All Aboard Life Quotes

It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN. I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

As the ego-dead, so we might imagine, we would continue to know pain in its various forms—that is the essence of existence—but we would not be cozened by our egos to take it personally, an attitude that converts an individual’s pain into conscious suffering. Naturally, we would still have to feed, but we would not be omnivorous gourmands who eat for amusement, gorging down everything in nature and turning to the laboratory for more. As for reproduction, who can say? Animals are driven to copulate, and even as the ego-dead we would not be severed from biology, although we would not be unintelligently ruled by it, as we are now. As a corollary of not being unintelligently ruled by biology, neither would we sulk over our extinction, as we do now. Why raise another generation destined to climb aboard the evolution treadmill? But then, why not raise another generation of the ego-dead? For those who do not perceive either their pleasures or their pains as belonging to them, neither life nor death would be objectionable or not objectionable, desirable or not desirable, all right or not all right. We would be the ego-dead, the self-less, and, dare we are, the enlightened.

(pg.31) "As it was, my first days on Earth were somewhat anticlimactic. Mother and Father seemed so happy tempting and corrupting that I didn't want to interrupt them. But the fact was that I hadn't the slightest clue what to do with myself. I tried to convince cows to take over the world, to rampage across the fields slaughtering all in their wake, to start a new religion of udder worship, to build cities devoted to the consumption of grass, their aqueducts running with fresh milk. I even prepared a pictorial presentation of cows traveling into outer space aboard butter-powered space churns, but the cows seemed unconvinced, and soon returned to wondering how many stomachs they had. The current belief was seventeen. Cows:Unambitious.

Like the Baron, Mathilde developed a formula for acting out life as a series of roles—that is, by saying to herself in the morning while brushing her blond hair, "Today I want to become this or that person," and then proceeding to be that person. One day she decided she would like to be an elegant representative of a well-known Parisian modiste and go to Peru. All she had to do was to act the role. So she dressed with care, presented herself with extraordinary assurance at the house of the modiste, was engaged to be her representative and given a boat ticket to Lima. Aboard ship, she behaved like a French missionary of elegance. Her innate talent for recognizing good wines, good perfumes, good dressmaking, marked her as a lady of refinement.

Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together. p 251

If you help them (the crew) create good memories, they'll forget all the bad stuff

When the world was ending the first time, Noah took all the animals, two by two, and loaded them aboard his escape craft for evacuation. But it’s a funny thing: He left the plants to die. He failed to take the one thing he needed to rebuild life on land, and concentrated on saving the freeloaders!

When a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him passage. You. Speaker—ever since I first learned Stark and read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter, of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well." "You did well, Human.

Even in the best of times, life aboard a seventeenth-century privateering ship was a challenging and claustrophobic experience. The fact that a community of a hundred or more people could survive on the open seas for months at a time, in a vessel with dimensions not much larger than a tennis court, should go down as one of the great achievements in our long history of creating life-sustaining habitats in fundamentally inhospitable environments.

It had been a windy night, that night where his life had taken its turning. The atmosphere, in flood, was trying to wash the trees right off the hills. The big oaks twisted and shuddered like black flames in the moonlight, and the white grass rippled and bannered. The wind that night made him feel his chronic longing. The wind, trying to stampede the trees, was roaring for a grand, universal departure to another solar system, a better deal, and the grass struggled to join the rootless giant of the air. All that lives strives to fly, to master time. All tribes of beings strain to rise in insurrection, all knowing their time is short, all, when the wind blows, wanting to climb aboard. ("The Growlimb")

Roman Centurion's Song" LEGATE, I had the news last night - my cohort ordered home By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome. I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below: Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go! I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall, I have none other home than this, nor any life at all. Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here. Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done; Here where my dearest dead are laid - my wife - my wife and son; Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love, Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove? For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields suffice. What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern skies, Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze - The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June's long-lighted days? You'll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and olive lean Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps Nemausus clean To Arelate's triple gate; but let me linger on, Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront Euroclydon! You'll take the old Aurelian Road through shore-descending pines Where, blue as any peacock's neck, the Tyrrhene Ocean shines. You'll go where laurel crowns are won, but -will you e'er forget The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet? Let me work here for Britain's sake - at any task you will - A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops to drill. Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite Border keep, Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old messmates sleep. Legate, I come to you in tears - My cohort ordered home! I've served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome? Here is my heart, my soul, my mind - the only life I know. I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm—the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning. CHAPTER

When the Archives file out of the room, Galen turns to Emma. She’s ready for him. She holds up her shushing finger. “Don’t even,” she says. “I was going to tell you, but I just didn’t have a chance.” “Tell me now,” he says. “Since it seems I’m the last to know.” He isn’t the last to know, of course. But he’d really hoped she would come to him with it. Before now. Before it became an issue for other people. She raises a hesitant brow. “Please,” he grates out. She sighs in a gust. “I still don’t think it’s important at the moment, but when Rayna took off for the Arena, I hoped on one of the jet skis and tried to follow. But,” she amends, “I did not intend to get in the water. I swear I didn’t. It’s just that Goliath wanted to play, and he tipped over the”-she must sense all his patience oozing out-“anyway, so I come across this Syrena, Jasa, and she’s been caught in a net and two men are pulling her aboard. So me and Goliath helped her.” “Where are the fishermen now?” “Um. Unless Rachel did something drastic, they’re probably at home telling their kids crazy stories about mermaids.” Galen feels a sense of control slipping, but of what he’s not sure. For centuries, the Syrena have remained unnoticed by humans. Now within the span of a week, they’ve allowed themselves to be captured twice. He hopes this does not become a pattern. Toraf must have mistaken his long pause for brooding. “Don’t be too hard on her, Galen,” he says. “I told you, Emma helped her and then went straight home.” “Stay out of this,” Galen says pleasantly. “I knew you told him.” Emma crosses her arms at Toraf. “You really are a snitch.” “You had enough to worry about. And so did I.” Toraf shrugs, unperturbed. “It’s over now.” Nalia pinches the bridge of her nose. “This is where I ground you for life,” she tells Emma. “All three hundred years of it.

I have a friend that seems to never get anything accomplished because he’s so wishy-washy in his decisions. He has to analyze everything. He has to think about it. He has to ask a lot of people their opinions. By the time he’s done getting opinions, sometimes he never does anything at all. It’s possible to live a life without a go-for-it attitude.

I don't know what it is about this city. ...First you appeared, ...and then her, there's always some reason for me to delay my journey. Sometimes it feels as if I've just arrived in Wardernburg; other days I wake up with the sensation of having lived here all my life. When I go out I look at the coaches and say to myself: Go on, climb aboard, it's very simple, you've done it a thousand times. Yet I let them go by, and I don't understand what's happening to me.

