Cascade Life Quotes

There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.

Take bread away from me, if you wish, take air away, but do not take from me your laughter. Do not take away the rose, the lance flower that you pluck, the water that suddenly bursts forth in joy, the sudden wave of silver born in you. My struggle is harsh and I come back with eyes tired at times from having seen the unchanging earth, but when your laughter enters it rises to the sky seeking me and it opens for me all the doors of life. My love, in the darkest hour your laughter opens, and if suddenly you see my blood staining the stones of the street, laugh, because your laughter will be for my hands like a fresh sword. Next to the sea in the autumn, your laughter must raise its foamy cascade, and in the spring, love, I want your laughter like the flower I was waiting for, the blue flower, the rose of my echoing country. Laugh at the night, at the day, at the moon, laugh at the twisted streets of the island, laugh at this clumsy fool who loves you, but when I open my eyes and close them, when my steps go, when my steps return, deny me bread, air, light, spring, but never your laughter.

If we cannot flap with the butterflies of “happiness,” we must bring to life the cascades of “joy,” conjuring up the spell of its enchantment and rolling cheerfully on the splashing waves of the future. ("Waiting for Mr. Out-placer")

Only when self moves out of the way can His spectacular glory come cascading through your life. When Jesus is in His rightful place, all insecurity will fade away and His lasting loveliness will become the mark of your life.

...Tell me you believe that our lives are anything more than a ridiculous cascade of random chances.

Jesper gave his shoulder another little shake. "Well, how about this? Kaz is going to tear your father's damn life apart." Wylan was about to say that didn't help either, but he hesitated. Kaz Brekker was the most brutal, vengeful creature Wylan had ever encountered--and he'd sworn he was going to destroy Jan Van Eck. The thought felt like cool water cascading over the hot, shameful feeling of helplessness he'd been carrying with him for so long. Nothing could make this right, ever. But Kaz could make his father's life very wrong.

Life is full of tough choices between less-than-perfect alternatives.

I want something good to die for. . . to make it beautiful to live.

My eyes shifted to the trickling river. Come spring, it would be ten times as wide and just as deep. On and on it went, rushing toward the distant horizon. Like time. Like life. Sometimes gently falling from one pool into the other, other times fast and cascading, and still other times narrowing into a funnel, a torrent of knots and waves.

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind- loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies in the perfumed heat of summer night.

I scoop a clattering cascade of green apple Jelly Bellys into the white paper bag and remember when we were seven. I got stung by a jellyfish. Tim cried because his mother, and mine, wouldn’t let him pee on my leg, which he’d heard was an antidote to the sting.

The mirror of life casts reflections that cascade the emotions.

Another way to look at meditation is to view the process of thinking itself as a waterfall, a continual cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantagepoint in a cave or depression in a rock behind a waterfall. We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent.

Goddamnit I've never been the "pretty friend..." She's the one who wears the perfect eyeliner, it never gathers like a crowd in her tear ducts to create a grapefruit-size ebony eye booger. The one who can wear a bodysuit, sit down in it, and not have rolls of fat cascading over her belt. The one who can eat a sandwich or hamburger and not wind up with lipstick on the bun or on her chin. The one who can actually eat in front of other people and not have food, like coleslaw, hanging from her lip or shooting out of her mouth, landing on the plates of other diners. She never spits when she talks. She sleeps with her mouth shut and never drools. She doesn't pick at her face. And she never, ever has to take a shit.

Life is a cascade of nows falling on top of one another without meaning or purpose. Of all the philosophers, only Schopenhauer ever got that right.

...so now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Manning's drawing-room at Marlow twenty years ago; where one moved about without haste or anxiety, for there was no future to worry about. She knew what had happened to them, what to her. It was like reading a good book again, for she knew the end of that story, since it had happened twenty years ago, and life, which shot down even from this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows where, was sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its banks.

Alter any event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into radically different channel.

We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.

She could see all of Ferenwood from here: the rolling hills, the endless explosion of color cascading down and across the lush landscape. Reds and blues: Maroon and ceruleans. Yellow and tangerine and violet and aquamarine. Every hue held a flavor, a heartbeat, a life. She took a deep breath and drew it all in.

The Cascade happens and Neha calls fire and ice, Elena said into his mind at the same instant. Titus moves the earth, Astaad the sea, while creepy Lijuan brings the dead back to life. Meanwhile, my gorgeous archangel, not satisfied with, I don't know, shooting lightning bolts or something, actually taps into the energy of the planet and calls an army of bogeymen from the bottom of the ocean. Of course you do. The dry commentary made him wonder how he'd ever walked through life without the wit and laughter of his hunter by his side. He could no longer imagine such a cold, remote existence, the idea of it spawning an immediate repudiation in his bloodstream.

But Father Time is real. And, in truth, he cannot age. Beneath the unruly beard and cascading hair—signs of life, not death—his body is lean, his skin unwrinkled, immune to the very thing he lords over.

It was a wild indulgent slope we had cascaded down, and I didn’t care. For once in my life, I didn’t care about tomorrow. I didn’t care if I starved or died. I feasted on the now, and I didn’t let myself think about who he was or who I was, only who we were right now in this moment and how he made me feel on this patch of earth, in this patch of shade. In this strange upside-down world, ignoring tomorrow seemed as natural and expected as breathing.

I love how grown children will still name their mothers the most beautiful. It is as though, their eyes have met the cascading curves and golden silhouettes of every woman. Yet their souls still drum to the beat  of their mother's warmth and care.

every moment is a pink moment cascading calm love U.

From this cascade comes a prediction: getting too little sleep across the adult life span will significantly raise your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Precisely this relationship has now been reported in numerous epidemiological studies, including those individuals suffering from sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea.VIII Parenthetically, and unscientifically, I have always found it curious that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan—two heads of state that were very vocal, if not proud, about sleeping only four to five hours a night—both went on to develop the ruthless disease. The current US president, Donald Trump—also a vociferous proclaimer of sleeping just a few hours each night—may want to take note.

Our lives can be compared to beautiful streams, which are destined to flow, grow in majesty to create wonderful features such as cascading waterfalls, and give nourishment and life to those in its path. Inshan Meahjohn

In fact, the belief that climate could be plausibly governed, or managed, by any institution or human instrument presently at hand is another wide-eyed climate delusion. The planet survived many millennia without anything approaching a world government, in fact endured nearly the entire span of human civilization that way, organized into competitive tribes and fiefdoms and kingdoms and nation-states, and only began to build something resembling a cooperative blueprint, very piecemeal, after brutal world wars—in the form of the League of Nations and United Nations and European Union and even the market fabric of globalization, whatever its flaws still a vision of cross-national participation, imbued with the neoliberal ethos that life on Earth was a positive-sum game. If you had to invent a threat grand enough, and global enough, to plausibly conjure into being a system of true international cooperation, climate change would be it—the threat everywhere, and overwhelming, and total. And yet now, just as the need for that kind of cooperation is paramount, indeed necessary for anything like the world we know to survive, we are only unbuilding those alliances—recoiling into nationalistic corners and retreating from collective responsibility and from each other. That collapse of trust is a cascade, too.

Fungi are equipped with different kinds of bodies. They don’t have noses or brains. Instead, their entire surface behaves like an olfactory epithelium. A mycelial network is one large chemically sensitive membrane: A molecule can bind to a receptor anywhere on its surface and trigger a signaling cascade that alters fungal behavior.

So many people came into your life, and they were such a part of the everyday that it was impossible to imagine them gone until, one day, they were.

I have to stop this cascade of memories, or at least take them out of their drawer only for a moment, have a brief look, and put them back. I know how to do it now: I have to take the key to acting and apply it to my life. There is no other way to survive except to be in the moment. Just as my accident and its aftermath caused me to redefine what a hero, I've had to take a hard look at what it means to live as fully as possible in the present. How do you survive in the moment when it's bleak and painful and the past seems so seductive?

My love, suddenly your hip is the curve of the wineglass filled to the brim, your breast is the cluster, your hair the light of alcohol, your nipples, the grapes your navel pure seal stamped on your barrel of a belly, and your love the cascade of unquenchable wine, the brightness that falls on my senses, the earthen splendor of life.

I am billionaire bold bright omnipotent lively determined to go within to win opening my omnific eyes to realize wisdom innovation naturalizes… My cascading flow of financial love lavishly streams gold bars as I realize gold is intrinsic wealth as my intuitive imagination is my intrinsic innovations…

Magnus threw the monkey a fig. The monkey took the fig. "There," said Magnus. "Let us consider the matter settled." The monkey advanced, chewing in a menacing fashion. "I rather wonder what I am doing here. I enjoy city life, you know," Magnus observed. "The glittering lights, the constant companionship, the liquid entertainment. The lack of sudden monkeys." He ignored Giuliana's advice and took a smart step back, and also threw another piece of fruit. The monkey did not take the bait this time. He coiled and rattled out a growl, and Magnus took several more steps back and into a tree. Magnus flailed on impact, was briefly grateful that nobody was watching him and expecting him to be a sophisticated warlock, and had a monkey assault launched directly to his face. He shouted, spun, and sprinted through the rain forest. He did not even think to drop the fruit. It fell one by one in a bright cascade as he ran for his life from the simian menace. He heard it in hot pursuit and fled faster, until all his fruit was gone and he ran right into Ragnor. "Have a care!" Ragnor snapped. He detailed his terrible monkey adventure twice. "But of course you should have retreated at once from the dominant male," Giuliana said. "Are you an idiot? You are extremely lucky he was distracted from ripping out your throat by the fruit. He thought you were trying to steal his females." "Pardon me, but we did not have the time to exchange that kind of personal information," Magnus said. "I could not have known! Moreover, I wish to assure both of you that I did not make any amorous advances on female monkeys." He paused and winked. "I didn't actually see any, so I never got the chance." Ragnor looked very regretful about all the choices that had led to his being in this place and especially in this company. Later he stooped and hissed, low enough so Giuliana could not hear and in a way that reminded Magnus horribly of his monkey nemesis: "Did you forget that you can do magic?" Magnus spared a moment to toss a disdainful look over his shoulder. "I am not going to ensorcel a monkey! Honestly, Ragnor. What do you take me for?

We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.

The river asked me who I was to be gazing so longingly into her curving body of cascading dreams and shifting beauty.

It’s all about perspective... From the top of the canyon, the river looks like a snake and from the bottom of the canyon, it looks like a cascading body of jewel-blue water.

Every failure from his life cascades into his mind.

Emotions are physiological cascades that want to complete their cycles, and they will complete those cycles when you allow them to; they want to be travelers, not residents. They want to move on. Let them.

When we mourn those who die young – those who have been robbed of time – we weep for lost joys. We weep for opportunities and pleasure we ourselves have never known. We feel sure that somehow that young body would have known the yearning delight for which we searched in vain all our lives. We believe that the untried soul, trapped in its young prison, might have flown free and known the joy that we still seek. We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.

It was less the fact of Yoshiko's defilement than the defilement of her trust in people which became so persistent a source of grief as almost to render my life insupportable. [...] Yoshiko's immaculate trustfulness seemed clean an pure, like a waterfall among green leaves. One night sufficed to turn the waters of this pure cascade yellow and muddy. Yoshiko began from that night to fret over my every smile or frown.

It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.

A Wild Woman Is Not A Girlfriend. She Is A Relationship With Nature. But can you love me in the deep? In the dark? In the thick of it? Can you love me when I drink from the wrong bottle and slip through the crack in the floorboard? Can you love me when I’m bigger than you, when my presence blazes like the sun does, when it hurts to look directly at me? Can you love me then too? Can you love me under the starry sky, shaved and smooth, my skin like liquid moonlight? Can you love me when I am howling and furry, standing on my haunches, my lower lip stained with the blood of my last kill? When I call down the lightning, when the sidewalks are singed by the soles of my feet, can you still love me then? What happens when I freeze the land, and cause the dirt to harden over all the pomegranate seeds we’ve planted? Will you trust that Spring will return? Will you still believe me when I tell you I will become a raging river, and spill myself upon your dreams and call them to the surface of your life? Can you trust me, even though you cannot tame me? Can you love me, even though I am all that you fear and admire? Will you fear my shifting shape? Does it frighten you, when my eyes flash like your camera does? Do you fear they will capture your soul? Are you afraid to step into me? The meat-eating plants and flowers armed with poisonous darts are not in my jungle to stop you from coming. Not you. So do not worry. They belong to me, and I have invited you here. Stay to the path revealed in the moonlight and arrive safely to the hut of Baba Yaga: the wild old wise one… she will not lead you astray if you are pure of heart. You cannot be with the wild one if you fear the rumbling of the ground, the roar of a cascading river, the startling clap of thunder in the sky. If you want to be safe, go back to your tiny room — the night sky is not for you. If you want to be torn apart, come in. Be broken open and devoured. Be set ablaze in my fire. I will not leave you as you have come: well dressed, in finely-threaded sweaters that keep out the cold. I will leave you naked and biting. Leave you clawing at the sheets. Leave you surrounded by owls and hawks and flowers that only bloom when no one is watching. So, come to me, and be healed in the unbearable lightness and darkness of all that you are. There is nothing in you that can scare me. Nothing in you I will not use to make you great. A wild woman is not a girlfriend. She is a relationship with nature. She is the source of all your primal desires, and she is the wild whipping wind that uproots the poisonous corn stalks on your neatly tilled farm. She will plant pear trees in the wake of your disaster. She will see to it that you shall rise again. She is the lover who restores you to your own wild nature.

As the wind swelled, my tree started to sway. Almost like a human body it swung back and around, gently at first, then more and more wildly. While the swaying intensified, so did my fears that the trunk might snap and hurl me to the ground. But in time my confidence returned. Amazed at how the tree could be at once so flexible and so sturdy, I held on tight as it bent and waved, twisted and swirled, slicing curves and arcs through the air. With each graceful swing, I felt less a creature of the land and more a part of the wind itself. "The rain began falling, it's sound merging with the splashing river and the singing trees. Branches streamed like waterfalls of green. Tiny rivers cascaded down every trunk, twisting through moss meadows and bark canyons. All the while, I rode out the gale. I could not have felt wetter. I could not have felt freer. "When, at last, the storm subsided, the entire world seemed newly born. Sunbeams danced on rain-washed leaves. Curling columns of mist rose from every glade. The forest's colors shown more vivid, its smells struck more fresh. And I understood, for the first time in my life, that the Earth was always being remade, that life was always being renewed. That it may have been the afternoon of this particular day, but it was still the very morning of Creation.

Remember this fundamental fact: You are absolutely unique. There never was, is not now, nor ever can be anyone exactly like you. The proof lies in the vaults of your senses, where you have been storing your sense memories all your life. They have come cascading in through your senses, randomly and mostly unnoticed, sinking to the bottom. Learn to dive for them. When you recover one, when you rise with it to the surface and hold it aloft, you will not only surprise your onlookers, you will surprise yourself.

That’s the experience I’ve gained from working in the garden: there’s no reason to be cautious or anxious about anything, life is so robust, it seems to come cascading, blind and green, and at times it is frightening, because we too are alive, but we live in what amounts to a controlled environment, which makes us fear whatever is blind, wild, chaotic, stretching towards the sun, but most often also beautiful, in a deeper way than the purely visual, for the soil smells of rot and darkness, teems with scuttling beetles and convulsing worms, the flower stalks are juicy, their petals brim with scents, and the air, cold and sharp, warm and humid, filled with sunrays or rain, lies against skin, accustomed to the indoors, like a soothing compress of hereness.

Emotions are physiological cascades that want to complete their cycles, and they will complete those cycles when you allow them to; they want to be travelers, not residents. They want to move on. Let them. You may tremble or shake or cry or curl up in a ball. You may notice your body doing these things without your volition. Your body knows what to do, and it will do it as long as you sit calmly with it, as you would sit calmly beside a sick or grieving child.

Arising there, a china cabinet, its gifts enclosed in a hug. Atop a pedestal table, hand-sanded and love-stained, Mom's Christmas cactus trails and cascades in forest greens awaiting pink-winged petals alighting in season, a crescendo of bloom framed an autumn-light meandering through remembrance like a dream.

Our souls are like streams that can never rest until they once again mingle with the Infinite Sea. Until that time comes we meander, trying out new channels, new lines of least resistance. Sometimes the stream of life swells and rises, sometimes it cascades down like a waterfall. At times the water is shallow, at other times deep, sometimes dark and murky, sometimes pure and crystal clear. At times we enter lakes of the spirit that are so large and still that they deceive us into thinking that we have reached the ocean of endlessness that we have sought so long. Sometimes we are lured by gravity into swamps of uncertainty, sometimes we are trapped in tidal pools from which we fear we might never escape. From lifetime to lifetime the stream goes on, searching, suffering, pursuing the Infinite reunion.

