Bridge Game Quotes

That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.

What did you say to Van Eck on the bridge?” Kaz asked at last. “When we were making the trade?” “You will see me once more, but only once.” “More Suli proverbs?” “A promise to myself. And Van Eck.” “Careful, Wraith. You’re ill-suited to the revenge game. I’m not sure your Suli Saints would approve.” “My Saints don’t like bullies.

Yamamoto sensed a feeling of culmination about the huge success of the first strike, and the same incisive intuition that guided his brilliant moves at the gaming tables told him what the next move on the bridge of Akagi would be. In (Vice Admiral) Nagumo he knew his man. Nagumo had never been committed to the Pearl Harbor mission. He had not been Yamamoto’s choice to command the Striking Force; his assignment was the decision of the Navy Ministry in Tokyo, based on seniority. While the exultation of the officers and sailors on his staff swirled around him, Yamamoto sat quietly. Finally, he fixed a steely gaze on his chief of staff, and in a low, intense voice: “Admiral Nagumo is going to withdraw.

Seems to me that love can calm storms, end wars, make fools of smart people, and bridge the gap between life and death. Doesn’t that make it the most powerful?

Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.

It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time--by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still? In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions--we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made shape our lives for decades to come.

...but you are too much for them: the weak in courage are strong in cunning; and one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert halls, or over a bridge game, or to relax; Cézannes are hung on walls, reproduced, in natural wood frames; van Gogh is the man who cut off his ear and whose yellows became recently popular in window decoration.

I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

They didn't come to crush the city. They came to crush the hubris of its king." "That must have hurt," Oates said. Umber pinched the bridge of his nose. "Hubris means arrogance, you great buffoon.

In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the Neo-Con-Artists seized the economy and added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defence, three times more for gasoline and home-heating oil and twice what we payed for health-care. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health-care, their pensions; trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war payed for with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the President's oil men are maneuvering on Iraq's oil. Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Borrowed money to start a hot war with Iran, now we have another cold war with Russia and the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.

I never win anything," Dolorous Edd complained. "The gods always smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice depp proof of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks?" "Was it a long fall?" Green wanted to know. "Did landing in the pool of water save his life?" "No," said Dolorous Edd. "He was dead already, from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks.

You don't know how to respond," Ferrin said. "I'll make it easy for you. The safest course of action for your young rebellion would be to toss me off the tallest cliff you can find. I have played a perilous game for years--trading secrets, telling lies, finding leverage, earning trust only to betray it. I got away with an eccentric lifestyle among Maldor's elite by hiding much of what I learned and proving myself too valuable to kill. It was a precarious, unforgiving game. When I released you from Felrook, I miscalculated, and I lost Game over. Bridges burned. But the game is part of my nature. I don't think I can stop playing until I stop breathing.

Yet even so, Jon Snow was not sorry he had come. There were wonders here as well. He had seen sunlight flashing on icy thin waterfalls as they plunged over the lips of sheer stone cliffs, and a mountain meadow full of autumn wildflowers, blue coldsnaps and bright scarlet frostfires and stands of piper's grass in russet and gold. He had peered down ravines so deep and black they seemed certain to end in some hell, and he had ridden his garron over a wind-eaten bridge of natural stone with nothing but sky to either side. Eagles nested in the heights and came down to hunt the valleys, circling effortlessly on great blue-grey wings that seemed almost part of the sky.

Life is a gift, value it.
 Life is a trial, endure it.
 Life is a journey, complete it.
 Life is a test, pass it.
 Life is a task, fulfill it.
 Life is an opportunity, use it.
 Life is a moment, enjoy it.
 Life is a mission, accomplish it. Life is a battle, face it.
 Life is a jungle, explore it.
 Life is a puzzle, study it.
 Life is a mystery, solve it.
 Life is a game, beat it.
 Life is an opponent, defeat it.
 Life is a treasure, cherish it. Life is a bridge, cross it.

Dont act like you are walking around with a Tshirt that says "I give Up!" on the front and on the back saying "I never started trying!" People can bring you down, situations happen, YOU can feel like Life is the shittiest thing to deal with. BLAH BLAH BLAH.. If you're walking through Hell, keep going! Everyday there's a new challenge. Face it! Deal with it! Move on! To every problem there is a solution or a way around it.. Stop being a sour mongral and think life owes you something.. No one will do anything for you these days. Start fighting. Get rid of ALL the shit people in your Life. Grow some balls of steel and work progressively through everything. Step by Step or what ever mad method you have to get you back in line again. Who cares, if people don't like you, BURN that mother of a bridge down. It was never meant to be.. Build New ones! Many roads to cross and new paths on life to Explore.. It starts with YOU.. And if people want to judge you, tell them to F/O and look in the mirror. Time for a new game.. It's called "Take over the World" WHOOOP WHOOOP!!

I slipped the envelope into it, there in the wide lower corridor of the Arts Building with people passing me on the way to classes, on the way to have a smoke and maybe a game of bridge in the Common Room. On their way to deeds they didn't know they had in them.

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I can’t help but think what my life would be like if I hadn’t written the book. Monday, I would’ve played bridge. And tomorrow night, I’d be going to the League meeting and turning in the newsletter. Then on Friday night, Stuart would take me to dinner and we’d stay out late and I’d be tired when I got up for my tennis game on Saturday. Tired and content and . . . frustrated. Because Hilly would’ve called her maid a thief that afternoon, and I would’ve just sat there and listened to it. And Elizabeth would’ve grabbed her child’s arm too hard and I would’ve looked away, like I didn’t see it. And I’d be engaged to Stuart and I wouldn’t wear short dresses, only short hair, or consider doing anything risky like write a book about colored housekeepers, too afraid he’d disapprove. And while I’d never lie and tell myself I actually changed the minds of people like Hilly and Elizabeth, at least I don’t have to pretend I agree with them anymore.

Wasn't it what her father always warned her about? Don't jump off a bridge because a cute guy tells you to?

It has taken many years for the game of go to initiate me into the freedom of slipping between yesterday, today, and tomorrow. From one stone to the next, from black to white, the thousands of stones have ended up building a bridge far into the infinite expanse of China.

No people are uninteresting. Their fate is like the chronicle of planets. Nothing in them in not particular, and planet is dissimilar from planet. And if a man lived in obscurity making his friends in that obscurity obscurity is not uninteresting. To each his world is private and in that world one excellent minute. And in that world one tragic minute These are private. In any man who dies there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight it goes with him. There are left books and bridges and painted canvas and machinery Whose fate is to survive. But what has gone is also not nothing: by the rule of the game something has gone. Not people die but worlds die in them. Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures Of whom, essentially, what did we know? Brother of a brother? Friend of friends? Lover of lover? We who knew our fathers in everything, in nothing. They perish. They cannot be brought back. The secret worlds are not regenerated. And every time again and again I make my lament against destruction.

With my limited understanding what I think happened was that God decided to play a fun game. He created a great experiment and BANG and Kapoof! He exploded into millions of trillions of little pieces and they are each one of them us, scattered all over the universe. This would mean that we are all pieces of each other. We all belong to each other. I am part of you, you are part of me, always have been, always will be. If you put us all together, well, maybe that is God.

I stood there, on the edge of the bloody bridge, because he was mine. Sherlock was mine and I wanted him. I loved him, and maybe it was wrong, or twisted, but I couldn’t be swayed. Not again.

Chances are you have a deep connection to books because at some point you discovered that they were the one truly safe place to discover and explore feelings that are banished from the dinner table, the cocktail party, the golf foursome, the bridge game. Because the writers who mattered to you have dared to say I am a sick man. And because within the world of books there is no censure.

Through the darkness and the tender trees we could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards – presumably because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.

My story is about all I got to my name right now, and that's why I feel robbed. But a story's a whole lot more than most people got. All you people watching out there, you're listening to what I say because I have something you don't: I got plot. Bought and paid for. That's what all you people want, and why you're sucking off me. You want my plot. I know how you feel too, since hey, I used to feel the same way. TV and video games and movies and computer screens... On April 8th, 1999, I jumped into the screen, I switched to watchee. Ever since, I've known what my life is about. I give good story. It may have been kinda gory, but admit it, you all loved it. You ate it up. Nuts, I ought to be on some government payroll. Without people like me, the whole country would jump off a bridge, 'cause the only thing on TV is some housewife on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? winning $64,000 for remembering the name of the president's dog.

Longing on a large scale is what makes history. This is just a kid with a local yearning but he is part of an assembling crowd, anonymous thousands off the buses and trains, people in narrow columns tramping over the swing bridge above the river, and even if they are not a migration or a revolution, some vast shaking of the soul, they bring with them the body heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the unseen something that haunts the day—men in fedoras and sailors on shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game.

…Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk." He stopped his actions when I spoke up. "You probably know this already, but I'm not a prophet. No, I am as far removed from such a being as you can get." Ever since we got into a tussle back on the Dongho Bridge, I had never introduced myself properly once. To Yoo Joonghyuk, I was the prophet, a man with a mysterious background. "I'm not the 'Demon King of Salvation'." [Story, 'Demon King of Salvation', has stopped its storytelling.] "I'm also not the 'King of a Kingless World'." [Story, 'King of a Kingless World', has stopped its storytelling.] One by one, my Stories stopped their stories. Excluding my own, everything else became dead still. "My name is Kim Dokja." The wings on my back disappeared, and the ballooned-up muscles shrunk back, too. "Twenty-eight… No, wait. I was twenty-eight, and I was an employee of a game company. My hobby was reading web novels…" As if I was talking to someone I met for the first time, I continued to tell my own story. "It's pathetic, right? Well, this is who I am… Yoo Joonghyuk, who are you?" To me, Yoo Joonghyuk was someone I 'knew' since from a long time ago. To be more specific, he was someone I read about all by myself. That was why I had never heard about his story in his own words. He finally opened his mouth. "I am Yoo Joonghyuk." His blade slowly moved and cut me down. "Yoo Joonghyuk, a former Regressor.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

For the brave souls who burned the bridges between themselves and their demons. And for those still trying to light the match—we’ll wait for you.

Seems to me that love can calm storms, end wars, make fools of smart people, and bridge the gap between life and death.

She didn’t fall off the bridge! The snow would look different where she was standing!” Maude Ivory insisted. “Lucy Gray, which is it?” “It’s a mystery, sweetheart. Just like me. That’s why it’s my song,” Lucy Gray answered.

Clerk Carmine said a job’s a job, and music can be a bridge to better understanding between people because most everybody loves a good tune. Lenore Dove said most everybody loves breathing, too, and where did that get us? Some loves don’t signify.

A nice new thought," I said. "That's what learning is, after all: not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

It’s hard enough to be taken seriously when love is up against powers like storm, war, knowledge, and death.” “Seems to me that love can calm storms, end wars, make fools of smart people, and bridge the gap between life and death. Doesn’t that make it the most powerful?

He proposed an imitation game. There would be a man (A), a woman (B) and an interrogator (C) in a separate room, reading the written answers from the others, trying to work out which was the woman. B would be trying to hinder the process. Now, said Turing, imagine that A was replaced by a computer. Could the interrogator tell whether they were talking to a machine or not after five minutes of questioning? He gave snatches of written conversation to show how difficult the Turing Test would be: Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge. A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry. To imitate that a computer would need deep knowledge of social mores and the use of language. To pass the Turing Test the computer would have to do more than imitate. It would have to be a learning entity.

Oh, you're right. I'm just a human with thick skin, purple eyes, and hard bones. Which means you can go home. Tell Galen I said hi." Toraf opens and shuts his mouth twice. Both times it seems like he wants to say something, but his expression tells me his brain isn't cooperating. When his mouth snaps shut a third time, I splash water in his face. "Are you going to say something, or are you trying to catch wind and sail? A grin the size of the horizon spreads across his face. "He likes that, you know. Your temper." Yeahfreakingright. Galen's a classic type A personality-and type A's hate smartass-ism. Just ask my mom. "No offense, but you're not exactly an expert at judging people's emotions." "I'm not sure what you mean by that." "Sure you do." "If you're talking about Rayna, then you're wrong. She loves me. She just won't admit it." I roll my eyes. "Right. She's playing hard to get, is that it? Bashing your head with a rock, splitting your lip, calling you squid breath all the time." "What does that mean? Hard to get?" "It means she's trying to make you think she doesn't like you, so that you end up liking her more. So you work harder to get her attention." He nods. "Exactly. That's exactly what she's doing." Pinching the bridge of my nose, I say, "I don't think so. As we speak, she's getting your mating seal dissolved. That's not playing hard to get. That's playing impossible to get." "Even if she does get it dissolved, it's not because she doesn't care about me. She just likes to play games." The pain in Toraf's voice guts me like the catch of the day. She might like playing games, but his feelings are real. And can't I relate to that? "There's only one way to find out," I say softly. "Find out?" "If all she wants is games." "How?" "You play hard to get. You know how they say. 'If you love someone, set them free. If they return to you, it was meant to be?'" "I've never heard that." "Right. No, you wouldn't have." I sigh. "Basically, what I'm trying to say is, you need to stop giving Rayna attention. Push her away. Treat her like she treats you." He shakes his head. "I don't think I can do that." "You'll get your answer that way," I say, shrugging. "But it sounds like you don't really want to know." "I do want to know. But what if the answer isn't good?" His face scrunches as if the words taste like lemon juice. "You've got to be ready to deal with it, no matter what." Toraf nods, his jaw tight. The choices he has to consider will make this night long enough for him. I decide not to intrude on his time anymore. "I'm pretty tired, so I'm heading back. I'll meet you at Galen's in the morning. Maybe I can break thirty minutes tomorrow, huh?" I nudge his shoulder with my fist, but a weak smile is all I get in return. I'm surprised when he grabs my hand and starts pulling me through the water. At least it's better than dragging me by the ankle. I can't but think how Galen could have done the same thing. Why does he wrap his arms around me instead?

The art of fiction has not changed much since prehistoric times. The formula for telling a powerful story has remained the same: create a strong character, a person of great strengths, capable of deep emotions and decisive action. Give him a weakness. Set him in conflict with another powerful character -- or perhaps with nature. Let his exterior conflict be the mirror of the protagonist's own interior conflict, the clash of his desires, his own strength against his own weakness. And there you have a story. Whether it's Abraham offering his only son to God, or Paris bringing ruin to Troy over a woman, or Hamlet and Claudius playing their deadly game, Faust seeking the world's knowledge and power -- the stories that stand out in the minds of the reader are those whose characters are unforgettable. To show other worlds, to describe possible future societies and the problems lurking ahead, is not enough. The writer of science fiction must show how these worlds and these futures affect human beings. And something much more important: he must show how human beings can and do literally create these future worlds. For our future is largely in our own hands. It doesn't come blindly rolling out of the heavens; it is the joint product of the actions of billions of human beings. This is a point that's easily forgotten in the rush of headlines and the hectic badgering of everyday life. But it's a point that science fiction makes constantly: the future belongs to us -- whatever it is. We make it, our actions shape tomorrow. We have the brains and guts to build paradise (or at least try). Tragedy is when we fail, and the greatest crime of all is when we fail even to try. Thus science fiction stands as a bridge between science and art, between the engineers of technology and the poets of humanity.

This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals sails appeared charmed. They blazed red in the day and silver at night, like a magician’s cloak, hinting at mysteries concealed beneath, which Tella planned to uncover that night. Drunken laughter floated above her as Tella delved deeper into the ship’s underbelly in search of Nigel the Fortune-teller. Her first evening on the vessel she’d made the mistake of sleeping, not realizing until the following day that Legend’s performers had switched their waking hours to prepare for the next Caraval. They slumbered in the day and woke after sunset. All Tella had learned her first day aboard La Esmeralda was that Nigel was on the ship, but she had yet to actually see him. The creaking halls beneath decks were like the bridges of Caraval, leading different places at different hours and making it difficult to know who stayed in which room. Tella wondered if Legend had designed it that way, or if it was just the unpredictable nature of magic. She imagined Legend in his top hat, laughing at the question and at the idea that magic had more control than he did. For many, Legend was the definition of magic. When she had first arrived on Isla de los Sueños, Tella suspected everyone could be Legend. Julian had so many secrets that she’d questioned if Legend’s identity was one of them, up until he’d briefly died. Caspar, with his sparkling eyes and rich laugh, had played the role of Legend in the last game, and at times he’d been so convincing Tella wondered if he was actually acting. At first sight, Dante, who was almost too beautiful to be real, looked like the Legend she’d always imagined. Tella could picture Dante’s wide shoulders filling out a black tailcoat while a velvet top hat shadowed his head. But the more Tella thought about Legend, the more she wondered if he even ever wore a top hat. If maybe the symbol was another thing to throw people off. Perhaps Legend was more magic than man and Tella had never met him in the flesh at all. The boat rocked and an actual laugh pierced the quiet. Tella froze. The laughter ceased but the air in the thin corridor shifted. What had smelled of salt and wood and damp turned thick and velvet-sweet. The scent of roses. Tella’s skin prickled; gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. At her feet a puddle of petals formed a seductive trail of red. Tella might not have known Legend’s true name, but she knew he favored red and roses and games. Was this his way of toying with her? Did he know what she was up to? The bumps on her arms crawled up to her neck and into her scalp as her newest pair of slippers crushed the tender petals. If Legend knew what she was after, Tella couldn’t imagine he would guide her in the correct direction, and yet the trail of petals was too tempting to avoid. They led to a door that glowed copper around the edges. She turned the knob. And her world transformed into a garden, a paradise made of blossoming flowers and bewitching romance. The walls were formed of moonlight. The ceiling was made of roses that dripped down toward the table in the center of the room, covered with plates of cakes and candlelight and sparkling honey wine. But none of it was for Tella. It was all for Scarlett. Tella had stumbled into her sister’s love story and it was so romantic it was painful to watch. Scarlett stood across the chamber. Her full ruby gown bloomed brighter than any flowers, and her glowing skin rivaled the moon as she gazed up at Julian. They touched nothing except each other. While Scarlett pressed her lips to Julian’s, his arms wrapped around her as if he’d found the one thing he never wanted to let go of. This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals were as ephemeral as feelings, eventually they would wilt and die, leaving nothing but the thorns.

