Bleed Yellow Quotes

Ready to put your claws where your mouth is, or are you going to cringe behind the big boys and yip all day?" His eyes flared yellow "Is that a challenge?" "Yes it is.

I also stole a small yellow doughnut from the box of Duncan's doughnuts in the rec room and fed it to the attack poodle in my office. He made a great production of it. First, he growled at the doughnut, just to show it who was boss. Then he nudged it with his nose. Then he licked it, until finally he snagged it into his mouth and chomped it with great pleasure, dropping crumbs all over the carpet.

Our love is not perfect. Our love is fucked up and bleeding, but it's the most precious thing in my entire life.

The purple butterflies fluttered about with gold dust on their wings, visiting each flower in turn; the little lizards crept out of the crevices of the wall, and lay basking in the white glare; and the pomegranates split and cracked with the heat, and showed their bleeding red hearts. Even the pale yellow lemons, that hung in such profusion from the mouldering trellis and along the dim arcades, seemed to have caught a richer colour from the wonderful sunlight, and the magnolia trees opened their great globe-like blossoms of folded ivory, and filled the air with a sweet heavy perfume.

My voice is blind, my hearing is mute, my sight is deaf. Art is science, mathematics is conversation, and music is something that bleeds. I am so far away that I am inside myself. I barely notice colors unless I taste them. Not the yellows or the greens. I taste the deeper blues. The darker reds.

Every now and then a green dot shifted to yellow. A soldier down, their armored suits detecting the injuries or death that rendered them combat ineffective. Combat ineffective. Such a nice euphemism for one of his kids bleeding out.

More and more the world resembles an entomologist's dream. The earth is moving out of its orbit, the axis has shifted; from the north the snow blows down in huge knife-blue drifts. A new ice age is setting in, the transverse sutures are closing up and everywhere throughout the corn belt the fetal world is dying, turning to dead mastoid. Inch by inch the deltas are drying out and the river beds are smooth as glass. A new day is dawning, a metallurgical day, when the earth shall clink with showers of bright yellow ore. As the thermometer drops, the form of the world grows blurred; osmosis there still is, and here and there articulation, but at the periphery the veins are all varicose, at the periphery the light waves bend and the sun bleeds like a broken rectum.

Sometimes, drunk, I ruminate on the state of my liver, and think of all the cirrhotics I have watched turn yellow and die. They either bleed out, raving, coughing up and drowning in blood from ruptured esophageal veins, or, in coma, they slip away, slip blissfully away down the yellow-brick ammonia-scented road to oblivion.

Like steaming droppings in an old dovecote A thousand Dreams within me gently burn: And at times my sad heart is like sapwood Bleeding dark yellow gold where a branch is torn.

Asita had been raised on this knowledge. He knew also that all these planes merged into each other like wet dyed cloths hung too close on the line, the blue bleeding into the red, the red into the saffron yellow. Lokas were apart and together at the same time. Demons could move among humans, and often did. The re-verse, a mortal visiting the demon loka, was much rarer.

Song for the Last Act Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its darkening frame Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame, Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook. Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease The lead and marble figures watch the show Of yet another summer loath to go Although the scythes hang in the apple trees. Now that I have your face by heart, I look. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read In the black chords upon a dulling page Music that is not meant for music's cage, Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed. The staves are shuttled over with a stark Unprinted silence. In a double dream I must spell out the storm, the running stream. The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see The wharves with their great ships and architraves; The rigging and the cargo and the slaves On a strange beach under a broken sky. O not departure, but a voyage done! The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

If you challenge someone, we can’t interfere,” Barabas murmured. “Remember, don’t provoke them.” I kicked the door open and walked in. Fourteen pairs of eyes glared at me from around the table. Beyond the alpha, fourteen other shapeshifters waited—the betas of each clan, invited as a courtesy. I looked from face to face. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the male voice said. Third man on the left. Tall, wiry. Sontag. I looked at him. “Ready to put your claws where your mouth is, or are you going to cringe behind the big boys and yip all day?” His eyes flared with yellow. “Is that a challenge?” “Yes, it is.