The growth and maintenance of living things like us is a delicate (but also robust) dance of cause and effect, cascading up and down the hierarchy of scales in space and time. This leads to that, but then that creates a new this. It’s for this reason that life can only be understood as a dynamic process of becoming—from conception to the grave.

One day in the next five hundred billion years, while the probes complete one full circuit of the Milky Way, maybe they’ll stumble upon intelligent life. In forty thousand years or so, when the two probes sail close enough to a planetary system, maybe just maybe one of these plants will be home to some life form which will spy the probe with whatever it has that passes for eyes, stay its telescope, retrieve the derelict fuel-less old probe with whatever it has that passes for curiosity, lower the stylus (supplied) to the record with whatever it has that passes for digits, and set free the dadadadaa of Beethoven’s Fifth. It’ll roll like thunder through a different frontier. Human music will permeate the Milky Way’s outer reaches. There’ll be Chuck Berry and Bach, there’ll be Stravinsky and Blind Willie Johnson, and the didgeridoo, violin, slide guitar and shakuhachi. Whale song will drift through the constellation of Ursa Minor. Perhaps a being on a planet of the star AC +793888 will hear the 1970s recording of sheep bleat, laughter, footsteps, and the soft pluck of a kiss. Perhaps they’ll hear the trundle of a tractor and the voice of a child. When they hear on the phonograph a recording of rapid firecracker drills and bursts, will they know that these sounds denote brainwaves? Will they ever infer that over forty thousand years before in a solar system unknown a woman was rigged to an EEG and her thoughts recorded? Could they know to work backwards from the abstract sounds and translate them once more into brainwaves, and could they know from these brainwaves the kinds of thoughts the woman was having? Could they see into a human’s mind? Could they know she was a young woman in love? Could they tell from this dip and rise in the EEG’s pattern that she was thinking simultaneously of earth and lover as if the two were continuous? Could they see that, though she tried to keep her mental script, to bring to mind Lincoln and the Ice Age and the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt and whatever grand things have shaped the earth and which she wished to convey to an alien audience, every thought cascaded into the drawn brows and proud nose of her lover, the wonderful articulation of his hands and the way he listened like a bird and how they had touched so often without touching. And then a spike in sound as she thought of that great city Alexandria and of nuclear disarmament and the symphony of the earth’s tides and the squareness of his jaw and the way he spoke with such bright precision so that everything he said was epiphany and discovery and the way he looked at her as though she were the epiphany he kept on having and the thud of her heart and the flooding how heat about her body when she considered what it was he wanted to do to her and the migration of bison across a Utah plain and a geisha’s expressionless face and the knowledge of having found that thing in the world which she ought never to have had the good fortune of finding, of two minds and bodies flung at each other at full dumbfounding force so that her life had skittered sidelong and all her pin-boned plans just gone like that and her self engulfed in a fire of longing and thoughts of sex and destiny, the completeness of love, their astounding earth, his hands, his throat, his bare back.

I do urge you to welcome children. Even one child will make a difference in your life that you cannot fathom. I promise you, my girl.

I was surrounded by ripples and cascades of Light, rising and falling all around me, like immense waves in the middle of a huge ocean. I was a tiny girl-child, newborn.

Events in one area of our lives cascade into every other area.

When it comes down to who should die: It’s always them!

I smiled. He had come for me. Saved me. How many times would this man save my life?

I sit down by the river. Its incessant flow has polished the rocks carried from the top of the mountain. The aqueous caress, that has unrolled for millions of years the liquid ribbon from the summits towards the plains, keeps the freshness of the youth. The July sun heats the trees on the shore, while the stream of water refreshes the air; Two breaths which mingle without opposing one another. The foliage softly sways under the summer breeze, tuning its movement to that of the fiery wave. Won by a palpable peace, thank you Mother Nature, I dive into my book. A time later, which seems infinite to me, the sky becomes darker, I raise my head. How many hours have passed during which, indifferent to the human time, the cascading water has descended from the mountain? How much water has passed in front of me? How many beings have quenched their thirst there, and get their lives out from it? How long after my small passage on Earth will have been forgotten, the river will continue to flow, to carry its rocks, to erode the mountain until it becomes a plain, to spread life like a vein of the Earth ?

Do not bury your sorrows like seeds in a garden; instead, let them cascade onto the soil of the earth the way rain patters on rooftops, flows down bricks, alas to drench grass and flowers. Do not bury your anguish; let it drip like rainclouds; you will miss the sunlight but when blooms finally blossom, you'll understand that the sun cannot grow flowers without her rain.

Human life, Borges said, is a cascade of possible directions, and we take only one, or we perceive that we take only one—which is how novels are written, too. You start with a blank page, and the first word opens up possibilities for the second word. If your first word is Call, those second two or three could be a doctor or it could be me Ishmael. It could be Call girls on Saturday nights generally cost more than . . . The second sentence opens up a multitude of third sentences, and on we go through that denseness of choices taken and choices not taken, swinging our machetes.

I found myself whirling around and falling down and down. My life memories were spinning around me, flashing like thousands of brilliant pictures with bright cascading colors like a thousand tiny kaleidoscopes...

All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us.

You wrapped your wings against my soul, calmly cascaded tears into eternal waters, where I sat in solitude, waiting ephemerally, for those hours of lost comfort once again, how long ago did sleep become such an end?

Recent research is showing that we actually have three “brains” — the head brain, heart brain, and gut brain — and our health and development depend on keeping them in balance and alignment.... Some signals begin in the gut, or the heart, and flow upstream to the head brain, while others cascade from above. In this way, our thoughts and emotions have both instant and long-lasting effects on all our biological systems: nervous, endocrine, immune.

We are focus-points of consciousness, [...] enormously creative. When we enter the self-constructed hologrammetric arena we call spacetime, we begin at once to generate creativity particles, imajons, in violent continuous pyrotechnic deluge. Imajons have no charge of their own but are strongly polarized through our attitudes and by the force of our choice and desire into clouds of conceptons, a family of very-high-energy particles which may be positive, negative or neutral. [...] Some common positive conceptions are exhilarons, excytons, rhapsodons, jovions. Common negative conceptions include gloomons, tormentons, tribulons, agonons, miserons. "Indefinite numbers of conceptions are created in nonstop eruption, a thundering cascade of creativity pouring from every center of personal consciousness. They mushroom into conception clouds, which can be neutral or strongly charged - buoyant, weightless or leaden, depending on the nature of their dominant particles. "Every nanosecond an indefinite number of conception clouds build to critical mass, then transform in quantum bursts to high-energy probability waves radiating at tachyon speeds through an eternal reservoir of supersaturated alternate events. Depending on their charge and nature, the probability waves crystallize certain of these potential events to match the mental polarity of their creating consciousness into holographic appearance. [...] "The materialized events become that mind's experience, freighted with all the aspects of physical structure necessary to make them real and learningful to the creating consciousness. This autonomic process is the fountain from which springs every object and event in the theater of spacetime. "The persuasion of the imajon hypothesis lies in its capacity for personal verification. The hypothesis predicts that as we focus our conscious intention on the positive and life-affirming, as we fasten our thought on these values, we polarize masses of positive conceptions, realize beneficial probability-waves, bring useful alternate events to us that otherwise would not have appeared to exist. "The reverse is true in the production of negative events, as is the mediocre in-between. Through default or intention, unaware or by design, we not only choose but create the visible outer conditions that are most resonant to our inner state of being [...]

The thousand thousand grasses, dry now in the late-summer heat, bristle like the brittle pages of a thousand ancient books being turned by invisible scholars. Every blade and leaf and rock speaking of loss and endurance, the birds settling down for another night or two before their long, familiar hegira. The landscape he walks is an endless cascade of loss and dying and coming to life again, and he feels the immense silence of the dead and the eternal pulse of the living in the soles of his feet.

Those rose-tinted glasses look good on you, Sunshine.” Sunshine? I was sure he meant that mockingly, but the butterflies in my stomach stirred to life anyway, fanning away my anger. Traitors. “Thanks. You can borrow them. You need them more than I do,” I said pointedly. A low chuckle slipped from his throat, and I almost fell to the floor in shock. Tonight was turning out to be a night of firsts. Alex’s hand trailed up my spine until it rested on the back of my neck, leaving a cascade of tingles in their wake. “I feel it dripping all over me.” He did not—what? An inferno consumed my body. “You’re—you—no, I’m not!” I sputtered, pushing him away and scrambling off him. My core pulsed. Oh my God, what if I was? I couldn’t look, afraid I’d see a telltale wet spot on his jeans. I’d have to move to Antarctica. Build myself an ice cave and learn to speak penguin because I could never show my face in Hazelburg, D.C., or any city where I could run into Alex Volkov again. His chuckle blossomed into a full-blown laugh. The effect of his real smile was so devastating, even amid my mortification, that all I could do was stare at the way his face lit up and the sparkle that transformed his eyes from beautiful to downright breathtaking. Holy crap. Perhaps I should be grateful he never smiled, because if that was what he looked like while doing it…womankind didn’t stand a chance. “I’m talking about your bleeding heart,” he drawled. “What did you think I was talking about?” “I—you—” Forget Antarctica. I had to move to Mars. Alex’s laughter subsided, but the twinkle in his eyes remained.

Those rose-tinted glasses look good on you, Sunshine.” Sunshine? I was sure he meant that mockingly, but the butterflies in my stomach stirred to life anyway, fanning away my anger. Traitors. “Thanks. You can borrow them. You need them more than I do,” I said pointedly. A low chuckle slipped from his throat, and I almost fell to the floor in shock. Tonight was turning out to be a night of firsts. Alex’s hand trailed up my spine until it rested on the back of my neck, leaving a cascade of tingles in their wake. “I feel it dripping all over me.

I'm a rushing river, flowing towards the cascades, I'm plunging over a precipice. Where will I come to a stop, dear God? I'm in the abyss, I'm sinking. Shame, my own shame, don't leave me alone, adrift in this life. Where are you going, shame, leaving me all alone like this?

Ecosystems are complex networks. They can be remarkably resilient under stress, but when certain key nodes begin to fail, knock-on effects reverberate through the web of life. This is how mass extinction events unfolded in the past. It’s not the external shock that does it – the meteor or the volcano: it’s the cascade of internal failures that follows. It can be difficult to predict how this kind of thing plays out. Things like tipping points and feedback loops make everything much riskier than it otherwise might be. This is what makes climate breakdown so concerning.

Our personal story has many chapters that reconnoiter universal themes. We each struggle to understand ourselves and aspire to make ourselves known to the world. We struggle to win the love of other people. We seek to pick all the low hanging fruit that we come across in our journey through the corridor of time. We write our story in the Niagara of emotional experiences that flowing watercourse makes us human. We use a profusion of words, symbols, and the nuances pulled from a rich library of language to depict the cascade of our visions, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, dreams, and infelicitous thoughts. We use logical and dialectal thought processes when communing with our inner self. We use self-speak along with the esemplastic powers of poetic imagination, sprinkled with the fizz of creativity, to cohere disparate chapters of our life into a unified whole and relay the effervescence of our story to other people.

all of my bases covered. You assume responsibility for violations of local, regional, global, intrasystem, interstellar, intergalactic and interdimensional law, civil, religious, or military. I’m also not responsible for loss of life and limb, property damage, domestic disputes, engineered biological human dieback, nuclear fallout, violations of causality, cascading sub-quantum misalignment, hastening of cosmic heat death, rampant AI, accelerated climate change, geomagnetic reversal, vacuum metastability events, total existence failure, gray goo scenario, red goo scenario--that’s a nasty one--tectonic inversion--

Life is a River" Life is a river zig zag it goes on flowing myriad memories quench thirst in the swirling waves of life! Life has its own colour a mingling of blue, green, black and white sweeping away all happiness and sadness in the cascading bubbles of tears and delight Life shares its own wisdom to keep on flowing is its only zeal whether it be summer or winter life will keep on flowing but never still Life is a river it flows at its own pace sometimes it may have no direction and this is life's story and grace! - Poet Manjushree Mohanty Translated from Odiya to English by Poet Avijeet Das

On the Lights, Tom Sherbourne has plenty of time to think about the war. About the faces, the voices of the blokes who had stood beside him, who saved his life one way or another; the ones whose dying words he heard, and those whose muttered jumbles he couldn’t make out, but who he nodded to anyway. Tom isn’t one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels. Nor were his lungs turned to glue or his brains to stodge by the gas. But he’s scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then. He carries that other shadow, which is cast inward. He tries not to dwell on it: he’s seen plenty of men turned worse than useless that way. So he gets on with life around the edges of this thing he’s got no name for. When he dreams about those years, the Tom who is experiencing them, the Tom who is there with blood on his hands, is a boy of eight or so. It’s this small boy who’s up against blokes with guns and bayonets, and he’s worried because his school socks have slipped down and he can’t hitch them up because he’ll have to drop his gun to do it, and he’s barely big enough even to hold that. And he can’t find his mother anywhere. Then he wakes and he’s in a place where there’s just wind and waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning, always looking over its shoulder. If he can only get far enough away—from people, from memory—time will do its job.

Carpe Diem By Edna Stewart Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman did it, why can't I? The words of Horace, his laconic phrase. Does it amuse me or frighten me? Does it rub salt in an old wound? Horace, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman my loves, we've all had a taste of the devils carpe of forbidden food. My belly is full of mourning over life mishaps of should have's, missed pleasure, and why was I ever born? The leaf falls from the trees from which it was born in and cascade down like a feather that tumbles and toil in the wind. One gush! It blows away. It’s trampled, raked, burned and finally turns to ashes which fades away like the leaves of grass. Did Horace get it right? Trust in nothing? The shortness of Life is seventy years, Robert Frost and Whitman bared more, but Shakespeare did not. Butterflies of Curiosities allures me more. Man is mortal, the fruit is ripe. Seize more my darling! Enjoy the day.

The music surged down the stairs like a flashing stream—it gathered in the corridor and burst like a waterfall through the wide entry doors. It splashed over a small, lonely figure crouching on the lowest step, dark and colorless like an un-moving lump of black, a little hillock with mad, unresting eyes. It was the old man who had freed himself with such difficulty from the unrelenting window. He crouched in the corner, lost and done for, with bowed shoulders and knees drawn high, as though he would never rise again—and over him, and away in gay and flashing cascades, the music splashed and danced, strong, pitiless, unceasing as life itself.

Under the aegis of wildlife management, the oxymoron that is now a fact of life for most North American creatures, spins unbounded tinkering, with further tinkering made necessary by past tinkering, effects of causes, effects of effects—a “cascade of consequences” precipitated by human intervention, well intended though it may be.

Orlando, who had just dipped her pen in the ink, and was about to indite some reflection upon the eternity of all things, was much annoyed to be impeded by a blot, which spread and meandered round her pen. . . . She dipped it again. The blot increased. She tried to go on with what she was saying but no words came. Next she began to decorate the blot with wings and whiskers, till it became a round-headed monster, something between a bat and a wombat. But as for writing poetry with Basket and Bartholemew in the room, it was impossible. No sooner had she said 'impossible' than, to her astonishment and alarm, the pen began to curve and caracole with the smoothest possible fluency. Her page was written in the neatest sloping Italian hand with the most insipid verses she had ever read in her life: I am myself but a vile link Amid life's weary chain, But I have spoken hallowed words, Oh, do not say in vain! . . . . . She was so changed, the soft carnation cloud Once mantling o'er her cheek like that which eve Hangs o'er the sky, glowing with roseate hue, Had faded into paleness, broken by Bright burning blushes, torches of the tomb, but here, by an abrupt movement she spilt the ink over the page and blotted it from human sight she hoped for ever. She was all of a quiver, all of a stew. Nothing more repulsive could be imagined than to feel the ink flowing thus in cascades of involuntary inspiration.

Whereas cascaded goals are a control mechanism, cascaded meaning is a release mechanism. It brings to life the context within which everyone works, but it leaves the locus of control—for choosing, deciding, prioritizing, goal setting—where it truly resides, and where understanding of the world and the ability to do something about it intersect: with the team member.

The stakes are higher than you may ever know. Your life, man, it’s a reflection of everything. Everything that ever was. You’re a link in the chain, but it’s more than a chain. It’s like a whole gigantic fabric. A huge quilt. And God, God’s like the needle. God sews it all together. God connects us. It’s a crazy ass quilt, and every square is different, see, but God connects us.

