Beach Chairs Quotes

Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that. So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?" I tell him, "Real.

Ultimately, the main reasons why I will be chubby for life are (1) I have virtually no hobbies except dieting. I can’t speak any non-English languages, knit, ski, scrapbook, or cook. I have no pets. I don’t know how to do drugs. I lost my passport three years ago when I moved into my house and never got it renewed. Video games scare me because they all seem to simulate situations I’d hate to be in, like war or stealing cars. So if I ever lost weight I would also lose my only hobby; (2) I have no discipline; I’m like if Private Benjamin had never toughened up but, in fact, got worse; (3) Guys I’ve dated have been into me the way I am; and (4) I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.

No throne in the world can substitute a beach chair.

Winter is when I reorganise my bookshelves and read all the books I acquired in the previous year and failed to actually read. It is also the time when I reread beloved novels, for the pleasure of reacquainting myself with old friends. In summer, I want big, splashy ideas and trashy page-turners, devoured while lounging in a garden chair or perching on one of the breakwaters on the beach. In winter, I want concepts to chew over in a pool of lamplight—slow, spiritual reading, a reinforcement of the soul. Winter is a time for libraries, the muffled quiet of bookstacks and the scent of old pages and dust. In winter, I can spend hours in silent pursuit of a half-understood concept or a detail of history. There is nowhere else to be, after all.

Every one made such a fuss over things nowadays! They wanted injections before they had teeth pulled -they took drugs if they couldn't sleep-they wanted easy chairs and cushions and the girls allowed their figures to slop about anyhow and lay about half naked on the beaches in summer.

What are you doing here, Bish?" I asked as Caleb asked Kyle the same question but with much more edge to his tone. "I'm your chaperone," Kyle said grinning in clear enjoyment of the situation and Caleb's reaction. "And I'm his," Bish muttered and glared at us. "They couldn't spare anyone else so I volunteered to come. Kyle insisted on coming too. So here we are. What are you doing?" "We were just about to go to the beach," I answered. "Great. I'll go put on my suit," Kyle said chipperly and flung his duffel bag on the club chair before running upstairs.

Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.

Thank you. This line of salt is the beach. And this piece of bread is a rock at low-water level.’ Wimsey twitched his chair closer to the table. ‘And this salt-spoon,’ he said, with childlike enjoyment, ‘can be the body.

You’d rather be here than in Africa. The trump card all narrow-minded nativists play. If you put a cupcake to my head, of course, I’d rather be here than any place in Africa, though I hear Johannesburg ain’t that bad and the surf on the Cape Verdean beaches is incredible. However, I’m not so selfish as to believe that my relative happiness, including, but not limited to, twenty-four-hour access to chili burgers, Blu-ray, and Aeron office chairs is worth generations of suffering. I seriously doubt that some slave ship ancestor, in those idle moments between being raped and beaten, was standing knee-deep in their own feces rationalizing that, in the end, the generations of murder, unbearable pain and suffering, mental anguish, and rampant disease will all be worth it because someday my great-great-great-great-grandson will have Wi-Fi, no matter how slow and intermittent the signal is.

Guys I’ve dated have been into me the way I am; and (4) I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.

I was born by the sea," I said. "I'd go to the beach the morning after a typhoon and find all sorts of things that the waves had tossed up. There'd be bottles and wooden geta and hats and cases for glasses, tables and chairs, things from nowhere near the water. I liked combing through the stuff, so I was always waiting for the next typhoon. I put out my cigarette. The strange thing is, everything washed up from the sea was purified. Useless junk, but absolutely clean. There wasn't a dirty thing. The sea is special in that way. When I look back over my life so far, I see all that junk on the beach. It's how my life has always been. Gathering up the junk, sorting through it, and then casting it off somewhere else. All for no purpose, leaving it to wash away again. This was in your hometown? This is all my life. I merely go from one beach to another. Sure I remember the things that happen in between, but that's all. I never tie them together. They're so many things, clean but useless.

If my mom died and I couldn’t call her up inside myself, I’d pull on a pair of elastic-waistband pants, pour a touch of Smirnoff over ice, and phone a girlfriend to play cards. If that didn’t work, I’d try reading a library book on a beach chair, and if that didn’t work, I’d take her rosary beads and shake them like a shaman until she came back to me, until I could see her and hear her and feel her again.

I was commissioned to write copy for an annual publication produced by Top Tourist Parks of Australia. After a print run of seventy-five thousand and distribution throughout Australia and New Zealand, it was discovered that I had left the letter v out of the word 'dive' and the introduction for a family beach resort activity read, "Die with your children. A new world awaits.

After nearly two years of never knowing whether to believe the worst, of trying to focus on the demands of their day-to-day lives and then helplessly absorbing every rumor about what the government had in store for them, of never being able to justify either their alarm or their composure with hard fact—after so much perplexity, they were so ripe for delusion that, when the parents gathered on their beach chairs to chat together in the alleyways at night, the guessing game that invariably started up could go on without letup for hours: Who would be vice president on the Winchell ticket?

On its own, my spirit seemed to relax, like a folding chair let out by a pool.

A summer full of cheap food, folding chairs, and home-cooked meals. Those good times were so going to roll.

Giulia continued to fidget, but after a few minutes she calmed down and sat back on her beach chair. Psychosis waxes and wanes like the tides, and a passing jogger had triggered a fierce return of her disoriented, paranoid thinking. And then just as inexplicably, it faded away. The hospital hadn’t fixed anything. It had only stabilized her, and not even all the way.

At the rear of the courtyard, several chairs had been placed beneath a vined trellis, and it was here Pickett at last spied Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. He was wearing a white linen suit similar to the one Pickett recalled from their meeting a fortnight or so earlier at a rooftop bar in Miami Beach. One leg was flung over the other, and beautifully made loafers of buttery leather were on his feet.

B'gwus is famous because of his wide range of homes. In some places, he's called Bigfoot. In other places, he's Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman, or Sasquatch. To most people, he is the equivalent of the Loch Ness monster, something silly to bring the tourist in. His image is even used to sell beer, and he is portrayed as a laid-back kind of guy, lounging on mountaintops in patio chairs, cracking open a frosty one.

This was different. It had synths droning and sending saltwater waves under my feet. It had drumbeats bursting like fireworks, rumbling the furniture out of place, and then a crazy, irregular, disharmonious, spiral crescendo of pure electric noise, like a typhoon dragging our bodies into it. It featured brass orchestras and choirs of mermaids and a piano in Iceland, all of them right there, visible, touchable, in Axton House. It shook us, fucked us, suspended us far above the reach of Help bouncing on his hind legs. It spoke of magenta sunsets and plastic patio chairs growing moss under summer storms rolling on caterpillar tracks. It sprinkled a bokeh of car lights rushing through night highways and slapped our faces like the wind at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. It pictured Niamh playing guitar, washed up naked on a beach in Fiji.

There were, inevitably, children’s clothing stores, furniture shops still offering bedroom sets by layaway, and dollar stores whose awnings teemed with suspended inflatable dolls, beach chairs, laundry carts, and other impulse purchases a mom might make on a Saturday afternoon, exhausted by errand running with her kids. There was the sneaker store where Olga used to buy her cute kicks, the fruit store Prieto had worked at in high school, the little storefront that sold the kind of old-lady bras Abuelita used to wear. On the sidewalks, the Mexican women began to set up their snack stands. Mango with lime and chili on this corner, tamales on that. Until the Mexicans had come to Sunset Park, Olga had never tried any of this food, and now she always tried to leave a little room to grab a snack on her way home. Despite the relatively early hour, most of the shops were open, music blasting into the streets, granting the avenue the aura of a party. In a few more hours, cars with their stereos pumping, teens with boom boxes en route to the neighborhood’s public pool, and laughing children darting in front of their mothers would add to the cacophony that Olga had grown to think of as the sound of a Saturday.

Nightbitch wanted to say, You don’t even know what the grumpies are! Have you ever yelled at your twins, in full voice, in the middle of the night? Yelled at them to go back to sleep, pumping your diaphragm with rage and sound? Have you sobbed beside them when they asked for another glass of water, another snack, at ten at night, just really let go and had a full-on snot fest in front of your children, so they were the ones comforting you? Have you ever locked yourself in the bathroom for twenty whole minutes to peruse your phone while your child bangs on the door and yells MAMA as loud as he can, until he is sobbing and, probably, permanently traumatized? Sometimes- Nightbitch longed to say, stunning all of them into a sweet-smelling silence- I fantasize about getting in my car and driving through night and day, as far south as I can go, until I get to a dirty beach and check in at a cut-rate motel where I’ll drink horrible pina coladas all day in a faded beach chair. Sometimes- Nightbitch imagined uttering plainly to their beautiful, happy faces- I imagine abandoning my family, abandoning this entire life. So don’t invoke the grumpies unless you’ve really got them, she wanted to scream. Just don’t.

