Barefoot Running Quotes

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.

And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running -- that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach....

I want to go barefoot because it’s holy ground; I want to be running because time is short and none of us has as much runway as we think we do; and I want it to be a fight because that’s where we can make a difference. That’s what love does.

Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her

What softened your heart?" I asked softly. "Good music and a friend." I felt my eyes burn a little and turned from him, blinking quickly to lap up the sting of tears. "Music has incredible power" "So does friendship," he supplied frankly.

You can't build walls and then be mad when no one wants to climb over them.

This is something I’ve learned. You can’t run away to find yourself. Yourself is there no matter where you go. The difference is, if you’re running, you’ll be too busy to pick up the sword and face your enemies. Sometimes your enemy will be you; sometimes it will be those with the power to hurt you. Take off your shoes and stop running. Live barefoot and fucking fight. I ran from my feelings—the ones I felt for

Like a shoe that has lost its mate is never worn again, I had lost my matching part and didn't know how to run barefoot.

You see beauty in things other people just take for granted. You need understanding, and, and…deep conversation, and someone who can keep up with that mind of yours!

If you push people away for long enough, isolation become a terrible habit. People start to believe your prefer it.

But sometimes in my reading I would discover new insights or have seemingly profound thoughts that would change my way of thinking.

When you realize there's so much you can't control, you get pretty stingy with what you can.

These are the wild women who run barefoot through the meadow, who teach new songs to the birds, who howl at the moon together. Wild women are their own kind of magic.

Human beings are not designed to be alone. Our creator gave us smooth, sensitive skin that craves the warmth of other skin. Our arms seek to hold. Our hands yearn to touch. We are drawn to companionship and affection out of an innate need.

wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn’t have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do..

You will think me foolish. But I wanted to be a fairy queen, to run barefoot through the woods, to sing like a bird and fly through the trees." She smiled. "To be able to talk to the animals.

And true love suffereth long, and is kind; true love envieth not; true love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. True love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; true love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. True love never faileth…

We too can begin a new life, one that brings satisfaction and enrichment, whether this is by singing, dancing, running through the waves, walking barefoot on the grass or making love under the stars. Perhaps your dreams are greater than this, or perhaps more conservative, but whatever they are, Beltane is a wonderful time for expressing who you truly are.

This place is in my heart, but it can't be my home, not now, maybe not ever..." - Samuel Yates

Yesterday I finally realized that all the things I thought were wrong about you were actually the things I enjoyed most. I don't give a damn what you do, so long as it pleases you. Run barefoot on the front lawn. Eat pudding with your fingers. Tell me to go to hell as often as you like. I want you just as you are.

It wasn't a meaningless act for me either," Marcus said, his raspy whisper tickling her ear. "Yesterday I finally realized that all the things that I thought were wrong about you were actually the things I enjoyed most. I don't give a damn what you do, so long as it pleases you. Run barefoot on the front lawn. Eat pudding with your fingers. Tell me to go to hell as often as you like. I want you just as you are. After all, you're the only woman aside from my sisters who has ever dared to tell me to my face that I'm an arrogant ass. How could I resist you?" His mouth moved to the soft cushion of her cheek. "My dearest Lillian," he whispered, easing her head back to kiss her eyelids. "If I had the gift of poetry, I would shower you with sonnets. But words have always been difficult for me when my feelings are strongest. And there is one word in particular that I can't bring myself to say to you...'goodbye'. I couldn't bear the sight of you walking away from me. If you won't marry me for the sake of your honor, then do it for the sake of everyone who would have to tolerate me otherwise. Marry me because I need someone who will help me to laught at myself. Because someone has to teach me how to whistle. Marry me, Lillian...because I have the most irresistable fascination for your ears.

My own prescription for health is less paperwork and more running barefoot through the grass.

And Ross again knew himself to be happy-in a new and less ephemeral way than before. He was filled with a queer sense of enlightnment. It seemed to him that all his life had moved to this pinpoint of time down the scattered threads of twenty years; from his old childhood running thoughtless and barefoot in the sun on Hendrawna sands, from Demelza's birth in the squarlor of a mining cottage, from the plains of Virginia and the trampled fairgrounds of Redruth, from the complex impulses which had governed Elizabeth's choice of Francis and from the simple philosophies of Demelza's own faith, all had been animated to a common end-and that end a moment of enlightenment and understanding and completion. Someone--a Latin poet--had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come. He thought: if we could only stop here. Not when we get home, not leaving Trenwith, but here, here reaching the top of the hill out of Sawle, dusk wiping out the edges of the land and Demelza walking and humming at my side.

I actually think that the food our mothers made may not be what we are nostalgic for. It’s more an emotional picture of a mother who was always there, knew what we needed, loved us, let us run free when we wanted to explore.

She saw the scarlet thread of her lips, the light in her eyes, the family through their love, their children running barefoot in a fresh field.

Take off your shoes and stop running. Live barefoot and fucking fight.

Oh Josie," Samuel sighed gently. "Your heart is too tender for your own good." "I don't usually cry like this, Samuel. Geez, it's been years since I've cried like this. Since you've been back I can't seem to stop. It's like a cloud has burst inside me, and I'm caught in a constant downpour" "Come here, Josie," Samuel said, and when I slid over next to him he kissed me gently on the forehead and smoothed my hair from my damp cheeks. "Well then, maybe you should go ahead and just let it rain for a while" And so I did.

we become what we surround ourselves by,

Someday, I would be the one to leave.

He preferred her barefoot, he said. She had such lovely feet. Roza didn’t agree. What was lovely about feet that could not take you anywhere? What was lovely about feet that could not run?

We were running all over the front lawn and under the rainspouts, barefooted, in our underpants, with the rain pelting down, straight cold gray rain of Delta summers, wonderful rain. -Mexico

There once was a poor man who walked around without shoes. His feet were covered in calluses. One day a rich man felt sorry for the poor man and bought him a pair of Nikes. The poor man was extremely grateful and wore the shoes constantly. Well after a year or so, the shoes fell apart. So the poor man had to go back to running around barefoot, only now all his calluses were gone and his feet got all cut up and soon the cuts became infected and the man got sick and eventually, after they cut off his legs, he died. I call that particular story "Love, Death & Nikes." A real cheer me up story for Mr. Monster. That's right! All for you. Oh and something else: fuck you Mr. Monster.

Yeah, I knew," he finally said, his voice soft. "I always knew I'd do whatever it took. Living in a trailer park, running in a pack of barefoot kids . . . my whole life was already set out for me, and I sure as hell didn't like the looks of it. So I always knew I'd take my chance when I got it. And if it didn't come, I'd make something happen.

It was too good to be true, too sweet to be reality for too long, so when someone set out to destroy his belief in her, it made more sense to doubt her than to believe that she had truly loved him in the first place.

All these years I've been...I'm...' He still seemed to be choking. 'I'm...an orphan. I'm...I'm alone. I'm...I'm...I'm...free.' He pushed himself up on one elbow, staring at his hands as if for the first time they had become his own. 'I can...I can do anything. I can leave Jealousy! I can break my spectacles and run off barefoot to become a...a...cobbler! I can...I can marry my housekeeper! Do I have a housekeeper? I never had time to notice! But now I can get a housekeeper! And marry her!

Shoes block pain, not impact! Pain teaches us to run comfortably! From the moment you start going barefoot, you will change the way you run.

You make me feel safe, Fern. You make me forget. And when I kiss you I just want to keep kissing you. Everything else falls away.

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running - that's the way to live.

I hated making small talk and avoided people in the grocery store and other places just so that i wouldn't have to think of things to say. I liked people, i cared about them, and i wanted to be a good person, but don't make me chat idly on the telephone or make pleasant conversation just for the sake of being polite.- Josie Jo Jensen

I clung to him like my life depended on it. Maybe it did. I hadn’t seen him for so many years, and so much had happened in my life since I had last seen his face, but at that moment I was thirteen again. Someone I had loved had returned, someone lost had come back to me, and I held him fiercely, with no intention of ever letting him go.

What were you doing to that cat, boy?” Myrcella asked again, sternly. To her brother she said, “He’s a ragged boy, isn’t he? Look at him.” She giggled. “A ragged dirty smelly boy,” Tommen agreed. They don’t know me, Arya realized. They don’t even know I’m a girl. Small wonder; she was barefoot and dirty, her hair tangled from the long run through the castle, clad in a jerkin ripped by cat claws and brown roughspun pants hacked off above her scabby knees. You don’t wear skirts and silks when you’re catching cats. Quickly she lowered her head and dropped to one knee. Maybe they wouldn’t recognize her. If they did, she would never hear the end of it. Septa Mordane would be mortified, and Sansa would never speak to her again from the shame.

How could I tell him that I now wanted what he had once wanted----to travel on trains and fall in love with girls with dark eyes and extravagant lips? It didn't matter to me if at the end of it I had nothing to show but sore thighs. It wasn't my fault that the life of the wanderer, the wayfarer, had fallen out of favor with the world. So what if it was no longer acceptable to drift with the wind, asking for bread and a roof, sleeping on bales of hay and enjoying dalliances with barefooted farmgirls, then running away before the harvest? This was the life I wanted, blowing around like a leaf with appetites.

I kind of prefer being by myself, but I can’t expect anyone to want to get to know me if I purposely keep myself separated.” I paused as his face remained stony. “Mrs. Grimaldi says you can’t build walls and then be mad when no one wants to climb over them.

I like red.

There is beauty behind me as I walk There is beauty before me as I walk There is beauty below me as I walk. There is beauty above me as I walk. In beauty I must always walk.

Music is 'that by which I live.

You made me question what I thought I knew.

I wish I had not spent my hours worrying over another nickel for the carousel, but instead running barefoot through the fields of yellow bonnets.

And that laughter of hers which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.

There’s nothing in the mechanical world that matches the sophistication, complexity, and multi-tasking ability of the foot

Shoes block pain, not impact! Pain teaches us to run comfortably! From the moment you start going barefoot, you will change the way you run.

Angelique, with both hands open, lying limply on her knees, was giving herself. And Felicien remembered the evening on which she had run barefoot through the grass, so adorable that he had pursued her, and whispered in her ear, "I love you". And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, "I love you." And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, "I love you", the eternal cry that had finally emerged from her wide-open heart. "I love you... Take me, carry me away, I am yours.