heart bleeds into itself; the heart muscle softens and has hemorrhages into its chambers, and blood squeezes out of the heart muscle as the heart beats, and it floods the chest cavity. The brain becomes clogged with dead blood cells, a condition known as sludging of the brain. Ebola attacks the lining of the eyeball, and the eyeballs may fill up with blood: you may go blind. Droplets of blood stand out on the eyelids: you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate. You may have a hemispherical stroke, in which one whole side of the body is paralyzed, which is invariably fatal in a case of Ebola. Even while the body’s internal organs are becoming plugged with coagulated blood, the blood that streams out of the body cannot clot; it resembles whey being squeezed out of curds. The blood has been stripped of its clotting factors. If you put the runny Ebola blood in a test tube and look at it, you see that the blood is destroyed. Its red cells are broken and dead. The blood looks as if it has been buzzed in an electric blender. Ebola kills a great deal of tissue while the host is still alive. It triggers a creeping, spotty necrosis that spreads through all the internal organs. The liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquefy, and then it cracks apart. The cracks run across the liver and deep inside it, and the liver completely dies and goes putrid. The kidneys become jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. As the kidneys fail, the blood becomes toxic with urine. The spleen turns into a single huge, hard blood clot the size of a

Focused on nothing, open to everything- it's a state I fall into, where all my senses swap. My voice is blind, my hearing is mute, my sight is deaf. Art is science, mathematics is conversation, and music is something that bleeds. I am so far away that I'm inside myself. I barely notice colors unless I taste them. Not the yellows or the greens. I taste the deeper blues. The darker reds.

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

If the seasons bleed into each other like a watercolor painting, it means not enough fish and berries to last the winter, not enough wood chopped for the stove, not enough meat in the freezer. One year winter came so fast and so hard, the leaves on the birch trees didn't even have time to turn yellow and fall off; they froze solid green on the branches. They clung there for months on skinny skeleton arms, the color so blindingly wrong it was creepy. Every year it's a race between the seasons, and that year fall lost.

I was too awestruck to speak. Vines of bright pink flowers danced over a wrought-iron arbor. I recognized them immediately as the very same variety, bougainvillea, that grew in Greenhouse No. 4 at the New York Botanical Garden. Just beyond, two potted trees stood at attention- a lemon, its shiny yellow globes glistening in the sunlight, and what looked like an orange, studded with the tiniest fruit I'd ever seen. "What is this?" I asked, fascinated. "A kumquat," she said. "Lady Anna used to pick them for the children." She reached out to pluck one of the tiny oranges from the tree. "Here, try for yourself." I held it in my hand, admiring its smooth, shiny skin. I sank my teeth into the flesh of the fruit. Its thin skin disintegrated in my mouth, releasing a burst of sweet and sour that made my eyes shoot open and a smile spread across my face. "Oh, my," I said. "I've never had anything like it." Mrs. Dilloway nodded. "You should try the clementines, then. They're Persian." I walked a few paces further, admiring the potted orchids- at least a hundred specimens, so exquisite they looked like Southern belles in hoop skirts. On the far wall were variegated ferns, bleeding hearts, and a lilac tree I could smell from the other end of the room.

Ode to the West Wind I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! II Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

The souvenir hunters were prowling among them, carefully ripping insignia off tunics, slipping rings off fingers, or pistols off belts. There was Souvenirs himself, stepping gingerly from corpse to corpse, armed with his plyers and a dentist flashlight that he had had the forethought to purchase in Melbourne. I stood among the heaps of dead, they lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels, and the substance had leapt out. The mysteries of the universe had once inhabited these lulling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different then, now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul, does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. For this red and yellow lump I look down upon this instant was once a man. And the thing that energized him, the word that gave to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, the word from a higher word this cannot have been obliterated by a quarter inch of heated metal. The mystery of the universe has departed him and it is no good to say that the riddle is solved. The mystery is over because it has changed residences. The thing that shaped the flare of that nostril, that broadened that arm now bleeding, that wrought so fine that limply lying hand, that thing exists still and has still the power to flare that nostril, to bend that arm to clench that fist exactly as it did before. Because it is gone you cannot say it will not return; even though you may say it has never yet returned-you cannot say that it will not. It is blasphemy to say a bit of metal has destroyed life, just as it is presumptuous to say that because life has disappeared it has been destroyed. I stood among the heaps of the dead and I knew-no, I felt that death is only a sound we make to signify the Thing we do not know.