I decide that if I ever get to come back here under different, nonstressful circumstances, I will stay at this hotel and drink fruity drinks and lay in the sand until my skin looks like it had a makeout session with the sun. But today, I’m looking for an inconspicuous way into the water. We head out of the lobby and get waylaid by hula dancers in grass skirts handing out necklaces of flowers. Apparently Toraf doesn’t like necklaces of flowers; as one of the women raises it above his head, he slaps her hand away. I show him, as I accept the gift around my neck, that the woman with the coconut boobs was just trying to be his friend. Just like all the women he’s come across so far. “Humans are too weird,” he whispers, unconvinced. I wonder what Toraf would think of Disney World. Our hotel is right on the water, so we pass through the lobby to the back. The beach is lined with lounge chairs and umbrellas and people scantily clad and people who shouldn’t be scantily clad.

And what of Nature itself, you say--that callous and cruel engine, red in tooth and fang? Well, it is not so much of an engine as you think. As for "red in tooth and fang," whenever I hear the phrase or its intellectual echoes I know that some passer-by has been getting life from books. It is true that there are grim arrangements. Beware of judging them by whatever human values are in style. As well expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life--all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. Live in Nature, and you will soon see that for all its non-human rhythm, it is no cave of pain.

Mrs. Stevens did not really mind, one way or another: she did not bathe, so would not feel the greater comfort of a larger hut, and in her heart of hearts she preferred to sit in her deck chair on the beach, with the seething life around her. She did not have people about her during her daily work at home, like the others did, and on holiday it came as a change to be amongst the crowd

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead... ...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin. It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair. Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus... ...Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.

She could feel the coolness, a whole childhood of it, falling through her. Rain on the coral beach in Galway. White tennis balls on the broken court. Her brother at his shortwave radio. A nest of wires and voices. Her father's cattle huddled on a laneway. The broken church bell. A grass verge of green in the laneway. High windows. Too tall for the school chairs. The milk came in small silver cans. She would not cry or whimper. She had always refused him that.

They sat on fold-up beach chairs and were talking about polio. The older ones, like his grandmother, had lived through the city's 1916 epidemic and were lamenting the fact that in the intervening years science had been unable to find a cure for the disease or come up with an idea of how to prevent it. Look at Weequahic, they said, as clean and sanitary as any section in the city, and it's the worst hit. There was talk, somebody said, of keeping the colored cleaning women from coming to the neighborhood for fear that they carried the polio germs up from the slums. Somebody else said that in his estimation the disease was spread by money, by paper money passing from hand to hand. The important thing, he said, was always to wash your hands after you handled paper money or coins. What about the mail, someone else said, you don't think it could be spread by the mail? What are you going to do, somebody retorted, suspend delivering the mail? The whole city would come to a halt.

She speaks reverently of her summers here. This is her favorite place in the world, she tells him, and he understands that this landscape, the water of this particular lake in which she first learned to swim, is an essential part of her, even more so than the house in Chelsea. This was where she lost her virginity, she confesses, when she was fourteen years old, in a boathouse, with a boy whose family once summered here. He thinks of himself at fourteen, his life nothing like it is now... He realizes that this is a place that will always be here for her. It makes it easy to imagine her past, and her future, to picture her growing old. He sees her with streaks of gray in her hair, her face still beautiful, her long body slightly widened and slack, sitting on a beach chair with a floppy hat on her head. He sees her returning here, grieving, to bury her parents, teaching her children to swim in the lake, leading them with two hands into the water, showing them how to dive cleanly off the dock.

He isn’t a friend of Mr. Pontellier’s; he’s a friend of mine. I always knew him—that is, it is only of late that I know him pretty well. But I’d rather talk about you, and know what you have been seeing and doing and feeling out there in Mexico.” Robert threw aside the picture. “I’ve been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grande Isle; the quiet, grassy street of the Chênière; the old fort at Grande Terre. I’ve been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul. There was nothing interesting.” She leaned her head upon her hand to shade her eyes from the light. “And what have you been seeing and doing and feeling all these days?” he asked. “I’ve been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the quiet, grassy street of the Chênière Caminada; the old sunny fort at Grande Terre. I’ve been working with a little more comprehension than a machine, and still feeling like a lost soul. There was nothing interesting.” “Mrs. Pontellier, you are cruel,” he said, with feeling, closing his eyes and resting his head back in his chair. They remained in silence till old Celestine announced dinner.

A nice lady opens the door on Peachtree Street and she’s got one of those faces that feels familiar like you’ve known her all her life. She buys a bunch of colored paper for her daughter who likes to draw. You ask how old her daughter is and she is four years younger than you. You ask what school she went to and she says that she kept her at home. You see her daughter peek at you from the hall and you think that maybe she was born wrong too. You figure she has never left this house. And you want to get her out of it. The next week you ask the woman if you can visit with her daughter. She brings you down the hall and into the sun room where her daughter is drawing. She’s quiet for a while and then she looks up and tells you she likes to sit in here and watch the birds outside. The light falls in on her hair like beach sunshine in the movies. There’s plants growing all around her. It’s like a jungle and you sit in the wicker chair across from her and wait for her to talk to you, like she’s a magical animal behind all the vines and leaves. All you can figure is that she’s just very, very shy. You think maybe you would have been this way too if you didn’t grow up in such a loud family.

Where the hell did the Pack find you two? At a beach volleyball tournament? Great tan. Love those curls.” LeBlanc shook his head. “He’s not even as big as I am. He’s what, six foot nothing? Two hundred pounds in steel-toed boots? Christ. I’m expecting some ugly bruiser bigger than Cain and what do I find? The next Baywatch star. Looks like his IQ would be low enough. Can he chew gum and tie his shoes at the same time?” Clay stopped playing with his chair and turned to face the mirror. He got up, crossed the room, and stood in front of me. I was leaning forward, one hand pressed against the glass. Clay touched his fingertips to mine and smiled. LeBlanc jumped back. “Fuck,” he said. “I thought that was one-way glass.” “It is.” Clay turned his head toward LeBlanc and mouthed three words. Then the door to his room opened and one of the officers called him out. Clay grinned at me, then sauntered out with the officer. As he left, a surge of renewed confidence ran through me. “What did he say?” LeBlanc asked. “Wait for me.” “What?” “It’s a challenge,” Marsten murmured from across the room. He didn’t look up from his magazine. “He’s inviting you to stick around and get to know him better.” “Are you going to?” LeBlanc asked. Marsten’s lips curved in a smile. “He didn’t invite me.” LeBlanc snorted. “For a bunch of killer monsters, the whole lot of you are nothing but hot air. All your rules and challenges and false bravado.” He waved a hand at me. “Like you. Standing there so nonchalantly, pretending you aren’t the least bit concerned about having the two of us in the room.” “I’m not.” “You should be. Do you know how fast I could kill you? You’re standing two feet away from me. If I had a gun or knife in my pocket, you’d be dead before you had time to scream.” “Really? Huh.” LeBlanc’s cheek twitched. “You don’t believe me, do you? How do you know I’m not packing a gun? There’s no metal detector at the door. I could pull one out now, kill you, and escape in thirty seconds.” “Then do it. I know, you don’t like our little games, but humor me. If you have a gun or a knife, pull it out. If not, pretend to. Prove you could do it." “I don’t need to prove anything. Certainly not to a smart-mouthed—” He whipped his hand up in mid-sentence. I grabbed it and snapped his wrist. The sound cracked through the room. The receptionist glanced over, but LeBlanc had his back to her. I smiled at her and she turned away. “You—fucking—bitch,” LeBlanc gasped, cradling his arm. “You broke my wrist.” “So I win.” His face purpled. “You smug—” “Nobody likes a sore loser,” I said. “Grit your teeth and bear it. There’s no crying in werewolf games. Didn’t Daniel teach you that?

It was in the Cornish summer of his twelfth year that Peter began to notice just how different the worlds of children and grown-ups were. You could not exactly say that the parents never had fun. They went for swims - but never for longer than twenty minutes. They liked a game of volleyball, but only for half an hour or so. Occasionally they could be talked into hide-and-seek or lurky turkey or building a giant sand-castle, but those were special occasions. The fact was that all grown-ups, given half the chance, chose to sink into one of three activities on the beach: sitting around talking, reading newspapers and books, or snoozing. Their only exercise (if you could call it that) was long boring walks, and these were nothing more than excuses for more talking. On the beach, they often glanced at their watches and, long before anyone was hungry, began telling each other it was time to start thinking about lunch or supper. They invented errands for themselves - to the odd-job man who lived half a mile away, or to the garage in the village, or to the nearby town on shopping expeditions. They came back complaining about the holiday traffic, but of course they were the holiday traffic. These restless grown-ups made constant visits to the telephone box at the end of the lane to call their relatives, or their work, or their grown-up children. Peter noticed that most grown-ups could not begin their day happily until they had driven off to find a newspaper, the right newspaper. Others could not get through the day without cigarettes. Others had to have beer. Others could not get by without coffee. Some could not read a newspaper without smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. Adults were always snapping their fingers and groaning because someone had returned from town and forgotten something; there was always one more thing needed, and promises were made to get it tomorrow - another folding chair, shampoo, garlic, sun-glasses, clothes pegs - as if the holiday could not be enjoyed, could not even begin, until all these useless items had been gathered up.

Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.

Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that. So after, when he whispers, 'You love me. Real or not real?' I tell him, 'Real.

No, I’d open a refuge for mothers. A retreat. Concrete 1970s brutalism, an anti-domestic architecture without flounces. Something low with big windows and wide corridors, carpets to deaden sound. There will be five or six rooms off the corridor, each with a wall of glass and sliding doors looking on to a cold, grey beach. Each room has a single bed in the corner, a table and chair. You may bring your laptop but there is no internet access and no telephone. There are books with a body count of zero and no suffering for anyone under the age of eight. A cinema where everything you wanted to see in the last eight years is shown at a time that allows you to have an early night afterwards. And the food, the kind of food you’re pleased to have eaten as well as pleased to eat, is made by a chef, a childless male chef, and brought to your room. You may ask him for biscuits at any moment of the day or night, send your mug back because you dislike the shape of the handle, and change your mind after ordering dinner. And there is a swimming pool, lit from below in a warm, low-ceilinged room without windows, which may be used by one mummy at a time to swim herself into dream. Oh, fuck it, I am composing a business plan for a womb with a view. So what? I’ll call it Hôtel de la Mère and the only real problem is childcare. Absent, children cause guilt and anxiety incompatible with the mission of the Hôtel; present, they prevent thought or sleep, much more swimming and the consumption of biscuits. We need to turn them off for a few days, suspend them like computers. Make them hibernate. You can’t uninvent children any more than you can uninvent the bomb.

Family is everything to him. When he was a young boy, he lost his mother and four sisters to scarlet fever, and was sent away to boarding school. He grew up very much alone. So he would do anything to protect or help the people he cares about." She hefted the album into Keir's lap, and watched as he began to leaf through it dutifully. Keir's gaze fell to a photograph of the Challons relaxing on the beach. There was Phoebe at a young age, sprawling in the lap of a slender, laughing mother with curly hair. Two blond boys sat beside her, holding small shovels with the ruins of a sandcastle between them. A grinning fair-haired toddler was sitting squarely on top of the sandcastle, having just squashed it. They'd all dressed up in matching bathing costumes, like a crew of little sailors. Coming to perch on the arm of the chair, Phoebe reached down to turn the pages and point out photographs of her siblings at various stages of their childhood. Gabriel, the responsible oldest son... followed by Raphael, carefree and rebellious... Seraphina, the sweet and imaginative younger sister... and the baby of the family, Ivo, a red-haired boy who'd come as a surprise after the duchess had assumed childbearing years were past her. Phoebe paused at a tintype likeness of the duke and duchess seated together. Below it, the words "Lord and Lady St. Vincent" had been written. "This was taken before my father inherited the dukedom," she said. Kingston- Lord St. Vincent back then- sat with an arm draped along the back of the sofa, his face turned toward his wife. She was a lovely woman, with an endearing spray of freckles across her face and a smile as vulnerable as the heartbeat in an exposed wrist.

What I didn’t want: a low-octane life of draining jobs, counting the days till I’d have time to mow the lawn again, counting the weeks till I could afford some plastic, beach-chair vacation, counting the years till retirement when I’d be too old to enjoy it. I was from a place built off those blueprints, where sprinklers went off in the morning and whole neighborhoods became ghost towns during work hours. I’d look out at all those empty houses, the exhausted adults returning home, the whole sorry bunch living at low throttle, and it seemed like death. I wanted to see the stars over Kilimanjaro, the sunrise after sleeping at the base of a killer range, to breathe powder. You can stand on the peak of the world, knowing you’re about to drop into the mouth of a canyon sculpted by wind, and if you die, at least you die by your own rules. That’s why I gave my life to extreme sports.

The page begins with the person’s picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or painting by Peeta. Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Prim’s cheek. My father’s laugh. Peeta’s father with the cookies. The color of Finnick’s eyes. What Cinna could do with a length of silk. Boggs reprogramming the Holo. Rue poised on her toes, arms slightly extended, like a bird about to take flight. On and on. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their deaths count. Haymitch finally joins us, contributing twenty-three years of tributes he was forced to mentor. Additions become smaller. An old memory that surfaces. A late primrose preserved between the pages. Strange bits of happiness, like the photo of Finnick and Annie’s newborn son. We learn to keep busy again. Peeta bakes. I hunt. Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out, and then raises geese until the next train arrives. Fortunately, the geese can take pretty good care of themselves. We’re not alone. A few hundred others return because, whatever has happened, this is our home. With the mines closed, they plow the ashes into the earth and plant food. Machines from the Capitol break ground for a new factory where we will make medicines. Although no one seeds it, the Meadow turns green again. Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that. So after, when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?” I tell him, “Real.

You look nice,” he commented, before thanking her for the wine and making his way outside to the porch. Grateful he had turned away and so couldn’t see her blush, she fussed about in the kitchen for a while, preparing a dressing for the side salad, adding a few chopped herbs as an afterthought. Happy that all was well, she joined him, looking forward to another evening of lighthearted chat. “I thought we’d eat out here tonight, if that’s okay. It’s a lovely evening. We should make the most of it,” she said as she drew up a chair opposite him. “Definitely,” he replied, staring out toward Gull Rock. “Beautiful,” she sighed, realizing too late she was still looking at him as she spoke. Averting her eyes, she added, “The view, I mean.” “Oh, so not me?” he joked, one eyebrow raised in challenge. Recovering quickly, she grinned back. “You’re okay, I guess. Not my type, but I’m sure there’s plenty out there who’ll appreciate you.” “Thanks very much.” He appeared somewhat crestfallen. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.” “A bit of both, I think.” She winked, before heading back to the kitchen to bring dinner out.

Brian and Avis deliver their stacks and try to refuse dinner, but the waiters bring them glasses of burgundy, porcelain plates with thin, peppery steaks redolent of garlic, scoops of buttery grilled Brussels sprouts, and a salad of beets, walnuts, and Roquefort. They drag a couple of lawn chairs to a quiet spot on the street and they balance the plates on their laps. Some ingredient in the air reminds Avis of the rare delicious trips they used to make to the Keys. Ten years after they'd moved to Miami they'd left Stanley and Felice with family friends and Avis and Brian drove to Key West on a sort of second honeymoon. She remembers how the land dropped back into distance: wetlands, marsh, lazy-legged egrets flapping over the highway, tangled, sulfurous mangroves. And water. Steel-blue plains, celadon translucence. She and Brian had rented a vacation cottage in Old Town, ate small meals of fruit, cheese, olives, and crackers, swam in the warm, folding water. Each day stirring into the next, talking about nothing more complicated than the weather, spotting a shark off the pier, a mysterious constellation lowering in the west. Brian sheltered under a celery-green umbrella while Avis swam: the water formed pearls on the film of her sunscreen. They watched the night's rise, an immense black curtain from the ocean. Up and down the beach they hear the sounds of the outdoor bars, sandy patios switching on, distant strains of laughter, bursts of music. Someone played an instrument- quick runs of notes, arpeggios floating in soft ovals like soap bubbles over the darkening water.

In the second week, more people appeared. Esme met a missionary couple returning to a place called Wells-next-the-Sea. ‘It’s next to the sea,’ the lady said, and Esme smiled and thought she must remember that, to tell Kitty later. She saw them both glance at the black band round her arm, then look away. They told her about the huge beach that stretched out below the town and how Norfolk was full of houses made of pebbles. They had never been to Scotland, they said, but they had heard it was very beautiful. They bought her some lemonade and sat with her on deck-chairs while she drank it. ‘My baby brother,’ Esme found herself saying, as she swirled the ice in the bottom of the glass, ‘died of typhoid.’ The lady put her hand to her throat, then rested it on Esme’s arm. She said she was very sorry. Esme didn’t mention that her ayah had also died, or that they had buried Hugo in the churchyard in the village and that this bothered her, that he was being left behind in India while they all went to Scotland, or that her mother hadn’t spoken to her or looked at her since. ‘I didn’t die,’ Esme said, because this still puzzled her, still kept her awake in her narrow bunk. ‘Even though I was there.’ The man cleared his throat. He gazed out to the lumped, greenish line of what he’d told Esme was the coast of Africa. ‘You will have been spared,’ he said, ‘for a purpose. A special purpose.’ Esme looked up from her empty glass and studied his face in wonder. A purpose. She had a special purpose ahead of her. His dog-collar was startling white against the brown of his neck, his mouth set in a serious downturn. He said he would pray for her.