No one had asked about his life, the years aboard ship. As a child she had been fascinated by the way he would come home every year smaller, angrier, more leathery, until one day in her teens, he fell into bed and lay there glaring up at her and her mother, unable to rise, enraged, knowing that at the end of this furlough they expected him to pull up his carcass and make his way back to the dungeon of his vessel. Not once did they ask him how he felt. After all he was a man. Men endured.

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: "All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

Street-Cries II. The Ship of Earth Thou ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard, And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold, I fear thee, O! I fear thee, for I hear the tongue and sword At battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold! The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky, But all the deck is wet with blood and stains the crystal red. A pilot, God, a pilot! for the helm is left awry, And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead! Prattville, Alabama, 1868

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.

Here am I, a little animal called a man--a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and brain,--all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air, and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from a snake, and I cease to move--for ever I cease to move. A splinter of lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the eternal blackness. Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life--it is all I am. About me are the great natural forces--colossal menaces, Titans of destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious, unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or licking them off into the sea and to death--and these insensate monsters do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses, whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and quite a superior being.

But compared with much of the rest of the world, Europe is a beacon of enlightenment. Among the many amazing and depressing facts in his book, Roberts gives a list of all the aquatic life incidentally killed—the bycatch, as it is known—by a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean in the process of legally catching 211 mahi-mahi. Among the aquatic animals hauled aboard and tossed back dead after a single sweep were: 488 turtles 455 stingrays and devil rays 460 sharks 68 sailfish 34 marlin 32 tuna 11 wahoo 8 swordfish 4 giant sunfish This was legal under international protocols. The hooks on the longlines were certified as “turtle friendly.” All this was to give 211 people a dinner of mahi-mahi. —

Wake up, Ohan,” he said. Ohan’s eyes snapped open, confused. “Do you know what’s happening aboard this ship right now? Do you care? I know you’re dying and all, but even on your best days, you’ve never been terribly present. Not that I’m one to talk. But on the off-chance that you do care, you should know that the ship’s AI has just crashed. It’s wiped clean. Now, to me—and possibly to you, who knows—this is an inconvenience. To Jenks, this is the worst day of his life. Do you know that he loved the AI? Actually loved, as in, ‘in love.’ Ridiculous, I know. I don’t pretend to understand. Frankly, I find the whole notion absurd. But you know what I realized? It doesn’t matter what I think. Jenks thinks something different, and his pain is very real right now. Me knowing how stupid this whole thing is doesn’t make him hurt any less.

The marine underworld stretched below the ship and embodied many secrets. The disappearance of Olga had become one of the mysteries that would remain with Stefania and her family. The disappearance of her baby sister and sudden departure from her home had taught the ten-year-old that life was filled with uncertainties. But she was willing to forget that for a little while. She jumped down from the barrel and headed toward Liam, Felix, and the other shipmates. They would sing shanties and talk of the constellations, the sea, its creatures, and the legends. It would get her through another night. La Suerte was the only stability for her passengers with the infinite unknown all around them. The waters of the sea, the world below the surface, and the sky that stretched beyond the horizon was a representation of the limitless possibilites and dangers awaiting those aboard.

With one final flip the quarter flew high into the air and came down on the mattress with a light bounce. It jumped several inches off the bed, high enough for the instructor to catch it in his hand. Swinging around to face me, the instructor looked me in the eye and nodded. He never said a word. Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task. Throughout my life in the Navy, making my bed was the one constant that I could count on every day. As a young SEAL ensign aboard the USS Grayback, a special operation submarine, I was berthed in sick bay, where the beds were stacked four high. The salty old doctor who ran sick bay insisted that I make my rack every morning. He often remarked that if the beds were not made and the room was not clean, how could the sailors expect the best medical care? As I later found out, this sentiment of cleanliness and order applied to every aspect of military life. Thirty years later, the Twin Towers came down in New York City. The Pentagon was struck, and brave Americans died in an airplane over Pennsylvania. At the time of the attacks, I was recuperating in my home from a serious parachute accident. A hospital bed had been wheeled into my government quarters, and I spent most of the day lying on my back, trying to recover. I wanted out of that bed more than anything else. Like every SEAL I longed to be with my fellow warriors in the fight. When I was finally well enough to lift myself unaided from the bed, the first thing I did was pull the sheets up tight, adjust the pillow, and make sure the hospital bed looked presentable to all those who entered my home. It was my way of showing that I had conquered the injury and was moving forward with my life. Within four weeks of 9/11, I was transferred to the White House, where I spent the next two years in the newly formed Office of Combatting Terrorism. By October 2003, I was in Iraq at our makeshift headquarters on the Baghdad airfield. For the first few months we slept on Army cots. Nevertheless, I would wake every morning, roll up my sleeping bag, place the pillow at the head of the cot, and get ready for the day.

In the chapter entitled “You Can’t Pray a Lie” in Twain’s beloved novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn has helped hide Miss Watson’s runaway slave, Jim. But Huck thought he was committing a sin in helping a runaway slave. Huck had learned in Sunday school “that people that acts as I’d been acting … goes to everlasting fire.” So in an act of repentance in order to save his soul, Huck wrote a note to Miss Watson and told her where she could find her runaway slave. Now Huck was ready to pray his “sinner’s prayer” and “get saved.” I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world and the only he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see the paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.1 Huck Finn had been shaped by the Christianity he’d found in his Missouri Sunday school—a Christianity focused on heaven in the afterlife while preserving the status quo of the here and now. Huck thought that helping Jim escape from slavery was a sin, because that’s what he had been taught. He knew he couldn’t ask God to forgive him until he was ready to “repent” and betray Jim. Huck didn’t want to go to hell; he wanted to be saved. But Huck loved his friend more, so he was willing to go to hell in order to save his friend from slavery.

It is 1839. England is tumbling towards anarchy, with countrywide unrest and riots. The gutter presses are fizzing, fire-bombs flying. The shout on the streets is for revolution. Red evolutionists - visionaries who see life marching inexorably upward, powered from below - denounce the props of an old static society: priestly privilege, wage exploitation, and the workhouses. A million socialists are castigating marriage, capitalism, and the fat, corrupt Established Church. Radical Christians join them, hymn-singing Dissenters who condemn the 'fornicating' Church as a 'harlot,' in bed with the State. Even science must be purged: for the gutter atheists, material atoms are all that exist, and like the 'social atoms' - people - they are self-organizing. Spirits and souls are a delusion, part of the gentry's cruel deceit to subjugate working people. The science of life - biology - lies ruined, prostituted, turned into a Creationist citadel by the clergy. Britain now stands teetering on the brink of collapse - or so it seems to the gentry, who close ranks to protect their privileges. At this moment, how could an ambitious thirty-year-old gentleman open a secret notebook and, with a devil-may-care sweep, suggest that headless hermaphrodite molluscs were the ancestors of mankind? A squire's son, moreover, Cambridge-trained and once destined for the cloth. A man whose whole family hated the 'fierce & licentious' radical hooligans. The gentleman was Charles Darwin: well heeled, imperturbably Whig, a privately financed world traveller who had spent five years aboard HMS Beagle as a dining companion to the aristocratic captain.

