Blackberry Sayings And Quotes

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter! 'One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.' But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.

My shift isn’t over until six,” I say glumly. “Hold on,” he says. He pulls a Blackberry from his coat pocket and taps out a text. It buzzes, and he taps out another text before stashing it back in his pocket. “I think you can take the rest of the afternoon off.” “I only have a week left, but my boss would kill me,” I say. “I’m your boss, Anna.” “What do you mean?” There’s that smile again, the one with all those teeth. “I just bought Walmart,” he says.

What I wanted to talk to you about was—” He kissed me. At first he gently touched his lips to mine. e more exciting development was that in order to do this, he’d stepped very close. His chest was an inch from mine. I could feel his heat. He tasted of blackberries. He leaned even closer and braced his muscular arms on the tree on either side of me. When he broke the kiss to take a breath, I whispered, “Tree hugger.” He opened his eyes, blue as the afternoon sky, and gave me this look. A combination of amusement and exasperation and hunger. He looked like a teenager making out in the woods. Puzzling through this, I realized that I was gazing at him from the perspective of a six-year-old girl playing army and dodging rubber snakes. But he was this teenager, and so was I. I felt the same need for him that he felt for me, like a force was drawing me forward into his heat. I just didn’t know how to say it.

There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

When I say I will never leave you nor forsake you, I am not making up some white man's words that mean nothing, I am repeating holy, sacred words that are in that book. Those words have power. I want to teach you the power of those words. For me to ignore my Holy Scriptures and walk away from you, or to take a child from you as your father did your mother, would mean to me that I had lied to my God. I would accept death before I would leave you after making such a holy promise.

You go to class and discuss famous poems. The poems are full of swans, gorse, blackberries, leopards, elderflowers, mountains, orchards, moonlight, wolves, nightingales, cherry blossoms, bog oak, lily-pads, honeybees. Even the brand-new ones are jam-packed with nature. It’s like the poets are not living in the same world as you. You put up your hand and say isn’t it weird that poets just keep going around noticing nature and not ever noticing that nature is shrinking? To read these poems you would think the world was as full of nature as it ever was even though in the last forty years so many animals and habitats have been wiped out. How come they don’t notice that? How come they don’t notice everything that’s been annihilated? If they’re so into noticing things? I look around and all I see is the world being ruined. If poems were true they’d just be about walking through a giant graveyard or a garbage dump. The only place you find nature is in poems, it’s total bullshit. Even the sensitive people are fucking liars, you say. No, you don’t, you sit there in silence like always.

The sin of David stands out like a tar-baby in a field of snow, like a blackberry in a bowl of cream. It may cause us to miss the greatness of the man. Remember that sin was the exception in David’s life—not the pattern of it. The Word of God does not play down the sin of David; it does not whitewash the man. God doesn’t say it is not sin. God is going to call it sin, and David will be punished for it.

My aunt Bee has always said that contrary to what most people think, the definition of a true friend is not someone who swoops in when you’re going through a rough patch.” She shook her head. “Anyone can do that. True friendship, she says, is when someone can appreciate your happiness—celebrate your happiness, even—when she’s not necessarily happy herself.” She looked at me with appreciative eyes. “That’s you, Claire.

It was a warm and sunny afternoon. Fresh breeze was combing the soughing reeds over the river. Some of our tourists began unpacking foods and preparing snacks; others went up the hills raiding the local thickets of thorny, wild blackberry shrubs, picking the sourly-sweet berries and greedily eating them, like they haven’t eaten anything for at least a week.

The smell of thyme was pungent in the air. It grew wild by the roadside. Thyme improves the memory, Joe used to say. He used to make a syrup out of it, keeping it in a bottle in the pantry. Two tablespoonsful every morning before breakfast. That clear greenish liquid smelled exactly like the night air over Lansquenet, crisp and earthy and nostalgic, like a summer day's weeding in the herb garden, and the radio on...

fingers encircle a blackberry and pluck it from its stem. I roll it gently between my thumb and forefinger. Suddenly, I turn to him and toss it in his direction. “And may the odds —” I say. I throw it high so he has plenty of time to decide whether to knock it aside or accept it. Gale’s eyes train on me, not the berry, but at the last moment, he opens his mouth and catches it. He chews, swallows, and there’s a long pause before he says “— be ever in your favor.

RIM shipped PlayBooks to major retail clients, such as Best Buy, which had preserved premium display space for the new product. Unfortunately, RIM had neglected to create a demo program to showcase and explain its latest product. With no helpful presentation on the screen of the device, shoppers were left to rummage around PlayBook programs on their own. Countless PlayBooks were immobilized after customers armed the devices with passwords, which the sales staff couldn’t unlock. “This happened hundreds of times,” says McDowell.

For the weekend before, we had had a blowout of tarts, a tart bender, tart madness- even, I dare say, a Tart-a-pa-looza, if you will forgive one final usage of the construction before we at last bury that cruelly beaten dead pop-culture horse. Tarte aux Pêches, Tarte aux Limettes, Tarte aux Poires, Tarte aux Cerises. Tarte aux Fromage Frais, both with and without Pruneaux. Tarte aux Citron et aux Amandes, Tarte aux Poires à la Bourdalue, and Tarte aux Fraises, which is not "Tart with Freshes," as the name of the Tarte aux Fromage Frais ("Tart with Fresh Cheese," of course) might suggest, but rather Tart with Strawberries, which was a fine little French lesson. (Why are strawberries, in particular, named for freshness? Why not blackberries? Or say, river trout? I love playing amateur- not to say totally ignorant- etymologist....) I made two kinds of pastry in a kitchen so hot that, even with the aid of a food processor, the butter started melting before I could get it incorporated into the dough. Which work resulted in eight tart crusts, perhaps not paragons of the form, but good enough. I made eight fillings for my eight tart crusts. I creamed butter and broke eggs and beat batter until it formed "the ribbon." I poached pears and cherries and plums in red wine.

