Bass Head Quotes

The way you move is incredible.” Ren drew me back to press against him. His fingers slid down to the curve of my hips, rocking our bodies in rhythm with the heavy bass. The sensation of being molded against the hard narrow line of his hips threatened to overwhelm me. We were hidden in the mass of people, right? The Keepers couldn’t see? I tried to steady my breath as Ren kept us locked together in the excruciatingly slow pulse of the music. I closed my eyes and leaned back into his body; his fingers kneaded my hips, caressed my stomach. God, it felt good. My lips parted and the misty veil slipped between them, playing along my tongue. The taste of flower buds about to burst into bloom filled my mouth. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to melt into Ren. The surge of desire terrified me. I had no idea if the compulsion to draw him more tightly around my body emerged from my own heart or from the succubi’s spellcraft. This couldn’t happen! I started to panic when he bent his head, pressing his lips against my neck. My eyes fluttered and I struggled to focus despite the suffocating heat that pressed down all around me. His sharpened canines traced my skin, scratching but not breaking the surface. My body quaked and I pivoted in his arms, pushing against his chest, making space between us. “I’m a fighter, not a lover,” I gasped. “You can’t be both?” His smile made my knees buckle.

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler.

Lying on her side, the warm fire at her feet, Helen's laughter died away as Lucas suddenly went from tuning to playing. It was like an orchestra in an instrument. He played with both hands-not one hand picking and the other holding down strings-but with both hands so that it sounded like more than one guitar was playing. Sometimes he hit the strings to make them hum like a harp, and sometimes he hit the body of the guitar like a drum to add bass and keep time. It was the most fascinating thing Helen had ever watched, like Lucas had a dozen voices in his head, all singing the same song, and he'd figured a way to make them come out of ten fingers. Helen looked at his face and could tell why he loved it. It was like thinking for him, only this was a puzzle that he could share with her as he solved it. He'd walked into her head when he'd come to her world. And she'd walked into his when she finally heard him play. It was heaven.

Guitar is for the head, drums are for the chest, but bass gets you in the groin

What about you and me, Adina?” Duff said, sidling up to her by the railing. “I know I screwed up. But do you think we could start over?” Adina thought about everything that had happened. Part of her wanted to kiss Duff McAvoy, the tortured British trust-fund-runaway-turned-pirate-of-necessity who loved rock ‘n’ roll and mouthy-but-vulnerable bass-playing girls from New Hampshire. But he didn’t exist. Not really. He was a creature of TV and her imagination, a guy she’d invented as much as he’d invented himself. And this was what she suddenly understood about her mother: how with each man, each husband, she was really trying to fill in the sketchy parts of herself and become somebody she could finally love. It was hard to live in the messiness and easier to believe in the dream. And in that moment, Adina knew she was not her mother after all. She would make mistakes, but they wouldn’t be the same mistakes. Starting now. “Sorry,” she said, heading for the bow, where a spot of sun looked inviting. ”Oh, also, about that blog? Just so you know, my dads know a lot of gay lawyers. Bitches will take your ass down if you try to publish that. Peace out.

The big bass drum in my head started booming again. Guilt made way too much noise.

I'm pretty strong," he says. "I could cart you around on my back all day long. Hey, I could even teach you to swim." 'Tisn't true," she replies haughtily. "How could you do that?" I know how--with floats, to keep your feet up." She shakes her head. He puffs out his cheeks and whistles soundlessly. "I go fishing with my father on Sundays. I can bring you back a hake big as this!" He spreads his arms to show a fish about the size of a whale. "You like hake?" She shakes her head. Bass?" Same response. Crab claws? We got a lot of them, in the nets." She turns her chair around and pushes the wheels along--now she's the one who goes away. Snobby Parisienne!" he yells after her. "And to think I almost fell for you! I smell too fishy is that it?

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

It’s that time of the month again… As we head into those dog days of July, Mike would like to thank those who helped him get the toys he needs to enjoy his summer. Thanks to you, he bought a new bass boat, which we don’t need; a condo in Florida, where we don’t spend any time; and a $2,000 set of golf clubs…which he had been using as an alibi to cover the fact that he has been remorselessly banging his secretary, Beebee, for the last six months. Tragically, I didn’t suspect a thing. Right up until the moment Cherry Glick inadvertently delivered a lovely floral arrangement to our house, apparently intended to celebrate the anniversary of the first time Beebee provided Mike with her special brand of administrative support. Sadly, even after this damning evidence-and seeing Mike ram his tongue down Beebee’s throat-I didn’t quite grasp the depth of his deception. It took reading the contents of his secret e-mail account before I was convinced. I learned that cheap motel rooms have been christened. Office equipment has been sullied. And you should think twice before calling Mike’s work number during his lunch hour, because there’s a good chance that Beebee will be under his desk “assisting” him. I must confess that I was disappointed by Mike’s over-wrought prose, but I now understand why he insisted that I write this newsletter every month. I would say this is a case of those who can write, do; and those who can’t do Taxes. And since seeing is believing, I could have included a Hustler-ready pictorial layout of the photos of Mike’s work wife. However, I believe distributing these photos would be a felony. The camera work isn’t half-bad, though. It’s good to see that Mike has some skill in the bedroom, even if it’s just photography. And what does Beebee have to say for herself? Not Much. In fact, attempts to interview her for this issue were met with spaced-out indifference. I’ve had a hard time not blaming the conniving, store-bought-cleavage-baring Oompa Loompa-skinned adulteress for her part in the destruction of my marriage. But considering what she’s getting, Beebee has my sympathies. I blame Mike. I blame Mike for not honoring the vows he made to me. I blame Mike for not being strong enough to pass up the temptation of readily available extramarital sex. And I blame Mike for not being enough of a man to tell me he was having an affair, instead letting me find out via a misdirected floral delivery. I hope you have enjoyed this new digital version of the Terwilliger and Associates Newsletter. Next month’s newsletter will not be written by me as I will be divorcing Mike’s cheating ass. As soon as I press send on this e-mail, I’m hiring Sammy “the Shark” Shackleton. I don’t know why they call him “the Shark” but I did hear about a case where Sammy got a woman her soon-to-be ex-husband’s house, his car, his boat and his manhood in a mayonnaise jar. And one last thing, believe me when I say I will not be letting Mike off with “irreconcilable differences” in divorce court. Mike Terwilliger will own up to being the faithless, loveless, spineless, useless, dickless wonder he is.

Not in the mood for pasta?” He narrowed those bold blue eyes to give her a critical study. “You must’ve hit your head harder than we thought.” “I was going to do it—get dinner, I mean. One of the fancy things you like, because—Hell.” She gave up, hurried to him to wrap her arms around him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was so pissed off at what happened, at myself, I didn’t think.” He stroked a hand down her hair first, then gave the choppy ends a quick tug. “I’m not angry with you.” “I know. You could be, but you’re not. So I have to be even sorrier.” “Your logic is fascinating, and elusive.” “I can’t pay you back with sex or salt-crusted sea bass or whatever because you’re too busy taking care of me. So now I’ve got this black mark in my column against the bright shiny star in yours, and—” He tipped her head up. “Are we keeping score?” “No. Maybe. Shit.” “How am I doing?” “Undisputed champ.” “Good. I like to win.” He brushed her bangs back to study the injury himself. “You’ll do. Let’s eat.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was so pissed off at what happened, at myself, I didn’t think.” He stroked a hand down her hair first, then gave the choppy ends a quick tug. “I’m not angry with you.” “I know. You could be, but you’re not. So I have to be even sorrier.” “Your logic is fascinating, and elusive.” “I can’t pay you back with sex or salt-crusted sea bass or whatever because you’re too busy taking care of me. So now I’ve got this black mark in my column against the bright shiny star in yours, and—” He tipped her head up. “Are we keeping score?” “No. Maybe. Shit.” “How am I doing?” “Undisputed champ.” “Good. I like to win.” He brushed her bangs back to study the injury himself. “You’ll do. Let’s eat.

We´re going to be eaten! I don´t WANT to be eaten! I´m only twenty-three minutes old!", screamed the Creature (...)

Well?" Dad asked. "How do I look?" "Like you want us to follow you into an alley so you can flash us," Nick said. "Like you own sixteen birds with complicated backstories for each," Seth said. "Like you're the bass player in a Christian punk band called Please Us, Jesus," Jazz said, leaning her head out of Matilda. "Like you have red satin sheets on your bed and mirrors on the ceiling," Gibby said, her head just above Jazz's. "Like you know how to show a guy a good time," Burrito Jerry said. 'they've got a point, man," Trey said as Bob nodded. "I feel like you want to give me a body-cavity search with gloves you brouqht from home.