Do you hear it?" Samuel asked, his eyes penetrating. "I don't hear it...but I know it's there." I struggled to express something that I'd never put into words. "Sometimes I think if I could just SEE without my eyes, the way I FEEL without my hands, I would be able to HEAR the music. I don't use my hands to feel love or joy or heartache - but I still feel them all the same. My eyes let me see incredibly beautiful things, but sometimes I think that what I SEE gets in the way of what's...what's just beyond the beauty. Almost like the beauty I can SEE is just a very lovely curtain, distracting me from what's on the other side...and if I just knew how to push that curtain aside, there the music would be." I threw up my hands in frustration. "I can't really explain it.

What if she doesn't worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women's shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem to obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like?

I hadn’t even spoken to him, other than to breathe his name, and I was suddenly wrapped around him in a rainstorm, in the middle of the road. Slowly, I felt his strong arms come up around me, holding me, enfolding me. I was enveloped in warmth. The pleasure of the embrace was so intense I shuddered with it. I felt his hand in my hair, and he made those soft shushing noises. I realized I was crying. We stood in the rain, and he held me up, letting me hold him in return. No comments, no questions, just comfort.

They left a trail of hopscotch behind them, Mellie always thinking of ways to make it harder. They'd be jumping along in the dust, barefoot, with licorice drops in their mouths, feeling as though they had run off with everything in that town that was worth having.

I missed all the people and places I didn’t know if I would ever see again – my grandparents and their cute little house at Basin Head, where we used to visit the beach everyday and I would run barefoot over the singing sands and swim in the impossibly enormous ocean.

Within minutes the girls were running barefoot along the sand, playing tag with the breaking wavelets. Nancy was dangling a bathing cap in her hand. “I’m glad it’s calm,” George remarked. “Say, maybe we could use one of those sailboats!” There were a variety of boats tied up—small sailing dinghies, rowboats, Boston Whalers. Larger sailboats were moored offshore. Several Sailfish had been pulled up on the beach.

Classic Ballet, Keep away, keep building your creaky fairy castles, keep cloning clones and meaningless manners, hang on to your beanstalk ballerinas and their midget male shadows, run yourself out of business with your tons of froufrou and costly clattery toe shoes that ruin all chances for illusions of lightness, keep on crowding the minds of blind balletomanes who prefer dainty poses to the eloquent strength of momentum, who have forgotten or never known the manings of gesture, who would nod their noses to barefoot embargos ("so grab me" spelt backwards). Continue to repolish your stiff technique and to ignore a public that hungers for something other than a bag of tricks and the empty-headedness of surface patterns. Just keep it up, keep imitating yourself, and, , go grow your own dance makers. Come on, don't keep trying to filter modern ones through your so-safe extablishment. We're to be seen undiluted, undistorted, not absorbed by your hollow world like blood into a sponge. Yours truly, A Different Leaf on Our Family Tree

Briony knew her only reasonable choice then would be to run away, to live under hedges, eat berries and speak to no one, and be found by a bearded woodsman one winter's dawn, curled up at the base of a giant oak, beautiful and dead, and barefoot, or perhaps wearing the ballet pumps with the pink ribbon straps . . .

back in Borough I ran barefoot on the grass to try to help Ky. Out here I wear heavy boots and have to run around rocks that threaten my ankle and yet I feel lighter than I did back then, and lighter by far than I ever felt running on the smooth belt of the tracker. I'm filled with adrenaline and hope; I could run forever this way, running to Ky.

Your song…that is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me.

Yeah, I guess he had a right to be a jerk." "I guess he had reason to be.

We have been winning running barefoot, imagine what would happen if we had spikes, a nutritionist and a coach we would break records.

Maybe there is no such thing as forgiveness, Maybe all we have is journey

You need to be willing to wipe the slate clean and admit that you may not know everything about running. This is the best advice I can give for staying injury-free

As much for his mind as for his body, Erwan likes to run it barefoot.

If you can’t run barefoot, you probably shouldn’t be running.” —Graham Tuttle

This is something I’ve learned. You can’t run away to find yourself. Yourself is there no matter where you go. The difference is, if you’re running, you’ll be too busy to pick up the sword and face your enemies. Sometimes your enemy will be you; sometimes it will be those with the power to hurt you. Take off your shoes and stop running. Live barefoot and fucking fight. I

There was no way that these guys were going to let a bleeding, barefoot woman simply wander off alone into the streets. Two of them were already running toward her with hands reaching out in a manner that, in normal circumstances, would have seemed just plain ungentlemanly. What would have been designated, in a Western office, as a hostile environment was soon in full swing as numerous rough strong hands were all over her, easing her to a comfortable perch on a chair that was produced as if by magic, feeling through her hair to find bumps and lacerations. Three different first aid kits were broken open at her feet; older and wiser men began to lodge objections at the profligate use of supplies, darkly suggesting that it was all because she was a pretty girl. A particularly dashing young man skidded up to her on his knees (he was wearing hard-shell knee pads) and, in an attitude recalling the prince on the final page of Cinderella, fit a pair of used flip-flops onto her feet.

Most human lives were and are too short. Most people have lived out their days hungry and barefoot, on the run from this war and that famine, a plague here and a flood there. But people have to sing anyway. Even a baby that hasn’t been fed in days will stop crying and look around when they hear someone singing in joy. You sing and it’s like giving a thirsty person water. It’s a kindness. It makes you shine.

With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair. And that laughter of hers which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.

The truth is that running in shoes is high impact, heel-centric, promotes bad form, is relatively unstable and inflexible, tends to weaken rather than strengthen your feet, and dampens your connection to the world around you. In contrast, barefoot running is low-impact, toe-centric, promotes good form, enhances stability and adaptability, strengthens your feet in miraculous ways, and provides delightful sensory and spiritual connections to the earth.

We crunched over the gravel in front of my house. It was dark and empty, my dad long gone on his way to Moab and the beckoning Book Cliffs. “Would you like to come in for a minute? You could check the house for bad guys, and I could make us something yummy to eat. I think I have ice cream in the freezer and I could make us some hot fudge topping to put on top?” I waggled my eyebrows at him in the dim interior of the truck, and he smiled a little. “Bad guys?” “Oh you know, I’m here all alone, the house is dark. Just look under the beds and make sure no one is hiding in my closet.” “Are you afraid to be alone at night?” His brows were lowered with concern over his black eyes. “Nope. I just wanted to give you a reason to come inside.” His expression cleared, and his voice lowered even further. “Aren’t you reason enough?” I felt the heat rise in my face. “Hmmm,” was all I said. “Josie.” “Yes?” “I would love to come in.

Only later I felt that poetry is like feeling another person lying next to you in the dark. Do you believe in poetry, in the spirit of poetry? I could see poetry in ballads, in the picture of the cathedral on the back of the postcard that my father sent my mother from London, in glaciers, peaks of mountains, river dust, Ian McEwan's covers of his books, cheap thrillers. Running gave me a gravitational pull. Running was my mother love. I was barefoot. There I was dressed in white. Matchstick legs. Hair standing up. I did not feel like a zero. I did not feel like a lost oar, unloved and unwanted, like a plant that needed water. A fleet of paper ships that needed to be mourned. I often felt homesick for the country of my mother.

Achilles’ rebuke of Odysseus, in its pride and despair, resonates throughout the Odyssey. Yet rather than spreading a gloom over the rest of the poem, it is a constant background reminder. We are moved, as the poet describes them, by the simplest of things human life has to offer: a bath, a meal, a courteous welcome to a stranger, a conversation by the fire. There is a radiance that surrounds our brief human actions, a beauty that makes even the life of a beggar or a slave, from Achilles’ perspective, seem like a privilege. These simple things are the givens longed for by him and the other ghosts, those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality, That would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the frost And cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves And against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was ugly And laughed . . .

According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, in 2006, one out of six people or 43.1 million Americans suffered foot ailments. Among cultures that don’t wear shoes, approximately 2 percent of the population has foot-related injuries, compared to 70 percent among shoe-wearing societies.

Mary fell asleep early, but her dreams were most unpleasant. She was a mouse running across the kitchen floor, and Elizabeth was a sharp-clawed cat waiting silently to pounce. Then she was a wild deer being chased by famished dogs. Elizabeth was a laughing huntsman in black velvet, urging the ravenous pack onward with a whip. And then Mary was her true self, barefoot and in a bedgown, attempting to escape by night. But the castle was dark and the halls were a winding maze. Mary ran down long shadowy corridors, panting and out of breath, but at every turn she ran into blank walls or locked doors. At last she managed to yank open a door, expecting to breathe the sweet air of freedom. But the way was blocked by laughing faces, all of them growing larger and larger while Mary got smaller and smaller. There was Elizabeth . . . and Dudley . . . and Cecil . . . and Walsingham . . . and their loud laughter filled her ears, drowning her pleas like ocean waves.

Set down your phones. Run barefoot through the grass. Let snowflakes land on your cheeks. Break out a deck of cards on the deck. Lean in. Listen. Relax. Smile. Enjoy. Toss the baseball until the streetlights come on, and then watch the stars appear. You’re doing enough. Keep going. It’s the small things that add up to a big life.

When I was a kid," he said, "I used to run around this place barefoot, until I stepped on one of those pop-tops. I have a semicircular scar, big one, on my heel." A hand on the doorframe for support, he lifted up one of his feet and pointed. She stopped, looked, seeing the little scar that was virtually identical to the one on 'her' foot.

Reading was a defense, a shield his timidity could use to arm itself, a guide to seeking relationships. But writing was infinitely more than that. Writing was an interior palace with secret sites, gorgeous places, a complex of unlimited spaces. He explored them, laughing, running barefoot, and stopping to touch the beautiful treasures stored there.

Back in Borough I ran barefoot on the grass to try to help Ky. Out here I wear heavy boots and have to run around rocks that threaten to turn my ankle and yet I feel lighter that I did back then, and lighter by far than I ever felt running on the smooth belt of the tracker. I'm filled with adrenaline and hope; I could run forever this way, running to Ky.

Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o’er the dim weeping dawn As to Josie’s side I returned at last, And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov’d best Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast! While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years Seem’d mingling their voices with the moaning flood: Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith, My true love’s shadow lamenting stood. But the sudden sun kiss’d the cold, cruel mist Into dancing show’rs of diamond dew, And the dark flowing stream laugh’d back to his beam, And the lark soared aloft in the blue: While no phantom of night but a form of delight Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy, And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy.

I love it here,” she says with a sigh. “Pretty sure it’s because I’m here that you love it.” “Stop being an arrogant jerk.” She glares up at me. “Besides, you tried to ruin it for me.” I raise an eyebrow. “How so?” “Um...excuse me? You don’t remember making me run in this forest naked and barefoot while you kept shocking the fuck out of me?” “Admit it, you loved it.” She huffs. “Whatever.

