Azores Quotes

Melisandre: I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only snow.

When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.

Calla, calla, princesa —dice el hada madrina—; en caballo, con alas, hacia acá se encamina, en el cinto la espada y en la mano el azor, el feliz caballero que te adora sin verte, y que llega de lejos, vencedor de la Muerte, a encenderte los labios con un beso de amor

There is a Portuguese word, saudade, that they say has no translation. It’s bigger than homesickness or missing someone. It’s a yearning that can be expressed in no other language. It is, as one Azorean friend puts it, “a strictly Portuguese word.

It is night in your Seven Kingdoms now,' the red woman went on, 'but soon the sun will rise again. The war continues, Davos Seaworth, and some will soon learn that even an ember in the ashes can still ignite a great blaze. The old maester looked at Stannis and saw only a man. You see a king. You are both wrong. He is the Lord's chosen, the warrior of fire. I have seen him leading the fight against the dark, I have seen it in the flames. The flames do not lie, else you would not be here. It is written in prophecy as well. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.

Home—it seemed like a fragile idea to me. Is it where we’re from or where we are?

America has long been divided between those who believe its strength lies in diversity and those who are afraid of outsiders and blame social ills on whoever is in the latest wave of migrants.

Maria was amazed to learn that he had been in the Azores, where she had lived until she was eleven. She was doubly amazed that he had been in the Hawaiian Islands, whither she had migrated from the Azores with her people.

I have seen it in the flames, read of it in ancient prophecy. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt.” Jon

the Pednosophers who, by one name or another, actually did exist in late 16th century London. It numbered among its members Marlowe and Raleigh. (‘Its president is in the Azores,’ says Cotton, of Raleigh. And so he was.) Probably only one reader in a million will detect this obscure reference. I pray it’s the reviewer for The New York Times.

Well, Jack, we have taken the Macedonian, and your share of the prize, if we get her in safely, may be two hundred dollars; what will you do with it?” Stephen Decatur, commanding the frigate United States, North Atlantic, near the Azores Islands, 1812. “One hundred will go to my mother, sir, and the other I shall spend on schooling.” Jack Creamer, aged ten.

marriage works best when people live in separate countries.

One of the West's singular migrations--from the Azores to California's Great Central Valley--is given faces and voices in Anthony Barcellos's new novel, Land of Milk and Money. Along with its triumphs, the Francisco family embodies the challenges to an immigrant family in a new land, including the often ignored difficulties posed by success and the loss of the old culture. A must read...

Among the many spots used by philosophers and astronomers over the centuries to mark the meridian for zero degrees longitude were Ferro, in the Canary Islands; Ujjain, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; the “agonic line” (a line along which true north and magnetic north coincide, but not forever) that passed through the Azores; the Paris Observatory; the Royal Observatory at Greenwich; the White House; and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

He pulled a battered red photo album from his truck’s glove compartment and showed me pictures of green Azorean fields divided by hedges of lilac-colored hydrangeas. He showed me waves crashing against black volcanic rock and his ancient stone house next to the sea, the home where he returned every summer. “Over there the air is so clean, so nice. The ocean is right there. The fish are fresh, you catch and eat them, and the potatoes are so good, you won’t believe it. “We make wine. Put on shorts and get in there and smash grapes, and when you drink right away is sweet like juice. Every year when we get back from there, we’re fat,” Morais said. He loved his island house in the Azores so much that at the end of each summer, when he left, he had to have someone else close the door for him. “I’m a guy that came from the old country. I never go to school five minutes in this country, and still I work and I do good. I love my money. God bless this country,” he said. “But when I leave to close my door over there, I cry like a baby. I try so hard not to, but I cry.