He snatched at the kerchief, managing to loosen it. "Please. It's all I want from life, to see you with-" another swipe, and he snagged the edge of the cloth, "-your hair all-" But Leo broke off as the kerchief pulled free, and the hair that spilled out was not any conceivable shade of green. It was blond... pale amber and champagne and honey... and there was so much of it, cascading in shimmering waves to the middle of her back. Leo went still, holding her in place as his astonished gaze raked over her. They both gulped for breath, worked up and winded like racehorses. Marks couldn't have looked more appalled if he had just stripped her naked. And the truth was, Leo couldn't have been any more confounded- or aroused- if he were actually viewing her naked. Though he certainly would have been willing to try it. Such a commotion had risen in him, Leo hardly knew how to react. Just hair, just locks of hair... but it was like a previously undistinguished painting in the perfect frame, revealing its beauty in full luminous detail. Catherine Marks in the sunlight was a mythical creature, a nymph, with delicate features and opalescent eyes. The most confounding realization was that it wasn't really hair color that had concealed all this from him... he had never noticed how stunning she was because she had deliberately kept him from seeing it. "Why," Leo asked, his voice husky, "would you conceal something so beautiful?" Staring at her, nearly devouring her, he asked more softly still, "What are you hiding from?

Cancer, in short, was not merely genetic in its origin; it was genetic in its entirety. Abnormal genes governed all aspects of cancer’s behavior. Cascades of aberrant signals, originating in mutant genes, fanned out within the cancer cell, promoting survival, accelerating growth, enabling mobility, recruiting blood vessels, enhancing nourishment, drawing oxygen—sustaining cancer’s life.

She was a mimicry of a façade fashioned from the half-truths of her life. She was a beautiful abomination, patched together from the most pristine and terrible parts she could find. She was a black crystal of many cuts and facets whose dark glow suffocated and entranced those it washed over. There was a pointlessness in her eyes and apathy in her stature, and further in, past the symphonies of nightmarish screams was a blinding light. All the capability she could ever ask for kept in a place she would never reach. She chose the ice rather than the fire, shivering and hard with heat sparse, for while a flicker can exist in freeze's cold, it's heat will not radiate, no matter how bold. She took my face in hands that would make ice seem warm and whispered a blizzard into my ear, a cascading song of fear after fear. The lies she spilled, mixed with regrets and appeal, were cloaked in the inferno of her rage, the anger, the only thing that really made her real. This was her one semblance of life, a bottomless and endless void of proportions vast with a calamity of fusion and fission streaking through, a mindless hue, an emotion with a face, a darling of her race. The cracks spew darkness from within her ever so pale skin. They congregated on her curves and flesh in black and churning rivers and streams. They flooded every dip with blackness. They filled every hollow with unstable curiosity, this is her release, this is when she is free. The faces of deceit always laugh, they never wallow for their lies are a pleasure tool, her insides are contorted in laughter the same way, just as slick, just as cruel. A crude combination of fascination, of animation, of the darkest demons of them all. She was poetry written in pen, scratched and scribbled again and again. Ink splattered across the page, and within those scrawled words, those small, sharp incisions, an image can be seen, and you're left to wonder what, in the end, this all could mean...

The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world’s biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods; collective-interest agencies of governments and unions are stripped while for-profit state subsidies multiply; police state laws and methods advance while belligerent wars for corporate resources increase; the media are corporate ad vehicles and the academy is increasingly reduced to corporate functions; public sectors and services are non-stop defunded and privatized as tax evasion and transnational corporate funding and service by governments rise at the same time at every level.

would react with violent seizures. Because of the rudimentary working conditions, and the difficulty of correctly reproducing body parts in miniature, this body had been built using only parts from the biggest and fittest of cadavers. The straps were not sufficient to hold me. I tore free. Lightning was cascading through copper rods buried in my chest. I ripped them out. Elixir and blood were being pumped into my body by a machine. I smashed it. I roared like an animal as I began destroying the very tools that had brought me to life. The bellows were manned by one of Dippel’s assistants. I remember him looking at me with an expression of terror as I picked him up by the neck. I killed my first man only ten seconds after I had been born. With blood and Elixir pouring from my self-inflicted wounds, I

Once, near the Metsovon pass, in December, when it was twenty degrees below zero because there was no cloud, the Italians sent up a starshell. It exploded in a cascade of brilliant blue light against the face of the full moon, and the sparks drifted to earth in slow motion like the souls of reluctant angels. As that small magnesium sun hovered and blazed, the black pines stepped out of their modest shadows as though previously they had been veiled like virgins but had now decided to be seen as they are in heaven. The drifts of snow pulsed with the incandescence of the absolute chastity of ice, a mortar coughed disconsolately, and an owl whooped. For the first time in my life I shivered physically from something other than the cold; the world had sloughed away its skin and revealed itself as energy and light.

A microscopic egg had failed to divide in time due to a failure somewhere along a chain of chemical events, a tiny disturbance in a cascade of protein reactions. A molecular event ballooned like an exploding universe, out onto the wider scale of human misery. No cruelty, nothing avenged, no ghost moving in mysterious ways. Merely a gene transcribed in error, an enzyme recipe skewed, a chemical bond severed. A process of natural wastage as indifferent as it was pointless. Which only brought into relief healthy, perfectly formed life, equally contingent, equally without purpose. Blind luck, to arrive in the world with your properly formed parts in the right place, to be born to parents who were loving, not cruel, or to escape, by geographical or social accident, war or poverty. And therefore to find it so much easier to be virtuous.

A morning-flowered dalliance demured and dulcet-sweet with ebullience and efflorescence admiring, cozy cottages and elixirs of eloquence lie waiting at our feet - We'll dance through fetching pleasantries as we walk ephemeral roads evocative epiphanies ethereal, though we know our hearts are linked with gossamer halcyon our day a harbinger of pretty things infused with whispers longing still and gamboling in sultry ways to feelings, all ineffable screaming with insouciance masking labyrinthine paths where, in our nonchalance, we walk through the lilt of love’s new morning rays. Mellifluous murmurings from a babbling brook that soothes our heated passion-songs and panoplies perplexed with thought of shadows carried off with clouds in stormy summer rains… My dear, and that I can call you 'dear' after ripples turned to crashing waves after pyrrhic wins, emotions drained we find our palace sunned and rayed with quintessential moments lit with wildflower lanterns arrayed on verandahs lush with mutual love, the softest love – our preferred décor of life's lilly-blossom gate in white-fenced serendipity… Twilight sunlit heavens cross our gardens, graced with perseverance, bliss, and thee, and thou, so splendid, delicate as a morning dove of charm and mirth – at least with me; our misty mornings glide through air... So with whippoorwill’d sweet poetry - of moonstones, triumphs, wonder-woven in chandliers of winglet cherubs wrought with time immemorial, crafted with innocence, stowed away and brought to light upon our day in hallelujah tapestries of ocean-windswept galleries in breaths of ballet kisses, light, skipping to the breakfast room cascading chrysalis's love in diaphanous imaginings delightful, fleeting, celestial-viewed as in our eyes which come to rest evocative, exuberant on one another’s moon-stowed dreams idyllic, in quiescent ways, peaceful in their radiance resplendent with a myriad of thought soothing muse, rhapsodic song until the somnolence of night spreads out again its shaded truss of luminescent fantasies waiting to be loved by us… Oh, love! Your sincerest pardons begged! I’ve gone too long, I’ve rambled, dear, and on and on and on and on - as if our hours were endless here… A morning toast, with orange-juiced lips exalting transcendent minds suffused with sunrise symphonies organic-born tranquilities sublimed sonorous assemblages with scintillas of eternity beating at our breasts – their embraces but a blushing, longing glance away… I’ll end my charms this enraptured morn' before cacophony and chafe coarse in crude and rough abrade when cynical distrust is laid by hoarse and leeching parasites, distaste fraught with smug disgust by hairy, smelly maladroit mediocrities born of poisoned wells grotesque with selfish lies - shrill and shrieking, biting, creeping around our love, as if they rose from Edgar Allen’s own immortal rumpled decomposing clothes… Oh me, oh my! I am so sorry! can you forgive me? I gone and kissed you for so long, in my morning imaginings, through these words, through this song - ‘twas supposed to be "a trifle treat," but little treats do sometimes last a little longer; and, oh, but oh, but if I could, I surly would keep you just a little longer tarrying here, tarrying here with me this pleasant morn

Suddenly, it wasn't just Emeline's song flooding out, but something else. A thick and shimmering power gushed out of her, like blood from a wound. Around her, the clearing changed. Pale, dead leaves cascaded to the forest floor like snow. The trunks of the trees changed from powdery white to deep browns and dappled greens, color spreading like a blush from their roots to their branches. New leaves began to bud and unfurl, teeming with life.

is easy to recall from everyday experience that neither electricity nor magnetism have visual properties. So, on its own, it’s not hard to grasp that there is nothing inherently visual, nothing bright or colored about that candle flame. Now let these same invisible electromagnetic waves strike a human retina, and if (and only if) the waves each happen to measure between 400 and 700 nanometers in length from crest to crest, then their energy is just right to deliver a stimulus to the 8 million cone-shaped cells in the retina. Each in turn sends an electrical pulse to a neighbor neuron, and on up the line this goes, at 250 mph, until it reaches the warm, wet occipital lobe of the brain, in the back of the head. There, a cascading complex of neurons fire from the incoming stimuli, and we subjectively perceive this experience as a yellow brightness occurring in a place we have been conditioned to call “the external world.” Other creatures receiving the identical stimulus will experience something altogether different, such as a perception of gray, or even have an entirely dissimilar sensation. The point is, there isn’t a “bright yellow” light “out there” at all. At most, there is an invisible stream of electrical and magnetic pulses. We are totally necessary for the experience of what we’d call a yellow flame. Again, it’s correlative.

Look up at that, Henry. Look up at that, honestly, and tell me you believe that our lives are anything more than a ridiculous cascade of random chances. A cloud of dust and gas forms our planet, a chemical reaction creates life, and then all of our cavemen ancestors live just long enough to bone each other before they die awful deaths. The universe is not the magical place people like to paint it as. It’s excruciatingly beautiful, but there’s no magic there, just science.

An organism arises when the loop of circulating energy somehow closes on itself to give a regenerating, reproducing life cycle within which energy is mobilised, remaining stored as it is mobilised. The energy goes into complex cascades of coupled cyclic processes within the system before it is allowed to dissipate to the outside. These cascades of cycles span the entire gamut of space-times from slow to fast, from local to global, that all together, make up the life cycle.

Her. Her. Her. Future breezes implore me to stay. But I'm no future. I'm no past. Only ever contemporary of this path. I'll sacrifice everything for all her seasons give from losing. She, I sigh from The Mountain top. By her now. My only role. And for that freedom, spread my polar chill, reaching even the warmest times, a warning upon the back of every life that would by harming Hailey's play, ever wayward around this vegetative rush of orbit & twine, awaken among these cascading cliffs of bellicose ice me. And my Vengeance. At once. The Justice of my awful loss set free upon this crowded land. An old terror violent for the glee of ends. But to those who would tend her, harrowed by such Beauty & Fleeting Presence to do more, my cool cries will kiss their gentle foreheads and my tears will kiss their tender cheeks, and then if the Love of their Kindness, which only Kindness ever finds, spills my ear, for a while I might slip down and play amidst her canopies of gold. Solitude. Hailey's bare feet. And all her patience now assumes. Garland of Spring's Sacred Bloom. By you, ever sixteen, this World's preserved. By you, this World has everything left to lose. And I, your sentry of ice, shall allways protect what your Joy so dangerously resumes. I'll destroy no World so long it keeps turning with flurry & gush, petals & stems bending and lush, and allways our hushes returning anew. Everyone betrays the Dream but who cares for it? O Hailey no, I could never walk away from you. - Haloes! Haleskarth! Contraband! I can walk away from anything. Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it. Bald Eagles soar over me: —Reveille Rebel! I jump free this weel. On fire. Blaze a breeze. I'll devastate the World. \\ Samsara! Samarra! Grand! I can walk away from anything. Everyone loves the Dream but I kill it. Atlas Mountain Cedars gush over me: —Up Boogaloo! I leap free this spring. On fire. How my hair curls. I'll destroy the World. - Him. Him. Him. Future winds imploring me to stay. But I'm no tomorrow. I'm no yesterday. Only ever contemporary of this way. I will sacrifice everything for all his seasons miss of soaring. He, I sigh from The Mountain top. By him now. My only role. And for that freedom, spread my polar chill, reaching even the warmest climes, a warning upon the back of every life that would by harming Sam's play, ever wayward around this animal streak of orbit & wind, awaken among these cataracts of belligerent ice me. And my Justice. At once. The Vengeance of my awful loss set free upon this crowded land. An old terror violent for the delirium of ends. But to those who would protect him, frightened by such Beauty & Savage Presence to do more, my cool cries will kiss their tender foreheads and my tears will kiss their gentle cheeks, and then if the Kindness of their Love, which only Loving ever binds, spills my ear, for a while I might slip down and play among his foals so green. My barrenness. Sam's solitude. And all his patience now presumes. Luster of Spring's Sacred Brood. By you, ever sixteen, this World's reserved. By you, this World has everything left to lose. And I, your sentry of ice, shall allways protect what your Joy so terrifyingly elects. I'll destroy no World so long it keeps turning with scurry & blush, fledgling & charms beading with dews, and allways our rush returning renewed. Everyone betrays the Dream but who cares for it? O Sam no, I could never walk away from you.

It is a sort of quasi-monastic diabolical vision. In a landscape populated with larvae - flowing and undulating larvae called forth like a cascade of leeches by tolling bells - three female figures rise up phantasmally, enshrouded with gauze like Spanish madonnas. They are the 'three brides': the bride of Heaven, the bride of the Earth and the bride of Hell... The bride of Hell, with her two serpents writhing about her temples to hold her veil in place, has the most attractive mask: the most profound eyes, the most vertiginous smile that one could ever see. If she existed, how I would love that woman! I feel that if that smile and those eyes were in my life they would be all the cure I need! I could never tire of the study and contemplation of that hallucinatory visage. "The Three Brides" is very peculiar in its detail and composition. It is the whimsy of a dream rendered with astonishing fastidiousness: the delusion of an opium-smoker composed in the style of Holbein.

PATER PROFUNDUS. [Far below]   The chasm at my feet, dark, yawning,   Rests on a chasm deeper still,   A thousand streams, their waters joining,   In a cascade terrific fall;   The tree’s own life, its strength from nature,   Its trunk lifts skywards straight and tall—   All, all, show love’s almighty power   That shapes all things, cares for them all.   The storm breaks round me, fiercely howling,   The woods, ravines, all seem to quake, 12240 And yet, swelled by the deluge falling,   The torrent plunges down the rock   To water lovingly the valley;   The lightning burns the overcast   And clears the air, now smelling freshly,   Of all its foulness, dankness, mist—   All love proclaim! the creating power   By which the whole world is embraced.   Oh kindle, too, in me your fire,   Whose thoughts, disordered, cold, depressed, 12250 Inside the cage of dull sense languish,   Tormented, helpless, hard beset!   Dear God, relieve my spirit’s anguish,   My needy heart illuminate!

Ingeborg's face was cold as ice. He kissed her cheeks until she slipped from his embrace…The sky was full of stars, many more than could be seen at night in Kempten, and many, many more than it was possible to see on the clearest night in Cologne. It's a very pretty sky, darling, said Archimboldi, then he tried to take her hand and drag her back to the village but Ingeborg clung to a tree branch, as if they were playing, and wouldn't go. "Do you realize where we are, Hans?" she asked, laughing with a laugh that sounded to Archimboldi like a cascade of ice... "All this light is dead," said Ingeborg. "All this light was emitted thousands and millions of years ago. It's the past, do you see? When these stars cast their light, we didn't exist, life on Earth didn't exist, even Earth didn't exist. This light was cast a long time ago. It's the past, we're surrounded by the past, everything that no longer exists or exists only in memory or guesswork is there now, above us, shining on the mountains and the snow and we can't do anything to stop it.

If you had to invent a threat grand enough, and global enough, to plausibly conjure into being a system of true international cooperation, climate change would be it- the threat everywhere, and overwhelming, and total. And yet now, just as the need for that kid of cooperation is paramount, indeed necessary for anything like the world we know to survive, we are only unbuilding those alliances- recoiling into nationalistic corners and retreating from collective responsibility and from each other. That collapse of trust is a cascade, too.