Driving alone along the Northway, feeling more haunted than I really had the courage to be, I cried in the car the way one does when leaving someone in a bitter and unbearable way. I don't know why I should have picked that time to grieve, to summon everything before me--my own monsterousness, my two-bit affections, three-bit, four. It could have been sooner, it could have been later, it could have been one of the hot, awkward funerals (my grandmother's, LaRoue's, my father who one morning in Vero Beach clutched his fiery arm and fell dead off his chair mouthing to my mother, "Help. Heart. I love you" --how every death makes the world a lonelier place), it oculd have been some other time when the sun wasn't so bright, and there was no news on the raido, and my arms were not laced in a bird's nest on the steering wheel, my life going well, I believed, pretty well. It could have been any other time. But it was then: I cried for Sils and LaRoue, all that devotion and remorse, stars streaming light a million years after dying; I cried for the boyfriends I was no longer with, the people and places I no longer knew very well, for my parents and grandmother ailing and stuck in Florida, their rough, unchanging forms conjured only in memory; a jewel box kept in the medicine cabinet in the attic of a house on the moon; that's where their unchanging forms were kept. I cried for everyone and for all the scrabbly, funny love one sent out into the world like some hit song that enters space and bounds off to another galaxy, a tune so pretty you think the words are true, you do! There was never any containing a song like that, keeping it. It went off and out, speeding out of earshot or imagining or any reach at all, like a rocket invented in sleep.

Here you go,” Ryder says, startling me. He holds out a sweating bottle of water, and I take it gratefully, pressing it against my neck. “Thanks.” I glance away, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave me in peace. His presence makes me self-conscious now, but it wasn’t always like this. As I look out at Magnolia Landing’s grounds, I can’t help but remember hot summer days when Ryder and I ran through sprinklers and ate Popsicles out on the lawn, when we rode our bikes up and down the long drive, when we built a tree fort in the largest of the oaks behind the house. I wouldn’t say we’d been friends when we were kids--not exactly. We had been more like siblings. We played; we fought. Mostly, we didn’t think too much about our relationship--we didn’t try to define it. And then adolescence hit. Just like that, everything was awkward and uncomfortable between us. By the time middle school began, I was all too aware that he wasn’t my brother, or even my cousin. “Mind if I sit?” Ryder asks. I shrug. “It’s your house.” I keep my gaze trained straight ahead, refusing to look in his direction as he lowers himself into the chair beside me. After a minute or two of silence but for the creaking rockers, he sighs loudly. “Can we call a truce now?” “You’re the one who started it,” I snap. “Last night, I mean.” “Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said. You know, about eighth grade--” “Do we have to talk about this?” “Because we didn’t really hang out in middle school, except for family stuff,” he continues, ignoring my protest. “Until the end of eighth grade, maybe. Right around graduation.” My entire body goes rigid, my face flushing hotly with the memory. It had all started during Christmas break that year. We’d gone to the beach with the Marsdens. I can’t really explain it, but there’d been a new awareness between us that week--exchanged glances and lingering looks, an electrical current connecting us in some way. The two of us sort of tiptoed around each other, afraid to get too close, but also afraid to lose that hint of…something. And then Ryder asked me to go with him to the graduation dance. There was no way we were telling our parents.

She keeps her fingers on Faye’s face. Faye closes her eyes against tears. When she opens them Julie is still looking at her. She’s smiling a wonderful smile. Way past twenty. She takes Faye’s hands.“‘Then tell them to look closely at men’s faces. Tell them to stand perfectly still, for time, and to look into the face of a man. A man’s face has nothing on it. Look closely. Tell them to look. And not at what the faces do–men’s faces never stop moving–they’re like antennae. But all the faces do is move through different configurations of blankness.’ Faye looks for Julie’s eyes in the mirror. Julie says, ‘Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you ever even hope to have what you can’t grab onto.’ Julie turns her makeup chair and looks up at Faye. ‘That’s when I love you, if I love you,’ she whispers, running a finger down her white powdered cheek, reaching to trace an angled line of white onto Faye’s own face. 'Is when your face moves into expression. Try to look out from yourself, different, all the time. Tell people that you know your face is at least pretty at rest.’ 'You asked me once how poems informed me,’ she says. Almost a whisper–her microphone voice. 'And you asked whether we, us, depended on the game, to even be. Baby?’–lifting Faye’s face with one finger under the chin–'Remember? Remember the ocean? Our dawn ocean, that we loved? We loved it because it was like us, Faye. That whole ocean was obvious. We were looking at something obvious, the whole time.’ She pinches a nipple, too softly for Faye even to feel. 'Oceans are only oceans when they move,’ Julie whispers. 'Waves are what keep oceans from just being very big puddles. Oceans are just their waves. And every wave in the ocean is finally going to meet what it moves toward, and break. The whole thing we looked at, the whole time you asked, was obvious. It was obvious and a poem because it was us. See things like that, Faye. Your own face, moving into expression. A wave, breaking on a rock, giving up its shape in a gesture that expresses that shape. See?’ It wasn’t at the beach that Faye had asked about the future. It was in Los Angeles. And what about the anomalous wave that came out of nowhere and broke on itself? Julie is looking at Faye. 'See?’ Faye’s eyes are open. They get wide. 'You don’t like my face at rest?

Mirabelle always ate her lunch on Brighton beach if the weather was in any way passable, but out of sheer principle she never paid tuppence for a chair. We did not win the war to have to pay to sit down, she frequently found herself thinking.

Together, they were legend tripping, the age old practice of visiting strange locations of urban myths. Places such as the Baird chair monument, the Screaming Beaches, or the Spider Gates Cemetery. Popular sites frequently visited by tour groups or rowdy teenagers, locations with a history of the tragic, the horrific, or just plain old supernatural acclaim

She was sitting in a beach chair, facing the lit-up buildings across the water.

I knew the Tam were already a success by the greeting I got. The women in their canoes in the middle of the lake called out loud hellos that I heard over my engine, and a few men and children came down to the beach and gave me big floppy Tam waves. A noticeable shift from the chary welcome we’d received six weeks earlier. I cut the engine and several men came and pulled the boat to shore, and without my having to say a word two swaybacked young lads with something that looked like red berries woven in their curled hair led me up a path and down a road, past a spirit house with an enormous carved face over the entryway—a lean and angry fellow with three thick bones through his nose and a wide open mouth with many sharp teeth and a snake’s head for a tongue. It was much more skilled than the Kiona’s rudimentary depictions, the lines cleaner, the colors—red, black, green, and white—far more vivid and glossy, as if the paint were still wet. We passed several of these ceremonial houses and from the doorways men called down to my guides and they called back. They took me in one direction then, as if I wouldn’t notice, turned me around and doubled back down the same road past the same houses, the lake once again in full view. Just when I thought their only plan was to parade me round town all day, they turned a corner and stopped before a large house, freshly built, with a sort of portico in front and blue-and-white cloth curtains hanging in the windows and doorway. I laughed out loud at this English tea shop encircled by pampas grass in the middle of the Territories. A few pigs were digging around the base of the ladder. From below I heard footsteps creaking the new floor. The cloth at the windows and doors puffed in and out from the movement within. ‘Hallo the house!’ I’d heard this in an American frontier film once. I waited for someone to emerge but no one did, so I climbed up and stood on the narrow porch and knocked on one of the posts. The sound was absorbed by the voices inside, quiet, nearly whispery, but insistent, like the drone of a circling aeroplane. I stepped closer and pulled the curtain aside a few inches. I was struck first by the heat, then the smell. There were at least thirty Tam in the front room, on the floor or perched oddly on chairs, in little groups or even alone, everyone with a project in front of them. Many were children and adolescents, but

Tree House   This jungle tree house build is both fun and rewarding, especially once you get finished in the evening and can watch the sun set from the patio of your new house suspended a hundred feet in the air. Here’s how to get started.   Once you locate a jungle biome in your world, pick out a few tall trees that are close to each other:         Start by building a platform around one of the trees and adding columns at the corners to support a half-roof:           With the columns in place, begin adding on a roof, using stairs as the roof portions. Note that all of the wood I’m using for this build is jungle wood.             Add fencing between the columns to keep people from falling out, leaving a space on one side for your patio. Create the patio using bottom stone slabs for a lower portion where a fountain/waterfall will go, then using top stone slabs for the eating area.               Once the patio is completed, you can use pressure plates on top of fence posts for tables, stairs for chairs and then use a water bucket to create a nice flow of water through a hole in the patio. Fences around the perimeter keep people safe and a few torches keep things well-lit.   Next, find a nearby tree and construct a second platform:           Make sure the second platform is surrounded by fending as well, then connect both platforms with stairs and wood planks, adding in fencing on the sides for safety:           This new platform will be the sleeping area, and three sets of beds arranged around the tree in the middle look cozy and inviting. Top this platform off with a few torches and you’re set!         Adding some jungle leaves above the platform will protect sleepers below from getting wet when it rains, and will help keep things looking natural and open.         Go back to the main platform and construct an additional, smaller platform above it:         Cut a hole in both platforms and add a tall ladder going from the uppermost platform down to the ground, passing through the main platform on its way. At the bottom, add a landing with torches and stairs leading down to the beach:           Clear the upper platform of leaves and then add on fencing for safety, torches for light and use a staircase and wooden slab to create long chairs that people can sit on to watch the sunsets. A pair of stairs on the sides of the upper platform add additional seating for more guests:             Wow! This tree house looks amazing! You’ve got all of the basic set up, so now it’s up to you to take it to the next level! Add in more personal touches, expand the tree house with more connected platforms or build even higher into the jungle!  