And so it turned out that Ove became a night cleaner instead. And if this hadn't happened, he would never have come off his shift that morning and caught sight of her. With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair. And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.

Ironically, more impact may result from more cushioning because, to regain balance, the pillowish pile encourages the foot to plow into the ground like a bull in a china shop. A study Robbins published in 1997 found that runners tend to land harder on soft surfaces to improve stability. He concluded that sports shoes are too soft and thick and recommended they be redesigned to protect the wearer. Most

We were about a mile from school, on a path in the park, when Chirag reached down and took off his shoes, tossing them into the trees beside us. “What are you doing?” I shouted in between breaths. Step, breath. Step, breath. He was a few yards ahead of me. I took advantage of his pause to pass him; I wasn’t about to let him beat me. “There’s a tribe of Indians in Mexico who are the best runners in the world,” he shouted. “They run barefoot for miles and miles and never break a sweat.” “You’re not that kind of Indian,” I shouted back, and Chirag laughed, his golden skin shimmering beneath his sweat. “You should try it, too!” “No way!” I replied without turning around to face him. “The ground is filthy. There could be glass or splinters or something.” “Aw, come on, Maisie,” he cooed, coming up on my left side and getting a few steps ahead of me once more. “I dare you.

She was shocked when she followed her aunt and cousin down into the city proper. The streets were crawling with people, all hurrying to and fro, mindless of one another. They brushed by with barely even a glance, stepping down into the busy roads between horse drawn buses and draymen’s carts with such confidence, seemingly oblivious that they could be run down at any moment. Children dodged in and out amongst them, ragamuffins all, some barefoot.

Coyote was inside the belly of the giant, and he didn’t even know it. He was completely unaware that he was trapped. I think that’s what grandma was trying to say.” “You could also argue that Coyote was the only one who wasn’t trapped.” I shrugged, knowing that Samuel’s grandmother’s interpretation of the legend had reminded him of me. My stomach twisted at the knowledge, and I was suddenly eager to turn the tables on him. “Coyote had no trouble getting out – but he knew he couldn’t leave everyone else behind.” “Hmm. I should have known you’d see it that way.” Samuel reached out and brushed his fingertips down my cheek. “I feel like I’m back on the bus, trying to keep up. You were always two steps ahead of me.” “Would it make you feel better if we arm wrestled?” I poked at him, “I’m sure I wouldn’t stand a chance.” I was relieved to turn the conversation in a different direction. Samuel laughed out loud

He finally found what he was looking for, holding up a pair of shoes similar to the pair I wore. “Here we go. These were my Jacob’s when he was your age.” He sat on his stool and unlaced the pair of shoes I was wearing. “Now you,” he continued, “have old soles for a boy so young: scars, calluses. Feet like these could run barefoot all day on stone and not need shoes. A boy your age only gets these feet one way.” He looked up at me, making it a question. I nodded.

THE FIRST ROOTS CREEP UP I am learning to come upon the tree, slowly, to surprise it For the song its memorizing. The water runs up, the sap Runs down… I will carry water for you, if you ask me. If someone Asks me What differences between trees and me? Each is Beholden to rivers. each knows thirst. In those countries where trees walk, they go barefoot, singing madrigals… excerpt, Collected in: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature by Lorraine Anderson

Having a few half fish in my family tree keeps my vision from blurring through the pudgy tears-I can perfectly see the solid yellow line on the road as I walk it. When I hear him following, I rip off my heels and start sprinting. Two months ago, this kind of abuse to my feet would leave them bleeding and with who-knows-what embedded in them. But with the convenience of my new thick skin, running barefoot is like running in Nike’s latest kicks. Galen is apparently a flying fish though-his hand wraps around my arm, braking my own sad attempt at flight. He whirls me around. Pulling me to him, he lifts my chin with the pad of his thumb. When I jerk away, he grasps it tight, forcing me to look at him. The old Emma would be bruised within the next ten minutes. The new one is just pissed off. "Let go!" I screech, pushing against his chest. Somehow this just gets me closer to him. "Emma," he growls as I stomp his foot. "What would you have done?" Okay, that's unexpected. I stop flailing. "What?

I would appreciate it if they would call a halt on all their devoted efforts to find a way to abolish war or eliminate disease or run trains with atoms or extend the span of human life to a couple of centuries, and everybody concentrate for a while on how to wake me up in the morning without my resenting it. It may be that a bevy of beautiful maidens in pure silk yellow very sheer gowns, barefooted, singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morning and scattering rose petals over me would do the trick, but I’d have to try it.

We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The burrow sloped into the ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see where the two corridors united, and the floor was dusty from use, like a little highway over which much travel went. I was walking backward, in a crouching position, when I heard Antonia scream. She was standing opposite me, pointing behind me and shouting something in Bohemian. I whirled around, and there, on one of those dry gravel beds, was the biggest snake I had ever seen. He was sunning himself, after the cold night, and he must have been asleep when Antonia screamed. When I turned, he was lying in loose waves, like a letter "W". He twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I thought - he was a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity, his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my leg, and looked as if millstones couldn't crush the disgusting vitality out of him. He lifted his hideous little head , and rattled. I didn't run because I didn't think of it - if my back had been against a stone wall I couldn't have felt more cornered. I saw his coils tighten - now he would spring, spring his length, I remembered. I ran up and drove at his head with my spade, struck him fairly across the neck, and in a minute he was all about my feet in wavy loops. I struck now from hate. Antonia, barefooted as she was, ran up behind me. Even after I had pounded his ugly head flat, his body kept on coiling and winding, doubling and falling back on itself. I walked away and turned my back. I felt seasick.

The streets were narrow and evil-smelling, with a broad stream running down the center to carry the sewage, and beggars holding out their hands for alms. I remember my sudden feeling of fright when my father’s back was turned to see to our luggage, and in a moment a woman had thrust her way between us, with two little barefooted children beside her, clamoring for money. When I drew back she shook her fist at me, and cursed. This was not the Paris I had expected, where all was gaiety, laughter, driving to the Opera, and bright lights.

Astarte has come again, more powerful than before. She possesses me. She lies in wait for me. December 97 My cruelty has also returned: the cruelty which frightens me. It lies dormant for months, for years, and then all at once awakens, bursts forth and - once the crisis is over - leaves me in mortal terror of myself. Just now in the avenue of the Bois, I whipped my dog till he bled, and for nothing - for not coming immediately when I called! The poor animal was there before me, his spine arched, cowering close to the ground, with his great, almost human, eyes fixed on me... and his lamentable howling! It was as though he were waiting for the butcher! But it was as if a kind of drunkenness had possessed me. The more I struck out the more I wanted to strike; every shudder of that quivering flesh filled me with some incomprehensible ardour. A circle of onlookers formed around me, and I only stopped myself for the sake of my self-respect. Afterwards, I was ashamed. I am always ashamed of myself nowadays. The pulse of life has always filled me with a peculiar rage to destroy. When I think of two beings in love, I experience an agonising sensation; by virtue of some bizarre backlash, there is something which smothers and oppresses me, and I suffocate, to the point of anguish. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night to the muted hubbub of bumps and voices which suddenly become perceptible in the dormant city - all the cries of sexual excitement and sensuality which are the nocturnal respiration of cities - I feel weak. They rise up around me, submerging me in a sluggish flux of embraces and a tide of spasms. A crushing weight presses down on my chest; a cold sweat breaks out on my brow and my heart is heavy - so heavy that I have to get up, run bare-foot and breathless, to my window, and open both shutters, trying desperately to breathe. What an atrocious sensation it is! It is as if two arms of steel bear down upon my shoulders and a kind of hunger hollows out my stomach, tearing apart my whole being! A hunger to exterminate love. Oh, those nights! The long hours I have spent at my window, bent over the immobile trees of the square and the paving-stones of the deserted street, on watch in the silence of the city, starting at the least noise! The nights I have passed, my heart hammering in anguish, wretchedly and impatiently waiting for my torment to consent to leave me, and for my desire to fold up the heavy wings which beat inside the walls of my being like the wings of some great fluttering bird! Oh, my cruel and interminable nights of impotent rebellion against the rutting of Paris abed: those nights when I would have liked to embrace all the bodies, to suck in all the breaths and sup all the mouths... those nights which would find me, in the morning, prostrate on the carpet, scratching it still with inert and ineffectual fingers... fingers which never know anything but emptiness, whose nails are still taut with the passion of murder twenty-four hours after the crises... nails which I will one day end up plunging into the satined flesh of a neck, and... It is quite clear, you see, that I am possessed by a demon... a demon which doctors would treat with some bromide or with all-healing sal ammoniac! As if medicines could ever be imagined to be effective against such evil!

No matter how much you run, or fly or swim, you come back to the land. It’s like as if whatever mud is made up of, it is all beautifully transformed from the seeds that die to begin in the roots, from the roots that expand to grow into a trunk, from a trunk that stretches into branches and from branches that sprout leaves which birth stories before returning to honor the soil once again—just like your body will one day rest for a time in the garden of the Earth—knowing that there will be more stories by others who will follow set paths to find their own.

This is something I've learned. You can't run away to find yourself. Yourself is there no matter where you go. The difference is, if you're running, you'll be too busy to pick up the sword and face your enemies. Sometimes your enemy will be you; sometimes it will be those with the power to hurt you. Take off your shoes and stop running. Live barefoot and fucking fight. I ran from my feelings-the ones I felt for Kit, the guilt of feeling them. I thought that if I put enough distance between us, my feelings would go away. I should have faced myself back then.

What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women’s shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem so obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like? But if she is not careful she will end up: raped, pregnant, impossible to control, or merely what is now called fat. The teenage girl knows this. Everyone is telling her to be careful. She learns that making her body into her landscape to tame is preferable to any kind of wildness

God says He wants us to battle injustice, to look out for orphans and widows, to give sacrificially. And anyone who gets distracted with the minutiae of this point or that opinion is tagging out of the real skirmish. God wants us to get some skin in the game and to help make a tangible difference. I can’t make a real need matter to me by listening to the story, visiting the website, collecting information, or wearing the bracelet about it. I need to pick the fight myself, to call it out just like I called Dale out. Then, most important of all, I need to run barefoot toward it. But I want to go barefoot because it’s holy ground; I want to be running because time is short and none of us has as much runway as we think we do; and I want it to be a fight because that’s where we can make a difference. That’s what love does. Sure, it’s easier to pick an opinion than it is to pick a fight. It’s also easier to pick an organization or a jersey and identify with a fight than it is to actually go pick one, to commit to it, to call it out and take a swing. Picking a fight isn’t neat either. It’s messy, it’s time consuming, it’s painful, and it’s costly. It sounds an awful lot like the kind fight Jesus took on for us when He called out death for us and won.