The formula was the same formula we see in every election: Republicans demonize government, sixties-style activism, and foreigners. Democrats demonize corporations, greed, and the right-wing rabble. Both candidates were selling the public a storyline that had nothing to do with the truth. Gas prices were going up for reasons completely unconnected to the causes these candidates were talking about. What really happened was that Wall Street had opened a new table in its casino. The new gaming table was called commodity index investing. And when it became the hottest new game in town, America suddenly got a very painful lesson in the glorious possibilities of taxation without representation. Wall Street turned gas prices into a gaming table, and when they hit a hot streak we ended up making exorbitant involuntary payments for a commodity that one simply cannot live without. Wall Street gambled, you paid the big number, and what they ended up doing with some of that money you lost is the most amazing thing of all. They got America—you, me, Priscilla Carillo, Robert Lukens—to pawn itself to pay for the gas they forced us to buy in the first place. Pawn its bridges, highways, and airports. Literally sell our sovereign territory. It was a scam of almost breathtaking beauty, if you’re inclined to appreciate that sort of thing.

I can't give up on anyone either, even someone who's burned every bridge like Drake Schultz. Getting him to deal with his insecurities and whatever it is he's trying to hide. It's this never-ending cycle of self-hatred that I have to address before I can even think about doing anything else with him. I have to put him to the test. Just how far gone is he? How good of a liar has he become?

We sleep and nap in bed--my two piled up mattresses on the bare wooden floor. We are silent, dreamy. She surveys my photographs crowded on the wall. I have no particular subject, no special theme. The Brooklyn Bridge at dawn will do, tugs and their milky wake, elms fading in the fading light, my postman and his green mailbag. It's the shooting the excites me. Printing is the fatiguing task after the action, the dressing of the game after the hunt.

Mrs. French's cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. "Have you seen Honey?" We've all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody. Until last Thursday morning, when Miss Colette Piscine swerved her car to miss Honey the cat as she drove across a bridge. Well this bridge, now slightly damaged, is a bit of a local treasure and even has its own fancy name; Pont de Flaque. Now Collette, that sounds like Culotte. That's Panty in French. And Piscine means Pool. Panty pool. Flaque also means pool in French, so Colete Piscine, in French Panty Pool, drives over the Pont de Flaque, the Pont de Pool if you will, to avoid hitting Mrs. French's cat that has been missing in Pontypool. Pontypool. Pontypool. Panty pool. Pont de Flaque. What does it mean? Well, Norman Mailer, he had an interesting theory that he used to explain the strange coincidences in the aftermath of the JFK assasination. In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birthdates and middle names, all kind of superfluous things appear related to eachother. It's a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well... it means something's going to happen. Something big. But then, something's always about to happen.

At one point in 2015, a few Instagrammers in Barnieh's crowd in Hong Kong took the game to another level: they made a habit of hanging off the side of buildings and the tops of bridges. In one shot by Lucian Yock Lam, @yock7, a man is holding another man's arm while he dangles from the side of a skyscraper at night, hovering above a busy street. The caption is a simple hashtag: #followmebro. It got 2,550 likes, a fleeting reward for putting one's life at risk.

life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.

In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come. —

Foreignness is intrinsically stimulating. Like a good game of bridge, the condition of being foreign engages the mind constantly without ever tiring it.”… …“But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another. The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity—the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them.

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on. It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups. I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it’s close to 70 degrees. There’s a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board. I’m thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off. Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures. Then the hollow percussion sounds of the ice thudding, crackling under my feet, breaking off little ice flows carried away into a snow-covered cavern and out the other side of the tunnel. And I followed it all the way to bridge under Maple Road as if I didn't have a care in the world.

Wiser and more capable men than I shall ever be have put their findings before you, findings so rich and so full of anger, serenity, murder, healing, truth, and love that it seems incredible the world were not destroyed and fulfilled in the instant, but you are too much for them: the weak in courage are strong in cunning; and one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all your poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert halls, or over a bridge game, or to relax; Cézannes are hung on walls, reproduced, in natural wood frames; van Gogh is the man who cut off his ear and whose yellows became recently popular in window decoration; Swift loved individuals but hated the human race; Kafka is a fad; Blake is in the Modern Library; Freud is a Modern Library Giant; Dovschenko’s Frontier is disliked by those who demand that it fit the Eisenstein esthetic; nobody reads Joyce any more; Céline is a madman who has incurred the hearty dislike of Alfred Kazin, reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune book section, and is, moreover, a fascist; I hope I need not mention Jesus Christ of whom you have managed to make a dirty gentile. However

He has his own games, his own bits of mischief, whose foundation consists of hatred for the bourgeois; his peculiar metaphors: to be dead is to eat dandelions by the root; his own occupations, calling hackney-coaches, letting down carriage-steps, establishing means of transit between the two sides of a street in heavy rains, which he calls making the bridge of arts, crying discourses pronounced by the authorities in favor of the French people, cleaning out the cracks in the pavement; he has his own coinage, which is composed of all the little morsels of worked copper which are found on the public streets.

I love reading. It has taught me many things. I have learned how to bridge the gap between both genders and age. Separation anxiety and psychoanalysing myself. Between youth and adulthood. It takes a lifetime for some people to fully grasp how wonderful it is just to accept the friendship of someone who is older than you or younger than you. You will always learn something new and that is always how the game of life is played. You do not have to be an intellectual to realise that this moment in time for any generation you will always be caught between pitching your tent, finding that perfect picnic spot, realising that you are perpetually caught between being the frosting on top of the cake and the Everest.

A player’s first move isn’t necessarily the truest or clearest view of that person I’ll get, but it’s often the most naked, because it takes a while to situate yourself within an imaginary landscape. When you respond to the initial subscriber packet with your opening move—when you come to the bridge—you haven’t had a chance to get much sense of the game’s rhythms, so you’re awkward, halting, more likely to overplay your hand. The open path at the overpass gives way to grand schemes, huge, multipart responses, whole narratives from within the canvas newly forming inside the player’s imagination. I keep myself out of it; I interpret and react, like a flowchart responding flatly to a person who’s asking it how to live.

We were on a bridge in Paris in the summer of 1985. It was overcast. We leaned against the smooth stone rail and stared at the green water rolling on below. Your world had cleaved and then it paused, waiting to rearrange itself around whatever you chose next. I wanted to run away from what had come before. I tried to convince you to begin a new life with me in Paris, to shed our former selves and let something else course through us. I wanted us to crawl through that black chasm of your broken world and emerge, anonymous and new, in simple lives where I could cook you simple dinners and we could be together every day, like children playing a sweet game with no purpose save the game itself. I like to think you considered it before you laughed and said “What could I do?

The Montreux Palace Hotel was built in an age when it was thought that things would last. It is on the very shores of Switzerland's Lake Geneva, its balconies and iron railings look across the water, its yellow-ocher awnings are a touch of color in the winter light. It is like a great sanitarium or museum. There are Bechstein pianos in the public rooms, a private silver collection, a Salon de Bridge. This is the hotel where the novelist Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov and his wife, Véra, live. They have been here for 14 years. One imagines his large and brooding reflection in the polished glass of bookcases near the reception desk where there are bound volumes of the Illustrated London News from the year 1849 to 1887, copies of Great Expectations, The Chess Games of Greco and a book called Things Past, by the Duchess of Sermoneta. Though old, the hotel is marvelously kept up and, in certain portions, even modernized. Its business now is mainly conventions and, in the summer, tours, but there is still a thin migration of old clients, ancient couples and remnants of families who ask for certain rooms when they come and sometimes certain maids. For Nabokov, a man who rode as a child on the great European express trains, who had private tutors, estates, and inherited millions which disappeared in the Russian revolution, this is a return to his sources. It is a place to retire to, with Visconti's Mahler and the long-dead figures of La Belle Epoque, Edward VII, d'Annunzio, the munitions kings, where all stroll by the lake and play miniature golf, home at last.

Stop strokin’ that gun, Kyle,” Gator said. “You’re makin’ me nervous. I’m thinkin’ you’re about to make love to the damn thing.” “She is purty,” Kyle said, giving the gun one last caress, his eye watching the truck ahead. “Slow down a little, and let them get ahead of us, Gator.” “What if they put up a roadblock?” Jonas asked. Ryland opened one eye. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Can the chatter and let me sleep. We’ve got swimming to do and I’m getting too old for this shit.” “Do they have sharks off this coast?” Jonas asked. Sam snickered. “You and those sharks, Jonas.” “I have nightmares, man,” Jonas protested. “I’ll feed you to a damn shark if you don’t let me sleep,” Ryland drawled. Kadan and Nico exchanged amused glances. Ryland opened both eyes. “I heard that. I’m not that old.