Why did you come to the United States? Perhaps no one knows the real answer. I know that migrants, when they are still on their way here, learn the Immigrant’s Prayer. A friend who had been aboard La Bestia for a few days, working on a documentary, read it to me once. I didn’t learn the entire thing, but I remember these lines: “Partir es morir un poco / Llegar nunca es llegar”—“To leave is to die a little / To arrive is never to arrive.” I’ve had to ask so many children: Why did you come? Sometimes I ask myself the same question. I don’t have an answer yet. Before coming to the United States, I knew what others know: that the cruelty of its borders was only a thin crust, and that on the other side a possible life was waiting. I understood, some time after, that once you stay here long enough, you begin to remember the place where you originally came from the way a backyard might look from a high window in the deep of winter: a skeleton of the world, a tract of abandonment, objects dead and obsolete. And once you’re here, you’re ready to give everything, or almost everything, to stay and play a part in the great theater of belonging. In the United States, to stay is an end in itself and not a means: to stay is the founding myth of this society. To stay in the United States, you will unlearn the universal metric system so you can buy a pound and a half of cooked ham, accept that thirty-two degrees, and not zero, is where the line falls that divides cold and freezing. You might even begin to celebrate the pilgrims who removed the alien Indians, and the veterans who maybe killed other aliens, and the day of a president who will eventually declare a war on all the other so-called aliens. No matter the cost. No matter the cost of the rent, and milk, and cigarettes. The humiliations, the daily battles. You will give everything. You will convince yourself that it is only a matter of time before you can be yourself again, in America, despite the added layers of its otherness already so well adhered to your skin. But perhaps you will never want to be your former self again. There are too many things that ground you to this new life. Why did you come here? I asked one little girl once. Because I wanted to arrive.

However we decide to apportion the credit for our improved life spans, the bottom line is that nearly all of us are better able today to resist the contagions and afflictions that commonly sickened our great-grandparents, while having massively better medical care to call on when we need it. In short, we have never had it so good. Or at least we have never had it so good if we are reasonably well-off. If there is one thing that should alarm and concern us today, it is how unequally the benefits of the last century have been shared. British life expectancies might have soared overall, but as John Lanchester noted in an essay in the London Review of Books in 2017, males in the East End of Glasgow today have a life expectancy of just fifty-four years—nine years less than a man in India. In exactly the same way, a thirty-year-old black male in Harlem, New York, is at much greater risk of dying than a thirty-year-old male Bangladeshi from stroke, heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. Climb aboard a bus or subway train in almost any large city in the Western world and you can experience similar vast disparities with a short journey. In Paris, travel five stops on the Metro’s B line from Port-Royal to La Plaine—Stade de France and you will find yourself among people who have an 82 percent greater chance of dying in a given year than those just down the line. In London, life expectancy drops reliably by one year for every two stops traveled eastward from Westminster on the District Line of the Underground. In St. Louis, Missouri, make a twenty-minute drive from prosperous Clayton to the inner-city Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood and life expectancy drops by one year for every minute of the journey, a little over two years for every mile. Two things can be said with confidence about life expectancy in the world today. One is that it is really helpful to be rich. If you are middle-aged, exceptionally well-off, and from almost any high-income nation, the chances are excellent that you will live into your late eighties. Someone who is otherwise identical to you but poor—exercises as devotedly, sleeps as many hours, eats a similarly healthy diet, but just has less money in the bank—can expect to die between ten and fifteen years sooner. That’s a lot of difference for an equivalent lifestyle, and no one is sure how to account for it.

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself. And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view. Mick and Henry were laughing. “If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling. “Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added. Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong. The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air. The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier. I was out of there--and Mick was busy taking his socks off. As we descended, I spotted, far beneath us, this lone figure sat on a rock in the middle of a giant boulder field. Neil’s two white “beacons” shining bright. I love it. I smiled. We picked Neil up, and in an instant we were flying together through the huge Himalayan valleys like an eagle freed. Neil and I sat back in the helicopter, faces pressed against the glass, and watched our life for the past three months become a shimmer in the distance. The great mountain faded into a haze, hidden from sight. I leaned against Neil’s shoulder and closed my eyes. Everest was gone.

By pointing to the captain’s foolhardy departure from standard procedure, the officials shielded themselves from the disturbing image of slaves overpowering their captors and relieved themselves of the uncomfortable obligation to explain how and why the events had deviated from the prescribed pattern. But assigning blame to the captain for his carelessness afforded only partial comfort, for by seizing their opportunity, the Africans aboard the Cape Coast had done more than liberate themselves (temporarily at least) from the slave ship. Their action reminded any European who heard news of the event of what all preferred not to contemplate too closely; that their ‘accountable’ history was only as real as the violence and racial fiction at its foundation. Only by ceaseless replication of the system’s violence did African sellers and European buyers render captives in the distorted guise of human commodities to market. Only by imagining that whiteness could render seven men more powerful than a group of twice their number did European investors produce an account naturalizing social relations that had as their starting point an act of violence. Successful African uprisings against European captors were of course moments at which the undeniable free agency of the captives most disturbed Europeans—for it was in these moments that African captives invalidated the vision of the history being written in this corner of the Atlantic world and articulated their own version of a history that was ‘accountable.’ Other moments in which the agency and irrepressible humanity of the captives manifested themselves were more tragic than heroic: instances of illness and death, thwarted efforts to escape from the various settings of saltwater slavery, removal of slaves from the market by reason of ‘madness.’ In negotiating the narrow isthmus between illness and recovery, death and survival, mental coherence and insanity, captives provided the answers the slave traders needed: the Africans revealed the boundaries of the middle ground between life and death where human commodification was possible. Turning people into slaves entailed more than the completion of a market transaction. In addition, the economic exchange had to transform independent beings into human commodities whose most ‘socially relevant feature’ was their ‘exchangeability’ . . . The shore was the stage for a range of activities and practices designed to promote the pretense that human beings could convincingly play the part of their antithesis—bodies animated only by others’ calculated investment in their physical capacities.