Like A Hanged Pitcher Like a hanged pitcher, No drink is pouring off me It's natural to get numbed gradually. Pig-headed seashells! This boasting sky, Is an anchor which has fallen on my lap This dizzy sky! The moon's been cleared A shadow's coming after me Barefooted on my dreams You used to run! Enjoyed?! Numb! All my veins are connected to this land... Like a hanged pitcher Joyful of this sky One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole. And it was over! The Gulf was over! You waved hands. Like a hanged pitcher, It's simple! I lost the game And gambled away... (TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)

On one end it had a few tables and a little kitchen that served as a diner where the old men sat and drank their coffee in the morning. “Sweaty Betty” Johnson (we called her Mrs. Johnson to her face) ran the diner and has for longer than I can remember. She’s a one woman operation - she cooks, waitresses, and manages it all on her own. She makes fluffy homemade donuts and the best greasy french fries on the planet. Everything she makes is deep-fried, and her face has a permanent sheen from the grease and the heat – which is how she got the nickname Sweaty Betty. Even cleaned up for church on Sundays her face glows and sadly, it isn’t from the Holy Spirit.

THEY WALKED UP TO the front door, rang the bell. Del scratched his neck and looked at the yellow bug light and said, “I feel like a bug.” “You look like a bug. You fall down out there?” “About four times. We weren’t running so much as staggering around. Potholes full of water . . . I see you kept your French shoes nice and dry.” “English. English shoes . . . French shirts. Italian suits. Try to remember that.” “Makes my nose bleed,” Del said. The door opened, and Green looked out: she was still fully dressed, including the jacket that covered her gun and the fashionable shoes that she could run in. She took a long look at Del, and asked, “Where’re Dannon and Carver?” “Dead,” Lucas said. “Where’s Grant?” “In the living room.” “You want to invite us in?” She opened the door, and they stepped inside, and followed her to the living room. Grant was there, still dressed as she had been on the stage; she was curled in an easy chair, with a drink in her hand, high heels on the floor beside her. Schiffer was lying on a couch, barefoot; a couple of Taryn’s staff people, a young woman and a young man, were sitting on the floor, making a circle. Another man, heavier and older, was sitting in a leather chair facing Grant. Lucas didn’t recognize him, but recognized the type: a guy who knew where all the notional bodies were buried, a guy who could get the vice president on the telephone.

Sometimes I think with half the world on fire- with so much dying and so much pain- it's a special kind of sin to sing and feel good. But then I think, well, even before Dragonscale, most human lives were unfair, brutal, full of loss and grief and confusion. Most human lives were and are too short. Most people have lived out their days hungry and barefoot, on the run from this war and that famine, a plague here and a flood there. But people have to sing anyway. Even a baby that hasn't been fed in days will stop crying and look around when they hear someone singing in joy. You sing and it's like giving a thirsty person water. It's a kindness. It makes you shine. The proof that you matter is in your song and in the way you light up for one another.

Did you think I – I would be able to carry on, without you?” I sob, my voice muffled against his shoulder. “Did you think I’d manage to get through this thing called life without you by my side?” “I thought you’d be better off without me – I didn’t think, I couldn’t think…” We are both sobbing now. “Who else would run out on their own birthday party, force me barefoot down the fire escape, bring me fruit salad in bed, complain that I’m humming a pop song in the wrong key?” I am laughing and crying at once. “Who else would force me to dance in front of a complete stranger, learn to play the guitar overnight and accompany me when I sing?” I sniff hard and punch him on the shoulder. “How could I possibly live without you, you stupid, stupid idiot?

PLAYER 'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--' HAMLET 'The mobled queen?' LORD POLONIUS That's good; 'mobled queen' is good. PLAYER 'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins, A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd, 'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounced: But if the gods themselves did see her then When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, The instant burst of clamour that she made, Unless things mortal move them not at all, Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, And passion in the gods.

He accelerates. The growing complexity of lights threatens him. He is being drawn into Philadelphia. He hates Philadelphia. Dirtiest city in the world, they live on poisoned water, you can taste the chemicals. He wants to go south, down, down the map into orange groves and smoking rivers and barefoot women. It seems simple enough, drive all night through the dawn through the morning through the noon park on a beach take off your shoes and fall asleep by the Gulf of Mexico. Wake up with the stars above perfectly spaced in perfect health. But he is going east, the worst direction, into unhealth, soot, and stink, a smothering hole where you can’t move without killing somebody. Yet the highway sucks him on, and a sign says POTTSTOWN 2. He almost brakes. But then he thinks.

I was afraid of other people’s houses. After school sometimes a friend might talk me into going to his house or apartment to do our homework together. It was a shock, the way people lived, other people, those who weren’t me. I didn’t know how to respond, the clinging intimacy of it, kitchen slop, pan handles jutting from the sink. Did I want to be curious, amused, indifferent, superior? Just walking past a bathroom, a woman’s stocking draped over the towel rack, pill bottles on the windowsill, some open, some capsized, a child’s slipper in the bathtub. It made me want to run and hide, partly from my own fastidiousness. The bedrooms with unmade beds, somebody’s socks on the floor, the old woman in nightclothes, barefoot, an entire life gathered up in a chair by the bed, hunched frame and muttering face. Who are these people, minute to minute and year after year? It made me want to go home and stay there.

And I know it scares you through and through No one knows you like I do Try to tell me that ain’t true Oh, we could be lovely If this could get ugly C’mon now, honey Let yourself think about it Can you really live without it? Oh, we could be lovely If this could get ugly IMPOSSIBLE WOMAN Impossible woman Let her hold you Let her ease your soul Sand through fingers Wild horse, but she’s just a colt Dancing barefoot in the snow Cold can’t touch her, high or low She’s blues dressed up like rock ’n’ roll Untouchable, she’ll never fold She’ll have you running In the wrong direction Have you coming For the wrong obsessions Oh, she’s gunning For your redemption Have you headed Back to confession Sand through fingers Wild horse, but she’s just a colt Dancing barefoot in the snow Cold can’t touch her, high or low She’s blues dressed up like rock ’n’ roll Untouchable, she’ll never fold Walk away from the impossible

Look into this one,' the Bomb says with a strange expression. It's Cardan as a very small child. He is dressed in a shirt that's too large for him. It hangs down like a gown. He is barefoot, his feet and shirt streaked with mud, but he wears dangling hoops in his ears, as though an adult gave him their earrings. A horned faerie woman stands nearby, and when he runs to her, she grabs his wrists before he can put his dirty hands on her skirts. She says something stern and shoves him away. When he falls, she barely notices, too busy being drawn in to conversation with other courtiers. I expect Cardan to cry, but he doesn't. Instead, he stomps off to a tree that an older boy is climbing. The boy says something, and Cardan grabs for his ankle. A moment later, the boy is on the ground, and Cardan's small grubby hand is forming a fist. At the sound of the scuffle, the faerie woman turns and laughs, clearly delighted by his escapade. When Cardan looks back at her, he's smiling, too. I shove the crystal ball back in to the drawer. Who would cherish this? It's horrible.

My dad’s name is Jim, and my mother thought their names starting with the same letter was just further proof that they belonged together. So she named each of her babies a ‘J’ name to fit the mold. She wasn’t terribly original, because in Levan you’ll find families with all ‘K’ names, all ‘B’ names, all ‘Q’ names. You name the letter, and we’ve got it. People even have ‘themes’ for their children’s names - giving them monikers like Brodeo and Justa Cowgirl. I’m not kidding. So in my family we were all J’s - Jim, Janelle, Jacob, Jared, Johnny, and Josie Jo Jensen-the “J Crew.” The only problem with that was that whenever my mom needed one of us she had to run through the litany of ‘J’ names before she stumbled on the right one. I don’t know why I remember this, small as it was, but in the days and weeks before my mom died, I don’t ever remember her tripping over any of our names. Perhaps the distracting details of daily life that had once made her tongue tied dissolved in their insignificance, and she gave her rapt attention to our every word, our every expression, our every move.

That night, Jas wore the only dress she owned.It was made of soft,clingy fabric.The skirt was short, showing off her now tan and muscular legs.When she came down the steps barefoot,Chase's eyes widened in surprise. "Um...what happened to your jeans?" he asked. "Never mind." Linking her arm with his,she steered him away from the kitchen door."Is Danvers here?" "In the kitchen standing very close to Miss Hahn,tasting spaghetti sauce." "Okay.Here's the plan." she lowered her voice."Call him into the living room for something. I'll run up and get the album." Chase nodded his head with utmost seriousness"And I'll drop the salad." "Right." He was bent slightly to hear her and without warning, he suddenly angled his head and kissed her. When he pulled back, he was grinning like a little kid."Sorry.I couldn't help myself. It's all this intrigue." "Right it's the intrigue," Jas repeated, too surprised to say anything else. Her heart was beating like a drum, and when he went into the kitchen, she thumped up the steps, touching her lips. Thinking to herself "Did he really just kiss me?"...........

Don’t ever do that again!!” “What? Kiss you, or kiss you while we’re jumping out of a tree?” Samuel practically drawled the words, they were so slow and mild. He wasn’t breathing hard at all; in fact, he’d laid his head back in the water and barely seemed to be working at keeping himself afloat. “Ugh!” I huffed, completely disgusted. “I feel tricked! You didn’t want to kiss me! You just wanted to get me out of the tree!” “Oh, I wanted to kiss you,” the drawl was even more pronounced. “I just killed two birds with one stone.” He lifted his head up off the water and grinned at me, his teeth flashing, and I was dazzled. So much so, that I stopped kicking and my head sunk beneath the water like a stone. I splashed wildly and popped up, spitting and swiping at my hair again. “Lean back, Josie,” Samuel commanded, the words gentle and coaxing as he slid up beside me. “Kick your legs out in front of you and float on your back. Quit fighting. Floating’s easy.” “Ha!” I grumped. “I knew how to swim when you were still wearing floaties in the high school pool!” I wasn’t done being mad at him. “Very funny,” he chuckled warmly.