Unfortunately, on Christmas morning 1492 the Santa María ran aground on the northern coast of what is now Haiti. Not having any way to refloat her, the crew off-loaded the provisions and equipment from the ship before she broke up. For protection they then built a flimsy fortification on the beach, calling it “La Navidad.” With the consent of the local Indian Chief, Columbus left behind 39 men with orders to establish a settlement, and appointed Diego de Arana, a cousin of his mistress Beatriz, as the Governor. On January 16, 1493, Columbus left Navidad and sailed for Portugal and Spain on the Niña. Everything went well until the two remaining ships, the Niña and the Pinta, became separated from each other. Columbus was convinced that the captain of the faster Pinta would get back to Spain first, thereby garnering all the glory by telling lies about him and his discoveries. On March 4th, a violent storm off the Azores forced him to take refuge in Lisbon. Both ships, amazingly enough, arrived there safely. A week later, Columbus continued on to Palos, Spain, on the Gulf of Cádiz, from whence he had started. Finally, on March 15th, he arrived in Barcelona. It seems that all’s well that ends well, because he was hailed a hero and news of his discovery of new lands spread throughout Europe like wildfire.

About two days after passing by Gibraltar, I was again mesmerized by two Azores islands we passed between. The one on the north side was covered with gloomy clouds and looked rugged, dark, and mysterious; the one facing it, on the south side, looked like an enchanted isle from a fable book, with countless terraced gardens climbing up a mountain, spotted by sparkling white houses and churches. Then, more ocean…

Azor,

Urias;  MAT1:07 And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa;  MAT1:08 And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias;  MAT1:09 And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias;  MAT1:10 And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias;  MAT1:11 And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon:  MAT1:12 And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel;  MAT1:13 And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor;  MAT1:14 And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud;  MAT1:15 And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob;  MAT1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Under President Richard Nixon, U.S. policy developed an even more pronounced pro-Portuguese bent, consistent with the administration’s support for white-ruled Africa. The most notorious manifestation was the December 1971 executive agreement that gave Portugal $436 million in credits for the use of the Azores base until February 1974. It was, noted the New York Times, “one of the largest economic assistance packages negotiated in many years in exchange for foreign base rights,” and it would “prop up the Lisbon Government’s floundering economy,” exhausted by a decade of colonial wars.56 As Amílcar Cabral told the UN Security Council in Addis Ababa the following February, “Portugal would not be in a position to carry out three wars against Africans without the aid of her allies.”57 CUBAN

Stevenson had written Kennedy in June 1963 that the Africans wanted to know whether the United States stood “for self-determination and human rights” or whether “we will give our Azores base . . . priority.” Despite Kennedy’s uneasiness and the strong opposition of a few U.S. officials, the administration’s policy was clear: the base in the Azores was more important than self-determination in Africa. In the final analysis, as a German scholar concludes, “What worried the [Kennedy] administration was not Portugal’s use of the arms in Africa, but the danger that it might become public. In fact the administration . . . continued to deliver weapons to Portugal.”54

At the age of ninety-two, James spent months hunched over the kitchen table, learning the alphabet, practicing his signature, and slowly progressing to reading simple children’s books. Then his wife died, sending him into a tailspin and robbing him of his motivation to learn to read. But his story doesn’t end there. At the age of ninety-six, Henry became determined to try to learn to read again. This time he not only dove back into reading, but, with the help of a retired English teacher, he began to write, longhand, about his life, his time at sea, a man he lost overboard on one voyage, and what his grandfather’s farm was like in the Azores. He finished his memoir, and when he was ninety-eight it was published and became a bestselling book called In a Fisherman’s Language. It was optioned to become a film, and his success triggered a congratulatory letter from President Obama. Henry was working on his second book when he died at age ninety-nine in 2013. Henry’s story is remarkable on many levels. First, it took a tremendous amount of grit just to get by in today’s world as an illiterate adult. Even more remarkable was his determination to overcome it later in life.