Lemon and... blueberries, right? No, hold on- blackberries, I think. And... lavender? Lavender, for... excitement? I think there's an old saying that lavender is good for something like that." That sounded familiar. "Just a second." I took the book out of my backpack and flipped through the beginning again. "This isn't in alphabetical order, or any kind of order at all. Oh, here it is. Lavender brings luck and adventure for those who choose to embrace it," I said. "You were right." "What book is that?" asked Vik. "It looks ancient." "I just found it. It's got all these drawings and descriptions of herbs and spices." "Cool! Can I take a look?" I handed him the book, and he spent the next few minutes leafing through it, but then returned to eating the cupcake. "I love this. It's so different from the usual boring things people make. Although..." He took another bite. "I have a suggestion." He studied the cupcake. "The cake is light, fluffy, and complex, and the creamy, tangy frosting complements it so well. It might be even better with an edible garnish. Like a sugared mint leaf." He took another bite. "Or a sugared violet," he said with his mouth half full. "That would be lovely." I gaped in surprise. He was right. It would be lovely. I'd thought about topping them with fresh, mouth-puckering blackberries, but these suggestions were so much more elegant.

I’m really enjoying my solitude after feeling trapped by my family, friends and boyfriend. Just then I feel like making a resolution. A new year began six months ago but I feel like the time for change is now. No more whining about my pathetic life. I am going to change my life this very minute. Feeling as empowered as I felt when I read The Secret, I turn to reenter the hall. I know what I’ll do! Instead of listing all the things I’m going to do from this moment on, I’m going to list all the things I’m never going to do! I’ve always been unconventional (too unconventional if you ask my parents but I’ll save that account for later). I mentally begin to make my list of nevers. -I am never going to marry for money like Natasha just did. -I am never going to doubt my abilities again. -I am never going to… as I try to decide exactly what to resolve I spot an older lady wearing a bright red velvet churidar kurta. Yuck! I immediately know what my next resolution will be; I will never wear velvet. Even if it does become the most fashionable fabric ever (a highly unlikely phenomenon) I am quite enjoying my resolution making and am deciding what to resolve next when I notice Az and Raghav holding hands and smiling at each other. In that moment I know what my biggest resolve should be. -I will never have feelings for my best friend’s boyfriend. Or for any friend’s boyfriend, for that matter. That’s four resolutions down. Six more to go? Why not? It is 2012, after all. If the world really does end this year, at least I’ll go down knowing I completed ten resolutions. I don’t need to look too far to find my next resolution. Standing a few centimetres away, looking extremely uncomfortable as Rags and Az get more oblivious of his existence, is Deepak. -I will never stay in a relationship with someone I don’t love, I vow. Looking for inspiration for my next five resolutions, I try to observe everyone in the room. What catches my eye next is my cousin Mishka giggling uncontrollably while failing miserably at walking in a straight line. Why do people get completely trashed in public? It’s just so embarrassing and totally not worth it when you’re nursing a hangover the next day. I recoil as memories of a not so long ago night come rushing back to me. I still don’t know exactly what happened that night but the fragments that I do remember go something like this; dropping my Blackberry in the loo, picking it up and wiping it with my new Mango dress, falling flat on my face in the middle of the club twice, breaking my Nine West heels, kissing an ugly stranger (Az insists he was a drug dealer but I think she just says that to freak me out) at the bar and throwing up on the Bandra-Worli sea link from Az’s car. -I will never put myself in an embarrassing situation like that again. Ever. I usually vow to never drink so much when I’m lying in bed with a hangover the next day (just like 99% of the world) but this time I’m going to stick to my resolution. What should my next resolution be?

It’s not me telling you,” she said. “It’s neuroscience that would say that our capacity to multitask is virtually nonexistent. Multitasking is a computer-derived term. We have one processor. We can’t do it.” “I think that when I’m sitting at my desk feverishly doing seventeen things at once that I’m being clever and efficient, but you’re saying I’m actually wasting my time?” “Yes, because when you’re moving from this project to this project, your mind flits back to the original project, and it can’t pick it up where it left off. So it has to take a few steps back and then ramp up again, and that’s where the productivity loss is.” This problem was, of course, exacerbated in the age of what had been dubbed the “info-blitzkrieg,” where it took superhuman strength to ignore the siren call of the latest tweet, or the blinking red light on the BlackBerry. Scientists had even come up with a term for this condition: “continuous partial attention.” It was a syndrome with which I was intimately familiar, even after all my meditating.

You’re going to be walking along on the street one of these days, and suddenly there’s going to be a light over there. You’re going to look across the street, and on the corner over there, God is going to be standing right there, and you’re going to know it’s God because he’s going to have huge curly hair that sticks through his halo like Jesus, and he’s got little slitty eyes like Buddha, and he’s got a lot of swords in his belt like Mohammed. And he’s saying, “Come to me. Oh, come to me. I will have muses say in your ear that you will be the greatest writer ever, you will be better than Shakespeare. Come to me, they will have melon breasts and little blackberry nipples. Come to me, all you have to do is sing my praises.” Your job is to say, “Fuck you, God! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Because nobody else is going to say it. Our politicians aren’t going to say it. Nobody but the writer is going to say it. There’s a time in history when it’s time to praise God, but now is not the time. Now is the time to say, “Fuck you, God, and the Old Testament you rode in on. I don’t care who your daddy was. Fuck you!

He came back to her lips and tasted them briefly before settling his forehead against hers. “I don’t care what Grayson or his legal document says,” he muttered between catches of wind. “God’s given you to me, and as soon as He allows, I’ll claim you as my own.” He spoke with such confidence that if she allowed herself, she could almost believe him. But with belief came hope, and with hope, the inevitability of pain. The knocking at the door resumed, more urgently this time. Along her throat, splotches of cool marked where he’d sampled her. Milly lamented that it was already warming. In heartbeats, all she would have was memories. And anguish. Could God truly fill the hollow Phillip would leave? Last night, His promise had filled her to the depths of her soul. It was enough. It would have to be. With his eyes locked on hers, Phillip’s hand trailed her cheek and throat. It brushed over her shoulder and down her arm. Then, in one blink, he wiped every emotion from his face, stunning her with the callous glaze of his eyes. He gripped her by the elbow, whisked her through the kitchen, and opened the door to her wretched future.