We entered the cool cave of the practice space with all the long-haired, goateed boys stoned on clouds of pot and playing with power tools. I tossed my fluffy coat into the hollow of my bass drum and lay on the carpet with my worn newspaper. A shirtless boy came in and told us he had to cut the power for a minute, and I thought about being along in the cool black room with Joey. Let's go smoke, she said, and I grabbed the cigarettes off the amp. She started talking to me about Wonder Woman. I feel like something big is happening, but I don't know what to do about it. With The Straight Girl? I asked in the blankest voice possible. With everything. Back in the sun we walked to the edge of the parking lot where a black Impala convertible sat, rusted and rotting, looking like it just got dredged from a swamp. Rainwater pooling on the floor. We climbed up onto it and sat our butts backward on the edge of the windshield, feet stretched into the front seat. Before she even joined the band, I would think of her each time I passed the car, the little round medallions with the red and black racing flags affixed to the dash. On the rusting Chevy, Joey told me about her date the other night with a girl she used to like who she maybe liked again. How her heart was shut off and it felt pretty good. How she just wanted to play around with this girl and that girl and this girl and I smoked my cigarette and went Uh-Huh. The sun made me feel like a restless country girl even though I'd never been on a farm. I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse. I gave Joey my cigarette so I could unlace the ratty green laces of my boots, pull them off, tug the linty wool tights off my legs. I stretched them pale over the car, the hair springing like weeds and my big toenail looking cracked and ugly. I knew exactly who I was when the sun came back and the air turned warm. Joey climbed over the hood of the car, dusty black, and said Let's lie down, I love lying in the sun, but there wasn't any sun there. We moved across the street onto the shining white sidewalk and she stretched out, eyes closed. I smoked my cigarette, tossed it into the gutter and lay down beside her. She said she was sick of all the people who thought she felt too much, who wanted her to be calm and contained. Who? I asked. All the flowers, the superheroes. I thought about how she had kissed me the other night, quick and hard, before taking off on a date in her leather chaps, hankies flying, and I sat on the couch and cried at everything she didn't know about how much I liked her, and someone put an arm around me and said, You're feeling things, that's good. Yeah, I said to Joey on the sidewalk, I Feel Like I Could Calm Down Some. Awww, you're perfect. She flipped her hand over and touched my head. Listen, we're barely here at all, I wanted to tell her, rolling over, looking into her face, we're barely here at all and everything goes so fast can't you just kiss me? My eyes were shut and the cars sounded close when they passed. The sun was weak but it baked the grime on my skin and made it smell delicious. A little kid smell. We sat up to pop some candy into our mouths, and then Joey lay her head on my lap, spent from sugar and coffee. Her arm curled back around me and my fingers fell into her slippery hair. On the February sidewalk that felt like spring.

The colored lights streamed over her face like rays of the sun. She closed her eyes and raised her arms over her head. The song was the best she’d ever heard. There’s 70 billion people of Earth, where are they hiding? The cocaine coursed through her organs in time with the pounding bass. Her eyes stung, she was pouring sweat. A voice inside her head called her name. Where are they hiding? She clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering. Her hands were shaking like falling leaves.

You’re like a pair of jazz musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians, but your love manifests in the music. Sometimes, your head tucked into her neck, you can feel her heartbeat thudding like a kick drum. Your smile a grand piano, the glint in her eye like the twinkle of hands caressing ivory keys. The rhythmic strum of a double bass the inert grace she has been blessed with, moving her body in ways which astound. A pair of soloists in conversations so harmonious, one struggles to separate. You are not the musicians but the music.

FORGET you? How could I EVER forget you? Sure, I only remember the last nine minutes, but I know a BESTEST friend when I see one! "Bestest what?", squeaked Stitch Head. "Oh, totally! BETEST friends forever! I knew we would be from the moment just after you said you weren't going to EAT me.

Desmond had a round head, chubby baby cheeks, and a voice that startled everyone the first time they heard it, it was so gruff and full of bass. His voice made the chucks jump when he crept up on them, and he got a kick out of it, until one day a supervisor with an even deeper voice crept up on him and taught him a lesson.

Sitting just a foot or two away from a bloody body, Bill would soon find even himself overrun with flies, seeking any moist bodily fluids to feed on, any dark, damp orifices (including Bill’s nostrils) to lay their eggs in. He quickly learned to wrap netting around his head to keep the flies out of his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

Instead, he picked up his bass guitar, and, in what seemed like an odd coincidence, he began to play a solo version of “One of These Days” while staring up at the stars projected on the dome over our heads. Then I noticed a practice set list taped to the floor in front of him, and saw that several of the songs listed there were tracks I knew from my father’s old mixtapes.

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive—as follows: Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Expanding further on his own observations of Prince’s writing style(s) during the course of the album’s recording, fellow Paisley Park engineer Eddie Miller, who engineered the recording of ‘Electric Chair’ among other Prince recordings during the Batman era, recalled that “he would write all sorts of ways. I have to admit that I listened to some of his cassette demos that he would sometimes bring into the studio to reference (as I remember, he would hold the cassette player up to his ear, so you couldn’t really hear it.). They were fascinating. His cassette demo technique was extremely crude but ingenious—it’s like something you’d do if you had no access to any equipment. He’d use two cheap cassette recorders. If he wanted to hear drums, he’d record a human beat box rhythm for the length of the song—and most likely, he’d have the form of the song in his head while he was recording this. By the way, it was the same in the studio when he’d do his one man band approach to recording a song. He’d know the song in his head, and start out recording the drums for the song (it would essentially become the ‘click track’—the way a click track should be). Back to the cassette demo—he’d then play his beat box groove over the speaker on the cassette recorder and sing the bass line while recording all this onto the second cassette machine. He’d build up a rhythm track this way, and then add vocals. And there’s your demo.

You're like a pair of jazz musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians, but your love manifests in the music. Sometimes, your head tucked into her neck, you can feel her heartbeat thudding like a kick drum. Your smile a grand piano, the glint in her eye like the twinkle of hands caressing ivory keys. The rhythmic strum of a double bass the inert grace she has been blessed with, moving her body in ways which astound. A pair of soloists in conversations so harmonious, one struggles to separate. You are not the musicians but the music.

Nobody ever started a fight because they thought they were wrong. Think about it. We're all so sure of ourselves that we can't even have an honest conversation. Instead, we babble bass-ackwards agendas and cling to ill-conceived notions. Our heads are so far up our own arses that we assume we are the hero of the story. Even when we are up to our necks in it, we never bother asking what the awful smell is. The thing is... everyone can't be right. That's not a thing. But nobody wants to back down. So instead, you get a line in the sand and people taking sides.

We therefore discussed the circumstance of the Captain taking a poor old woman's dinner out of her hands one very slippery Sunday. He had met her returning from the bakehouse as he came from church, and noticed her precarious footing; and, with the grave dignity with which he did everything, he relieved her of her burden, and steered along the street by her side, carrying her baked mutton and potatoes safely home. This was thought very eccentric; and it was rather expected that he would pay a round of calls, on the Monday morning, to explain and apologise to the Cranford sense of propriety: but he did no such thing: and then it was decided that he was ashamed, and was keeping out of sight. In a kindly pity for him, we began to say, "After all, the Sunday morning's occurrence showed great goodness of heart," and it was resolved that he should be comforted on his next appearance amongst us; but, lo! he came down upon us, untouched by any sense of shame, speaking loud and bass as ever, his head thrown back, his wig as jaunty and well-curled as usual, and we were obliged to conclude he had forgotten all about Sunday.

Do you know why I call you sunshine?" He suddenly asks, serious. I shake my head, raising my eyebrows in question. "Because the first time I saw you, you were like the sun. The brightest fucking star, and I felt myself blinded by your light. You shine brighter than anyone I've ever seen, Gianna, and I can only say I'm the luckiest motherfucker that you choose to share your light with me." "Bass," I smile, his words touching me. "You can be very sweet sometimes." "I love you, Gianna. I may not have told you before, but I've loved you for so long it feels like forever.

Dr. Syngmann: I am talking about the only quality that was worth creating the world for, the only power that is worth controlling. Pastor Jón: Úa? Dr. Syngmann in a tired, gravelly bass: I hear you mention once more that name which is no name. I know you blame me; I blame myself. Úa was simply Úa. There was nothing I could do about it. I know you have never recovered from it, John. Neither have I. Pastor Jón: That word could mean everything and nothing, and when it ceased to sound, it was as if all other words had lost their meaning. But it did not matter. It gradually came back. Dr. Syngmann: Gradually came back? What did? Pastor Jón: Some years ago, a horse was swept over the falls to Goðafoss. He was washed ashore, alive, onto the rocks below. The beast stood there motionless, hanging his head, for more than twenty-four hours below this awful cascade of water that had swept him down. Perhaps he was trying to remember what life was called. Or he was wondering why the world had been created. He showed no signs of ever wanting to graze again. In the end, however, he heaved himself onto the riverbank and started to nibble. Dr. Syngmann: Only one thing matters, John: do you accept it? Pastor Jón: The flower of the field is with me, as the psalmist said. It isn't mine, to be sure, but it lives here; during the winter it lives in my mind until it resurrects again. Dr. Syngmann: I don't accept it, John! There are limits to the Creator's importunacy. I refuse to carry this universe on my back any longer, as if it were my fault that it exists. Pastor Jón: Quite so. On the other hand, I am like that horse that was dumbfounded for twenty-four hours. For a long time I thought I could never endure having survived. Then I went back to the pasture.

Even more confused than before, I started backing up. I’d go around and get in through the kitchen; David and Raquel had to know what was going on. Unfortunately for all of us, that was when Lend came out the front door, immediately collapsed with a thunk that made me cringe, and—perfect—went completely transparent. The police officers stopped fighting, every eye glued on my boyfriend, now essentially invisible other than this T-shirt and flannel pajama pants. “Okay,” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “No. This is unacceptable. I don’t care what the bleep is going on, we’re going to get it settled immediately or I swear I will give you all to the Dark Queen and let her feed on your dreams for the rest of eternity.” Every head turned my direction, their faces a portrait of shock and disbelief. “What, you’ve never seen a boy made of water before? Yawn. Go down to the pond—it’ll really blow your mind.” One close to the front—barrel-chested, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick mustache—shook his head as though trying to clear it. “Are you Evelyn Green?” “Sort of. Mostly. I mean, legally. Again, sort of.” He tried to look at me, but his eyes kept drifting back to Lend. “You’re under—We’re here to—Could you please come with us?” I rolled my eyes. “No, I couldn’t. You’re last place in a very long line of people who want me right now. Besides, I haven’t done anything.” “Actually,” said a painfully tall and thin officer with a voice that struggled between tenor and bass but really sounded like a dog with something caught in its throat, “you’re wanted for terrorism.” He shrugged apologetically. “We’re supposed to take you into NSA headquarters.” “I think you have the wrong acronym there,” I said. This had Anne-Whatever Whatever written all over it.