People still said that “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire,” even though the Commonwealth was starting to come apart. In spite of the obvious, it was unthinkable that the United States had a colony in Africa; well they had one, and that was where I was headed! World War II had been over for ten years and in Europe they were getting on with things and for now all was well in Africa, and with the World! Unless especially fitted out, aircraft didn’t have the range to cross the Atlantic in one jump, so after leaving Idlewild Airport in New York City, we flew halfway across the Atlantic Ocean to the Portuguese island of Santa Maria in the Azores. After refueling and stretching our legs we continued on to Lisbon. Our layovers were only for as long as it took to take care of business. There were no days built in, for me to have a leisurely, gentlemanly, civilized journey to my destination. Instead my seat was beginning to feel as hard as a rock pile. The engines continued to drone on as the Atlantic Ocean eventually gave way to the Iberian Peninsula. My view of Portugal was only what I could see from the air and what was at the airport. Again we landed for fuel in Lisbon, and then without skipping a beat, headed south across the Mediterranean to the North African desert. The beaches under us, in Morocco and the Spanish Sahara, were endless and the sand went from the barren coastal surf inland, to as far as the eye could see. With very few exceptions there was no evidence of civilization.

The ocean floor had identifiable formations such as the continental shelf near the continents' landmass. Here it is generally thought of as that part of the continent that is underwater. Perhaps it could be better thought of as that part that corresponds to the area of the mainland between the beach and the point where the continent falls off into the abyss. Other terms include the seabed, seafloor, sea floor, or ocean floor which is the bottom of the ocean. If this area were to be dry it would include many of the same features found on land, such as mountain ranges and flat plains. Some of these mountains penetrate the surface to become islands. The Hawaiian and Caribbean islands are examples of this. In the Atlantic Ocean the mid-Atlantic riff also has many examples such as Iceland, the Azores Madeira, Ascension Island and Saint Helena. These islands follow a seismic crack or fault line between adjacent tectonic plates. It runs 24,855 miles, mostly underwater, from the Polar Regions in both the northern and southern hemispheres. There is a concern that as more ice melts due to global warming some of the lands near the ocean, including entire islands, will relatively soon become flooded, Coastal Florida is definitely an area of concern, however politicians have not yet noticed! Usually a seabed describes the Seafloor and its characteristics such as the type of sediment, sand or stones covering it. Some scientists differentiate the Ocean floor from the Sea bottom, by the water over it such as that of an Ocean a Gulf or a Sea. Although it can be made to sound complicated these nouns are basically synonymous and in most cases can be used interchangeably.

That morning Captain Rostron had considered several places he might land his more than seven hundred unexpected passengers. He’d first considered the Azores so that he could continue to the Mediterranean as scheduled; then Halifax, which was the nearest port. But on seeing the survivors come aboard, many of them in a distressed state and some in need of medical attention, it soon became clear that he should take them directly to New York. Rostron decided to visit Bruce Ismay to discuss the decision with him but the shattered White Star chairman quickly gave his agreement to whatever the captain thought was best. It was Rostron who had earlier prompted a dazed Ismay to send a wireless message notifying the White Star Line’s New York office about the accident. To Philip Franklin, the U.S. vice president of White Star’s parent company, the International Mercantile Marine, Ismay had written: Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning after collision iceberg, resulting serious loss life. Full particulars later. Bruce Ismay.

The first known published text of the classic fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740 and collected in her compilation La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins. To say that the story met with favor is an understatement. By 1756, "Beauty and the Beast" was so well known that Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont wrote an abridged edition of it that would become the popular version included in collections of fairy tales throughout the nineteenth century (although Andrew Lang went back to de Villeneuve's original for his groundbreaking anthology The Blue Fairy Book, first published in 1891 as the beginning of a twelve-book series that would revolutionize the anthologizing of fairy tales for young read ers). Fifteen years later. Jean-François Marmontel and André Ernest Modeste Grétry adapted de Villeneuve's story as the book for the opera Zémire et Azor. the start of more than two centuries of extraliterary treatments that now include Jean Cocteau's famous 1946 film La Belle et la Bête, Walt Disney's 1991 animated feature Beauty and the Beast, and countless other cinematic, televi sion, stage, and musical variations on the story's theme. More than 4,000 years after it became part of the oral storytelling tradi tion, it is easy to understand why "Beauty and the Beast" continues to be one of the most popular fairy tales of all time, and a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists working in all mediums. Its theme of the power of unconditional love is one that never grows old.