Mamá was mixing bread dough by the kitchen window, pressing and pulling in a culinary tug of war. It took all her strength to mix four loaves at once, flour up to her elbows, tendrils of hair escaping from her bun, but it hardly made sense to do less. Her good bread disappeared as fast as she made it. Why, her family could hammer away a whole loaf in one sitting. Mamá smiled, then crossed herself against the sin of pride. Modesta was always saying, “That’s too much work! Why not just buy a loaf at the store?” Those sickly soft things they call bread? Mamá snorted as she slapped her dough. It was a sin to call such cotton bread! Her bread could stand up to thick bacon sandwiches and homemade blackberry jam. Hers melted in your mouth like cake. Indeed, after supper Father often buttered a big slice for dessert. At the thought of her husband, Mamá crossed herself again, this time not for pride, but for love. Everything she did was done for him. She meant to work for God, to make her life a prayer, but since the first time she saw Manuel, long before they were married, his was the face she pictured as she wiped her brow, bent her back to the task at hand. She shrugged. Perhaps her daughters would do better...

When you were dying, Edward quickly discovered, people would let you do pretty much whatever you wanted. So he made some new unofficial decrees: 1. The king was allowed to sleep in as long as he wished. 2. The king no longer had to wear seven layers of elaborate, jewel-encrusted clothing. Or silly hats with feathers. Or pants that resembled pumpkins. Or tights. From now on, unless it was a special occasion, he was fine in just a simple shirt and trousers. 3. Dessert was to be served first. Blackberry pie, preferably. With whipped cream. 4. The king would no longer be taking part in any more dreary studies. His fine tutors had filled his head with enough history, politics and philosophy to last him two lifetimes, and as he was unlikely to get even half of one lifetime, there was no need for study. No more lessons, he decided. No more books. No more tutors' dirty looks. 5. The king was now going to reside in the top of the southeast turret, where he could sit in the window ledge and gaze out at the river for as long as he liked. 6. No one at court would be allowed to say the following words or phrases: affliction, illness, malady, sickness, disease, disorder, ailment, infirmity, convalescence, indisposition, malaise, plight, plague, poor health, failing health, what's going around, or your condition. Most of all, no one was allowed to say the word dying. And finally (and perhaps most importantly, for the sake of our story) 7. Dogs would now be allowed inside the palace. More specifically, his dog.

In ballads, love is a disease, an affliction. You contract it as a mortal might contract one of their viruses. Perhaps a touch of hands or a brush of lips, and then it is as though your whole body is fevered and fighting it. But there’s no way to prevent it from running its course.” “That’s a remarkably poetic and profoundly awful view of love,” Oak says. Tiernan looks back at the sea. “I was never in love before, so all I had were ballads to go by.” Oak is silent, thinking of all the times he thought himself to be in love. “Never?” Tiernan gives a soft huff of breath. “I had lovers, but that’s not the same thing.” Oak thinks about how to name what he feels about Wren. He does not wish to write her ridiculous poems as he did for so many of the people with whom he thought he was in love, except that he does wish to make her laugh. He does not want to give her enormous speeches or to make grand, empty gestures; he does not want to give her the pantomime of love. He is starting to suspect, however, that pantomime is all he knows. “But…” Tiernan says, and hesitates again, running hand through his short blackberry hair. “What I feel is not like the ballads.” “Not an affliction, then?” Oak raises an eyebrow. “No fever?” Tiernan gives him an exasperated look—one with which the prince is very familiar. “It is more the feeling that there is a part of me I have left somewhere and am always looking for.” “So he’s like a missing phone?” “Someone ought to pitch you into the sea,” Tiernan says, but he has a small smile in the corner of his mouth.

New trout, having never seen rain on the river, rise eagerly to ripples on the Mink. Some windows close against the moist and some open for the music. Rain slips and slides along hawsers and chains and ropes and cables and gladdens the cells of mosses and weighs down the wings of moths. It maketh the willow shiver its fingers and thrums on doors of dens in the fens. It falls on hats and cats and trucks and ducks and cars and bars and clover and plover. It grayeth the sand on the beach and fills thousands of flowers to the brim. It thrills worms and depresses damselflies. Slides down every window rilling and murmuring. Wakes the ancient mud and mutter of the swamp, which has been cracked and hard for months. Falls gently on leeks and creeks and bills and rills and the last shriveled blackberries like tiny dried purple brains on the bristles of bushes. On the young bear trundling through a copse of oaks in the woods snorffling up acorns. On ferns and fawns, cubs and kits, sheds and redds. On salmon as long as your arm thrashing and roiling in the river. On roof and hoof, doe and hoe, fox and fence, duck and muck. On a slight man in a yellow slicker crouched by the river with his recording equipment all covered against the rain with plastic wrap from the grocery store and after he figures out how to get the plastic from making crinkling sounds when he turns the machine on he settles himself in a little bed of ferns and says to the crow huddled patiently in rain, okay, now, here we go, Oral History Project, what the rain says to the river as the wet season opens, project number …something or other … where’s the fecking start button? …I can’t see anything … can you see a green light? yes? is it on? damn my eyes … okay! there it is! it’s working! rain and the river! here we go!

The store smells of roasted chicken and freshly ground coffee, raw meat and ripening stone fruit, the lemon detergent they use to scrub the old sheet-linoleum floors. I inhale and feel the smile form on my face. It's been so long since I've been inside any market other than Fred Meyer, which smells of plastic and the thousands of people who pass through every day. By instinct, I head for the produce section. There, the close quarters of slim Ichiban eggplant, baby bok choy, brilliant red chard, chartreuse-and-purple asparagus, sends me into paroxysms of delight. I'm glad the store is nearly empty; I'm oohing and aahing with produce lust at the colors, the smooth, shiny textures set against frilly leaves. I fondle the palm-size plums, the soft fuzz of the peaches. And the berries! It's berry season, and seven varieties spill from green cardboard containers: the ubiquitous Oregon marionberry, red raspberry, and blackberry, of course, but next to them are blueberries, loganberries, and gorgeous golden raspberries. I pluck one from a container, fat and slightly past firm, and pop it into my mouth. The sweet explosion of flavor so familiar, but like something too long forgotten. I load two pints into my basket. The asparagus has me intrigued. Maybe I could roast it with olive oil and fresh herbs, like the sprigs of rosemary and oregano poking out of the salad display, and some good sea salt. And salad. Baby greens tossed with lemon-infused olive oil and a sprinkle of vinegar. Why haven't I eaten a salad in so long? I'll choose a soft, mild French cheese from the deli case, have it for an hors d'oeuvre with a beautiful glass of sparkling Prosecco, say, then roast a tiny chunk of spring lamb that I'm sure the nice sister will cut for me, and complement it with a crusty baguette and roasted asparagus, followed by the salad. Followed by more cheese and berries for dessert. And a fruity Willamette Valley Pinot Noir to wash it all down. My idea of eating heaven, a French-influenced feast that reminds me of the way I always thought my life would be.