Comparing marriage to football is no insult. I come from the South where football is sacred. I would never belittle marriage by saying it is like soccer, bowling, or playing bridge, never. Those images would never work, only football is passionate enough to be compared to marriage. In other sports, players walk onto the field, in football they run onto the field, in high school ripping through some paper, in college (for those who are fortunate enough) they touch the rock and run down the hill onto the field in the middle of the band. In other sports, fans cheer, in football they scream. In other sports, players ‘high five’, in football they chest, smash shoulder pads, and pat your rear. Football is a passionate sport, and marriage is about passion. In football, two teams send players onto the field to determine which athletes will win and which will lose, in marriage two families send their representatives forward to see which family will survive and which family will be lost into oblivion with their traditions, patterns, and values lost and forgotten. Preparing for this struggle for survival, the bride and groom are each set up. Each has been led to believe that their family’s patterns are all ‘normal,’ and anyone who differs is dense, naïve, or stupid because, no matter what the issue, the way their family has always done it is the ‘right’ way. For the premarital bride and groom in their twenties, as soon as they say, “I do,” these ‘right’ ways of doing things are about to collide like two three hundred and fifty pound linemen at the hiking of the ball. From “I do” forward, if not before, every decision, every action, every goal will be like the line of scrimmage. Where will the family patterns collide? In the kitchen. Here the new couple will be faced with the difficult decision of “Where do the cereal bowls go?” Likely, one family’s is high, and the others is low. Where will they go now? In the bathroom. The bathroom is a battleground unmatched in the potential conflicts. Will the toilet paper roll over the top or underneath? Will the acceptable residing position for the lid be up or down? And, of course, what about the toothpaste? Squeeze it from the middle or the end? But the skirmishes don’t stop in the rooms of the house, they are not only locational they are seasonal. The classic battles come home for the holidays. Thanksgiving. Which family will they spend the noon meal with and which family, if close enough, will have to wait until the nighttime meal, or just dessert if at all? Christmas. Whose home will they visit first, if at all? How much money will they spend on gifts for his family? for hers? Then comes for many couples an even bigger challenge – children of their own! At the wedding, many couples take two candles and light just one often extinguishing their candle as a sign of devotion. The image is Biblical. The Bible is quoted a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. What few prepare them for is the upcoming struggle, the conflict over the unanswered question: the two shall become one, but which one? Two families, two patterns, two ways of doing things, which family’s patterns will survive to play another day, in another generation, and which will be lost forever? Let the games begin.

The problem for him in high school was that debate made you a nerd and poetry made you a pussy – even if both could help you get to the vaguely imagines East Coast city from which your experiences in Topeka would be recounted with great irony. The key was to narrate participation in debate as a form of linguistic combat; the key was to be a bully, quick and vicious and ready to spread an interlocutor with insults at the at the smallest provocation. Poetry could be excused if it upped your game, became cipher and flow, if it was part of why Amber was fucking you and not Reynolds et al. If linguistic prowess could do damage and get you laid, then it could be integrated into the adolescent social realm without entirely departing from the household values of intellect and expression. It was not a reconciliation, but a workable tension. His disastrous tonsorial compromise. The migraines. Fortunately for Adam, this shifting of aggression to the domain of language was sanctioned by one of the practices the types had appropriated: after several hours of drinking, if no fight or noise complain had broken up the party, you were likely to encounter freestyling. In many ways, this was the most shameful of all the poses, the clearest manifestation of a crisis in white masculinity and its representational regimes, a small group of privileged crackers often arrhythmically recycling the genre’s dominant and to them totally inapplicable clichés. But it was socially essential for him: the rap battle transmuted his prowess as a public speaker and aspiring poet into something cool. His luck was dizzying: that there was a rapid, ritualized poetic insult exchange bridging the gap between his Saturday afternoons in abandoned high schools and his Saturday nights in unsupervised houses, allowing him to transition from one contest to the other.

[...]a man and a boy, side by side on a yellow Swedish sofa from the 1950s that the man had bought because it somehow reminded him of a zoot suit, watching the A’s play Baltimore, Rich Harden on the mound working that devious ghost pitch, two pairs of stocking feet, size 11 and size 15, rising from the deck of the coffee table at either end like towers of the Bay Bridge, between the feet the remains in an open pizza box of a bad, cheap, and formerly enormous XL meat lover’s special, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, and ham, all of it gone but crumbs and parentheses of crusts left by the boy, brackets for the blankness of his conversation and, for all the man knew, of his thoughts, Titus having said nothing to Archy since Gwen’s departure apart from monosyllables doled out in response to direct yes-or-nos, Do you like baseball? you like pizza? eat meat? pork?, the boy limiting himself whenever possible to a tight little nod, guarding himself at his end of the sofa as if riding on a crowded train with something breakable on his lap, nobody saying anything in the room, the city, or the world except Bill King and Ken Korach calling the plays, the game eventless and yet blessedly slow, player substitutions and deep pitch counts eating up swaths of time during which no one was required to say or to decide anything, to feel what might conceivably be felt, to dread what might be dreaded, the game standing tied at 1 and in theory capable of going on that way forever, or at least until there was not a live arm left in the bullpen, the third-string catcher sent in to pitch the thirty-second inning, batters catnapping slumped against one another on the bench, dead on their feet in the on-deck circle, the stands emptied and echoing, hot dog wrappers rolling like tumbleweeds past the diehards asleep in their seats, inning giving way to inning as the dawn sky glowed blue as the burner on a stove, and busloads of farmhands were brought in under emergency rules to fill out the weary roster, from Sacramento and Stockton and Norfolk, Virginia, entire villages in the Dominican ransacked for the flower of their youth who were loaded into the bellies of C-130s and flown to Oakland to feed the unassuageable appetite of this one game for batsmen and fielders and set-up men, threat after threat giving way to the third out, weak pop flies, called third strikes, inning after inning, week after week, beards growing long, Christmas coming, summer looping back around on itself, wars ending, babies graduating from college, and there’s ball four to load the bases for the 3,211th time, followed by a routine can of corn to left, the commissioner calling in varsity teams and the stars of girls’ softball squads and Little Leaguers, Archy and Titus sustained all that time in their equally infinite silence, nothing between them at all but three feet of sofa;

I cannot remember who scored runs or took wickets, and I have always held in check the temptation to take an archaeological dig into Wisden to find out. Long ago I realised that to go looking for the evidence risked shaking loose the memories I already had; and possibly losing some of them as a consequence. So the important fragments of that day remain intact, shut and airtight in my mind, as if sealed in a jar. The scorecard my grandfather bought me - and filled in with a silver ballpoint pen - is long gone too. I have nothing that preserves our time together there except for the dozen or so still, square images which I can slide in a private show across my mind. These keep alive its broad outline, which is sufficient. The bold statistics don't matter anyway. What does matter is the imprint our journey to Trent Bridge left on me. It's evident in this book, which is also part-payment of an outstanding debt to my grandfather which I can never fully repay.

Alas, great is my sorrow. Your name is Ah Chen, and when you were born I was not truly pleased. I am a farmer, and a farmer needs strong sons to help with his work, but before a year had passed you had stolen my heart. You grew more teeth, and you grew daily in wisdom, and you said 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' and your pronunciation was perfect. When you were three you would knock at the door and then you would run back and ask, 'Who is it?' When you were four your uncle came to visit and you played the host. Lifting your cup, you said, 'Ching!' and we roared with laughter and you blushed and covered your face with your hands, but I know that you thought yourself very clever. Now they tell me that I must try to forget you, but it is hard to forget you. "You carried a toy basket. You sat at a low stool to eat porridge. You repeated the Great Learning and bowed to Buddha. You played at guessing games, and romped around the house. You were very brave, and when you fell and cut your knee you did not cry because you did not think it was right. When you picked up fruit or rice, you always looked at people's faces to see if it was all right before putting it in your mouth, and you were careful not to tear your clothes. "Ah Chen, do you remember how worried we were when the flood broke our dikes and the sickness killed our pigs? Then the Duke of Ch'in raised our taxes and I was sent to plead with him, and I made him believe that we could not pay out taxes. Peasants who cannot pay taxes are useless to dukes, so he sent his soldiers to destroy our village, and thus it was the foolishness of your father that led to your death. Now you have gone to Hell to be judged, and I know that you must be very frightened, but you must try not to cry or make loud noises because it is not like being at home with your own people. "Ah Chen, do you remember Auntie Yang, the midwife? She was also killed, and she was very fond of you. She had no little girls of her own, so it is alright for you to try and find her, and to offer her your hand and ask her to take care of you. When you come before the Yama Kings, you should clasp your hands together and plead to them: 'I am young and I am innocent. I was born in a poor family, and I was content with scanty meals. I was never wilfully careless of my shoes and my clothing, and I never wasted a grain of rice. If evil spirits bully me, may thou protect me.' You should put it just that way, and I am sure that the Yama Kings will protect you. "Ah Chen, I have soup for you and I will burn paper money for you to use, and the priest is writing down this prayer that I will send to you. If you hear my prayer, will you come to see me in your dreams? If fate so wills that you must yet lead an earthly life, I pray that you will come again to your mother's womb. Meanwhile I will cry, 'Ah Chen, your father is here!' I can but weep for you, and call your name.