Sigtryggr held out a hand to pull me from the ditch. His one eye was bright with the same joy I had seen on Ceaster’s ramparts. ‘I would not want you as an enemy, Lord Uhtred,’ he said. ‘Then don’t come back, Jarl Sigtryggr,’ I said, clasping his forearm as he clasped mine. ‘I will be back,’ he said, ‘because you will want me to come back.’ ‘I will?’ He turned his head to gaze at his ships. One ship was close to the shore, held there by a mooring line tied to a stake. The prow of the ship had a great dragon painted white and in the dragon’s claw was a red axe. The ship waited for Sigtryggr, but close to it, standing where the grass turned to the river bank’s mud, was Stiorra. Her maid, Hella, was already aboard the dragon-ship. Æthelflaed had been watching Eardwulf’s death, but now saw Stiorra by the grounded ship. She frowned, not sure she understood what she saw. ‘Lord Uhtred?’ ‘My lady?’ ‘Your daughter,’ she began, but did not know what to say. ‘I will deal with my daughter,’ I said grimly. ‘Finan?’ My son and Finan were both staring at me, wondering what I would do. ‘Finan?’ I called. ‘Lord?’ ‘Kill that scum,’ I jerked my head towards Eardwulf’s followers, then I took Sigtryggr by the elbow and walked him towards his ship. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ Æthelflaed called again, sharper this time. I waved a dismissive hand, and otherwise ignored her. ‘I thought she disliked you,’ I said to Sigtryggr. ‘We meant you to think that.’ ‘You don’t know her,’ I said. ‘You knew her mother when you met her?’ ‘This is madness,’ I said. ‘And you are famous for your good sense, lord.’ Stiorra waited for us. She was tense. She stared at me defiantly and said nothing. I felt a lump in my throat and a sting in my eyes. I told myself it was the small smoke drifting from the Norsemen’s abandoned campfires. ‘You’re a fool,’ I told her harshly. ‘I saw,’ she said simply, ‘and I was stricken.’ ‘And so was he?’ I asked, and she just nodded. ‘And the last two nights,’ I asked, ‘after the feasting was over?’ I did not finish the question, but she answered it anyway by nodding again. ‘You are your mother’s daughter,’ I said, and I embraced her, holding her close. ‘But it is my choice whom you marry,’ I went on. I felt her stiffen in my arms, ‘And Lord Æthelhelm wants to marry you.’ I thought she was sobbing, but when I pulled back from the embrace I saw she was laughing. ‘Lord Æthelhelm?’ she asked. ‘You’ll be the richest widow in all Britain,’ I promised her. She still held me, looking up into my face. She smiled, that same smile that had been her mother’s. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘I swear on my life that I will accept the man you choose to be my husband.’ She knew me. She had seen my tears and knew they were not caused by smoke. I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘You will be a peace cow,’ I said, ‘between me and the Norse. And you’re a fool. So am I. And your dowry,’ I spoke louder as I stepped back, ‘is Eardwulf’s money.’ I saw I had smeared her pale linen dress with Eardwulf’s blood. I looked at Sigtryggr. ‘I give her to you,’ I said, ‘so don’t disappoint me.

I put my hand on his forearm, I don't know why I do this, and it's not exactly natural, although it's not unnatural, except that I really want to touch his skin. It's smooth and tan just a little bit and feels like summer, like something familiar and warm and good, like my skin did on the first days aboard 'Fishful Thinking' before it salted and burned and peeled. 'We broke up three years after that.' I sit back in my chair and give a sly smile. Relationships are complex and sometimes you can't really explain them to an outside party. 'I can't believe I just told you that' 'YES! YOU! ARE! LIVING! YOUR! FULL! LIFE!' A third time. I am not imagining it. 'There you are.' This time my heart does skip a beat. I look down at his arm, and we are still touching, and he has made no attempt to retract his arm or retreat. All my surroundings, the red formica table top, the pink yogurt, the blue sky, the green vegetables in the market, they all come alive in vibrant technicolor as the sun peers from behind a cloud. I am living my full life. 'Honesty in all things,' Byron adds, lifting his cup of yogurt for a toast of sorts. I pull my hand away from him and the instant my hand is back by his side, I miss the warmth of his arm, the warmth of him. Honesty in all things. I should put my hand back, that's where it wants to be, that's Lily's lesson to me. Be present in the moment, give spontaneous affection. I'm suddenly aware I haven't spoken in a bit. 'Did you know that an octopus has three hearts?' As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I realize I sound like that kid from 'Jerry McGuire.' 'Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?' I hope my question comes off almost a fraction as endearing. 'No,' Byron says with a glint in his eye that reads as curiosity, at least I hope that it does, but even if it doesn't I'm too into the inertia of the trivia to stop it. 'It's true, one heart called the systemic heart that functions much like the left side of the human heart, distributing blood throughout the heart, then two smaller branchial heart with gills that act like the right side of our hearts to pump the blood back.' 'What made you think of that?' I smile. It may be entirely inappropriate first date conversation, but at least it doesn't bore me in the telling. I look up at the winsome August sky, marred only by the contrails of a passing jet, and a vaguely dachshund shaped cloud above the horizon. I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in love at first site. I don't believe in angels. I don't believe in heaven and that our loved ones are looking down on us, but the sun is so warm and the breeze is so cool and the company is so perfect and the whole afternoon so intoxicating, ti's hard not to hear Lily's voice dancing in the gentle wind, 'one! month! is Long! Enough TO! BE! SAD!' ... 'I recently lost someone close to me....I don't know, I feel her here today with us, you, me, her, three hearts, like an octopus,' I shrug. If I were him, I would run. What a ridiculously creepy thing to say. I would run and I would not stop until I was home in my bed with a gallon of ice cream deleting my profile from every dating site I belonged to. Maybe it's because it's not rehearsed, maybe it's because it's as weird a thing to say as it is genuine, maybe it's because this is finally the man for me. Byron stands and offers me his hand, 'Let's take a walk and you can tell me about her.' The gentle untying of a shoe lace. It takes me a minute to decide if I can do this, and I decide that I can, and I throw our yogurt dishes away, and I put my hand in his, and it's soft and warm, and instead of awkward fumbling, our hands clasp together like magnets and metal, like we've been hand-in-hand all along, and we are touching again. ...

But a U-boat, like any other ship, is just so much cold metal until her crew comes aboard. Then each man in the crew loans her a little piece of his soul to keep as long as he serves in her — and often longer if she’s a good ship. These little pieces all added together make up the soul of the ship, bring her to life, give her personality, and make her a member of the seagoing community of ships.

Once the last guest is gone, maintenance crews descend on each attraction. The crews perform inspections of ride vehicles and tracks based upon Disney’s daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly maintenance checklist. They look for wear and potential mechanical problems. The ride engineers and maintenance workers perform their tasks, and by the end of their shift, just mere hours before thousands descend on the parks again, the attractions are powered up and run through their paces again before any guests can climb aboard. All of this preventive and corrective maintenance equates to roughly one thousand daily hours of inspection time, on all attractions.