By showing you how to accept your future dream as your current reality, and to do so in a way that your body believes is happening “now,” you discover how to set into motion a cascade of emotional and physiological processes that reflect your new reality. The neurons in your brain, the sensory neurites in your heart, and the chemistry of your body all harmonize to mirror the new thinking, and the quantum possibilities of life are rearranged to replace the unwanted circumstances of your past with the new circumstances that you’ve accepted as the present.

She's selling CDs on the corner, fifty cents to any stoner, any homeboy with a boner. Sleet and worse - the weather's awful. Will she live? It's very doubtful. Life out here is never healthful. She puts a CD in her Sony. It's the about the pony and a pie with pepperoni and a mom with warm, clean hands who doesn't bring home guys from bands or make some sickening demands. The cold wind bites like icy snakes. She tries to move but merely shakes. Some thief leans down and simply takes. Her next CD's called Land Of Food. No one there can be tattooed or mumble things that might be crude and everything to eat is free, there's always a big Christmas tree and crystal bowls of potpourri. She's weak but still she play one more: She's on a beach with friends galore. They scamper down the sandy shore to watch the towering waves cascade and marvel at the cute mermaids who call to her and serenade. She can't resist. the water's fine. The rocks are like a kind of shrine. The foam goes down like scarlet wine. One cop stands up and says, "She's gone." The other shakes his head and yawns. It's barely 10:00, and life goes on.

Another star crossed the sky, twirling and twisting over itself, as if it were reveling in its own sparkling beauty. It was chased by another, and another, until a brigade of them were unleashed from the edge of the horizon, like a thousand archers had loosed them from mighty bows. The stars cascaded over us, filling the world with white and blue light. They were like living fireworks, and my breath lodged in my throat as the stars kept on falling and falling. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. And when the sky was full with them, when the stars raced and danced and flowed across the world, the music began. Wherever they were, people began dancing, swaying and twirling, some grabbing hands and spinning, spinning, spinning to the drums, the strings, the glittering harps. Not like the grinding and thrusting of the Court of Nightmares, but—joyous, peaceful dancing. For the love of sound and movement and life. I lingered with Rhysand at the edge of it, caught between watching the people dancing on the patio, hands upraised, and the stars streaming past, closer and closer until I swore I could have touched them if I’d leaned out.

Dr. Syngmann: I am talking about the only quality that was worth creating the world for, the only power that is worth controlling. Pastor Jón: Úa? Dr. Syngmann in a tired, gravelly bass: I hear you mention once more that name which is no name. I know you blame me; I blame myself. Úa was simply Úa. There was nothing I could do about it. I know you have never recovered from it, John. Neither have I. Pastor Jón: That word could mean everything and nothing, and when it ceased to sound, it was as if all other words had lost their meaning. But it did not matter. It gradually came back. Dr. Syngmann: Gradually came back? What did? Pastor Jón: Some years ago, a horse was swept over the falls to Goðafoss. He was washed ashore, alive, onto the rocks below. The beast stood there motionless, hanging his head, for more than twenty-four hours below this awful cascade of water that had swept him down. Perhaps he was trying to remember what life was called. Or he was wondering why the world had been created. He showed no signs of ever wanting to graze again. In the end, however, he heaved himself onto the riverbank and started to nibble. Dr. Syngmann: Only one thing matters, John: do you accept it? Pastor Jón: The flower of the field is with me, as the psalmist said. It isn't mine, to be sure, but it lives here; during the winter it lives in my mind until it resurrects again. Dr. Syngmann: I don't accept it, John! There are limits to the Creator's importunacy. I refuse to carry this universe on my back any longer, as if it were my fault that it exists. Pastor Jón: Quite so. On the other hand, I am like that horse that was dumbfounded for twenty-four hours. For a long time I thought I could never endure having survived. Then I went back to the pasture.

Together the magicks swirled and danced around us, invisible but tangible, like an breeze. This wasn't defensive or offensive magic. It wasn't used to gather information, for strategy or diplomacy, or to fight a war against supernatural enemy. It simply was. It was fundamental, inexorable. It was nothing and everything, infinity and oblivion, from the magnificent furnace of a star to the electrons that hummed in an atom. It was life and death and everything in between, the urge to fight and grow and swim and fly. It was a cascade of water across boulders, the slow-moving advance of mountain glaciers, the march of time.

The sorceress walked a short distance away, her rounded hips swaying. She lifted her hands, fingers moving as if plucking invisible strings. Bitter cold flooded out, the sand crackling as if lit by lightning, and the gate that erupted was massive, yawning, towering. Through the billowing icy air flowed out a sweeter, rank smell. The smell of death. A figure stood on the threshold of the gate. Tall, hunched, a withered, lifeless face of greenish grey, yellowed tusks thrusting up from the lower jaw. Pitted eyes regarded them from beneath a tattered woollen cowl. The power cascading from this apparition sent Equity stumbling back. Abyss! A Jaghut, yes, but not just any Jaghut! Calm – can you hear me? Through this howl? Can you hear me? An ally stands before me – an ally of ancient – so ancient – power! This one could have been an Elder God. This one could have been…anything! Gasping, fighting to keep from falling to one knee, from bowing before this terrible creature, Equity forced herself to lift her gaze, to meet the empty hollows of his eyes. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You are Hood.’ The Jaghut stepped forward, the gate swirling closed behind him. Hood paused, regarding each witness in turn, and then walked towards Equity. ‘They made you their king,’ she whispered. ‘They who followed no one chose to follow you. They who refused every war fought your war. And what you did then – what you did—’ As he reached her, his desiccated hands caught her. He lifted her from her feet, and then, mouth stretching, he bit into the side of her face. The tusks drove up beneath her cheek bone, burst the eye on that side. In a welter of blood, he tore away half of her face, and then bit a second time, up under the orbitals, the tusks driving into her brain. Equity hung in his grip, feeling her life drain away. Her head felt strangely unbalanced. She seemed to be weeping from only one eye, and from her throat no words were possible. I once dreamed of peace. As a child, I dreamed of—

It is not easy being seventy-nine and lose your whole life- my life was that girl. I guess that my assignment in life is over my next stop is up on the hill, next to her I presume.' ‘Life goes by like a blink of an eye. I did the best I could, but I frequently wonder if my best was good enough. Maybe, I was too hard on her.' 'Maybe she was unhappy; maybe it was me? The only hobby I have, as I get older is looking at the scenery that surrounds me.' 'Looking over the pond that cascades a reflection of the trees on along the walkway. Plus, stumbling back and forth from the kitchen, I mumble in whispers, remembering her voice in my mind, while trying to write my fragmented thoughts down on paper, as they rush in my head faster than I can scribble with my pencil.' ‘Oddly Nevaeh is the writer I am not, yet I have given her all my notes about my memories.

He covered her mouth with his ---and she felt as if she had suddenly been enveloped in a cascade of sparks. The tingling warmth from his touch did not compare to the sensations that whirled through her as his lips moved over hers. It was as if every part of her body had at once become brilliantly alive. His beard was a startling, silky roughness against her skin. His other hand came to rest at her waist, drawing her in tight, and her body seemed to meld to his hard, lean lines, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her thoughts scattered. A sound escaped her, soft and deep, unlike any sound she had ever made in her life. Then his tongue touched her lower lip and she gave a startled little squeak. Her suddenly lifted his mouth from hers, his eyes midnight blue, his voice husky. "You have never even been kissed before, leannan. You are as innocent as the day you first set foot in the convent.

Swift as thought, he slipped away from me, running down the hillside like a cloud’s shadow when the wind blows. My connection to him frayed away as he went, scattering and floating like dandelion fluff in the wind. Instead of small and secret, I felt our bond go wide and open, as if he had invited all the Witted creatures in the world in to share our joining. All the web of life on the whole hillside suddenly swelled within my heart, linked and meshed and woven through with one another. It was too glorious to contain. I had to go with him; a morning this wondrous must be shared. “Wait!” I cried, and in shouting the word, I woke myself. Nearby, the Fool sat up, his hair tousled. I blinked. My mouth was full of salve and wolf-hair, my fingers buried deep in his coat. I clutched him to me, and my grip sighed his last stilled breath out of his lungs. But Nighteyes was gone. Cold rain was cascading down past the mouth of the cave.

Beyond serving as an inspiration to engineers, the group behavior of fireflies has broader significance for science as a whole. It represents one of the few tractable instances of a complex, self-organizing system, where millions of interactions occur simultaneously—when everyone changes the state of everyone else. Virtually all the major unsolved problems in science today have this intricate character. Consider the cascade of biochemical reactions in a single cell and their disruption when the cell turns cancerous; the booms and crashes of the stock market; the emergence of consciousness from the interplay of trillions of neurons in the brain; the origin of life from a meshwork of chemical reactions in the primordial soup. All these involve enormous numbers of players linked in complex webs. In every case, astonishing patterns emerge spontaneously. The richness of the world around us is due, in large part, to the miracle of self-organization.

Fear is one of the biggest single factors that deprives one of being able to achieve your full potential. We experience fear more as a result of our internal communication of mind rather than because of actual external factors.Fear is an unseen enemy that whispers negative thoughts into your mind, body and soul. It tries to convince you that you will not prosper and that you cannot achieve your full potential.Our lives can be compared to beautiful streams, which are destined to flow, grow in majesty to create wonderful features such as cascading waterfalls, and give nourishment and life to those in its path.Sometimes we let fear put up a small dam in our rivers of life and it causes us to have stunted growth. We need to be able to rise above it, rise above the fear, break the dam and let our potential flow.When we allow fear to create dams in our rivers of life, then our streams become like the Dead Sea, which is stagnant and void of life and movement. When we confront fear, we break the dams and free our potential to flow forward.We are beings of immense potential, ability and skills. In order to realize our God given talents we need to break through the fear barrier, which through its invisible walls traps us better than any physical prison can be constructed by the hands of man. Our human will and faith can break any barriers that fear can construct.

Rather, I found through this experience that there is significant similarity between meditating under a waterfall and tidying. When you stand under a waterfall, the only audible sound is the roar of water. As the cascade pummels your body, the sensation of pain soon disappears and numbness spreads. Then a sensation of heat warms you from the inside out, and you enter a meditative trance. Although I had never tried this form of meditation before, the sensation it generated seemed extremely familiar. It closely resembled what I experience when I am tidying. While not exactly a meditative state, there are times when I am cleaning that I can quietly commune with myself. The work of carefully considering each object I own to see whether it sparks joy inside me is like conversing with myself through the medium of my possessions. For this reason, it is essential to create a quiet space in which to evaluate the things in your life. Ideally, you should not even be listening to music. Sometimes I hear of methods that recommend tidying in time to a catchy song, but personally, I don’t encourage this. I feel that noise makes it harder to hear the internal dialogue between the owner and his or her belongings. Listening to the TV is, of course, out of the question. If you need some background noise to relax, choose environmental or ambient music with no lyrics or well-defined melodies. If you want to add momentum to your tidying work, tap the power of the atmosphere in your room rather than relying on music. The best time to start is early morning. The fresh morning air keeps your mind clear and your power of discernment sharp. For this reason, most of my lessons commence in the morning. The earliest lesson I ever conducted began at six thirty, and we were able to clean at twice the usual speed. The clear, refreshed feeling gained after standing under a waterfall can be addictive. Similarly, when you finish putting your space in order, you will be overcome with the urge to do it again. And, unlike waterfall meditation, you don’t have to travel long distances over hard terrain to get there. You can enjoy the same effect in your own home. That’s pretty special, don’t you think?

I’m sorry, I should have realized you’d be hungry. If you let me give you intravenous fluids, it would help.” The moment she put the glass down, she retreated to her computer desk. He ignored her comment. Why do you not feed? The question was asked casually, curiously. His black eyes were thoughtful as he studied her. From her position of safety across the room, Shea watched him. The weight of his gaze alone broke her concentration, took her breath away. She was feeling far too possessive of this patient. She had no right to tangle her life around his. It was frightening that she was reacting so uncharacteristically to him. She had always felt aloof, remote, detached from people and things around her. Her analytical mind simply computed facts. But right now, she could think only of him, his pain and suffering, the way his eyes watched her, half-closed, sexy. Shea nearly jumped out of her skin. Where had that thought come from? Knowing she wouldn’t want to think he was reading her mind at that precise moment, Jacques did the gentlemanly thing and pretended merely a casual interest. It was nice to know she found him sexy. Smugly he lay back with his eyes closed, long lashes dark against his washed-out complexion. Despite the fact that his eyes were closed, Shea felt as though he witnessed every move she made. “You rest while I shower and change my clothes.” Her hands went to her hair in a futile effort to tidy the wild thickness of it. His eyes remained closed, his breathing relaxed. I can feel your hunger, your need for blood nearly as great as my own. Why would you attempt to hide this from me? With sudden insight he let out his breath. Or is it that you are hiding from your own needs? That is it--you do not realize it is your hunger, your need. The gentleness in his flooded her body with unexpected heat. Furious that he could be right, she stalked into the bathroom, shrugged off her robe, and allowed the warm shower to cascade over her head. His laughter was low and taunting. You think to escape me, little red hair? I live in you as you live in me. Shea gasped, whirled around, grabbed frantically for a towel. It took a moment to realize he was still in the other room.

The assassination of President Kennedy killed not only a man but a complex of illusions. It demolished the myth that hate and violence can be confined in an airtight chamber to be employed against but a few. Suddenly the truth was revealed that hate is a contagion; that it grows and spreads as a disease; that no society is so healthy that it can automatically maintain its immunity. If a smallpox epidemic had been raging in the South, President Kennedy would have been urged to avoid the area. There was a plague afflicting the South, but its perils were not perceived. Negroes tragically know political assassination well. In the life of Negro civil-rights leaders, the whine of the bullet from ambush, the roar of the bomb have all too often broken the night's silence. They have replaced lynching as a political weapon. More than a decade ago, sudden death came to Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Moore, N.A.A.C.P. leaders in Florida. The Reverend George Lee of Belzoni, Mississippi, was shot to death on the steps of a rural courthouse. The bombings multiplied. Nineteen sixty-three was a year of assassinations. Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi; William Moore in Alabama; six Negro children in Birmingham—and who could doubt that these too were political assassinations? The unforgivable default of our society has been its failure to apprehend the assassins. It is a harsh judgment, but undeniably true, that the cause of the indifference was the identity of the victims. Nearly all were Negroes. And so the plague spread until it claimed the most eminent American, a warmly loved and respected president. The words of Jesus "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" were more than a figurative expression; they were a literal prophecy. We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man’s life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.