There were no furnishings and no decorations-- except the wall on the opposite side had a small alcove, and in the alcove was a bronze statue of a bird, green with age. I thought it might be a sparrow, but it was so corroded that I couldn't tell for sure. I wondered if it might be the statue of a Lar. In this room--like the first hallway-- the air smelled of summer. But there was no half-heard laughter on the air, no sense that space was subtly wrong, nor that invisible eyes were watching. There was only the warm, peaceful stillness that exists between one summer breeze and the next. A trickle of water ran down the wall on my left and pooled before the alcove; I drew a breath, and my lungs filled with the mineral scent of water over warm rock. Without thinking, I sat down and leaned back against the wall. It was not smooth; the stones formed hard, uneven ripples behind my back-- yet the tension ran out of my body. I stared at the bronze sparrow, and I did not entirely fall asleep, but I almost dreamt: my mind was full of summer breezes, the warm, wet smell of earth after summer rain, the delight of running barefoot through damp grass and finding the hidden tangle of strawberries.

Am I bothering you?” “Yes.” Samuel lifted his chin as he said this, jutting it at me, like he said the word purposely to hurt me and make me angry. “What am I doing that’s bothering you?” I again fought the wet that threatened to undermine my dignity. I spoke each word distinctly, focusing on the shape and sound instead of the sentiment. “You are so.....” His smooth voice was layered with turbulence and frustration. Samuel rarely raised his voice, and didn’t do so now, but the threat was there. “You are so… calm, and accepting, and NAIVE that sometimes…I just want to shake you!” I wondered what in the world had brought on this vehement attack and sat in stunned silence for several heartbeats. “I bother you because I’m calm...and accepting?” I said, my voice an incredulous squeak. “Do you want me to be hyper and, well, intolerant?” “It would be nice if you questioned something, sometime.” Samuel was revving up to his argument; I could see the animation in his face. “You live in your own happy little world. You don’t know how it feels to not belong anywhere! I don’t belong anywhere!” “Why do you think I created my own happy little world?” I shot back. “I fit in perfectly there!

She is innocent! Why is it so easy to believe she would betray him?” I was truly appalled. Samuel looked up at me calmly and replied, “Because it’s always easier to believe the worst.” I looked at him in disbelief. “It is not!” I sputtered. “I can’t believe you would say that! Wouldn’t you give the benefit of the doubt to someone you claimed to love?” The ease in which Othello accepted her betrayal was completely foreign to me. “And why would Othello believe Iago over Desdemona? I don’t care how honest they think Iago is! Emilia even told Othello she thought he was being manipulated and tricked!” Samuel sighed and tried to read to the end of the scene. I jumped in again. I couldn’t help it. My sense of outrage was on overdrive. “But he said, ‘I loved not wisely, but too well!’” I was dismayed. “He had it totally backwards! He did love wisely-she was worthy of his love…she was a wise choice! But he didn’t love well enough! If he had loved Desdemona more, trusted her more, Iago wouldn’t have been able to divide them.” I longed once again for Jane Eyre, where righteousness and principle won out in the end. Jane got her man, and she did it with style. Desdemona got her man, and he smothered her.

What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women’s shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the Pledge of Allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem so obvious to those who grew up with them really available. Who knows what she would do? Who knows what it would feel like? But if she is not careful she will end up: raped, pregnant, impossible to control, or merely what is now called fat. The teenage girl knows this. Everyone is telling her to be careful. She learns that making her body into her landscape to tame is preferable to any kind of wildness. Dieting is being careful, and checking into a hunger camp offers the ultimate in care.

They ran. In open fields, they hid within the shadows of the bird flocks, and in the rivers below the silver veil of fish. Their soles peeled from their shoes. They bound them with their rags, with bark, then lost them in the sucking fens. Barefoot they ran through the forest, and in the sheltered, sappy bowers, when they thought they were alone, he drew splinters from her feet. They were young and they could run for hours, and June had blessed them with her berries, her untended farmer’s carts. They paused to eat, to sleep, to steal, to roll in the rustling meadows of goldenrod. In hidden ponds, he lifted her dripping from the water, set her on the mossy stone, and kissed the river streaming from her tresses and her legs. Did he know where he was going, she asked him, pulling him to her, tasting his mouth, and always he answered, Away! North they went, to the north woods and then toward sun-fall, trespassing like fire, but the mountains bent their course and the bogs detained them, and after a week they could have been anywhere. Did it matter? Rivers carried them off and settled them on distant, sun-warmed banks. The bramble parted, closed behind them. In the cataracts, she felt the spring melt pounding her shoulders, watched him picking his way over the streambed, hunting creekfish with his hands. And he was waiting for her, winged in a damp blanket which he wrapped around her, lowering her to the earth.

You can’t do that again, Josie. I don’t want you to take care of me. I know you did it because you do care….but don’t take my pride from me.” “Is pride more important than friendship?” I said sadly. “Yes!” Samuel’s voice was harsh and emphatic. “That is so ridiculous!” I threw my arms wide in frustration. “Josie! You are just a little girl! You don’t know how helpless and weak and stupid it made me feel to stand there while you arranged my life like I was some kind of charity case!” Samuel fisted his hands in his hair and growling, turned towards the door. “I am not a little girl! I haven’t been a little girl for years…forever! I don’t think like a little girl, I don’t act like a little girl. I don’t LOOK like a little girl, do I? Don’t you dare say I am a little girl!” I pounded down on the piano keys - playing a violent riff, reminiscent of Wagner himself. Now I knew what Sonja meant by letting out the beast! I wanted to throw something, or smash something, and scream at Samuel. He was so impossible! Such a stubborn, mule-headed jerk! I played hard for several minutes, and Samuel stood at the door, dumbfounded. Suddenly Samuel sat down beside me on the piano bench and put his hands over the top of mine, bringing the din to a halt. “I’m sorry, Josie,” Samuel said softly. I was crying, tears dripping down onto the keys, making them slippery. I was a terrible beast, not fierce at all - just a blubbering baby beast. Samuel seemed at a loss. He sat very still, his hands covering mine. Slowly, his hands rose to my face and gently wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Will you play something else?” He requested softly, his voice remorseful. “Will you play something for me....please?

Moreover, Nancy Sinatra was afflicted, as the overwhelming majority of Americans were, with monolingualism. Lana’s richer, more textured version of “Bang Bang” layered English with French and Vietnamese. Bang bang, je ne l’oublierai pas went the last line of the French version, which was echoed by Pham Duy’s Vietnamese version, We will never forget. In the pantheon of classic pop songs from Saigon, this tricolor rendition was one of the most memorable, masterfully weaving together love and violence in the enigmatic story of two lovers who, regardless of having known each other since childhood, or because of knowing each other since childhood, shoot each other down. Bang bang was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

Develop a rapid cadence. Ideal running requires a cadence that may be much quicker than you’re used to. Shoot for 180 footfalls per minute. Developing the proper cadence will help you achieve more speed because it increases the number of push-offs per minute. It will also help prevent injury, as you avoid overstriding and placing impact force on your heel. To practice, get an electronic metronome (or download an app for this), set it for 90+ beats per minute, and time the pull of your left foot to the chirp of the metronome. Develop a proper forward lean. With core muscles slightly engaged to generate a bracing effect, the runner leans forward—from the ankles, not from the waist. Land underneath your center of gravity. MacKenzie drills his athletes to make contact with the ground as their midfoot or forefoot passes directly under their center of gravity, rather than having their heels strike out in front of the body. When runners become proficient at this, the pounding stops, and the movement of their legs begins to more closely resemble that of a spinning wheel. Keep contact time brief. “The runner skims over the ground with a slithering motion that does not make the pounding noise heard by the plodder who runs at one speed,” the legendary coach Percy Cerutty once said.7 MacKenzie drills runners to practice a foot pull that spends as little time as possible on the ground. His runners aim to touch down with a light sort of tap that creates little or no sound. The theory is that with less time spent on the ground, the foot has less time to get into the kind of trouble caused by the sheering forces of excessive inward foot rolling, known as “overpronation.” Pull with the hamstring. To create a rapid, piston-like running form, the CFE runner, after the light, quick impact of the foot, pulls the ankle and foot up with the hamstring. Imagine that you had to confine your running stride to the space of a phone booth—you would naturally develop an extremely quick, compact form to gain optimal efficiency. Practice this skill by standing barefoot and raising one leg by sliding your ankle up along the opposite leg. Perform up to 20 repetitions on each leg. Maintain proper posture and position. Proper posture, MacKenzie says, shifts the impact stress of running from the knees to larger muscles in the trunk, namely, the hips and hamstrings. The runner’s head remains up and the eyes focused down the road. With the core muscles engaged, power flows from the larger muscles through to the extremities. Practice proper position by standing with your body weight balanced on the ball of one foot. Keep the knee of your planted leg slightly bent and your lifted foot relaxed as you hold your ankle directly below your hip. In this position, your body is in proper alignment. Practice holding this position for up to 1 minute on each leg. Be patient. Choose one day a week for practicing form drills and technique. MacKenzie recommends wearing minimalist shoes to encourage proper form, but not without taking care of the other necessary work. A quick changeover from motion-control shoes to minimalist shoes is a recipe for tendon problems. Instead of making a rapid transition, ease into minimalist shoes by wearing them just one day per week, during skill work. Then slowly integrate them into your training runs as your feet and legs adapt. Your patience will pay off.

the briefest of moments before he let out a strange laugh and punched my arm and broke off into a breathless run. There was the empty look on the faces of farmers the year the rains never came, the stoop in their shoulders as they wandered barefoot through their barren, cracked fields, bending over every so often to crumble earth between their fingers; and their desperation the following year when the rains lasted for over a month, swelling the river and fields until the streets gushed with water and swept as high as my waist and families scrambled to rescue their goats and their hens even as chunks of their huts washed away.

That damned dissertation, stuck in the same place for over a week while he struggled to elucidate the connections between Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, only to find the whole thing, even what he thought were his most original points, laid out, item for item, in a monograph over twenty years old. What was the point, he thought, of sitting in that stuffy library all day, every day, grinding out dozens of pages of useless “scholarly” prose, to be read by dyspeptic Frank Dunlop, and three other people in the department, and then buried forever in the stacks of the university library. Why was he wasting his time, his mind, his life itself. When he’d tried to explain what he was doing to Leah, one day when she brought him his lunch on a tray, she’d regarded him with a look of such utter incomprehension—not confused, not respectful, not derogatory, just uncomprehending—that he’d been paralyzed in his chair for hours after. Maybe hers was the legitimate, the reasonable, reaction to what he was doing, the reaction of anyone who knew what life was all about—that it wasn’t dropping into a chair each day, banished from the sun and the sky and the trees, to pound a tinny machine and clutter up sheets of paper. More and more, he had been feeling the urge to spend his time outdoors, to breathe the air off the water, to bask in the sun, even to run, barefoot, across the lawns and through the groves of trees.

In life, we have been running barefoot and winning. Imagine what would happen if we had spikes, a nutritionist and a coach we would break records.

women have many emotions, but only one physical response. When we’re angry we cry. When we’re happy we cry. When we’re sad we cry. When we’re scared, you guessed it, we cry.

