Breast Imaging Quotes

Whatever is deeply, essentially female--the life in a woman's expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin--is being reclassified as ugly, and ugliness as disease. These qualities are about an intensification of female power, which explains why they are being recast as a diminution of power. At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition--so that women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an "ideal" be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic does not exist on the woman's body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?

What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of our feet are scattered like gravel. It is strange that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.

How stupid that all I have to do is grow two squishy lumps and suddenly I'm man's best friend

Because she bears the image of God. She doesn’t have to conjure it, go get it from a salon, have plastic surgery or breast implants. No, beauty is an essence that is given to every woman at her creation.

I've got two backs, me - and I'm glad! Tits can be . . . mwa, I know, but they're always in the bloody road. Even in bed.

I could have waited years, now that I knew the end of the story. I was cold and wet and very happy. I could even look with charity towards the altar and the figure dangling there. She loves us both, I thought, but if there is to be a conflict between an image and a man, I know who will win. I could put my hand on her thigh or my mouth on her breast; he was imprisoned behind the altar and couldn't move to plead his cause.

Images have enormous power, and images freed from deep within ourselves can change us profoundly.

You'll want all your strength for the wedding night." I cannot think why I should need strength," she said, ignoring a host of spine-tingling images rising in her mind's eye. "All I have to do is lie there." "Naked," he said grimly. "Truly?" She shot him a glance from under her lashes. "Well, if I must, I must, for you have the advantage of experience in these matters. Still, I do wish you'd told me sooner. I should not have put the modiste to so much trouble about the negligee." "The what?" "It was ghastly expensive," she said, "but the silk is as fine as gossamer, and the eyelet work about the neckline is exquisite. Aunt Louisa was horrified. She said only Cyprians wear such things, and it leaves nothing to the imagination." Jessica heard him suck in his breath, felt the muscular thigh tense against hers. "But if it were left to Aunt Louisa," she went on,"I should be covered from my chin to my toes in thick cotton ruffled with monstrosities with little bows and rosebuds. Which is absurd, when an evening gown reveals far more, not to mention--" "What color?" he asked. His low voice had roughened. "Wine red," she said, "With narrow black ribbons threaded through the neckline. Here." She traced a plunging U over her bosom. "And there's the loveliest openwork over my...well, here." She drew her finger over the curve of her breast a bare inch above the nipple. "And openwork on the right side of the skirt. From here" --she pointed to her hip--"down to the hem. And I bought---" "Jess." Her name was a strangled whisper. "--slippers to match," she continued." Black mules with--" "Jess." In one furious flurry of motion he threw down the reins and hauled her into his lap.

Their [girls] sexual energy, their evaluation of adolescent boys and other girls goes thwarted, deflected back upon the girls, unspoken, and their searching hungry gazed returned to their own bodies. The questions, Whom do I desire? Why? What will I do about it? are turned around: Would I desire myself? Why?...Why not? What can I do about it? The books and films they see survey from the young boy's point of view his first touch of a girl's thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, become estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it. Sex is held hostage by beauty and its ransom terms are engraved in girls' minds early and deeply with instruments more beautiful that those which advertisers or pornographers know how to use: literature, poetry, painting, and film. This outside-in perspective on their own sexuality leads to the confusion that is at the heart of the myth. Women come to confuse sexual looking with being looked at sexually ("Clairol...it's the look you want"); many confuse sexually feeling with being sexually felt ("Gillete razors...the way a woman wants to feel"); many confuse desiring with being desirable. "My first sexual memory," a woman tells me, "was when I first shaved my legs, and when I ran my hand down the smooth skin I felt how it would feel to someone else's hand." Women say that when they lost weight they "feel sexier" but the nerve endings in the clitoris and nipples don't multiply with weight loss. Women tell me they're jealous of the men who get so much pleasure out of the female body that they imagine being inside the male body that is inside their own so that they can vicariously experience desire. Could it be then that women's famous slowness of arousal to men's, complex fantasy life, the lack of pleasure many experience in intercourse, is related to this cultural negation of sexual imagery that affirms the female point of view, the culture prohibition against seeing men's bodies as instruments of pleasure? Could it be related to the taboo against representing intercourse as an opportunity for a straight woman actively to pursue, grasp, savor, and consume the male body for her satisfaction, as much as she is pursued, grasped, savored, and consumed for his?

I know how it feels, dear one. As if your heart were torn in two. I feel your pain.” I took a deep breath. Another. “Finbar?” “I know how it feels. As if you will never be whole again.” I reached inside my dress, where I wore two cords about my neck. One held my wedding ring; the other the amulet that had once been my mother’s. I left the one, and took off the other. “This is yours. Take it back. Take it back, it was to you she gave it.” I slipped the cord over his head, and the little carven stone with its ash tree sign lay on his breast. He had grown painfully thin. “Show me the other. The other talisman you wear.” Slowly I took out the carven ring, and lifted it on my palm for my brother to see. “He made this for you? Him with the golden hair, and the eyes that devour”? “Not him. Another.” Images were strong in my mind; Red with his arm around me like a shield; Red cutting up and apple; Red kicking a sword from a man’s hand, and catching it in his own; Red barefoot on the sand with the sea around his ankles. “You risked much, to give your love to such a one.” I stared at him. “Love?” “Did you not know, until now, when you must say goodbye?

As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.

A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Mark the mastodon. The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spelling words Armed for slaughter. The rock cries out today, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face. Across the wall of the world, A river sings a beautiful song, Come rest here by my side. Each of you a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet, today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I And the tree and stone were one. Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow And when you yet knew you still knew nothing. The river sings and sings on. There is a true yearning to respond to The singing river and the wise rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew, The African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the tree. Today, the first and last of every tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river. Each of you, descendant of some passed on Traveller, has been paid for. You, who gave me my first name, You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, Then forced on bloody feet, Left me to the employment of other seekers-- Desperate for gain, starving for gold. You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot... You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare Praying for a dream. Here, root yourselves beside me. I am the tree planted by the river, Which will not be moved. I, the rock, I the river, I the tree I am yours--your passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, Need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands. Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts. Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, The rock, the river, the tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then. Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, Into your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.

In my experience the most forceful and aggressive mothers are always the least inspired, the most unmusical of souls, all of them profoundly unsuccessful women who wear their daughter’s image on their breast like a medal, like a bright deflection from their own unshining selves.

Cam’s grin was wicked as his hand coasted up my waist to cup my breast. He squeezed it, setting off a weird mixture of painful tenderness and a bolt of lust to my sex. “My eyes!” Cole yelled. Cam and I jerked apart, and I twisted my head to see my brother standing in the doorway in his pyjamas, his hair falling in wet locks across his forehead. His forearm covered his eyes. “I’m fucking blind,” he growled and turned around, bumping into the wall before remembering to drop his arm. After that he stomped out of the flat, the door slamming in his wake. Horrified, I looked up into Cam’s face, my eyes wide. “I think I should let him get away with using the ‘f’ word on this occasion.” Cam snorted, laughter sputtering as he dropped his head to my chest, his whole body shaking with amusement. I felt an irrepressible giggle escape me despite my mortification for myself and Cole. “It’s not funny. We’ve scarred him. I better check on him.” Cam shook his head, his eyes bright with mirth. “You’re the last person he wants to see right now … I’m sure he’s barricaded himself in his room and is doing anything he can to burn the image of me dry-humping his sister out of his mind.

Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours of a woman’s body takes on as she matures - the fuller breasts and rounded hips - have become distateful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men.

Yes, there would be a dirty way out of life, if one chose to take it. But she did not want to die. She wanted to live and dream - a hundred years, forever! As long as this sweetness welled up in her heart, as long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She felt as the pond must feel when it held the moon like that; when it encircled and swelled with that image of gold.

The definition of Man recited itself in my head... And God created man in His own image. And God decreed that man should have one body, one head, two arms and two legs: that each arm should be joined in two places and end in one hand: that each hand should have four fingers and one thumb: that each finger should bear a flat finger-nail...Then God created woman, also, in the same image, but with these differences, according to her nature: her voice would be of higher pitch than man's: she should grow no beard: she should have two breasts... And any creature that shall seem to be human, but is not formed thus is not human. It is neither man, nor woman. It is a blasphemy against the true image of God, and hateful in the sight of God.

The woman who presents herself to the spectator as a 'picture' forever arranged, is, for the contemplative mind, the chiefest danger. Sometimes one meets a woman who is beast turning human. Such a person's every movement will reduce to an image of a forgotten experience; a mirage of an eternal wedding cast on the racial memory; as insupportable a joy as would be the vision of an eland coming down an aisle of trees, chapleted with orange blossoms and bridal veil, a hoof raised in the economy of fear,stepping in the trepidation of flesh that will become myth; as the unicorn is neither man nor beast deprived, but human hunger pressing its breast to its prey. Such a woman is the infected carrier of the past; before her the structure of our head and jaws ache -- we feel that we could eat her, she who is eaten death returning, for only then do we put our face close to the blood on the lips of our forefathers.

I’m a short woman with a pretty good body and large breasts — that’s not what I think of as sexy.

she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast—at her, the child of honourable parents—at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman—at her, who had once been innocent—as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.