In 1995, the gray wolf was reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park after a seventy-year hiatus. Scientists expected an ecological ripple effect, but the size and scope of the trophic cascade took them by surprise.7 Wolves are predators that kill certain species of animals, but they indirectly give life to others. When the wolves reentered the ecological equation, it radically changed the behavioral patterns of other wildlife. As the wolves began killing coyotes, the rabbit and mouse populations increased, thereby attracting more hawks, weasels, foxes, and badgers. In the absence of predators, deer had overpopulated the park and overgrazed parts of Yellowstone. Their new traffic patterns, however, allowed the flora and fauna to regenerate. The berries on those regenerated shrubs caused a spike in the bear population. In six years’ time, the trees in overgrazed parts of the park had quintupled in height. Bare valleys were reforested with aspen, willow, and cottonwood trees. And as soon as that happened, songbirds started nesting in the trees. Then beavers started chewing them down. Beavers are ecosystem engineers, building dams that create natural habitats for otters, muskrats, and ducks, as well as fish, reptiles, and amphibians. One last ripple effect. The wolves even changed the behavior of rivers—they meandered less because of less soil erosion. The channels narrowed and pools formed as the regenerated forests stabilized the riverbanks. My point? We need wolves! When you take the wolf out of the equation, there are unintended consequences. In the absence of danger, a sheep remains a sheep. And the same is true of men. The way we play the man is by overcoming overwhelming obstacles, by meeting daunting challenges. We may fear the wolf, but we also crave it. It’s what we want. It’s what we need. Picture a cage fight between a sheep and a wolf. The sheep doesn’t stand a chance, right? Unless there is a Shepherd. And I wonder if that’s why we play it safe instead of playing the man—we don’t trust the Shepherd. Playing the man starts there! Ecologists recently coined a wonderful new word. Invented in 2011, rewilding has a multiplicity of meanings. It’s resisting the urge to control nature. It’s the restoration of wilderness. It’s the reintroduction of animals back into their natural habitat. It’s an ecological term, but rewilding has spiritual implications. As I look at the Gospels, rewilding seems to be a subplot. The Pharisees were so civilized—too civilized. Their religion was nothing more than a stage play. They were wolves in sheep’s clothing.8 But Jesus taught a very different brand of spirituality. “Foxes have dens and birds have nests,” said Jesus, “but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”9 So Jesus spent the better part of three years camping, fishing, and hiking with His disciples. It seems to me Jesus was rewilding them. Jesus didn’t just teach them how to be fishers of men. Jesus taught them how to play the man! That was my goal with the Year of Discipleship,

A Tale of Two Parking Requirements The impact of parking requirements becomes clearer when we compare the parking requirements of San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco limits off-street parking, while LA requires it. Take, for example, the different parking requirements for concert halls. For a downtown concert hall, Los Angeles requires, as a minimum, fifty times more parking than San Francisco allows as its maximum. Thus the San Francisco Symphony built its home, Louise Davies Hall, without a parking garage, while Disney Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, did not open until seven years after its parking garage was built. Disney Hall's six-level, 2,188-space underground garage cost $110 million to build (about $50,000 per space). Financially troubled Los Angeles County, which built the garage, went into debt to finance it, expecting that parking revenues would repay the borrowed money. But the garage was completed in 1996, and Disney Hall—which suffered from a budget less grand than its vision—became knotted in delays and didn't open until late 2003. During the seven years in between, parking revenue fell far short of debt payments (few people park in an underground structure if there is nothing above it) and the county, by that point nearly bankrupt, had to subsidize the garage even as it laid employees off. The money spent on parking shifted Disney Hall's design toward drivers and away from pedestrians. The presence of a six-story subterranean garage means most concert patrons arrive from underneath the hall, rather than from the sidewalk. The hall's designers clearly understood this, and so while the hall has a fairly impressive street entrance, its more magisterial gateway is an "escalator cascade" that flows up from the parking structure and ends in the foyer. This has profound implications for street life. A concertgoer can now drive to Disney Hall, park beneath it, ride up into it, see a show, and then reverse the whole process—and never set foot on a sidewalk in downtown LA. The full experience of an iconic Los Angeles building begins and ends in its parking garage, not in the city itself. Visitors to downtown San Francisco have a different experience. When a concert or theater performance lets out in San Francisco, people stream onto the sidewalks, strolling past the restaurants, bars, bookstores, and flower shops that are open and well-lit. For those who have driven, it is a long walk to the car, which is probably in a public facility unattached to any specific restaurant or shop. The presence of open shops and people on the street encourages other people to be out as well. People want to be on streets with other people on them, and they avoid streets that are empty, because empty streets are eerie and menacing at night. Although the absence of parking requirements does not guarantee a vibrant area, their presence certainly inhibits it. "The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages," Jane Jacobs argued in 1961, "the duller and deader it becomes ... and there is nothing more repellent than a dead downtown.

The masses of dense foliage all round became prison walls, impassable circular green ice-walls, surging towards her; just before they closed in, I caught the terrified glint of her eyes. On a winter day she was in the studio, posing for him in the nude, her arms raised in a graceful position. To hold it for any length of time must have been a strain, I wondered how she managed to keep so still; until I saw the cords attached to her wrists and ankles. Instead of the darkness, she faced a stupendous sky-conflagration, an incredible glacial dream-scene. Cold coruscations of rainbow fire pulsed overhead, shot through by shafts of pure incandescence thrown out by mountains of solid ice towering all round. Closer, the trees round the house, sheathed in ice, dripped and sparkled with weird prismatic jewels, reflecting the vivid changing cascades above. Instead of the familiar night sky, the aurora borealis formed a blazing, vibrating roof of intense cold and colour, beneath which the earth was trapped with all its inhabitants, walled in by those impassable glittering ice-cliffs. The world had become an arctic prison from which no escape was possible, all its creatures trapped as securely as were the trees, already lifeless inside their deadly resplendent armour. Frozen by the deathly cold emanating from the ice, dazzled by the blaze of crystalline ice-light, she felt herself becoming part of the polar vision, her structure becoming one with the structure of ice and snow. As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of her world. Fear was the climate she lived in; if she had ever known kindness it would have been different. The trees seemed to obstruct her with deliberate malice. All her life she had thought of herself as a foredoomed victim, and now the forest had become the malign force that would destroy her. In desperation she tried to run, but a hidden root tripped her, she almost fell. Branches caught in her hair, tugged her back, lashed out viciously when they were disentangled. The silver hairs torn from her head glittered among black needles; they were the clues her pursuers would follow, leading them to their victim. She escaped from the forest at length only to see the fjord waiting for her. An evil effluence rose from the water, something primitive, savage, demanding victims, hungry for a human victim. It had been night overhead all along, but below it was still daylight. There were no clouds. I saw islands scattered over the sea, a normal aerial view. Then something extraordinary, out of this world: a wall of rainbow ice jutting up from the sea, cutting right across, pushing a ridge of water ahead of it as it moved, as if the flat pale surface of sea was a carpet being rolled up. It was a sinister, fascinating sight, which did not seem intended for human eyes. I stared down at it, seeing other things at the same time. The ice world spreading over our world. Mountainous walls of ice surrounding the girl. Her moonwhite skin, her hair sparkling with diamond prisms under the moon. The moon’s dead eye watching the death of our world.

(The very next day) 'I am enduring will standing alone bare and yes, I am completely naked to the world outside. So, unprotected by the atmosphere above and around me, so unlike- the day, I was born into this hellish world.' 'My life was not always like this! Still as of now, I stand trembling on top of this cruel land, which I call my hereditary land or my home-town.' 'Some still call me by my name, and that is 'Nevaeh May Natalie.' 'Some of the others, like the kids I go to school within this land, have other titles for me.' 'However, you can identify me by the name of 'Nevaeh.' That is if you want to.' 'I do not think that even matters to you, my name is… it has been replaced and it is not significant anymore. Nor does my name matter to anyone out there for miles around. At least that is the way it seems to me, standing here now as I see the bus come to take me there.' 'Names or not said to me, 'I feel alone!' I whispered to myself.' 'It is like I am living a dream. I didn't think my nightmare of orgasmic, tragic, and drizzling emotions pouring in my mind would last this long.' ('Class, faces, names, done.') 'It like a thunderstorm pounding in my brain, as it is today outside. I have come home from yet another day of hell that would be called- school to you.' 'I don't even go into the house until I have this restricting schoolgirl uniform torn off my body. I feel like my skin is crawling with bugs when it is on my figure.' (Outside in the fields, next to the tracks) 'It's the middle- September and I am standing in the rain. It is so cold, so lonely, and so loveless! Additionally, this is not usual for me, I am always bare around my house, I have my reason you'll see.' 'The rain has been falling on me like knives ever since the moment, I got off the yellow bus.' 'A thunderbolt clattered, more resonant than anything ever heard previously.' 'All the rain is matting my long brown hair on me as it lies on my backside longer than most girls. Yet I am okay with that at last, I am free.' (I have freedom) 'To a point! I still feel so trapped by all of them.' 'Ten or twenty minutes have now passed; I am still in the same very spot. Just letting water follow me down. I'm drenched!' 'I can feel the wetness as it lingers in my hair for a while, so unforgivably soaking my body even more as if sinking within me washing me clean.' 'Counting my sanctions, I feel satisfied in a way when I do feel it dropping offends my hair, as if 'God' is still in control of my life, even if I was sent to and damned to hell.' 'Like it is wiping away everything that happened to me today, away from the day of the past too.' 'The wetness is still running down the small of my back thirty minutes must have passed, and it is like my mind is off.' 'Currently, it follows the center point on my back. Then down in-between my petite butt cheeks. Water and bloodstream off my butt to the ground near the heels of my feet. I can feel as if that part of me is washed clean from the day that I had to go through.' 'Some of this shower is cascading off my little face, and it slowly collects on my little boobs, where it beads up and separates into two different watercourses down to my belly button.' 'I eyeball this, as it goes all the way down the front of me. It trickles down on me, to where it turns the color of light pink off my 'Girly Parts.' As they would never be the same.

Chatting to the gossip of flames waking from the slumber of our flesh-drunk night together— it’s only when I step out to pee do I notice— how far, burgundy-dark, the moon has risen…. On four paws the shepherd- dogs bound, lightly though the trees they hardly touch on earth— we saw it from far sunk here in an always-ache…. Dyeing paling twilight woods— a pair of wasps, spiraling, writhe…. Wetted lips of hers and mine, just-parted, move over each other with tongues just-coming but refuse— like mists of evening they've no place to settle…. Just-here though she's singing she’s in some song from long ago— poised on the brink of twilight longing three thousand miles rush through my heart…. Under undulating curtains— I hover above her the tips of me brushing the tips of her— breathing back and forth a column of air we share our breath slowly asphyxiating…. From burning wood campfire sparks dart off extinguishing in the wet blue dark… how you blow your long wind across my embers, through my soul, she pleads me, take away the pain— I dip a branch in blue water and plunge it into coals…. *** In pre-dawn dark, against a leaping inferno of flames black monolith of wood in the cast iron compartment softens, and—gradually— fractures to cells, warping upward, until from the top a shard splinters: pearls of flame string a fiber and leap in little tongues while the log, glowing, engulfed, is consumed by the inferno contained…. A shadow daunts me, haunts and taunts me now reaching far, now recoiling, now growing bold…. I once sang eruptions and the wind— then appeared you it took my whole life singing only the songs of you and still I sing for you what other refuge can stay me from this torment? So— my doppelganger has arrived no one said it would happen this way but the way his hands fold like mine, the style of his humor, broadness of his smile— even the way he walks…. Licking and lapping these lashings of grasses are in tongues at my feet smoldering's the fury within me— I have seen my fields of daylight warp to noxious-air infernos but still to the clean blue of the flame I take rest in her breast…. His songs I mouth, and in my head is his voice— I cannot hear my own…. in my mind I see myself— thin, stupid— my arms too weak, my own chest too frail— and besides I prefer him more…. Along spiral lines, seed-heads decay— swept away they whirl and writhe in the hot blue fire of evening…. Stuck in a mural of sticky flesh— the family… I am locked-in-arms with brothers and sisters, drooping at the thighs with nieces and nephews, grafted to parents at the scalp, and pasted with toddlers all over… hived, sapped, black I sit, subject to the flavors and aromas of your abuse…. Then— be wrapped in his presence… crescendo to his warmth the cascade of your laughter search in his wrinkles for the boy inside him… I’m just biding here, bragless, trying to admit these rival-streams that flow in one latticework of blood…. Halves of flesh and bosomy hips, lips like dark ripe fruits they're chasing— I chased them… full-feathered was their hair like floss in the sunshine fine-fingered was their style like laces cut to curves: and then there was you, returning one, just there like the midnight moon in my sky at noontime….

Kode’s older sister, Kira, was leaning over a display of jewelry, fisting a jade-green necklace in one hand. Her nose was two inches from the Braetic across the table, the two exchanging intimidating glares. Eena watched for a few seconds as Kira all but crawled over a pile of merchandise, her face scrunched up with resentment, yet enviably stunning as always. “Hey Kode,” the young queen whispered. “Hey, girl.” “What’s going on?” “Kira’s bartering.” Eena watched the fistful of necklace come within a whisker of smacking the merchant’s nose. “She isn’t going to hurt the guy, is she?” Kode snorted on a chuckle. “Not if the dude’s got any sense.” Validly concerned, Eena inched closer to the confrontation, straining to hear their growled dialogue. Kode and Niki crept closer too. Efren, however, stayed where he was, testing the flagpole’s ability to support his body weight. They watched the feisty Mishmorat hold up a small pouch and shake it in front of the Braetic’s eyes. Kira’s fingers curled like claws around the purse. She seemed to smirk for a second when the merchant flinched. In a blink he was back in her face again, shoving aside the purse. “What is she trying to trade?” Eena asked, her voice still hushed as though she might disturb the haggling taking place across the way. “Viidun coins,” Kode said. “Ef gave ‘em to her.” “Are they worth much?’ Kode grinned wryly, “He sure as hell don’t freakin’ think so.” Eena foresaw Niki’s disapproving smack to the back of Kode’s head before he even finished his sentence. He cursed at his girlfriend for the physical abuse, an unwise response that earned him an additional thump on the head. “Freakin’ tyrant,” Kode grumbled. “Vulgar grogfish,” Niki retorted. Still unable to hear well enough to satisfy her curiosity, Eena stole in closer to the scene of heated bartering. She stopped when Kira’s strong voice carried over the murmur of the crowd. Kode and his girlfriend were right on her heels. “This purse is worth ten of those gaudy necklaces. You oughta be payin’ me to take ‘em off your hands, Braetic!” “That alien money is worthless to me, Mishmorat. In all my life I’ve never left Moccobatran soil. And even if I were to take an interstellar trip someday, you’d never catch the likes of me on a barbarian planet like Rapador!” Kira jerked her head, causing her black, cascading hair to ripple over her shoulder. The action made the trader flinch again. His eyes tapered, appearing to fume over what he perceived as intentional bullying. “You ain’t gonna sell this crap to no one else,” the exotic Mishmorat said. “Be smart and take the money. Hell, you could make a dozen pieces of jewelry from these coins. Sell ’em all for ten times the worth of anything you got here.” The Braetic shoved his finger at Kira’s chest, breathing down her throat at the same time. “Why don’t you just take your pretty little backside away from my table and make your own Viidun jewelry. Sell it yourself and then come back with a reasonable offer for my necklace.” His palm opened flat, demanding she hand over the jade stones still in her fist. “You wanna make me?” Kira breathed. “What do you plan to do, steal it?” The merchant challenged her in a gesture, nostrils flaring. “I’m no thief, but I’m not above beating some sense into you ‘til you choose to barter like a respectable Braetic!” Caught up in the intense interaction, Kode supported his sister a little too loudly. “Teach the freakin’ crook a lesson, Sis!” Niki smacked her boyfriend upside the head without missing a beat.

Looking back at the knowledge economies discussed earlier, we can recognize that the dynamic coupling of human societies and the Earth system not only depended on the generation of knowledge, but enhanced, in turn, the significance of that generation. In a process extending over millennia, scientific knowledge eventually became a crucial component of economic growth; it is now becoming no less important in coping with its consequences. Substantial anthropogenic change on a global scale was evidently already characteristic of the Holocene and the late Pleistocene, from the human-induced extinction of great mammals via Neolithization and urbanization to the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. What characterizes the Anthropocene is the need to actively prevent the Earth system from transgressing planetary boundaries. The emergence of this need is closely related to the cascade of evolutionary processes described above. Just as cultural evolution started as a side-show of biological evolution before it became the conditio humana (the essential condition of human life), epistemic evolution, that is, the growing dependence of human societies on knowledge economies producing scientific knowledge, was, for a long time, no more than a tangential aspect of cultural evolution. But with the onset of the Anthropocene, the survival of human culture as we know it hinges on this.

If you had to invent a threat grand enough, and global enough, to plausibly conjure into being a system of true international cooperation, climate change would be it—the threat everywhere, and overwhelming, and total. And yet now, just as the need for that kind of cooperation is paramount, indeed necessary for anything like the world we know to survive, we are only unbuilding those alliances—recoiling into nationalistic corners and retreating from collective responsibility and from each other. That collapse of trust is a cascade, too. —

The potential for experiencing pleasure is without limits, and the well of previously unknown beauty essentially bottomless. For—when free from modern life’s clouding distractions, and released from its obstinate grasp—one can tune into nature’s wavelength and experience her every breath, from the bobbing flight of a wagtail to the thundering cascade of a waterfall, as a new thrill. In these timeless moments, as one receives pulse after exhilarating pulse from the ecospheric orchestra, philosophy becomes redundant, just as life’s meaning is made abundantly clear.

In the silence of a day stripped of sleep and sustenance, I craft "Walking Alone in a Jungle." Immersed in the theatricality of my mind, questions cascade like an endless stream, leaving me suspended between belief and doubt. At times, I defy divine power, embracing logic as my refuge. Yet, within the labyrinth of thought, I query the origin – cosmic expanse or mere creation? Contemplating life's capricious dance, I grapple with control. Do I dictate my orbit, or does an unseen hand choreograph existence's strange waltz? The mystery deepens as virtuous hearts endure misfortune. If a benevolent God exists, why does adversity visit the good-hearted? "Why must a virtuous soul suffer?" echoes the proverb. Does God truly test the best with the toughest trials, or is this notion a construct of the mind? Amidst constant questioning, I navigate self-reflection. Why does positivity, tied to pure intentions, spawn misunderstanding? As day wears on, thoughts flow into a new book, yet answers elude me. Are unanswered questions born of perpetual thought, or does clarity dwell in thought's absence? The 'why' persists, a relentless echo in contemplative caverns. Existence's fabric seems woven with illusion, prompting scrutiny of authenticity. Why doubt the simplicity of truth, where pain persists? After tireless questioning, understanding teases, slipping away like shadows. Is it thought's 'why' constructing an exitless maze, or does enlightenment reside where thought surrenders? I don't know. Sometimes, I think too much or not enough. Stuck in a perpetual cycle, I laugh bitterly. Perhaps, writing holds answers, or stubborn questioning persists. Why?