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

He was quiet as he pulled out his phone and began typing something in. I watched as he searched feminine products, and boxes of tampons, pads, and liners came up in various sizes and brands. “Fucking hell… why are there so many flavours?” I stilled on the spot, my eyes going wide as I stared at him, wondering if I heard him correctly. “I beg your pardon?” “Look here!” He held up his phone, showing a picture of a box marked green for small. “I think this means mint or lime… there’s also yellow. Is that lemon? Or do you want oranges?” He scrolled through, looking at the different sizes, and it took literally every ounce of self-control I had to not burst into laughter as he continued his search. “What flavour should I ask for, love?

bleeds into itself; the heart muscle softens and has hemorrhages into its chambers, and blood squeezes out of the heart muscle as the heart beats, and it floods the chest cavity. The brain becomes clogged with dead blood cells, a condition known as sludging of the brain. Ebola attacks the lining of the eyeball, and the eyeballs may fill up with blood: you may go blind. Droplets of blood stand out on the eyelids: you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate. You may have a hemispherical stroke, in which one whole side of the body is paralyzed, which is invariably fatal in a case of Ebola. Even while the body’s internal organs are becoming plugged with coagulated blood, the blood that streams out of the body cannot clot; it resembles whey being squeezed out of curds. The blood has been stripped of its clotting factors. If you put the runny Ebola blood in a test tube and look at it, you see that the blood is destroyed. Its red cells are broken and dead. The blood looks as if it has been buzzed in an electric blender. Ebola kills a great deal of tissue while the host is still alive. It triggers a creeping, spotty necrosis that spreads through all the internal organs. The liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquefy, and then it cracks apart. The cracks run across the liver and deep inside it, and the liver completely dies and goes putrid. The kidneys become jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. As the kidneys fail, the blood becomes toxic with urine. The spleen turns into a single huge, hard blood clot the size of a

Gritting my teeth as if it requires actual physical strength, I push the memory of him dying in my arms down, deep down. It almost seems to fight me, to want to surge into the forefront of my mind, and I sigh. Long ago I came to the realization that painful memories are persistent. The agony of them stays with you much longer, sharper, and clearer than sweet memories, that soften and assume a hazy, rosy glow in your mind, almost as if they have been airbrushed. Remembrance of pain is different; there is no muting of colors, no blurring of edges. No, its colors remain stark and bold, a palette of vibrant primary reds, blues, and yellows; its edges stay defined and razor sharp. Years later it can still cut you as deeply, make you bleed as profusely, as the day it was formed. FROM AN UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRRESS

She didn't look up, her gaze focused entirely on the paper before her as she drew what looked like a wing. He picked up one of the papers from the floor, and on it was a butterfly, the colors a blending of vibrant yellows and oranges. He held out the paper. "What's this one called?" "Golden Shimmer," she said. "She loves the sunlight." He picked up a picture of a light-purple butterfly with a string of pearls around her neck. "And this one?" "Lavender Lace. She has the power to heal all sorts of wounds." He scanned the room, all the pictures on the floor. "Do they each have a name?" Finally she looked at him, her bright-blue eyes meeting his. "Of course." And he realized with a pang of sadness that these were Libby's friends for life. "They are beautiful." A glint of a smile. "Thank you." He picked up another butterfly, this one a dark violet shade, a silver streak bleeding across the edge of its wings. "What is she called?" "Silver Shadow." "Does she have a story?" Libby's smile faded. "She's lost and can't seem to find her way home.