We believed Harriet had been collected in 1835 by Charles Darwin himself. She was brought to Australia from England in 1841 by Captain Wickham aboard the HMS Beagle. Actually, three giant Galapagos tortoises had been donated to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, after Darwin realized they did not flourish in England, where he had originally taken them in 1835. How could we determine whether Harriet was one of the Darwin Three? Scott Thomson found a giant tortoise in the collection of the Queensland Museum that had been mislabeled an Aldabran tortoise. Carved on the carapace was the animal’s name. “Tom,” and “1929.” We now had potentially found two of the three Darwin tortoises. Harriet and Tom had been seen together in living memory. The third tortoise was never found and was presumed buried somewhere in the botanic gardens. Harriet lived on. Steve and I became very excited at this news. Our studies and research into Harriet’s history continued for years, and it was amazing to learn what a special resident we had at the zoo. Despite her impressive background, Harriet remained attractively modest. She had a sweet personality like a little dog. She loved hibiscus flowers, and certain veggies were her favorites. Steve carried on a practice that his parents had implemented: Whatever you feed animals should be good enough for you to eat. Thus Harriet got the most beautiful mustard greens, kale, eggplant, zucchinis, and even roses. In return, Harriet gave zoo visitors a rare chance to watch her keepers cuddle and scratch one of the grandest creatures on earth. She was the oldest living chelonian and the only living creature to have met Charles Darwin and traveled aboard the Beagle. And she gave us all something else, too--a lesson in how to live a long life. Don’t worry too much. Take it easy. Stop and munch the flowers. It was a lesson Steve noted and understood but could never quite take to heart. He was a meteor. Harriet was more of a mountain. In this world, we need both.

In return, Harriet gave zoo visitors a rare chance to watch her keepers cuddle and scratch one of the grandest creatures on earth. She was the oldest living chelonian and the only living creature to have met Charles Darwin and traveled aboard the Beagle. And she gave us all something else, too--a lesson in how to live a long life. Don’t worry too much. Take it easy. Stop and munch the flowers. It was a lesson Steve noted and understood but could never quite take to heart. He was a meteor. Harriet was more of a mountain. In this world, we need both.

near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights. Caleb exited the car fast. He pointed back at her, told Brian his wife was not taking things well. Rachel was happy to note Caleb limped even as he speed-walked to the boat. She, on the other hand, moved slowly, her eyes on Brian. His gaze barely left hers except for the occasional flicks in the direction of Caleb. If she’d known she’d end up killing him, would she have boarded the boat? She could turn around and go to the police. My husband is an impostor, she’d say. She imagined some smarmy desk sergeant replying, “Aren’t we all, ma’am?” Yes, she was certain, it was a crime to impersonate someone and a crime to keep two wives, but were those serious crimes? In the end, wouldn’t Brian just take a plea and it would all go away? She’d be left the laughingstock never-was, the failed print reporter who’d become a pill-addicted broadcast reporter who’d become a punch line and then a shut-in and who would keep the local comics stocked with weeks of fresh material once it was discovered that Meltdown Media Chick had married a con man with another wife and another life. She followed Caleb up the ramp to the boat. He stepped aboard. When she went to do the same, Brian offered his hand. She stared at it until he dropped it. He noticed the gun she carried. “Should I show you mine? So I feel safer?” “Be my guest.” She stepped aboard. As she did, Brian caught her by the wrist and stripped the gun from her hand in the same motion. He pulled his own gun, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, from under the flaps of his shirt and then laid them both on a table by the

I doubt you cared this much about their feelings when you chose this path,” Iolaus said. He didn’t raise his voice. The truth doesn’t need to be shouted. “Maybe not,” I answered, looking him in the eyes. “But I had to choose it.” “That’s ridiculous.” “No more ridiculous than why you’re ready to sail into the unknown. The only person who needs to chase after the Golden Fleece is Prince Jason, yet you and all the others are joining him for the sake of pure adventure. You hunger for it! Why can’t I?” “Enough.” Iolaus raised his hand. “You win, for your brothers’ sake and because I’ve got the feeling you’d find a way to sneak aboard no matter how much they or I try to stop you. I wish some of the men I know had half your boldness. It’s strange to see it in a girl. Perhaps you’re really Atalanta’s daughter.” My smile answered his. “My nurse, Ione, said I was Zeus’s child.” “My uncle Herakles is supposed to be Zeus’s son. You two must be related. He’s a great one for following his heart first and thinking about the consequences afterward. Or never.” His teeth flashed in the shadows of the old fishwife’s home. “I’ll keep your secret.” “Thank you. You won’t have to do it for very long. You said I didn’t care about my brothers’ feelings when I decided to join this quest. You were right. I’ve only been thinking about what I want.” I took a deep breath. What I was about to say tore at my heart, but I couldn’t escape it. “I’ll go back to Delphi. It’s one thing to take a chance with my own life, but not with so many others.” “Oh, I agree,” Iolaus said. “Which is why I intend to take very good care of my new weapons bearers.

When I told my parents that I was going to sea, they didn’t ask any questions and seemed to take it all for granted. It was hard for me to believe that I had graduated from High School the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. Everything had happened extremely fast. On the very same day that I was hired, without even having a passport, I was on this foreign flagship bound for Le Havre and Rotterdam. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any major mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother, now that I understood the routine. For me, it was my first seagoing adventure! Being the youngest and newest crewmember on the ship earned me a bunk four tiers up against the bulkhead, next to the chain locker. You couldn’t get any farther forward, which made me feel that I would be the first to get to where the ship was going. I didn’t take into account that it would also be the first part of the ship that would slam into the sea or anything else that got in the way, but such was the life of a novice seaman.

growing, like a storm on the horizon, gathering, the echo of thunder distant but present. For whatever reason, it doesn’t affect me. I am certain that there is something out there, waiting for us. We press on, into the darkness, barreling at maximum speed, the three nuclear warheads on our ship armed and ready. I feel like Ahab hunting the white whale. I am a man possessed. When I launched into space aboard the Pax, my life was empty. I didn’t know Emma. My brother was a stranger to me. I had no family, no friends. Only Oscar. Now I have something to lose. Something to live for. Something to fight for. My time in space has changed me. When I left Earth the first time, I was still the rebel scientist the world had cast out. I felt like an outsider, a renegade. Now I have become a leader. I’ve learned to read people, to try to understand them. That was my mistake before. I trudged ahead with my vision of the world, believing the world would follow me. But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you. Every morning, the crew gathers on the bridge. Oscar and Emma strap in on each side of me and we sit around the table and everyone gives their departmental updates. The ship is operating at peak efficiency. So is the crew. Except for the elephant in the room. “As you know,” I begin, “we are still on course for Ceres. We have not ordered the other ships in the Spartan fleet to alter course. The fact that the survey drones have found nothing, changes nothing. Our enemy is advanced. Sufficiently advanced to alter our drones and hide itself. With that said, we should discuss the possibility that there is, in fact, nothing out there on Ceres. We need to prepare for that eventuality.” Heinrich surveys the rest of the crew before speaking. “It could be a trap.” He’s always to the point. I like that about him. “Yes,” I reply, “it could be. The entity, or harvester, or whatever is out there, could be manufacturing the solar cells elsewhere—deeper in the solar system, or from another asteroid in the belt. It could be sending the solar cells to Ceres and then toward the sun, making them look as though they were manufactured on Ceres. There could be a massive bomb or attack drones waiting for us at Ceres.” “We could split our fleet,

Why We Did It is a book about the people who submitted to every whim of a comically unfit and detestable man who crapped all over them and took over the party they had given their life to. It’s about the army of consultants, politicians, and media figures who stood back and stood by as everything they ever fought for was degraded and devalued. The people who privately admitted they recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship that they knew would assuredly sink.