Most people enjoyed their summer break. The sunshine, the beach, the cold drinks on a hot day, and, most importantly, not being at school. But not Hannah, she didn’t find them interesting at all. Of course, most people didn’t enjoy school as much as she did. There was something about the buzz of getting things right, the way things were organized, and the idea you had to do something a certain way that just pleased her. It was everything else in the world that scared her. Unpredictability was a nightmare. Hannah slumped on the chair, counting in her head how many days she had to wait for the chaos to be restored. Ninety-three, that’s how many. She considered making a countdown calendar, that would

She’d calmly removed her headphones and was about to call out her guess when she noticed the red spatters on her curtain and a couple of brain snails sliding down the other side of the translucent vinyl. Crap, she thought. Gingerly pinching a corner of the curtain and sliding it aside, she stepped into the living room, where she found her dad and his ex-client. Her father was still seated opposite the body lying beached-whale-like on the floor. Roger’s own face was stricken, blood spattered, and frozen while his hands eagle-clawed the arms of his chair. “Dad?” Pandora asked. “Yes?” Roger said, not moving. “Should I call someone?” “Yes,” he said, still not moving. “Who?” she asked. “Anyone,” he replied.

3 Reasons Why You Should Visit Galapagos Islands Are you have been planning to spend their vacation in most of the beautiful place in the world. Then the Galapagos Islands is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The famous archipelago in the Pacific Ocean is a demand and desired destination for travelers all around the world. The Galapagos isn’t probably the easiest and cheapest accessible place in the world but still attracts huge numbers of visitors, although there is a limit on how many people can arrive in the Galapagos. These are not budget-friendly travel destination Islands, but there are some ways how to arrange your week in paradise from cruising the living onboard and archipelago to making the day trip from one of the islands. You have most already heard or read all superlatives Galapagos Island can offer many visitors. But if you hesitate if the time and money will be worth it, we’ve put a list of three reasons why we should visit the Galapagos Islands. After reading these reasons, we believe that there won’t be any hesitation. The Galapagos Legend should be on every traveler. Pristine beaches You come to Galapagos Island to see fantastic wildlife but firstly mention the beaches. The stretches of fine white sand are on every island, and although you won’t have that much time to relax and lay down here just because of that there is so much to do, so we are looking at you sea lions only walking on those beaches from one to another end is a great unforgettable experience. Never expect deck chairs, bars, or umbrellas beaches on the Galapagos have nothing familiar with those touristy and crowded places form travel catalogs. Wildlife When we think and talk about the Galapagos Islands, we have a suspicion that the wildlife would be something marvelous and unique. What we never know was that these superlatives would get a new dimension on the Galapagos. All the wildlife animal species from iguanas, birds, tortoises, sea lions crabs to fish are incredible, and nothing can make you on their natural behavior that is dissimilar from the animal's behavior we know from our countries. The Galapagos animals never feel fear human at all, so you can get close to them and take images of a lifetime. Island hikes There are many designed ways on islands of Galapagos that will help you to walk through a unique landscape and will also help you to understand the evaluation process better, evaluation of not only the islands but also of the flora and fauna which live here in unbelievable symbiosis. The hikes are short, so visitors are allowed to walk on the island on their own so that you want a certified guide to show you around. Hikes were one of the best activities we did on the Galapagos as it combined the exploration of almost barren volcanic islands and watching wildlife. Galapagos Legend help you plan the trip you have dreamed about. You can choose onshore activities that cater to your interests, from a wildlife safari to a side trip to the fabulous annual Carnival in Rio, Brazil. As you stay on shore before and after your trip, you have the option of staying at a delightful boutique-style hotel or in a 5-star hotel setting.

Mother Mary wants to draft two more kids,” Astrid told Sam. “Okay. Approved.” “Dahra says we’re running low on kids’ Tylenol and kids’ Advil, she wants to make sure it’s okay to start giving them split adult pills.” Sam spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “What?” “We’re running low on kid pills, Dahra wants to split adult pills.” Sam rocked back in the leather chair designed for a grown man. “Okay. Whatever. Approved.” He took a sip of water from a bottle. The wrapper on the bottle said “Dasani” but it was tap water. The dishes from dinner—horrible homemade split-pea soup that smelled burned, and a quarter cabbage each—had been pushed aside onto the sideboard where in the old days the mayor of Perdido Beach had kept framed pictures of his family. It was one of the better meals Sam had had lately. The fresh cabbage tasted surprisingly good. There was little more than smears on the plates: the era of kids not eating everything was over. Astrid puffed out her cheeks and sighed. “Kids are asking why Lana isn’t around when they need her.” “I can only ask Lana to heal big things. I can’t demand she be around 24/7 to handle every boo-boo.” Astrid looked at the list she had compiled on her laptop. “Actually, I think this involved a stubbed toe that ‘hurted.’” “How much more is on the list?” Sam asked. “Three hundred and five items,” Astrid said. When Sam’s face went pale, she relented. “Okay, it’s actually just thirty-two. Now, don’t you feel relieved it’s not really three hundred?” “This is crazy,” Sam said. “Next up: the Judsons and the McHanrahans are fighting because they share a dog, so both families are feeding her—they still have a big bag of dry dog food—but the Judsons are calling her Sweetie and the McHanrahans are calling her BooBoo.” “You’re kidding.” “I’m not kidding,” Astrid said. “What is that noise?” Sam demanded. Astrid shrugged. “I guess someone has their stereo cranked up.” “This is not going to work, Astrid.” “The music?” “This. This thing where every day I have a hundred stupid questions I have to decide. Like I’m everyone’s parent now. I’m sitting here listening to how little kids are complaining because their older sisters make them take a bath, and stepping into fights over who owns which Build-A-Bear outfit, and now over dog names. Dog names?” “They’re all still just little kids,” Astrid said. “Some of these kids are developing powers that scare me,” Sam grumbled. “But they can’t decide who gets to have which special towel? Or whether to watch The Little Mermaid or Shrek Three?” “No,” Astrid said. “They can’t. They need a parent. That’s you.

She stopped at the foot of the trio of beach chairs and smiled down at Richter and his men. Richter was in the middle. The one on the left was a hairy beast of a man with the fat-over-muscle build of someone who’d earned their conditioning from life experience, not a gym bike. Someone who possessed the brute core strength to physically break you. The man on the right was younger and leaner, but still carried plenty of brawn. It squared with Isaiah’s story—these weren’t techie savants hired to pull a sophisticated vault break. Richter was lining up big scary men to storm a hotel room and take down an army of casino thugs by force.

chair, expecting to hear Bridget McCloud’s voice rise in greeting. She leaned against the wall between the kitchen and dining room and tried to catch her breath.  Why was she so surprised? Two and a half weeks in Pilgrim Cove couldn’t erase a lifetime of love and memories. The heavy silence, however, reinforced her new reality. She was alone. A feeling which seemed much stronger here than at Sea View House. And not because of the kitten.  Laura walked slowly to her bedroom and automatically began to undress. During her time in Pilgrim Cove, she’d gotten involved with people. Funny, how she seemed so connected to the town after

Luther’s room at the Wartburg contained a tiled oven for warmth, a simple desk and chair, of which he made ample use, and one especially curious object, likely a gift from Frederick, via Spalatin, though any letter in which it is referenced has been lost. It was the gargantuan vertebra of a whale, doubtless from the remains of a cetacean that had beached or washed up someplace very far away, probably on the coast of the North Sea. Whale bones were at that time prized for their healing powers, and one assumes that because Luther complained so regularly of the various maladies affecting him, Spalatin had found it and sent it along as a happy surprise and encouragement. And how could Luther help to have been cheered by something as outrageous and singular as this colossal white bone from a leviathan that once swam endless miles beneath the waves of a distant sea? Luther had never seen the ocean, and never would in his life, so the exotic quality of the object must have been all the greater.