Its Not My Fault.” **Verse 1** Staring at the ceiling, got my heart on my sleeve, Every glance I’m stealing, but no one sees me breathe. I’m just a shadow in the corner of the room, You pass me by like I’m the dust that fills the gloom. **Pre-Chorus** I wear my scars like stories, but you don’t want to read, I’m shouting in silence, can’t you hear my need? I might be unplanned, but it’s not who I am, I’m just a soul in search of a hand. **Chorus** I'm sick of your eyes skimming over, Like I don’t exist, just a ghost in your world. I reach out for connection, but you turn away, You think it’s just me, but it’s the games that you play. I warned you, oh, I warned you, I’m will hurt you, But you’re blind to the pain, my heart’s in the dirt. **Verse 2** Every time I laugh, I’m fighting back the tears, You’re too caught in your story, lost in your own gears. Try to break the silence, want to scream out loud, But my voice is fading, drowning in the crowd. **Pre-Chorus** I wear my scars like stories, but you don’t want to read, I’m shouting in silence, can’t you hear my need? I might be unplanned, but it’s not who I am, I’m just a soul in search of a hand. **Chorus** I'm sick of your eyes skimming over, Like I don’t exist, just a ghost in your world. I reach out for connection, but you turn away, You think it’s just me, but it’s the games that you play. I warned you, oh, I warned you, I will hurt you, But you’re blind to the pain, my heart’s in the dirt. **Bridge** So look me in the eye, see the fire ignite, I’m not just a whisper; I’m the storm in the night. I’m more than your passing glance, I’m fighting for my place, Can’t you see the longing etched across my face? **Chorus** I'm sick of your eyes skimming over, Like I don’t exist, just a ghost in your world. I reach out for connection, but you turn away, You think it’s just me, but it’s the games that you play. I warned you, oh, I warned you, I will hurt you, But you’re blind to the pain, my heart’s in the dirt. **Outro** So next time you see me, take a moment to feel, I’m here, I’m alive; I just want to be real. I’m breaking the silence, ready to be heard, Because I warned you, darling, that love’s not absurd.

N.E.W.T. Level Questions 281-300: What house at Hogwarts did Moaning Myrtle belong to? Which dragon did Viktor Krum face in the first task of the Tri-Wizard tournament? Luna Lovegood believes in the existence of which invisible creatures that fly in through someone’s ears and cause temporary confusion? What are the names of the three Peverell brothers from the tale of the Deathly Hallows? Name the Hogwarts school motto and its meaning in English? Who is Arnold? What’s the address of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes? During Quidditch try-outs, who did Ron beat to become Gryffindor’s keeper? Who was the owner of the flying motorbike that Hagrid borrows to bring baby Harry to his aunt and uncle’s house? During the intense encounter with the troll in the female bathroom, what spell did Ron use to save Hermione? Which wizard, who is the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry of Magic lost his son in 1995? When Harry, Ron and Hermione apparate away from Bill and Fleur’s wedding, where do they end up? Name the spell that freezes or petrifies the body of the victim? What piece did Hermione replace in the game of Giant Chess? What bridge did Fenrir Greyback and a small group of Death Eaters destroy in London? Who replaced Minerva McGonagall as the new Deputy Headmistress, and became the new Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts? Where do Bill and Fleur Weasley live? What epitaph did Harry carve onto Dobby’s grave using Malfoy’s old wand? The opal neckless is a cursed Dark Object, supposedly it has taken the lives of nineteen different muggles. But who did it curse instead after a failed attempt by Malfoy to assassinate Dumbledore? Who sends Harry his letter of expulsion from Hogwarts for violating the law by performing magic in front of a muggle? FIND THE ANSWERS ON THE NEXT PAGE! N.E.W.T. Level Answers 281-300 Ravenclaw. Myrtle attended Hogwarts from 1940-1943. Chinese Firebolt. Wrackspurts. Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus. “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus” and “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.” Arnold was Ginny’s purple Pygmy Puff, or tiny Puffskein, bred by Fred and George. Number 93, Diagon Alley. Cormac McLaggen. Sirius Black. “Wingardium Leviosa”. Amos Diggory. Tottenham Court Road in London. “Petrificus Totalus”. Rook on R8. The Millenium Bridge. Alecto Carrow. Shell Cottage, Tinworth, Cornwall. “HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE ELF.” Katie Bell. Malfalda Hopkirk, the witch responsible for the Improper use of Magic Office.

Your grandmother thought--no, she believed, it was like a faith for her. She believed it the way some people believe in God or science. She believed that it was the rules that made her life so easy. She thought life was about the rules people make for it, as if life was some kind of a board game and if you had a little luck, and you kept to the rules, you'd end up winning. Or maybe she thought it was like a game of solitaire and once the cards had been shuffled and laid out, if you had a good draw you were safe, as if it was arranged for you to win. Or to lose, although Grandmother considered herself someone who had won, since all she had to do once she was born was follow the rules. But really, life's like a game of bridge: You're dealt a hand and it can be a winning hand or a losing one, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll win or lose because there are other people at the table, your partner for one, and the other ream for another, that's three people...playing too, and people make mistakes, multiply that times three too, or you can just be smarter than they are. And luckier too, because anybody who sits down to play bridge or life without figuring out how much luck is involved is making a Big Mistake. I don't want you girls doing that.

I hope you don’t mind that we’re crashing,” Wes says. “I’m trying to escape a hunting expedition. No joke. Dad thinks I’ll be more of a man if I can blow a rabbit’s head off. And my response? ‘Sorry, Dad, but as tempting as it is to obliterate Peter Cottontail first thing on a Sunday morning, I promised Camelia I’d swing by her house, because she’s been begging to abuse my body for weeks.’” “And speaking of being delusional,” Kimmie segues, “did I mention that my plan to reunite my parents was totally dumb?” She leads us into my bedroom and then closes the door behind her. “They could smell the setup before their water glasses were even filled.” “How’s that?” I ask, taking a seat on my bed. “The violinist I arranged to serenade them at the table might have been a tip-off,” she begins. “Either that, or the wrist corsage I ordered for my mom. I handpicked the begonias and had the florist deliver it right to the table.” “Don’t forget about the oyster appetizer you preordered for the occasion,” Wes adds. “Because, you know what they say about oysters, right?” An evil grin breaks out across her face. ‘I know, I know.” She sighs, before I can even say anything. “I may have gone a little overboard, but what can I say? I’m a dorkus extremus. Hence my outit du jour.” She’s wearing a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform, a pair of clunky black glasses (with the requisite amount of tape on the bridge), and a cone-shaped dunce cap. “Yes, but you’re a dorkus extremus with a nice set of begonias,” Wes teases.

I. The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. [...] (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you, I will show you fear in a handful of dust. [...] Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. [...] II. A Game of Chess [...] Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. III. The Fire Sermon [...] The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. [...] At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. [...] I Tiresias, old man with dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest-- I too awaited the expected guest. [...] IV. Death by Water [...] A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. [...] V. What the Thunder Said [...] A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings And crawled head downward down a blackened wall And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

Real Quick" [Intro:] Valuable lesson, man I had to grow up That's why I never ask for help I'll do it for you niggaz and do it for myself [Chorus:] I go 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga! [50 Cent:] I'll run my blade 'cross a nigga ass {"real quick"} I'm so for real I'm on some real real nigga shit You playin boy I'll get you hit {"real quick"} You better hope the parademics come {"real quick"} Got me fucked up you think it's different now a nigga rich Before I get to cuttin know you niggaz better cut the shit Boy, you gon' have ya head popped, pull a trigger for me And my lil' niggaz trigger op' like it's legal homie No game when I bang, boy I empty the clip You run like a bitch, you ain't 'bout that shit Hey hey hey hey, I'll catch you another day day day day It's the Unit back to the bullshit [Tony Yayo:] Yeah! Nothin in life is out of bounds AK hold about a hundred rounds 60 shots like K.D. at the Rucker's Okay! When I see you on respirators Southside nigga 'til the day I'm gone Indulge in the violence when the drama on Yeah, these rap niggaz lukewarm I'm two sleeves of dope, when the mic on [Chorus] [Kidd Kidd:] Real quick, Rida Gang fuck nigga, huh! Don't Tweet me, see me when you see me Down to make the news just to say that I'm on TV (Kidd Kidd) This clip rated R, niggaz PG Them shells burn like a bootleg CD (huh?) Fuck love, I want the money When you get too much of it they gon' say you actin funny "Kidd, how you feel now that the Unit's back?" Like a million bucks, muh'fucker do the math! [Young Buck:] Cold-blooded, boy my heart don't feel shit Get with me, ask 50, I'll take the hit {"real quick"} Balenciagas, you can still get ya ass kicked Take a rapper nigga bitch and make a real flick I know I'm different from what you usually be dealin with Don't need a mic, give me some white to make a million with Single borough, six shots on the Brooklyn Bridge I'll let the nigga Drake tell you what I just did (yeah) [Chorus] [Lloyd Banks:] Nigga gettin money new to you (uh) I give a fuck if shit get ugly, there'll be a beautiful funeral You fit the script I'm gon' assume it's true Can't manuever through the street without a strategy, ain't nobody to tutor you And man was lucky Unit's through, you know why he flows 15 years, switchin dealers like casinos And my goon'll clip you on the arm (uhh) I'm out the country every week and dumpin ash out on the Autobahn Auto-pilot's always on Rather better livin, I've been [?] green bills callin me all day long This is homicide, more tears in your mama eyes More reason to wake up, real niggaz arrive [Chorus]

