Barking At The Stars Quotes

Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom.

Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Franz Kafka is Dead He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." The people whispered and nodded among themselves. They put their arms around each other, and touched their children's hair. They took off their hats and raised them to the small, sickly man with the ears of a strange animal, sitting in his black velvet suit in the dark tree. Then they turned and started for home under the canopy of leaves. Children were carried on their fathers' shoulders, sleepy from having been taken to see who wrote his books on pieces of bark he tore off the tree from which he refused to come down. In his delicate, beautiful, illegible handwriting. And they admired those books, and they admired his will and stamina. After all: who doesn't wish to make a spectacle of his loneliness? One by one families broke off with a good night and a squeeze of the hands, suddenly grateful for the company of neighbors. Doors closed to warm houses. Candles were lit in windows. Far off, in his perch in the trees , Kafka listened to it all: the rustle of the clothes being dropped to the floor, or lips fluttering along naked shoulders, beds creaking along the weight of tenderness. It all caught in the delicate pointed shells of his ears and rolled like pinballs through the great hall of his mind. That night a freezing wind blew in. When the children woke up, they went to the window and found the world encased in ice. One child, the smallest, shrieked out in delight and her cry tore through the silence and exploded the ice of a giant oak tree. The world shone. They found him frozen on the ground like a bird. It's said that when they put their ears to the shell of his ears, they could hear themselves.

We stand dead still and we listen to the night. The city drones. An owl hoots and a cat howls and a dog barks and a siren wails. We let the stars shine into us.

Is it a wolf I hear, Howling his lonely communion With the unpiloted stars, Or merely the self importance and servitude In the bark of a dog? How many millenia did it take, Twisting and torturing The pride from the one To make a tool, The other? And how do we measure the distance from spirit to spirit? And who do we find to blame?

[Kevin and Molly's adorable banter] "I'm not carrying anything until I see what's on your panties." "It's Daphne, okay?" "I'm supposed to believe you're wearing the same underpants you had on yesterday?" "I have more than one pair" "I think you're lying. I want to see for myself." He dragged her deeper into the pines. While Roo circled them barking, he reached for the snap on her shorts. "Quiet, Godzilla! There's some serious business going on here." Roo obediently quieted. She grabbed his wrists and pushed. "Get away." "That's not what you were saying last night." "Somebody'll see." "I'll tell them a bee got you, and I'm taking out the stinger." "Don't touch my stinger!" She grabbed for her shorts, but they were already heading for her knees. "Stop that!" He peered down at her panties. "It's the badger. You lied to me." "I wasn't paying attention when I got dressed." "Hold still. I've just about found that stinger." She heard herself sigh. "Oh, yeah..." His body moved against hers. "There it is.

There were frogs all right, thousands of them. Their voices beat the night, they boomed and barked and croaked and rattled. They sang to the stars, to the waning moon, to the waving grasses. They bellowed long songs and challenges.

The wind grew cold. The leaves turned red. The bark turned red. The soil turned red. The stars turned red. Something was wrong with October.

Don't expect to sit next to the moon unless you are a star!

Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.

China. She will return, standing tall and straight, the milk burned out of her. She will look down on the circle of light we have made in the Pit and she will know that I have kept watch, that I have fought. China will bark and call me sister. In the star-suffocated sky, there is a great waiting silence. She will know that I am a mother.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode. 'I would love you to do something for me,' I said. 'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously. 'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said. 'Anything, sir, anything!' 'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.

Flowers were blooming, withered soon.. Rains kept falling, wasn't forever.. Dogs were barking, just for sometime.. Sun, moon & stars were invisible at times, but they kept watching you.. Let them shine for you, before it’s too late..

Then the stars went out, for the bark of Ra, in fiery splendor, burst out of the East. Sunshine flooded the wide desert and the long, green valley of the Nile. The night was over; a new day had dawned for the land of Egypt.

It breaks my heart. Better than your words, your eye tells me all your peril. You are not yet free, you still search for freedom. Your search has fatigued you and made you too wakeful. You long for the open heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your bad instincts too thirst for freedom. Your fierce dogs long for freedom; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit aspires to break open all prisons. To me you are still a prisoner who imagines freedom: ah, such prisoners of the soul become clever, but also deceitful and base. The free man of the spirit, too, must still purify himself. Much of the prison and rottenness still remain within him: his eye still has to become pure. Yes, I know your peril. But, by my love and hope I entreat you: do not reject your love and hope! You still feel yourself noble, and the others, too, who dislike you and cast evil glances at you, still feel you are noble. Learn that everyone finds the noble man an obstruction. The good, too, find the noble man an obstruction: and even when they call him a good man they do so in order to make away with him. The noble man wants to create new things and a new virtue. The good man wants the old things and that the old things shall be preserved. But that is not the danger for the noble man — that he may become a good man — but that he may become an impudent one, a derider, a destroyer. Alas, I have known noble men who lost their highest hope. And henceforth they slandered all high hopes. Henceforth they lived impudently in brief pleasures, and they had hardly an aim beyond the day. ‘Spirit is also sensual pleasure’ — thus they spoke. Then the wings of their spirit broke: now it creeps around and it makes dirty what it feeds on. Once they thought of becoming heroes: now they are sensualists. The hero is to them an affliction and a terror. But, by my love and hope I entreat you: do not reject the hero in your soul! Keep holy your highest hope! Thus spoke Zarathustra.

But as they stared into "The Star Spangled Banner," the music was blessedly drowned out by the squeal and moan of the barking train, iron on iron, a truer anthem of America.

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar: Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude: In honored poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,-- Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be

The Wookiee tilts his head back and ululates a loud, joyful growl, then wraps his impossible arms around the smuggler. Solo looks like a child snatched up by an eager parent—for a moment his whole body lifts up off the ground, his legs kicking as the Wookiee purrs and barks.

That evening the men worked late to finish and I raked the fields in the dusk with Alison, stopping to pick the dog-roses which were like white stars in the hedges, then hastening after my sister. Dumbledores boomed as they struck our dresses, a hedgehog walked in the path, and we could hear the barking of a fox in the wood. Night

Now a door slams. The kids have rushed out for the last play, the mothers are planning and slamming in kitchens, you can hear it out in swish leaf orchards, on popcorn swings, in the million-foliaged sweet wafted night of sighs, songs, shushes. A thousand things up and down the street, deep, lovely, dangerous, aureating, breathing, throbbing like stars; a whistle, a faint yell; the flow of lowell over rooftops beyond; the bark on the river, the wild goose of the night yakking, ducking in the sand and sparkle; the ululating lap and purl and lovely mystery on the shore, dark, always dark the river's cunning unseen lips murmuring kisses, eating night, stealing sand, sneaky.

And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show like fish, the great moon that once was rose now high like a blazing milk flails its white reflection vertical and deep in the dark surgey mass wall river's grinding bed push. As in a sad dream, under the streetlamp, by pocky unpaved holes in dirt, the father James Cassidy comes home with lunchpail and lantern, limping, redfaced, and turns in for supper and sleep. Now a door slams. The kids have rushed out for the last play, the mothers are planning and slamming in kitchens, you can hear it out in swish leaf orchards, on popcorn swings, in the million-foliaged sweet wafted night of sighs, songs, shushes. A thousand things up and down the street, deep, lovely, dangerous, aureating, breathing, throbbing like stars; a whistle, a faint yell; the flow of Lowell over rooftops beyond; the bark on the river, the wild goose of the night yakking, ducking in the sand and sparkle; the ululating lap and purl and lovely mystery on the shore, dark, always dark the river's cunning unseen lips, murmuring kisses, eating night, stealing sand, sneaky. 'Mag-gie!' the kids are calling under the railroad bridge where they've been swimming. The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and left, lost, down a path--the gloom of love. Maggie, the girl I loved.

Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night—and I dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room; and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth's name upon my lips, looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above me.

Beware of the man who does not talk and the dog who does not bark. —Cheyenne proverb

I thought of many an autumn I had known: Seemly autumns approaching deliberately, with amplitude. I thought of wild asters, Michaelmas daisies, mushrooms, leaves idling down the air, two or three at a time, warblers twittering and glittering in every bush ('Confusing fall warblers,' Peterson calls them, and how right he is): the lingering yellow jackets feeding on broken apples; crickets; amber-dappled light; great geese barking down from the north; the seesaw noise that blue jays seem to make more often in the fall. Hoarfrost in the morning, cold stars at night. But slow; the whole thing coming slowly. The way it should be.