There was Bonnie, the rabbit. His fur was a bright blue, his squared-off muzzle held a permanent smile, and his wide and chipped pink eyes were thick-lidded, giving him a perpetually worn-out expression. His ears stuck up straight, crinkling over at the top, and his large feet splayed out for balance. He held a red bass guitar, blue paws poised to play, and around his neck was a bow tie that matched the instrument’s fiery color. Chica the Chicken was more bulky and had an apprehensive look, thick black eyebrows arching over her purple eyes and her beak slightly open, revealing teeth, as she held out a cupcake on a platter. The cupcake itself was somewhat disturbing, with eyes set into its pink frosting and teeth hanging out over the cake, a single candle sticking out the top. “I always expected the cupcake to jump off the plate.” Carlton gave a half laugh and cautiously stepped up to Charlie’s side. “They seem taller than I remember,” he added in a whisper. “That’s because you never got this close as a kid.” Charlie smiled, at ease, and stepped closer. “You were busy hiding under tables,” Jessica said from behind them, still some distance away. Chica wore a bib around her neck with the words LET’S EAT! set out in purple and yellow against a confetti-covered background. A tuft of feathers stuck up in the middle of her head. Standing between Bonnie and Chica was Freddy Fazbear himself, namesake of the restaurant. He was the most genial looking of the three, seeming at ease where he was. A robust, if lean, brown bear, he smiled down at the audience, holding a microphone in one paw, sporting a black bow tie and top hat. The only incongruity in his features was the color of his eyes, a bright blue that surely no bear had ever had before him. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were partially closed, as though he had been frozen in song.

You," I said, "have this whole tall, dark stranger thing going on. Not to mention the tortured artist bit." "Bit?" "You know what I mean." He shook his head, clearly discounting this description. "And you," he said, "have that whole blonde, cool and collected, perfect smart girl thing going on." "You're the boy all the girls want to rebel with," I said. "You," he replied, "are the unattainable girl in the homeroom who never gives a guy the time of the day." There was a blast of music from inside, a thump of bass beat, then quiet again. "I'm not perfect," I said. "Not even close." "I'm not tortured. Unless you count this conversation.

The Sun burned down in a warm contrasting world of white and black, of white Sun against black sky and white rolling ground mottled with black shadow. The bright sweet smell of the Sun on every exposed square centimeter of metal contrasting with the creeping death-of-aroma on the other side. He lifted his hand and stared at it, counting the fingers. Hot-hot-hot-turning, putting each finger, one by one, into the shadow of the others and the hot slowly dying in a change in tactility that made him feel the clean, comfortable vacuum. Yet not entirely vacuum. He straightened and lifted both arms over his head, stretching them out, and the sensitive spots on either wrist felt the vapors- the thin, faint touch of tin and lead rolling through the cloy of mercury. The thicker taste rose from his feet; the silicates of each variety, marked by the clear separate-and-together touch and tang of each metal ion. He moved one foot slowly through the crunchy, caked dust, and felt the changes like a soft, not quite random symphony. And over all the Sun. He looked up at it, large and fat and bright and hot, and heard its joy. He watched the slow rise of prominences around its rim and listened to the crackling sound of each; and to the other happy noises over the broad face. When he dimmed the background light, the red of the rising wisps of hydrogen showed in bursts of mellow contralto, and the deep bass of the spots amid the muted whistling of the wispy, moving faculae, and the occasional thin keening of a flare, the ping-pong ticking of gamma rays and cosmic particles, and over all in every direction the soft, fainting, and ever-renewed sigh of the Sun's substance rising and retreating forever in a cosmic wind which reached out and bathed him in glory. He jumped, and rose slowly in the air with a freedom he had never felt, and jumped again when he landed, and ran, and jumped, and ran again, with a body that responded perfectly to this glorious world, this paradise in which he found himself.

There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

The team’s caravan traveled over difficult roads as American bombs fell. The car ahead of the one carrying Jonathan and Leah crashed. Jonathan and Leah remember the horror of seeing their friends thrown from the car. They jumped out to tend their injured colleagues, unsure of how to proceed. Just then some Iraqis stopped by the roadside. Seeing the wounded Americans lying in the ditch, they picked them up. Jonathan recalls, “They carried our bleeding friends to this town called Rutba. When we got there the doctor said, ‘Three days ago your country bombed our hospital. But we will take care of you.’ He sewed up their heads and saved their lives. When I asked the doctor what we owed him for his services, he said, ‘Nothing. Please just tell the world what has happened in Rutba.

I knew that being funny always came in second to musicians. (In the world of music, there’s a hierarchy, too—it’s my contention that bass players tend to get laid first, because they’re stolid and cool and their fingers move in gentle yet powerful ways [except for Paul Mc-Cartney; he never got laid first]; drummers come next because they’re all power and grit; then guitarists because they get those fancy solos; then, weirdly, the lead singer, because even though he’s out there up front, he never quite looks fully sexy when he has to throw his head back and reveal his molars to hit a high note.) Whatever the correct order, I knew I was way behind Eddie Van Halen—not only was he a musician, which means he was able to get laid more easily than someone who is funny, but he was also already married to the object of my desire.

Above the roar of pounding waves, Kya called to the birds. The ocean sang bass, the gulls sang soprano. Shrieking and crying, they circled over the marsh and above the sand as she threw piecrust and yeast rolls onto the beach. Legs hanging down, heads twisting, they landed. A few birds pecked gently between her toes, and she laughed from the tickling until tears streamed down her cheeks, and finally great, ragged sobs erupted from that tight place below her throat. When the carton was empty she didn’t think she could stand the pain, so afraid they would leave her like everybody else. But the gulls squatted on the beach around her and went about their business of preening their gray extended wings. So she sat down too and wished she could gather them up and take them with her to the porch to sleep. She imagined them all packed in her bed, a fluffy bunch of warm, feathered bodies under the covers together.

Above the roar of pounding waves, Kya called to the birds. The ocean sang bass, the gulls sang soprano. Shrieking and crying, they circled over the marsh and above the sand as she threw piecrust and yeast rolls onto the beach. Legs hanging down, heads twisting, they landed. A few birds pecked gently between her toes, and she laughed from the tickling until tears streamed down her cheeks, and finally great, ragged sobs erupted from that tight place below her throat. When the carton was empty she didn't think she could stand the pain, so afraid they would leave her like everybody else. But the gulls squatted on the beach around her and went about their business of preening their gray extended wings. So she sat down too and wished she could gather them up and take them with her to the porch to sleep. She imagined them all packed in her bed, a fluffy bunch of warm, feathered bodies under the covers together.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

In consequence of the inevitably scattered and fragmentary nature of our thinking, which has been mentioned, and of the mixing together of the most heterogeneous representations thus brought about and inherent even in the noblest human mind, we really possess only *half a consciousness*. With this we grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lighting. But what is to be expected generally from heads of which even the wisest is every night the playground of the strangest and most senseless dreams, and has to take up its meditations again on emerging from these dreams? Obviously a consciousness subject to such great limitations is little fitted to explore and fathom the riddle of the world; and to beings of a higher order, whose intellect did not have time as its form, and whose thinking therefore had true completeness and unity, such an endeavor would necessarily appear strange and pitiable. In fact, it is a wonder that we are not completely confused by the extremely heterogeneous mixture of fragments of representations and of ideas of every kind which are constantly crossing one another in our heads, but that we are always able to find our way again, and to adapt and adjust everything. Obviously there must exist a simple thread on which everything is arranged side by side: but what is this? Memory alone is not enough, since it has essential limitations of which I shall shortly speak; moreover, it is extremely imperfect and treacherous. The *logical ego*, or even the *transcendental synthetic unity of apperception*, are expressions and explanations that will not readily serve to make the matter comprehensible; on the contrary, it will occur to many that “Your wards are deftly wrought, but drive no bolts asunder.” Kant’s proposition: “The *I think* must accompany all our representations ,” is insufficient; for the “I” is an unknown quantity, in other words, it is itself a mystery and a secret. What gives unity and sequence to consciousness, since by pervading all the representations of consciousness, it is its substratum, its permanent supporter, cannot itself be conditioned by consciousness, and therefore cannot be a representation. On the contrary, it must be the *prius* of consciousness, and the root of the tree of which consciousness is the fruit. This, I say, is the *will*; it alone is unalterable and absolutely identical, and has brought forth consciousness for its own ends. It is therefore the will that gives unity and holds all its representations and ideas together, accompanying them, as it were, like a continuous ground-bass. Without it the intellect would have no more unity of consciousness than has a mirror, in which now one thing now another presents itself in succession, or at most only as much as a convex mirror has, whose rays converge at an imaginary point behind its surface. But it is *the will* alone that is permanent and unchangeable in consciousness. It is the will that holds all ideas and representations together as means to its ends, tinges them with the colour of its character, its mood, and its interest, commands the attention, and holds the thread of motives in its hand. The influence of these motives ultimately puts into action memory and the association of ideas. Fundamentally it is the will that is spoken of whenever “I” occurs in a judgement. Therefore, the will is the true and ultimate point of unity of consciousness, and the bond of all its functions and acts. It does not, however, itself belong to the intellect, but is only its root, origin, and controller.