He served Adaira the first slice and grinned when she cast a wary look his way. “You made this?” “Aye,” he said, standing close to her, waiting. Adaira took her spoon and poked at the pie. “What’s in it, Jack?” “Oh, what all did we dump in there, Frae? Blackberries, strawberries, pimpleberries—” “Pimpleberries?” Frae gasped in alarm. “What’s a pim—” “Honey and butter and a dash of good luck,” he finished, his gaze remaining on Adaira. “All of your favorite things, as I recall, heiress.” Adaira stared at him, her face composed save for her pursed lips. She was trying not to laugh, he realized. He was suddenly flustered. “Heiress, I did not put pimpleberries in there,” Frae frantically said. “Oh, sweet lass, I know you didn’t,” Adaira said, turning a smile upon the girl. “Your brother is teasing me. You see, when we were your age, there was a great dinner in the hall one night. And Jack brought me a piece of pie, to say sorry for something he had done earlier that day. He looked so contrite that I foolishly believed him and took a bite, only to realize something was very strange about it.” “What was it?” Frae asked, as if she could not imagine Jack doing something so awful. “He called it a ‘pimpleberry’, but it was actually a small skin of ink,” Adaira replied. “And it stained my teeth for a week and made me very ill.” “Is this true, Jack?” Mirin cried, setting her teacup down with a clatter. “‘Tis truth,” he confessed, and before any of the women could say another word, he took the plate and the spoon from Adaira and ate a piece of the pie. It was delicious, but only because he and Frae had found and harvested the berries and rolled out the dough and talked about swords and books and baby cows while they made it. He swallowed the sweetness and said, “I believe this one is exceptional, thanks to Frae.” Mirin bustled into the kitchen to cut a new slice for Adaira and find her a clean utensil, muttering about how the mainland must have robbed Jack of all manners. But Adaira didn’t seem to hear. She took the plate from his hands, as well as the spoon, and ate after him.

He ran long at the White House, and arrived late to his next meeting with Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan and Frank Ruggiero—their first major strategy session on Taliban talks after the secret meeting with A-Rod. She was waiting in her outer office, a spacious room paneled in white and gilt wood, with tasseled blue and pink curtains and an array of colorfully upholstered chairs and couches. In my time reporting to her later, I only ever saw Clinton take the couch, with guests of honor in the large chair kitty-corner to her. She’d left it open for him that day. “He came rushing in. . . . ” Clinton later said. “And, you know, he was saying ‘oh I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ ” He sat down heavily and shrugged off his coat, rattling off a litany of his latest meetings, including his stop-in at the White House. “That was typical Richard. It was, like, ‘I’m doing a million things and I’m trying to keep all the balls in the air,’ ” she remembered. As he was talking, a “scarlet red” flush went up his face, according to Clinton. He pressed his hands over his eyes, his chest heaving. “Richard, what’s the matter?” Clinton asked. “Something horrible is happening,” he said. A few minutes later, Holbrooke was in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, headed to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where Clinton had told her own internist to prepare the emergency room. In his typically brash style, he’d demanded that the ambulance take him to the more distant Sibley Memorial Hospital. Clinton overruled him. One of our deputies on the SRAP team, Dan Feldman, rode with him and held his hand. Feldman didn’t have his BlackBerry, so he scrawled notes on a State Department expense form for a dinner at Meiwah Restaurant as Holbrooke dictated messages and a doctor assessed him. The notes are a nonlinear stream of Holbrooke’s indomitable personality, slashed through with medical realities. “Call Eric in Axelrod’s office,” the first read. Nearby: “aortic dissection—type A . . . operation risk @ > 50 percent”—that would be chance of death. A series of messages for people in his life, again interrupted by his deteriorating condition: “S”—Secretary Clinton—“why always together for medical crises?” (The year before, he’d been with Clinton when she fell to the concrete floor of the State Department garage, fracturing her elbow.) “Kids—how much love them + stepkids” . . . “best staff ever” . . . “don’t let him die here” . . . “vascular surgery” . . . “no flow, no feeling legs” . . . “clot” . . . and then, again: “don’t let him die here want to die at home w/ his fam.” The seriousness of the situation fully dawning on him, Holbrooke turned to job succession: “Tell Frank”—Ruggiero—“he’s acting.” And finally: “I love so many people . . . I have a lot left to do . . . my career in public service is over.” Holbrooke cracked wise until they put him under for surgery. “Get me anything you need,” he demanded. “A pig’s heart. Dan’s heart.

Full round apple, peach, pear, blackberry. Each speaks life and death into the mouth. Look at the face of a child eating them. The tastes come from afar and slowly grow nameless on the tongue. Where there were words, discoveries flow, released from within the fruit. What we call apple—dare to say what it is, this sweetness which first condensed itself so that, in the tasting, it may burst forth and be known in all its meanings of sun and earth and here. How immense, the act and the pleasure of it.

We have one processor. We can’t do it.” “I think that when I’m sitting at my desk feverishly doing seventeen things at once that I’m being clever and efficient, but you’re saying I’m actually wasting my time?” “Yes, because when you’re moving from this project to this project, your mind flits back to the original project, and it can’t pick it up where it left off. So it has taketo take a few steps back and then ramp up again, and that’s where the productivity loss is.” This problem was, of course, exacerbated in the age of what had been dubbed the “info-blitzkrieg,” where it took superhuman strength to ignore the siren call of the latest tweet, or the blinking red light on the BlackBerry. Scientists had even come up with a term for this condition: “continuous partial attention.” It was a syndrome with which I was intimately familiar, even after all my meditating.