Song for the Last Act Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its darkening frame Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame, Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook. Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease The lead and marble figures watch the show Of yet another summer loath to go Although the scythes hang in the apple trees. Now that I have your face by heart, I look. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read In the black chords upon a dulling page Music that is not meant for music's cage, Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed. The staves are shuttled over with a stark Unprinted silence. In a double dream I must spell out the storm, the running stream. The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark. Now that I have your voice by heart, I read. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see The wharves with their great ships and architraves; The rigging and the cargo and the slaves On a strange beach under a broken sky. O not departure, but a voyage done! The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun. Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

When I was nineteen years old, I discovered a collection of books in the Harvard library written by Jacob Boehme. Do you know of him?" Naturally she knew of him. She had her own copies of these works in the White Acre library. She had read Boehme, though she never admired him. Jacob Boehme was a sixteenth-century cobbler from Germany who had mystical visions about plants. Many people considered him an early botanist. Alma's mother, on the other hand, had considered him a cesspool of residual medieval superstition. So there was considerable conflict of opinion surrounding Jacob Boehme. The old cobbler had believed in something he called "the signature of all things"- namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator's love. That is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver-shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. 'Polygonum,' with its spattering of blood-red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh.

I stood among the heaps of dead. They lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels and the substance had leaked out. The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different, then. Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul — does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. For this red-and-yellow lump I look down upon this instant was once a man, and the thing that energized him, the Word that gave “to airy nothing a local habitation and a name,” the Word from a higher Word — this cannot have been obliterated by a quarter-inch of heated metal. The mystery of the universe has departed him, and it is no good to say that the riddle is solved, the mystery is over — because it has changed residences. The thing that shaped the flare of that nostril, that broadened that arm now bleeding, that wrought so fine that limply lying hand — that thing exists still, and has still the power to flare that nostril, to bend that arm, to clench that fist exactly as it did before. Because it is gone you cannot say it will not return; even though you may say it has never yet returned — you cannot say that it will not. It is blasphemy to say a bit of metal has destroyed life, just as it is presumptuous to say that because life has disappeared it has been destroyed. I stood among the heaps of the dead and I knew — no, I felt that death is only a sound we make to signify the Thing we do not know.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha’pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with—oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all!—the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it! It is lumber, man—all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness—no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots. Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life’s sunshine—time to listen to the Æolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us—time to—

Mike continued to walk unhurriedly toward the crowd until he loomed up in the stereo tank in life size, as if he were in the room with his water brothers. He stopped on the grass verge in front of the hotel, a few feet from the crowd. "You called me?" He was answered with a growl. The sky held scattered clouds; at that instant the sun came out from behind one and a shaft of golden light hit him. His clothes vanished. He stood before them, a golden youth, clothed only in his own beauty, beauty that made Jubal's heart ache, thinking that Michelangelo in his ancient years would have climbed down from his high scaffolding to record it for generations unborn. Mike said gently, "Look at me. I am a son of man." . . . . "God damn you!" A half brick caught Mike in the ribs. He turned his face slightly toward his assailant. "But you yourself are God. You can damn only yourself and you can never escape yourself." "Blasphemer!" A rock caught him just over his left eye and blood welled forth. Mike said calmly, "In fighting me, you fight yourself... for Thou art God and I am God * . . and all that groks is God-there is no other." More rocks hit him, from various directions; he began to bleed in several places. "Hear the Truth. You need not hate, you need not fight, you need not fear. I offer you the water of life-" Suddenly his hand held a tumbler of water, sparkling in the sunlight. "-and you may share it whenever you so will . . . and walk in peace and love and happiness together." A rock caught the glass and shattered it. Another struck him in the mouth. Through bruised and bleeding lips he smiled at them, looking straight into the camera with an expression of yearning tenderness on his face. Some trick of sunlight and stereo formed a golden halo back of his head. "Oh my brothers, I love you so! Drink deep. Share and grow closer without end. Thou art God." Jubal whispered it back to him. . . . "Lynch him! Give the bastard a nigger necktie!" A heavy-gauge shotgun blasted at close range and Mike's right arm was struck off at the elbow and fell. It floated gently down, then came to rest on the cool grasses, its hand curved open in invitation. "Give him the other barrel, Shortie-and aim closer!" The crowd laughed and applauded. A brick smashed Mike's nose and more rocks gave him a crown of blood. "The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control yourself. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes." Another shotgun blast was followed by two more shots. One shot, a forty-five slug, hit Mike over the heart, shattering the sixth rib near the sternum and making a large wound; the buckshot and the other slug sheered through his left tibia five inches below the patella and left the fibula sticking out at an angle, broken and white against the yellow and red of the wound. Mike staggered slightly and laughed, went on talking, his words clear and unhurried. "Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened." "God damn it-let's stop this taking the Name of the Lord in vain!"- "Come on, men! Let's finish him!" The mob surged forward, led by one bold with a club; they were on him with rocks and fists, and then with feet as he went down. He went on talking while they kicked his ribs in and smashed his golden body, broke his bones and tore an ear loose. At last someone called out, "Back away a little so we can get the gasoline on him!" The mob opened up a little at that waning and the camera zoomed to pick up his face and shoulders. The Man from Mars smiled at his brothers, said once more, softly and clearly, "I love you." An incautious grasshopper came whirring to a landing on the grass a few inches from his face; Mike turned his head, looked at it as it stared back at him. "Thou art God," he said happily and discorporated.