Why We Did It is a book about the people who submitted to every whim of a comically unfit and detestable man who crapped all over them and took over the party they had given their life to. It’s about the army of consultants, politicians, and media figures who stood back and stood by as everything they ever fought for was degraded and devalued. The people who privately admitted they recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship that they knew would assuredly sink.

asked that each member of our team attach a little, plastic strobe light to his or her BCD vest. The strobes are cheap, they come with long-life batteries, and, when activated, they can be seen at night from at least three miles away. Anyone who travels over water in foreign lands, aboard foreign vessels, or who dives, should carry one. Few boat passengers or sport divers expect to be in the water after dusk. But all sunny days over a reef ultimately darken, and accidents are never planned. Which is why, each year, a surprising number of passengers and sport divers are set adrift and die. A strobe is the cheapest possible insurance against disaster.

A fleet of restored vintage trolleys ran from the West Village to Downtown. They had adorable names like Rosie, Betty, Petunia, and the Green Dragon. They dinged cheerfully down the green median of a cobblestone path. Griffin took a few shots of Megan and Josh in front of the Green Dragon before we all climbed aboard. As we looped around the neighborhood, I looked out the window and felt the breeze on my face. The West Village was a great cross section of urban Dallas life. Yuppies, families, and empty nesters commingled on the streets. Most days a breeze blew down the corridor, making it bearable, even enjoyable, to sit outside the cafés year-round. A dog-friendly café with an adjoining dog park was down the block, and a parade of pups dripped down the street, tails wagging, sopping wet from doggie pools. A couple on roller skates did tricks for pedestrians before they skated away, hand in hand. It felt vibrant and magical. Homey.

O reed fence, pay heed to my words. Tell your master, Utanapishtim of Shuruppak, son of Ubaratutu, to pull down his house and fashion a vessel therefrom. Advise him to abandon all possessions and save his life. Tell him to disdain worldly riches and preserve life instead. Aboard this vessel shall he take the seed of every creature that lives upon the Earth. This boat, which he is to build, the measurements shall be equal for the width and the length thereof. Tell him to cover this vessel, as the Firmament covers the Abyss.

Whoopee!” Michael said as his barbecued fish arrived. “Look at that! Amazing.” A meal was never just a meal; with Michael Foot it was a celebration. Nearly every mouthful got its own cry of satisfaction. I remembered, though, that on the boat he had been excited about the fishing and then sobered by seeing the fish pulled on board. He was going to eat it, but for that moment he did not like staring death in the face. Now, even with the whole fish—head and all on his plate, he devoured his delicacy without a qualm. While we talked, Michael put his head down and dug in. All he managed to utter, again and again, was “now, now, delicious.” Later I questioned him, “You’re not really against fishing, are you Michael?” “Well, not really, but every now and again I’m shaken.” Even after what I told you about Benjamin Franklin?” “Yes,” he insisted. I had told Michael the story from Franklin’s autobiography. Although he was a vegetarian, Franklin had been lured by the wonderful smell of sailors cooking fish aboard ship and had forsaken his principles, pointing out that he had watched the fish opened up and saw inside them smaller fish. He reasoned that if the bigger fish could eat the smaller fish, he could eat the bigger fish. “Good excuse that is,” Michael conceded, but he had read Brigid Brophy’s brief in favour of vegetarianism and been persuaded (mostly). “My father was a seaman,” I said to Michael gravely, “and it would be hard to convince me.

The boat slid off the trailer into the water. Once the boat was in the water, Aunt Claire and Victor began to unload everything from the van. “Cheri,” Aunt Claire called. “We could use your help.” Cheri frowned. She stepped out of the van and traded her sneakers for an old pair of hip boots as her aunt pulled the van away from the boat launch ramp and parked it up on high ground. Cheri helped her cousin load the boat. When Aunt Claire returned five minutes later she was pleased to see that everything had been loaded into the boat. She handed out life jackets. Once everyone had a life jacket on she said, “All aboard, the water taxi is departing.” Victor eagerly hopped into the boat and claimed the

Maybe this is how it goes, I think, watching Beth and Melanie, remembering the people I have loved, and the ones I wish I hadn't lost. Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together.

Look, I never meant to get involved with Lock and Deep in the first place and now everything is all messed up and my whole life feels out of control! I can feel their emotions filling me up until I think I’m drowning. Can you help me block them? Lock said you might be able to.” Mother L’rin shook her head. “Only with a full bond is mind privacy possible.” Kat’s heart sank. “So you’re saying in order to have any kind of peace I’d have to tie myself to them for life?” The wise woman nodded solemnly. “Bonded to them you must be.” “But I can’t be. I don’t want to be,” Kat protested. “Until you are, weak you will be.” Mother L’rin poked a finger at her. “The pain…return it will.” “It will?” Kat felt sick. Come to think of it, she hadn’t felt anything like the symptoms she’d had while she was aboard the Mother ship since she woke up. But just the thought of enduring that splitting headache again was hideous. “You must touch them—one at least. Both is better.” Mother L’rin nodded sagely. “As greater your weakness grows, the more deeply must you touch.” “You mean like a…” Kat cleared her throat. “Like a sexual touch?” “Yes, yes.” Mother L’rin nodded vigorously. “The bond it strengthens. Your pain will ease.” “But

Look, I never meant to get involved with Lock and Deep in the first place and now everything is all messed up and my whole life feels out of control! I can feel their emotions filling me up until I think I’m drowning. Can you help me block them? Lock said you might be able to.” Mother L’rin shook her head. “Only with a full bond is mind privacy possible.” Kat’s heart sank. “So you’re saying in order to have any kind of peace I’d have to tie myself to them for life?” The wise woman nodded solemnly. “Bonded to them you must be.” “But I can’t be. I don’t want to be,” Kat protested. “Until you are, weak you will be.” Mother L’rin poked a finger at her. “The pain…return it will.” “It will?” Kat felt sick. Come to think of it, she hadn’t felt anything like the symptoms she’d had while she was aboard the Mother ship since she woke up. But just the thought of enduring that splitting headache again was hideous. “You must touch them—one at least. Both is better.” Mother L’rin nodded sagely. “As greater your weakness grows, the more deeply must you touch.” “You mean like a…” Kat cleared her throat. “Like a sexual touch?” “Yes, yes.” Mother L’rin nodded vigorously. “The bond it strengthens. Your pain will ease.” “But I don’t want to be bonded to them,” Kat said, feeling like a broken record.