Imagination is not, as some poets have thought, simply synonymous with good. It may be either good or evil. As long as art remained primarily mimetic, the evil which imagination could do was limited by nature. Again, as long as it was treated as an amusement, the evil which it could do was limited in scope. But in an age when the connection between imagination and figuration is beginning to be dimly realized, when the fact of the directionally creator relation is beginning to break through into consciousness, both the good and the evil latent in the working of imagination begin to appear unlimited. We have seen in the Romantic movement an instance of the way in which the making of images may react upon the collective representations. It is a fairly rudimentary instance, but even so it has already gone beyond the dreams and responses of a leisured few. The economic and social structure of Switzerland is noticeably affected by its tourist industry, and that is due only in part to increased facilities of travel. It is due not less to the condition that (whatever may be said about their ‘particles’) the mountains which twentieth-century man sees are not the mountains which eighteenth-century man saw. It may be objected that this is a very small matter, and that it will be a long time before the imagination of man substantially alters those appearances of nature with which his figuration supplies him. But then I am taking the long view. Even so, we need not be too confident. Even if the pace of change remained the same, one who is really sensitive to (for example) the difference between the medieval collective representations and our own will be aware that, without traveling any greater distance than we have come since the fourteenth century, we could very well move forward into a chaotically empty or fantastically hideous world. But the pace of change has not remained the same. It has accelerated and is accelerating. We should remember this, when appraising the aberrations of the formally representational arts. Of course, in so far as these are due to affectation, they are of no importance. But in so far as they are genuine, they are genuine because the artist has in some way or other experienced the world he represents. And in so far as they are appreciated, they are appreciated by those who are themselves willing to make a move towards seeing the world in that way, and, ultimately therefore, seeing that kind of world. We should remember this, when we see pictures of a dog with six legs emerging from a vegetable marrow or a woman with a motorbicycle substituted for her left breast.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I- being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude- how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time." And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness...: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:- "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain. " ... "Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here." Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

I wonder if any of these boys ever sit in a room for boys' talk night and discuss how to treat women. Who teaches them how to call out to a girl when she's walking by, minding her own business? Who teaches them that girls are parts—butts, breasts, legs—not whole beings? I was going to eat at Dairy Queen, but I don't want to sit through the discussion of if I'm a five or not. I eat a few fries before I walk out. 'Hey, hold up. My boy wants to talk to you,' Green Hat says. He follows me, yelling into the dark night. I keep walking. Don't look back. 'Aw, so it's like that? Forget you then. Don't nobody want your fat ass anyway. Don't know why you up in a Dairy Queen. Needs to be on a diet.' He calls me every derogatory name a girl could ever be called. I keep walking. Don't look back.

A Cathedral Façade at Midnight Along the sculptures of the western wall I watched the moonlight creeping: It moved as if it hardly moved at all Inch by inch thinly peeping Round on the pious figures of freestone, brought And poised there when the Universe was wrought To serve its centre, Earth, in mankind’s thought. The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm, Then edged on slowly, slightly, To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere form Was blanched its whole length brightly Of prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state, That dead men’s tools had striven to simulate; And the stiff images stood irradiate. A frail moan from the martyred saints there set Mid others of the erection Against the breeze, seemed sighings of regret At the ancient faith’s rejection Under the sure, unhasting, steady stress Of Reason’s movement, making meaningless.

And you are?” She fluttered her hand over her face and brushed a wisp of light brown hair from her brow. The governor calls me Kitty. It’d probably be best if you did, too.” What an alluring name? It makes me think of a cat with its lips covered by a luscious coat of cream.” Jack stared at Kitty’s mouth, and his tongue tingled at the idea of tasting her rich, flavorful lust. She giggled and wove her hand through the crook in his arm. The soft swell of her breast bumped against his arm. “Oh, you’re naughty, but I love the alluring image.” Then, I hope you’ll let me have a taste later.” He didn’t crowd her but allowed her to step back. She led him across the entranceway to a door on the other side. Remember she’s a princess.

Many young women now seem to believe that sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having, and that sexual confidence can only be gained if a young woman is ready to conform to the soft-porn image of a tanned, waxed young girl with large breasts ready to strip and pole-dance. Whether sexual confidence can be found in other ways, and whether other kinds of confidence are worth seeking, are themes that this hypersexual culture cannot address.

So what if you have stretch marks. So what if you have cellulite. So what if you don’t have a big butt. So what if you don’t have large breasts. So what if you don’t have flawless skin. So what if you don’t have a body that other people deem to be perfect. So what! Don’t allow people to define YOUR beauty. Hold your head up high and know who YOU are! DO NOT EVER allow anybody to make you feel as if you’re NOT enough. You ARE enough! BELIEVE that.

This time she is the one who leans forward. She is on her knees in front of him, grasping his shirt collar, pulling him close to her. He is clearly as startled by this as she herself is, but he allows himself to be drawn in. Their mouths meet, she moves even closer still until she is sitting on his lap takes his hands from her waist and puts them on her breasts, does everything but devour him, desperate to see if she can have something beyond her bondage with the razor. Pictures of the accident start writhing beneath her closed lids, competing for attention with the image she holds of his face. A tidal wave of emotion threatens to engulf her. She is suddenly back in the basement with the bookcases. "I can't." Willow pushes him away. "I can't" Willow claps her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to drown out the dreadful sounds of the accident. She jumps up, wheels away from him, fumbles in her pocket for the razor that she always keeps there. But just as she's preparing to slice, to save herself, to end the nightmare visions, Guy's hand clamps down on hers He pulls her down on the floor again roughly. "No." He's shaking his head. "Not here. Not now. Not with me around." "I have to." Willow is gasping. "Just let me do it!" "All right then, you can cut yourself, but not like this, not like some concerned animal. You have to do it in front of me." Willow doesn't flinch as she presses the blade into her flesh. She stares at Guy, aware that although she is fully clothed, she is completely bare before him. It hurts. It hurts badly, and within seconds the pain is swirling through her like an opiate, completely crowding out everything else. "Oh my god. Oh my god!" Now Guy is the one who is clapping a hand over his mouth. "Stop it! I can't watch!" He grabs the razor and flings it around the room, grabs her arm and stares at the blood, grabs her and crushes her close. Willow is so close that once again she's sitting in his lap. She's so close that they might as well be sharing the same breath. "You won't let yourself feel anything but pain?" He holds her more tightly than she would have thought possible. She watches with half closed lids as he wipes the blood on her arm with his shirttail. Now that she's numbed herself, she'd like nothing more than to stay there with him, like this, forever. She just stays there like that, for as long as she possibly can.

I honestly had no idea why I was there, or why I couldn't keep my mind of him. Him.I even had to keep reminding myself it was a him. Not a her. No breasts. And, I guessed, no vagina. Definitely a him. And my fantasies were filling with images of his mouth on naked thing of mine. Naked things. With a guy. Naked things with a guy. Surreal

Women must keep their shirts on in every weather ostensibly because their nipples are sexual. But men’s nipples are sexual too, and that doesn’t keep them covered when the mercury breaks eighty. Women are “ugly” where they get stretch marks. Men get stretch marks, across their hips, of which they are often not aware. Women’s breasts must be perfectly symmetrical; men’s genitals sure aren’t. There is a whole literature of ancient revulsion against the tastes and sights of women’s bodies; men can taste unpleasant and look perfectly alarming. Women love them anyway.

I hated the things that grew out of my body, my breasts, my hair—even as I imagined they could someday make me sexy. That's what I wanted to be: sexy, not comfortable; pretty, not able; wanted, not admired.

Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast-- at her, the child of honorable parents--at her, who had once been innocent---as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.

THE FORTRESS Under the pink quilted covers I hold the pulse that counts your blood. I think the woods outdoors are half asleep, left over from summer like a stack of books after a flood, left over like those promises I never keep. On the right, the scrub pine tree waits like a fruit store holding up bunches of tufted broccoli. We watch the wind from our square bed. I press down my index finger -- half in jest, half in dread -- on the brown mole under your left eye, inherited from my right cheek: a spot of danger where a bewitched worm ate its way through our soul in search of beauty. My child, since July the leaves have been fed secretly from a pool of beet-red dye. And sometimes they are battle green with trunks as wet as hunters' boots, smacked hard by the wind, clean as oilskins. No, the wind's not off the ocean. Yes, it cried in your room like a wolf and your pony tail hurt you. That was a long time ago. The wind rolled the tide like a dying woman. She wouldn't sleep, she rolled there all night, grunting and sighing. Darling, life is not in my hands; life with its terrible changes will take you, bombs or glands, your own child at your breast, your own house on your own land. Outside the bittersweet turns orange. Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat branches, finding orange nipples on the gray wire strands. We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples. Your feet thump-thump against my back and you whisper to yourself. Child, what are you wishing? What pact are you making? What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark can I fill for you when the world goes wild? The woods are underwater, their weeds are shaking in the tide; birches like zebra fish flash by in a pack. Child, I cannot promise that you will get your wish. I cannot promise very much. I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch. A pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled through the mulch by his thick white collar. He's on show like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed, one time, from an old lady's hat. We laugh and we touch. I promise you love. Time will not take away that.

Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent. Everywhere, in every family, every tribe, every great community, crimes, crimes, crimes. War is clean by comparison. The hangman is a gentle dove by comparison. Attila, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan reckless automatons by comparison. Your father, your darling mother, your sweet sister: do you know the foul crimes they harbor in their breasts? Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image.

Those who visited that exhibition-room found an auto-de-fé of immense skies in ignition, globes blotted out by bleeding suns; hemorrhages of stars, flowing down in purple cataracts over tumbling tufts of clouds. Against this background of terrible din, silent women passed, nude or appareled in jeweled stuffs, like the bindings of the old Evangelists; women with hair of shaggy silk, with pale blue eyes, hard and fixed, and flesh of the frozen whiteness of milk; Salomes holding, motionless upon a platter, the head of the Baptist, which shone, soaked in phosphorus, under the quincunxes with shorn leaves, of a green that was almost black; goddesses galloping on hippogriffs and streaking, with the lapis lazuli of their wings, the agony of the clouds; feminine idols, in tiaras, upright on thrones, at the top of stairs submerged in extraordinary flowers, or seated, in rigid poses, upon the backs of elephants with green-mantled foreheads and breasts strung with pearl-ropes like cavalry bells, stamping about upon their own heavy image, reflected in a sheet of water and splashed by the columns of the ring-circled legs!