But Stanley persisted in the kitchen, performing the small yet demanding apprentice's tasks she set for him- removing the skin from piles of almonds, grating snowy hills of lemon zest, the nightly sweeping of the kitchen floor and sponging of metal shelves. He didn't seem to mind: every day after school, he'd lean over the counter, watching her experiment with combinations- shifting flavors like the beads in a kaleidoscope- burnt sugar, hibiscus, rum, espresso, pear: dessert as a metaphor for something unresolvable. It was nothing like the slapdashery of cooking. Baking, to Avis, was no less precise than chemistry: an exquisite transfiguration. Every night, she lingered in the kitchen, analyzing her work, jotting notes, describing the way ingredients nestled: a slim layer of black chocolate hidden at the bottom of a praline tart, the essence of lavender stirred into a bowl of preserved wild blueberries. Stanley listened to his mother think out loud: he asked her questions and made suggestions- like mounding lemon meringue between layers of crisp pecan wafers- such a success that her corporate customers ordered it for banquets and company retreats. On the day Avis is thinking of, she sat in the den where they watched TV, letting her hand swim over the silk of her daughter's hair, imagining a dessert pistou of blackberry, creme fraiche, and nutmeg, in which floated tiny vanilla croutons. Felice was her audience, Avis's picky eater- difficult to please. Her "favorites" changed capriciously and at times, it seemed, deliberately, so that after Avis set out what once had been, in Felice's words, "the best ever"- say, a miniature roulade Pavlova with billows of cream and fresh kumquat- Felice would announce that she was now "tired" of kumquats.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry. ― Robert Hass, from “Meditation at Lagunitas,” Praise ( ‎ Ecco, July 10, 1999)

You go to class and discuss famous poems. The poems are full of swans, gorse, blackberries, leopards, elderflowers, mountains, orchards, moonlight, wolves, nightingales, cherry blossoms, bog oak, lily-pads, honeybees. Even the brand-new ones are jam-packed with nature. It’s like the poets are not living in the same world as you. You put up your hand and say isn’t it weird that poets just keep going around noticing nature and not ever noticing that nature is shrinking? To read these poems you would think the world was as full of nature as it ever was even though in the last forty years so many animals and habitats have been wiped out. How come they don’t notice that? How come they don’t notice everything that’s been annihilated? If they’re so into noticing things? I look around and all I see is the world being ruined. If poems were true they’d just be about walking through a giant graveyard or a garbage dump. The only place you find nature is in poems, it’s total bullshit. Even the sensitive people are fucking liars, you say. No, you don’t, you sit there in silence like

I call this the Black 'n' Blue," she explained. "It's a freshly made pie with blackberries and blueberries and a buttery double crust. I'd say one piece will do the trick, but if you find yourself in a creative lull, I'd add a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top." Anna picked up a dessert neatly wrapped in plastic and tied with a bow. "Laughter and delight are guaranteed with this Mexican chocolate cinnamon roll.

Although corporate bosses were starting to embrace BlackBerry, Lazaridis and Balsillie knew they faced a challenge selling bulk orders to big businesses. Technology purchases were the domain of chief information officers (CIOs). These executives were conservative and frowned on technology that exposed internal communications. “The problem with going through IT is they had to approve everything. It would take a year,” says Lazaridis. “You had to test everything, approve it, and most of these [CIOs] didn’t want it anyway. It was just another thing to deal with. But once a CEO tried it, that was it.” The solution, Lazaridis and Balsillie decided, was an unorthodox plan to infiltrate Fortune 1000 companies. RIM made it easy for influential managers and executives to link the addictive BlackBerry system into their corporate e-mail without involving the IT department.

The meeting started well enough. Balsillie explained how BlackBerry could be synchronized with a user’s desktop computer calendar and contacts. You just have to put the device in this cradle, he said, pointing to a prototype. Normally, the cradle would have had a cable connecting it to the computer, but the cord was missing from the demonstration. One Intel executive, Sean Maloney, VP of worldwide sales, was confused. “What are you saying, how does it do that?” Maloney asked. Klimstra saw why the Intel executive was puzzled. He doesn’t realize there’s supposed to be a cable connecting the cradle to the computer, he thought. Balsillie appeared stumped too, saying nothing. To Klimstra, the lengthy silence that followed was agonizing. This must be my cue, he thought. Clearing his throat, Klimstra piped up: “That cradle is just a mock-up.” Maloney nodded as Klimstra explained it would normally have a cable attached. Balsillie turned to Klimstra. “Eric,” he said, growing cold with fury. “Don’t you ever, ever, ever, ever”—Klimstra’s stomach twisted with each “ever”—“interrupt me in a meeting again.” After an awkward silence, Balsillie continued the presentation. As they filed out after the meeting, Maloney’s eyes met Klimstra’s. The young evangelist could read the look: “Kid, I’m sorry if I got you fired.” Outside, Balsillie was unapologetic. “Never interrupt me when I’m in the zone,” he said. “I was very specific in directing them in a certain way and I didn’t want to go down any other path.” It wasn’t that Klimstra had said anything wrong. What bothered Balsillie was that he had said anything at all. “He could have been about to take us over a cliff” by inadvertently blurting out a corporate secret as he explained how the system worked, Balsillie says of his strict stick-to-the-script rule.

I had an expression: Never moon the gorilla,” Balsillie says. “Microsoft was the gorilla. We cut them by far the widest berth of anyone.” Balsillie’s strategy for dealing with Microsoft was to undersell RIM’s potential. Upon launching BlackBerry, he pitched the device to Microsoft as a pager-like service to promote the software giant’s corporate e-mail software, Exchange.

What we were showing was very futuristic,” Neale says. So futuristic no one visiting the enchanted forest realized the display was still a fantasy. None of the machines actually worked on Mobitex yet. The terminals were wired into a computer simulating radio transmissions.

If the iPhone gained traction, RIM’s senior executives believed, it would be with consumers who cared more about YouTube and other Internet escapes than efficiency and security. RIM’s core business customers valued BlackBerry’s secure and efficient communication systems. Offering mobile access to broader Internet content, says Mr. Conlee, “was not a space where we parked our business.