Makes sense, I guess. They found me in a prairie dress, barefoot on the ranch with no running water. They probably think I’m one of those cult victims.

My books were my friends, and I devoured everything I could get my hands on. All my favorite characters became my heroes.

The Navajo believe that the only thing that is left behind when a person dies is the bad or the negative parts of their spirit.

I guess I have an ear for music, and the rhythm of your voice sounds like music to me, that's all.

With every book my "Wall of Words" grew, as did my hunger for more words.

You’re like the tonic note. You’re the note that all the other notes revolve around and gravitate to. You’re home. Without you, the song just might not be a song, your family might not be a family.

К курам не так-то легко проникнуться теплыми чувствами. Это агрессивные, злые птицы, готовые в любую минуту кинуться в драку

Раз уж построил вокруг себя стену, не злись, если никто не захочет через нее лезть

Любовь, радость, печаль – они неосязаемы, но я все равно их чувствую

Проще всего поверить в худшее

Неужели любовь – это так сложно? Неужели так трудно довериться кому-то?

У женщин много разных чувств, но выход у них один. Когда мы злимся – мы плачем. Когда радуемся – плачем. Когда грустим – тоже плачем. Когда нам страшно – вы угадали, опять плачем

Лучшие друзья не уходят не попрощавшись

Я никогда не могла понять, почему младенцы и щеночки заставляли всех сюсюкать, вытянув губы трубочкой

Мы сами не знаем, какой у нас характер, пока не столкнемся с испытаниями

У Бога явно блестящее чувство юмора

Он был просто одним из множества мальчишек… до тех пор, пока я в него не влюбилась

Свинья никогда не увидит красоты в драгоценностях. У нее нет ни опыта, ни способности понять их значение

Проявлять доброту в мелочах было проще, чем извиниться словами

Летний ливень всегда прекрасен

Ткань пахла лосьоном после бритья, мылом и моими несбывшимися мечтами

Люди не созданы для одиночества. Господь дал нам гладкую, чувствительную кожу, которая всегда стремится ощутить чужое тепло. Наши руки стремятся к объятиям, пальцы – к прикосновениям. Нам необходимо общество близких, их любовь

Я любила людей, меня заботило их благополучие, я предпочитала никого не обижать, но болтать ни о чем по телефону или поддерживать разговор из вежливости – нет уж, увольте

Пески меняются под дуновением ветра, а воды текут и изменяются, и только небо постоянно. Этим оно и прекрасно

Я люблю уединение, но ненавижу одиночество

Дом там, где ты

Я отмыла жалюзи, постирала шторы и устроила коврам паровую чистку. Потом переключилась на двор. Короче говоря, я была в полном отчаянии

После смерти мамы твое детство закончилось

Я не умею уходить. Это неправильно

Если мы ничего не знаем друг о друге, как же нам научиться любить и уважать друг друга?

Bang bang was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

pictures. She hadn’t run into Paul all day, and Ian told her he’d gone to the market in Cyangugu. At least they had a little space from each other, which was rare here. For the past week, they had been constantly running into each other everywhere. And the next day, when she was getting dressed, there was a funny knock on the pole that supported her tent. She looked out the flap as she zipped up her jeans. She was standing there barefoot, just as they had told her not to do, and her hair was hanging loosely and framed her face with blond silk as she saw who was out there. It was Paul. “Put your shoes on.” “I am.” “You’re going to get stung by something.” “Thanks for the warning.” It was still early and she was not in the mood to see him. He could see it on her face. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to Bujumbura for a couple of hours. We have to pick up some supplies there. You’d get some great pictures.” She hesitated, looking at him. He was right. It would be good for her story. But it was also a lot of Paul. She wasn’t sure which she wanted, the pictures, or time without him. In the end, she opted for her story. “Okay. Thanks for asking. When are you leaving?” “In ten minutes.” He grinned. He was glad she was going with him. He even liked it when she was rude to him, it reminded him of Serena. She had always been feisty, and normally India wasn’t. But it chafed her in a thousand ways to be in such close quarters with him, and most of them were still very painful. “I’ll hurry. Do I have time for coffee?” “We can wait a couple of minutes. This isn’t British Air.” “Thanks. I’ll meet you at the jeep.” “I’ll see you there,” he said, and then walked away with his head down. She had no idea what he was thinking. Probably about the supplies they were picking up, she told herself, as she picked up her camera, and hurried to the mess tent, which was a singularly appropriate name for it in this case. The food was the same every day. She knew she wouldn’t gain weight on this trip. And Paul hadn’t either. They were both thinner than they had been before, but for other reasons. She grabbed a cup of coffee and drank it quickly, and a handful of damp crackers that tasted like they’d been there forever, and ran to meet him. He was

The mixture of displeasure and relief is so overpowering my mind. I knew that I would pick to have that pleasure if he kept being so passionate and felt right. I look down the tunneling hallway my eyes feel like kaleidoscopes, yet I can figure there are kids with sparklers and the firecrackers the sounds are going off within all the colors I see. He has to hold me with my back against the walls or I am sure I would fall, I see Justen feeling the left of a rail of the stairs, walking over the entryway into their room feather down that hallway, up above me, me like they’re going to slip away any second, and share the rest of the night cuddling in bed. Is tonight the night I follow him to his room and crawl in with him, or isn’t tonight the night, maybe hold back until tomorrow? That kept running through my head. Tonight, or tomorrow? Tomorrow I’ll wake up and be the same, regardless if I am in his bed or not. This earth will look the same, and everything will feel and taste and smell the same. What am I rushing it for, he’s going to love me the same if not more is, I hold out? Maybe play that three-date rule. My throat gets taut, just thinking about what we could be doing right now, also I have to think about what Ray and Justen are doing, and my eyes start to tingle in ire, and all I can think at that moment is that it’s all Ray’s fault, that my sis has gone home broken-hearted. Yet I don’t want her spending the night here anyway, with him of all boys. It’s funny how you can go from love to hate in seconds. Half an hour later the party starts to wind down. Inside, everyone is just about passed out, at this point, I need to find a place to crash too. Then I thought, should I, or shouldn’t I? My sis is one of those shy ones around cute boys, and those are the ones you have to worry about because they are freaks between the sheets. I can see that somebody pulled the drooping icicle lights off the wall there getting crouched on by the others passing by. They are getting tangled up in my feet, as I move. There twanging and shorting out from the broken blabs, in sparks lighting up the grime corners, like cups and broken beer bottles. You have to be careful like I see a lot of girls with flip-flops on or barefoot running around not a good idea. I think that I’m feeling better now until I move away from the walls, but I’m starting to feel more like the girl I should be around all my friends. ‘There’s always tomorrow,’ Jenny walked up to me and said before going up to her bed when I told her about Ray, yet she seemed not suppressed and I ran the phrase over and over in my head like a chant: There’s always tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow. So that is what I went with thinking… I am going to be with him tomorrow night. I see myself in the ornate hall mirror in the makeup that I replayed, thinking- ‘God Marcel loves this face.’ Every time I put on makeup it reminds me of my mom, I used to watch me bowed over her vanity, getting ready for dates with my father-daughter dates-and it calms me down.

Moreover, Nancy Sinatra was afflicted, as the overwhelming majority of Americans were, with monolingualism. Lana’s richer, more textured version of “Bang Bang” layered English with French and Vietnamese. Bang bang, je ne l’oublierai pas went the last line of the French version, which was echoed by Pham Duy’s Vietnamese version, We will never forget. In the pantheon of classic pop songs from Saigon, this tricolor rendition was one of the most memorable, masterfully weaving together love and violence in the enigmatic story of two lovers who, regardless of having known each other since childhood, or because of knowing each other since childhood, shoot each other down. Bang bang was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget. When Lana was finished, the audience clapped, whistled, and stomped, but I sat silent and stunned as she bowed and gracefully withdrew, so disarmed I could not even applaud.

Run with those who carry heavy clouds of sadness; they will help you embrace your own sensitivity.

The path dips down to Gal Vihara: a wide, quiet, hollow, surrounded with trees. A low outcrop of rock, with a cave cut into it, and beside the cave a big seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. The vicar general, shying away from "paganism." hangs back and sits under a tree reading the guidebook. I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything - without refutation - without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures, the clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into the rock shape and landscape, figure, rock and tree. And the sweep of bare rock sloping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures. Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded (much more "imperative" than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa because completely simple and straightforward). The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery." All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya... everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise. This is Asia in its purity, not covered over with garbage, Asian or European or American, and it is clear, pure, complete. It says everything: it needs nothing. And because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we, Asians included, who need to discover it. The whole thing is very much a Zen Garden, a span of bareness and openness and evidence, and the great figures, motionless, yet with the lines in full movement, waves of vesture and bodily form, a beautiful and holy vision. The rest of the "city", the old palace complex, I had no time for. We just drove around the roads and saw the ruined shapes, and started on the long drive home to Kandy.

The lemon scented geranium in the pot smells stronger. The seas roar. Autumn is here with its full clouds and wise earth. My darling. The year is mature now. It seems to me we have lived through a thousand-year adventure, but we are still wide-eyed children running hand in hand, barefoot in the sun.