In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pours down, images of women he has known on two continents, some from so far away in time that he barely recognizes them. Like leaves blown on the wind, pell-mell, they pass before him. A fair field full of folk: hundreds of lives all tangled with his. He holds his breath, willing the vision to continue. What has happened to them, all those women, all those lives? Are there moments when they too, or some of them, are plunged without warning into the ocean of memory? The German girl: is it possible that at this very instant she is remembering the man who picked her up on the roadside in Africa and spent the night with her? Enriched: that was the word the newspapers picked on to jeer at. A stupid word to let slip, under the circumstances, yet now, at this moment, he would stand by it. By Melanie, by the girl in Touws River; by Rosalind, Bev Shaw, Soraya: by each of them he was enriched, and by the others too, even the least of them, even the failures. Like a flower blooming in his breast, his heart floods with thankfulness.

Yes, Phebe was herself now, and it showed in the change that came over her at the first note of music. No longer shy and silent, no longer the image of a handsome girl, but a blooming woman, alive and full of the eloquence her art gave her, as she laid her hands softly together, fixed her eye on the light, and just poured out her song as simply and joyfully as the lark does soaring toward the sun. "My faith, Alec! that's the sort of voice that wins a man's heart out of his breast!" exclaimed Uncle Mac, wiping his eyes after one of the plaintive ballads that never grow old. "So it would!" answered Dr. Alec, delightedly. "So it has," added Archie to himself; and he was right: for just at that moment he fell in love with Phebe. He actually did, and could fix the time almost to a second: for at a quarter past nine, he thought merely thought her a very charming young person; at twenty minutes past, he considered her the loveliest woman he ever beheld; at five and twenty minutes past, she was an angel singing his soul away; and at half after nine he was a lost man, floating over a delicious sea to that temporary heaven on earth where lovers usually land after the first rapturous plunge. If anyone had mentioned this astonishing fact, nobody would have believed it; nevertheless, it was quite true: and sober, business-like Archie suddenly discovered a fund of romance at the bottom of his hitherto well-conducted heart that amazed him. He was not quite clear what had happened to him at first, and sat about in a dazed sort of way; seeing, hearing, knowing nothing but Phebe: while the unconscious idol found something wanting in the cordial praise so modestly received, because Mr. Archie never said a word.

Artemis, along with Selene and Hekate, was one of the Greek triads representing the Old European three-bodied or triune aspect of the Goddess. We can see this represented in this figurine (Fig. 72) of Artemis as part of three-fold Hekate. First you have the pillar—the goddess mother is the axis of the universe herself. Round about are three representations of the Goddess, including Artemis, and Hekate, who represents the chthonic underworld—the magic aspect of the Goddess—and then dancing in a relaxed, fluent manner around about we see the three Graces. Artemis is the giver of abundance: Our Lady of the Wild Things, and the All-Mother of the many breasts, who bears the totality of the entities of the natural world. This is something very, very different from the image of the virgin goddess and the mere huntress that we have normally associated with her.

Lollipops and raindrops Sunflowers and sun-kissed daisies Rolling surf and raging sea Sailing ships and submarines Old Glory and “purple mountain’s majesty” Screaming guitar and lilting rhyme Flight of fancy and high-steppin’ dances Set free my mind to wander… Imagine the ant’s marching journeys. Fly, in my mind’s eye, on butterfly wings. Roam the distant depths of space. Unfurl tall sails and cross the ocean. Pictures made just to enthrall Creating images from my truth Painting hopes and dreams on my canvas Capturing, through my lens, the ephemeral Let me ruminate ‘pon sensual darkness… Tremble o’er Hollywood’s fluttering Gothics… Ride the edge of my seat with the hero… Weep with the heroine’s desperation. Yet… more than all these things… Give me words spun out masterfully… Terms set out in meter and rhyme… Phrases bent to rattle the soul… Prose that always miraculously inspires me! The trill runs up my spine, as I recall… A touch… a caress…a whispered kiss… Ebony eyes embracing my soul… Two souls united in beat of hearts. A butterfly flutter in my womb My lover’s wonder o’er my swelling The testament of our love given life Newly laid in my lover’s arms Luminous, sweet ebony eyes Just so much like his father’s A gaze of wonder and contentment From my babe at mother’s breast Words of the Divine set down for me Faith, Hope, Love, and Charity Grace, Mercy, and undeserved Salvation “My Shepherd will supply my need” These are the things that inspire me.

Back at the Swan, the cat was asleep, curled against the chimney breast, which still exhaled a gentle warmth. Its eyelids flickered with the images of cat dreams that would be even more perplexing to us than the stories our human brains concoct nocturnally. Its ear twitched and the dream faded instantly.

And after having seen the pale necromancers who in that room with its many forgeries of Nature had talked long windedly about mildewed bones to him who dwells inaccessible in the mountain tops, that fairy person deepest in our breasts, I was refreshed and comforted by the memory of this rugged image of my origin.

I believe that social media has become a treacherous platform for love interests. Before the Internet invaded our lives, I’m sure that each single person liked a lot of people at one time. Before falling into a committed relationship, there are steps taken to get there. Often, this involves talking to and even dating a few people at once. That’s logical. But with Facebook, your competition is suddenly splattered in your face. All I had to do was click onto Number 23’s profile and scan one after another wall post from ladies who may or may not be his mating potentials or mating pasts. I see their names and faces. When I click onto their photos, I open a Pandora’s box into their lives. I see their friends, professions, achievements, hobbies, and bodies. I evaluate, I compare, and when I’m insecure, I tear apart. I copy, paste, email, and text the images to my friends, so that they can assure me that I’m prettier, smarter, have bigger breasts, clearer skin, have something that would make him a fool to want her over me. Suddenly, I am stalking, letting fits of rage overcome me with violent hatred for these women who I’ve never met.

Directly he was alone, he was assailed by her simulacra, in all states of acute sorrow, or smiling, of complete abstraction or painful animation, of dress and undress, as he had seen her these last few days: directly he was alone, the images came to mock everything he had seen. Her sadness became shrieking grief, and her animation riotous, immodest in dress and licentious in nakedness, many-limbed as some wild avatar of the Hindu cosmology assaulting the days he spent copying his work on clean scores, and the nights he passed alone in his chair where, instantly the lights went out, everything was transformed, and the body he had seen a moment before with no more surprise than its simple lines and modest unself-conscious movement permitted, rose up on him full-breasted and vaunting the belly, limbs undistinguishable until he was brought down between them and stifled in moist collapse.

and St. Bernard, the monastery’s patron, bearing both a crosier and a sword, his role as an apologist for the failed second crusade unforgotten even among his fans. (I confess I had rather hoped to see a portrayal of the Lactation of St. Bernard, the oft-depicted scene from a legend in which the saint kneeled before a nursing Madonna and was hit with a squirt of milk from her breasts, curing him of an eye infection. The image always makes me smile.) It

I love everything that flows,” said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with its painful gallstones, its gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul; I love the great rivers like the Amazon and the Orinoco, where crazy men like Moravagine float on through dream and legend in an open boat and drown in the blind mouths of the river. I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund. I love scripts that flow, be they hieratic, esoteric, perverse, polymorph, or unilateral. I love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to the beginning where there is never end: the violence of the prophets, the obscenity that is ecstasy, the wisdom of the fanatic, the priest with his rubber litany, the foul words of the whore, the spittle that floats away in the gutter, the milk of the breast and the bitter honey that pours from the womb, all that is fluid, melting, dissolute and dissolvent, all the pus and dirt that in flowing is purified, that loses its sense of origin, that makes the great circuit toward death and dissolution. The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and paralyzed by thought.

Many a tale of inguldgent parenthood illustrates the antique idea that when the roles of life are assumed by the improperly initiated, chaos supervenes. When the child outgrows the popular idyle of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the father-who becomes for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, the future husband. Whether he knows it or not, and no matter what his position in society, the father is the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the good and evil, so does now the father, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world. The traditional idea of initiation combines an introduction of the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relationship to the parental images. The mystagogue is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has been effectually purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes-for whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be rendered impossible by unconscious motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment. Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father. And he is competent consequently now to enact himself the role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door, through whom one may pass from infantile illusions of good and evil to an experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear, and at peace in understanding the revelation of being.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the plastic surgery industry, including the association of plastic surgeons, led a campaign to convince women that having small breasts was actually a physical deficiency. According to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, small breasts are not only a deformity but “a disease which in most patients results in feelings of inadequacy.” Thus millions of women have been led to change their breasts, not their image of themselves.

No one can say what the inner life is, but poetry tries to, and no one can say what poetry is, but let's be bold and claim that there are two major streamings in consciousness, particularly in the ecstatic life, and in Rumi's poetry: call them fana and baqa, Arabic words that refer to the play and intersection of human with divine. Rumi's poetry occurs in that opening, a dervish doorway these energies move through in either direction. A movement out, a movement in. Fana is the streaming that moves from the human out into mystery-the annihilation, the orgasmic expansion, the dissolving swoon into the all. The gnat becomes buttermilk; a chickpea disappears into the flavor of the soup; a dead mule decays into salt flat; the infant turns to the breast. These wild and boundaryless absorptions are the images and the kind of poem Rumi is most well known for, a drunken clairvoyant tavern voice that announces, "Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

Where is the man who has not felt in his breast the wonderful mystery of love? Whoever you may be who come to read these pages - call to mind that noontide of supreme happiness, behold once more that image of angelic beauty, the spirit of love itself, as she came to meet you; it was through her, through her alone, that you seemed assured of your own higher existence. Do you recall how the bubbling springs, the rustling bushes, the caressing evening breezes told so clearly of her love? Can you still picture the flowers that turned their gentle, shining eyes upon you, bringing kisses and words of endearment from her? And she came, yielding to you utterly. You embraced her with burning desire, and thought to rise above the pettiness of earth in the flame of your fervent longing. But the miracle did not happen; you were forced back to earth just as you were about to soar with her to the distant promised land. You had lost her even before you had dared to hope; the voices, the beautiful sounds had all died away, and only the despairing lamentation of the lonely soul was heard in the cruel wilderness.

At her dressing table putting on earrings. She is a pretty woman in the prime of life, and her ignorance of financial necessity is complete. Her neck is graceful, her breasts gleamed as they rose in the cloth of her dress, and, seeing the decent and healthy delight she took in her own image, I could not tell her that we were broke. She had sweetened much of my life, and to watch her seemed to freshen the wellsprings of some clear energy in me that made the room and the pictures on the wall and the moon that could see outside the window all vivid and cheerful.