But…but that’s tragic! To go through life without color? Unable to appreciate art, or beauty?” He laughed. “Now, sweet-hold your brush before you paint me a martyr’s halo. It’s not as though I’m blind. I have a great appreciation for art, as I believe we’ve discussed. And as for beauty…I don’t need to know whether your eyes are blue or green or lavender to know that they’re uncommonly lovely.” “No one has lavender eyes.” “Don’t they?” His gaze caught hers and refused to let go. Leaning forward, he continued, “Did that tutor of yours ever tell you this? That your eyes are ringed with a perfect circle a few shades darker than the rest of the…don’t they call it the iris?” Sophia nodded. “The iris.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned forward, his gaze searching hers intently. “An apt term it is, too. There are these lighter rays that fan out from the center, like petals. And when your pupils widen-like that, right there-your eyes are like two flowers just coming into bloom. Fresh. Innocent.” She bowed her head, mixing a touch of lead white into the sea-green paint on her palette. He leaned closer still, his voice a hypnotic whisper. “But when you take delight in teasing me, looking up through those thick lashes, so saucy and self-satisfied…” She gave him a sharp look. He snapped his fingers. “There! Just like that. Oh, sweet-then those eyes are like two opera dancers smiling from behind big, feathered fans. Coy. Beckoning.” Sophia felt a hot blush spreading from her bosom to her throat. He smiled and reclined in his chair. “I don’t need to know the color of your hair to see that it’s smooth and shiny as silk. I don’t need to know whether it’s yellow or orange or red to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how it would feel brushing against my bare skin.” Opening his book to the marked page, he continued, “And don’t get me started on your lips, sweet. If I endeavored to discover the precise shade of red or pink or violet they are, I might never muster the concentration for anything else.” He turned a leaf of his book, then fell silent. Sophia stared at her canvas. Her pulse pounded in her ears. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, channeling down between her shoulder blades, and a hot, itchy longing pooled at the cleft of her legs. Drat him. He’d known she was taunting him with her stories. And now he sat there in an attitude of near-boredom, making love to her with his teasing, colorless words in a blatant attempt to fluster her. It was as though they were playing a game of cards, and he’d just raised the stakes. Sophia smiled. She always won at cards. “Balderdash,” she said calmly. He looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “No one has violet lips.” “Don’t they?” She laid aside her palette and crossed her arms on the table. “The slope of your nose is quite distinctive.” His lips quirked in a lopsided grin. “Really.” “Yes.” She leaned forward, allowing her bosom to spill against her stacked arms. His gaze dipped, but quickly returned to hers. “The way you have that little bump at the ridge…It’s proving quite a challenge.” “Is that so?” He bent his head and studied his book. Sophie stared at him, waiting one…two…three beats before he raised his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. Quite satisfactory progress, that. Definite beginnings of fluster.

These Claudines, then…they want to know because they believe they already do know, the way one who loves fruit knows, when offered a mango from the moon, what to expect; and they expect the loyal tender teasing affection of the schoolgirl crush to continue: the close and confiding companionship, the pleasure of the undemanding caress, the cuddle which consummates only closeness; yet in addition they want motherly putting right, fatherly forgiveness and almost papal indulgence; they expect that the sights and sounds, the glorious affairs of the world which their husbands will now bring before them gleaming like bolts of silk, will belong to the same happy activities as catching toads, peeling back tree bark, or powdering the cheeks with dandelions and oranging the nose; that music will ravish the ear the way the trill of the blackbird does; that literature will hold the mind in sweet suspense the way fairy tales once did; that paintings will crowd the eye with the delights of a colorful garden, and the city streets will be filled with the same cool dew-moist country morning air they fed on as children. But they shall not receive what they expect; the tongue will be about other business; one will hear in masterpieces only pride and bitter contention; buildings will have grandeur but no flowerpots or chickens; and these Claudines will exchange the flushed cheek for the swollen vein, and instead of companionship, they will get sex and absurd games composed of pinch, leer, and giggle—that’s what will happen to “let’s pretend.” 'The great male will disappear into the jungle like the back of an elusive ape, and Claudine shall see little of his strength again, his intelligence or industry, his heroics on the Bourse like Horatio at the bridge (didn’t Colette see Henri de Jouvenel, editor and diplomat and duelist and hero of the war, away to work each day, and didn’t he often bring his mistress home with him, as Willy had when he was husband number one?); the great affairs of the world will turn into tawdry liaisons, important meetings into assignations, deals into vulgar dealings, and the en famille hero will be weary and whining and weak, reminding her of all those dumb boys she knew as a child, selfish, full of fat and vanity like patrons waiting to be served and humored, admired and not observed. 'Is the occasional orgasm sufficient compensation? Is it the prize of pure surrender, what’s gained from all that giving up? There’ll be silk stockings and velvet sofas maybe, the customary caviar, tasting at first of frog water but later of money and the secretions of sex, then divine champagne, the supreme soda, and rubber-tired rides through the Bois de Boulogne; perhaps there’ll be rich ugly friends, ritzy at homes, a few young men with whom one may flirt, a homosexual confidant with long fingers, soft skin, and a beautiful cravat, perfumes and powders of an unimaginable subtlety with which to dust and wet the body, many deep baths, bonbons filled with sweet liqueurs, a procession of mildly salacious and sentimental books by Paul de Kock and company—good heavens, what’s the problem?—new uses for the limbs, a tantalizing glimpse of the abyss, the latest sins, envy certainly, a little spite, jealousy like a vaginal itch, and perfect boredom. 'And the mirror, like justice, is your aid but never your friend.' -- From "Three Photos of Colette," The World Within the Word, reprinted from NYRB April 1977

Objective motives and subjective compulsions that incite a person to write is the decisive element in defining the writer’s unique voice. Anyone who does not understand oneself or is unwilling to ferret out their own buried, true identity and publicly unmask the hidden stranger that resides within us all will never be a person who can bridge a connection with other people who share similar thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs. Lacking critical discernment, this want-a-be writer will remain a cosseted imposter, playing a coldhearted game of charades. If a person is unwilling to peel back the craggy mask that we conceal ourselves behind and explore the seeds of inner awareness wrapped inside the enigma of doubt engulfing all people, one can still aim to be a writer of nonfiction or technical journals. Creative writing, in sharp contrast, is for the intrepid cliff dwellers, the recluses willing to mine the soft belly of their internal psychosis.

Office and Classroom Tools—Have the child cut with scissors; use a stapler and hole puncher; draw with crayons and chalk; paint with brushes, feathers, sticks, and eyedroppers; squeeze glue onto paper in letters or designs, sprinkle sparkles on the glue, and shake off the excess; and wrap boxes with brown paper, tape, and string. MOTOR PLANNING Jumping from a Table—Place a gym mat beside a low table and encourage the child to jump. After each landing, stick tape on the mat to mark the spot. Encourage the child to jump farther each time. Walking Like Animals—Encourage the child to lumber like a bear, on all fours; a crab, from side to side on all fours; a turtle, creeping; a snake, crawling; an inchworm, by stretching flat and pulling her knees toward her chest; an ostrich, while grasping her ankles; a duck, squatting; a frog, squatting and jumping; a kangaroo or bunny, jumping; a lame dog, with an “injured” leg; a gorilla, bending her knees; a horse, galloping. Playground Games—Remember Simon Says, Ring-Around-the-Rosy, The Hokey-Pokey, London Bridge, Shoo Fly, and Mother, May I? Insy-Outsy—Teach the child to get in and out of clothes, the front door, and the car. With a little help, the child may become able to perform these tasks independently, even if it takes a long time!

They would talk about the bridge game they had played the night before with two friends. The main topic of conversation had been a Kansas City murder in which a woman had killed her husband over a hand of bridge. “You be dumb,” Ace told Jane (as he reconstructed it years later for Jerome Beatty of American Magazine): “I’ll try to explain the finer points of bridge, and why murder is sometimes justified.

Play games that are an effective mind sport, such as backgammon, chess, or bridge. If you do not already know how to play one of these games, learn. Strategize and think through the moves as you challenge your opponent. Maybe find a group of people who meet on a regular basis to play these games. Enjoy building your logical/mathematical thinking!