Death was a constant fact of life. The reaper struck with fire and drowning; typhus, malaria, yellow fever, and a host of other diseases; accidents that ranged from the swift shock of a horse’s kick to a slow-spreading infection from a cut finger; and suicide and murder. More than one-fifth of the children born died before their first birthday; at birth the average life expectancy for an adult was little more than forty.6 Medicine at best could offer a patient little help and at worst was lethal, an excruciating matter of bleeding, blistering, and purging with potions such as laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol.

Near my feet is a glowing archway. The light is white and shimmery, like iridescent glitter, and it’s so tall the top nearly brushes the ceiling. Inside, instead of seeing the cement wall of the basement, I’m looking at evenly spaced wooden pillars and a reed-mat floor. Standing on that mat is a woman with curves that would make a Playboy model jealous. She’s wearing a long, butter yellow dress, and her white hair hangs down to her waist. She looks like an angel when she smiles at me, holding out her hands. “Hudson, come with me.” Her voice reminds me of the breeze rustling through the trees near the lake. Soft and subtle and calming. “Let me help you.” Did I die? Maybe the scratch on my side got infected. Maybe I’ve been slowly bleeding to death from internal injuries for the past week. Who knows? If this is death, if she’s what’s waiting for me on the other side, then fuck it. I’m letting go.

Now one of the other students flew into her hut with such velocity that a poster of Bal Thackeray, Shiv Sena’s aging founder, fluttered off its tack on the wall. “Devo! You’re early!” Manju protested. “And you forgot to take off your shoes!” Her eyes then moved from the mud tracks on the floor to his face, which was covered in blood. “Oh,” the boy said, holding his head. “A taxi …” Annawadi kids were always getting hit on the chaotic roads—usually, while crossing a treacherous intersection to get to Marol Municipal School. New drivers talking on new cellphones could be a lethal combination. Manju leaped up, grabbed the turmeric by the stove, and poured the yellow powder over Devo’s head. Turmeric, as good for wounds as for brides before weddings. She rubbed the spice until it blended with the blood into a bright orange paste, then pressed down hard. She was checking to see if she’d stanched the bleeding when Devo’s one-eyed, widowed mother came through the door, brandishing a foot-long piece of metal.

Sharp-angled blades of sunlight sliced open the heavy green canopy above, bleeding lemon-yellow splashes of warmth and light into the cool shade of my private oasis. Here,