Years before, a young girl had lain there naked on the iron bed in my room with her eyes closed and her hands folded over her breast, and I had been so struck by the pathos of her submissiveness and her trust in me and of the moment which would plunge her into the full, dark stream of the world that I had hesitated before laying my hands upon her and had, without understanding myself, called out her name. At that time I had had no words for what I felt, and now, too, it is difficult to find them. But lying there, she had seemed to be again the little girl who had, on the day of the picnic, floated on the waters of the bay, with her eyes closed under the stormy and grape-purple sky and the single white gull passing over, very high. As she lay there the image came into my head, and I had wanted to call her name, to tell her something—what, I did not know. She trusted me, but perhaps for that moment of hesitation I did not trust myself, and looked back upon the past as something precious about to be snatched away from us and was afraid of the future. I had not understood then what I think I have now come to understand: that we can keep the past only by having the future, for they are forever tied together. Therefore I lacked some essential confidence in the world and in myself. She came, as time passed, to suspect this fact about me. I do not know that she had words to describe the fact to herself. Or she only had the easy words people gave her: wanting to have a job, studying law, doing something. We went different ways in the world, as I have said, but I had with me always that image of the little girl on the waters of the bay, all innocence and trustfulness, under the stormy sky. Then, there came the day when that image was taken from me.

Woman I is considered to this day to be one of the most anxiety-producing and disturbing images of a woman in the history of art. In this painting de Kooning, who was reared by an abusive mother, creates an image that captures the divergent dimensions of the eternal woman: fertility, motherhood, aggressive sexual power, and savagery. She is at once a primitive earth mother and a femme fatale. With this image, marked by fanglike teeth and huge eyes that echo the shape of her enormous breasts, de Kooning gave birth to a new synthesis of the female. 7.6 The first known female sculpture, the Venus of Hohle Fels, circa 35,000 B.C.

Muscles contract somewhere above the roof of my mouth, pumping venom into her bloodstream. Kelly cries out, a gasp of pain that turns suddenly to moans of euphoria as the carotids rush the narcotic serum directly to her brain. Her knees buckle, and I reach down to steady her — one arm over her breasts, the other around her waist as I hold her tightly to myself. Then the blood begins to flow, seeping out of the wounds I have made, and I put my lips to her skin and drink. There are no words adequate to describe it. My mind explodes with a wash of light and color, swirling and dancing before my eyes. Then the Sharing truly begins, and I can see inside her: images of her memories, her thoughts, her hopes and dreams, the way she remembers her past and how she imagines her future. Her joys; her grief; that which she loves and that she despises, what stirs her fire and chills her bones. And through it all, I feel the touch of her presence, and I know that she sees the same things inside of me. Blood is more than matter, more than plasma and hemoglobin. Blood is life, the river on which the spirit flows. And as Kelly's blood flows into me, it carries her life with it, until my soul entwines with hers. She has given a part of herself to me, and from this day forth we are bound to each other.

As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but from that which then I shall be.

Beside the great image she seemed little, and even for a woman she was not tall, in spite of her high diadem. She wore the whole costume of the Goddess, all but the snakes. Even her skin, pale golden, polished and clear, had a look of ivory. Her high round breasts had golden tips, like those above her. Their faces were painted just alike, the eyes drawn round with black, the brows arched and thickened, the small mouth red. It seemed the face below must be itself the same. Since childhood I had seen my mother dressed for her priestly office; yet I was awed. She had never claimed to be more than a servant of the deity. This small stiff figure had a bearing that might claim anything.

Poor creatures who came out of my belly, all alone now on the other side of the world. I placed the doll on my knees as if for company. Why had I taken her. She guarded the love of Nina and Elena, their bond, their reciprocal passion. She was the shining testimony of perfect motherhood. I brought her to my breast. How many damaged, lost things did I have behind me, and yet present, now, in a whirl of images. I understood clearly that I didn’t want to give Nani back, even though I felt remorse, fear in keeping her with me. I kissed her face, her mouth, I hugged her as I had seen Elena do. She emitted a gurgle that seemed to me a hostile remark and, with it, a jet of brown saliva that dirtied my lips and my shirt.

Love has many positionings. Cordelia makes good progress. She is sitting on my lap, her arm twines, soft and warm, round my neck; she leans upon my breast, light, without gravity; the soft contours scarcely touch me; like a flower her lovely figure twines about me, freely as a ribbon. Her eyes are hidden beneath her lashes, her bosom is dazzling white like snow, so smooth that my eye cannot rest, it would glance off if her bosom were not moving. What does this movement mean? Is it love? Perhaps. It is a presentiment of it, its dream. It still lacks energy. Her embrace is comprehensive, as the cloud enfolding the transfigured one, detached as a breeze, soft as the fondling of a flower; she kisses me unspecifically, as the sky kisses the sea, gently and quietly, as the dew kisses a flower, solemnly as the sea kisses the image of the moon. I would call her passion at this moment a naive passion. When the change has been made and I begin to draw back in earnest, she will call on everything she has to captivate me. She has no other means for this purpose than the erotic itself, except that this will now appear on a quite different scale. It then becomes a weapon in her hand which she wields against me. I then have the reflected passion. She fights for her own sake because she knows I possess the erotic; she fights for her own sake so as to overcome me. She herself is in need of a higher form of the erotic. What I taught her to suspect by arousing her, my coldness now teaches her to understand but in such a way that she thinks it is she herself who discovers it. So she wants to take me by surprise; she wants to believe that she has outstripped me in audacity, and that makes me her prisoner. Her passion then becomes specific, energetic, conclusive, dialectical; her kiss total, her embrace without hesitation.—In me she seeks her freedom and finds it the better the more firmly I encompass her. The engagement bursts. When that has happened she needs a little rest, so that nothing unseemly will emerge from this wild tumult. Her passion then composes itself once more and she is mine.” —from_Either/Or: A Fragment of Life_, (as written by his pseudonym Johannes the Seducer)

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. 32 This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, 33 his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. 35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. Daniel 2:31-35 AKJV

But in a horse-chariot they brought [38] me to the sands of Aulis, a bride, alas! unhappy bride to the son of Nereus' daughter, alas! And now a stranger I dwell in an unpleasant home on the inhospitable sea, unwedded, childless, without city, without a friend, not chanting Juno in Argos, nor in the sweetly humming loom adorning with the shuttle the image of Athenian Pallas [39] and of the Titans, but imbruing altars with the shed blood of strangers, a pest unsuited to the harp, [of strangers] sighing forth [40] a piteous cry, and shedding a piteous tear. And now indeed forgetfulness of these matters [comes upon] me, but now I mourn my brother dead in Argos, whom I left yet an infant at the breast, yet young, yet a germ in his mother's arms and on her bosom, Orestes [the future] holder of the sceptre in Argos.

I threw the carving of my goddess as high and far as I could, into the sky above the waves, and watched its arcing path through the air. As it fell, I saw a golden shape come diving toward the plummeting image, a huge eagle that seized the monster’s tooth in his talons. The feathers on his breast skimmed the sea before he soared back into the sky and flew away. “Did you see that, La--Glaucus?” Milo’s voice sounded in my ear. He’d woken from his nap and come up behind me unexpectedly. I almost jumped overboard with surprise. “It’s a good sign, isn’t it? Or is it predicting that something’s waiting to snatch us away? If that’s so, I swear I won’t let it touch you. But is it a good sign after all? Ah, what does it mean?” “You worry too much, Milo,” I said as if I had no such worries of my own. “If every hero stopped to think about all the what-ifs in his path, none of us would ever take one step beyond our own doorways.” “But you saw what it did,” Milo protested. “The eagle is Lord Zeus’s bird. We can’t just ignore it. Ah, what does it mean?” “What it means,” I said, smiling, “is that you and I have just seen either the world’s most unmistakable omen or the world’s most nearsighted eagle.” May the gods stand by us, I thought as I laughed and Milo stared at me in dismay. May they favor and guide us, but may they never hold us hostage through our fears. “Don’t look at me like that,” I told him, wiping sea spray from my eyes. “I haven’t said anything wrong. I love the gods and honor them, but I’m not their slave. Neither are you. From now on we’re going to make our own omens.” I took his hand, and when he pulled it away, I took it again. This time he let me. We were free.

Again burst out that chant McKay had heard as he had floated through the mists upon the lake. Now, as then, despite his opened ears, he could distinguish no words, but clearly he understood its mingled themes - the joy of Spring's awakening, rebirth, with the green life streaming singing up through every bough, swelling the buds, burgeoning with tender leaves the branches; the dance of the trees in the scented winds of Spring; the drums of the jubilant rain on leafy hoods; passion of Summer sun pouring its golden flood down upon the trees; the moon passing with stately step and slow and green hands stretching up to her and drawing from her breast milk of silver fire; riot of wild gay winds with their mad pipings and strummings; - soft interlacing of boughs, the kiss of amorous leaves - all these and more, much more that McKay could not understand for it dealt with hidden, secret things for which man has no images. ("The Women Of The Woods")

In the land of Uz, there lived a man, righteous and God-fearing, and he had great wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children feasted, and he loved them very much and prayed for them. 'It may be that my sons have sinned in their feasting.' Now the devil came before the Lord together with the sons of God, and said to the Lord that he had gone up and down the earth and under the earth. 'And hast thou considered my servant Job?' God asked of him. And God boasted to the devil, pointing to his great and holy servant. And the devil laughed at God's words. 'Give him over to me and Thou wilt see that Thy servant will murmur against Thee and curse Thy name.' And God gave up the just man He loved so, to the devil. And the devil smote his children and his cattle and scattered his wealth, all of a sudden like a thunderbolt from heaven. And Job rent his mantel and fell down upon the ground and cried aloud, 'Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return into the earth; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever.' Fathers and teachers, forgive my tears now, for all my childhood rises up again before me, and I breathe now as I breathed then, with the breast of a little child of eight, and I feel as I did then, awe and wonder and gladness. The camels at that time caught my imagination, and Satan, who talked like that with God, and God who gave His servant up to destruction, and His servant crying out: 'Blessed be Thy name although Thou dost punish me,' and then the soft and sweet singing in the church: 'Let my prayer rise up before Thee,' and again incense from the priest's censer and the kneeling and the prayer. Ever since then - only yesterday I took it up - I've never been able to read that sacred tale without tears. And how much that is great, mysterious and unfathomable there is in it! Afterwards I heard the words of mockery and blame, proud words, 'How could God give up the most loved of His saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his children, smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption from his sores with a pot-sherd - and for no object except to board to the devil! 'See what My saint can suffer for My Sake.' ' But the greatness of it lies just in the fact that it is a mystery - that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of the earthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished. The Creator, just as on the first days of creation He ended each day with praise: 'That is good that I have created,' looks upon Job and again praises His creation. And Job, praising the Lord, serves not only Him but all His creation for generations and generations, and for ever and ever, since for that he was ordained. Good heavens, what a book it is, and what lessons there are in it! What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with it to man! It is like a mold cast of the world and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything for all the ages. And what mysteries are solved and revealed! God raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising such each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life - and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving!