Observing others go through them, he used to admire midlife crises, the courage and shamelessness and existential daring of them, but after he'd watched his own wife, a respectable nursery school teacher, produce and star in a full-blown one of her own, he found the sufferers of such crises not only self-indulgent but greedy and demented, and he wished them all weird unnatural deaths with various contraptions easily found in garages.

Sometimes we are written down in books. Or, someone tells a story in which our name figures. And so we live on, through someone else’s voice… These are the indelible marks others make of us, like the watermarks of high tides, names carved into barks, or stamps branded onto belongings. For what else is history but the collected voices of others, who sing a chorus of what once was. It is not words but voices that are the inscriptions seared onto pages, into minds, of the fragments others glean, as we live our lives in passing. Flitting and fl eeting, we rub off as we move through, and in our wake is cast the dust of the stars that we become. And sometimes it is caught on the fingers of others, and they press that gold to their lips, where it glistens, an eternal testimony to the fact that they adored us: So we, those of us who remember, we grow more golden as we age, as if cast into statues that commemorate the splendor of those who loved us, and those we were privileged to love.

Anyone who knows baseball knows Ted Williams. He played professionally from 1939 to 1960 and is one of the undisputed greatest hitters of all time, right up there with Babe Ruth. But whether you’re familiar with him or not, I have news for you: Ted Williams never played baseball. Nope, he never did. The problem there is the verb: Williams wasn’t playing. To him, hitting a baseball wasn’t a game. He always took it very, very seriously. In a 1988 interview he said as a child he literally wished on a falling star that he would become the greatest hitter to ever live. But he didn’t sit around and wait for the dream to come true. His obsessive, perfectionist work ethic would bring him more success than any descending celestial body would. Williams said, “I . . . insist that regardless of physical assets, I would never have gained a headline for hitting if I [had not] kept everlastingly at it and thought of nothing else the year round . . . I only lived for my next time at bat.” Ten thousand hours to achieve expertise? Williams probably did that a few times over. He was obsessed. After school, he’d go to a local field and practice hitting until nine P.M., only stopping because that’s when they turned the lights out. Then he’d go home and practice in the backyard until his parents made him go to bed. He’d get to school early so he could fit in more swings before classes started. He’d bring his bat to class. He picked courses that had less homework, not because he was lazy but so he’d have more time for hitting.

Chewie hugs him and purrs. “I’ll be back. We’re not done, you and I. We’ll see each other again. I’m gonna be a father and no way my kid won’t have you in his life.” One more bark and yip as Chewie pets his head. “Yeah, pal. I know.” He sighs. “I love you, too.

No mates exist for countless miles around, and a chestnut, though both male and female, will not serve itself. Yet still this tree has a secret tucked into the thin, living cylinder beneath its bark. Its cells obey an ancient formula: Keep still. Wait. Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted. There’s work to do. Star-work, but earthbound all the same. Or as the nurse to the Union dead writes: Stand cool and composed before a million universes. As cool and composed as wood.

If I look at a forest from afar, I see a dark green velvet. As I move toward it, the velvet breaks up into trunks, branches and leaves: the bark of the trunks, the moss, the insects, the teeming complexity. In every eye of every ladybug, there is an extremely elaborate structure of cells connected to neurons that guide and enable them to live. Every cell is a city, every protein a castle of atoms; in each atomic nucleus an inferno of quantum dynamics is stirring, quarks and gluons swirl, excitations of quantum fields. This is only a small wood on a small planet that revolves around a little star, among one hundred billion stars in one of the thousand billion galaxies constellated with dazzling cosmic events. In every corner of the universe we find vertiginous wells of layers of reality.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

It wasn't the first time the two of them had kissed but it was the first time they were both aware of what it was. the act itself wasn't any different, still lips upon lips, capped and wet and warm. But the intention was. This kiss was a question, an answer, fingers crossed, and a promise kept. it was hope. it was possibility. It was sparks across Wren's skin and a flutter in her stomach. It was roving hands and soft touches and lingering heat. It was bark pressed against her. back. It was tiny gasps, Tamsin's mouth splitting into a smile that Wren matched with her own. Wren wanted to remember every second, wanted to be aware of every single sensation, but it was like trying to count the stars. Never before had she been so conscious of how many ways to was possible to feel. To want. to need. The second kiss was much of the same. The third was somehow even more. After that, Wren stopped counting. She focused instead on the way her skin shivered beneath the witch's touch, how she had never before considered the neck to be a place particularly suited for kissing (oh, how foolish she had been), how tender a tongue could be. Kissing the witch gave Wren the same sensation magic did. Kissing Tamsin made Wren feel like magic too.

When Emerson poetically noted that mosses favour the north sides of trees (‘The moss upon the forest bark, was pole-star when the night was dark’) he really meant lichens, for in the nineteenth century mosses and lichens weren’t distinguished. True mosses aren’t actually fussy about where they grow, so they are no good as natural compasses.

And he had to say farewell to his hands, his eyes, to hunger and thirst, to love, to playing the lute, to sleeping and waking, to everything. Tomorrow a bird would fly through the air and Goldmund would no longer see it, a girl would sing in a window and he would not hear her song, the river would run and the dark fish would swim silently, the wind would blow and sweep the yellow leaves on the ground, the sun would shine and stars would blink in the sky, young men would go dancing, the first snow would lie on the distant mountains—everything would go on, trees would cast their shadows, people would look gay or sad out of their living eyes, dogs would bark, cows would low in the barns of villages, and all of it without Goldmund.

She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way," explained Bingo. "I thought we would meet her and bow, and you could see her, you know, and then we would walk on." "Of course," I said, "that's enough excitement for anyone, and undoubtedly a corking reward for tramping three miles out of one's way over ploughed fields with tight boots, but don't we do anything else? Don't we tack on to the girl and buzz along with her?" "Good Lord!" said Bingo, honestly amazed. "You don't suppose I've got nerve enough for that, do you? I just look at her from afar off and all that sort of thing. Quick! Here she comes! No, I'm wrong!" It was like that song of Harry Lauder's where he's waiting for the girl and says, "This is her-r-r. No, it's a rabbut." Young Bingo made me stand there in the teeth of a nor'-east half-gale for ten minutes, keeping me on my toes with a series of false alarms, and I was just thinking of suggesting that we should lay off and give the rest of the proceedings a miss, when round the corner there came a fox-terrier, and Bingo quivered like an aspen. Then there hove in sight a small boy, and he shook like a jelly. Finally, like a star whose entrance has been worked up by the personnel of the ensemble, a girl appeared, and his emotion was painful to witness. His face got so red that, what with his white collar and the fact that the wind had turned his nose blue, he looked more like a French flag than anything else. He sagged from the waist upwards, as if he had been filleted. He was just raising his fingers limply to his cap when he suddenly saw that the girl wasn't alone. A chappie in clerical costume was also among those present, and the sight of him didn't seem to do Bingo a bit of good. His face got redder and his nose bluer, and it wasn't till they had nearly passed that he managed to get hold of his cap. The girl bowed, the curate said, "Ah, Little. Rough weather," the dog barked, and then they toddled on and the entertainment was over.

Suffice it to say I was compelled to create this group in order to find everyone who is, let's say, borrowing liberally from my INESTIMABLE FOLIO OF CANONICAL MASTERPIECES (sorry, I just do that sometimes), and get you all together. It's the least I could do. I mean, seriously. Those soliloquies in Moby-Dick? Sooo Hamlet and/or Othello, with maybe a little Shylock thrown in. Everyone from Pip in Great Expectations to freakin' Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre mentions my plays, sometimes completely mangling my words in nineteenth-century middle-American dialect for humorous effect (thank you, Sir Clemens). Many people (cough Virginia Woolf cough) just quote me over and over again without attribution. I hear James Joyce even devoted a chapter of his giant novel to something called the "Hamlet theory," though do you have some sort of newfangled English? It looks like gobbledygook to me. The only people who don't seek me out are like Chaucer and Dante and those ancient Greeks. For whatever reason. And then there are the titles. The Sound and the Fury? Mine. Infinite Jest? Mine. Proust, Nabokov, Steinbeck, and Agatha Christie all have titles that are me-inspired. Brave New World? Not just the title, but half the plot has to do with my work. Even Edgar Allan Poe named a character after my Tempest's Prospero (though, not surprisingly, things didn't turn out well for him!). I'm like the star to every wandering bark, the arrow of every compass, the buzzard to every hawk and gillyflower ... oh, I don't even know what I'm talking about half the time. I just run with it, creating some of the SEMINAL TOURS DE FORCE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. You're welcome.

