Satan’s servants can “masquerade as servants of righteousness” and bring us messages that appear to be from God but aren’t (2 Corinthians 11: 15). Nevertheless, because Scripture teaches that one or more of God’s angels may be in the room with me now, every once in a while I say “Thank you” out loud. And sometimes I add, “I look forward to meeting you.” I can’t wait to hear their stories. We won’t be angels, but we’ll be with angels—and that’ll be far better. Will We Have Emotions? In Scripture, God is said to enjoy, love, laugh, take delight, and rejoice, as well as be angry, happy, jealous, and glad. Rather than viewing these actions and descriptors as mere anthropomorphisms, we should consider that our emotions are derived from God’s. While we should always avoid creating God in our image, the fact remains we are created in his. Therefore, our emotions are a reflection of and sometimes (because of our sin) a distortion of God’s emotions. To be like God means to have and express emotions. Hence, we should expect that in Heaven

Aubade" “My love, I fear the silence of your hands.” —Mahmoud Darwish Overnight, my heart, the forest has grown cold and every leaf shivers with the sure knowledge of its fall, shivers yellow and maple-red and mauve, Summer remembered in vermillion dying. When I walk the river now it bears merely the lightest press of feet, my body swaying to keep balance in the whetted breeze. I had to leave you on the absent shore, a warm bloom nesting in the reeds, an unfixed, iridescent eye. How we part only the morning knows, and what we said already dew. Tomorrow after tomorrow we will find the tongue to remember our silences, or borrow words from the night’s vocabulary of sighs. Grief will teach you new names and I will answer, hollow, in drumbeats and echoes, in footsteps and softly closed doors, never looking at you, never back. I place these words now in the vault of sleep before it comes. Before the burial and the blood.

Aubade" “My love, I fear the silence of your hands.” —Mahmoud Darwish Overnight, my heart, the forest has grown cold and every leaf shivers with the sure knowledge of its fall, shivers yellow and maple-red and mauve, Summer remembered in vermillion dying. When I walk the river now it bears merely the lightest press of feet, my body swaying to keep balance in the whetted breeze. I had to leave you on the absent shore, a warm bloom nesting in the reeds, an unfixed, iridescent eye. How we part only the morning knows, and what we said already dew. Tomorrow after tomorrow we will find the tongue to remember our silences, or borrow words from the night’s vocabulary of sighs. Grief will teach you new names and I will answer, hollow, in drumbeats and echoes, in footsteps and softly closed doors, never looking at you, never back. I place these words now in the vault of sleep before it comes. Before the burial and the blood.

Damn it, Shea, I swear if you keep that up, we will not make it to the springs.” “I never heard of any springs,” she murmured absently, stroking the beating pulse again, her teeth playfully nipping. Her mouth wandered farther up his neck to his ear. “Hot springs. It is only a little way farther,” he groaned, but he leaned his head toward her attentions. Her hand slipped down the front of his shirt, played with his buttons, slowly sliding them open so that her palm could rest on his hot skin. “I think you’re hot enough, Jacques,” she whispered wickedly into his ear, caressing his earlobe with her tongue. “I know I am.” He stopped, leaned against the curved wall, and allowed her feet to touch the ground. There were no words to describe the hunger, the urgency of his body, or the chaos of his mind. He bent over her, forcing her slender body backward as he took control of her mouth. His hand spanned her throat, tipping up her chin for better access. Shea experienced a curious shifting of the earth beneath her feet. Colors whirled in her head, and flames licked at her body. She could hardly bear the feel of clothes against her sensitive skin. Her breasts swelled and ached, her nipples pushing into the material covering them. Jacques was on fire, his jeans so tight, he could no longer breathe. He tore at them, freed his body from the restrictive fabric and ripped at the cotton covering hers. “I have to have you right now, Shea,” he said hoarsely.

Bacon was less interested in the problem of justifying inductive generalisations, than in how to generate good inductive hypotheses out of the masses of data collected by observation. Bacon devised a new method. To illustrate it, Bacon shows how one might generate an hypothesis on the nature of heat. One should, Bacon tells us, list all those things in which the property under investigation, in this case heat, is present, then all those things in which the property is absent and finally all those cases which admit of varying degrees of the property in question. From such a list, Bacon believes the natural hypothesis will present itself, which in this case, as he well knew at the time, is that heat is produced according to the movement or excitation of molecules within a body. Although Bacon’s method is undoubtedly one way of applying order to a body of data, and even perhaps a useful way in some cases, it nevertheless seems unlikely to fulfil his ambition, which was to find a systematic way of deriving scientific hypotheses from the arrangement of data. It is unlikely that there ever could be such a system. Bacon failed to take into account the creativity and imaginative aspect of scientific theory building. No matter how systematically one organises data, inductive hypotheses cannot be guaranteed to appear out of them. One may find that some facts deductively follow from a certain ordering of data, but that is not what Bacon was after.