Gerald and I saw the Azore Islands, Talcahuano, Tumbez, San Francisco, and Nome from afar while the captain and officers rowed to shore for fresh food and fresh whalers. Even at Nome, not two days ago, Gerald and I watched the Alaskan town from the ship. We saw Talcahuano at night, the town alive with lights and torches. We heard music across the water. People celebrated an event on shore. We thought it might be a wedding. We imagined walking the clay, brick roads, ordering crabs and clams near the sea, sampling the local exotic fruits and plants growing in their vibrant colors and prickly skins, and of course, seducing the dark- skinned indigenous women emanating macadamia oil, musk, and leafy air. Merihim laughed at our children’s eyes and said to act like men, not like guttersnipes at a bakery window.

Innocent III confirms this in cap. Litteras, de rest. spol. “Whatever is against conscience, paves the way to hell.” But an erroneous conscience is that which dictates what is false as though it were true. Moreover, some erroneous consciences are vincible, and some are invincible. A conscience is vincible, when it may and must be conquered by the operation, or because it notices an error, or at least hesitates about an error, and at the same time notices the obligation to conquer it, but does nothing to conquer it, as many teach (S. Anton. 2. p. tit. 5, c. 1 §5; Navarr. praelud. 9. n. 9; Salm. tr. 20. c. 14. punct. 2. n. 9; Suarez in 5. p. d. 4. sect. 8. n. 18 with Sylvius, Cajetan, communissime aliisque ex S. Thoma de Veritate, q. 15. art. 4. ad 10). Furthermore, the Salamancans (loc. cit.) and Alphonse de Castro (tr. 2, de pecc. d. 1. p. 15. n. 6, with Azor, Suarez, Vasquez, Bonac. etc. and Wigandt de consc. ex 1. q. 5, n. 7), teach that it is not necessary to apply oneself to the utmost so as to conquer error, rather it is sufficient to do what is common and ordinary. On the other hand, an invincible conscience is such that cannot be morally conquered, since no thought or doubt comes into the mind of the one who acts, nor even confusion while he acts, or when he considers the cause of the action, as it is explained in greater length in the Treatise On sins (book 2) where it is argued on the knowledge that is required for sin.

Where do you suggest?” he asks. “Where do you know a surgeon with our ink who won’t raise a battalion after us?” Sim stares at him for a moment, like she’s tracing a mental map of the world, weighing her choices. Then she says, “I know a surgeon in Ponta Delgada. With the winds at our back, we could be there by nightfall tomorrow.” “The Azores are Portuguese,” Saad replies. “I didn’t say they were ours; I said I know a surgeon there.” Saad doesn’t look convinced. Sim puffs out her cheeks in a frustrated sigh, then goes on. “I’d bet my life on her. She won’t betray us. And the Azores may be Portuguese, but plenty of corsairs make port there. Lots of Berber captains use it for a stopover—we won’t be in danger.” “Who’s the surgeon?” Saad asks. Sim falters. “What?” “You said she.” Saad folds his arms, his lips curling into an triumphant smile. “So I’m curious, what is the name of this lady doctor in Ponta Delgada? I didn’t know you knew any lady surgeons. Except one, who was banished from our fleet, a sentence you volunteered to carry out.” Sim looks away from him. I watch her throat flex as she swallows hard. “Tell me, Sim,” Saad says quietly. Sim keeps her gaze fixed on the floor. Monty shifts in his fitful sleep with a small whimper. Sim closes her eyes, then looks at Saad. “It’s Felicity Montague.

there are three routes to choose from. From Morocco, the Azores, or Senegal; the Cape Verde Islands, St. Paul Island, and Cayenne. Those are the routes most talked about at the start. They are favored because they are the farthest north and the most direct. I have a better, a least safer, idea.” “I’ll warrant you have, Dave, if it’s to be found,” declared Hiram. “What is it?” inquired Elmer. “The objection to those routes,” explained the young airman, “is that the water stretches are of wide extent. What I dread most is the fear of being caught away from land.” “Is there a shorter route than those you speak of?” asked Hiram. “Yes, there is,” asserted Dave. “What is it?” “Egypt, the Sahara Desert, the French Congo, Ascension Island, St. Helena, Trinidad, Rio Janeiro, and we are on American soil.” “Capital!” cried Hiram. “I wouldn’t lose an hour, Dave,” advised Elmer, with real anxiety. “Ever since we found out that there are two of the crowd ahead of us, it seems as if I’d be willing to sleep in the seat in the machine all the way to get ahead of them.” It was a warm, clear day when the Comet came to a rest at the city of Mayamlia, in French Congo. Looking back over the ten days consumed in making the run across Egypt, through Fezzan, the width of the great desert, over darkest Africa, and into the Soudan, the airship boys had viewed a country never before thus inspected by an aerial explorer. “Baked,