While he turned and twisted the strips, the thin outer bark fell off in flakes, leaving the soft, white, inside bark. The whip would have been white, except that Almanzo’s hands left a few smudges. He could not finish it before chore-time, and the next day he had to go to school. But he braided his whip every evening by the heater, till the lash was five feet long. Then Father lent him his jack-knife, and Almanzo whittled a wooden handle, and bound the lash to it with strips of moosewood bark. The whip was done. It would be a perfectly good whip until it dried brittle in the hot summer. Almanzo could crack it almost as loudly as Father cracked a blacksnake whip. And he did not finish it a minute too soon, for already he needed it to give the calves their next lesson. Now he had to teach them to turn to the left when he shouted, “Haw!” and to turn to the right when he shouted “Gee!” As soon as the whip was ready, he began. Every Saturday morning he spent in the barnyard, teaching Star and Bright. He never whipped them; he only cracked the whip.

It breaks my heart. Better than your words, your eye tells me all your peril. You are not yet free, you still search for freedom. Your search has fatigued you and made you too wakeful. You long for the open heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your bad instincts too thirst for freedom. Your fierce dogs long for freedom; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit aspires to break open all prisons. To me you are still a prisoner who imagines freedom: ah, such prisoners of the soul become clever, but also deceitful and base.

Then I grab her. I can’t help it. I grab her and pull her against me. I need to feel her, to touch her, to smell her. I kiss her, because I really need to taste her. I hear the tiny little noises she makes when she’s excited, and she growls against my lips. The coach barks out, “Knock it off, Reed!” I lift my head, but I imagine I have stars flying around my head like Sylvester the cat after he gets hit with a rolling pin. “But she’s Mrs. Reed, coach!” I call back. “Congratulations,” he says drolly. But he’s smiling too. “Now get a room.” My

Who are you?” Luce asked, falling to her knees. “What do you want?” “Show some respect.” The angel’s throat convulsed as if he meant to bark, but his voice came out warbled and faint and old. “Earn my respect,” Luce said. “And I’ll give it to you.” He gave her half an evil smirk and dropped his head low. Then he pulled down the cloak to expose the back of his neck. Luce blinked in the dim light. His neck bore a painted brand, which shimmered gold in the glow of streetlights mingled with the moon. She counted seven points on the star. He was one of the Scale. “Recognize me now?” “Is this how the Throne’s enforcers work? Bludgeoning innocent angels?” “No Outcast is innocent. Nor is anyone else, for that matter, until they are proven to be so.” “You’ve proven yourself innocent of any honor, striking a girl from behind.” “Insolence.” He wrinkled his nose at he. “Won’t get you far with me.” “That’s exactly where I want to be.” Luce’s eyes darted to Olianna, to her pale hand and the starshot clenched in its grip. “But it’s not where you will stay,” the Scale said haltingly, as if having to force himself to commit to heir illogical banter.

I looked up at the moon and stars through the glass roof above and gasped at the stunning sight, like a mural painted by a great artist. No wonder Lady Anna had loved this place. I walked to the orchids and plucked a weed from a small terra-cotta pot that held a speckled pink and white flower. "There you are, beautiful," I whispered, releasing a patch of clover roots from the bark near the orchid's stem. "Is that better?" In the quiet of the night, I could almost hear the flower sigh. I walked to the water spigot and filled a green watering can to the brim, then sprinkled the flower and her comrades. I marveled at how the droplets sparkled in the moonlight.

Spinoza was a pantheist: He believed that God was within nature, not a separate Being with an independent will. “In Spinoza’s system,” Jewish philosopher Louis Jacobs has written, “God and Nature are treated as different names for the same thing. God is not ‘outside’ or apart from Nature. He did not create Nature but is Nature.” This doctrine set Spinoza at loggerheads with both Judaism and Christianity. It was absurd in his view to credit God with attributes such as will or intellect; that was like demanding that Sirius bark, just because people refer to it as the Dog Star. Spinoza tried to posit a system of ethics based on reason, not supernatural revelation.

Still gasping for breath from the exertion of the chase, the colonel lifted his rifle and aimed at the closest mountain lion. The crack of the colonel’s rifle rang through the night air, echoing off the surrounding mountains. A piece of bark flew up next to the lion as the cat leapt to a different branch of the tree. Swearing in anger that he had missed the shot, the colonel took several steps closer, levered his rifle, and fired again. Once more, the lion leaped away just in time, slinking from branch to branch as her brother hissed and snarled to keep the frenzied, stupid tree-climbing dogs at bay. Serafina ran toward her brother and sister as fast as she could, her claws out and ready to fight. The colonel fired again, and then again, twigs breaking, bark exploding, the lions hissing and snarling, the sound of the repeated shots echoing across the mist-filled valley. Discouraged by the colonel’s poor accuracy, the other hunters began to position themselves to shoot the mountain lions themselves and get it over with. “My shot!” he screamed again as he moved closer. Serafina ran straight toward them, her powerful chest expanding with raging power. She was almost there. But on the colonel’s next shot, she heard the bullet thwack into her sister’s body. Serafina watched helplessly as her sister fell from the branch of the tree and tumbled through midair, her limbs flailing as she plummeted toward the rocks below.

22 grams cinchona bark 4 grams dried hawthorn berries 8 grams dried sumac berries 2 grams cassia buds 3 cloves 1 small (2-inch) cinnamon stick, preferably Ceylon cinnamon 1 star anise 12 grams dried bitter orange peel 4 grams blackberry leaf 51⁄4 cups spring water 50 grams citric acid 2 teaspoons sea salt 1 stalk lemongrass, cut into 1⁄2-inch sections Finely grated zest and juice of 2 limes Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon 1⁄2 cup agave syrup Combine the cinchona bark, hawthorn berries, sumac berries, cassia buds, cloves, cinnamon, and star anise in a spice mill or mortar and pestle and crush into a coarse powder. Add the orange peel and blackberry leaf, divide the mixture among three large tea baskets or tea bags, and put a few pie weights in each. Bring the water to a boil in a large stainless-steel saucepan. Add the tea baskets, citric acid, and salt. Let simmer for 5 minutes. Add the lemongrass, cover partially, and let simmer 15 minutes longer. Add the lime and lemon zests and juices and let simmer, uncovered, until the liquid is reduced by a little less than half, making about 3 cups. Remove from the heat and remove the tea balls. Pour the agave syrup into a bowl. Set a fine-mesh strainer over the bowl and strain the tonic into the syrup. You will need to work in batches and to dump out the strainer after each pour. If the tonic is cloudy, strain again. Pour into a clean bottle and seal. Store in the refrigerator for up to 1 year.

The arborist has determined: senescence beetles canker quickened by drought but in any case not prunable not treatable not to be propped. And so. The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries. The trunk where the ant. The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground. The bark cambium pine-sap cluster of needles. The Japanese patterns the ink-net. The dapple on certain fish. Today, for some, a universe will vanish. First noisily, then just another silence. The silence of after, once the theater has emptied. Of bewilderment after the glacier, the species, the star. Something else, in the scale of quickening things, will replace it, this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.