How did you two meet?” she asks. She tilts her head to the side. Something tells me that she already knows the story, but her husband has set aside his Blackberry and is listening now. Emily looks up at me and blinks her pretty brown eyes. “I went into his tattoo shop to get a tattoo.” She grins. “And he put the moves on me.” She nudges me in the side. “Can I tell them what happened next?” I can feel her laughter against my side. “She punched me in the face, Mrs. Madison.” I reach up and absently stroke across my nose. “He tried to put the moves on me, and I was angry.” She shrugs, but she’s still laughing. “I’ll never forget the look on his face.” “One minute I think I’m going to get to spend some time with a pretty girl,” I say. Emily squeezes my hand when I say “spend some time” because we both know I tried to lay her, just like I used to do with every woman I met. “And the next, she breaks my nose.” Emily laughs. She tugs my sleeve until I look down at her. “You never tried that move on anyone else, did you? After that?” “You cured me of that particular move,” I say. I laugh because it’s funny now. It wasn’t nearly as funny then. It fucking hurt. “Was it love at first sight?” her mom asks. I look down into Emily’s eyes. I was intrigued by her the moment I saw that tattoo she wanted. There was so much in that drawing that made me want to get to know her. But she wouldn’t let me. “It was almost instantaneous for me,” I admit. Trip jabs a finger toward his throat like he wants to make himself throw up, but I think I’m the only one who sees it. “It took me a little longer,” she says.

Hillary stopped. A cell phone vibrated in her pantsuit jacket pocket. She had earlier obtained a spare cell phone in case of an emergency, having left her BlackBerry back in Whitehaven to prevent it from being tracked. Somehow, she knew she wasn’t going to like what the other person on the line would say. “—llary,” The voice of President Obama came through as she pressed the spare cell phone to her ear. “I gave you express orders—

Blackberry Beauty has all eyes on her. She slowly raises her head and smiles at the onlookers. Her walk is still graceful and delicate. Her voice is still a whisper. She says, “I am the beautiful Blackberry. I was made to be way too dark because I am ripe. My beauty comes from my blackberry skin and your ugliness comes from your unripe ones.

tough message of Lolly Willowes is that women turn witch to show their ‘scorn of pretending life’s a safe business’. Laura comes to feel part of a community of angry, outsider women: ‘When I think of witches,’ she says, ‘I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded … Nothing for them except subjugation and plaiting their hair … But they must be active.’ Yes we must.

Song" Listen: there was a goat’s head hanging by ropes in a tree. All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat’s head Swayed back and forth, and from far off it shone faintly The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away Beside which the goat’s headless body lay. Some boys Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined. The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything. The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks. The head called to the body. The body to the head. They missed each other. The missing grew large between them, Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills. Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder, Sang long and low until the morning light came up over The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped…. The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after The night’s bush of stars, because the goat’s silky hair Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit. The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train’s horn Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats. She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming Made it so. But one night the girl didn’t hear the train’s horn, And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain Stripping the branches of fruit. She knew that someone Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat’s body By the high tracks, the flies already filling their soft bottles At the goat’s torn neck. Then somebody found the head Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take These things away so that the girl would not see them. They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat. They hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing but a joke…. But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job, Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark. What they didn’t know was that the goat’s head was already Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn’t know Was that the goat’s head would go on singing, just for them, Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen, Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song, The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother’s call. Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness. Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Song. (• BOA Editions; 1st edition 1995)

And now tell me"-in the end I could not restrain myself "how did you manage to know?" "My good Adso," my master said, "during our whole journey I have been teaching you to recognize the evidence through which the world speaks to us like a great book. Alanus de Insulis said that omnis mundi creatura quasi liber et pictura nobis est in speculum and he was thinking of the endless array of symbols with which God, through His creatures, speaks to us of the eternal life. But the universe is even more talkative than Alanus thought, and it speaks not only of the ultimate things (which it does always in an obscure fashion) but also of closer things, and then it speaks quite clearly. I am almost embarrassed to repeat to you what you should know. At the cross roads, on the still-fresh snow, a horse's hoofprints stood out very neatly, heading for the path to our left. Neatly spaced, those marks said that the hoof was small and round, and the gallop quite regular --and so I deduced the nature of the horse, and the fact that it was not running wildly like a crazed animal. At the point where the pines formed a natural roof, some twigs had been freshly broken off at a height of five feet. One of the blackberry bushes where the animal must have turned to take the path to his right, proudly switching his handsome tail, still held some long black horsehairs in its brambles. ... You will not say, finally, that you do not know that path leads to the dungheap, because as we passed the lower curve we saw the spill of waste down the sheer cliff below the great south tower, staining the snow; and from the situation of the crossroads, the path could only lead in that direction." "Yes," I said, "but what about the small head, the sharp ears, the big eyes...?" "I am not sure he has those features, but no doubt the monks firmly believe he does. As Isidore of Seville said, the beauty of a horse requires that the head be small, siccum prope pelle ossibus adhae rente, short and pointed ears, big eyes, flaring nostrils, erect neck, thick mane and tail, round and solid hoofs.' If the horse whose passing I inferred had not really been the finest of the stables, stableboys would have been out chasing him, but instead, the cellarer in person had undertaken the search. And a monk who considers a horse excel lent, whatever his natural forms, can only see him as the auctoritates have described him, especially if" and here he smiled slyly in my direction-"the describer is a learned Benedictine." "All right," I said, "but why Brunellus?" "May the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind, son!" my master exclaimed. "What other name could he possibly have? Why, even the great Buridan, who is about to become rector in Paris, when he wants to use a horse in one of his logical examples, always calls it Brunellus This was my master's way. He not only knew how to read the great book of nature, but also knew the way monks read the books of Scripture, and how they thought through them. A gift that, as we shall see, was to prove useful to him in the days to follow. His explanation, moreover, seemed to me at that point so obvious that my humiliation at not having discovered it by myself was surpassed only by my pride at now being a sharer in it, and I was almost congratulat ing myself on my insight. Such is the power of the truth that, like good, it is its own propagator. And praised be the holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ for this splendid revelation I was granted.