I’ll never forget the time I went duck-hunting with my buddy Mike Williams; you’ll read a lot about our adventures and shenanigans in this book. Mike and I were hunting blue-winged teal ducks, which tend to move en masse, so typically you’ll either shoot your limit or not see a duck. In other words, there is a lot of idle time involved with teal hunting, so we usually bring along our fishing poles. After a hunt with Mike one morning, in which we had not seen a single teal, I hooked a four-pound bass. Almost simultaneously, one lone blue-winged teal flew over our heads. As I was reeling in the bass, I reached for my shotgun, raised it with only my left hand, and shot the duck. Now, I’m right-handed but left-eye dominant. It was the first duck I ever shot left-handed, but it would be the first of many. I eventually made the switch to shooting left-handed permanently. It was the hardest obstacle I’ve ever had to overcome in hunting, but it made me a better shot because I’m left-eye dominant. When Mike and I went back to my dad’s house and told him what happened, Phil didn’t believe us, even though we had the teal and bass as evidence. He’d told us about a similar feat many times before, when his friend Hookin’ Bull Thompson pulled in a fish with one hand and shot a duck with the other. I had heard the story many time, but only then did I realize it had now been duplicated. No matter how many times we told Phil about what I did, he didn’t believe us. He thought we made the entire story up because of the countless times he’d bragged about witnessing his buddy’s epic feat. Now, Mike is one of the most honest people you’ll meet, so he couldn’t believe Phil thought we were lying to him. “I’m going to sign an affidavit about what you did,” Mike told me. “Maybe then he’ll believe us.” “Oh, drop it,” I said. “That’s just how my family rolls.

Suddenly I realized I was standing on the hot wood of the dock, still touching elbows with Adam, staring at the skull-and-crossbones pendant. And when I looked up into his light blue eyes, I saw that he was staring at my neck. No. Down lower. “What’cha staring at?” I asked. He cleared his throat. “Tank top or what?” This was his seal of approval, as in, Last day of school or what? or, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders or what? Hooray! He wasn’t Sean, but he was built of the same material. This was a good sign. I pumped him for more info, to make sure. “What about my tank top?” “You’re wearing it.” He looked out across the lake, showing me his profile. His cheek had turned bright red under his tan. I had embarrassed the wrong boy. Damn, it was back to the football T-shirt for me. No it wasn’t, either. I couldn’t abandon my plan. I had a fish to catch. “Look,” I told Adam, as if he hadn’t already looked. “Sean’s leaving at the end of the summer. Yeah, yeah, he’ll be back next summer, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to compete once he’s had a taste of college life and sorority girls. It’s now or never, and desperate times call for desperate tank tops.” Adam opened his mouth to say something. I shut him up by raising my hand. Imitating his deep boy-voice, I said, “I don’t know why you want to hook up with that jerk.” We’d had this conversation whenever we saw each other lately. I said in my normal voice, “I just do, okay? Let me do it, and don’t get in my way. Stay out of my net, little dolphin.” I bumped his hip with my hip. Or tried to, but he was a lot taller than me. I actually hit somewhere around his mid-thigh. He folded his arms, stared me down, and pressed his lips together. He tried to look grim. I could tell he was struggling not to laugh. “Don’t call me that.” “Why not?” “Dolphins don’t live in the lake,” he said matter-of-factly, as if this were the real reason. The real reason was that the man-child within him did not want to be called “little” anything. Boys were like that. I shrugged. “Fine, little brim. Little bass.” He walked toward the stairs. “Little striper.” He turned. “What if Sean actually asked you out?” I didn’t want to be teased about this. It could happen! “You act like it’s the most remote poss-“ “He has to ride around with the sunroof open just so he can fit his big head in the truck. Where would you sit?” “In his lap?” A look of disgust flashed across Adam’s face before he jogged up the stairs, his weight making the weathered planks creaked with every step.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. With finocchio in fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

Inside McClintic Sphere was swinging his ass off. His skin was hard, as if it were part of the skull: every vein and whisker on that head stood out sharp and clear under the green baby spot: you could see the twin lines running down from either side of his lower lip, etched in by the force of his embouchure, looking like extensions of his mustache. He blew a hand-carved ivory alto saxophone with a 4 ½ reed and the sound was like nothing any of them had heard before. The usual divisions prevailed: collegians did not dig, and left after an average of 1 ½ sets. Personnel from other groups, either with a night off or taking a long break from somewhere crosstown or uptown, listened hard, trying to dig. 'I am still thinking,’ they would say if you asked. People at the bar all looked as if they did dig in the sense of understand, approve of, empathize with: but this was probably only because people who prefer to stand at the bar have, universally, an inscrutable look… …The group on the stand had no piano: it was bass, drums, McClintic and a boy he had found in the Ozarks who blew a natural horn in F. The drummer was a group man who avoided pyrotechnics, which may have irritated the college crowd. The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with pinpoints in the center. He talked to his instrument. It was taller than he was and didn’t seem to be listening. Horn and alto together favored sixths and minor fourths and when this happened it was like a knife fight or tug of war: the sound was consonant but as if cross-purposes were in the air. The solos of McClintic Sphere were something else. There were people around, mostly those who wrote for Downbeat magazine or the liners of LP records, who seemed to feel he played disregarding chord changes completely. They talked a great deal about soul and the anti-intellectual and the rising rhythms of African nationalism. It was a new conception, they said, and some of them said: Bird Lives. Since the soul of Charlie Parker had dissolved away into a hostile March wind nearly a year before, a great deal of nonsense had been spoken and written about him. Much more was to come, some is still being written today. He was the greatest alto on the postwar scene and when he left it some curious negative will–a reluctance and refusal to believe in the final, cold fact–possessed the lunatic fringe to scrawl in every subway station, on sidewalks, in pissoirs, the denial: Bird Lives. So that among the people in the V-Note that night were, at a conservative estimate, a dreamy 10 per cent who had not got the word, and saw in McClintic Sphere a kind of reincarnation.

All those statistics - the ones about decline - point toward massive theological discontent. People still believe in God. They just do not believe in the God proclaimed and worshipped by conventional religious organizations. Some of the discontented - and there are many of them - do not know what to call themselves. So they check the “unaffiliated” box on religion surveys. They have become secular humanists, agnostics, posttheists, and atheists and have rejected the conventional God. Others say they are spiritual but not religious. They still believe in God but have abandoned conventional forms of congregating. Still others declare themselves “done” with religion. They slink away from religious communities, traditions that once gave them life, and go hiking on Sunday morning. Some still go to church, but are hanging on for dear life, hoping against hope that something in their churches will change. They pray prayers about heaven that no longer make sense and sing hymns about an eternal life they do not believe in. They want to be in the world, because they know they are made of the same stuff as the world and that the world is what really matters, but some nonsense someone taught them once about the world being bad or warning of hell still echoes in their heads. They are afraid to say what they really think or feel for fear that no one will listen or care or even understand. They think they might be crazy. All these people are turning toward the world because they intuit that is where they will find meaning and awe, that which those who are still theists call God. They are not crazy. They are part of this spiritual revolution - people discovering God in the world and a world that is holy, a reality that enfolds what we used to call heaven and earth into one. These people are not secular, even though their main concern is the world; they are not particularly religious (in the old-fashioned understanding of the term), even though they are deeply aware of God. They are fashioning a way of faith between conventional theism and any kind of secularism devoid of the divine. In our time, people are turning toward the numinous presence that animates the world, what theologian Rudolf Otto called “the Holy.” They are those who are discovering a deeply worldly faith. Decades ago Catholic theologian Karl Rahner made a prediction about devout people of the future. He said they would either be “mystics,” those who have “experienced something ,” or “cease to be anything at all”; and if they are mystical believers, they will be those whose faith “is profoundly present and committed to the world.” The future of faith would be an earthy spirituality , a brilliant awareness of the spirit that vivifies the world.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

Many business heads also feel that they’re “going it alone”—they’re receiving much less guidance from their boss than they did when they were functional managers.

know what Clement said about being pope?” I shook my head, as he’d hoped I would. “Clement said none of his predecessors knew how to be pope.” “What did he mean?” “He meant that none of the others knew how to throw such big parties. He was also called ‘Clement the Magnificent.’ When he was crowned as pope, he gave a feast for three thousand people. He served one thousand sheep, nine hundred goats, a hundred cows, a hundred calves, and sixty pigs.” “Goodness. That’s, what, ten, twenty pounds of meat for every person?” “Ah, but there is more. Much more. Ten thousand chickens. Fourteen hundred geese. Three hundred fish—” “Only three hundred?” He stretched his arms wide—“Pike, very big fish”—then transformed the gesture into a shrug. “But also, Catholics eat a lot of fish, so maybe it was not considered a delicacy.” He held up a finger. “Plus fifty thousand cheeses. And for dessert? Fifty thousand tarts.” “That’s not possible. Surely somebody exaggerated.” “Non, non, pas du tout. We have the book of accounts. It records what they bought, and how much it cost.” “How much did it cost?” “More than I will earn in my entire life. But it was a smart investment. It made him a favorite with the people who mattered—kings and queens and dukes. And, of course, with his cardinals and bishops, who sent him money they collected in their churches.” Turning away from the palace, he pointed to a building on the opposite side of the square. “Do you know this building?” I shook my head. “It’s just as important as the palace.” “What is it?” “The papal mint.” “Mint, as in money?” He nodded. “The popes coined their own money, and they built this mint here. They made gold florins in the mint, then stored them in the treasury in the palace.” “The popes had their own mint? That seems ironic, since Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem.” “If you look for inconsistencies, you will find a million. The popes had armies. They had mistresses. They had children. They poisoned their rivals. They lived like kings and emperors; better than kings and emperors.” “And nobody objected?” “Oh, sure,” he said. “Some of the Franciscans—founded by Saint Francis of Assisi—they were very critical. They said monks and priests and popes should live in poverty, like Jesus.

pitch axis theory, which I learned in high school from my music teacher Bill Westcott. It is a compositional technique that was actually developed at the turn of the last century, so this is something that had been around for a long time. I remember Bill saying, "I'm going to teach you this very cool compositional technique," and he sat me down at the piano, and he went, "Watch this: I'll hold this C bass note, and then I play these chords, and each chord will put me in a different key, but it will sound like C 'something' to you . . ." I was fascinated by it, because I thought, "That is the sound I'm hearing in my head." To me it sounded very "rock," because rock songs don't travel around in too many keys, and it was the antithesis of the modern pop music that had been around for fifty years. It was the total opposite of most commercial jazz, but not all jazz, as I learned when I started really listening closely to modern jazz. I realized, "Wow, John Coltrane is using pitch axis theory. Not only is he doing that, but he’s going beyond it with his 'sheets of sound' approach," where in addition to building modes in different keys off of one bass note, he was building modes off of notes outside the key structure as well. He had taken it a step further. But that’s not what I was looking for, except for in a song like "The Enigmatic," which has that sort of complete atonal-meetspsycho melodic approach. I was more interested in using the pitch axis where you really could identify with one key bass note, in a rock and R&B sort of fashion. Then all the chords that you put on top would basically put you in different keys. So on Not of This Earth, you have these pounding E eighth notes on the bass, and your audience says, "Okay, we're in the key of E." But the chords on top are saying, "E Lydian, E Minor, E Lydian, E Mixolydian in cyclical form." And I thought, "Well, this gives me great melodic opportunities, I'm not stuck with just the seven notes of one key. I've got seven notes for every different key that I apply on top of this bass note." And I just love that sound, so I applied it to quite a lot of my music.