Ascent To The Sierras poet Robinson Jeffers #140 on top 500 poets Poet's PagePoemsCommentsStatsE-BooksBiographyQuotationsShare on FacebookShare on Twitter Poems by Robinson Jeffers : 8 / 140 « prev. poem next poem » Ascent To The Sierras Beyond the great valley an odd instinctive rising Begins to possess the ground, the flatness gathers to little humps and barrows, low aimless ridges, A sudden violence of rock crowns them. The crowded orchards end, they have come to a stone knife; The farms are finished; the sudden foot of the slerra. Hill over hill, snow-ridge beyond mountain gather The blue air of their height about them. Here at the foot of the pass The fierce clans of the mountain you'd think for thousands of years, Men with harsh mouths and eyes like the eagles' hunger, Have gathered among these rocks at the dead hour Of the morning star and the stars waning To raid the plain and at moonrise returning driven Their scared booty to the highlands, the tossing horns And glazed eyes in the light of torches. The men have looked back Standing above these rock-heads to bark laughter At the burning granaries and the farms and the town That sow the dark flat land with terrible rubies... lighting the dead... It is not true: from this land The curse was lifted; the highlands have kept peace with the valleys; no blood in the sod; there is no old sword Keeping grim rust, no primal sorrow. The people are all one people, their homes never knew harrying; The tribes before them were acorn-eaters, harmless as deer. Oh, fortunate earth; you must find someone To make you bitter music; how else will you take bonds of the future, against the wolf in men's hearts?

eyes. She felt the changes shimmer across her scales. The hardest part was the extra horns IceWings had around their heads. She concentrated on making her ruff look like it was made of icicles and hoped that would do. She also couldn’t make her claws ridged like IceWing claws, and her tail wasn’t as whip-thin at the end as an IceWing’s would be. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe there’s no way I’ll get away with it. But it was still pretty dark out . . . and she really, really wanted to know what a NightWing was doing out here. Well, she thought ruefully, if he figures me out, I guess I’ll just kill him. Somehow it didn’t sound as funny as she’d hoped. She leaped into the air and flew back to the spot where she’d seen the strange dragon. For a moment she was afraid she’d lost him, before she realized that he was lying down, his black scales half-hidden in the long shadows. Confidence, she told herself. It’s all about attitude. “Hey!” she barked, landing with a thump beside him. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our territory?” The NightWing leaped up in surprise and stared at her. He was a lot younger and smaller than Morrowseer, wiry and graceful in his movements even when he was startled. The silver scales sparkling under his wings caught the morning light like trapped stars. “Great moons. Where did you come from?” he asked. He looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression. “Where do you think?” she said. “And I’m asking the questions here. What are you doing in the Ice Kingdom?” “Technically this isn’t the Ice Kingdom yet,” he said. “Or didn’t you know that?” It isn’t? she thought. The map she’d memorized didn’t exactly have borders drawn on it, not that those would have helped her out here anyway.

In the beginning, there was no time, and no man or beast walked the world. Where the ocean met the land, an ivory mare was born, her mane crafted from sea-foam and her body from barnacles. She was the Creator, goddess of all conception and supreme ruler of seven worlds. The Creator planted the seed of life in her most precious world, and a mighty elderwood tree grew to hold up the sky and nourish life. The elderwood bore creatures of all kinds—including giants from her bark, elves from her leaves, and mankind from her acorns. This elite triad of brothers and sisters dwelled in harmony, but the Creator knew peace was temporary. Avarice, wrath, and pride would set her children against each other, so she appointed a lesser god as guardian over them and commanded that he give every living thing a time to be born and a time to die. But this story isn’t about death. Not yet.

My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you’re doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I’ll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it’s lowlifes you’re looking after, not so much. And if it’s kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I’m chasing the big bucks now. Schoolteacher!

-Wait, Anna, do you hear it? Listen" "-What is it?" It sounds like barking. "-Look- seals." She points about thirty feet down the share where a dozen or so brown lumps wriggle and play in the sand, barking like some kind of water dogs, "-Wow", I breath. "I'm changing my answer." "Anna, What's the number one coolest thing you've ever seen in your life?" He asked me on night, about a week after my birthday, when We saw three shooting stars in a row behind his house. It was after midnight, and everyone was asleep but the crickets. I remember telling him about this crazy lighting storm I saw when I was ten. It was far away but I could see the rain billowing out in sails and sheets, all the dark blue-gray sky lit up in flash after flash after flash. "What's yours?" "It's always been the ocean. but I'm thinking about changing my answer." He didn't say anything after that. He just looked at my eyes for a long, long time, missing all the stars above Us until it was too light to see them anyway. "-What answer?" Frankie asks. "-Seals. The seals are officially the number one coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Springs and summers full of song and revolution. The Popular Front, demonstrations and confrontations, time that takes you away from yourself and your poetry, so that you could see them as if from cosmic space, a way of looking that changes everything into stars, our Earth, you and me, Estonia and Eritrea, blue anemones and the Pacific Ocean. Even the belief that you will write more poems. Something that was breathing into you, as May wind blows into a house bringing smells of mown grass and dogs' barks, - this something has dissipated, become invisible like stars in daylight. For quite a time I haven't permitted myself to hope it would come back. I know I am not free, I am nothing without this breathing, inspiration, wind that comes through the window. Let God be free, whether he exist or no. And then, it comes once again. At dusk in the countryside when I go to an outhouse, a little white moth flies out of the door. That's it, now. And the dusk around me begins little by little to breathe in words and syllables. * In the morning, I was presented to President Mitterrand, in the evening, I was weeding nettles from under the currant bushes. A lot happened inbetween, the ride from Tallinn to Tartu and to our country home through the spring that we had waited for so long, and that came, as always, unexpectedly, changing serious greyish Estonia at once into a primary school child's drawing in pale green, into a play-landscape where mayflies, mayors and cars are all somewhat tiny and ridiculous... In the evening I saw the full moon rising above the alder grove. Two bats circled over the courtyard. The President's hand was soft and warm. As were his eyes, where fatigue was, in a curious way, mingled with force, and depth with banality. He had bottomless night eyes with something mysterious in them like the paths of moles underground or the places where bats hibernate and sleep.

The Search for Happiness Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of [children]. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate. —PSALM 127:5     Storm Jameson, a twentieth-century English writer, wrote, “Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” Parents want to make their children happy, employers want to make employees happy, married couples want a happy marriage, etc. “Just make me happy, and I’ll be satisfied!” Isn’t that what people (ourselves included) think and expect of others a lot of the time? Yet, we run into so many unhappy people—clearly these expectations are rarely met. Our newspapers are full of stories about unhappy people. They rob, they kill, they steal, they take drugs. They, they, they. Everywhere one looks, there is unhappiness. Then how does one become happy? I’ve found that happiness comes from one’s own perception. No one else is responsible for your happiness. Look in the mirror, and you can see who is responsible for your happiness! Gerald Brenan wrote: One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then if we do that, we will never suffer a moment’s boredom.56 Happiness comes from within. It’s what you do: the choices you make, the interests you pursue, the attitudes you have, the friends you make, the faith you embrace, and the peace you live. You, you, you bring happiness to your life—no one else. Turn to the One who created you, inside and out, and follow His lead to happiness and wholeness.

On quitting Bretton, which I did a few weeks after Paulina’s departure—little thinking then I was never again to visit it; never more to tread its calm old streets—I betook myself home, having been absent six months. It will be conjectured that I was of course glad to return to the bosom of my kindred. Well! the amiable conjecture does no harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontradicted. Far from saying nay, indeed, I will permit the reader to picture me, for the next eight years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a harbour still as glass—the steersman stretched on the little deck, his face up to heaven, his eyes closed: buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that fashion; why not I with the rest? Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. However, it cannot be concealed that, in that case, I must somehow have fallen overboard, or that there must have been wreck at last. I too well remember a time—a long time—of cold, of danger, of contention. To this hour, when I have the nightmare, it repeats the rush and saltness of briny waves in my throat, and their icy pressure on my lungs. I even know there was a storm, and that not of one hour nor one day. For many days and nights neither sun nor stars appeared; we cast with our own hands the tackling out of the ship; a heavy tempest lay on us; all hope that we should be saved was taken away. In fine, the ship was lost, the crew perished. As far as I recollect, I complained to no one about these troubles. Indeed, to whom could I complain? Of Mrs. Bretton I had long lost sight. Impediments, raised by others, had, years ago, come in the way of our intercourse, and cut it off. Besides, time had brought changes for her, too: the handsome property of which she was left guardian for her son, and which had been chiefly invested in some joint-stock undertaking, had melted, it was said, to a fraction of its original amount. Graham, I learned from incidental rumours, had adopted a profession; both he and his mother were gone from Bretton, and were understood to be now in London. Thus, there remained no possibility of dependence on others; to myself alone could I look. I know not that I was of a self-reliant or active nature; but self-reliance and exertion were forced upon me by circumstances, as they are upon thousands besides; and when Miss Marchmont, a maiden lady of our neighbourhood, sent for me, I obeyed her behest, in the hope that she might assign me some task I could undertake.