Aunt Jane was in perfect correspondence with her environment. She wore a purple calico dress, rather short and scant; a gingham apron, with a capacious pocket, in which she always carried knitting: or some other "handy work"; a white handkerchief was laid primly around the wrinkled throat and fastened with a pin containing a lock of gray hair; her cap was of black lace and lutestring ribbon, not one of the butterfly affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh was as clear and joyous as a young girl's. "Yes, I'm a-piecin' quilts again," she said, snipping away at the bits of calico in her lap. "I did say I was done with that sort o' work; but this mornin' I was rummagin' around up in the garret, and I come across this bundle of pieces, and thinks I, 'I reckon it's intended for me to piece one more quilt before I die;' I must 'a' put 'em there thirty years ago and clean forgot 'em, and I've been settin' here all the evenin' cuttin' 'em and thinkin' about old times. "Jest feel o' that," she continued, tossing some scraps into my lap. "There ain't any such caliker nowadays. This ain't your five-cent stuff that fades in the first washin' and wears out in the second. A caliker dress was somethin' worth buyin' and worth makin' up in them days. That blue-flowered piece was a dress I got the spring before Abram died. When I put on mournin' it was as good as new, and I give it to sister Mary. That one with the green ground and white figger was my niece Rebecca's. She wore it for the first time to the County Fair the year I took the premium on my salt-risin' bread and sponge cake. This black-an' white piece Sally Ann Flint give me. I ricollect 'twas in blackberry time, and I'd been out in the big pasture pickin' some for supper, and I stopped in at Sally Ann's for a drink o' water on my way back. She was cuttin' out this dress.

He’s holding a white box wrapped with string, and he slides it onto the windowsill. The surface is slightly damp. “What’s this?” I ask. “I remember you saying you liked lavender cake, and I saw some in the bakery.” He takes the spyglass from me and starts staring out the window. I take the box and sit on the bed, scooting back cross-legged. I pull the string on the box, unwrapping it. “You got me cake?” I’m still confused. This doesn’t square with his rant about not liking me. “Why?” “Because you said you liked it. You told me you ordered the lavender cake, but you got blackberry.” I stare at his large back, stunned. “That was six months ago.” “Right.

Mona rushed through the shower and selected her best dress, a slinky black wraparound number that she ordered on a whim, online. She piled her hair into a messy up do and lined her eyes in black liner with grey eye shadow for a smoky effect. Berry lip stick, dangly silver earrings and a spritz of perfume completed the look. Just as she was slipping on a pair of strappy heels, her cell phone buzzed. It was her Aunt Bee calling. “Darling! The BOGO sale is a great success. Alana says you almost brought the Frugalicious server down!” “I did!” “Blackberry ginger jam is a knock out!” “Well, it may have been knocked off too.” “Whatdya mean?” Aunt Bee asked. “Lacey MacInroy got hold of my recipes, and I understand she’s preparing my jam for the As You Slice It gala reception tonight.” “Why that little rat!” Aunt Bee said. “Are you going to the reception?” Mona asked. “No way! Alexander has never honored, not one of the Coupon Clipper’s requests for a sale. Are you going?” Aunt Bee asked. “Yup. On my way now. Wish me luck,” and as Mona hung up, she heard Aunt Bee squeak out, “Luck with what?” Mona admired her reflection in the mirror and declared herself ready for action. Grabbing her car keys and purse, she nearly stumbled, racing down the front steps. Driving into town, she felt a feeling she had not experienced in a long time, bravery. This new-found liberation from caring about what anyone thought about her was freeing. She felt like her old self once more, that girl she used to be the

We shall never know whether thought is an imposture, and that is providential. 'The people is, in some cases, so enlightened that it is no longer indifferent to anything' (Montesquieu). That is indeed the end point: when there is no longer anything about which there is nothing to say. Verdict of a Chinese writer on a monstrous tree that is at once a blackberry and a bamboo: 'any disorder appearing in nature is the sign of a hidden disorder in the administration of the Empire ... Order restored in nature clearly indicates satisfaction in heaven.' Our current blossoming of monsters and clones, hybrids and chimeras, our systematic mixing of mores and cultures, sexes and genes, cannot but attest to an irremediable disorder in the highest spheres of the Empire.

Exactly. Don't you see, they'd altered what rabbits do naturally because they taught they could do better? And if they altered their ways, so can we if we like. You say buck rabbits don't dig. Nor they do. But they could, if they wanted to. Suppose we had deep, comfortable burrows to sleep in? To be out of bad weather and underground at night? Then we would be safe. And there is nothing to stop us having them, except that buck rabbits won't dig. Not can't -- won't.' - Blackberry

Meditation at Lagunitas" All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking. The idea, for example, that each particular erases the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown- faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch is, by his presence, some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light. Or the other notion that, because there is in this world no one thing to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds, a word is elegy to what it signifies. We talked about it late last night and in the voice of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone almost querulous. After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves: justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman I made love to and I remembered how, holding her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, I felt a violent wonder at her presence like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her. Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances. I must have been the same to her. But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread, the thing her father said that hurt her, what she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous as words, days that are the good flesh continuing. Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Let’s raise the stakes. It requires more courage to say “I don’t read to my children because it’s not a priority.” If it’s true that it’s not a priority, then it’s true—even if that’s not politically correct to say. Be honest. Own that truth. Maybe you don’t enjoy reading with children. Maybe they don’t enjoy reading with you. Maybe you’d prefer to check your BlackBerry, or maybe you’d prefer to watch America’s Next Top Model. Maybe your spouse is already doing a bang-up job in this department. Maybe you honestly do think that the income you provide, the service you do for society, or the joy you gain by working during the entirety of your children’s waking hours is a bigger priority than interacting with them. There could be many good reasons for this. There are probably some bad ones, too. Nonetheless, it is a choice, and not a matter of lacking time. When you say “I don’t have time,” this puts the responsibility on someone else: a boss, a client, your family. Or else it puts the responsibility on some nebulous force: capitalism, society, the monster under the bed.

There’s nothing more rude than having a conversation and having someone’s BlackBerry go off and they say nothing,” Boerner said. “And they just pull it out, read it, respond, and then come back to the conversation. That’s slappable rude.

Growing heated as he talks about the lost opportunity, Balsillie stops and bows his head. Rubbing a clenched fist back and forth across his forehead, as if trying to remove some hidden stain, he ends the conversation. “I must not go back to the life of commerce,” he says.

It is all right,” the mother said, cheerily; “I noticed that your tent door was tied early in the evening, and did not see you untie it; and I was a little afraid you had deserted us and run home.” “I would not do that without telling you, and saying good-bye,” he answered gently, and some way his voice seemed more tender than Dilly had ever noticed before. He lifted Effie, whose blackberries were gone, from her chair, and gave her such a frolic that she shouted for joy, then putting her on Dilly’s shoulder, walked away with his mother’s hand drawn through his arm, and a happy look on her face; a look which, while it lasted, nearly always hid the wrinkles which were gathering there.