Last night, when he had been showing her how to refasten the bowline, she had feigned incompetence at the simple knot. It was a schoolgirl’s trick, but the poor, honest man had been completely deceived. He’d stood behind her, with her in the circle of his arms and take her hands to guide them through the easy motions. Heat had flushed through her, and her knees had actually trembled at his closeness. A wave of dizziness had washed through her; she had wanted to collapse on the deck and pull him down on top of her. She’d gone still in his loose embrace, praying to every god she’d ever heard of that he would know what she so hotly desired and act on it. This, this was what she was supposed to feel about the man she was joined to, and had never felt at all! “Do you understand it now?” he’d asked her huskily. His hands on hers pulled the knot firm. “I do,” she’d replied. “I understand it completely now.” She hadn’t been speaking of knots at all. She’d dared herself to take half a step backward and press her body to his. She dared herself to turn in the circle of his arms and look up into his whiskery beloved face. Cowardice paralyzed her. She could not even form words. For a time that was infinitely brief and forever, he stood there, enclosing her in a warm, safe place. All around her, the night sounds of the Rain Wilds made a soft music of water and bird and insect calls. She could smell him, a male musky smell, “sweaty” as Sedric would have mocked it, but incredibly masculine and attractive to her. Enclosed by his embrace, she felt a part of his world. The deck under her feet, the railing of the ship, the night sky above her, and the man at her back connected her to something big and wonderful, something that was untamed and yet home to her. Then he had dropped his arms and stepped back from her. The night was warm and muggy, the insects chirred and buzzed, and she heard the night call of a gnat-chaser. But it had all seemed separate from her then. Last night, as now, she knew herself for the mousy, scholarly little Bingtown woman she undoubtedly was. She’d sold herself to Hest, prostituted out her ability to bear a child for the security and position that he had offered. She’d made the deal and signed on it. A Trader was only as good as his word, so the saying went. She’d given her word. What was it worth? Even if she took it back now, even if she broke it faithlessly, she’d still be a mousy, little Bingtown woman, not what she longed to be. She could scarcely bear to consider what she longed to be, not only because it was so far beyond her but because it seemed a childishly extravagant dream. In the dark circle of her arms, she closed her eyes and thought of Althea, wife to the captain of the Paragon. She’d seen that woman dashing about the deck barefoot, wearing loose trousers like a man. She’d seen her standing by her ship’s figurehead, the wind stirring her hair and a smile curving her lips as she exchanged some sort of jest with the ship’s boy. And then Captain Trell had bounded up the short ladder to the foredeck to join them there. She and the captain had moved without even looking at each other, like a needle drawn to a magnet, their arms lifting as if they were the halves of the god Sa becoming whole again. She’d thought her heart would break with envy. What would it be like, she wondered, to have a man who had to embrace you when he saw you, even if you’d just risen from a shared bed a few hours earlier? She tried to imagine herself as free as that Althea woman, running barefoot on the decks of the Tarman.

I knew Gigi would understand. My life started here, in Thailand. In a small commune run by women, for women. They say it takes a village to raise a child and that’s what I had. A whole village of like-minded women who looked out for one another and their offspring. Until the next adventure beckoned on the balmy breeze, and with babes strapped to their chests they followed their hearts and kept roaming. The communes are long since gone. Those beautiful barefoot women with a baby on a breast are now elsewhere. They were ahead of their time with their wildness, their sense of adventure … ‘Now Mom’s only battle is beating cancer. But she’s got her apothecary for that, and she’s winning. Every day she gets that little bit stronger.’ A year ago, she gave me the news of her diagnosis. Mom told me not to cut my travels short and rush home. It was under control. While Mom might be the best healer there is, she doesn’t like being the coddled patient. Still, she’s my everything, so rush home I did. I stayed for a few weeks and saw with my very own eyes that she was getting

And so it turned out that Ove became a night cleaner instead. And if this hadn’t happened, he would never have come off his shift that morning and caught sight of her. With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair. And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast.

Barefoot Running Yes, barefoot running is a workout! It’s challenging and works all of the small muscles in your feet and lower legs that have atrophied through years of shod running. If you’re new to running without shoes, start with 1-2 minutes on a soft surface like an artificial turf field, grass, or golf course. Keep the pace easy and take the next 2-3 days off from running barefoot.

I listened to some John Phillip Sousa today and imagined you marching in your dress blues. Will you send me a picture when you graduate? I can’t wait to see you all serious in front of the flag. You do serious pretty well, so I don’t think you will look too different to me

We've been spending the last few weeks on the rifle range. I learned how to shoot from my grandma. When we were out with the sheep she would send me off away from the sheep, and I would practice. She called this time ‘loose time’when the sheep were finished grazing, and they were full and drowsy, and we stayed in one place for a while to watch them. When my grandma was little she actually used a bow and arrow to run the coyotes off. I know how primitive that sounds - most people probably wouldn’t believe it. My grandmother had her own herd at eight years old. If she lost a sheep she would be whipped, because it meant loss of food and livelihood. She wasn’t as hard on me, but the care and well-being of her sheep was the most important thing to her. I’ve seen my grandma ride full out, shrieking at a coyote, shooting from the back of her horse. My grandma probably would have made a good Marine, too. I’ll have to tell her that when I see her again. She’ll get a kick out of that.

I hear the drill instructors in my sleep yelling “pivot, align to the right, cover, don’t close up, and don’t rush it!” We drill for hours on end it seems like. I feel like I am marching in my sleep. Antwon Carlton actually did march in his sleep. Tyler was on Firewatch duty night before last and Carlton came marching by in his sleep. Tyler called out “Pivot, back to the rack recruit!” It worked, and big bad Carlton marched back to his bunk. Tyler had everyone laughing about it-you know he didn’t keep it to himself.

Well Josie,” my dad turned to me suddenly. “I think you and Samuel have earned the right to name the colt. Whaddya think?” I looked at Samuel expectantly, but he just shrugged, dipping his head in my direction as he deferred to me. “Go ahead, Josie.” “George Frederic Handel,” I said impulsively. Jacob and my dad groaned loudly in unison and hooted in laughing protest. “What the hell kind of name is that, Josie?” My brother howled. “He’s a composer!” I cried out, embarrassed and wishing I had taken a minute to think before I blurted out the first thing that came to my head. A smile played around Samuel’s lips as he joined in the fray. “He wrote the music that Josie played last night at the church service.” “I just thought the colt should have a Christmas name, and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus is synonymous with Christmas!” I defended and then cringed as Jacob and my dad burst out laughing again. My dad wiped tears of mirth from his eyes as he tried to get control of himself. “We’ll call him Handel,” he choked out. “It’s a very nice name, Josie.” He patted my shoulder, still chuckling. I felt like I was ten years old.

I had just sat down with my plate of food and hit play on the new CD player I’d received the night before, ready to hear the sounds of Handel’s opening movement, when I remembered the horses. “Ah hell!” I cursed, sounding exactly like my dad. It was hard not to grow up swearing when you lived on a farm. We never took the Lord’s name in vain or said the F-word, but pretty much damn, hell, and shit were part of the vernacular of most folks born and raised in Levan. To tell the truth, those words weren’t really considered swear words. Last week in church, Gordon Aagard was giving a sermon on trials. He referred to horse shit right in the middle of his talk, and nobody really batted an eye.

Beef stew and biscuits?!” I thought to myself, outraged. He couldn’t even say hello? I looked down at my silky black dress and high heeled shoes and suddenly felt very foolish. I had been passed over for beef stew and biscuits.

Everyone always sat in the same place. It just kind of happens. We’re creatures of habit. There were families who sat in the same pew, generation upon generation. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the people of Levan bequeathed their pews in their wills.

My grandmother uses the yucca soap to wash the sheep’s wool after she shears it every spring. She says it works better than anything else. Your hair won’t smell like lavender or roses when I’m done - but it’ll be clean. My grandmother says it will give you new energy, too.” “Your wise grandmother…I think about her every time I feed my chickens.” “Why?” There was a smile in his voice. “Well, you told me once how she had names for all her sheep, and she had so many! I named the chickens when I was a little girl, after my mother died. Somehow it made it easier to take care of them if I named them. I gave them names like Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and Susan after the characters in the Chronicles of Narnia. But your grandmother named her sheep names like ‘Bushy Rump’ and ‘Face like a Fish,’ and it always made me laugh when I thought about it.” “Hmm. The names do sound a little more poetic in Navajo,” Samuel replied, chuckling softly. “Sadly, I think ‘Bushy Rump’ and ‘Face like a Fish’ have died, but she has a new one named ‘Face like a Rump’ in honor of both.” I let out a long peel of laughter, and Samuel’s finger’s tightened in my hair. “Ahhh Josie, that sound should be bottled and sold.

So…this Samuel guy…why’s he back in town?” Tara interrupted her mom’s giddy monologue. “Well, Nettie told me he’s come back to help her and Don get things in order.” Louise responded. “They don’t really have anybody else, ya know, and they’re gettin’ on in years. Tabrina and her husband are no help - those two together are about as smart as a box of rocks.” “Louise!” I scolded “Oh okay, Josie. I am bein’ kinda harsh.” She amended with “Tabrina and her husband are about as smart as a box of frogs.” She smirked at me over her right shoulder before she continued

I’m a Marine, Josie AND I am Navajo, an Earth-walker. I am Samuel of the Bitter Water People.” He grinned, his eyebrows wagging devilishly. He leaned into me and said slyly, “Therefore you can’t outrun me - even when I’m wearing shitkickers.” He used the Levan slang for cowboy boots, and it made me laugh despite myself

I sniffed hopefully, trying to smell fall in the air, but sadly got a whiff of summer leftovers instead. I leaned down and re-tied my running shoes, wiggling my toes. I meandered out to the road and faced my mountains wreathed in sunrise. I breathed and raised my arms high above my head, stretching and arching and working out my morning kinks. “You look like Changing Woman greeting the Sun.” A voice spoke immediately to my left. I was startled, and my arms dropped to my sides as I whirled around. “Oh! Samuel!” I cried out. “You scared me!” “I’m a sneaky indian, what can I say?

Lorraine, bless her pea-pickin’ heart, was carrying a huge, triple-layer, chocolate cake.

I stopped, torn between my concern for Samuel and my wish to vacate the kitchen before I dissolved into a howling puddle. “If you talk to Samuel soon.....will you tell him I came by and asked about him? Please remind him about his umbilical cord.” Nettie and Don stared at me like I’d lost my marbles. “Just tell him, okay? He’ll understand.” I fled through the house and out into the frigid February evening.

Bee’iin’a at’e

I spent some time with my grandmother. During the winter the sheep are corralled close to home, and my grandmother works almost non-stop at her loom. She makes these amazing rugs and blankets. She says her ability to weave is a gift from Spider Woman.” He looked at me, a faint smile lurking around his firm lips. “Spider Woman is of no relation to Super Sam or Bionic Josie.” He quirked his eyebrows at me

When I got home, I told my dad the truth about Yazzie; I told him that he had belonged to Don and Nettie’s grandson who was going into the Marine Corps, and he had given him to me because he couldn’t keep him. Truth without embellishment, although one could argue that it was slightly abbreviated. My dad didn’t seem to care where I’d gotten him. “I’ve been thinking about getting a dog around here.” My dad cooed as well as a gravely cowboy can. “He’s a good boy, oh yes he is! He’s a little beauty!” What was it about babies and puppies that made everyone talk with their lips pushed out in that kissy-faced way? I left Yazzie in my dad’s enthusiastic care and climbed up to my room

I have a new nickname. A few of the guys have noticed that I am reading the bible on my free time. I am now ‘preacher.’ Not very fitting, if you ask me. Don’t preachers have to stand up and teach people? I guess it could be worse. Some of the guys were talking about their favorite kind of music. Nobody said classical. I wasn’t surprised, and I didn’t volunteer my preference. Later on, I was talking to Tyler Young, and he asked me what I liked to listen to, so I told him about Beethoven. He asked me what songs I liked. I told him I especially liked Air on a G String - big mistake!! He thought I was talking about women’s underwear. He’s calling me ‘G’ now. I think I prefer Preacher. Tyler has a big mouth, especially when he thinks he’s going to get laughs, and before I knew it, he’d told everyone about Air on a G String. Now I’m ‘Preacher G.