Kat jerked her head up to see Deep lounging in the bedroom doorway, one broad shoulder pressed against the door jam. There was a mocking look on his dark face but his eyes were fierce. “Well, well,” he murmured. “You two look so cozy. I’d join you but I don’t think that bed is big enough for three.” Lock sat up, shielding Kat protectively with his arm. “What are you doing here?” he snarled. “The same thing you are, dear brother. Little Kat’s pain called to me—dragged me like a magnet all the way across the ship from the Unmated Males section.” Lock’s brown eyes flashed. “What were you doing there? You’re not unmated!” Deep raised an eyebrow. “I practically am. Anyway, why should you care?” Kat looked back and forth between them uneasily. She wasn’t sure exactly what went on in the Unmated Males area—but she thought there must be some kind of sexual element to it. She’d never heard of prostitutes aboard the Mother ship but vague whispers and rumors seemed to indicate that there was some form of release available to the unmated warriors. Which made sense when you considered the uncharted amount of testosterone in the average alpha male Kindred. “I care because it’s disrespectful to the lady Kat,” Lock growled. “But why should I expect anything different? You disrespect everything and everyone. You don’t care about anyone but yourself.” Deep threw up his hands. “That’s me—I’m just a self-centered bastard, pissing on everything you hold dear. Ruining your life.” “Yes, you are!

River Rafting in Rishikesh is one of the most thrilling water based adventure sports that gives you an up close splatter of untamed nature in a world where the royal river is what you are up adjacent to. Aboard a raft, when the water wave hits your face for the first time; you be familiar with that it will take a little more than a few ounces of bravery to tame the river beast and indeed this duel next to mother nature will enrich your life forever, even if tried only once in a life time…The modern raft is a boat that is inflated comprising of a very durable and thick coated rubberized or vinyl fabric and also has a number of air chambers. The chief apparatus required for rafting are a life jacket ,Safety helmet, Safety Helmet, Paddles, River guide and a Self-Bailing Raft, etc. It is a very daring activity and it may appear a very perilous sport, but once you knowledge it, you will certainly realize the actual thrill of rafting. The best time for water river rafting is spiral summer to February to May and in winter September to November. You probably think that there is completely no way to extreme sports such as rafting can be fun at all. This is false, because all you need for a great sport like this is fun to be an expert to take manages of all rafting. It is a fun place to take part in all the summer sports, when it's nice and warm and all you need is a movement related to the water to take temperatures down. It is also a thrilling sport that many people can participate at the same time. Friends and family can get together and everybody can have a brilliant day of fun. As you begin your boat journey, you will encounter a number of rapids, which you will be necessary to sail over. Uttarakhand adventure is well known rafting company in Rishikesh. This excursion will roughly be two hours long, and will make you use all your power and skill to keep the boat under control. Water will stay splash all over you, and will keep you invigorated and bouncing if you start feeling tired due to the corporeal work that you will do. As an extreme sport, rafting certainly has its drawbacks, but not all make games? The best way to take safety measures so that you can avoid fatal accidents is to acquire a knowledgeable scout who is qualified for the chore and the best gear for rafting. For example, you should always have a life jacket on the obverse rafting, in the unfortunate event that the boat capsize; you'll be able to stay afloat and hope to swim to defense. Also, if you are unsure of your rafting skills, rapids and waterfalls stay away from very high.

The marine underworld stretched below the ship and embodied many secrets. The disappearance of Olga had become one of the mysteries that would remain with Stefania and her family. The disappearance of her baby sister and sudden departure from her home had taught the ten-year-old that life was filled with uncertainties. But she was willing to forget that for a little while. She jumped down from the barrel and headed toward Liam, Felix, and the other shipmates. They would sing shanties and talk of the constellations, the sea, its creatures, and the legends. It would get her through another night. La Suerte was the only stability for her passengers with the infinite unknown all around them. The waters of the sea, the world below the surface, and the sky that stretched beyond the horizon was a representation of the limitless possibilities and dangers awaiting those aboard.

Even now, missing Earth, he felt sympathy only for those aboard Gypsy, those orphaned, damaged, disaffected, dispossessed, Aspergerish souls whose anger at that great abstraction, The World, was more truly an anger at all those fortunate enough to be unlike them. We were all so young. How can you be so young, and so hungry for, and yet so empty of life?

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter—and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. Huck Finn. I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

But it was too late to turn back – how I often felt in the middle of these small-hour adventures, convincing myself that this was just getting my money’s worth out of my youth. A Margaret Atwood quote hung over this period of my life like a lampshade from the ceiling. When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.” Excerpt From Everything I Know About Love Dolly Alderton This material may be protected by copyright.

Schwieger ordered the submarine to the bottom so his crew could dine in peace. “And now,” said Zentner, “there was fresh fish, fried in butter, grilled in butter, sautéed in butter, all that we could eat.” These fish and their residual odors, however, could only have worsened the single most unpleasant aspect of U-boat life: the air within the boat. First there was the basal reek of three dozen men who never bathed, wore leather clothes that did not breathe, and shared one small lavatory. The toilet from time to time imparted to the boat the scent of a cholera hospital and could be flushed only when the U-boat was on the surface or at shallow depths, lest the undersea pressure blow material back into the vessel. This tended to happen to novice officers and crew, and was called a “U-boat baptism.” The odor of diesel fuel infiltrated all corners of the boat, ensuring that every cup of cocoa and piece of bread tasted of oil. Then came the fragrances that emanated from the kitchen long after meals were cooked, most notably that close cousin to male body odor, day-old fried onions. All this was made worse by a phenomenon unique to submarines that occurred while they were submerged. U-boats carried only limited amounts of oxygen, in cylinders, which injected air into the boat in a ratio that varied depending on the number of men aboard. Expended air was circulated over a potassium compound to cleanse it of carbonic acid, then reinjected into the boat’s atmosphere. Off-duty crew were encouraged to sleep because sleeping men consumed less oxygen. When deep underwater, the boat developed an interior atmosphere akin to that of a tropical swamp. The air became humid and dense to an unpleasant degree, this caused by the fact that heat generated by the men and by the still-hot diesel engines and the boat’s electrical apparatus warmed the hull. As the boat descended through ever colder waters, the contrast between the warm interior and cold exterior caused condensation, which soaked clothing and bred colonies of mold. Submarine crews called it “U-boat sweat.” It drew oil from the atmosphere and deposited it in coffee and soup, leaving a miniature oil slick. The longer the boat stayed submerged, the worse conditions became. Temperatures within could rise to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “You can have no conception of the atmosphere that is evolved by degrees under these circumstances,” wrote one commander, Paul Koenig, “nor of the hellish temperature which brews within the shell of steel.