Something Christians easily miss is how many times Jesus limits who will be able to follow him. To those asking if they can go with him, he intentionally said things he knew would cause them to cramp up and head for cover. Things like: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (John 6:54). See ya! Oh, your dad is dead: “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:59-60). Sheesh! You’re mean, man! “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). Follow you? . . . No way!

I look down and see that Colter has returned and has gone on lock-solid, drop-dead point about twenty feet in front of us, head and shoulders hunched and crouched, bony ass stuck way up in the air, body half-twisted, frozen, as if cautioning us of some hidden, deadly betrayal: and green eyes afire, stub tail motionless. We ease forward, adrenaline-drunk. Nothing happens. And then it does. The cock-bird climbs towering above and then flares and accelerates away; Tim fires twice, I fire twice, Colter runs shrieking after the untouched bird, and from across that spartan landscape we hear the cattlewomen snort small laughs of disbelief, and one of them says, “Oops, they missed again.”   We

On a gray afternoon I sit in a silent room and contemplate din. In the street a single car passes - a rapid bass vowel - and then it is quiet again. So what is this uproar, this hubbub, this heaving rumble of zigzag static I keep hearing? This echo chamber spooling out spirals of chaos? An unmistakable noise as clearly mine as fingerprint or twist of DNA: the thrum of regret, of memory, of defeat, of mutability, of bitter fear, made up of shame and ambition and anger and vanity and wishing. The soundtrack of a movie of the future, an anticipatory ribbon of scenes long dreaded, of daydreams without a prayer of materializing. Or else: the replay of unforgotten conversations, humiliating, awkward, indelible. Mainly it is the buzz of the inescapably mundane, the little daily voice that insists and insists: right now, not now, too late, too soon, why not, better not, turn it on, turn it off, notice this, notice that, be sure to take care of, remember not to. The nonstop chatter that gossips, worries, envies, invokes, yearns, condemns, self-condemns.

Gorgeous place to live! I tell you I got a fright one night. That jolly piano up there is rusted all to glory, most of the strings bust, but one of the remaining bass strings took it into its head to snap just after I’d turned the lights off. It was uncanny. First a report which sounded as loud as a pistol shot, then the quiver and hum of the string springing back, and that woke the echo of every remaining string—the dampers have all rotted to glory—and the whole thing seemed to sing. Then a cat began to howl in accompaniment and the owls woke up and hooted. Very pretty! A sort of diabolic concert.

The chef decided to prepare a few large bass in his special manner for our group. He grabbed a four-pounder from the tank and within seconds had scaled it alive, gutted it, cut slits into the skin, rolled the fish in egg white and cornstarch, and wrapped the head in a water-soaked cold towel. He then inserted a wooden skewer through the gills and lowered the fish into the hot oil of a deep-fryer. The skewer, extending horizontally beyond the fish on either side, rested on the rim of the fryer, holding the head of the fish above the oil. The whole operation took a couple of minutes, at the most. The chef hurriedly placed the fish on a platter, rushed it to our table, and removed the towel from around the head. Uncooked and cold, it was still moving, the mouth opening and closing gruesomely.

The tram was mostly empty. It climbed steadily up a slope of tilted plain, stopping to pick up or drop off a few travellers. Those that saw Tefwe all stopped and stared at her for a few moments, then ignored her. Nobody chose to sit close to her. The sound built very slowly; it would have been hard to know when it first started to become distinct from the noises of the rattling, swaying tram and the wind moving over the surrounding fields of tall, bronze-coloured grasses and occasional thick-trunked coppery trees. She became aware of the sound when she realised that she’d been assuming for a while that somebody was humming monotonously just behind her, only there was nobody there. “Is that… the sound?” she sub-vocalised to the suit. “Yes.” The tram clattered to a stop at another station, and now she could hear the sound properly, distinctly; it was a low booming collection of tones like very distant and continuous thunder, all the individual claps rolled together and coming and going on the wind. She got up out of the uncomfortably tilted seat and went to the front of the tram’s middle carriage, heading upstairs to get a better view. There were more of the locals here; they parted as though to let her through to the front, but she bowed, gestured, hung back. She could see well enough. The mountains rose out of the hazy plain ahead like a dark storm of rock, the higher massifs draped with cloud, the highest peaks capped in orange-white ice and snow. The sound swelled and fell away with a sort of tantalising grace, its strength implicitly influenced not just by the light breezes circling round the tram but by mightier winds blowing tens of kilometres away towards the far horizon and kilometres further into the sky. The sound, she thought, was like something you might have heard from an enormous choir of basses singing a slow, sonorous hymn in a language you would never understand. The tram station in the foothills possessed a sort of modest, ordered busyness to it, full of the dark folds moving about it with their odd, side-to-side, flip-flopping walk. The station connected with a whole fan of cogged funicular lines, winding up into the mountains like something being unravelled. The sound here was a little louder, still coming and going on the wind.

You're like a pair of jazz musicians, forever improvising. Or perhaps you are not musicians, but your love manifests in the music. Sometimes, your head tucked into her neck, you can feel her heartbeat thudding like a kick drum. Your smile a grand piano, the glint in her eye like the twinkle of hands caressing ivory keys. The rhythmic strum of a double bass the inert grace she has been blessed with, moving her body in ways which astound. A pair of soloists in conversations so harmonious, one struggles to separate. You are not the musicians but the music.

I reach out and grab the hem of Benny's T-shirt between two fingers, then turn and pull him along behind me as I look for someplace more private. I walk with purpose, as if I have a spot picked out already, which I totally don't. But when I come upon an unoccupied pantry, I pull Benny in after me. Closing the door, I turn to face him. And find his face reeeal close to mine. The corners of his mouth are starting to tick up in a smile in spite of his efforts to hide it. "Hey there." I swallow the heady feeling I get at the sound of his voice this close, low and rumbly. There are only a couple of inches between our chests, no more than that between our faces, which are almost level. This would certainly be easier in, say, an open field. I press my back flat against the door and clear my throat. "My cardigan. Give it back." "I enjoyed our conversation on Saturday," he continues in that smooth bass as if I haven't said anything. "What kind of kidnapper leaves a note identifying themselves as the kidnapper, anyway? What are you playing at?" I bite out with a frustration that is quickly fleeing my body. Benny's eyes flit down to the floor almost sheepishly. "I don't enjoy what brought on our talk at the cookout, or hearing what you go through. But I was honored that you told me, and I like talking to you. I'd listen to you talk like that every day if you let me." His words almost stop my breath, despite the weirdness of this situation he's facilitated and the way we're having two totally different conversations. I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut, but they pop back open when I feel something brush past my hair. Benny stares at me intently, and I register that he's put one palm flat against the door beside my head. He leans in closer, and I try my damnedest not to notice all the muscles in that arm flexing so close to me, but holy biceps, Batman, and oh my, how much closer can he get before he--- "Reese," he breathes, and I feel the word brush against my lips even though they still haven't made contact with his. I don't think I'm breathing at all.

Well, you don’t have to worry about a thing like that, big man.” “Yeah, why is that?” We pull up and park along the long road of cars. She slides forward on the seat, ready to climb out the second the locks click open. She looks back to me. “‘Cause I don’t have a bed. I’m only borrowing one.” And then she hops out, heading right for Bass and his emo ass friend.

Is dessert okay? Maybe some kind of bread pudding with homemade ice cream---simple, but hearty and good?" We all nodded. "I'd like to do a raw fish appetizer," said Bald Joe. "Maybe a crudo with hamachi?" "And I'd like to do an entrée," Vanilla Joe said. "A beef dish. Which means our other entrée should probably be seafood." I nodded. "I can do a slow-cooked black bass." We'd done one at the Green Onion that I loved. It had a preserved tomato broth and cauliflower and a pile of nutty grains. I could do farro. That left Bald Joe and me to divide another appetizer and a dessert between us. "I can do a dessert," I offered, thinking about a deconstructed baklava, but Vanilla Joe shook his head. "No. Joe here is already doing one appetizer; we can't make him do two. He'll get overwhelmed." "I really don't mind," said Bald Joe. "As long as Sadie helps me put everything together. I'd rather do an appetizer. I'm not great at pastry." Vanilla Joe shook his head before I could speak up and say of course I would help. "Joe, I want you doing a dessert, so Sadie, you pick an appetizer." Fine. Whatever. I hashed it out with the rest of the team, decided I would make a sunchoke soup with bacon and thyme. Vanilla Joe squinted at me. "I didn't think bacon was kosher." "I don't cook kosher food," I explained patiently. I actually didn't mind; I was used to it. Kosher cooking had a long list of rules: no pork, no shellfish, no combining meat and dairy, among many others. Grandma Ruth had kept kosher, and I had total respect for everyone who did, but it wasn't me.

of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler. The dream across the way was none of these, not even of that kind of world.