Birch bark lends a mild wintergreen flavor to brewed sodas. Birch beer, flavored with sassafras and birch, is a classic American brew. Birch bark is usually sold in homebrew stores. Bitter Orange (Bergamot) s highly aromatic, and its dried peel is an essential part of cola flavor. The dried peel and its extract are usually available in spice shops, or any store with a good spice selection. They can be pricey. Burdock root s a traditional ingredient in American root beers. It has a mild sweet flavor similar to that of artichoke. Dried burdock root is available in most Asian groceries and homebrew stores. Cinnamon has several species, but they all fall into two types. Ceylon cinnamon is thin and mild, with a faint fragrance of allspice. Southeast Asian cinnamon, also called cassia, is both stronger and more common. The best grade comes from Vietnam and is sold as Saigon cinnamon. Use it in sticks, rather than ground. The sticks can be found in most grocery stores. Ginger, a common soda ingredient, is very aromatic, at once spicy and cooling. It is widely available fresh in the produce section of grocery stores, and it can be found whole and dried in most spice shops. Lemongrass, a perennial herb from central Asia, contains high levels of citral, the pungent aromatic component of lemon oil. It yields a rich lemon flavor without the acid of lemon juice, which can disrupt the fermentation of yeasted sodas. Lemon zest is similar in flavor and can be substituted. Lemongrass is available in most Asian markets and in the produce section of well-stocked grocery stores. Licorice root provides the well-known strong and sweet flavor of black licorice candy. Dried licorice root is sold in natural food stores and homebrew stores. Anise seed and dried star anise are suitable substitutes. Sarsaparilla s similar in flavor to sassafras, but a little milder. Many plants go by the name sarsaparilla. Southern-clime sarsaparilla (Smilax spp.) is the traditional root-beer flavoring. Most of the supply we get in North America comes from Mexico; it’s commonly sold in homebrew stores. Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia spp.) is more common in North America and is sometimes used as a substitute for true sarsaparilla. Small young sarsaparilla roots, known as “root bark” are less pungent and are usually preferred for soda making, although fully mature roots give fine results. Sassafras s the most common flavoring for root beers of all types. Its root bark is very strong and should be used with caution, especially if combined with other flavors. It is easily overpowering. Dried sassafras is available in homebrew stores. Star anise, the dried fruit of an Asian evergreen, tastes like licorice, with hints of clove and cinnamon. The flavor is strong, so use star anise with caution. It is available dried in the spice section of most grocery stores but can be found much more cheaply at Asian markets.

Lady Thornton, how very good of you to find the time to pay us a social call! Would it be too pushing of me to inquire as to your whereabouts during the last six weeks?” At that moment Elizabeth’s only thought was that if Ian’s barrister felt this way about her, how much more hatred she would face when she confronted Ian himself. “I-I can imagine what you must be thinking,” she began in a conciliatory manner. He interrupted sarcastically, “Oh, I don’t think you can, madam. If you could, you’d be quite horrified at this moment.” “I can explain everything,” Elizabeth burst out. “Really?” he drawled blightingly. “A pity you didn’t try to do that six weeks ago!” “I’m here to do it now,” Elizabeth cried, clinging to a slender thread of control. “Begin at your leisure,” he drawled sarcastically. “here are only three hundred people across the hall awaiting your convenience.” Panic and frustration made Elizabeth’s voice shake and her temper explode. “Now see here, sir, I have not traveled day and night so that I can stand here while you waste time insulting me! I came here the instant I read a paper and realized my husband is in trouble. I’ve come to prove I’m alive and unharmed, and that my brother is also alive!” Instead of looking pleased or relieved he looked more snide than before. “Do tell, madam. I am on tenterhooks to hear the whole of it.” “Why are you doing this?” Elizabeth cried. “For the love of heaven, I’m on your side!” “Thank God we don’t have more like you.” Elizabeth steadfastly ignored that and launched into a swift but complete version of everything that had happened from the moment Robert came up behind her at Havenhurst. Finished, she stood up, ready to go in and tell everyone across the hall the same thing, but Delham continued to pillory her with his gaze, watching her in silence above his steepled fingertips. “Are we supposed to believe that Banbury tale?” he snapped at last. “Your brother is alive, but he isn’t here. Are we supposed to accept the word of a married woman who brazenly traveled as man and wife with another man-“ “With my brother,” Elizabeth retorted, bracing her palms on the desk, as if by sheer proximity she could make him understand. “So you want us to believe. Why, Lady Thornton? Why this sudden interest in your husband’s well-being?” “Delham!” the duchess barked. “Are you mad? Anyone can see she’s telling the truth-even I-and I wasn’t inclined to believe a word she said when she arrived at my house! You are tearing into her for no reason-“ Without moving his eyes from Elizabeth, Mr. Delham said shortly, “Your grace, what I’ve been doing is nothing to what the prosecution will try to do to her story. If she can’t hold up in here, she hasn’t a chance out there!” “I don’t understand this at all!” Elizabeth cried with panic and fury. “By being here I can disprove that my husband has done away with me. And I have a letter from Mrs. Hogan describing my brother in detail and stating that we were together. She will come here herself if you need her, only she is with child and couldn’t travel as quickly as I had to do. This is a trial to prove whether or not my husband is guilty of those crimes. I know the truth, and I can prove he isn’t.” “You’re mistaken, Lady Thornton,” Delham said in a bitter voice. “Because of its sensational nature and the wild conjecture in the press, this is no longer a quest for truth and justice in the House of Lords. This is now an amphitheater, and the prosecution is in the center of the stage, playing a starring role before an audience of thousands all over England who will read about it in the papers. They’re bent on giving a stellar performance, and they’ve been doing just that. Very well,” he said after a moment. “Let’s see how well you can deal with them.

This Girl I Knew Glasses, bad bangs, patched blue jeans, creek-stained tennis shoes caked in mud, a father who sells vacuum cleaners, a mother skinny as a nun, a little brother with straw-colored hair and a scowling, confused look in the pews at church: this girl I knew. House at the edge of town, crumbling white stucco. Dog on a chain. Weeds. Wildcat Creek trickling brown and frothy over rocks out back, past an abandoned train trestle and the wreck of an old school bus left to rot. This girl I knew, in whatever room is hers, in that house with its dust-fogged attic windows, its after-dinner hours like onions soft in a pan. Her father sometimes comes for her, runs a hand through her hair. Her mother washes every last stick of silverware, every dish. The night sky presses down on their roof, a long black yawn spiked with stars, bleating crickets. The dog barks once, twice. Outside town, a motorcycle revs its engine: someone bearing down. Then nothing. Sleep. This girl I knew dreams whatever this girl I knew dreams. In the morning it’s back to school, desks, workbooks, an awkwardly held pencil in the cramped claw of a hand. The cigarette and rosewater scent of Ms. Thompson at the blackboard. The flat of Ms. Thompson’s chest, sunburned and freckled, where her sweater makes a V. You should be nice to her, my mother says about this girl I knew. I don’t want to be nice to her, I say to my mother. At recess this girl I knew walks around the playground, alone, talking to herself: elaborate conversations, hand gestures, hysterical laughing. On a dare from the other girls this girl I knew picks a dandelion, pops its head with her thumbnail, sucks the milky stem. I don’t want to be nice to her. Scabbed where she’s scratched them, mosquito bites on her ankles break and bleed. Fuzzy as a peach, the brown splotch of a birthmark on her arm. The way her glasses keep slipping down her nose. The way she pushes them up.

Public holoCans yapping and barking the dog language of distraction. All stirred and boiled together to make a thick soup of noise and shadowy light. Rollo

Drill to stay on as class teacher to this year’s Form Four. We are trying hard to find a new gym mistress for later in the term, so Form Four can count themselves lucky that Miss Drill will be able to keep them fit and healthy until gym classes are up and running again.” Maud and Enid glanced sideways at Mildred, who was looking desperate. “During the holidays,” said Miss Hardbroom, “there have been exciting improvements in all the bedrooms. Glass has been fitted in every pupil’s window.” There were whoops of joy from the entire school, except the bewildered first-years, who had no idea that their bedrooms would not have had proper windows in the first place; but there was great rejoicing from all the old hands as they imagined snuggling up in a cosy bed, without rain and wind blowing onto their pillows. In particularly bad weather, they had all had to move their beds away from the open stone windows. “Settle down now, girls!” barked Miss Hardbroom. “What is it, Mildred?

You aspire to free heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your wicked instincts, too, thirst for freedom. Your wild dogs want freedom; they bark with joy in their cellar when your spirit plans to open all prisons.

Caption!" Toot-toot piped in a shrill, voice. "Report!" A green-lit faerie beside Toot snapped to attention and slapped herself on the forehead with one hand, then turned sharply to her left and barked, "Loo Tender, report!" A purple-hued faerie came to attention as well and smacked himself in the head with one hand, then turned to the next faerie beside him and snapped, "Star Jump, report!" And so it went down the line, through the "Corpse Oral," the "First Class Privy," and finally to the "Second Class Privy," who marched up to Toot-toot and said, "Everyone's here, Generous, and we're hungry!" "All right," Toot-toot barked. "Everyone fall apart for messy!