Shortly after Lazaridis decided to cut his ties to RIM, he drove to a Waterloo electronics store. Preparing for what he regarded as an unthinkable future without keyboard BlackBerrys, Lazaridis emptied the store’s shelves of BlackBerrys, filling a large box with his purchases. “The most frightening thought,” he says, “was that I wouldn’t have a BlackBerry.

As Ross entered the kitchen, he saw Ernest sitting at the scrubbed wooden table. The boy wolfed down a plate of breakfast as if it were the first decent meal he'd had in months. Sophia stood at the range with the scrawny cook-maid, apparently showing her how to prepare the morning's fare. "Turn them like this," Sophia was saying, expertly flipping a row of little cakes on a griddle pan. The kitchen atmosphere was especially fragrant today, spiced with frying bacon, coffee, and sizzling batter. Sophia looked fresh and wholesome, the trim curves of her figure outlined by a white apron that covered her charcoal-gray dress. Her gleaming hair was pinned in a coil at the top of her head and tied with a blue ribbon. As she saw him standing in the doorway, a smile lit her sapphire eyes, and she was so dazzlingly pretty that Ross felt a painful jab low in his stomach. "Good morning, Sir Ross," she said. "Will you have some breakfast?" "No, thank you," he replied automatically. "Only a jug of coffee. I never..." He paused as the cook set a platter on the table. It was piled with steaming batter cakes sitting in a pool of blackberry sauce. He had a special fondness for blackberries. "Just one or two?" Sophia coaxed. Abruptly it became less important that he adhere to his usual habits. Perhaps he could make time for a little breakfast, Ross reasoned. A five-minute delay would make no difference in his schedule. He found himself seated at the table facing a plate heaped with cakes, crisp bacon, and coddled eggs. Sophia filled a mug with steaming black coffee, and smiled at him once more before resuming her place at the range with Eliza. Ross picked up his fork and stared at it as if he didn't quite know what to do with it. "They're good, sir," Ernest ventured, stuffing his mouth so greedily that it seemed likely he would choke. Ross took a bite of the fruit-soaked cake and washed it down with a swallow of hot coffee. As he continued to eat, he felt an unfamiliar sense of well-being. Good God, it had been a long time since he'd had anything other than Eliza's wretched concoctions. For the next few minutes Ross ate until the platter of cakes was demolished. Sophia came now and then to refill his cup or offer more bacon. The cozy warmth of the kitchen and the sight of Sophia as she moved about the room caused a tide of unwilling pleasure inside him.

The second main argument to support the idea that simple living enhances our capacity for pleasure is that it encourages us to attend to and appreciate the inexhaustible wealth of interesting, beautiful, marvelous, and thought-provoking phenomena continually presented to us by the everyday world that is close at hand. As Emerson says: “Things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. . . . This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.”47 Here, as elsewhere, Emerson elegantly articulates the theory, but it is his friend Thoreau who really puts it into practice. Walden is, among other things, a celebration of the unexotic and a demonstration that the overlooked wonders of the commonplace can be a source of profound pleasure readily available to all. This idea is hardly unique to Emerson and Thoreau, of course, and, like most of the ideas we are considering, it goes back to ancient times. Marcus Aurelius reflects that “anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure,” from the jaws of animals to the “distinct beauty of old age in men and women.”48 “Even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charms, its own attractiveness,” he observes, citing as an example the way loaves split open on top when baking.49 With respect to the natural world, celebrating the ordinary has been a staple of literature and art at least since the advent of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century. Wordsworth wrote three separate poems in praise of the lesser celandine, a common wildflower; painters like van Gogh discover whole worlds of beauty and significance in a pair of peasant boots; many of the finest poems crafted by poets like Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, and Seamus Heaney take as their subject the most mundane objects, activities, or events and find in these something worth lingering over and commemorating in verse: a singing thrush, a snowy woods, a fish, some chilled plums, a patch of mint. Of course, artists have also celebrated the extraordinary, the exotic, and the magnificent. Homer gushes over the splendors of Menelaus’s palace; Gauguin left his home country to seek inspiration in the more exotic environment of Tahiti; Handel composed pieces to accompany momentous ceremonial occasions. Yet it is striking that a humble activity like picking blackberries—the subject of well-known poems by, among others, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Richard Wilbur—appears to be more inspirational to modern poets, more charged with interest and significance, than, say, the construction of the world’s tallest building, the Oscar ceremonies, the space program, or the discovery of DNA’s molecular structure. One might even say that it has now become an established function of art to help us discover the remarkable in the commonplace

WHOM DO YOU SPEND MORE time with: your best friend or your Blackberry? Thought so. Technology allows you to be constantly connected, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay available to everyone at all times. To give yourself time to recharge, get in the habit of setting aside time to literally unplug, says Linda Lantieri, director of The Inner Resilience Program, an organization focused on building emotional strength in school teachers. “I try not to turn on my computer at least one day a weekend,” says Lantieri. “At the end of a stressful week, I need to shift out of work mode in order to be present during my time off.” If taking a technology break isn’t an option, set some boundaries for yourself, like not viewing work e-mails after 8 p.m., or avoiding social networking sites on the weekend. By limiting your online distractions, you’ll be better able to engage with the friends and family who are physically—not virtually—with you, and make time for activities you enjoy, like reading or playing a sport, which help you recharge and beat burnout.

I keep having dreams about a lad I met back when I was seventeen,” Bliss was saying. “Perfectly innocent afternoon in its way. One of those endless summers. You never remember it raining in your past, do you? Just summers. We collected blackberries. Then we sat on the beach and talked. He took his shirt off. I kept mine on. I was too ashamed of my body to do the same. He was beautiful. So piss-elegant in his way. All cheek-bones and wrists. Tanned hairless skin. I wanted to be the centre of his world forever.” Bliss smiled, his eyes somewhere in the distance, away from the heat of all these people and their mindless chatter. “It was just a kiss. That was all it was. A sweet, sweet kiss… I never saw him again, even though I went back to that place every afternoon for a week.” His eyes refocused and he glanced at Malcolm, at Oliver. His face was hard, his voice brittle. “I found out he’d been hit by a postal van not two hours after we’d kissed. Died later that night in hospital. I overheard my mother talking about it. She said his name and I had to run away to the beach. I wept for hours. All gone, gone, gone.