And here her eyes sparkled and she stood up straight, her beautiful face shining in the sunlight that glowed into the store window, the light bouncing off the fruit and vegetables and cascading into the corners of the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, illuminating the peppers and carrots, the Saltines and apple peelers, making life seem as full and new and fresh as the promise of Pennsylvania had once been for so many of those standing about who had come up from the South to the North, a land of supposed good, clean freedom, where a man could be a man and a woman could be a woman, instead of the reality where they now stood, a tight cluster of homes enclosed by the filth of factories that belched bitter smoke into a gray sky and tight yards filled with goats and chickens in a part of town no one wanted, in homes with no running water or bathrooms.

In the ebb and flow of the present's embrace, Hidden truths emerge, weaving tales in grace. Do we craft stories or in narratives abide? Uncertainty's pulse, our existence as a guide. Like particles entwined in a cosmic ballet, Are we oceans within a droplet, or droplets in a bay? Strings of existence dance in quantum trance, As rain merges with rivers, do we merge in the cosmic expanse? Observer and observed, in stories we immerse, As cosmic dancers, are we waves or the universe? The melody of existence, an intricate weave, Echoing through verses, our shared tapestry perceived. Sometimes, truths half-revealed, whispers of depth, Half-scripted life cascades like rain's soft breath. Do we fathom the depths or simply float? A droplet or the sea, in life's rhythmic boat.

Critics of capitalism often decry the “greed” that animates successful entrepreneurs. The real problem, however, is not the amount of money made by people at the top; it is the systematic suppression of people at the bottom. The real-life equivalent of the Monopoly player who has to mortgage all his money-making assets to pay his debts is the hand-to-mouth day laborer who, unable to pay his car insurance, loses his car and, unable to drive to his job, is unable to pay his rent. The villain here is not necessarily the avarice of the banker who loaned this poor fellow his money in the first place. It is the unstable dynamic of a system that mercilessly drives some people down to the bottom through a succession of cascading misfortunes. To experience the board game version of this kind of misery vortex in Monopoly is to appreciate the advantages of the welfare state, which, when it is functioning properly, does not just take money from rich people and give it to poor people. It also softens the iterative feedback dynamics within the system so as to ensure that minor nudges—a lost job, a criminal conviction, a divorce, a medical setback—do not create feedback effects that ultimately produce a full-blown personal catastrophe. Job training, public health care, a humane justice system, community housing and support for single mothers are examples of programs that can achieve that effect.

Reducing resource use removes pressure from ecosystems and gives the web of life a chance to knit itself back together, while reducing energy use makes it much easier for us to accomplish a rapid transition to renewables before dangerous tipping points begin to cascade. This is called ‘degrowth’ – a planned downscaling of energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way.

I lay in the rain as it made intricate rivers that flowed off my nose and along the peaks and valleys of my face. I could almost feel memories encapsulated in the different streams. Water pooled in the leeward side of my mouth after cascading across the rapids of my front teeth. In the previous hours, my jaw and mouth went limp from their newfound home on the ground. They now served for little more than a shitty birdbath. I wished the water would drown me.

How does the Magic Paradox work? By setting into motion a cascade of “yes” coming from the other person (“Yes, you’re right, my life is a mess, and I can’t take it anymore”), you shift the person’s attitude from disagreement to agreement. Once you establish that rapport, the person is emotionally primed to cooperate instead of punch back.

shining in the sunlight that glowed into the store window, the light bouncing off the fruit and vegetables and cascading into the corners of the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, illuminating the peppers and carrots, the Saltines and apple peelers, making life seem as full and new and fresh as the promise of Pennsylvania had once been for so many of those standing about who had come up from the South to the North, a land of supposed good, clean freedom, where a man could be a man and a woman could be a woman, instead of the reality where they now stood, a tight cluster of homes enclosed by the filth of factories that belched bitter smoke into a gray sky and tight yards filled with goats and chickens

an investment in the first bucket (knowledge) is the highest-yielding investment you can make. Because when that knowledge is applied (skill), it inevitably cascades to fill your remaining buckets.

True happiness reveals its depth in the radiant exchange of smiles, where the warmth of your joy becomes the catalyst for a cascade of happiness in the hearts of those around you.

Our eyes can distinguish several million colours, our ears can distinguish half a million tones, but our noses can distinguish well over a trillion different odours. Humans can detect virtually all volatile chemicals ever tested. Smells feature in our choice of sexual partners and in our ability to detect fear, anxiety or aggression in others. Human noses can detect some compounds at as low a concentration as 34,000 molecules in one square centimetre, the equivalent of a single drop of water in 20,000 Olympic swimming pools. For an animal to experience a smell, a molecule must land on their olfactory epithelium. In humans, this is a membrane up and behind the nose. The molecule binds to a receptor, and nerves fire. The brain gets involved as chemicals are identified or trigger thoughts and emotional responses. Fungi are equipped with different kinds of bodies. They don’t have noses or brains. Instead, their entire surface behaves like an olfactory epithelium. A mycelial network is one large chemically sensitive membrane: a molecule can bind to a receptor anywhere on its surface and trigger a signalling cascade that alters fungal behaviour. Fungi live their lives bathed in a rich field of chemical information. Truffle fungi use chemicals to communicate to animals their readiness to be eaten; they also use chemicals to communicate with plants, animals, other fungi – and themselves. Through smell, we can participate in the molecular discourse fungi use to organise much of their existence.

Neuroscientists and psychologists call this phenomenon “the illusion of free will.” The word “illusion” is a bit of a misnomer; your brain isn’t acting behind your back. You are your brain, and the whole cascade of events is caused by your brain’s predictive powers.

Life doesn’t come in nice tidy boxes, Bree. That’s why your relationship status is set to ‘complicated.’ Events don’t happen one at a time. They cascade and snowball and try to crush us.

When emotional associations of pain and deprivation are triggered by instinct, it is difficult to be present with and curious about them; usually, this is because at the age when any particular self-image took root, the sensations and emotions were overwhelming. When these associations arise in the present, we typically react as if they’re objectively true in the moment. The “volume” of our reactivity is too loud for us to listen to our inner life. Any slight incongruence in an instinctual domain can provoke a cascade of negative self-images from the past with their accompanying emotional content. As a result, most people spend their entire lives defending and supporting their ego as if they were fighting for their lives.

It is caused by a single pathogen that infects our cells, reproduces at our expense, and cascades a predictable array of symptoms. This causal agent can be identified, isolated, and studied. With luck, it can be removed, ending our affliction for good. Typical symptoms of this condition cover a wide range, including fatigue, shortness of breath, cognitive difficulties, heart palpitations, and over 200 others that impact numerous major organ systems, profoundly influencing daily life and general wellness. These symptoms often vary in intensity and can reappear over time.

Essie swam in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and three of the Great Lakes and crossed Death Valley (Mojave Desert) and the Sonoran Desert. She made two Canadian trips and traveled from Texas to Calgary. She crossed the United States twice, the Rocky Mountains nine times, and the Cascade Range four. I like to think it beat a long, slow, uninteresting life as a pasture potato.

Alys came down the stairs and filled the room like a ray of sunshine. Her golden hair had been washed and brushed, and he could see it was just as beautiful as it had been when he’d first seen her. Those locks were shiny and smooth, falling around her head in a cascade of golden curls like a waterfall. Her skin was nearly back to normal, although there were still a few red lines at her joints that clearly hadn’t healed just yet. But the dark circles under her lovely eyes were gone, and the bright expression on her face was full of life. Just as he would always remember her. Because this was how she looked the first time he’d met her, and it was that first glimpse that had filled his soul with sunlight. She was so beautiful that it was hard to breathe when he looked at her. And her? She bolted toward the glass the moment she saw him. Ran for him, moving faster than he’d realized her kind could until she was right there. So close he could have touched her if there wasn’t a barrier between them. Just like the first time they’d seen each other, she lifted her hand and pressed it against the glass. So he mirrored her, wishing he could actually touch her. He wanted to hold her and make sure that she was still really alive. He wanted to feel her against his chest, to know without a doubt, she wasn’t broken. She wasn’t still injured.

He’d been the victim of a “prescribing cascade.”4 It started when he was given a new blood pressure pill, a good and common one, but—as is the case for almost all drugs— one with side effects. In Dimitri, it had precipitated gout. Instead of changing medications, his doctor treated the gout with a strong anti-inflammatory drug that caused heartburn, earning Dimitri another new medicine. And so it went, each side effect treated with another medication that caused another side effect that was treated with yet another medication, and so on. Just as bad, even when his problems got better, as his gout had, the medications were continued. In just a few months, he’d gone from healthy to bedbound.

Writing for you and about you is an absolute feeling of mingling into the ocean, there is a place where all the water meets, places and philosophies meet. I meet you where sun and horizon meets. I will surrender to you where a brook leaves a mountain! I will wander with you where water bursts out of a rock and cascades into the valley, or where pine meets the sky or where running deer gives a glimpse to a traveller in the distant forest.

Baptism is the good news that Jesus' royal rain has fallen from heaven to earth, and it incorporates the baptized into Jesus' work. Jesus establishes his justice through his body. United with the King, we're kings and queens, new Adams and Eves. By baptism, we dissonant children of Adam begin to resonate with creation. Soaked with heavenly rain, we become refreshing water for the world. The church is a cascade that sweeps away brutes and thugs; the church is a gentle shower to revive the thirsty and a cooling cup of mercy and justice, offered in compassion and humility. Whatever is born of flesh is flesh; what is born of Spirit is Spirit. Born of word, we are God's word to the world. Born of water, we are water.

Think back to our earlier conversations about how important attentive, responsive caregiving is in providing the organizing experiences for the infant’s stress-response systems. Remember that if the life experiences of the first two months include inconsistent or unpredictable stress, this pattern of activation creates a sensitized stress response (see Figures 3 and 5). That leads to a cascade of problems—trauma-related problems.

In this soft embrace, life renews with eternal grace, time seems to suspend, offering a moment of peace.

I’d spent years of my life learning to read people. The skill was an essential component of my line of work, but it also helped me keep my cool. If people didn’t catch me off guard, I didn’t get upset, and no one got hurt. My childhood was spent trapped in that series of cascading events. I refused to succumb as an adult. So why the fuck couldn’t I get a proper read on Rowan Alexander? Never in a million years had I anticipated her walking into Moxy, let alone accepting the challenge I’d thrown down. I fully expected her to tuck tail and run. Not only did that not happen, but she owned that fucking stage. She looked like a goddamn fantasy without even taking off a scrap of clothing, and I wasn’t the only dick in the room standing salute.

And here her eyes sparkled and she stood up straight, her beautiful face shining in the sunlight that glowed into the store window, the light bouncing off the fruit and vegetables and cascading into the corners of the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, illuminating the peppers and carrots, the Saltines and apple peelers, making life seem as full and new and fresh as the promise of Pennsylvania had once been for so many of those standing about who had come up from the South to the North, a land of supposed good, clean freedom, where a man could be a man and a woman could be a woman, instead of the reality where they now stood, a tight cluster of homes enclosed by the filth of factories that belched bitter smoke into a gray sky and tight yards filled with goats and chickens in a part of town no one wanted, in homes with no running water or bathrooms. Living like they were down home. Except they weren’t down home. They were up home. And it was the same.

You deserve everything good in your life. It's funny, isn’t it? A lifetime of people walking away and never looking back left me scrambling for validation, for connection. Left me desperately chasing a version of me I’d never be able to attain. It took nearly sixteen years to realize the reason I’d never been able to be better was because there was nothing wrong with who I was in the first place. I’m still working on it, struggling every day to accept that I truly am deserving of all the good things in my life, a struggle that gets easier every day with my family by my side. And a handful of carefully selected words, spilled out like the tears cascading down their faces and mine, wipes the slate clean with a single sweep of the hand. Because life is too short to hold grudges, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that hurt people are desperate enough that they’ll do whatever they think they need to do to ease the pain, that we’re all just out here doing the best that we can, wherever we are in life.

When a person has suspicious disease of doubt and suspect others in a relationship, it can lead to a cascade of negative consequences, including fights, arguments, sadness, misunderstandings, conflicts, toxic relationships, and ultimately, abandonment, rejection, and a lack of peace.

When a person has suspicious disease of doubt and suspecting others in a relationship, it can lead to a cascade of negative consequences, including fights, arguments, sadness, misunderstandings, conflicts, toxic relationships, and ultimately, abandonment, rejection, and a lack of peace.

My father believed in evolution but held no brief for progress. He decided after close readings that the ancient Greeks had pretty much figured everything out and since then it had just been a cascade of better data, the benefits of tinkering in the mills and ever finer machines. But no one had gotten any closer to the meaning of life, and no one was likely to get any closer because life exists and the meaning is not part of that existence.

We are small, in-process versions of our big creator God. Flowers bloom, waterfalls cascade, cheetahs run fast, and birds fly high; but none of them is made in God’s image—only we are. And not only did He make us, but He also made us with a purpose: to reflect who He is and give Him glory with our lives. I’ll never forget watching the birth of each of my four children. How can it be that these little eternal beings, made in God’s image, who no one but God had ever met before, just popped out and showed up on planet Earth? To this day I still can’t quite comprehend it. I remember in particular the birth of my third child, Emmie. The minute she saw daylight, she looked around as if to say, “What’s going on around here? Who are you guys, and what are you talking about?” Like the rest of us, she will live her God-ordained years on Earth and, I hope, fulfill all the works that God has predestined for her (see Eph. 2:10). Then Emmie will go on to live forever in worlds unknown to carry out the mystery of God’s redemptive cosmic plan. Try to get your brain around that one! Oh, and beyond that, try to fathom the It’s a Wonderful Life phenomenon: The lives of everyone Emmie meets and interacts with during her lifetime will be altered and influenced in some way because she showed up on planet Earth that hot August day in 1997.

The magnitude of Fort Peck in his telling of it gripped me the way the notion of a thirty-year winter had, and Zoe's magical presence in the back room, and the selection of the Medicine Lodge as the most pleasurable of all the saloons in the state, and family fame in newspapers far and wide, and Delano Roberston arriving in a cloud of sheep, the entire cascade of this one-of-a-kind year; the idea of outsize life, the feeling of being present as things happened way beyond ordinary in human experience. I suppose it was something like a mental fever, the headiest kind to have. Ever since Pop consolidated his thinking there in the hallway of the house, where my finger snap still echoed, my imagination and I knew no limits, and at twelve or at any other known age, there is no spell more dizzying.

It was a school photograph and although the face was immediately recognisable she couldn’t have pulled it up from her memory, it had long ago been replaced by the bloat of decomposed flesh. Caleb wore the same uniform that she had, shared the same classes and, possibly, aspirations but that’s where the similarities with his life ended. On the occasions that Eleanor had forced herself to look at him she’d taste again the cascade of emotions that both defied and defiled her. Caleb was her ‘safe word’, the boy who had experienced all of the world’s horror so she wouldn’t have to. Her hands steadier, she slid the remains back into the box and piled her life back on top of it.

She was surprised when the major squatted down to help, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “What’s your name?” he asked. Lily flung the last of the silverware onto the tray with a clatter. “It’ll be mud if I don’t get back to the kitchen and pick up my orders,” she snapped. The major took the heavy tray and stood with a sort of rolling grace while Lily scrambled inelegantly back to her feet. Just as she reached out to take the tray back someone pinched her hard on the bottom, and everything cascaded back to the floor again. Lily cried out, spinning around in search of the culprit. “Who did that?” she demanded. The unshaven, unwashed faces around her fairly glowed with innocence. It was obvious that no one was going to admit to the crime. The major cleared his throat, and the troops, so rowdy only an instant before, immediately fell silent. “That’ll be enough,” he said with quiet authority. “The next man who bedevils this woman will spend his leave time in the stockade. Is that understood?” “Yes, sir,” the men answered in rousing unison. One picked up Lily’s tray and handed it to her, brimming with shattered plates and cups and dirty silverware. She turned in a whirl of calico and stormed away, remembering the man who’d come into her mother’s life years before and persuaded Kathleen to send Lily and her sisters west on the orphan train. Soldiers. They were all alike. In

But political crises, moments when the keystone of authority of some major governing institution is whisked away like a Jenga block, can produce a tumbling cascade of new forms of politics. We’ve been looking at the tower for so long we forget it’s made of blocks; we forget it can be put back together in a different way. Previous crises of authority in America produced not just concerted movements to reform the institutions of the time, but organic bouts of institutional innovation that created fundamentally new ways of coordinating work and life.