A while later I stop in a stand of big doug-firs and lean my body against one of them. The bars of yellow sun are scattered just so and I push my face into the deep rutted bark of the tree smelling the spider webs there, the dust, the hardened pitch. Big doug-fir, I think. What do I need to know right now. I love you, says the doug-fir. I love you so much. I can feel the tree there, the tree underneath me the tree all around me, the tree inside of me. The trees holding each other holding the soil holding me. The trees more patient than anything, save the ocean. The trees with the long view. I can feel their pity- Little mammal, they say, with your two legs. Running around saying Where Do I Belong. Making value judgments on the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the shapes of the stars. Little mammal with your trembling heart. I am your home and I love you and I will always be here.

Patty whipping more of his weapons from his shoulder holster: a pink heart, yellow moon, orange star, and more green clovers. I bark a laugh at Patty being a Lucky Charms warrior.

You’ll never guess who just called!” someone hollered, crashing into the apartment from the stairs. Later, I would wonder why we did not jump away from each other. Maybe because it was already too late. Or maybe because the kiss was just that good. For whatever reason, at the sound of Daniel’s voice, Caleb did not let me go. Our kiss broke off gently, almost reverently. Strong arms remained wrapped around me. And I felt my body go absolutely quiet. “Sorry,” Daniel sputtered. “Shit. I always warn you. Always. But I just… forgot.” He paused to take a deep breath. “Warn us?” Caleb’s eyes were only inches from mine, so I saw them widen. “My God, he does.” As I stood there, retreating into shock, I realized Caleb was right. So many times, I’d heard Daniel call out, “hey, guys!” as he walked into the house, or down the stairs. Why did he do that? I was slow to realize what it might mean. Because I just didn’t trust it. Daniel knew? “Look,” he said quietly. “I could just walk out of here again, and keep on pretending that I don’t know how things are with you two. But it’s getting kind of old.” At that point, my heart stuttered. The rational response — fear — was just kicking in. And even though it made me look even guiltier, I ducked my head, burying my face in Caleb’s shirt, where I felt safe. Caleb put a hand to the back of my neck and cleared his throat. “How long have you…” “Eh,” Daniel said. He sounded winded, like he’d just run from the house. “It’s not important. But you should probably know that every time you search for something on Google, that search term stays in there. Unless you clear it out.” I felt Caleb’s chest contract with a bark of sudden laughter. “Oh, my fucking god.” “Yeah,” Daniel said, his voice full of restrained humor. “Google thinks I’m interested in Star Wars, used carburetors, and anal sex.” My groan was muffled by Caleb’s shirt. “Does Maggie know?” Daniel hesitated. “I don’t think so. I never asked her.

He must have heard her incorrectly. Because there was no possible way that she could be that brash, that foolish and insane and idealistic and brave. “Have you lost your senses completely?” His words rose into a shout, a riot of rage and fear that rushed through him so fast he could hardly think. “He’ll kill you! He will kill you if he finds out.” She took a step toward him, that spectacular dress glinting like a thousand stars. “He won’t find out.” “It’s only a matter of time,” he gritted out. “He has spies who are watching everything.” “And you’d rather I kill innocent men?” “Those men are traitors to the crown!” “Traitors!” She barked a laugh. “Traitors. For refusing to grovel before a conqueror? For sheltering escaped slaves trying to get home? For daring to believe in a world that’s better than this gods-forsaken place?” She shook her head, some of her hair escaping. “I will not be his butcher.

retrieve their winter coats from the cloakroom, he wrenched open the door and ran down the short flight of steps to the courtyard. “We’ll take the cart to speed us up.” He slid behind the wheel of the small golf cart they used to transport supplies around the island. Bran leaped into the back, barking in excitement. A moment later, Peters clambered into the passenger seat, clutching both their coats. Darko turned the key in the ignition and eased the vehicle into motion. “Is the corpse male or female? Young or old?” “Male. Medium height. Heavy build. Forty-plus.” Darko’s

John Burroughs beautifully expresses this in his poem “Waiting”: Serene, I fold my hands and wait, Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, For, lo! my own shall come to me. I stay my haste, I make delays, For what avails this eager pace? I stand amid the eternal ways, And what is mine shall know my face. Asleep, awake, by night or day, The friends I seek are seeking me; No wind can drive my bark astray, Nor change the tide of destiny. What matter if I stand alone? I wait with joy the coming years; My heart shall reap where it hath sown, And garner up its fruit of tears. The waters know their own and draw The brook that springs in yonder height; So flows the good with equal law Unto the soul of pure delight. The stars come nightly to the sky; The tidal wave unto the sea; Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, Can keep my own away from me.

Rifles coughed bullets, shotguns barked slugs, and pulse rifles screamed, but nothing managed to hit me as I spun around the room and searched for my next target.

And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak thus: It rends my heart. Better than your words express it, your eyes tell me all your danger. As yet you are not free; you still seek freedom. Too unslept has your seeking made you, and too wakeful. On the open height would you be; for the stars thirst your soul. But your bad impulses also thirst for freedom. Your wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit endeavors to open all prison doors. Still are you a prisoner - it seems to me -who devises liberty for himself: ah! sharp becomes the soul of such prisoners, but also deceitful and wicked. It is still necessary for the liberated spirit to purify himself. Much of the prison and the mould still remains in him: pure has his eye still to become. Yes, I know your danger. But by my love and hope I appeal to you: cast not your love and hope away! Noble you feel yourself still, and noble others also feel you still, though they bear you a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to everybody a noble one stands in the way. Also to the good, a noble one stands in the way: and even when they call him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside. The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue. The old, wants the good man, and that the old should be conserved. But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest he should become an arrogant boor , a mocker, or a destroyer. Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they slandered all high hopes. Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day had hardly an aim. "Spirit is also voluptuousness," - said they. Then broke the wings of their spirit; and now it creeps about, and defiles where it gnaws. Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now. A trouble and a terror is the hero to them. But by my love and hope I appeal to you: cast not away the hero in your soul! Maintain holy your highest hope! - Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Let us always be out of doors among trees and grass, and rain and wind and sun. There the breeze comes and strikes the cheek and sets it aglow: the gale increases and the trees creak and roar, but it is only a ruder music. A calm follows, the sun shines in the sky, and it is the time to sit under an oak, leaning against the bark, while the birds sing and the air is soft and sweet. By night the stars shine, and there is no fathoming the dark spaces between these brilliant points, nor the thoughts that come as it were between the fixed stars and landmarks of the mind. Or it is morning on the hills, when hope is as wide as the world; or it is the evening on the shore. A red sun sinks, and the foam-tipped waves are crested with crimson; the booming surge breaks, and the spray flies afar, sprinkling the face watching under the pale cliffs. Let us get out of these indoor narrow modern days, whose twelve hours somehow have become shortened, into the sunlight and the pure wind. A something that the ancients call divine can be found and felt there still.

What would Kay do if he were here?” “Oh, he’d be toasted,” Lam said, and Ari barked a surprise laugh. “Just permanently mead-drunk. And let’s be honest, even though he’s the preferred gender of this hostile island, he’d fit in the least well of all of us. Stomping around with that silver space rat hair, telling stories about grand things like cargo shorts and high fructose corn syrup.

Kid, this is October you can make the maples blaze just by stopping to look, you can set your clock to the barks of geese. Somewhere the grandfathers who own this town lean down to iron crisp blue shirts, their faces bathing in steam, and blackbirds clamor in packs, make plans behind corn. You know this, you were born whistling at crackling stars, you snap your fingers and big turtles slide out of rivers to answer. You can swim one more time in the puddle of sun in your water glass, taste icicles already in the white crunch of your lunch apple. Go to sleep. I’ll put on my silver suit and chase the sky into the moon.