The voice in her head was drowned by a rush of music. Low bass notes of a cello swept through her in an elegant, heart-wrenching melody of love and loss. It was the sound of Alexis reaching out to her. Penelope gripped tighter to their connection, holding into it like a lifeline. The music became loader and louder. "I can hear your heart," she said, dazed. "Can you hear it? It's singing to me." "It's because it belongs to you," Alexis replied simply.

The deafening sound of music recedes as the door to the ladies' loo swings closed behind me, but I can still feel the heavy bass vibrating through my body, beating in time with the miniature drummer in my head. A few years ago, I could have put it down to a dozen or more gin and tonic and the start of the inevitable hangover, but I rarely drink these days

Even the most kindhearted white woman, Dragging herself through traffic with her nails On the wheel & her head in a chamber of black Modern American music may begin, almost Carelessly, to breathe n-words. Yes, even the most Bespectacled hallucination cruising the lanes Of America may find her tongue curls inward, Entangling her windpipe, her vents, toes & pedals When she drives alone. Even the most made up Layers of persona in a two- or four-door vehicle Sealed in a fountain of bass & black boys Chanting n-words may begin to chant inwardly Softly before she can catch herself. Of course, After that, what is inward, is absorbed.

Braised Striped Bass Pavillon YIELD: 4 SERVINGS I HAD NEVER SEEN or tasted striped bass before I worked at Le Pavilion. It is similar, however, to the loup de mer of the Mediterranean, one of the most prized fish of that region and a standard menu item in restaurants along the Côte d’Azur. With flesh that is slightly softer and moister than its European cousin, striped bass was a specialty of Le Pavilion. The braised wild striped bass would be presented to the patrons whole and carved at tableside. The following is a simple, elegant, and mouth-watering adaptation of the recipe from Le Pavilion. The fish, gutted with head on, is braised with white wine, shallots, and mushrooms in the oven, then coated with the cooking juices enriched with butter. This dish is excellent served with tiny steamed potatoes or sautéed cucumbers. 1 striped bass, gutted, with head on (about 3 pounds) 2 cups thinly sliced mushrooms ¼ cup chopped shallots ½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste 1 tablespoon good olive oil 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves 2 bay leaves 1 cup dry, fruity white wine (Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon minced fresh chives Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the fish in a gratin dish or stainless steel baking dish that is narrow enough to prevent the garnishes and the wine from spreading out too much. Sprinkle with the mushrooms, shallots, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper, olive oil, thyme, bay leaves, and wine. Cover tightly with a piece of aluminum foil so the fish will cook in its own steam. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through. Check by inserting the point of a small knife into the flesh. It should be tender, and the flesh should separate from the central bone when pierced with the knife. Reduce the heat to 150 degrees. Using a large hamburger spatula, transfer the whole fish to an ovenproof serving platter, and set aside in the warm oven while you complete the recipe. Pour the fish’s cooking juices and vegetable solids into a small saucepan, and discard the bay leaves. You should have ¾ to 1 cup of liquid; cook down the liquid or add water to adjust the yield to this amount. Bring to a boil on top of the stove, and add the butter spoonful by spoonful, incorporating each piece into the mixture with a whisk before you add another. Remove the saucepan from the heat, and add the lemon juice, chives, and additional salt and pepper to taste. At serving time, pull or scrape off the skin on top of the fish with a small paring knife. Coat the fish with the sauce, and sprinkle the chives on top. Bring to the table, and carve for the guests.

Are you kidding me? I’d love to write with you, Fish. Hell yeah.” Fish is beaming. “Cool. I’ve got some lyrics, too. Some weird shit I wanna bounce off you.” “Awesome. And just so you know, you’re a sick-ass bass player, Fish Head. Always have been. I wouldn’t want anyone else standing there with me every night.” “Word,” Colin says. “Same with you, Colinoscopy. You’re a sick-ass drummer beast, and I couldn’t do what I do without you, either.” Colin and Fish are both clearly moved. And so am I. On impulse, we all step into a huddle and put our hands in. We make stupid goat noises, ever so briefly, but they don’t make us laugh as usual. This time, they make our Adam’s apples bob.

Beauregard thought the night sky looked like a painting. Laughter filled the air only to be drowned out by a cacophony of revving engines as the moon slid from behind the clouds. The bass from the sound system in a nearby Chevelle was hitting him in his chest so hard, it felt like someone was performing CPR on him. There were about a dozen other late-model cars parked haphazardly in front of the old convenience store. In addition to the Chevelle, there was a Maverick, two Impalas, a few Camaros and five or six more examples of the heyday of American muscle. The air was cool and filled with the scent of gas and oil. The rich, acrid smell of exhaust fumes and burnt rubber. A choir of crickets and whippoorwills tried in vain to be heard. Beauregard closed his eyes and strained his ears. He could hear them but just barely. They were screaming for love. He thought a lot of people spent a large part of their life doing the same thing. The wind caught the sign hanging above his head from the arm of a pole that extended twenty feet into the air. It creaked as the breeze moved it back and forth. CARTER SPEEDE MART the sign proclaimed in big black letters set against a white background. The sign was beginning to yellow with age. The letters were worn and chipped. The cheap paint flaking away like dried skin. The second “E” had disappeared from the word “SPEEDEE.” Beauregard wondered what had happened to Carter. He wondered if he had disappeared too.

Each moment of your life is the sum total of all the prior moments. There’s not a single thing that happens to you that doesn’t leave its mark; doesn’t redirect your course somehow; doesn’t make you more fully who you are. It took every single step—even the steps you took as life dragged you by the hair of your head—to put you exactly where you are.

Left now in a measure to themselves, the Mohicans, whose time had been so much devoted to the interests of others, seized the moment to devote some attention to themselves. Casting off, at once, the grave and austere demeanor of an Indian chief, Chingachgook commenced speaking to his son in the soft and playful tones of affection. Uncas gladly met the familiar air of his father; and before the hard breathing of the scout announced that he slept, a complete change was effected in the manner of his two associates. It is impossible to describe the music of their language, while thus engaged in laughter and endearments, in such a way as to render it intelligible to those whose ears have never listened to its melody. The compass of their voices, particularly that of the youth, was wonderful — extending from the deepest bass to tones that were even feminine in softness. The eyes of the father followed the plastic and ingenious movements of the son with open delight, and he never failed to smile in reply to the other’s contagious, but low laughter. While under the influence of these gentle and natural feelings, no trace of ferocity was to be seen in the softened features of the Sagamore. His figured panoply of death looked more like a disguise assumed in mockery, than a fierce annunciation of a desire to carry destruction in his footsteps. After an hour passed in the indulgence of their better feelings, Chingachgook abruptly announced his desire to sleep, by wrapping his head in his blanket, and stretching his form on the naked earth. The merriment of Uncas instantly ceased; and carefully raking the coals in such a manner that they should impart their warmth to his father’s feet, the youth sought his own pillow among the ruins of the place.

My poor head is pounding out a questionable drum and bass track while my throat feels like I’ve deep-throated a cheese grater.

She found Dean Henry easily enough. He was the silver-haired man in the loud patterned jacket and a Burberry scarf that hung a little too long. He wore John Lennon glasses and the righteous smile formed over decades of lectures. A grinning cadre surrounded him. She drifted close enough to catch the end of a conversation about movie posters and the recent death of Saul Bass.

want you having to wake up all early when I leave.” He wasn’t worried about none of that. “I’d prefer waking up to you; Ion’t care how early it is. I ain’t ready for you to leave me yet.” “Awww,” she cooed, leaning over the console to kiss his lips. “You’re so mushy.” Levi smirked. “Go pack a bag and quit playin’ with me.” “Ooooh, yas. Saying it like that with all that bass in your voice. What else you want me to do?” “Sit that pussy on my face again if you hurry up.” Shanae damn near tumbled out the car the way she hopped out. Levi shook his head

I want to be as laid-back about gender as they are. But I'm not laid-back at all, thanks to Dad. I'm Ashley or I'm Asher and that's that. While I'm switching, for that week or so, everything feels gross and inside out and bass-ackward until I can settle into what I'm switching to. That 'identify as airport' thing Dad said was icky, but it also hit a nail on the head. I hate being in between. It's like when a lousy radio DJ doesn't know how to fade one song into another. That few seconds when both songs are playing but the beats aren't blending and you're like, Oh my god, go back to DJ school.

To reach the head of the class, students needed to conform to the school system and work equally hard at all subjects.

I remember driving there in the afternoon, and I remember getting there and loading the gear in. I don’t remember the sound check. We had one, I think, but we had no idea what to do because we’d never done one before. No one had the foggiest. Not knowing what to do made it exciting, though. Like, now, everybody’s got a stage manager and a sound guy, lights, and so on. The bands know all about sound checks and levels, equipment and all that. Now they even have music schools to teach you that kind of stuff. Back then you knew fuck-all. You didn’t have anyone professional, just your mates, who, like you, were clueless; you had a disco PA and a sleepy barmaid. It’s something I find quite sad about groups today, funnily enough, the careerism of it all. I saw this program once, a “battle of the bands” sort of thing. It had Alex James from Blur on it and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they’d sit there saying what they thought of the band: “Your bass player’s shit and your image needs work; lose the harmonica player.” All the bands just stood there and took it, going, “Cheers, man, we’ll go off and do that.” I couldn’t believe it. I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off, and if somebody said to me, “Your image is shit,” I’d have gone, “Fuck off, knob head!” And if someone had said, “Your music’s shit,” I would have nutted them. That to me is what’s lacking in groups. They’ve missed out that growing-up stage of being bloody-minded and fucking clueless. You have to have ultimate self-belief. You have to believe right from the word go that you’re great and that the rest of the world has to catch up with you. Of us lot, Ian was the best at that. He believed in Joy Division completely. If any of us got downhearted it was always him who would cheer us up and get us going again. He’d put you back on track.