Yet now she could not even seem to find her king. I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R’hllor shows me only Snow.

On both ships we were as comfortable as possible, and the voyage was wholly devoid of incidents. Now and then, as at the Azores, at Suez, and at Aden, the three naturalists landed, and collected some dozens or scores of birds — which next day were skinned and prepared in my room, as the largest and best fitted for the purpose

There’re a lot of Portuguese families on the Cape. They came over from the Azores in the 1880s, and they settled here to fish. According to the stories, a fisherman was out on the ocean when his oars broke. Or his mast, depending on who’s telling the story. Anyhow, something broke. He prayed to the Madonna, and the seas calmed, allowing him to return safely to port (117).

Charles Darwin “could be considered a professional outsider,” according to creativity researcher Dean Keith Simonton. Darwin was not a university faculty member nor a professional scientist at any institution, but he was networked into the scientific community. For a time, he focused narrowly on barnacles, but got so tired of it that he declared, “I am unwilling to spend more time on the subject,” in the introduction to a barnacle monograph. Like the 3M generalists and polymaths, he got bored sticking in one area, so that was that. For his paradigm-shattering work, Darwin’s broad network was crucial. Howard Gruber, a psychologist who studied Darwin’s journals, wrote that Darwin only personally carried out experiments “opportune for experimental attack by a scientific generalist such as he was.” For everything else, he relied on correspondents, Jayshree Seth style. Darwin always juggled multiple projects, what Gruber called his “network of enterprise.” He had at least 231 scientific pen pals who can be grouped roughly into thirteen broad themes based on his interests, from worms to human sexual selection. He peppered them with questions. He cut up their letters to paste pieces of information in his own notebooks, in which “ideas tumble over each other in a seemingly chaotic fashion.” When his chaotic notebooks became too unwieldy, he tore pages out and filed them by themes of inquiry. Just for his own experiments with seeds, he corresponded with geologists, botanists, ornithologists, and conchologists in France, South Africa, the United States, the Azores, Jamaica, and Norway, not to mention a number of amateur naturalists and some gardeners he happened to know. As Gruber wrote, the activities of a creator “may appear, from the outside, as a bewildering miscellany,” but he or she can “map” each activity onto one of the ongoing enterprises. “In some respects,” Gruber concluded, “Charles Darwin’s greatest works represent interpretative compilations of facts first gathered by others.” He was a lateral-thinking integrator.

Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor,

gastronomic flavours and traditions on display to tease and seduce the senses.

Carthage was a spider’s web of trade and communications that spread eastward to Egypt and the Levant, and westward as far as scarcely imaginable places beyond Spain. Where the Mediterranean issued between the giant Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar and Ceuta) into the misty Ocean that lapped the whole world round, the Carthaginians had planted trading posts. Their interests extended as far north as Britain and the Baltic, as well as to the Canary Islands, the Cameroons, and possibly even the Azores.

Something my father always told me was that the trick to success is to know when you have enough and stop and appreciate it.

But São Jorge startled me. From the ferry it looked like a towering emerald fortress ringed by waterfalls. It was a steep, secretive island.

One thing is we spend most of our time with couples who like each other,” Elmano said. “Being around people who don’t like being married to each other can be contagious.

But a friend of mine whose husband died has a theory that there are four chambers in the human heart—so even if one belongs for eternity to someone missing, there is still room for love.

In California, every spring weekend, somewhere in a Portuguese community, they are dishing out free soup. It’s a deeply spiritual rite but not a Catholic one, something seldom realized.