Who is that in the glass? She sees herself for the first time. She doesn't require soft light, not at her age, not with her looks, so the effect of three candles is excessively ravishing. Her hair sparks at every brush stroke. The candlelight carves a grotto in the gloom around her. The mirror is a sacred pool, in it she sees the future: her lips swollen with kissing, eyes caressing, come with me to my home beneath the sea and I will love you. She unbuttons her nightgown. My beautiful throat. Bares a white shoulder, ohh. Parts the fabric to reveal her breasts, sailor take warning. Her image floating just beneath the twilight surface, tempting herself overboard. She hovers her hand above a nipple that gathers and pleats to a point seeking heat. Kisses her palm with one eye on the mirror. Again, this time with her tongue. Experiments with the creation of cleavage. Arranges her hair: Gibson girl, milkmaid, madwoman, dryad. And leaves it there, spilling over her shoulders. It's a self-portrait and the artist is in love.

Upon the deck, image to the roughest man on board of something that is graceful, beautiful, and harmless—something that it is good and pleasant to have there, and that should make the voyage prosperous—is Florence. It is night, and she and Walter sit alone, watching the solemn path of light upon the sea between them and the moon. At length she cannot see it plainly, for the tears that fill her eyes; and then she lays her head down on his breast, and puts her arms around his neck, saying, ‘Oh Walter, dearest love, I am so happy!’ Her husband holds her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and the stately ship goes on serenely. ‘As I hear the sea,’ says Florence, ‘and sit watching it, it brings so many days into my mind. It makes me think so much—’ ‘Of Paul, my love. I know it does.’ Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love—of love, eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away!

Its chief covering seemed to me to be composed of large wings folded over its breast and reaching to its knees; the rest of its attire was composed of an under tunic and leggings of some thin fibrous material. It wore on its head a kind of tiara that shone with jewels, and carried in its right hand a slender staff of bright metal like polished steel. But the face! it was that which inspired my awe and my terror. It was the face of man, but yet of a type of man distinct from our known extant races. The nearest approach to it in outline and expression is the face of the sculptured sphinx—so regular in its calm, intellectual, mysterious beauty. Its colour was peculiar, more like that of the red man than any other variety of our species, and yet different from it—a richer and a softer hue, with large black eyes, deep and brilliant, and brows arched as a semicircle. The face was beardless; but a nameless something in the aspect, tranquil though the expression, and beauteous though the features, roused that instinct of danger which the sight of a tiger or serpent arouses. I felt that this manlike image was endowed with forces inimical to man.

But when I saw whence the light came, then indeed my breath grew thick. The plinth had opened beneath the image. Within, a clear blue fire danced on a tripod. It shone upon the Earth Mother, living, crowned with her diadem; her arms stretched forth over the earth were wreathed with twisting serpents. Her hands grasped their middles; the light shone on their polished skins, and I heard their hissing. My heart was a hammer shut in my breast; I made the sign of homage with a shaking hand. Rooted on my feet I looked at the Earth Mother; and the Earth Mother looked at me. And as she looked, I saw her eyelids tremble. I stood still, and stared. The flames flickered, and the Earth Mother looked straight before her. I took a pace forward, softly, and then another, and one more. She had not had time to paint her face, and the diadem leaned a little. As I came, I saw her gasp from holding her breath. She held out her arms stiffly, and the serpents wriggled, disliking the light, and wishing for their house again. But I did not watch them as I drew near; I watched her face. When I stretched out my hand toward them, I knew well enough that their teeth were drawn.

Surely a one-and-a-half-year-old infant was unable to grasp what it meant for a man who was not his father to be sucking his mother’s breasts. That much was clear. So if this memory of Tengo’s was genuine, the scene must have been seared into his retinas as a pure image free of judgment—the way a camera records objects on film, mechanically, as a blend of light and shadow. And as his consciousness matured, the fixed image held in reserve would have been analyzed bit by bit, and meaning applied to it. But is such a thing even possible? Was the infant brain capable of preserving images like that? Or was this simply a false memory of Tengo’s? Was it just something that his mind had later decided—for whatever purpose or plan—to make up on its own? Tengo had given plenty of thought to the possibility that this memory might be a fabrication, but he had arrived at the conclusion that it probably was not. It was too vivid and too deeply compelling to be fake. The light, the smells, the beating of his heart: these felt overwhelmingly real, not like imitations. And besides, it explained many things—both logically and emotionally—to assume that the scene was real.

All the while, he was conscious of the sound of water. Dahlia was taking a shower. No matter how hard he tried to prevent it, his imagined insisted on conjuring up a vivid picture of Dahlia naked, wet, her hair slick and her face turned up to the hot spray. He closed his eyes against the image and groaned softly. Where had all his self-discipline gone? His tremendous control? He couldn’t blame energy, sexual or otherwise, for his fantasies. It was the glimpse of her bare bottom, the curve of her hip. Her bare breasts gleaming at him in the sun. Or maybe it was her smile. She didn’t smile often, but when she did, Nicolas could swear it was for him alone, no one else. And then there was her skin . . . “Hey! Lover boy! Stop mooning around and hit the shower. You smell like a swamp rat, and it just doesn’t do a thing to put me in the mood.” Dahlia stood in the doorway, a towel wrapped around her like a sarong. Her hair was up in a towel and she was dripping water all over the floor. She’d obviously come downstairs straight from her shower to scold him for his indiscretions, but changed her mind. “You’re not helping me with my overactive imagination,” he pointed out as he walked toward her.

Good Lord, Gray thought. Here he held this woman in his arms while she made him out to be some sort of…not a saint, exactly, but a man possessing a shred of honor. And all the while she trembled against his body, soft and damp and warm, never suspecting the dozens of ways in which he longed to dishonor them both. Would she still allow him to hold her like this, encircled in his arms, her backside pressed against his swelling groin, if she could read his thoughts? If she knew that when she titled her head to bury her face in his sleeve, she gave him a direct view of the alabaster curve of her neck, the carved ivory of her collarbone, and the exquisite image that would haunt his dreams-the soft, rose-scented valley between her breasts? God, what a lecherous bastard he was. He’d been ashamed of many things in his life, but never before had he felt so ashamed simply to be a man, a part of this violent, brutish race of creatures who flogged one another, beat helpless boys with marlinespikes, and lusted after unsuspecting governesses while they were overset with emotion. This woman was bred for better things, deserved better things. Better than this ship, this life. Better than a base, craving creature like him.

The Applicant First, are you our sort of a person? Do you wear A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch, A brace or a hook, Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch, Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then How can we give you a thing? Stop crying. Open your hand. Empty? Empty. Here is a hand To fill it and willing To bring teacups and roll away headaches And do whatever you tell it. Will you marry it? It is guaranteed To thumb shut your eyes at the end And dissolve of sorrow. We make new stock from the salt. I notice you are stark naked. How about this suit—— Black and stiff, but not a bad fit. Will you marry it? It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof Against fire and bombs through the roof. Believe me, they'll bury you in it. Now your head, excuse me, is empty. I have the ticket for that. Come here, sweetie, out of the closet. Well, what do you think of that? Naked as paper to start But in twenty-five years she'll be silver, In fifty, gold. A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk. It works, there is nothing wrong with it. You have a hole, it's a poultice. You have an eye, it's an image. My boy, it's your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

What the hell was that?” Joss turned on him the moment Gabriel cleared the last of the china. “What the hell was what?” Gray pulled a flask from his breast pocket and offered it to his brother. Joss waved it away. “You know damn well what I mean. Something’s going on between you and Miss Turner, I know it.” Gray uncapped the flask and took a sip. “What makes you say that?” He circled the table, discreetly examining the angle of the tablecloth and the perspective from the captain’s chair. Surely Joss couldn’t have seen what had taken place under the table. Even if his brother had noticed, he could demand all the answers he wished. Gray had no desire-or words-to explain it. For the first time since he’d left England, Gray gave thanks for the thin, impractical leather of those dandified Hessians. The feel of her lithe, shapely leg against his…She’d accepted the contact so readily, blushed so attractively. Beneath that table, they’d formed some sort of alliance. And then she had extended a clear verbal invitation. If he went to her berth right now, she would be expecting him. At last, he could solve the mystery of what held together that damned striped frock. Or…he could simply rip it from her body. Gray shoved the image aside before his groin could react further.