I have four pets,’ Bjørnar Nicolaisen tells me at 69.31°N, ‘two cats and two sea eagles. I feed them all together on the shore, there by the throne, with the best fish in the world!’ He gives a huge laugh, and points east through the window of his living room: snow-filled fields sloping away to a rocky beach that borders a fjord several miles in width. Steel-blue water in the fjord, choppy where the currents are running. Far across the fjord, ranks of smooth-snowed peaks gleam in the late sunlight. They are shaped more wildly than any mountains I have ever seen before. Witches’ hats and shark fins and jabbing fingers, all polished white as porcelain. I cannot see a throne on the shore, though. ‘Here, try these.’ He hands me a pair of binoculars. Black leather-clad barrels, weathered in places to brown. Polished eye-pieces – and a Nazi eagle engraved into the left-hand barrel-back. ‘Wehrmacht-issue,’ says Bjørnar. ‘Beautiful lenses. An officer’s. When my father was dying, he asked me what I wanted from his possessions. “One thing only,” I told him, “the binoculars you took from the Germans.”‘ I lift the binoculars and the shoreline leaps to my eyes, close enough to touch. Calibrated cross-hairs float in my vision. I pan right along the beach. Nothing. I switch back left. Yes, there, a chair of some kind – but six or seven feet tall, built from driftwood lashed and nailed together. It looks like something the ironborn of Westeros might have made. ‘I take the eagles a cod or a saithe whenever I come back from a good day’s fishing. I feed them by my chair, there.’ ‘Bjørnar, you are the only person I know who counts sea eagles among his pets.’ ‘I am more of a cat person,’ Bjørnar replies. ‘Than a dog person or than an eagle person?’ ‘Than a people person!’ Bjørnar laughs and laughs – a deep, explosive laugh coming from far inside his chest.

on the metro so far :P” 2. Her bio says, “sunrise > sunset.” Your first message: “So you’re either a party girl who stays up all night or a good girl who wakes up before the crack of dawn. I think I know which.” 3. Her bio says, “I’m a blue-eyed, beer-loving and cocktail-making gal.” Your first message: “So what kind of drink will you make us on the first date? (This may or may not be a deal-breaker)”. 4. She’s got a picture at a famous tourist attraction, like Machu Picchu. Your first message: “I dig your Machu Picchu photo. I hope the llamas went easy on you out there.” 5. She’s got a picture by the beach. Your first message: “I dig your beach photo. I’m guessing you’re the type of girl that likes to swim more than sit on the beach chair and tan.

When I woke up the lounge chair was empty, the woman was gone. But the gray light that pervaded the sky after sunset made me melancholy. That diffuse shade, exclusive to no one, defeated me, it provided no relief. Come to think of it, there’s always some savage element at the beach, either to tolerate or to overcome: an element we crave and cower from at the same time. I’ve

I wouldn't want this to turn into a generic Asian hodgepodge, for example. Or a brand where the Korean part is no longer core to the business. Or the branding is offensive. Remember when Abercrombie and Fitch had all those offensive Asian T-shirts a few years back? I wouldn't want that to happen." Wyatt slurped his straw. "Jessie, sometimes you really overthink it all. For a company your size, the offer is more than fair. You'll have so much money, you can go invest it somewhere and retire on a secluded beach. These guys, Rich and Tommy, they have vision! They make magic happen with any business they acquire. Their Persian Eats cookbook based on their Netflix series has held the number one spot on the bestseller list for three months. The author is this fancy Culinary Institute of the Arts instructor. Dudley something; I forget his name, some English dude. Tommy, didn't you tell me he was chomping at the bit to do a splashy Seoul Sistas cookbook?" My whole body tensed. "We already have one coming out. And did you just say a White dude would be writing a Korean Seoul Sistas cookbook?" He backtracked in the most Wyatt-like way. "I never said that exactly. And I didn't say he was White." "With a name like Dudley, he's not exactly a sista." The silence in the room was palpable. Wyatt asked, "So no deal? Any smart business leader would jump at this opportunity." My God. Was he serious? "No deal." I looked at Daniel, pleading for any lifeline he could throw me to get me out of there. He stood from his chair. "Rich, Tommy, as always, it's been a pleasure working with you these last few weeks, but my contract ends now, at five P.M. And Wyatt, I'm respectfully declining your offer of full-time employment." Wyatt's mouth formed a perfect O. "But... why?" "I have a new client to counsel. Jessie Kim. And effective immediately, we'll be declining your offer and evaluating all of our options for selling or retaining her business." I stood and pushed the chair back with my leg. "Thank you so much for finding time to meet with me, and it was great meeting you, Rich and Tommy." Shooting a death stare at Wyatt, I continued, "As a smart business leader in a new and growing category, it's best for me now to consider my options and explore alternatives.

On the beach in the center of Provincetown, just off the long strip of Commercial Street, there is a comically large wooden blue chair that faces the ocean. It must be eight feet tall, as if it is waiting for a giant. I would often sit on that chair, looking tiny as darkness fell, talking with people I had befriended around the town. Sometimes we would be silent, and simply watch the light change. The light in Provincetown is unlike the light anywhere else I have ever been. You are on a thin, narrow sandbar in the middle of the ocean, and as you sit on that beach, you are facing east. The sun is setting behind you in the west—but its light is flowing forward, onto the water in front of you, and reflecting back into your face. You seem to be flooded with the waning light of two sunsets. I watched it with the people I met, and I felt radically open, to them, and to the sun, and to the ocean.

A good deed needs no excuse. So his pop used to reassure Dexter when he would resist, embarrassed, carrying a covered dish of leftover meatballs to the bums and hoboes who haunted the carny houses near his restaurant. Dexter muttered the phrase to himself as he lifted the heavy folded chair into his trunk. A good deed needs no excuse.

Make your vacation luxurious and memorable. Luxury Camping in Rishikesh is the greatest alternative for those who seek "Adventure with Luxury," that is, luxurious facilities and services in the camping site. Beach camps and jungle camps are not the same as luxury camps. These are located in a specific place that is around 1.5 kilometres from the river and jungle. These are built differently than the other camping areas. These can be found in the bush or along a river, but never on a river's bank. A luxurious camp is built on a good frame with a nylon basic structure and textiles (safari tents). Wildlife and adventure enthusiasts flock to Rishikesh for luxury camping.from all over the world. Rishikesh Luxury Camping not only gives sufficient possibilities for wildlife and nature lovers, but also allows visitors to participate in recreational activities. In the heart of the jungle, luxury camping in Rishikesh provides all of the comforts of home. Luxury camps include an attached bathroom, handheld shower, continuous running water, room service, a mirror in the tent, luxurious Swiss tents with carpeted floors, music, a toe chair, and one table inside the tent, and luxury Swiss tents with carpeted floors, bonfires, and one table inside the tent. Rishikesh offers luxury camping as well as rappelling, trekking, bird watching, rock climbing, and a variety of other activities. Wildlife excursions can also be enjoyed, making the journey even more enjoyable and bringing you closer to nature.

I’d spent most of the morning lying on a lounge chair that was equally close to the beach and the cabana, where a man dressed all in white had been refilling my drinks as quickly as I could empty them.

All i could do was understand the small deaths - the empty chair, or the fact that she would never shower after the beach.

Seven Days" First Day I sat in a room that was almost dark, looking out to sea. There was a light on the water that released a rainbow which landed near the stairs. I was surprised to discover you at the end of it. Second Day I sat in a beach chair surrounded by tall grass so that only the top of my hat showed. The sky kept shifting but the sunlight stayed. It was a glass pillar filled with bright dust, and you were inside. Third Day A comet with two tails appeared. You were between them with your arms outspread as if you were keeping the tails apart. I wished you would speak but you didn't. I knew then that you might remain silent forever. Fourth Day This evening in my room there was a pool of pink light that floated on the wooden floor and I thought of the night you sailed away. I closed my eyes and tried to think of ways we might be reconciled; I could not think of one. Fifth Day A light appeared and I thought the dawn had come. But the light was in the mirror and became brighter the closer I moved. You were staring at me. I watched you until morning but you never spoke. Sixth Day It was in the afternoon but I was sure there was moonlight trapped under the plates. You were standing outside the window, saying, "Lift them up." When I lifted them up the sea was dark, the wind was from the west, and you were gone. Seventh Day I went for a walk late at night wondering whether you would come back. The air was warm and the odor of roses made me think of the day you appeared in my room, in a pool of light. Soon the moon would rise and I hoped you would come. In the meantime I thought of the old stars falling and the ashes of one thing and another. I knew that I would be scattered among them, that the dream of light would continue without me, for it was never my dream, it was yours. And it was clear in the dark of the seventh night that my time would come soon. I looked at the hill, I looked out over the calm water. Already the moon was rising and you were here. Mark Strand, The Georgia Review Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 1975), pp. 363-365