Why We Did It is a book about the people who submitted to every whim of a comically unfit and detestable man who crapped all over them and took over the party they had given their life to. It’s about the army of consultants, politicians, and media figures who stood back and stood by as everything they ever fought for was degraded and devalued. The people who privately admitted they recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship that they knew would assuredly sink.

Miracle story about Lahiri Mahasaya from a woman disciple, Abhoya, from Chapter 31, titled "An Interview with the Sacred Mother", in the book "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Yogananda*: She [Abhoya] and her husband, a Calcutta lawyer, started one day for Banaras to visit the guru. Their carriage was delayed by heavy traffic; they reached the Howrah main station in Calcutta only to hear the Banaras train whistling for departure. Abhoya, near the ticket office, stood quietly. "Lahiri Mahasaya, I beseech thee to stop the train!" she silently prayer. "I cannot suffer the pangs of delay in waiting another day to see thee." The wheels of the snorting train continued to move round and round, but there was no onward progress. The engineer and passengers descended to the platform to view the phenomenon. An English railroad guard approached Abhoya and her husband. Contrary to all precedent, the guard volunteered his services. "Babu," he said, "give me the money. I will buy your tickets while you get aboard." As soon as the couple was seated and had received the tickets, the train slowly moved forward. In panic, the engineer and passangers clambered again to their places, knowing neither how hte train started nor why it had stopped in the first place. Arriving at hte home of Lahiri Mahasaya in Banaras, Abhoya silently prostrated herself before the master, and tried to touch his feet. "Compose yourself, Abhoya," he remarked. "How you love to bother me! As if you could not have come here by the next train! - *More Lahiri Mahasaya miracle stories can be found in this chapter of this book.

You think I’ve changed? Well, all aboard the Crazy Train and hold on for wretched life. Those sharp turns and sudden betrayals are a bitch.

Here and there may be found men in all walks of life who neither wonder or care how much or how little the world thinks of them. They pursue life’s pathway, doing their appointed tasks, without ostentation, loving their work for the work’s sake, content to live and do in the present rather than look for the uncertain rewards of the future. To them notoriety, distinction, or even fame, acts neither as a spur nor a check to endeavor, yet they are among the foremost of those who do the world’s work. Joshua James was one

…if at this moment you and I, and all our companions, were not aboard these ships, in the midst of the sea, in this unknown solitude, in a condition as uncertain and risky as you please; what other situation in life would we find ourselves in? What would we be doing? How would we be spending these days? Do you think, more happily? Or would we not rather be in some greater trouble or anxiety, or else full of boredom? . . .Even if we gain no other benefit from this voyage, it seems to me that it is most profitable to us, in that for a while it keeps us free of boredom, renders life dear to us, and makes us value many things that we would not otherwise take into account.

It was hard for me to believe that I had graduated from High School the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had, were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother now that I understood the routine. I really don’t know if getting a job aboard a foreign ship was easier in the “50’s” or was it that the ship needed another steward and I was willing to be a strike breaker? No one on the ship mentioned the strike and everyone treated me as just another member of the crew. Mostly everyone aboard spoke Dutch and amazingly enough I understood them. Dutch being a Germanic language was very similar to the German spoken in the lowlands, which included Hamburg. It didn’t take long before I was answering and then conversing with the crew…. Although I was on the bottom rung of the ladder I felt right at home. My bunk was at the top of a three bunk stack in the crew’s quarters, high up against the chain locker. The bathroom, called the “head” in English, didn’t have toilets or urinals. Instead I had to perfect my aim as I balanced myself over a hole in the deck. Fortunately there were places for my feet and handholds to help me stabilize myself in this balancing act. With no partitions for modesty I soon lost my inhibitions and became deft at this. At least they furnished the paper and considering it all, life was good!

The Air Force had a requirement that an EC-135 be airborne with a general officer aboard at all times, with no lapses ever, which translated to three missions of eight-plus hours a day. Remarkably, Looking Glass aircraft were airborne and mission-ready continuously for thirty-one years.

Aboard the SS Bremen. Dietrich’s mannish attire was not at all unusual in the Berlin culture of the 1920s. In Hollywood, my mother phoned us every day, wishing she were back home.

Amidst the comfort of flight, we have lost track of its miraculousness. We embark on great journeys spanning many hours and meridians of mercator space. We purchase tickets that guarantee our arrival. For a nominal charge, we are assured that our possessions will appear intact and, if not, someone will be held accountable. Then we proceed through immense palisades of machinery that guarantee our security before sampling terminal cuisine and stepping aboard a tube that will ascend into the stratosphere and descend again. But it's more complex than that isn't it? In all the history of mankind there has never been something as wonderfully utilitarian as flight. We, the heirs of millennia of humanity, are spoiled by this convenience. The vastness of our trek is disarticulated by altitude. We know not the hardships of insurmountable spaces, only the seeming ease of the shortcut. Our trek westward is not that of our forefathers. It is much more insidious. The perils are intangible, but just as lethal. The intense pressure and friction of prolonged human contact. A lack of space despite our seeming mastery of it. The constant rubbing. The back and forth shoves that push us closer to the chasm. These are the realities that sublimate themselves into a vast subterranean tension. Unseen, but surely felt. The unspoken dread. The unacknowledged foreboding. It eats at us. Demands that we come to grips with what we've become. Acknowledgement.

SAILORS ABOARD Whispering like wind amidst the tempest Is the calm sea beneath the tides The waters that rise in harmony with the moon How be it that nature adores on element with grace It's all smooth when the sailors sails The flapping flings, the life beneath it The graceful shine that illuminates grayscale Let the earth move for life is only beneath An irony beyond the minds of the children of men Daughter of the sea, the sail be smooth. Poem by Victor Vote for Henrieta Chine

I had graduated from high school the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had, were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother now that I understood the routine. When I told my parents that I was going to sea, they didn’t ask any questions and seemed to take it all for granted. Everything happened extremely fast. On the very same day that I was hired, I was on this foreign flagship bound for Le Havre and Rotterdam, without having as much as a passport. Most of the crewmembers that went on strike were left behind for U.S. Immigration to sort out, provided that they could even be rounded up. For me, it was my first seagoing adventure! Being the youngest and newest crewmember on the ship earned me a bunk four tiers up and against the bulkhead, next to the chain locker. You couldn’t get any farther forward, which made me feel that I would be the first to get to where the ship was going. I didn’t take into account that it would also be the first part of the ship that would slam into the sea or anything else that got in the way, but such was the life of a seaman.

We're all the same. We all want the same thing in life. Everybody going around like they know how to sail but there is no captain and we are all only passengers aboard the same sinking ship.