Before the shrinking of the Feminine was the Goddess—and all that is split in our own lives was in harmony in Hers. She was profoundly in Her body. Her body itself was sacred. In the Old Religion, body and spirit were one. She was seen as substantial, as essentially embodied. Her thighs, Her Belly, Her breasts were generous, Her physical strength apparent. We miss the beauty of such an image, we who have been taught to measure ourselves endlessly. Too fat, too thin, too flat, too wrinkled. Our bodies are never good, and in themselves. We must deny our naturalness to see beauty. What we learn to reject was once holy. What we learn to hide behind closed doors was once celebrated in the open. Blood was sacred to the Goddess—menstrual blood. Some of Her images were painted red between the legs. What some of us and many of our mothers learned to see as 'the curse' was once seen as the Blessing, women's particular creative magic. The blood that flows of itself and not from a wounding was thought to be the very source of life. One early creation tale stated than when the Mother created man and woman, She made them from a mixture of Her menstrual blood and clay. Moreover, every woman carried some of the Goddess's sacred substance and participated in Her ability to create life.

The Angles Of The Frame 1 Many years have passed since the day, I looked into a mirror, saw a wrinkled face. I've been disclosed to the bulging sands of my bed. 2 Aeons of breath account for the many veins in my atrium. 3 The bull I breast-fed for many years And I've submerged into the frame. 4 I knew the justifications were hard, Hard as against the current of water. No news from the ambiguous points something uncommon. It can't be justified by natural rules, many years we've been tangled on it. 5 This usurped land is a part of all buried treasure islands No finger points in any direction. Lost in the dead-end alleys Tracing images without a compass. 6 Horse pounding pulse sing endlessly in my blood. My kinsmen of horses… Blood-line linked as to rays of a circle like roots of a tree growing deep on the roof. 7 You can't stop the hands of the clock. You can't come back to the broken minutes. The days have been arranged one after another. The knights have left the game one after another. 8 There was a straw mat where you fell asleep. I became numb, quite used to the stillness of the house. 9 Was something supposed to get away from the core to join us? A century has passed and we still live in this house. 10 Dimensions have shifted Not exclusive to the roof The letters approved us as the residents of the house They ran away as the convicts And we got used to the standstill. (Translated from original Persian into English by Rosa Jamali)

Adeline is Battered & Threatened Not knowing the title of this bureaucrat, I addressed him incorrectly as Meine Herrschaften. With this silly fabricated title, I simply tried to explain to him that the corporal was a brave Frontsoldat. My efforts were in vain since he was intent on finding out the corporal’s name, and my stalling only made matters worse. “What’s his name?” he shouted again and again, this time hitting my breasts and punching me in the stomach, which caused me to vomit all over the floor. It didn’t matter to him that my husband was a German soldier fighting for das Vaterland. He continued to beat me and threatened to put me into the terrible prison camp at Schirmeck. Having passed by there recently, the crying and moaning sounds from inside the gates of this prison were still very vivid in my mind. He reached for his telephone and said, “With one call you’ll be there if you don’t answer me!” “Please, I won’t be able to live with myself if I’m the cause of an innocent person’s death,” I sobbed. I remember him saying, “I remember you! You’re the woman from Bischoffsheim who helped with the kindergarten class and did the art work there. You have two little girls, don’t you?” How could this man know so much about me? He continued his threats by saying that he would beat my little girls at 3 o’clock every afternoon in the Village center, until I gave him the names he wanted. I formed a mental image of this cruel act, however in spite of this, I firmly told him that I would never talk and that the only Etappenhase was the man standing in front of me. The last thing I can remember was him using the telephone to hit me. His last blow struck me above my right eye…. With this I fell down into my own vomit and lost consciousness!

[Nero] castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images,​ fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing. He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched​ by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House. Its size and splendour will be sufficiently indicated by the following details. Its vestibule was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor a hundred and twenty feet high; and it was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade​ a mile long. There was a pond too, like a sea, surrounded with buildings to represent cities,​ besides tracts of country, varied by tilled fields, vineyards, pastures and woods, with great numbers of wild and domestic animals. In the rest of the house all parts were overlaid with gold and adorned with gems and mother-of‑pearl. There were dining-rooms with fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens. His mother offended him by too strict surveillance and criticism of his words and acts. At last terrified by her violence and threats, he determined to have her life, and after thrice attempting it by poison and finding that she had made herself immune by antidotes, he tampered with the ceiling of her bedroom, contriving a mechanical device for loosening its panels and dropping them upon her while she slept. When this leaked out through some of those connected with the plot, he devised a collapsible boat,​ to destroy her by shipwreck or by the falling in of its cabin. ...[He] offered her his contrivance, escorting her to it in high spirits and even kissing her breasts as they parted. The rest of the night he passed sleepless in intense anxiety, awaiting the outcome of his design. On learning that everything had gone wrong and that she had escaped by swimming, driven to desperation he secretly had a dagger thrown down beside her freedman Lucius Agermus, when he joyfully brought word that she was safe and sound, and then ordered that the freedman be seized and bound, on the charge of being hired to kill the emperor; that his mother be put to death, and the pretence made that she had escaped the consequences of her detected guilt by suicide.

_qt ~~ L,4_-k,,d_e, V q99- You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb ...I am fearfully and wonderfully made. -PSALM 139:13-14 IfI could only have a straight nose, a tummy tuck, blonde hair, larger (or smaller) breasts, or be more like so-and-so, I would be okay as a person. Never have I heard women satisfied with how God made them. "God must have made a mistake when He made me." "I'm certainly the exception to His model creation." "There's so much wrong with me, I'm just paralyzed over who I am." These negative thoughts poison our system. We can't be lifted up when we spend so much time tearing ourselves down. When we are in a negative mode, we can always find verification for what we're looking for. If we concentrate on the negative, we lose sight of all the positive aspects of our lives. We can always justify our damaging assumptions when we overlook the good God has for us. These critical vibes create more negative vibes. Soon we are in a downward spiral. When you concentrate on your imperfections you have a tendency to look at what's wrong and not what's right. Putting yourself down can have some severe personal consequences. Have you ever realized that God made you uniquely different from everyone else? (Even ifyou're a twin you are different.) Yes, it is important to work on improving your imperfections-but don't dwell on them so much that you forget who you are in the sight of God. The more positive you are toward yourself the more you will grow into the person God had in mind for you when you were created. Go easy on yourself. None of us will ever be perfect. The only way we will improve our self-image is by being positive and acknowledging that we are God's creation. Negativity tears down; positivity builds up. PRAYER Father God, You knew me while I was in my mother's womb. I hunger to be the woman You created me to be. Help me become all that You had in mind when You

She had come to analysis because she was, as she put it, “ruining her children.” ... “But you are so frustrating,” she said. “I want you to take something away from me, and you keep giving it back.” And what, I asked, was that “something” she wanted to give away? “The pain. The crazy,” she said. She said there was a little shrine, somewhere in the north of Brazil. The land was dry, the town impossibly poor, but people would travel for hundreds of miles to get there, to leave candles, gifts, and ex- voto offerings thanking the saint for answered prayers, for healing, for having rescued them from distress. “I bring you my worries. I bring you my tears. I bring you the dreams I have. I want to leave them here. I want to hang them on your wall and return home healed. But everything I give to you, you give back. You say, like you just said, ‘What is this “something” you want to give away?’ ” Years later I looked it up, the shrine. There were many like the one my Brazilian patient had described. One of them was a kind of cave or grotto, where pilgrims would leave little body parts carved from wood or wax: a foot, a breast, a head. From time to time the priest collected the wax objects and melted them down, making candles to be sold to other pilgrims. The walls and ceiling of the shrine were black with candle smoke and crowded with these suspended offerings. I think now that my Brazilian patient managed at least to give that away, the conjured image of a blackened shrine, hung with a jumble of body parts. I think that in the soul of each psychoanalyst such a place must exist, in spite of what we profess about our neutrality, our professional detachment. Perhaps something of what we receive can be melted down and sold back as candlelight— our costly illuminations— but other elements remain just as they appeared, the dreams nailed to the walls, the abandoned hearts and limbs, the soot of inextinguishable longing.

A splash of light snuck beneath the a dressing room door. He heard a groan. A shuffle. A bump. A heavy sigh. "Uh, too tight." He walked toward the back, stopping outside the dressing room. The door was cracked a fraction. He rested a shoulder against the wall, and glanced inside. Grace as Catwoman blew his mind. A feline fantasy. The three-way mirror tripled his pleasure. He viewed her from every angle. Hot, sleek, fierce. The lady could fight Batman in her skintight black leather catsuit and come out the winner. After a moment she scrunched her nose, slapped her palms against her thighs. Stuck out her tongue at her reflection in the mirrors. He saw what had her so frustrated. Sympathized with her disappointment. Her costume didn't fit. The front zipper hadn't fully cleared her cleavage, which was deep and visible. She wore no bra. She gave a little hop, and her breasts bounced. Full and plump. He felt a tug at his groin. Superhero lust. He cleared his throat and made his presence known. She caught his image in the corner of the glass, and reached for the fitting room chair, positioning it between them. Like that would keep him from her. He should've looked away, but couldn't. He sensed her embarrassment. Her panic. Flight? She had nowhere to go. He blocked the door. He wasn't leaving until they'd talked. "Archibald's going to love your costume," he initiated. She didn't find him funny. Her gaze narrowed behind the molded cat-eye mask with attached ears. Her fingers clenched in her elbow-length gloves. Inspired by the movie The Dark Knight, she'd added a whip and a gun holster. Her thigh-high stiletto boots were killer, adding five inches to her height. Her image would stick with him forever. She backed against the center mirror, and nervously fingered the open flaps over her breasts. A yank on the zipper broke the tab. The metal teeth parted, and the gap widened, revealing the round inner curves of her breasts. A hint of her nipples. Dusky pink. All the way down to the dent of her navel.