Droplets of blood stand out on the eyelids: you may weep blood. The blood runs from your eyes down your cheeks and refuses to coagulate. You may have a hemispherical stroke, in which one whole side of the body is paralyzed, which is invariably fatal in a case of Ebola. Even while the body’s internal organs are becoming plugged with coagulated blood, the blood that streams out of the body cannot clot; it resembles whey being squeezed out of curds. The blood has been stripped of its clotting factors. If you put the runny Ebola blood in a test tube and look at it, you see that the blood is destroyed. Its red cells are broken and dead. The blood looks as if it has been buzzed in an electric blender. Ebola kills a great deal of tissue while the host is still alive. It triggers a creeping, spotty necrosis that spreads through all the internal organs. The liver bulges up and turns yellow, begins to liquefy, and then it cracks apart. The cracks run across the liver and deep inside it, and the liver completely dies and goes putrid. The kidneys become jammed with blood clots and dead cells, and cease functioning. As the kidneys fail, the blood becomes toxic with urine. The spleen turns into a single huge, hard blood clot the size of a baseball. The intestines may fill up completely with blood. The lining of the gut dies and sloughs off into the bowels and is defecated along with large amounts of blood. In men, the testicles bloat up and turn black-and-blue, the semen goes hot with Ebola, and the nipples may bleed. In women, the labia turn blue, livid, and protrusive, and there may be massive vaginal bleeding. The virus is a catastrophe for a pregnant woman: the child is aborted spontaneously and is usually infected with Ebola virus, born with red eyes and a bloody nose. Ebola destroys the brain more thoroughly than does Marburg, and Ebola victims often go into epileptic convulsions during the final stage.

Partisanship had grown so fierce even treatments for the disease became politicized. There were now “Republican” and “Federalist” cures. Jeffersonian Benjamin Rush, acknowledged the finest doctor in town if not the country, used the time-honored if incorrect practices of bleeding and purging. Alexander Hamilton and his family were stricken just when an old friend from Nevis, Dr. Edward Stevens, was visiting. A veteran of “Yellow Jack” outbreaks in the Caribbean, Stevens administered large doses of “Peruvian bark”—quinine—laced with burnt cinnamon and a nightcap of laudanum. The treatment worked, but Rush, an ardent Republican, dismissed it and went right on bleeding patients, which Stevens believed medieval. Rush’s backyard was soon so drenched with blood that he indirectly began to breed countless flies, while his property gave off a “sickening sweet stench” to passersby.

ice. His legs were cut off just below the knees, his stumps somehow healed and not bleeding. His skin had darkened, and his eyes had yellowed. Brand let

Noa sleeps with the curtains open, allowing as much moonlight as possible to flood her bedroom, allowing her to see each and every picture on the walls, if only as a pale glimmer. It took Noa weeks to perfect the art display. Reproductions of Monet's gardens at Giverny blanket one wall: thousands of violets- smudges of purples and mauves- and azaleas, poppies, and peonies, tulips and roses, water lilies in pastel pinks floating on serene lakes reflecting weeping willows and shimmers of sunshine. Turner's sunsets adorn another: bright eyes of gold at the center of skies and seas of searing magenta or soft blue. The third wall is splashed with Jackson Pollocks: a hundred different colors streaked and splattered above Noa's bed. The fourth wall is decorated by Rothko: blocks of blue and red and yellow blending and bleeding together. The ceiling is papered with the abstract shapes of Kandinsky: triangles, circles, and lines tumbling over one another in energetic acrobatics.

And especially, why at the moment when I was so moved by the smiling peacefulness of the old lunatic (a more touching scene than anything I had seen that day), did she seem like a prophetic warning? Yes, prophetic: I would see the chilling sight again, almost exactly the same, with my bodily eyes in another country far away: Two men who looked like thuggish convicts, in a forest, chased a naked old woman whose long, dirty white hair slapped her back and shoulders; prickly twigs scratched the gray skin of the fugitive who jumped like a rangy, wretched goat—charging through spiky, clawed bushes, feeling no pain. And there was a clearing beyond the thickets. The woman ran faster and faster, but on the carpet of short grass, the hunters caught up. One of them reached out, touched the shoulder of his prey who turned around to bite him with her sharp, white teeth, strangely young in that face slashed with wrinkles. But his partner’s close call enraged the other human dog and he hurled himself ahead, desperately, leaning forward, his two hands stretched out, grabbed the white hair, lost his balance and was thrown onto her by his wild momentum. He rolled over the body of the poor wretch and murdered her with his elbows, knees and huge bones. The two men who looked like convicts gloated. They dragged the bleeding body over the ground, then spread it out on its back and took turns defiling it hideously and, in case the victim still had the energy to scream, they martyred it with their fists and steel-toed boots. They took the human wreck and threw it into a wagon… The horse galloped away on the muddy road; the muck flew, splattered the sinister chariot with huge yellow stains and… everything disappeared.