The only sounds at the late hour were the faint jingle of a phone ringing in the nurses’ station, the ping of an elevator, the faraway sound of the wheels of a cart, and the gentle beep of Brandon’s vital signs monitor. They wouldn’t allow any flowers or personal items in the ICU, but Sloan had snuck in an engagement photo. It sat on the table next to the bed. Her and Brandon on the beach, the surf crashing around their feet, her tattooed arm over his shoulder, them looking at each other. Both of them laughing. I looked back at him and sighed. “You’re going to have some gnarly scars, buddy.” They’d started the skin grafts for the road rash on his arm. “But you’ll get to do everything you planned to do with your life. One of us is going to get the girl. I’ll help you any way I can. Even if I have to wheel your ass to the altar.” I could picture his smile. With any luck I’d see it in a few hours. A knock on the door frame turned me around in my chair. “Hey, cutie.” Valerie came into the room for her vitals check. She turned the lights up, and I stood and stretched. As if sleeping in a chair wasn’t hard enough, the activity every two hours was the final kicker. I wouldn’t call anything I did on these overnight shifts sleeping. Maybe napping, but not sleeping. Every two hours Brandon was moved. They checked his airways, changed out bags, looked at his vitals. I don’t know how Sloan was handling doing this almost nightly for the last three weeks. Sloan was a good woman. I’d always liked her, but now she’d earned my respect, and I was grateful Brandon and Kristen had her. “Did you decide what day you want to bring the kids to the station?” I asked Valerie, yawning. She cycled the blood pressure cuff on Brandon’s arm and smiled. “I’m thinking Tuesday. You on shift Tuesday?” “Yup.” She wrote down some notes on Brandon’s chart and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “Any updates with your lady friend?” I laughed a little. “No.” The whole nursing staff knew about my depressing love life. I’d gotten hit on a few too many times by some of the younger nurses. I couldn’t claim to have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t married, so it was either “I’m gay” or “I’m in love with that girl over there.” I’d gone with the latter, and now I wished I’d said I was gay. They didn’t know why Kristen wouldn’t date me, just that she wouldn’t. It had turned into the favorite topic of the ICU. A real-life episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I rarely got through a Brandon visit without it coming up. The drama escalated when Kristen had been hit on by the nurses’ favorite single orthopedic surgeon. According to the nurses’ gossip circuit, Kristen told him to go fuck himself. And apparently she’d actually said, “Go fuck yourself.” After that everyone was sure she was holding out for me. Only I knew better.

Scarlett Mistry supposed there were natural disasters everywhere. But it was all so very inconvenient. When she was a child, her father had gone apoplectic over a hurricane that had flattened one of their multi-million-dollar high-rises in Miami Beach. A landslide in Vail had once collapsed the roof of a Mistry Hotels chalet. And her mother was constantly threatening to sell off the property in New Orleans before the levees gave way for good. Even in her family's native Gujarat, India, there were terrible floods when the monsoons came. Property was a risky way to make a living, in Scarlett's opinion - not that she'd ever say as much to her parents. She'd long ago decided on an alternative route to fame and fortune, one free from the uncertainty of climate change and its unpredictable effect on the real estate market. Unfortunately, she hadn't factored in power outages. So instead of being able to check any of her feeds, she was stuck sitting in a wingback chair, her phone as dead as a brick in her hand, and listening to Orchid pepper the townie with questions about how bad the storm had gotten. He wasn't big on details, that Vaughn Green. Not that Scarlett needed Vaughn's opinion on how screwed they all were. After all, she was spending the afternoon sitting under a quilt by a fire like some sort of pioneer girl.

I swear to god, Jake Compton, if you shotgun marry me with an Elvis minister, I will kill you on the honeymoon,” she replies. Now we’re all laughing as Jake settles back down in his beach chair.

Thirty minutes later, we reached the rocky Anjuna beach and parked the bike. We walked for five minutes and reached a shack called Curlies. We sat on adjacent easy chairs, both of us facing the Arabian Sea. I removed my sneakers to rest my feet on the sandy floor of Curlies. ‘Beer?’ Brijesh said. ‘Sure,’ I said. He asked a waiter to bring us two Kingfishers. Two tables away, I saw another Indian couple. The girl wore red and white bangles on both hands, a wedding chudaa; they had just gotten married. Must be their honeymoon. They held hands, but it seemed a little awkward. Arranged marriage, maybe. I looked at Brijesh. We would be a married couple too by this weekend. Brijesh smiled as he handed me a half-pint Kingfisher bottle. ‘What did you tell your folks?’ Brijesh said. ‘I told Aditi didi that I am going for a walk with you.’ ‘They don’t know you are at Anjuna?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘mom will freak out.’ I sipped my beer. We watched the sun go down. A young singer at Curlies sang and played the guitar. The Goan sunset became even more poignant with the music. The singer sang Justin Bieber’s song, Sorry. Is it too late now to say sorry? Yeah, I know that I let you down

until the sun dipped down beneath the horizon at dusk. He had felt closer to a drink in Tokyo than he had for months, and had resolved to attend a meeting every day for a month in order to find his balance again. There were plenty to choose from, most of them attended by US sailors from the nearby base. His Wednesday evening meeting was in a gazebo at the north end of Chatan beach, close to the Hilton. He checked his watch as he made his way to the gazebo, the sand warm between his toes. He had struggled to find the venue the first time, the familiar AA sign just visible in the darkening light. He took a folding chair from the stack at the rear of the gazebo and sat down at the back of the small congregation of men and women. It was a rich mixture of colour and age, a collection scraped from all strata of society and united only by their addictions. There were the usual unlikely alcoholics: the well-turned-out men and women who would have looked more at home at a tennis club or on a golf course. They sat among those who more readily fulfilled the stereotype of the drunk: red noses and bloodshot eyes, the unwashed and unwanted.

Samantha strolled into the garden and followed the little winding pathway that led through a small orchid garden to a beach shaded by tall palms. Delighted to find the beach relatively empty, Samantha carefully chose a lounge chair with a bright turquoise cushion under a palm tree whose leaves fluttered softly in the breeze. Settling in, she pulled her books and notepad from her bag and set them with her water bottle on the table next to the chair.

Visualize. Here’s a visualization practice my friend and mentor Pia taught me: Find a comfortable chair and sit upright. Take 10 deep breaths, relax your shoulders, and clear your mind. Visualize walking through a forest, or a field of cornstalks, or a lush garden. Visualize coming to an open beach. Hold that scene in your mind’s eye for as long as you can, and see what emerges. Objects or people that emerge from the left represent the past. Those from the right represent the future. Record the images in your journal. Writing helps to consolidate the experience. Do timed automatic writings to quiet your rational mind. See 13. Survive love and loss for directions. Record your dreams in a journal. Note patterns, repetitions, symbols, and archetypes, rather than literal events. Before sleep, invite your subconscious for revelation through dreams. Pay attention to your body’s signals: twinges, goosebumps, or nausea, for example. Intuitive signals tend to be fleeting, whereas signals that represent physical imbalances or disease tend to be longer-lasting. Enlist the gift of hindsight. This can help to correlate images and signs with actual happenings, and decipher between intuition and wishful or fearful thinking. Record these notes into your dream journal, which may be used for all intuition-related reflections. Be patient. Developing intuition is like learning a new language. It takes time, repetition, and practice. Practice humility and trust. Like analytical thinking, intuition isn’t 100 percent accurate 100 percent of the time.

Mornings they get up late, eat breakfast in their cottages, then cross the road and spend the day gathered on the beach in front of Pasco’s place, one of about a dozen clapboard houses set on concrete pylons near the breakwater on the east end of Goshen Beach. They set up beach chairs, or just lie on towels, and the women sip wine coolers and read magazines and chat while the men drink beer or throw in a fishing line. There’s always a nice little crowd there, Pasco and his wife and kids and grandkids, and the whole Moretti crew—Peter and Paul Moretti, Sal Antonucci, Tony Romano, Chris Palumbo and wives and kids. Always a lot of people dropping by, coming in and out, having a good time. Rainy days they sit in the cottages and do jigsaw puzzles, play cards, take naps, shoot the shit, listen to the Sox broadcasters jaw their way through the rain delay. Or maybe drive into the main town two miles inland and see a movie or get an ice cream or pick up some groceries.

For some weeks now I have been engaged in dispersing the contents of this apartment, trying to persuade hundreds of inanimate objects to scatter and leave me alone. It is not a simple matter. I am impressed by the reluctance of one’s worldly goods to go out again into the world. During September I kept hoping that some morning, as by magic, all books, pictures, records, chairs, beds, curtains, lamps, china, glass, utensils, keepsakes would drain away from around my feet, like the outgoing tide, leaving me standing silent on a bare beach.