As soon as we had the music arranged on our stands, Conductor Li tapped his baton on the lectern and called us to attention. "Quiet please, comrades! And as we play just think of the Long March," he said. "I will be at the front, like Chairman Mao. I will beat the time. Try to keep up. If you get lost, skip a few pages. Hopefully, the rest of us will pass your way eventually... The first movement sounded like nothing less than a full-scale military retreat. We were ambushed by missing pages of score, by an impulsive feint by the cellists and double basses, and by a flautist who turned two pages rather than one and played along happily in no man's land for a dozen or so bars until he was rapped on the head with the end of a clarinet

While reading some old articles to jog my memory for this book, I came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Rick Kogan, a reporter who traveled with Styx for a few concert dates in 1979. I remember him. When we played the Long Beach Civic Center’s 12,000-seat sports arena in California, he rode in the car with JY and me as we approached the stadium. His recounting of the scene made me smile. It’s also a great snapshot of what life was like for us back in the day. The article from 1980 was called, “The Band That Styx It To ‘Em.” Here’s what he wrote: “At once, a sleek, gray Cadillac limousine glides toward the back stage area. Small groups of girls rush from under trees and other hiding places like a pack of lions attacking an antelope. They bang on the windows, try to halt the driver’s progress by standing in front of the car. They are a desperate bunch. Rain soaks their makeup and ruins their clothes. Some are crying. “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you!” one girl yells as she bangs against the limousine’s window. Inside the gray limousine, James Young, the tall, blond guitarist for Styx who likes to be called J.Y. looks out the window. “It sure is raining,” he says. Next to him, bass player Chuck Panozzo, finishing the last part of a cover story on Styx in a recent issue of Record World magazine, nods his head in agreement. Then he chuckles, and says, “They think you’re Tommy.” “I’m not Tommy Shaw,” J.Y. screams. “I’m Rod Stewart.” “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you! I love you!” the girl persists, now trying desperately to jump on the hood of the slippery auto. “Oh brother,” sighs J.Y. And the limousine rolls through the now fully raised backstage door and he hurries to get out and head for the dressing room. This scene is repeated twice, as two more limousines make their way into the stadium, five and ten minutes later. The second car carries young guitarist Tommy Shaw, drummer John Panozzo and his wife Debbie. The groupies muster their greatest energy for this car. As the youngest member of Styx and because of his good looks and flowing blond hair, Tommy Shaw is extremely popular with young girls. Some of his fans are now demonstrating their affection by covering his car with their bodies. John and Debbie Panozzo pay no attention to the frenzy. Tommy Shaw merely smiles, and shortly all of them are inside the sports arena dressing room. By the time the last and final car appears, spectacularly black in the California rain, the groupies’ enthusiasm has waned. Most of them have started tiptoeing through the puddles back to their hiding places to regroup for the band’s departure in a couple of hours.” Tommy

Excuse me, Cinderella?” a deep voice called next to my ear. Cinderella? I removed my hand from my face to look at the guy who belonged to that voice, then quickly pushed myself up onto my elbows when I took in his face, so close to mine. My cheeks burned with embarrassed heat, but I didn’t know how to look away from him. Despite a large red mark on his forehead, his face was flawless and masculine, with a strong brow and nose, a smirk I knew would’ve made my knees weak had I been standing, and a lethal stare from green eyes so clear it was as if I could see through the iris. My gaze had become so fixated on the way his lips moved that it took a few seconds too long to realize he’d said something. “I’m sorry, what?” The smirk broadened for a brief moment, giving me a glimpse of straight, white teeth. He leaned over me until his lips were at my ear, and if I’d had the capability to breathe around him, I would’ve stopped then. “I said I think you lost this,” he drawled, and I swooned. Literally . . . swooned. As in: all the air left my body in one hard rush, I was unable to keep myself up on my elbows any longer, my head felt light and dizzy, the room spun, and I was pretty sure I’d just entered a romance novel. It really didn’t matter that it was from the lingering effects of nearly choking to death, and then unknowingly holding my breath for too long. “Whoa.” He quickly put a hand under my head before it could smack on the hardwood floor. “I’m fine,” I said breathlessly, and internally berated myself for doing everything imaginable to look like an idiot tonight. I tried to sit up, but the guy was still hovering over me, making it impossible to go farther than I’d been. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Yes,” I promised, and blew out a steadying breath when he sat back. “Good. I can’t have you passing out on me, Cinderella.” “Cin—” My head shook firmly as I corrected him. “No, my name is Rorie.” With another slow smirk, he gestured to the red mark on his forehead for barely a second, then reached behind him and produced my stiletto. My embarrassment from earlier couldn’t compare to the level it was at then as I put it all together. My shoe had flown into his face. “Oh my God,” I whispered so low, the words drifted away with the bass of the music. “I’m so sorry.” He laughed easily, as if he hadn’t just taken a five-inch stiletto to the face, and glanced from my shoe to me. “My name is Declan,” he provided. “I already know this shoe belongs to you. What I want to know now, Cinderella, is if I give this back to you, are you going to run away from me?” Despite

Excuse me, Cinderella?” a deep voice called next to my ear. Cinderella? I removed my hand from my face to look at the guy who belonged to that voice, then quickly pushed myself up onto my elbows when I took in his face, so close to mine. My cheeks burned with embarrassed heat, but I didn’t know how to look away from him. Despite a large red mark on his forehead, his face was flawless and masculine, with a strong brow and nose, a smirk I knew would’ve made my knees weak had I been standing, and a lethal stare from green eyes so clear it was as if I could see through the iris. My gaze had become so fixated on the way his lips moved that it took a few seconds too long to realize he’d said something. “I’m sorry, what?” The smirk broadened for a brief moment, giving me a glimpse of straight, white teeth. He leaned over me until his lips were at my ear, and if I’d had the capability to breathe around him, I would’ve stopped then. “I said I think you lost this,” he drawled, and I swooned. Literally . . . swooned. As in: all the air left my body in one hard rush, I was unable to keep myself up on my elbows any longer, my head felt light and dizzy, the room spun, and I was pretty sure I’d just entered a romance novel. It really didn’t matter that it was from the lingering effects of nearly choking to death, and then unknowingly holding my breath for too long. “Whoa.” He quickly put a hand under my head before it could smack on the hardwood floor. “I’m fine,” I said breathlessly, and internally berated myself for doing everything imaginable to look like an idiot tonight. I tried to sit up, but the guy was still hovering over me, making it impossible to go farther than I’d been. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Yes,” I promised, and blew out a steadying breath when he sat back. “Good. I can’t have you passing out on me, Cinderella.” “Cin—” My head shook firmly as I corrected him. “No, my name is Rorie.” With another slow smirk, he gestured to the red mark on his forehead for barely a second, then reached behind him and produced my stiletto. My embarrassment from earlier couldn’t compare to the level it was at then as I put it all together. My shoe had flown into his face. “Oh my God,” I whispered so low, the words drifted away with the bass of the music. “I’m so sorry.” He laughed easily, as if he hadn’t just taken a five-inch stiletto to the face, and glanced from my shoe to me. “My name is Declan,” he provided. “I already know this shoe belongs to you. What I want to know now, Cinderella, is if I give this back to you, are you going to run away from me?” Despite my humiliation, my lips spread into a smile as the name finally made sense. I reached for the shoe, but Declan held it away from me. His expression showed he was still waiting for an answer. With a raised eyebrow, I said, “I lost both shoes. I don’t care what Disney said, a girl can’t run away very easily with only one shoe.” His smirk stretched to match my smile, and he dipped his head close. “Then I’m keeping the other one that hit the back of my head.

Nobody ever started a fight because they thought they were wrong. Think about it. We're all so sure of ourselves that we can't even have an honest conversation. Instead, we babble bass-ackwards agendas and cling to ill-conceived notions. Our heads are so far down our own arses that we assume we are the hero of the story. Even when we are up to our necks, we never bother asking what that awful smell is. The thing is... everyone can't be right. That's not a thing. But nobody wants to back down.

RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

We must participate in this world that has birthed us. We must not sit around in rawhide rocking chairs with our heads sunk in grief, while the waters trickle past. We must join the waters.

The way he learned to sing was by imitating the songbirds: their warbles and whistles, their scolds. Before his stroke he'd been able to imitate certain notes and melodies of their calls, but never whole songs. I was sitting under the umbrella with him, in early March-March second, the day the Texas Declaration of Independence had been signed, when Grandfather began to sing. A black-and-white warbler had flown in right in front of us and was sitting on a cedar limb, singing-relieved, I think, that we weren't owls. Cedar waxwings moved through the brush behind it, pausing to wipe the bug juice from their bills by rubbing their beaks against branches (like men dabbing their mouths with napkins after getting up from the table). Towhees were hopping all around us, scratching through the cedar duff for pill bugs, pecking, pecking, pecking, and still the vireo stayed right there on that branch, turning its head sideways at us and singing, and Grandfather made one deep sound in his throat-like a stone being rolled away-and then he began to sing back to the bird, not just imitating the warbler's call, but singing a whole warbler song, making up warbler sentences, warbler declarations. Other warblers came in from out of the brush and surrounded us, and still Grandfather kept whistling and trilling. More birds flew in. Grandfather sang to them, too. With high little sounds in his throat, he called in the mourning doves and the little Inca doves that were starting to move into this country, from the south, and whose call I liked very much, a slightly younger, faster call that seemed to complement the eternity-becking coo of the mourning dove. Grandfather sang until dark, until the birds stopped answering his songs and instead went back into the brush to go to roost, and the fireflies began to drift out of the bushes like sparks and the coyotes began to howl and yip. Grandfather had long ago finished all the tea, sipping it between birdsongs to keep his voice fresh, and now he was tired, too tired to even fold the umbrella. .... I was afraid that with the miracle of birdsong, it was Grandfather's last night on earth-that the stars and the birds and the forest had granted him one last gift-and so I drove slowly, wanting to remember the taste, smell, and feel of all of it it, and to never forget it. But when I stopped the truck he seemed rested, and was in a hurry to get out and go join Father, who was sitting on the porch in the dark listening to one of the spring-training baseball games on the radio.