Artemis, the virgin huntress. It’s Greek. Think of her out on a moon yellow night, arrow notched taut in a bowstring and the taste of blood in her mouth. How seriously her parents considered the effect on destiny in the act of her naming, I don’t know. They had their pick of the pantheon. They could have called her Syrinx and had her running in terror from musically inclined men with hairy legs. She might have been more docile, vegetative even. But she would have had a tune to hum to herself then, high and reedy, remembering river banks. If they had called her Persephone they could have kept her, for half the year anyway, tending a fruitful garden. Though it is true that every fall her memory of them would drown in the icy River of Forgetfulness as she went into the underworld to live with her dreary husband, six bleeding pomegranate seeds glistening in his open palm. It might have been easier, for as it is she remembers nothing of them at all since they were forced to give her up for adoption when she was six months old. The name, which her adoptive parents decided to keep, thinking

I WOULD NEVER FORGET the day you slipped away. A small lift of your chin and our eyes met. I only saw emptiness in a place where a wistful vulnerability used to collide with wonder. Now, a hollowness of a bottomless pit. In your eyes, I’d never seen your shade of green so dim. It caused my stomach to fall into the same somber eclipse, spiraling faster and faster with no end, no walls, only darkness. And then you averted your gaze. The flesh from my bones, the blood in my veins, the oxygen in my lungs, all of it crumbled, breaking into small pieces yet still holding on by a thread—the thread was my heart. It pumped on auto-pilot as if it couldn’t associate with the rest of my body. It’s thumping sounded in my ears, and I wished it would stop, but my heart was not ready to let go. It continued with the same steady beat, refusing to give up what was right in front of me. Maybe your eyes will return to mine, I thought—well, prayed. And I waited. Two seconds passed. Then three—waiting as my body weakened from your disconnection, and my heart continued to pump. Four. And then your back was to me. Whatever we’d had no longer existed, but I remembered everything clearly, and it wasn’t fair. Could I have accepted the hollow look in your eyes over the wonder? Surely, anything you had to offer would be better than nothing. If only you had turned back around. Had you even noticed me? And then you took a step in the opposite direction. You were gone, left in obscurity and I couldn’t bring you back, but my heart still maintained a steady beat, pumping along to a rhythm of crimson hope. “Stay with me,” you had said over and over. Who would have thought you would be the one to take a step into oblivion? I’m screaming now, can you hear me?Why didn’t you stay with me? I didn’t get to kiss you goodbye. You were gone, and even though you were only twenty feet away, I missed you. It was entirely possible you’d wake up and turn back around, or I’d wake up. Either way, it was a nightmare. I forced my eyes closed. I couldn’t watch you walk away, each step drawing more distance and less of a chance of you coming back. The darkness was better, anyway, and if I held my lids closed tight, I could see stars. I focused on the yellow and orange horizon behind my eyelids, pretending it was a sunset through the bitterness. The only warmth was the water gathering in the corners of my eyes. The tears struggled for a moment, fighting the same lie as my beating heart. I wished I could switch places with you, because I didn’t deserve a world once blessed by your light, and you didn’t deserve this at all. But this is what I deserved. In the beginning, I’d thought you’d be fun, and I’d thought I could leave you effortlessly. It was me who ripped hearts out, but now mine was the one bleeding. The walls surrounding me had been durable, indestructible, before you. And with no more walls, and no more you, I was slowly suffocating. When it came down to you and me, I’d never thought you’d be the one to slip away.

Nowadays, most of his strategic thinking and writings are collectively referred to as “Mahanism,” and it typically places great importance on naval power. This would eventually lead to him lending his voice to and arguing in favor of the US annexing Hawaiʻi, which occurred in 1898. Specifically, the threat of Japan to the US was the key factor in the thinking that placed such military importance on Hawaiʻi. Along with other popular writers, Mahan wrote about other concerns, such as the Japanese immigrants failing to assimilate with the culture of the United States. These writings both directly and indirectly fueled hysteria around the sensational image of the “Yellow Peril,” a racist ideology that targeted people of East Asian descent. This hysteria would eventually bleed over to the islands of Hawaiʻi, which was home to a large and growing population of Japanese migrant workers.