I think we all collectively have gone a little crazy. We worry about the wrong things. I have an acquaintance, Christy, whose twelve–year–old son managed to get into a very violent PG–13 movie. I don’t know how many machine–gunnings, explosions, and killings this boy wound up witnessing. As I recall, the boy had nightmares for a week afterward. That disturbed his mother—but not as much as if her son had stumbled into a different kind of movie. “At least there wasn’t any sex,” she said with dead–serious concern. “No,” I said, “probably not a single bare breast.” I didn’t add that most societies do not regard the adult female breast as being primarily an object of sexual desire. After all, it’s just a big gland that makes milk in order to feed hungry babies. “You know what I’m talking about,” she snapped. “I mean graphic sex.” We were sitting in a café drinking tea. She cut off the volume of her speech at the end of her sentence, whispering and exaggerating the consonants of S–E–X as if she needed me to read her lips—as if giving voice to this word might disturb our neighbors and brand her as a deviant. “I don’t think children should see that kind of thing,” she added. “What should children see?” I asked her. I am not arguing that we should let our children buy tickets to raunchy movies. I never let my daughters bring home steamy videos or surf the Internet for porn. But something is wrong when sex becomes a dirty word that we don’t even want our children to hear. Why must we regard almost anything sexual as tantamount to obscene? I think many of us are like Christy. We wouldn’t want our children—even our very sexual teenagers—to see certain kinds of movies, even if they happened to be erotic masterpieces, true works of art. It wouldn’t matter if a movie gave us a wonderful scene of a wife and a husband very lovingly making love with the conscious intention of engendering new life. It wouldn’t matter that sex is life, and therefore must be regarded as sacred as anything could possibly be. It wouldn’t even matter that not one of us could have come into the world but for the sexual union of our fathers and our mothers. If a movie portrayed a man and woman in the ecstatic dance of love—actually showed naked bellies and breasts, burning lips and adoring eyes and the glistening, impassioned organs of sex—most people I know would rather their children watch the vile action movie. They would rather their “innocent” sons and daughters behold the images of bloody, blasted bodies, torture, murder, and death.

There you go with the breasts too big again. I rub my eraser over the sketchbook page and brush the crumbs away before reworking my lines over the ghosted image. With each stroke of the pencil my dream girl comes to life, her heart-shaped face graced with huge blue eyes and plump bow lips. Oh, how I want to kiss those lips

Television, film and computer visuals reflect our values when they show sexual contact and aggressive conflict as common images, but rarely show non-sexual physical contact (except violence), such as suckling.

it was absurd how women’s magazines forced images of small-boned, small-breasted white women on the rest of the multi-boned, multi-ethnic world of women to emulate.

He drove both torturous images away by losing himself in thoughts of young, delicious Alice Montague. Her shy, skeptical smile, so reluctantly given and therefore so much more precious, charmed him even now. There was a wholeness, a simplicity in her that eased him. He began to relax at last as he savored the memory of touching her, the silken tenderness of her thighs under his hands, the delectable softness of her breasts. The wonder in her response as he had tasted her warm, virginal mouth. 'So innocent,' he thought. It pleased him deeply to know that he had touched her where no one ever had, that he had been the first to kiss her.

From the earliest of times, the eye has had a privileged place in the conventions of Arabic poetry.22 As Richard Ettinghausen put it, In [Arabic courtly poetry] one reads that the ideal Arab woman must be so stout that she nearly falls asleep… . Her breasts should be full and rounded, her waist slender and graceful, her belly lean, her hips sloping, and her buttocks so fleshy as to impede her passage through a door. [Her neck is said to be] like that of a gazelle, while her arms are described as well rounded, with soft delicate elbows, full wrists, and long fingers. Her face [has] white cheeks, … and her eyes are those of a gazelle with the white of the eye clearly marked.23 Far from expanding creatively on this set of classical formulas, the figures of feminine beauty in the Nights often repeat them mechanically. This story cycle is filled with over a dozen derivative poems that repeat, in cliché terms, this same image of the beloved’s eye.

What is being a Scot like?" Ellice heard her mother ask. 'Oh, no.' "A certain independence of spirit,"she answered before the men could. Or before the girl serving the venison could hear, take notes about Enid's snide remarks, and carry them to Brianag. "An ability to carry on despite circumstances," she continued. "Perhaps a belief in otherworldly phenomena." "Do you think we all believe in ghosts?" Gadsden asked. She glanced at him. Now was not the time to recall the feeling of her breasts pressing against his chest, of his fingers on her skin, his lips trailing kisses along her throat. Or her earlier image of him unveiling her, inch by inch. Her cheeks warmed. "Do you believe in ghosts?" she asked him. "Not the incorporeal ones," he said. "Only those of memory and mind." "Are you a haunted man?" He didn't answer her, merely sat there, his gaze steady on her. To her surprise neither her mother nor Macrath said a word. Or perhaps they did and she didn't hear anything. She was caught by his gray eyes, snared and netted until she could almost imagine she was at his feet, head bowed, swearing allegiance to him. He'd raise her up with both hands on her arms until she stood before him, clad only in her gauzy tunic. A slave brought to the man who declared himself her master.

The gift of sustenance is crucial to motherhood: the mother providing milk for her newborn from her own body, created from her own blood. Julian sees breast feeding as an image of the Eucharist,

As he turned her face to study her, he said, “You have more courage than you have strength, Yellow Hair. It is not wise to fight when you cannot win.” Looking up at his carved features and the arrogant set of his mouth, she longed for the strength to jerk him off his horse. He wasn’t just taunting her, he was challenging her, mocking her. “You will yield. Look at me and know the face of your master. Remember it well.” Riding high on humiliation, Loretta forgot Amy, Aunt Rachel, everything. An image of her mother’s face flashed before her. Never, as long as she had life in her body, would she yield to him. She worked her parched mouth and spat. Nothing came out, but the message rang clear. “Nei mah-heepicut!” Releasing her, he struck her lightly on the arm. Wheeling his horse, he glanced toward the windows of the house and thumped his chest with a broad fist. “I claim her!” Loretta staggered, watching in numb disbelief as Hunter pranced his stallion in a circle around her. I claim her? Warily she turned, keeping him in sight, unsure of what he might do. He rode erect, his eyes touching on her dress, her face, her hair, as if everything about her were a curiosity. A taunting smile curved his mouth. His attention centered on her full skirt, and she could almost see the questions churning in his head. He repositioned his hand on the lance. The determination in his expression filled her with foreboding. He rode directly toward her, and she sidestepped. He turned his mount to come at her again. As he swept by he leaned forward, catching the hem of her skirt with his lance. Loretta whirled, striking out with her forearms, but the Indian moved expertly, his aim swift and sure, his horse precision-trained to the pressure of his legs. He was as bent on seeing her undergarments as she was on keeping them hidden. The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.” Raising tear-filled eyes to his, she again spat in his face. This time he felt the spray and wiped his cheek, his lips quivering with something that looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter, friendly laughter this time. “Maybe not so quick. But I am a good teacher. You will learn not to fight me, Yellow Hair. It is a promise I make for you.

I would have you beside me,” he told her huskily. “But you promised to take me home.” The stallion nickered and sidestepped, pulling both of them off balance. Hunter released the horse to catch her, his arm encircling her waist. Loretta snapped taut when his hard thighs pressed intimately against hers. He bent his head and nuzzled her hair, his breath sifting through the strands to her scalp. A shiver ran through her. For a moment she struggled against him, but then she felt as if an invisible web were entwining itself around her, the silken threads binding her so she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. She closed her eyes, wildly afraid, of him and what he was making her feel. She tried desperately to conjure an image of her mother, anything to break the spell. Perhaps he knew how to be gently persuasive after all. She knew she should pull away, yet an unnameable something held her transfixed. His mouth trailed to the slope of her neck, sending tingles down her spine. A treacherous languor stole into her limbs. Heat spread through her belly. For an instant she wanted to lean against him, to let his wonderfully strong arms mold her to his length. The shock of his hand on her bare back brought her to her senses. Her eyes flew open, and she gasped. She tried to arch away from him and succeeded only in accommodating his mouth when her head fell back. He pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat, where her pulse beat a rapid tattoo. His callused palm slid slowly but inexorably to her side, his thumb feathering against the underside of her breast. Horrified, she groped for his wrist, her fingers finding feeble purchase through the leather. “Ah, nei mah-tao-yo,” he whispered. “You tremble.

Guide Note: Zaphod Beeblebrox’s two heads and three arms have become as much a part of Galaxy lore as the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast’s cranial spigot, or Eccentrica Gallumbits’s third breast. And though Zaphod claims to have had his third arm fitted to improve his chances at ski-boxing, many media pundits believe that the arm was actually fitted so that the President could simultaneously fondle all of Eccentrica’s mammaries. This attention to erotic detail resulted in Miss Gallumbits referring to Zaphod in Street Walkie-Talkie Weekly as the “best bang since the Big One.” A quote which was worth at least half a billion votes in the presidential election and twice as many daily hits on the private members section of the Zaphod Confidential Sub-Etha site. The origin of Zaphod’s second head is shrouded in mystery and seems to be the one thing the President is reluctant to discuss with the media, other than claim that two heads are better than none. A comment which was taken as a direct jibe by Councillor Spinalé Trunco of the Headless Horsemen tribe of Jaglan Beta. Zaphod’s response to this accusation was “Of course it’s a jibe, baby. Dude’s got zero heads. Come on!” Early images do represent Zaphod with two heads, but in many shots they do not appear to be identical. In fact, in one vidcap, which has famously come to be known as the “I’m With Stupid” shot, Zaphod’s left head appears to be that of a sallow female, attempting to bite the right head’s ear. A Betelgeusean woman later surfaced claiming to be the original owner of the “sallow female” head. Loolu Softhands told Beebelblog that “Zaphod wanted us to be together, like all the time, so we conjoined. After a couple of months he found out that he liked the two-headed thing more than he liked me. So we went out for a few Blasters one night and I woke up back on my own body. Bastard.” Zaphod has never refuted Miss Softhands’s story, leading to speculation that his second head is a narcissistic affectation, an allegation President Beeblebrox claims not to understand. Related

Pornography, it is said, presents false images about women. Pornography is a lie, because it presents women as large-breasted nymphomanics. If this accusation is true, the remedy is not to ban pornography, but to recruit a wider variety of women into the industry.