I pulled on a pair of shorts and did two hundred and fifty Hindu push-ups, five hundred Hindu squats, several minutes of neck bridges, front and back, and a variety of other bodyweight calisthenics and stretches. What you can get done with nothing more than a floor, your bodyweight, and gravity in thirty minutes of nonstop activity would put the fitness equipment industry out of business if people caught on. When

Man’s mortality is constantly vexed with dreams of immortality, his transience is teased by hopes of infinity. The gods have given man hungers which no food can satisfy. He is indeed the dumb cattle driven by the gods. He is tied to the rope of his body, and for fodder they throw at him grief, hope and joy, and they have enclosed his pasture ground with the fence of ignorance. The gods have been playing a cruel game with man. They

Two other applicants were talking in the corner of the room. Normally Hope would’ve disregarded the distant chatter, but she had distinctly heard the phrase “Krom’s Canyon.” She swiveled her head to look at them. A fairly good-looking guy in a shirt-and-tie combination just casual enough to look much better than any truly formal clothes ever could was talking with a woman who was working her hardest to look like she was radiating a sexy librarian vibe by accident. “The way you had to work back and forth across the bridges with limited cover, taking out psychos blocking your path while the turret at the end of the canyon tried to gun you down, was just epic. It’s probably my favorite map in the entire series, even though it’s in my least favorite of the games. The writing was just so much better from two onward, though around five it started losing steam again.” Borderlands, Hope thought. They’re talking about the Borderlands games. Why can’t I be over there, talking games with them, instead of being stuck with, um, Bill Murray in Caddyshack. What was that character’s name? Carl something? Hmm. Well, I bet I know who’ll know.

Southern Humor Hit List Here are just a few topics to get you started: • Yankees. We know ’em when we see ’em, and so do you. • White trash. It’s the way you act, not your socioeconomic standing. • Rednecks. No shirt, no shoes, no service, but plenty of bawdy humor. • Sports teams. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t played in a decade, we’re still mad about that game from 1962. Note this is the only category of Southern humor truly born of hate. • Fans of sports teams. They bring it on themselves with their shakin’, screamin’, game-goin’ ways. • Cheerleaders. Nothin’ but beauty queen wanna-bes. • Garden club ladies. So prim, but so dirty! • Marriage. You better laugh, or the stress will have you pushing up daisies with the garden club sooner than you think. • Country club ladies. Life is nothing but tennis, bridge, dining, and whining. • Politicians. Anyone fool enough to run for office deserves what they get.

Two other applicants were talking in the corner of the room. Normally Hope would’ve disregarded the distant chatter, but she had distinctly heard the phrase “Krom’s Canyon.” She swiveled her head to look at them. A fairly good-looking guy in a shirt-and-tie combination just casual enough to look much better than any truly formal clothes ever could was talking with a woman who was working her hardest to look like she was radiating a sexy librarian vibe by accident. “The way you had to work back and forth across the bridges with limited cover, taking out psychos blocking your path while the turret at the end of the canyon tried to gun you down, was just epic. It’s probably my favorite map in the entire series, even though it’s in my least favorite of the games. The writing was just so much better from two onward, though around five it started losing steam again.” Borderlands, Hope thought. They’re talking about the Borderlands games. Why can’t I be over there, talking games with them.

This is closer to reality, but not exactly so. In the Earth incarnation we have lost sight of whom and what we are. We have got so entangled in the game that we have forgotten where we came from and have started associating our sense of self with the personality. In humanity we have become defined by our physical selves, our bodies, our minds, our emotions. We think we are our thoughts. We do not remember…we do not remember that from the oneness we created this planet and the planes. We are the creators, and our mission is to detach from all the chains we imposed upon ourselves and create a bridge to the infinite self. Journey back to where we started.

This is closer to reality, but not exactly so. In the Earth incarnation we have lost sight of whom and what we are. We have got so entangled in the game that we have forgotten where we came from and have started associating our sense of self with the personality. In humanity we have become defined by our physical selves, our bodies, our minds, our emotions. We think we are our thoughts. We do not remember…we do not remember that from the oneness we created this planet and the planes. We are the creators, and our mission is to detach from all the chains we imposed upon ourselves and create a bridge to the infinite self. Journey back to where we started.

Finn swore and swung on me, his eyes darting between me and the road. “You don’t have a filter, do you? You just say whatever the hell comes into your head!” “You just told me no games. You just told me to say it like it is. That’s what I’m doing.” “There’s a big difference between saying it like it is and telling all there is to tell!” “You’re probably right.” I nodded. “I’ve always been . . . blunt, but something happened to me when I let go on the bridge,” I explained softly. “My give-a-damn broke. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t. I’m not afraid. I’m not feeling suicidal, but I don’t give a rat’s ass. Does that make any sense?” Finn nodded. “Yeah. It does. I’ve been there myself. But I just fixed my give-a-damn, unfortunately. So you need to have a little respect and show a little restraint. Deal?” “Okay.” I sighed. “Tell it like it is, but only in doses Clyde can handle. Got it.” “Thank you,” he said sarcastically. I resolved to freeze him out and didn’t say another word, staring out the window, composing song lyrics in my head so I wouldn’t go crazy.

I pulled on a pair of shorts and did two hundred and fifty Hindu push-ups, five hundred Hindu squats, several minutes of neck bridges, front and back, and a variety of other bodyweight calisthenics and stretches. What you can get done with nothing more than a floor, your bodyweight, and gravity in thirty minutes of nonstop activity would put the fitness equipment industry out of business if people caught on.

Perhaps the greatest wound a shame-based person carries is the inability to be intimate in a relationship. This inability flows directly out of the fundamental dishonesty at the core of toxic shame. To be a false self, always hiding and filled with secrets, precludes any possibility of honesty in relationships. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, shame-based people always seek out relationships with shame-based people. Hockey players don’t usually hang out with professional bridge players. They don’t know each other’s rules. We tend to find those who play by the same rules. Secretiveness, dishonesty and game-playing were certainly the substance of my relational history. During my drunken

Bran can bridge that distance. He is a sweet boy, quick to laugh, easy to love.

Bridge. Ha!.." "Have you ever played?" "I don't play anyone's games, especially hers...

I’d never played bridge, but mom and dad had when I was back in high school. I vaguely remembered coming home from the roller rink or football games and finding a dozen people in our living room, all seated at those fold-up card tables. I’d never been sure if my parents had truly loved the card game, or had just used it as an excuse to get together with friends, drink martinis, and eat those little hot dogs rolled up in Crescent rolls that Mom used to bake for parties.

It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time—by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still? In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come. —

I go over and hug her silently, one foot in each culture, both of us trying hopelessly to bridge what seems like an impossible gap between worlds.

My analysis shows that the best path would be to follow the trend away from social media and into social gaming. Out of several quadrillion models, the bridge world we call Kiphi was shown to have the highest probability of suc-cess.

Young people do not try to avoid quarrels, even as young animals easily take part in rough and violent games among themselves.

The bridge between a psychopath and a murderer is often drawn paper thin. There are psychopaths who twist you inside out with psychological torture, while others make it a reality, twisting you to pieces with blades of steel. They’re all geniuses in their own little fantasies. Some feel trapped and need to find a way through the reality of this harsh world. Some will never be free.

Outlaw Nation [Verse] There's a storm in D.C. now, can't see the light, Biden's dropped the reins, runnin' from the fight, Kamala's in the spotlight, dancin' on a stage, Trump's rollin' back in, full of fury and rage. [Verse 2] Folks down in the heartland, feelin' all the strain, Politicians playin' games, drivin' us insane, Farmers in the fields, can't catch a break, Factories closin' down, livelihoods at stake. [Chorus] Outlaw nation, we're fightin' to survive, Caught in the crossfire, just tryin' to stay alive, The rich gettin' richer, while we pay the price, Outlaw nation, it's time to stand and rise. [Verse 3] Main street's empty now, dreams turned to dust, Kids askin' questions, who can we trust? Grandpa's on the porch, with a tear in his eye, Reminiscin' 'bout the days, when the flag flew high. [Bridge] It's a tangled web they weave, in them fancy suits, But out in the country, we're stickin' to our roots, With a six-string guitar and a bottle of truth, Outlaw nation, we're fightin' for the youth. [Chorus] Outlaw nation, we're fightin' to survive, Caught in the crossfire, just tryin' to stay alive, The rich gettin' richer, while we pay the price, Outlaw nation, it's time to stand and rise.