In spring, Granny would send me off to pick bluets, violets, and windflowers. As the weeks passed, she’d ask for yellow lady’s slippers and bleeding hearts, then roses and white rhododendron clusters that grew along the stream. She’d always seem to know the day when the mayflies danced and died. When I’d come back from whatever venture she’d sent me on, she’d talk about how life was precious.

the signature of all things”—namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity’s betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love. This is why so many medicinal plants resembled the diseases they were meant to cure, or the organs they were able to treat. Basil, with its liver-shaped leaves, is the obvious ministration for ailments of the liver. The celandine herb, which produces a yellow sap, can be used to treat the yellow discoloration brought on by jaundice. Walnuts, shaped like brains, are helpful for headaches. Coltsfoot, which grows near cold streams, can cure the coughs and chills brought on by immersion in ice water. Polygonum, with its spattering of blood-red markings on the leaves, cures bleeding wounds of the flesh. And

Twilight was reaching its climax, no doubt: the last fires of the sun, like a violent dermatitis, ruched and ravined the horizon, giving it blisters, edema, and creases — the yellows, oranges, turquoise, ocher, reddish purples, crimsons, and browns became more vivid as the star descended, becoming bruises, scales, scabs, clots, and even bleeding eviscerations, as though the sky were reproducing the painful sequence of it's birth, what psychoanalysts call repetition compulsion.

But you did something stupid.” “What makes you think that?” I grumble. “Because you have testicles.” She throws up her hands. She picks up the salad bowl and stares into it. “What happened to all the carrots?” she asks. Matt barks out a laugh. “So what did you do?” Sky asks, and then she digs until she finds a carrot and pops it into her mouth. “I overstepped,” I say quietly. Sky looks at Matt and arches a brow. He gives her a subtle nod. “Is this about one little secret?” She points to her belly. I shake my head. “I don’t care that she’s pregnant.” Well, I care because I kind of wish the kid were mine. But that’s the only reason. “Who’s pregnant?” Seth asks as he comes into the room and takes out a bottle of water. Matt grins at him. “As long as it’s not you, I don’t care.” Seth rolls his eyes and walks back to the living room. “So it wasn’t about the surrogacy…” Sky prods. I shake my head. “It’s about something else. And I kind of stuck my nose in where it didn’t belong. But she really needed for it to be done.” “Maybe she wanted it done on her own schedule,” Sky says softly. “Now she’s mad at me, and I don’t even know where she went.” Matt jerks a spatula toward the door. “Go see if you can fix it. We’ll let Hayley play with Sky’s belly for a while.” Sky grins and shakes her head. “Something about twins,” she says. I get up and push my chair in. “I won’t be gone too long,” I say. “You sure you don’t mind?” Like they need another kid. “What’s one more?” Sky says. She waves a breezy hand around. “After a while, you just stop counting them. One of them will scream when they want something. Or when someone is bleeding. It all works out.” “Mine’s blond,” I say. “She’ll stick out in your crowd.” For now at least. “Oh, good to know. Maybe we’ll feed that one.” Sky looks at Matt and nods. “Look for the one with yellow hair. Feed it. We got this.” She claps her hands together like she’s coaching a team. I laugh. They’re just too damn cute together.

Jobs I Have Had (cont’d): I once demonstrated fill-in painting at a ten-cent store. I would gather a crowd around me and take out my Sylvan Scene Number 10 cardboard with its jigsaw of shapes, all numbered. For about three minutes, I would do my cyborgian routine, showing the shoppers how to put bleeding-gum crimson in all the 5’ s—never in a 7 or a 2. Then, all of a sudden, I would go crazy. I could not bring myself to stay within the lines. My blind-man blue would stray from the 52-to-75 lower-sky section, where it belonged, and would begin to invade the cavity yellow of the 45-to-48 cloud tinge. But the management kept me on. They merely warned against sloppiness, saying prissily, “Neatness counts, neatness counts.