I’m worried he’s going to think I’m jealous. A woman sent us a photo the other day with I LOVE CYRUS JONES written across her breasts. Cyrus glanced at it, said, “Let’s hope that’s not permanent ink,” and moved on to something else. But I stared and stared. Her breasts were not just slightly better than mine, they were better in every possible way. First of all, they were bigger, which meant they were inherently better. But they also seemed perkier on top of being bigger, which made it all so much worse, and her nipples seemed ludicrously well proportioned, like a perfect dinner setting for two. She smiled at the camera, her hands holding up her T-shirt, with the sort of smile only a woman with those breasts could possibly possess: light, smug, 100 percent confident that the person who was looking at her would have major trouble ever erasing the image of her tits from their mind.

The Witch stood on an isthmus connecting two rocky lands, and on either side of her stretch patches of cerulean blue sea, with white-lipped waves of astonishing vigor and particularity. The Witch held in her hands a beast of unrecognizable species, though it was clearly drowned, or nearly drowns. She cradled it in an arm that, without attention to actual skeletal flexibility, lovingly encircled the beast's wet, spiky-furred back. With her other hand she was freeing a breast from her robe, offering suck to the creature. Her expression was hard to read, or had the monk's hand smudged, or age and grime bestowed a sfumato sympathy? She was nearly motherly, with miserable child. Her look was inward, or sad, or something. But her feet didn't match her expression, for they were planted on the narrow strand with prehensile grip, apparent even through the silver-colored shoes, whose coin-of-the-realm brilliance had first caught Boq's eyes. Furthermore, the feet were turned out at ninety-degree angles to the shins. They showed in profile as mirror images, heels clicked together and toes pointing in opposite directions, like a stance in ballet. The gown was a hazy dawn blue.

Without mothers, as opposed to “birthing individuals,” you do not have a civilization. Without mothers nurturing their children, no families, no households can exist. Women, not men, were given wombs to carry children. Women, not men, were given breasts to feed children. Women were designed to be the anchor of their households and the bringers and nurturers of life. One must do violence to the glorious image of God that they bear in order to make them wombless, breastless, pathetic and miserable imitations of men. Until we are willing to admit that feminism, even (especially!) the feminism accepted by conservatives, is a demon goddess responsible for our enslavement, we will remain under the shade of the oaken shrines of Trashworld.

But in the sweaty depths of this night, Dexter dreamed. The images were as twisted as the bedsheets: Lily Anne holding a knife in her tiny fist, Brian collapsing into a pool of blood while Rita breast-fed Dexter, Cody and Astor swimming through that same awful red pool. Typical for such nonsense, there was no real meaning in any of it, and yet it still made me vastly uncomfortable on the bottom shelf of my inner cabinet, and when I finally staggered out of bed the next morning I was very far from rested. I

Though the scoffers still revile at Christianity and say that it spreads not as once it did, a speedy answer shall confound them, or if not speedy, yet the stroke shall be sure! Our King waits a while. He has leisure. Haste belongs to weakness. His strength moves calmly. Only let Him be awakened and you shall see how quick are His paces! He redeemed the world in a few short hours upon the Cross and I guarantee you that when He gets that iron rod once to working, He will not need many days to ease Him of His adversaries and make a clean sweep of all that set themselves against Him! If you want to see how it will be done, read, I pray you, Daniel 2:31—“You, O king, saw and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before you; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” It was a strange conglomeration—all the metallic empires are set forth as combined in one image—which image is the embodied idea of monarchical power which has fascinated men even to this day. The Prophet goes on to say, “You saw still that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay and broke them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold broken to pieces together and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” And so it is to be—the vision is being each day fulfilled. The Gospel stone, which owes nothing to human strength or wisdom, is breaking the image and scattering all opposing powers. No system, society, confederacy, or cabinet can stand which is opposed to the Truth of God and righteousness. I, even I, that am but of yesterday and know nothing, have seen one of the mightiest of empires of modern times melt away all of a sudden as the frost of the morning in the heat of the sun. I have seen monarchs driven out of their tyrannies by the powers of a single man and a free nation born as in an hour. I have seen states which fought to hold the Negro in perpetual captivity subdued by those whom they despised, while the slave has been set free! I have seen nations chastened under evil governments and revived when the yoke has been broken and they have returned to the way of righteousness and peace. He who lives longest shall see most of this. Evil is short-lived. Truth shall yet rise above all. The Lord says, overturn, overturn till He shall come whose right it is and God shall give it to Him. Woe unto those that stand against the Lord and His Anointed, for they shall not prosper. “Be wise now, therefore, O you kings: be instructed, you judges of the earth. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.

She answered him by reaching back, between his thighs, and gently encircling his scrotum with thumb and forefinger. She rocked there for a minute in the dark, erect above him, her other hand on his neck. The leather of her jeans creaked softly with the movement. Case shifted, feeling himself harden against the temperfoam. His head throbbed, but the brittleness in his neck seemed to retreat. He raised himself on one elbow, rolled, sank back against the foam, pulling her down, licking her breasts, small hard nipples sliding wet across his cheek. He found the zip on the leather jeans and tugged it down. “It’s okay,” she said, “I can see.” Sound of the jeans peeling down. She struggled beside him until she could kick them away. She threw a leg across him and he touched her face. Unexpected hardness of the implanted lenses. “Don’t,” she said, “fingerprints.” Now she straddled him again, took his hand, and closed it over her, his thumb along the cleft of her buttocks, his fingers spread across the labia. As she began to lower herself, the images came pulsing back, the faces, fragments of neon arriving and receding. She slid down around him and his back arched convulsively. She rode him that way, impaling herself, slipping down on him again and again, until they both had come, his orgasm flaring blue in a timeless space, a vastness like the matrix, where the faces were shredded and blown away down hurricane corridors, and her inner thighs were strong and wet against his hips. O

Primitive veddhas moulded images of women with full-blown breasts and legs. This was not to evoke sensuous pleasure, but as symbolic images related to their faith in religious fertility rites with the aim of increasing their return from harvesting and hunting. The modern artist magnifies the breasts of the woman in a painting in order to derive and to evoke erotic pleasure. That is how vulgarity enters their art.

So whether the woman is breast- or bottle-feeding, food and mother tend to be one." Abby, a thirty-two-year-old Vassar graduate and recovering anorexic, feels very strongly that family dynamics rather than idealized images of women contributed to her eating disorder. "I grew up in Greenwich Village," she explained. "I was the child of a single mother who was a devout feminist. I wasn't allowed to watch TV until I was thirteen because my mother believed that its patriarchal stereotypes would have a bad influence on the way I identified myself as a woman. Instead, I was given Sisterhood Is Powerful and Ms. magazine. My mother hated Barbie and what she represented. I wasn't allowed to have a Barbie, much less a Skipper or a Midge. And the irony is that I was severely anorexic as a teenager. When I was fifteen, I stopped eating. I'm five foot nine and at my lowest weight, I was just under a hundred pounds. I lost my period for three years. Today, I have come to realize that my anorexia was a reaction to a very controlled and crazy family situation. I became obsessed with being thin because it wasn't something my mother valued. I think overreacting to Barbie—setting her up as the ultimate negative example—can be just as damaging as positing her as an ideal.

My lady—” Lock began but Kat held up a hand. “Okay, I just have to say this. Before we go any farther, could both of you please stop calling me ‘my lady?’ It’s getting really old. We’re not at the freaking Renaissance Fair, you know. I mean, what’s next? Are you going to offer to buy me a tankard of mead and joust for my honor?” Both the brothers looked thoroughly confused. “Buy you what?” Deep said. “What’s a joust?” Lock asked. Kat blew out a breath in frustration. “Never mind. The point is, I want you to stop calling me ‘my lady.’ All right?” Lock frowned. “But it’s the only proper term of address for an elite female.” Kat had a feeling she was getting in deeper and deeper, but she couldn’t help asking. “What’s an elite female?” Lock’s dark brown eyes were suddenly as hot as his brother’s had been earlier when he’d scented her. “One with a shape like yours, my lady.” His big hands described a generous hourglass in the air. “Most of the females on Twin Moons are lean and tough—our lifestyle and diet make them that way.” “But there are a few,” Deep went on, taking up where his brother had left off. “A lucky few whom the Mother has marked with curving hips and ripe breasts, full to overflowing.” His black eyes flickered hungrily over her body as he spoke and Kat had to fight the urge to cover herself. She suddenly felt naked under the blue silk gown. “They are blessed by the Mother—goddesses who walk among us. We call them the elite,” Lock continued, still eyeing her. “And naturally we thought you were an Earth elite. Were we wrong?” Kat stared at them, unbelieving. “Uh, I guess so. But on Earth we call it ‘plus sized.’” “Plus sized?” Deep raised an eyebrow at her. “You know—more to love? Pleasingly plump? Big beautiful woman?” His eyes gleamed. “Most intriguing. I like all those descriptions.” “I do, too.” Lock gave her a ravenous look. Kat felt the sudden urge to pinch herself. Are they seriously saying they come from a planet of skinny-minnies but they think plus sized girls are hotter? Did somebody slip me some crazy pills? She shook her head, trying to clear away the mental images the brothers’ words brought to mind. “Look,” she said sternly. “It’s great you’re so into women with curves, but we are getting way, way, way off point here. One, I’d prefer if you just called me Kat. And two, we need to do this…whatever it is we’re going to do and try to locate Sophie and Sylvan. They’ve been missing for hours now.” “Very

Thanks to Kate Butler, I am now acquainted with the red breasted robins which one sees with the snow (in typical pictures). Kate also told me that these pictures in England became popular for Christmas cards because postmen used to wear a red waistcoat. I cannot help now but view this as a recent unintentional cultural projection of the ancient Phoenix symbolism -which I have validly asserted before- for being, a Messenger. The subtlety of this functional distinction of its symbolism (which we see throughout history) lies in the belief that the message carrier has to bring the news and information from afar and above. I cannot believe that I am now gazing at a vivid image of this concept (existing in England) to confirm my own discovery and observation of ancient Egypt!