Right now steam enveloped her and Sabin, thick as clouds. Hot water cascaded down the planes and curves of her body. Nothing had ever felt so amazing—except for the naked man behind her, pinning her in, keeping her inside. She would not hook up with a demon, no matter how sexy he was. Would she? Her life didn’t need more weird. Did it? Why

Making your bed is considered a “keystone” habit. As Barrie says in her book Sticky Habits, “Keystone habits are particular habits that make success in many other aspects of life far easier, regardless of the circumstances you face. These habits unlock a cascade of positive behavior changes with far less effort than establishing a single habit from the ground up.

That's the experience I've gained from working in the garden: there's no reason to be cautious or anxious about anything, life is so robust, it seems to come cascading, blind and green, and at times it is frightening, because we too are alive, but we live in what amounts to a controlled environment, which makes us fear whatever is blind, wild, chaotic, stretching towards the sun, but most often also beautiful, in a deeper way than the purely visual, for the soil smells of rot and darkness, teems with scuttling beetles and convulsing worms, the flower stalks are juicy, their petals brim with scents, and the air, cold and sharp, warm and humid, filled with sunrays or rain, lies against the kin, accustomed to the indoors, like a soothing compress of hereness.

I often had thoughts of vengeance, but I never felt they consumed me. In the days after our conversation, I thought about what Lee had said about Lydia’s killer having a new beginning in a different life. I didn’t want it to get in the way of justice, but didn’t everyone deserve a chance to begin again and become a better person? I think Lee knew he could reach my spirit of fairness, and as a human being –or near enough to one, it seemed unfathomable that someone should be made to pay for their past-life transgressions in a future life. I suppose that’s what karma was, in a way, just very different from an avenging fae. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t punish him, of course, if I had the chance.

I assume 'elegant gentlemen,' such as you, learn such useful skills very early in life." "Actually, no." Straight-faced, Vane reached for her pins. "Us rakes-of-the-first-order..." Dropping pins left and right, he set her hair cascading down. With a satisfied smile, he caught her about the waist and drew her hard against him. "We," he said, looking into her eyes, "spend our time concentrating on rather different skills- like letting ladies' hair down. And getting them out of their clothes. Getting them into bed. And other things." He demonstrated- very effectively.

Truth is more than trustable knowledge; it is deeply experiential, confessional, and contextual. It should be engaged in a community that he or she lives, embodied in a world beyond the immediate community, and testified at all costs because of the love of God for all. Truth is not possessive, but requires a life that engages the way, the truth and the life as we get clues from John 14:6.” -- Yung Suk Kim, Truth, Testimony, and Transformation: A New Reading of the "I am" Sayings in the Fourth Gospel (Cascade Books, 2013 forthcoming)

Human sociality is often assumed to be entirely a matter of culture, originating from the age of life when children are taught to be nice to one another. A cascade of discoveries, many in the past decade, has made clear that this is not the case. Human sociality has been shaped by natural selection, just as might be expected for any feature so crucial to survival. Sociality is written into our physical form, as with the whites of the eyes and the self-mortifying phenomenon of blushing as a signal of embarrassment. It is engraved in our neural circuitry too, most obviously in the faculty of language—there is no point in talking to oneself—and in many other behaviors. These include an inclination to follow rules and an urge to punish others when they fail to do so. Shame and guilt are the penalties for our own failings. To achieve status and avert retribution, we are always seeking to burnish our reputation. We trust the members of our in-group and are prepared to distrust the out-group. We often know instinctively what is right and wrong.

What kind of poet would write about watching clouds through a cascade of flowers when he could lie here really doing it?' 'Isn't that what poets do?' 'Yes, ma'm, most of them. But I'm more interested in life poems than word poems.

Indra believed that the birth of each of her sons had been accompanied by a sign... With Sarva, overnight her cascading black hair showed a thick clutch of grey. He was the child she would struggle most with.

I wanted life to be a film so that I could rewind it to when I first saw Gringo on the big screen. I was sitting happily between Flathead and Hercules, feeling the luckiest and most protected child in the world. Back to the time when I rode with Happiness on the bike in Qala, when Aida and I first kissed, and when Papula and I danced under the cascading water from the hose. I did not want to stop running, or stop thinking of those wonderful times when I had been happy,

After a parting eyebrow arch into the mirror, I drift into my room and spend a second staring longingly at a an oversized gray hoodie picturing the cover of one of my favorite books, My Antonia, before tossing it aside and grabbing a boring, cream sweater that hits me about mid-thigh. I have these ridiculously awesome Prada combat boots that would breathe some life into this bleh, but I don’t want to draw that kind of attention tonight, so I settle on a pair of brown Tory Burch riding boots that would only look expensive to the most discerning eye. I shake my head around a few more times, letting my armpit-length auburn waves cascade around my face, before I fasten my hair into a casual French braid. Then I grab my backpack purse, my adorable bear keychain, and my phone out of the Bose dock, and sprint toward the garage door:

He no longer grasped to a strong sense of self. To him life felt more like a dream, a cascade of cause and effect that was completely up for grabs—and he was no longer separate from any of it. Because of that, he could do amazing things.

He no longer grasped to a strong sense of self. To him life felt more like a dream, a cascade of cause and effect that was completely up for grabs-and he was no longer separate from any of it. Because of that, he could do amazing things

He no longer grasped to a strong sense of self. To him life felt more like a dream, a cascade of cause and effect that was completely up for grabs-and he was no longer separate from any of it. Because of that, he could do amazing things.

Cade gently began to unbraid Lily’s hair, pulling the silken strands through his fingers until they settled in a pale cascade over her shoulders and back. "I am coming back, Lily." Cade said, as he would to a skittish horse. He had grown up with animals as his only friends. He knew no other principles to apply. "Jim didn't." Lily set her brush down and pulled away. But there was nowhere she could go without walking out the door or over to the bed. "I am not Jim. I have been taking care of myself most of my life. What are you afraid of, Lily?" Her back stiffened. "Nothing. Go where you will." Cade didn't know what to do. He couldn't leave with this anger between them, but he didn't know how to alleviate it. He could wrestle a steer to the ground, track a man through open prairie, live in the wilderness with ease, but he didn't know how to talk to a woman. His hand dropped to his side. "There's some things a man has to do, Lily." She swung around and glared at him. "No, there are some things a man wants to do. It's his choice. There's a difference." She was a slender flame in the darkness. Cade wanted to touch the beauty of her, to know for certain that she was actually his to have and to hold, but flames burned. He kept his hands to himself. "I don't want to leave you, Lily. It would be much easier to stay here and hold you in my arms and let the world go by, for the present. But not for the future. It is our future I seek, Lily. I may not succeed. I may come back empty-handed. But I have to try. Lily, can you see that? I have to try." There was almost a plea in his voice. It seemed impossible to believe. His eyes were as dark and impenetrable as ever. The angular lines of his face revealed nothing. Without thought to what she did, Lily lifted her hand to touch the stony line of his jaw. It was warm and very, very human. Cade gave up the fight and jerked her into his arms. Just her touch shattered something inside of him, something that had held him immobile for too long. He did not know what it was to need someone. He did not want to know. But right this minute he needed her. Lily's

Cade gently began to unbraid Lily’s hair, pulling the silken strands through his fingers until they settled in a pale cascade over her shoulders and back. "I am coming back, Lily." Cade said, as he would to a skittish horse. He had grown up with animals as his only friends. He knew no other principles to apply. "Jim didn't." Lily set her brush down and pulled away. But there was nowhere she could go without walking out the door or over to the bed. "I am not Jim. I have been taking care of myself most of my life. What are you afraid of, Lily?" Her back stiffened. "Nothing. Go where you will." Cade didn't know what to do. He couldn't leave with this anger between them, but he didn't know how to alleviate it. He could wrestle a steer to the ground, track a man through open prairie, live in the wilderness with ease, but he didn't know how to talk to a woman. His hand dropped to his side. "There's some things a man has to do, Lily." She swung around and glared at him. "No, there are some things a man wants to do. It's his choice. There's a difference." She was a slender flame in the darkness. Cade wanted to touch the beauty of her, to know for certain that she was actually his to have and to hold, but flames burned. He kept his hands to himself. "I don't want to leave you, Lily. It would be much easier to stay here and hold you in my arms and let the world go by, for the present. But not for the future. It is our future I seek, Lily. I may not succeed. I may come back empty-handed. But I have to try. Lily, can you see that? I have to try." There was almost a plea in his voice. It seemed impossible to believe. His eyes were as dark and impenetrable as ever. The angular lines of his face revealed nothing. Without thought to what she did, Lily lifted her hand to touch the stony line of his jaw. It was warm and very, very human. Cade gave up the fight and jerked her into his arms. Just her touch shattered something inside of him, something that had held him immobile for too long. He did not know what it was to need someone. He did not want to know. But right this minute he needed her. Lily's arms slid around his neck, and Cade held her close, doing nothing more than feeling her breathing against him. "I don't want you to hate me, Lily." "I don't." She rested her head against his shoulder. "I was angry. And afraid. I'm afraid of you, Cade. I'm afraid of what you do to me. I'm afraid of what you are. I'm afraid of what I don't know." He could understand those emotions, but he couldn't admit it. He ought to just carry her to bed and end this foolishness, but she had touched something inside of him that he hadn't known existed, and bed wasn't enough any longer. Caressing her back with one large hand, Cade asked, "What do I need to do to show you, Lily? Show me what you want." "It isn't that easy. There has to be trust. We don't know each other well enough to trust.

Sparks had grown up in New Orleans and gone to sea in his twenties. He was a teetotaler, unusual in an Irishman. “Ah, but I dream of this stuff,” he said, gazing into the cup of milk before downing it in a cascade of voluptuous gulps. “I’ll crawl across broken glass for a cup of milk like an opium addict for a pipe.” “You might like opium better.” Sparks snorted. “It’s bad enough needing food and sleep and cigarettes, having to drag this fucking leg around. I can’t afford a habit like that.” “I’ve seen cripples in opium dens.” “Sure you have—trying to forget they’re cripples! How’s that for smarts—you’ve got a brace on your fucking leg and a monkey on your fucking back, and you think you’ve solved your fucking problem when all you’ve really done is stuck your head up your arse.” As Sparks shook the cup to catch the last drops of milk, Eddie was stricken with sympathy. To be a deviant and a cripple, without good looks or fortune or physical strength—how had Sparks managed to endure such a life? Yet he’d more than endured; he was ever cheerful.

The public space of the museum is not my favorite, loud and full of tourists and school groups and hungry hordes. Their curiosity is endearing---they're acolytes for the natural world. And the marble gleams with architectural detail and precious objects all around. But on these, my gray days, entering the building carries the weight of death: all the specimens, thousands of carcasses of every species, stuffed or otherwise retrieved from oblivion so we can know them, yet all dead. The birds I draw and paint, all dead. On these days, my only defense is to imagine every pinned butterfly taking wing, every stuffed marsupial waking up, every preserved plant specimen blooming and carpeting the marble floor like a time-lapse forest, and every bird coming to life, flying up to the dome and away. On the days when the fog comes and hooks into my gut like a sharp-toothed parasite, these visions can save me. The steadier, more consistent salvation, of course, is the work. I can lose myself for hours drawing, for instance, the common loon, with its inky head, white banding at the neck, and an intricacy of pin dots and fractured rectangles cascading across the wings. With the right precision, I can bring the deadness of a bird skin to a striking facsimile of life.

glanced out the ancient window at the afternoon sunlight cascading down the broad new leaves of a chestnut tree in the garden. It shimmered with life and meaning – a vision of something forever beyond us – innocent and true, the miracle of sunlight on the green magic of leaves, in this world of mysterious beauty we do not love or understand

In the beginning, according to Rabbi Isaac Luria, God contracted himself—zimzum. The divine essence withdrew into itself to make room for a finite world. Evil became possible: those genetic defects that dog cellular life, those clashing forces that erupt in natural catastrophes, and those sins human minds invent and human hands perform. The creator meant his light to emanate, ultimately, to man. Grace would flow downward through ten holy vessels, like water cascading. Cataclysm—some say creation itself—disrupted this orderly progression. The holy light burst the vessels. The vessels splintered and scattered. Sparks of holiness fell to the depths, and the opaque shards of the broken vessels (qelippot) imprisoned them. This is our bleak In fact, God is hidden, exiled, in the sparks of divine light the shells entrap. So evil can exist, can continue to live: The spark of goodness within things, the Gnostic-like spark that even the most evil tendency encloses, lends evil its being. “The sparks scatter everywhere,” Martin Buber said. “They cling to material things as in sealed-up wells, they crouch in substances as in caves that have been bricked up, they inhale darkness and breathe out fear; they flutter about in the movements of the world, searching for where they can lodge to be set free.

Enhancing our memory is just the beginning. When you express an idea in writing, it’s not just a matter of transferring the exact contents of your mind into paper or digital form. Writing creates new knowledge that wasn’t there before. Each word you write triggers mental cascades and internal associations, leading to further ideas, all of which can come tumbling out onto the page or screen.V Thinking doesn’t just produce writing; writing also enriches thinking. There is even significant evidence that expressing our thoughts in writing can lead to benefits for our health and well-being.11 One of the most cited psychology papers of the 1990s found that “translating emotional events into words leads to profound social, psychological, and neural changes.” In a wide range of controlled studies, writing about one’s inner experiences led to a drop in visits to the doctor, improved immune systems, and reductions in distress. Students who wrote about emotional topics showed improvements in their grades, professionals who had been laid off found new jobs more quickly, and staff members were absent from work at lower rates. The most amazing thing about these findings is that they didn’t rely on input from others. No one had to read or respond to what these people wrote down—the benefits came just from the act of writing.

She was a complete human being, with enlightened brilliance, cruelty, instincts, and subconscious trauma all sharing the one-room apartment of the mind.

With the downtown of Fort Wayne nearly abandoned, my mother would weave the car down one-way streets heading west, then east, featuring display after display of historical holiday cheer. Our official tour began at the bread factory, where a mechanical wheel of never-ending sliced bread actually never stopped slicing, and the smell of hot flour, sugar, and yeast entwined itself with Christmas. The factory would be decorated with blinking lights cascading from just below the perpetually spinning bread wheel, to what I assumed was the ground beneath us. We'd pass Santa and his reindeer, bigger than life and all lit up on the side of PNC Bank, and he would wink at me. I knew it was a trick of the light, but I winked back just in case the real Santa might know that I didn't. The drive was nearly over when we got to the bright green wreath on the plaza, but this was also the spot where my mom would park and let us out. All three of us would jump towards the wreath that was mounted much too high for any person to read. We didn't think we could reach it either but that didn't stop us from trying.

Certainty is for the fallen. The living have to work with what is probable.

Every little change can make a difference. We have reached a time in our history where knowledge, science and technology is starting to cascade together to help us make better purposeful choices in every aspects of our life. Take those small steps in right direction and make purposeful choices in every part of your life. Take back control, read learn and dare to try. . Do not walk through life and let it happen to you. Make life happen on your terms. All of us have yet to reach our potential. Do it this moment for yourself, your family and the planet. We implore you to explore and question everything. With Love and Respect Jeff and Tammy

Every little change can make a difference. We have reached a time in our history where knowledge, science and technology is starting to cascade together to help us make purposeful choices in every aspects of our life. Take those small steps in right direction. Take back control, read, learn and dare to try. Do not walk through life and let it happen to you. Make life happen on your terms. All of us have yet to reach our potential. You are more amazing then you know! Do it this moment for yourself, your family and the planet. We implore you to explore and question everything. With Love and Respect

For Leonardo, the spiral form was the archetypal code for the ever-changing yet stable nature of living forms. He saw it in the growth patterns of plants and animals, in curling locks, in human movements and gestures, and above all in the swirling vortices of water and air. The movement of water is the grand unifying theme in Leonardo’s science of living forms. Water is the life-giving element flowing through the veins of the Earth and the blood vessels of the human body. It nourishes and sustains all living bodies. Its forms, like theirs, are fluid and always varying. It is a major source of power and for eons has shaped the surface of the living Earth, gradually turning arid rocks into fertile soil. With its infinite variety of form and movement—as rivers and tides, clouds and rain, cascades and currents, eddies and whirlpools—water flows through Leonardo’s art and interlinks the main fields of his science.