Mark Allin and Richard Burton started Capstone, their book-publishing venture, with high hopes. False modesty aside, they knew they were excellent editors, with a great track record at two publishing giants. I could vouch for Mark Allin’s profit-making abilities, since he gave me the idea for writing The 80/20 Principle, my bestselling book. Richard and Mark envisaged Capstone as a star venture, the leader in a new category of ‘funky business books’. They convinced me that this idea was plausible and I became their financial backer. I reckoned that I had an ‘each-way bet’ - either their star business would materialise, or, at worst, they would pick a few great winners, making Capstone highly profitable. The business appeared to start well. They commissioned a stream of trendy books from interesting authors. The product looked great, with distinctive trendy designs. Mark and Richard were full of ideas and enthusiasm, confidently projecting sales that would give us good profits. The only thing was, the forecasts never materialised. Whenever we looked at the numbers we were constantly disappointed. I kept injecting cash, and it kept vanishing. To this day I don’t know why their books didn’t sell in quantities we could reasonably expect.The favoured explanation was the weakness of the sales force - inevitably, it was difficult to acquire distribution muscle from scratch. Maybe they just had bad luck in not commissioning any smash hits. Whatever the reason, Capstone was a financial black hole. I remember a rather difficult meeting at my home in Richmond some three years after the start. Richard and Mark asked for a further loan to commission new books. I had to say no. We had to face facts. Capstone was not a star; the category of ‘funky business books’ had not established itself. Capstone was a rather weak follower in the business-books arena. Capstone had none of the financial attributes of a star. If it looked like a dog, behaved like a dog and barked like a dog, it probably was a dog.

Yet still this tree has a secret tucked into the thin, living cylinder beneath its bark. Its cells obey an ancient formula: Keep still. Wait. Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted. There’s work to do. Star-work, but earthbound all the same.

against Natalie and her mother, slamming them into the wall. Natalie saw stars as pain shot through her, and she fought to stay conscious. The waterlogged mattress knocked her under again, and Natalie’s scream was swallowed by another mouthful of warm, salty water. Natalie fought her way back up again and found Mama beside her, coughing and gagging but all right. And there was Churro too, clinging to the sofa. The little dog was still alive! The sofa was upside down, and Churro stood on top of it, barking his head off as though the couch had personally attacked him.

The soul remaining chestnut goes on flowering. But its blooms have no more blooms to answer them. No mates exist for countless miles around, and a chestnut, though both male and female, will not serve itself. Yet this tree has a secret tucked into the thin, living cylinder beneath its bark. Its cells obey an ancient formula: Keep still. Wait. Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted. There's work to do. Star-work, but earthbound all the same. Or as the nurse to the Union dead writes: Stand cool and composed before a million universes. As cool and composed as wood.

There is only one way to go into the woods Wild in spirit Wide eyed No thought of being lost Just deep into the dark There is no path Just bramble and thorn Root and bark Fallen Thick ways through the forest The noon sky is in deep gloom High over the swaying trees But no help to your navigation Perhaps the stars will shine through And amid this darkness You will find a way through

I’m pretty sure he plans on killing me anyway,” I said with a shrug. “At least if he kills me for this, it was for something that matters.” “I-” “Tell him I came here and spoke with you about Darius. Tell him I made some excuse to get you to leave the room and by the time you came back I’d done this. Put all the blame on me. I mean that.” “Okay…” she said hesitantly and I met her eye. “Do I need to make you swear it on the stars?” I growled. “No. I’ll tell him. Thank you, Roxanya.” “It’s Tory. Only Darius calls me Roxy and I can’t make him stop, but I don’t want anyone else making a habit of it,” I said. Although at this point if Darius started calling me Tory it would probably just be weird. Not that I’d ever admit that I was okay with the Roxy thing. “Okay. Thank you, Tory.” I smirked at her and hit post. Catalina gasped as Xavier’s secret went viral and I glanced down at my Atlas as reactions and comments began to pour in before I locked the screen. Shit, what if Daddy Acrux really does kill me for this? “Run, Tory,” Catalina breathed, real fear dancing in her eyes. “Run for the gate and get back to the academy before he comes back. If he finds you here-” “Consider me gone.” I barked a laugh as nerves made my heart flutter. Catalina smiled at me before ripping her dress off, knocking her hair free of its perfectly styled bun, flashing me those gloriously fake tits and leaping out of thewindow after her son. She transformed as she plummeted and my lips fell open as a stunning silver Dragon burst from her flesh. She beat a path up towards the clouds just as Xavier dipped beneath them with an excited whinny. I quickly raised my Atlas and snapped a picture of the two of them dancing through the sky before I took a running jump out of the window too. My wings burst to life at my back and I flew hard and fast along the drive until I soared over the gates, beyond the anti-stardust wards where I landed quickly, my boots skidding in the gravel. I grabbed the stardust from my pocket and winked at the startled guards half a second before I tossed it over my head and the stars whisked me back to the academy. I stumbled as they deposited me and suddenly strong arms locked around my chest from behind, making me scream in surprise. A hand slapped over my mouth and I stilled for a moment as the scent of smoke and cedar overwhelmed me. Darius dragged me back through the hole in the wards, pulled me through the fence and shoved me up against a huge tree at the edge of campus before he took his hand from my mouth. His hands landed either side of my head as he penned me in, glaring down at me with an angry as fuck Dragon peering out of his eyes, his pupils transformed into reptilian slits and a hint of smoke slipped between his lips. He was only wearing sweatpants and I got the impression he’d flown here to ambush me the moment I returned. I guess he didn’t like my FaeBook post. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded. “Whoa, chill out dude,” I said, pressing my hands to his chest to push him back. He didn’t move a single inch and I just ended up with my hands pressed to his rock hard muscles, his heart pounding frantically beneath my right palm. “Do you know what you’ve done?” Darius snarled. “Father could kill Xavier for this! He could-” “He won’t,” I snapped angrily. “He can’t. Don’t you see that? The only power he held over Xavier was in keeping his real Order form a secret. Now everyone knows, he’s free. Killing him wouldn’t change the truth. And he can’t very well alienate every Pegasus in Solaria by making his Orderist bullshit public knowledge. He’ll have to let Xavier leave the house, join a herd, fly.” Darius was staring at me like he didn’t know whether to kill me or kiss me and as my gaze fell on his mouth, I found myself aching for the latter. Fuck the stars. (Tory POV)

The sole remaining chestnut goes on flowering. But its blooms have no more blooms to answer them. No mates exist for countless miles around, and a chestnut, though both male and female, will not serve itself. Yet still this tree has a secret tucked into the thin, living cylinder beneath its bark. Its cells obey an ancient formula: Keep still. Wait. Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted. There’s work to do. Star-work, but earthbound all the same. Or as the nurse to the Union dead writes: Stand cool and composed before a million universes. As cool and composed as wood.

Nyoshul Lungtok, who later became one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of recent times, followed his teacher Patrul Rinpoche for about eighteen years. During all that time, they were almost inseparable. Nyoshul Lungtok studied and practiced extremely diligently, and accumulated a wealth of purification, merit, and practice; he was ready to recognize the Rigpa, but had not yet had the final introduction. Then, one famous evening, Patrul Rinpoche gave him the introduction. It happened when they were staying together in one of the hermitages high up in the mountains above Dzogchen Monastery. It was a very beautiful night. The dark blue sky was clear and the stars shone brilliantly. The sound of their solitude was heightened by the distant barking of a dog from the monastery below. Patrul Rinpoche was lying stretched out on the ground, doing a special Dzogchen practice. He called Nyoshul Lungtok over to him, saying: "Did you say you do not know the essence of Mind?" Nyoshul Lungtok guessed from his tone that this was a special moment and nodded expectantly. "There's nothing to it really," Patrul Rinpoche said casually, and added, "My son, come and lie down over here: be like your old father." Nyoshul Lungtok stretched out by his side. Then Patrul Rinpoche asked him, "Do you see the stars up there in the sky?" "Yes." "Do you hear the dogs barking in Dzogchen Monastery?" "Yes." "Do you hear what I'm saying to you?" "Yes." "Well, the nature of Dzogchen is this: simply this." Nyoshul Lungtok tells us what happened then: "At that instant, I arrived at a certainty of realization from within. I had been liberated from the fetters of 'it is' and 'it is not.' I had realized the primordial wisdom, the naked union of emptiness and intrinsic awareness. I was introduced to this realization by his blessing, as the great Indian master Saraha said: He in whose heart the words of the master have entered, Sees the truth like a treasure in his own palm.