Er..." I bit my lower lip. "Do you have a minute? I wanted to talk to you really quickly, without being overheard." She looked mildly surprised but sat down on the end of the bed and nodded toward a chair. "Of course." Jim ambled over, plopping itself down at her feet. I glanced at the demon. "Er..." "Jim, shoo," Aisling said, correctly reading my thoughts. "What? I'm not doing anything!" "You're making May uncomfortable. Go see what the boys are doing." "Whatever it is, it won't be nearly as interesting as this," it answered. "Oh, it doesn't matter, I guess," I said with a tight smile. "Jim might have some helpful insights as well." "I'm all over helpful insights, sister," it told me with an oddly endearing grin. "What's the problem? You can tell Dr. Jim. Is it something in the romance department? Need some advice on how to handle Gabriel?" "No, thank you-" "Ah. Then it's the sex, right? Fiery, animalistic, dragon sex too much for you?" It was difficult to keep from rolling my eyes. "Thank you, my sex life is not open to-" "What's the silver dragon element? Earth?" Jim's face screwed up as it thought. "Oh, man, that means he's gonna want to do it outdoors all the time. Buck naked in the wilderness. My advice is to take sunscreen and bug spray. And maybe a spatula or something to dig the sand out of your butt crack, in case he takes you to a beach." "Jim!" Aisling said, wrapping her hands around the demon's muzzle. She shot me an apologetic look. "I'm so sorry. It knows better than to offer unwanted sexual advice." "Just trying to be helpful," it said in a muffled voice. "Well, you're not. And you can just be quiet unless you have something of importance to offer to the conversation," Aisling told it as she released its muzzle

ot everyone liked Albert. Not everyone was happy that he had become the most important person around. Lots of people were jealous that Albert had a girl to clean his house and the porcelain basin where he did his business at night when he didn’t want to go outside to the only actual outhouse in Per-dido Beach. And that he could afford to send his clothes to be washed in the fresh water of the ironically named Lake Evian. And there were definitely people who didn’t like working for Albert, having to do what he said or go hungry. Albert traveled with a bodyguard now. The bodyguard’s name was Jamal. Jamal carried an automatic rifle over his shoulder. He had a massive hunting knife in his belt. And a club that was an oak chair leg with spikes driven through it to make a sort of mace. Unlike everyone else Albert carried no weapon himself. Jamal was weapon enough.

I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.

Most people enjoyed their summer break. The sunshine, the beach, the cold drinks on a hot day, and, most importantly, not being at school. But not Hannah, she didn’t find them interesting at all. Of course, most people didn’t enjoy school as much as she did. There was something about the buzz of getting things right, the way things were organized, and the idea you had to do something a certain way that just pleased her. It was everything else in the world that scared her. Unpredictability was a nightmare. Hannah slumped on the chair, counting in her head how many days she had to wait for the chaos to be restored. Ninety-three, that’s how many. She considered making a countdown calendar, that would take up a few minutes of her boring existence. “You’re not going to laze about here all summer.” Her mother, the irrepressible Coco, butted into her thoughts. She stood over her, both hands on her hips, with that ‘I’m not taking no for an answer’ look on her face. Hannah hated that look. “Well you wouldn’t let me go to summer school, so what am I supposed to do?” “Get a job, I don’t care, just get out of this house. Be normal for once in your life and have some fun.” Coco turned and left her there, letting her words sink into the seemingly impenetrable skull of her daughter. Hannah waited just long enough for it not to be because she was told, to get up and do as she was told. She picked up her handbag and made a point of slamming the front door behind her. So she was outside of the house, just like Coco ordered her. But now what? She looked from left to right at the other houses in the street. They were all exactly the same, two storey, shutters on the windows, friendly doormats on the porches. It seemed like the entire world was conforming and giving up on any hope of being an individual.

Now I’m just going to help you relax. Relax. Relax now.” Morgan continued in a soothing voice. “If you could get away from your problems and go on vacation--where would you go?” He laughed. “I wish.” “We can do it here.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. A beach, I guess.” “You like the beach?” “I did when I was a kid. Not much time to lie around since then.” “Well, you can now. Imagine you’re in a sling chair staring out at a beautiful blue ocean. The waves are rolling in, breaking on a horseshoe stretch of white sand.” She saw the tension ease out of Jack’s face. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” “Um.” “Can you talk to me?” “Yeah,” he answered in a slow, drowsy voice. “When I tell you to wake up, you’ll come right back to this room.” “Uh huh.

Come on inside, and take the chair across from the big television screen on the wall. Are you sitting across from the TV now?” “Yes.” “Use the remote to turn it on. We’re going to watch the Wade Trainer militia program. Three days ago. That’s the day that somebody caught you sneaking around the compound. You won’t actually be there, but you can see everything that’s happening. Just like it happened before. But you’ll be at the beach house. Nothing you see can hurt you.” He grunted. “There’s no threat to you. Do you understand?” “Yes.” “Do you see yourself in the picture?” “Yes.” “What are you doing?” “Peeing.” She made a low sound. “I don’t need to know about that. Skip to breakfast.

He says that fashion happens because people what to define themselves. He says that the desire to define oneself will last forever, not just one year. He says that the easiest way to give a definition to oneself will always be to play a role. He says, "People stop asking themselves whether they are enjoying what they are doing or wearing, and instead ask themselves whether they are supposed to be enjoying what they are doing or wearing. They ask whether they are in role." ...He says, "Think of all the human types. We all play a few dozen types at any time, giving the illusion of originality, but most of us are no more unique than a spread of tarot cards is unique. Most of us are nothing more than a recombination of the same old cards." ...He says, "But people do enjoy the sense that they are playing a role. 'Oh my god, he took me on such an amazing date!' 'Dude--a beer in a chair on the beach.' 'Oh, we just love going to the Met.'" He says, "And that's how you achieve immortality. You achieve immortality by being a cliche. Because if you are a cliche, then even though you may die, you have lived on.

Activities to Develop the Vestibular System Rolling—Encourage your child to roll across the floor and down a grassy hill. Swinging—Encourage (but never force) the child to swing. Gentle, linear movement is calming. Fast, high swinging in an arc is more stimulating. If the child has gravitational insecurity, start him on a low swing so his feet can touch the ground, or hold him on your lap. Two adults can swing him in a blanket, too. Spinning—At the playground, let the child spin on the tire swing or merry-go-round. Indoors, offer a swivel chair or Sit ’n Spin. Monitor the spinning, as the child may become easily overstimulated. Don’t spin her without her permission! Sliding—How many ways can a child swoosh down a slide? Sitting up, lying down, frontwards, backwards, holding on to the sides, not holding on, with legs straddling the sides, etc. Riding Vehicles—Trikes, bikes, and scooters help children improve their balance, motor planning, and motor coordination. Walking on Unstable Surfaces—A sandy beach, a playground “clatter bridge,” a grassy meadow, and a waterbed are examples of shaky ground that require children to adjust their bodies as they move. Rocking—Provide a rocking chair for your child to get energized, organized, or tranquilized.

Out of nowhere, her body began to buzz with awareness. Lena looked up. And spotted him. Duncan towered above most everyone else on Main Street. He walked at a steady pace, with a strong stride. He was about half a block from the water and headed right toward her. Lena slipped under the awning of Frankie’s Fish-n-Chips, pulled a bistro chair into the shade, and sat with her back against the restaurant’s cedar-shingled wall. Her heart was beating like crazy! What was she—eleven years old? She took a deep breath and told herself to calm down and blend in with the dozen or so tourists dining al fresco. She slumped in the chair and covered the lower part of her face with her shopping bag. A mother of two glared at Lena, moving her chair to act as a buffer between Lena and her offspring. Good grief! Since when did a woman with a tote full of eggplant look like a threat?

You should have been in Atlanta right after she got her iPhone and texted all of us her plans to ‘masterbate penis primavera,’” Kyra said, unsnapping Dustin’s bib and scooping him up out of the high chair. Chase snorted with laughter. Maddie could see the curve of Troy’s smile beneath the camera. “It seems clear that people over forty should not be allowed to text,

Set in the cliffside overlooking a beautiful beach, Azure is a coffee shop and then some. The iconic white building features an open-air eating area, with more swanky chairs and quirky bean bags than you could ever imagine. Charming lanterns are scattered around the place, making me long to be here at sunset to watch the waves by candlelight.

Back in counseling when we got home, the topic was our trip. His narrative: We had gone to the beach with our kids, and I never played in the waves. My perspective: Never was hyperbole. Rarely is true. What I said: “I didn’t want to be near him. I was too sad.” What I didn’t say: I thought about dying all the time. Or, not dying, but disappearing. Poof. I didn’t want to die, not really, but I wanted relief. I wanted to stop feeling what I was feeling. I carried all of that with me to the coast, and I didn’t know what to do with it there. The sticking point: I wrote poems at the ocean and didn’t play in the waves. The marriage counselor said, “It isn’t about the waves.” What I said: “He knows I’ve never liked being in the ocean much. Even before we had kids, I mostly sat in my beach chair and read or wrote.” What I didn’t say: The thing about the ocean is I don’t feel safe in it, because I can’t see what’s in there with me. I know I’m not alone in the water, but I don’t know what’s there.

I’d packed my sadness, despite its enormous size. Each day I lugged it down to the beach with my towel and beach chair and sunglasses and paperback and sunblock and water bottle.

It is. I need you to find my ex-husband so I can go to the beach in ten days with my girlfriends. No kids. No men. No work. Just wine and pizza and books. I. Need. This.” She stabbed the table with a sharp fingernail. “I’ve got my Kindle right here. I’ve been reading the same book for six months because every time my ass hits a chair, a kid needs