Self-destruction seems to be an aberration peculiar to the human condition. Aren’t man’s miseries of his making, brought about by his own debilities? And yet, while lamenting over his shortcomings, he tends to blame it on life! But life seems to understand man more than he does it. Well, to preclude him from perishing in grief, life infuses in him hope for sustenance. Besides, by imparting an existential ethos in him to avert the cascade of tragedy--of human extinction--life seems to countervail itself to keep up its propagation.

Now, my little present, be quiet and let me unwrap you." She stared at him, his jest reminding her of how he had saved her life that day on the cliffs. "We're really going to do this?" she ventured softly. "You're serious, you want me for your mistress? You could have anyone." His gaze strayed to her lips. "Kate, my sweet enchantress, I've dreamed of you from the moment you walked through my door." He leaned down and kissed her with a tenderness that amazed her as he gathered her into his arms. "Don't be nervous," he whispered, ending the kiss. "Trust me." She nodded, lifting her face to offer her lips again. He claimed her mouth, his expert kiss dizzying her senses. Her heart hammered as she lifted her arms around his neck; crossing her wrists behind his head, she stood in his embrace. As she leaned against him, the feel of his body pressed to hers ignited long-suppressed fires in her blood. It would not do to think about this too much. But as he caressed her gently, skillfully, kissing her again and again, her ability to reason began dissolving, anyway, into sheer pleasure. The problems that had loomed so insolubly a short while ago now seemed to belong to someone else. Sensuality stole over her, awakening her senses. He was everything. She loved the taste of his mouth, his soft lips stroking hers, his hard body under her hands. The scent of winter clung to his long, sable hair, and the soothing way he touched her made her toes curl, his large, warm hand cupping the back of her neck beneath the cascade of her hair.

Inadequate sleep and the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease interact in a vicious cycle. Without sufficient sleep, amyloid plaques build up in the brain, especially in deep-sleep-generating regions, attacking and degrading them. The loss of deep NREM sleep caused by this assault therefore lessens the ability to remove amyloid from the brain at night, resulting in greater amyloid deposition. More amyloid, less deep sleep, less deep sleep, more amyloid, and so on and so forth. From this cascade comes a prediction: getting too little sleep across the adult life span will significantly raise your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Stress is a survival mechanism that serves an obvious evolutionary function. When we are anxious, our autonomic nervous system releases a cascade of chemicals (stress hormones), which give our body instructions on how to prepare to face danger. Our heart beats faster to pump more blood to the muscles, and our breathing becomes heavier to provide us with more oxygen. Muscles tense up to protect us from injury and to facilitate fighting or running. Sweating helps cool the body down. Our attention increases, and our reflexes become sharper, keeping us alert. Stress acts as motivation, helping us to focus on our goals and rise to meet our challenges, whether those involve studying for an exam, flying a fighter jet or scoring that match-winning goal. In short, stress serves a purpose. The problem, however, is that beyond certain threshold stress ceases to be useful.

and Trystan didn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Instead, he stood still and nuzzled the man’s temple, soaking up the attention.  Needing it.  Nothing in his life had prepared him for the avalanche of lust that cascaded through him.  It blew common sense to bits and who the hell missed it?

Given that observable neurobehavioural characteristics in adulthood are determined in part by GABA-A receptors in early life, and the impact of GABA-acting drugs during pregnancy – in particular, on the construction of the brain – have been said to lead to ‘a cascade of pathogenic consequences’, it’s clear that the long-term effects of phenobarbital regularly administered during infancy would be severe.

So how does a cell go about ending its own existence? The actual mechanism of ‘cell suicide’ depends upon mitochondria, termed the ‘angels of death’ by Nick Lane in his book, Power, Sex and Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life . The first change occurs in the mitochondrial inner membrane, which becomes damaged by aberrant biochemical activity, leading to the formation of pores in the mitochondrial membrane (Figure 12b, d). At this point, the mitochondrion becomes committed to trigger apoptosis, and releases cytochrome c (a protein crucial to its normal function of energy production) which exits through the newly formed pores. This information came to light as a result of some neat experiments in which apoptotic mitochondria were introduced into perfectly healthy cells, resulting in apoptosis. The released cytochrome c binds to several other proteins in the cytoplasm to form a complex called the apoptosome which, in turn, activates a cascade of ‘executioner enzymes’ which not only kill the cell but cause fragmentation of the nucleus and cytoplasm into bite-size pieces ready to be phagocytosed by neighbouring cells.

A depressing corollary of the butterfly effect (or so it was widely believed) was that two chaotic systems could never synchronize with each other. Even if you took great pains to start them the same way, there would always be some infinitesimal difference in their initial states. Normally that small discrepancy would remain small for a long time, but in a chaotic system, the error cascades and feeds on itself so swiftly that the systems diverge almost immediately, destroying the synchronization. Unfortunately, it seemed, two of the most vibrant branches of nonlinear science—chaos and sync—could never be married. They were fundamentally incompatible. Plausible as it sounds, the argument outlawing synchronized chaos is now known to be wrong. Chaos can sync.

This was a privileged land, a forest that thrived in the protective shadow of the mountains, carelessly enjoying the fruits of the rivers that cascaded from their peaks. Not only did the Belem protect their environs from the elements, but from the harsh, scorching wars of men. No army wanted to traverse those jagged peaks, even to access the Lanterbrun Pass. It was a fruitless effort, a waste of man- and horsepower that could do nothing but suck away time, and life. Ari had to admire the mountains for this. They were a watchful mother to the lands at their mighty feet. She could smell the freedom in the air, in the scent of the late summer leaves. It pulsed through the earth with a power that only grew stronger as the ground began to climb.

With further increases in connectivity, the cascades at first become even larger and more likely, as one might expect, but then—paradoxically—they become larger yet rarer, suddenly vanishing when the network exceeds a critical density of connections. This second tipping point arises because of a dilution effect: When a node has too many neighbors, each of them has too little influence to trigger a toppling on its own. (Remember that each node compares its threshold to the fraction of its neighbors that have tipped, not the absolute number. The more neighbors there are, the less impact any one of them has, in a fractional sense.)

In particular, the creeping advance of an improbable cascade near the second tipping point is reminiscent of a low-budget hit that starts out slowly and builds by word of mouth.

Don’t get sick, Victoria,” Kyle taunts as I retch, spilling my guts on the pavement, then forced to wallow in it as he holds me down for Lawrence to have his turn. “We’re just getting started.” “Don’t get sick, Kyle. We’re just getting started,” I say, slicing through another finger, taking one more digit that once held me in place. As he cries out, more memories assault me, and tears of pure hatred skid down my cheeks unexpectedly. “The daughter of a whore and a fucking pussy. You see, I know your dad never had the balls to kill those women. I just don’t care. Now take it, Victoria. Take it and shut the hell up.” “Take it!” I shout, slicing through another finger. “Take it and shut the hell up!” Jake holds him down harder as I work through all ten fingers, then tie up the damage, preventing him from bleeding too much. Kyle is a sobbing mess, but I wasn’t lying. We’re just getting started. “Your turn, Tyler. Saddle up. It’s bareback and fun tonight,” Kyle goads, grabbing my naked crotch and then slapping it. “It’s getting a little worn out.” “This is for me,” I hiss, slicing the blade down his torso, scooting back as he screams in agony. The slice is just shallow enough to burn like fire but not deep enough to bleed too much. Another memory surfaces, one that has my heart being suffocated and squeezed to death. “I’m sorry, Ms. Carlyle. But it seems like the damage done to your internal organs and the life saving measures they took at the hospital have prevented you from ever being able to have children. They were forced to perform an emergency hysterectomy.” More tears cascade down my cheeks as I slice him to the side, slowly flaying a piece of flesh from his body like the monstrous pro I’ve become. “This is for my father,” I tell him, carving another section.

Lazarus Saturday: The Longest Way by Stewart Stafford "Lazarus, come out!" Jesus said: A dead man awoke in a burial place, Wrapped head to foot on a stretcher; He shook away the cloth on his face. Four days dead, his soul was gone; His sisters berated Jesus's late arrival; The Lord did not doubt his power, From the afterlife came his survival. From a white light end to a dark revival, Life cascaded in decomposing flesh, His chest hurt as it rose and fell again, Bloated and blotchy skin alive afresh. Lazarus struggled to breathe in dusty air; His body was freezing and deathly pale; At first, he thought he had gone to God, The voice of his friend told another tale. Shuffling stiffly to the cave's womb exit, Newborn-blind to his second life; The Disciples rushed to unwrap him, His sisters embraced away their strife. Lazarus wanted to tell what he had seen, But was told it was not for mortal ears; His sisters had to respect this wish, Overjoyed to live to Methuselah's years. The word spread fast of this act; Of the Nazarene's immense power; That his reach could extend so far, To the world far past Babel's Tower. As the daughter of Jairus resurrected, Christ himself arose on the third day; Lazarus was in Death's grip tightest, Miracles that blood money cannot repay. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

It’s important to keep in mind that our defenses originate as nonconscious and automatic—both anger and fear were originally meant to be mechanisms of protection. However, as we’ve evolved into more complex beings, and as the original biological imperative has taken on psycho-social layering, our defenses often just get in our way. Indeed, these defensive responses can trigger one another and exacerbate additional emotional imbalances. The result? A cascade effect of nonhelpful responses that further erode our relationships and our capacity for pleasure. Katie was suffering from an outdated FEAR response and Kara was suffering from RAGE that was getting in the way of PLAY, CARE, and LUST. Again, these basic core emotions are powerful forces that live within us and our memories. Unless we notice them and connect to how they are playing out or emerging in our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and body responses, they will continue to interfere with our access to and experience of our pleasure system. And, when it comes to FEAR and RAGE, these defensive emotions can easily wreak havoc on all aspects of our lives.

As a toymaker, Christmas has always been a special time of year, but Christmas is about so much more than toys and presents, because beneath the gentle cascade of snowflakes and amidst the soft glow of twinkling lights, Christmas weaves a spell that awakens the heart's deepest yearnings. It's not just the cold that draws us closer, but the hope and joy that Christmas kindles, reminding us of life's endless possibilities. This season holds a magic that transcends the ordinary, turning fleeting moments into timeless memories. For those who believe in Christmas magic, hope and joy become the heartbeat of every embrace, a silent promise that, despite the world's uncertainties, there remains a steadfast warmth and brightness, waiting to be rekindled each year. In this magical time, the spirit of Christmas becomes the compass guiding us through winter's chill, ensuring that no heart feels cold when enveloped in the profound joy and hope that Christmas brings.

In SMT Magazine and Scottish Country Life, Alastair Borthwick informed would-be visitors that 'Facing you as you enter... are the Cascades - seventeen waterfalls pouring 400 feet down the hillside - and the Grand Staircase, which is a double flight of steps running on either side of the cascades'. Soaring above these at the crest of Bellahouston Hill was the exhibition's 'sensational and symbolic centrepiece' - the 300-feet-high Tower of Empire which Thomas S. Tait designed with assistance from Launcelot Ross and from structural engineer James Mearns... In height, it was equivalent to a skyscraper - a building type most Scots would have known only from illustrations in newspapers and magazines - but the effect of slenderness Tait achieved also made it suggestive of some sort of futuristic scence fiction fantasy structure that might be used to tether airships, for example. Its design captured the imaginations of all who saw it and it was undoubtedly the exhibition's one truly awe-inspiring building.

When we mourn those who die young – those who have been robbed of time – we weep for lost joys. We weep for opportunities and pleasures we ourselves have never known. We feel sure that somehow that young body would have known the yearning delight for which we searched in vain all our lives. We believe that the untried soul, trapped inside its young prison, might have flown free and known the joy that we still seek. We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.

she was. Loose and free, her shiny brown hair cascaded past her shoulders. Her face, open and disarming, held not a trace of the passage of time. Could today be any more depressing? Brandy turned to Cole who was eyeing a platter of hamburgers a waiter carried by. She put a hand on his arm to get his attention. While she signed my request, I turned to Jean-Charles. Before I spoke, he held up a hand. "A platter of hamburgers for your friends. I will prepare them myself, if you will excuse me." He gave a stiff little bow and a rueful half grin dialed back from its previous warmth. I watched him work his way through the tables, his practiced façade of charm falling into place, and wondered how to have a relationship with a man who bristled at the first barrier in his path.  Brandy and Cole were deep into a silent conversation, so I sipped my wine and pouted. Just being able to express a simple, albeit juvenile, emotion was so much better than my normal routine of bottling them inside. My job required eating too much crow as it was. I'd be damned if I'd conduct my personal life the same way.  Brandy snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. "Do

Yes.  Think of our genetic history as a giant tree system with branches cascading down to smaller and smaller branches, all replicating millions of times, over millions of years, and eventually touching everything.”  Neely stopped mid-thought.  “Have you ever heard the old Albert Einstein quote that, ‘God doesn’t play dice with the universe?’” “I don’t think so.” “Einstein was troubled by the apparent randomness of the universe and came to believe that there had to be some underlying, hidden law to explain why what appeared to be random actually wasn’t.  Most of his thinking had to do with particles and things like that.  But it still begs the question: does God play dice?” “When you say dice are you talking about chance?” “Yes, exactly.”  Neely nodded.  “Regardless of a person’s fundamental religious belief, if we step back and ask ourselves that question, most people have to acknowledge that the answer is yes.  At least to a large extent.” Alison looked confused and put her own cup down.  “I’m not sure I’m following.” “Okay, look.  Let’s say half the population believes that life is designed, while the other half believes it simply evolves.  Evolution being the randomness, or chance, that Einstein struggled with.

The Unbidden An unbidden grace seizes me, compelling me to be what I know I ought to be. To let it in I know I must let go. This is the grace of aspiration, The gravitas of one hundred New Year’s resolutions, with peaks of love, death and transience jagged as the Teton’s crown. With a nervous laughter I imagine it as the frazzled smile on a cartoon character. There is altitude in grace; I’m anointed sherpa of my landscape. Fumeroles of memory erupt through my soul, pointing to a underground river of propinquity. Time and space fuse, the desperation of the disparate is vanquished. In the mindscape of grace, everything flows in two directions. Memories ripple forward and are joined by new events cascading backwards. My sherpa calls this swirling cauldron life, the manufacturer of all meaning. Without the epiphany of the unbidden, we are without compass and forever lost.

Some researchers consider this move from “behavior to be changed in the future” to a “self that is fundamentally flawed” as the outcome for children who experience repeated parental hostility in response to their behavior. Toxic shame and humiliation can continue through childhood and into adulthood, even beneath the surface of awareness, leaving individuals with a hidden “secret” that they are permanently and deeply defective. A cascade of negative consequences—having trouble with close relationships that might reveal this hidden secret, feeling unworthy, being driven to succeed in life but never feeling satisfied—can then dominate the individual’s life. You as a parent can avoid giving your child this negative cascade of toxic shame by learning how to create needed structure without humiliating your child. That’s an achievable goal, and we are committed to making that path available to you if you choose it.

I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to do anything but go for a short walk. When I heard him, I felt the need to make certain he was all right. I didn’t know, Mikhail, that I was seeking human company.” “I do not blame you, little one, never that.” His voice was so gentle, it turned her heart over. “I can easily read your memories. I know of your intent. And I would never blame you for your compassionate nature.” “I guess we both have difficulties to contend with,” she said softly. “I can’t be what you want me to be, Mikhail. You use the word ‘human’ like a curse, something less than what you are. Did it ever occur to you that you’re prejudiced against my race? Carpathian blood may flow in my veins, but in my heart and my mind I’m human. I didn’t set out to betray you. I went for a walk. That’s all I did. I’m sorry, Mikhail, but all my life I’ve known freedom. Changing my blood is not going to change who I am.” He paced across the floor with quick, fluid energy, all power and coordination. “I am not prejudiced,” he denied. “Of course you are. You view my race with a measure of contempt. Would you have been happy if I had fed, using Romanov’s blood? Is that acceptable? To use him for food, but not for a few friendly words?” “I do not like this picture you paint of me, Raven.” Mikhail crossed the room to hold out his hand for the cape. The bedchamber was warm and smelled of nature--wood and meadow. Reluctantly Raven slipped the cape from her shoulders. Mikhail frowned when he saw that she was clad only in his crisp white shirt. Although the tails reached her knees and covered her bottom, a generous portion of her thighs was exposed, right up to her hips. The effect was incredibly sexy, with her long, wild mane of hair cascading in waves down to the bed, framing her slender form. “O köd belső--darkness take it,” Mikhail swore softly, a few choice words in his own language, thankful he hadn’t realized she was wearing nothing but his shirt beneath his cape.