Historians believe the Holy Spirit tradition began with Joachim, a monk born in Calabria circa 1135. He was the abbot of a monastery in Fiore, Italy. He came to believe that the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—represented different ages for humanity. The age of the Father was in the past, they were living in the age of the Son, and ahead was the age of the Holy Spirit, according to Joachim’s reading of Scripture.

part of an e. e. cummings poem—the closest thing to a hymn that I have memorized: i thank You God for most this amazing / day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees / and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything / which is natural which is infinite which is yes.

The Tenth Island is what you carry inside you. It’s what’s left when everything else falls away. Those of us who live between worlds just know the Tenth Island better. No matter where I have lived—I have never left my island.

It was the reason I liked immigration stories: place and separation and identity and figuring out what stayed put even when you didn’t.

Stories almost always begin with a person at their low point.

The world is a small place, and the currents can carry anyone anywhere.

Recent archaeology finds suggest there may have been even earlier, unknown inhabitants who disappeared before the Portuguese arrived, raising the question of how people got to the middle of the ocean before the known advent of sailing ships.

Mark Twain mentioned the Azores in The Innocents Abroad but only to say, “Out of our whole ship’s company there was not a solitary individual who knew anything whatever about them.

The humidity keeps the hills a rich green and means that a wildfire won’t burn, but it can be hard on pudding-headed sorts overly concerned with the texture of their hair. Like me. Redheads are vulnerable to such worries. We’re conditioned to believe that there’s only a few flyaway hairs’ difference between siren and Pippi Longstocking, Little Orphan Annie, or Witchiepoo.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DAWDLING THEORY This theory holds that there is nothing more valuable than time to waste. The most interesting things are the ones tucked in the empty spaces to be discovered when dawdling, loitering, lying in bed. It’s the only part of the universe you can truly call your own.

That night, after a hearty meal of sopas ladled out of huge pots and linguiça and Portuguese breads and cheeses,

THE PAPER-CUT THEORY This theory holds that the tiny cuts made by bad bosses, broken romances, and the like sting more than real grief. It’s the difference between a deep throbbing wound and a paper cut. Our fingers have more nerves near the surface because that’s how we explore the world. So it hurts like hell when paper slices us. At the same time, scientists believe that our bodies know it’s not really life-threatening, so all the natural protective mechanisms, such as endorphins and bleeding, don’t kick into gear. And since paper is microscopically ragged, it leaves a jagged cut. Unlike the clean slice of a razor, which can kill us.

I have thought about a DNA test. But I don’t like the idea, because I think it shouldn’t matter. I’m a proponent of a one-race sorting system: human.

Here’s to nothing,” he said. “That’s when anything can happen.

Infante Dom Henrique de Avis, Duke of Viseu, better known as Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, was the fifth child of King John I. The prince was a responsible ruler and is remembered for developing Portugal’s trade routes with foreign countries, exploring the islands along the central spine of the Atlantic Ocean and sailing along the western coast of Africa in search of new trade routes to the Far East. The 15th century was exciting as well as dangerous. It was a time when exploring meant going to sea and discovering new lands inhabited by many people that were previously unknown to Europeans. The explorations started in about 1418, when two Portuguese ships were inadvertently driven off-course by a storm. The vessels grounded onto the island now known as Porto Santos. The captains, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, who had been commissioned by Prince Henry the Navigator, saw heavy clouds in the distance, under which lay the island of Madeira. Eight years later, Diogo de Silves discovered islands north of Madeira, now known as the Azores.

We have this one life. But all the roads not taken, all those other lives we might have lived, are a part of it too.

when traveling, one should forget constant exploration. Go back to the same spots. You’ll be recognized as a familiar face and you’ll discover more.