Shh,” I murmur, taking care to keep my voice low. “It is only a dream. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” [...] "A dream,” she repeats, pupils dilated as she stares up at me. She licks her lips, and I follow the movement with my eyes, a heat pulsing low at the base of my spine. “It was just a dream.” I nod, trying to angle my hips away from her in a futile attempt to hide my thickening cock. But her body is pressed close to mine, tucked beside me under my and Jadi’s wool traveling blankets. I see the moment she realizes, my preternatural vision able to take in the details of her shock. I see the way her pale eyes go wide, cheeks flushing pink. Hear her breath hitch in surprise. I feel my own cheeks heat in response, a flush of shame tightening in my chest. Shame at how much I want her. At how I’ve treated her. Shame at how jealously I guarded Jadi’s affections. At the way I cruelly tried to drive him away from her. “Asterion?” My name is barely a whisper on her lips, but she doesn’t pull away from me. Instead, her thigh presses against my hardening length. Almost like she’s seeking me out. But of course, that can’t be right. No woman would seek me out. Not after the way I’ve treated her. “Yes?” My voice catches in my throat, but I don’t dare look away. “Do you – are you…” her voice trails off, but she keeps her eyes locked on mine. Guilt tightens its hold behind my ribs, but I nod. There’s no point in denying it. No point in lying to her. Not when she can feel the proof of my attraction to her pressing against her. “I’m sorry,” I grit out, pulling my hand away from her face. “I don’t mean to… Please, just ignore it.” I roll away until I’m lying on my back, my erection almost painful as it pushes against the weight of the blankets. “Because of Jadi?” she asks, her voice thready and uncertain. I furrow my brow, glaring with irritation into the darkness. “Jadi? What does Jadi have to do with it?” “I mean – just that you and Jadi are together. Lovers? I not know word,” she babbles. “And I know that. Respect that. I not want come between you and Jadi. At party, he asked if he could court me,” she confesses. “I sorry if I…” I cut her off with a frustrated hiss, hating myself even more for this proof of how I’ve hurt Jadi. How successfully I have pushed her away from him. “You have nothing to apologize for,” I grind out. “Jadi has every right to court you. Every right. The only one who could deny him that is you.” “But you and Jadi…” “Are lovers? Intertwined as closely as two threads woven into the same cloth? Yes.” I bark out a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Which makes my treatment of him – of you – even worse.” The words are spilling out now, like water into the hull of a ship once the wood has cracked. Now that I’ve started, there is no stopping it. “I’ve known for moon cycles that he cares for you, and I hurt him for it. I was cruel to him and tried to chase you away. Because I was afraid you would steal him away from me, and he’s all I have. He’s everything to me. He’s my heart. My heart.” I clutch my fist against my chest in emphasis, still staring at the ceiling, not daring to turn and meet her eyes with my own. “I was jealous, and it was wrong, and now the gods are probably laughing at me. Because I want you. I want you. After trying to drive Jadi away from you, now I want you for myself. But I don’t deserve you. Not after the way I’ve treated you. And even then, even if I hadn’t…” [...] “I want you too.” Her words are no more than a whisper, and I tense, my first instinct to dismiss them the moment I register what she’s said. “I want you. And Jadi,” she admits, and there’s a raw vulnerability in those simple words that I don’t understand. “I shouldn’t, should I? Want you both, I mean? Like that?” I roll to my side to stare at her in disbelief.

Marinne dug her fingers into the tree and swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Her heart pounded in her ears and she shut her eyes, pressing her forehead against the rough bark.

You were the seed and the leaf and the fruit. You were the earth and you were the root. You were the song in the echoing dark. You were not the snake. You were never the rock. You were the needle and bark, and you were the river. You were not winter. You were fresh water. You were not locked door or slammed door or rattle. You were not metal. You were not empty bottle. You were treetop and grassland and night sky and star. Oh you were warm, you were rain, you were air. You were the oak leaf and honey and clover and you were forest and you were my mother. You were the shore where no crocodiles are. You were not wire. You were not wire. - Monkey Writes a Poem About His Mother

Vader’s on that ship,” Luke said. “Now don’t get jittery, Luke,” Han told him. “There are a lot of command ships. Keep your distance, though, Chewie, but don’t look like you’re trying to keep your distance.” Wondering how he should accomplish this tactic, Chewbacca barked a question to Han. “I don’t know,” Han replied. “Fly casual.

And the more he chews in my ear, the less hunger I have for answers, for continuing. “Gotta jet!” he barks mercifully. “Have a blessed day!” he shouts, a toilet flushing in the background as he hangs up. What the fuck is he doing? God, I hate him.

Sara caught sight of them stumbling toward the tent together, and hurried over. “Are you all right?” “No he’s fucking not,” Ozzie barked at her. “You might have told me.” “It’s a hunt. What did you expect?” Ozzie’s anger spluttered out. She was right. What had I expected it to be like? Just another TSI spectacular?

Gasping Stars Look Down Upon My Tired Soul When I need to again find my own way late midnight walks are my mainstay There is this place I walk and roam comfort away from worries of my home The sidewalk ends and fields begin I imagine they stretch and never end Cool night air soothes my tired brain far away, whistle of an old night train My pace slows to soak so much more in I am not alone, night is my friend Gasping stars look down upon my soul Seeking calm, I then reach my goal Dog barks sadly as I slowly trod by moans so blue, almost seems to cry Past the farmhouse my favorite tree massive black oak, does so comfort me Gazing at its massive majestic form I see damage from a terrible storm Ahh yes, none are immune from harm not even this great titan on the farm Very slowly I turn to find my way back retracing this walk along this track A calm has now found my lonely spirit happiness approaches I can even hear it My pace increases as I seek to return to the place where my love does burn Family , the gift of my very long life my children, my love , my sweet wife When I need to again find my own way late midnight walks are my mainstay

Anderson!” Mr. Smyth barked from across the tent.

The direct holoLink goes through and the face of a wan young Copper administrator looks sleepily back at us. “Citadel General Com,” she drones, “how may I direct your…” She blinks suddenly at our images on the display. Wipes sleep from her eyes. And loses all faculty of speech. “I would like to speak with the ArchGovernor,” I say. “And…may I say who is…calling?” “It’s the bloodydamn Reaper of Mars,” Sevro barks. “One moment, please.” The

An invisible inquisition stands armed with canons outside the house gates of every person awakening to their destiny. Yet God is a playful guard pup, a magnificent constellation with a massive pair of brass balls called the Sun and the Moon. Visibly excited and panting at the game, this gigantic guard pup wags a tail of stars back and forth then lifts his hind leg like a radiant sequoia tree uprooted from the earth. After blinding them and spraying them with bright yellow doggie urination, he towers over the marked territory of tiny toy soldier figurines, barking, panting, kicking up dust, and doing all those playful doggie things. Hosed down with blinding misfortune, and standing there dripping with dishonor, the army finally begins to discover the depths of the unbreakable bond between a person and their pup. However, at daybreak, the big-eyed and floppy-eared puppy happily scurries back through the gate slides on the loose gravel at the corner of the house, darts through the doggie door, up the stairs, and leaps into the bed of his awakening master or mistress, jumping upon them and licking them all over, with the warmth of puppy love.

remembering. The music had carried her away, to another time and another place, when she was young and in love and the future still sparkled with possibility. Somewhere on the hillside a dog barked and jolted her from her reverie. Adrienne turned her head toward the window, filled now with the blue dark of evening. She stood and moved to the glass and stared out into the dusk. Color faded from the sky. Stars winked in the canyons. Lights in the houses on the hillside flickered to life, bathing the windows with gold and spilling out into the streets. She could hear them—families gathering

Lassie was an unusual series in that the canine star did its own acting, with owner-trainer Rudd Weatherwax giving cues and providing on-air narration. The original Lassie (a male named Pal) took “about 15 whining and barking cues a week. He also pants with exquisite nuance, but cannot be depended upon to growl or snarl on cue” (Time) Animal imitator Earl Keen was thus on hand to fill in where Lassie failed to speak, and to play the roles of other dogs.

She doesn’t scream, but she groans and the sounds she makes are beyond the pain and work of labor, beyond human—or even animal—life. They are the sounds that move the earth, the sounds that give voice to the deep, violent fissures in the bark of the redwoods. They are the sounds of splitting cells, of bonding atoms, the sounds of the waxing moon and the forming stars.

He examined her closet-sized office with typical Fae arrogance—and disapproval. “Your star glows in my presence because our union is predestined. In case you were wondering.” Bryce barked out a laugh. “Says who?” “The Oracle.” “Which one?” There were twelve sphinxes around the world, each one bitchier than the last. The meanest of them, apparently, dwelled in the Ocean Queen’s court Beneath. “Does it matter?” Cormac turned,