Yes Dear [Verse] Well, I’ve been known to raise some hell, ride the wind, and chase the storms, But when it comes to you, my lady, I find myself reborn. All the wild ways of my youth seem to fade to gray, ‘Cause when you speak, darlin', there ain't much to say but... [Chorus] Yes dear, you’re right dear, I ain't gonna argue at all, A happy wife makes a happy home, that's the truth, y’all. Damn woman, I loved you first, and that means I’m right dear, But when you're smiling at me, well, it all becomes so clear. [Verse 2] Outlaws and rebels, that's what folks used to call my name, Running whiskey through the night, playing a dangerous game. But then you came into my life, all calm and fierce, Now every morning starts with "Yes dear," whispered in my ears. [Chorus] Yes dear, you’re right dear, I ain't gonna argue at all, A happy wife makes a happy home, that's the truth, y’all. Damn woman, I loved you first, and that means I’m right dear, But when you're smiling at me, well, it all becomes so clear. [Bridge] Now the only fight I want is fighting for your love, Your laughter echoes in my heart, fits like a flawless glove. And every time you say I’m wrong, I shrug and pull you near, Cause it’s worth it just to keep you happy, always saying, "Yes dear." [Verse 3] I might be an outlaw still, but you’re the sheriff of my heart, Together we ride this life, never apart. So let them talk of wild men tamed by love's sweet song, I'll just smile and say, "Yes dear," no matter what goes wrong.

Be You [Verse] Standin' at the crossroads burnin' in the sun Dust in my boots heart on the run Grit in my teeth fire in my veins Be who you are don't play no games [Verse 2] Voices in the dark shadows on the wall Be the change you wish to see stand tall False love fades but truth stays bright Better hated for real than loved in the night [Chorus] Be who you are shout from the hills Be who you are shake off them chills Sing your song loud bang on those drums Be who you are let the wild winds hum [Verse 3] Roads twist and turn dreams take flight Stars burn bright in the cold Cold night Chains of the world break 'em down Be who you are find your own crown [Bridge] Feel the heartbeat thunder in your chest Rumble through the night never settle for less Voices might whisper they might scream Be who you are chase your wildest dream [Chorus] Be who you are shout from the hills Be who you are shake off them chills Sing your song loud bang on those drums Be who you are let the wild winds hum

Outlaw Prairie Thunder [Verse] This old town's got nothing left, storefronts boarded tight, Once was a place of hope and pride, now lost to endless night. Biden's bowed out gracefully, Kamala's on parade, Trump's stirring up the winds of change, on a roaring train of rage. [Verse 2] Folks around these parts are weary, they’re standing in the sun, Fighting for the scraps they get, wondering if help will come. Saw old man Jenkins cry today, says he can't stand the weight, Bank just took his family farm, he's cursing his cruel fate. [Chorus] Oh, where’s the heart of this country, when our leaders just play the game? Trading blows on TV screens, while we live with loss and pain. Oh, America’s torn at the seams, can’t find trust or grace, In this outlaw prairie thunder, we’re all part of the race. [Verse 3] Mama's working double shifts, just to pay the rent, Daddy's out there driving trucks, all his money's spent. Kids are dreaming 'bout a life, where they ain't gotta fight, These backroads tell a story, of a million restless nights. [Bridge] Brother's in the army now, they sent him overseas, Fighting for a notion, that he barely believes. Sister’s waiting tables, barely getting by, As the politicians holler, and the flags of freedom fly. [Chorus] Oh, where’s the heart of this country, when our leaders just play the game? Trading blows on TV screens, while we live with loss and pain. Oh, America’s torn at the seams, can’t find trust or grace, In this outlaw prairie thunder, we’re all part of the race.

Chiefs Kingdom Anthem October 3, 2024 at 11:04 AM (Verse 1) We’re gearing up on game day, Kansas City Chiefs, ready to fight. With Mahomes and Kelce, we’re on a roll, The crowd’s on fire, the lights are bright. (Chorus) Arrowhead’s rocking, what a sight, Three-peat to the Super Bowl, feels so right. Kansas City Chiefs, let’s go, let’s go, In Chiefs Kingdom, we steal the show. (Verse 2) From the tailgates to the final play, Red and gold, we’re here to stay. With every touchdown, the crowd goes wild, In this heartland, we’re running miles. (Chorus) Arrowhead’s rocking, what a sight, Three-peat to the Super Bowl, feels so right. Kansas City Chiefs, let’s go, let’s go, In Chiefs Kingdom, we steal the show. (Bridge) Through the highs and the lows, we stand tall, With our team, we’ve got it all. From the first snap to the final score, In Chiefs Kingdom, we roar for more. (Chorus) Arrowhead’s rocking, what a sight, Three-peat to the Super Bowl, feels so right. Kansas City Chiefs, let’s go, let’s go, In Chiefs Kingdom, we steal the show. (Outro) Kansas City, we’re proud and strong, In Chiefs Kingdom, we all belong. With Mahomes and Kelce, leading the way, We’re the Chiefs, and we’re here to stay.

We strolled into one of the rooms in which the play was on. The game was at its height, with huge stacks of chips upon the tables and the players chatting gayly. There was no large crowd there, however. Indeed, as we found afterward, it was really in the afternoon that it was most crowded, for it was rather a poolroom than a gambling joint, although we gathered from the gossip that some stiff games of bridge were played there. Both men and women were seated at the poker game that was in progress before the little green table. The women were richly attired and looked as if they had come from good families.

I can remember being surprised to find that kiosk is Turkish – as may be the card game bridge – and that berserk, like geyser and narwhal, is Icelandic: it seems to derive from the name of the bearskin coats worn by the fiercest Norse warriors.

Engineering, which until then had been concerned either with the construction of buildings, bridges, and other structures, or for military purposes arms manufacturing and fortification building, was now expanding to include new applications: machines and engines for mining, metallurgy and agriculture, allowing quick and efficient production.

Engineering, which until then had been concerned either with the construction of buildings, bridges, and other structures, or for military purposes arms manufacturing and fortification building, was now expanding to include new applications: machines and engines for mining, metallurgy and agriculture, allowing quick and efficient production. Interestingly, until about 1840, the inventors of early technologies were actually craftsmen; only toward the latter part of the 19th century did science become involved in industry, in a partnership that still goes on today.

The phrase “conflict of interest” barely begins to describe Tom Lanphier’s rabidly partisan approach to advising one of the most powerful congressional allies of the American military-industrial complex. Yet he was in good company. Air force intelligence was crammed with highly competitive analysts who believed they were in a zero-sum game not only with the Russians but also with the army and the navy. If they could make the missile-gap theory stick, America would have to respond with a crash ICBM program of its own. The dominance of the Strategic Air Command in the U.S. military hierarchy would be complete—and Convair would profit mightily. It is hardly surprising that the information Lanphier fed to Symington and Symington to every politician and columnist who would listen was authoritative, alarming, and completely, disastrously wrong. Symington’s “on the record” projection of Soviet nuclear strength, given to Senate hearings on the missile gap in late 1959, was that by 1962 they would have three thousand ICBMs. The actual number was four. Symington’s was a wild guess, an extrapolation based on extrapolations by air force generals who believed it was only responsible to take Khrushchev at his word when, for example, he told journalists in Moscow that a single Soviet factory was producing 250 rockets a year, complete with warheads. Symington knew what he was doing. He wanted to be president and believed rightly that missile-gap scaremongering had helped the Democrats pick up nearly fifty seats in Congress in the 1958 midterm elections. But everyone was at it. The 1958 National Intelligence Estimate had forecast one hundred Soviet ICBMs by 1960 and five hundred by 1962. In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months. On the political left a former congressional aide called Frank Gibney wrote a baseless five-thousand-word cover story for Harper’s magazine accusing the administration of giving the Soviets a six-to-one lead in ICBMs. (Gibney also recommended putting “a system of really massive retaliation” on the moon.) On the right, Vice President Nixon quietly let friends and pundits know that he felt his own boss didn’t quite get the threat. And in the middle, Joe Alsop wrote a devastating series of columns syndicated to hundreds of newspapers in which he calculated that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs in ten months flat and suggested that by not matching them warhead for warhead the president was playing Russian roulette with the national future. Alsop, who lived well but expensively in a substantial house in Georgetown, was the Larry King of his day—dapper, superbly well connected, and indefatigable in the pursuit of a good story. His series ran in the last week of January 1960. Khrushchev read it in translation and resolved to steal the thunder of the missile-gap lobby, which was threatening to land him with an arms race that would bankrupt Communism. Before the four-power summit, which was now scheduled for Paris in mid-May, he would offer to dismantle his entire ICBM stockpile. No one needed to know how big or small it was; they just needed to know that he was serious about disarmament. He revealed his plan to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a secret meeting in the Kremlin on

Many people believe that their intellectual ability is hardwired from birth, and that failure to meet a learning challenge is an indictment of their native ability. But every time you learn something new, you change the brain—the residue of your experiences is stored. It’s true that we start life with the gift of our genes, but it’s also true that we become capable through the learning and development of mental models that enable us to reason, solve, and create. In other words, the elements that shape your intellectual abilities lie to a surprising extent within your own control. Understanding that this is so enables you to see failure as a badge of effort and a source of useful information—the need to dig deeper or to try a different strategy. The need to understand that when learning is hard, you’re doing important work. To understand that striving and setbacks, as in any action video game or new BMX bike stunt, are essential if you are to surpass your current level of performance toward true expertise. Making mistakes and correcting them builds the bridges to advanced learning.