We were introduced to the pugil sticks this week. Pugil sticks are basically a four foot stick with thick pads on each end. The recruits wear helmets and protective padding. We battled guys from platoons 4043 and 4045. They had us lined up along this boardwalk, and we fought one on one. The goal is to deliver a blow to the head or chest, both considered kill shots. The first guy who lands two kill shots wins. When it was my turn, I went flying up the ramp yelling like my grandmother taught me to do when a coyote is trying to attack the sheep. I knocked the other guy off the platform with one big blow to the chest. D.I Meadows actually cheered. Sergeant Blood said “What was that, some kind of Indian War Cry?” He seemed to like it – at least he didn’t complain that I wasn’t loud enough. I think my opponent was more scared by my blood curdling scream than the actual blow to the chest. I’m starting to realize that’s the whole point with the constant yelling.

I knew I was going to fall out of the tree. Girls as athletically challenged as I was should never climb trees. At the very least, I was going to snag my underwear on a branch and be stuck wearing only a tank top high up in the tree. I shuddered in horror. I was NOT that kind of girl. I had a decent rear-end, but I don’t think anyone’s butt looks good climbing trees. At the very worst, I would impale myself on a sharp branch like a pig on a spit. Knowing me, both would happen, and I would soon be pantiless and impaled. I could just see the story in the local newspaper: “Local Woman Found Dead and Half Naked in Tree.

Do you really believe what you do in the service of your country, for the men you fight beside, is something you need to explain to me?” My voice was just above a whisper, my face a breath from his. “You think you have to justify yourself to me? Me? Someone who’s never had to march umpteen miles with 150 pounds on her back, or been shot at, or gone days on little to no sleep? Someone who hasn’t spent the last ten years in harsh conditions, with few comforts, someone who’s never been asked to do incredibly difficult things to keep people safe?” I kissed him again, the tips of my wet fingers resting lightly on his jaw. “Where would we all be without people like you?

I didn’t want to be the yardstick of righteousness; I was too lacking.

I made myself listen to the music I loved as I worked. I would not be a coward anymore. If I acted like a lunatic, so be it! In my mind I raged and I vowed that Samuel’s leaving would not make me resort to musical holocaust. I was done with that nonsense! I played Grieg until my fingers were stiff, and I worked with the frenzy of Balakirev’s ‘Islamey’ pounding out of the loud speakers. My dad came inside during that one and turned around and walked right back out again. On day 15, I made a chocolate cake worthy of the record books. It was disgustingly rich and fattening, teetering several stories high, weighing more than I did, laden with thick cream cheese frosting, and sprinkled liberally with chocolate shavings. I sat down to eat it with a big fork and no bib. I dug in with a gusto seen only at those highly competitive hotdog eating contests where the tiny Asian girl kicks all the fat boys’ butts. “JOSIE JO JENSEN!” Louise and Tara stood at the kitchen door, shock and revulsion, and maybe just a little envy in their faces. Brahms ‘Rhapsodie No. 2 in G Minor’ was making my little kitchen shake. Eating cake to Brahms was a new experience for me. I liked it. I dug back in, ignoring them. “Well Mom,” I heard Tara say, “what should we do?!” My Aunt Louise was a very practical woman. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” She quoted cheerfully. Before I knew it, Tara and Louise both had forks, too. They didn’t seem to need bibs either. We ate, increasing our tempo as the music intensified. “ENOUGH!” My dad stood in the doorway. He was good and mad, too. His sun-browned face was as ruddy as my favorite high heels. “I sent you two in for an intervention! What is this?! Eater’s Anonymous Gone Wild?” “Aww, Daddy. Get a fork,” I replied, barely breaking rhythm. My dad strode over, took the fork from my hand and threw it, tines first, right into the wall. It stuck there, embedded and twanging like a sword at a medieval tournament. He pulled out my chair and grabbed me under the arms, pushing me out of the kitchen. I tried to take one last swipe at my cake, but he let out this inhuman roar, and I abandoned all hope of making myself well and truly sick. “Tara! Aunt Louise!” I shouted frantically. “I want you gone!!! That’s my cake! You can’t have any more without me!” My dad pushed me through the front door and out onto the porch, the screen banging behind him. I sunk to the porch swing, sullenly wiping chocolate crumbs from my mouth. My dad stomped back inside the house and suddenly the music pouring from every nook and cranny stopped abruptly. I heard him tell Louise he’d call her later, and then the kitchen door banged, indicating my aunt’s and Tara’s departure. Good. They would have eaten that whole cake. I saw the way they were shoveling it in.

running shoes may be the most destructive force to ever hit the human foot. Barefoot

Not Your Stereotypical Southern Belle By Betsy Shearon, George Grits I grew up being more interested in scoring touchdowns than wearing tiaras. I never particularly wanted to get married and was well into my thirties before I even got engaged. And although I am a devoted aunt, the call of motherhood for me has always sounded strangely similar to the “Warning Will Robinson!” cry on the old Lost in Space television show. Still, I consider myself a true Southern Girl, simply because, as we say in the South, my mama done raised me right. I say, “yes, ma’am,” “no, sir,” “please” and “thank you.” I am respectful of my elders, even my great-aunt Ida Mable, whose food we were never allowed to eat at family reunions. (Suffice it to say that eccentricity not only runs in my family, it pretty much gallops.) I always wear clean underwear in case I am in an accident. And I always leave the house clean before I go on a trip in case I get killed and strangers have to come into my house to get my funeral wear (this is despite the fact that I have yet to read an obituary that said, “she left a husband, two children, and an immaculate house.”) And I know things that only Southern girls know, such as the fact that it is possible to “never talk to strangers and at the same time greet everyone you meet with a smile and a hello. I know that it is possible to “always tell the truth,” but to always answer “fine” when someone asks how you are--even if your hair is on fire at the time. It is this knowledge that allows us to turn the other cheek when people say ugly things like “Southern girls are stupid, barefoot and pregnant.” Southern girls realize that, given the swollen feet and ankles that accompany pregnancy, going barefoot when possible is actually a very smart and sensible thing to do--and that the Yankees who say things like that probably wouldn’t talk so ugly if their feet didn’t hurt, bless their hearts.

Well hello, Miss Josie!” Don Yates stepped stiffly out of the pickup, approaching me with a slightly bow-legged gait. He’d been tall once but had become stooped and shrunken in his later years. He’d been a bull-rider in his younger days, and he’d been beaten up and put back together a time or two. Nettie said he’d broken every bone in his hands by the time his career was over. His fingers were as big around as sausages, his palms thick and muscular. Combine that with his built up forearms, and he looked a little like Popeye - all arms, no butt, and bowed legs.

So what’s the story your grandpa told you?” I leaned back against the blanket, propping my head in one hand and looking up at him. “It wasn’t about the pond, I guess. It’s more about the town. I didn’t ever come to Mona when I lived here. I never had reason to - so when I asked my grandpa if there were any good fishing spots around here, and he mentioned this pond, I asked him about the town. He said Burl Ives, the singer, was once thrown in jail here in Mona. It was before his time, but he thought it was a funny story.” “I’ve never heard about that!” “It was the 1940’s, and Burl Ives traveled around singing. I guess the authorities didn’t like one of his songs - they thought it was bawdy, so they put him in jail.” “What was the song?” I snickered. “It was called Foggy, Foggy Dew. My grandpa sang it for me.” “Let’s hear it!” I challenged. “It’s far too lewd.” Samuel pulled his mouth into a serious frown, but his eyes twinkled sardonically. “All right you’ve convinced me,” he said without me begging at all, and we laughed together. He cleared his throat and began to sing, with a touch of an Irish lilt, about a bachelor living all alone whose only sin had been to try to protect a fair young maiden from the foggy, foggy dew. One night she came to my bedside When I was fast asleep. She laid her head upon my bed And she began to weep She sighed, she cried, she damn near died She said what shall I do? So I hauled her into bed and covered up her head Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew. “Oh my!” I laughed, covering my mouth. “I don’t think I would have stuck Burl Ives in jail for that, but it is pretty funny,” “Marine’s are the lewdest, crudest, foulest talking bunch you’ll ever find. I’ve heard much, much worse. I’ve sung much, much worse. I tried to remain chaste and virtuous, and I still have the nickname Preacher after all these years - but I have been somewhat corrupted.” He waggled his eyebrows at his ribaldry. “I kind of liked that song…” I mused, half kidding. “Sing something else but without the Irish.” “Without the Irish? That’s the best part.” Samuel smiled crookedly. “I had a member of my platoon whose mom was born and raised in Ireland. This guy could do an authentic Irish accent, and man, could he sing. When he sang Danny Boy everybody cried. All these tough, lethal Marines, bawling like babies

When people focus on how the foot should land, they try to impose a forefoot landing without changing their overall running technique. But to land correctly, you actually first have to move up the body and relax your calves, which will then alter the way the foot lands. Often,

rather than trying to force a certain foot landing, we should let our feet land and try to feel whether they are landing comfortably without strain or tension. Instead

Let the hips and torso lead the way. This should feel a bit like falling forward; you’ll need to move the feet quickly under your hips to catch yourself, with each foot landing below—and not ahead of—your vertical body. (A

the natural barefoot form immediately and instinctively trains you to let your body lead the way and keep your feet back

front door in the dark and debated going after the gunman. A police car pulled up in front of my house. We blinked the front lights and the car came to a stop. We ripped open the front door and ran straight at the officer, me barefoot and holding a large butcher knife. The officer quickly stepped from his car and his hand went to his weapon. I shouted, “No, no!” and pointed toward the Murrays’ house. “There he goes. He has a gun!” The gunman burst out from the Murrays’ front door and took off running toward the nearby woods. As police cars from many jurisdictions

flithy pendejos who would lounge barefoot all day on the benches of the plaza. What good is a tourist that spends no money? Some of those mocosos even begged...No one called me cheap, Menos, a rich girl pretending to be poor, menos, one that I knew could any time run home to hot water and the clean house of her parents.

I’ve found that if I focus on a foot lift, not a foot push, it is easy to keep my cadence higher. Here’s why: when you try to push your foot into the ground, you are actually launching or pushing your body up into the air, fighting against gravity’s accelerating force (which is trying to pull you back down). The