Lucy, Lucy, good and true, Went to Castle Grotteskew. Thougth she´d see what lurked inside, But for her troubles, Lucy died. Before she perished, she did say, "Monsters! Creatures! Go away!

As he and Beth hit the stairs, he called out to his brothers, “Thanks for having my back once again.” The group stopped and turned to face him. After a beat of silence, they formed a half circle around the foot of the grand staircase, each making a thick fist with his weapon hand. With a great whoop! of a war cry, they went down on their right knee and slammed their heavy knuckles into the mosaic floor. The sound was thunder and bass drums and bomb explosions, ricocheting outward, filling all the rooms of the mansion. Wrath stared at them, seeing their heads bent, their broad backs curled, their powerful arms planted. They had each gone to that meeting prepared to take a bullet for him, and that would ever be true. Behind Tohr’s smaller form, Lassiter, the fallen angel, stood with a straight spine, but he wasn’t cracking any jokes at this reaffirmation of allegiance. Instead, he was back to staring at the damn ceiling. Wrath glanced up at the mural of warriors silhouetted against a blue sky and could see nothing much of the pictures that he’d been told were there. Getting back with the program, he said in the Old Language, “No stronger allies, no greater friends, no better fighters of honor could a king behold than these assembled afore me, mine brothers, mine blood.” A rolling growl of ascent lifted as the warriors got to their feet again, and Wrath nodded to each one of them. He had no more words to offer as his throat had abruptly choked, but they didn’t seem to need anything else. They stared at him with respect and gratitude and purpose, and he accepted their enormous gifts with grave appreciation and resolve. This was the ages-old covenant between king and subjects, the pledges on both sides made with the heart and carried out by the sharp mind and the strong body. “God, I love you guys,” Beth said. There was a lot of deep laughter, and then Hollywood said, “You want us to stab the floor for you again? Fists are for kings, but the queen gets the daggers.” “I wouldn’t want you to take chips out of this beautiful floor. Thank you, though.” “Say the word and it’s nothing but rubble.” Beth laughed. “Be still, my heart.” The Brothers came over and kissed the Saturnine Ruby that rode on her finger, and as each paid his honor, she gave him a gentle stroke of the hair. Except for Zsadist, who she smiled tenderly at. “Excuse us, boys,” Wrath said. “Little quiet time, feel me?” There was a ripple of male approval, which Beth took in stride—and with a blush—and then it was time for some privacy.

Well, I’ve been at Cambridge,” Jode says. “Jode’s also been with Anna,” Marcus adds with a mischievous smile. Gideon shakes his head. “A little respect?” I’m glad to see them teasing each other. I was worried about the fallout from the haunting, but with Sebastian back, everyone’s happy. United. Bas’s eyes go wide, turning from Jode to Gideon. “Wait, wait, wait. Your sister? That Anna?” “Yes, that Anna,” Jode says. “And I truly don’t see why it’s such an issue for you, Gideon. It’s not as though I’ve shared the details about—” “One more word, Jode. Seriously, man. One more.” Jode laughs. “Anyhow.” He gestures between Gideon and me. “I think we’re looking past the obvious here.” Bas breaks into a huge grin. “You two? The two of you? That’s awesome!” “I broke down her defenses,” Gideon says matter-of-factly. “He didn’t,” I say. “My defenses are perfectly secure. We’re conducting friendly negotiations.” “Our negotiations are a lot more than friendly.” “On occasion.” “Such passion,” Jode says. “It’s electrifying.

In my head, I’m composing a new piece of music.” Vim turned to see Lord Val riding along beside him. “It will be called, ‘Lament for a Promising Young Composer Who Died of a Frozen Bum-Fiddle.’ I’ll do something creative with the violins and double basses—a bit of humor for my final work. It will be published posthumously, of course, and bring me rave reviews from all my critics. ‘A tragic loss,’ they’ll all say. It could bring frozen bum-fiddles into fashion.” “You haven’t any critics.” St. Just spoke over his shoulder, having abdicated the lead position to his sister. “Ellen won’t allow it, more’s the pity.” “My wife is ever wise—” “Oh, famous.” Westhaven’s muttered imprecation interrupted his idiot younger brother. Lord Val leaned over toward Vim. “There’s another word, a word that alliterates with famous, that his-lordship-my-brother-the-heir has eschewed since becoming a father. Famous is his attempt at compromise.” “I’ll say it, then.” St. Just sighed as another flurry drifted down from the sky. “Fuck. It’s going to snow again. Beg sincere pardon for my language, Sophie.” She

A Dream Of Sunshine - Excerpt I'm weary of this weather and I hanker for the ways Which people read of in the psalms and preachers paraphrase-- The grassy fields, the leafy woods, the banks where I can lie And listen to the music of the brook that flutters by, Or, by the pond out yonder, hear the redwing blackbird's call Where he makes believe he has a nest, but hasn't one at all; And by my side should be a friend--a trusty, genial friend, With plenteous store of tales galore and natural leaf to lend; Oh, how I pine and hanker for the gracious boon of spring-- For _then_ I'm going a-fishing with John Lyle King! How like to pigmies will appear creation, as we float Upon the bosom of the tide in a three-by-thirteen boat-- Forgotten all vexations and all vanities shall be, As we cast our cares to windward and our anchor to the lee; Anon the minnow-bucket will emit batrachian sobs, And the devil's darning-needles shall come wooing of our bobs; The sun shall kiss our noses and the breezes toss our hair (This latter metaphoric--we've no fimbriae to spare!); And I--transported by the bliss--shan't do a plaguey thing But cut the bait and string the fish for John Lyle King! Or, if I angle, it will be for bullheads and the like, While he shall fish for gamey bass, for pickerel, and for pike; I really do not care a rap for all the fish that swim-- But it's worth the wealth of Indies just to be along with him In grassy fields, in leafy woods, beside the water-brooks, And hear him tell of things he's seen or read of in his books-- To hear the sweet philosophy that trickles in and out The while he is discoursing of the things we talk about; A fountain-head refreshing--a clear, perennial spring Is the genial conversation of John Lyle King!

Nature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she desired to make us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud had covered the heavens. At the moment when Jean Valjean paused in front of the bed, this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light, traversing the long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop’s pale face. He was sleeping peacefully. He lay in his bed almost completely dressed, on account of the cold of the Basses-Alps, in a garment of brown wool, which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown back on the pillow, in the careless attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with the pastoral ring, and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many holy actions, was hanging over the edge of the bed. His whole face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction, of hope, and of felicity. It was more than a Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 179 smile, and almost a radiance. He bore upon his brow the indescribable reflection of a light which was invisible. The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven. A reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop. It was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven was within him. That heaven was his conscience. At the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak, upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory. It remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver, that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose of this man, and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole that white hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope and all was confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber of an infant. There was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august, without being himself aware of it. Jean Valjean was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with his iron candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous old man. Never had he beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him. The moral world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled and uneasy conscience, which has arrived on the brink of an evil action, contemplating the slumber of the just.

Meanwhile the rain continued to beat sonorously down upon the wooden roof, and could be heard trickling into a water butt; nor for a single moment did the dogs cease to bark with all the strength of their lungs. One of them, throwing up its head, kept venting a howl of such energy and duration that the animal seemed to be howling for a handsome wager; while another, cutting in between the yelpings of the first animal, kept restlessly reiterating, like a postman's bell, the notes of a very young puppy. Finally, an old hound which appeared to be gifted with a peculiarly robust temperament kept supplying the part of contrabasso, so that his growls resembled the rumbling of a bass singer when a chorus is in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of choristers are wagging their heads before approaching a climax, and this contrabasso alone is tucking his bearded chin into his collar, and sinking almost to a squatting posture on the floor, in order to produce a note which shall cause the windows to shiver and their panes to crack. Naturally,

Silver confetti falls from the ceiling. The music launches again, and the sleek young mob dances feverishly, arms in the air. My head throbs along with the bass. Why had I agreed to this? I plug my ears with my fingers. I feel ridiculous beside these twenty-somethings. Marie and her friend apparently do not. They’re drinking the champagne and bopping their heads to the music. I watch a group of girls pucker for a photographer. They’re practically falling out of their tops. I hear Emily’s voice. Prude. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I tell Marie, and slide out of the booth. And I’m thinking of those catacombs, seemingly endless. I can see Emily, the version of her in that coffin. Embalming, the displacement of blood and interstitial fluids by embalming chemicals. I had looked the process up, after Mom insisted on a viewing. She was so beautiful, she cried. I want to see her one more time. The body is washed in disinfectant, limbs are massaged and manipulated, eyes glued closed, mouth and jaw secured with wires. The embalming solution contains dye to simulate a lifelike skin tone. A warm peach tone, the funeral director told us. I could barely stand it. I make my way to the second floor, where the music isn’t techno, only sultry R&B.

Scotland forever, ya bass!” said Tam, rocking back and landing the perfect head-butt on Rannoch’s nose.