DIVING BOARD NOTES Odie tells Albert, a friend the family knew back in Iran, that I had a cocktail party, and they met my Armenian writer friend, and she found him intelligent and smokin’ hot. Odie is perfectly fluent in English, but connotation can still trip her up. A while back, I told her that when Americans think someone is nice-looking, they say, “smokin’ hot.” Albert’s twenty-two-year-old son seated next to me whispers, “She thinks he’s smoking hot?” I whisper back, “She also thinks you and I are smoking hot. It’s her phrase.” Albert, on the other side of me, whispers, “You are smoking pot?” Patrick, across from me, listening through the din, says, “No, I don’t like smoking pot.” Armen, a little hard of hearing, says to Patrick, “You like smoking pot?!” Albert whispers to me, “Pot is not so bad. I like Scotch better.” Odie, oblivious to their side conversations, finishes her recounting with a flourish: “And he’s such a good writer!

the trick to success is to know when you have enough and stop and appreciate it.

Our next stop was Terceira’s surest shot for a tourist attraction: Algar do Carvão, probably the only known place in the world where you can walk inside the cone of a volcano. There was an initial explosion some three thousand two hundred years ago, and then two thousand years ago another eruption at the same site spewed molten lava inside the mountain. When the lava drained, it left chambers whose rock walls were as varied in colors of bronzes and golds as the cloak of the lover in the Gustav Klimt painting The Kiss.

Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it . . . We do these things not to change the world, but so that the world will not change us.

had dated a pilot afraid of buttons. He’d been trapped in a duvet as a child. One friend of mine didn’t think this was a deal breaker, likening it to her mother’s aversion to plaid: “It makes her dizzy. She has to leave the room.” Then it came out that he didn’t like zippers either, and I realized he just wanted people to keep their clothes on.

what makes the present beautiful and complete is also imagining what we will do next.

I wish I could figure out the rules that the universe follows for catching you when you jump off a cliff. There seems to be some sort of caveat that the life rafts won’t line up until after you’re hurtling through the air spread out for a belly flop.

It had been a tumultuous week, and it occurred to me that in all levels of crisis, it is a good idea to lie down outside and look up.

Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it . . . We do these things not to change the world, but so that the world will not change us.

come alive as the center of Holy Spirit festivals. It’s a celebration in which huge pots of soup and baskets of bread are served, a reminder to practice charity. The chapels are covered with fresh flowers, and each village forms a procession with young girls dressed as queens in white dresses and capes,

THE IMPORTANCE OF DAWDLING THEORY

For all our talk about living in the moment, what makes the present beautiful and complete is also imagining what we will do next.

When you go on an adventure, just trust that you’ll meet who you need to meet and hear what you need to hear because the really important stuff, you just can’t plan.

Just being here, at ease, alone in the dark, made me realize I had been mindlessly maneuvering just-the-way-things-are, accepting that violence was always a possibility, never realizing there are other places where it doesn’t feel that way. Of course, my dad had a saying for this: “They might have a different way of doing things across the river.” Or in this case, the middle of the ocean. I liked the idea of my own, personal Tenth Island, made only of things I wanted to keep. I’d start by carrying inside me a place where a desk clerk looked confused when a woman asked where it was safe for her to walk alone.

I think they called them human-interest stories back then, when there was a belief that most humans shared a common interest in one another.

As far as many of the crew members knew, we were just heading out to resume the search for Titanic. Given the highly classified nature of the mission, the Navy would only let me tell those with a need-to-know status what was really happening. How could I conceal our first stop over Scorpion’s wreckage? It was south of the Azores. Titanic was west. I was waiting for someone to say, “Bob, why is the sun rising on our port instead of our stern?” We told everyone we were testing equipment for the Navy.

The Navy knew where both wrecks were: Thresher was about 200 miles east of Massachusetts, but Scorpion was a good two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic, several hundred miles southwest of the Azores. The Navy had already examined them both from submersibles in 1969, but Thunman wanted to photograph the wrecks with the more sophisticated cameras we were developing. He was hoping that new images would help experts determine why Scorpion had sunk. He also wanted to know if either of the steel containment vessels enclosing the subs’ nuclear reactors or the nuclear-tipped torpedoes that Scorpion carried had leaked radiation and harmed the environment. I confirmed that we had the equipment to do a more thorough inspection of both vessels. At some point, I happened to mention that all my life, I’d wanted to search for Titanic, and maybe I could piggyback that search onto these expeditions.