Caught Lacking Quotes

He looked at her. She was pretty still, with thick hair and soft eyes, and she moved so gracefully that it almost seemed as though she were gliding. He'd seen beautiful women before, though, women who caught his eye, but to his mind, they usually lacked the traits he found most desirable. Traits like intelligence, confidence, strength of spirit, passion, traits that inspired others to greatness, traits he aspired to himself.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I am a siren, and for my adoration of mankind, have been caught in fishing nets one time too many. And in those fishing nets I have learned too many unfavorable things about human intentions and the lack of trust and goodwill; I'm not going to allow myself to be caught, anymore. Sirens do well at singing the sirens' song and dragging vile people to their deaths, and for good reason!

Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty thru good times and bad. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses. Love is content with the present; it hopes for the future and it doesn't brood over the past. It is the day-in and out chronicles of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories and common goals. If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things that you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else is there, it isn't enough..

Everyone deserves to feel beautiful. It is your God-given right to look in the mirror and love what you see. Never mind the imperfections -we're all imperfect, after all. But people tend to get so caught up in what they are lacking, they forget to appreciate all that they have.

Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate. I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me. I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool. And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing. And it is as if hell itself were laughing within me but, instead of the human touch of diabolical laughter, there's the mad croak of the dead universe, the circling cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds drifting blackly in the wind, misshapen, anachronistic, without the God who created it, without God himself who spins in the dark of darks, impossible, unique, everything. If only I could think! If only I could feel!

Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?

Ty braced himself as Julian walked directly up to him, not breaking stride, his jaw set, his blue-green eyes as dark as the deep part of the ocean. He reached Ty and caught hold of him, pulling him into a fierce hug. He pressed his face down into his little brother's black hair as Ty stood, frozen and astonished at Julian's lack of anger. "Jules?" he said. "Are you alright?" Julian's shoulders shook. He held his little brother tighter, as if he could crush Ty into himself, into a place where he'd always be safe. He put his cheek against Ty's curls, squeezing his eyes shut, his voice muffled. "I thought something happened to you," he said. "I thought Johnny Rook might--" He didn't finish his sentence. Ty put his arms carefully around Julian. He patted his back, gently, with his slender hands. It was the first time Emma had seen Ty comfort his older brother--almost the first time she'd ever actually seen Julian let someone else take care of him.

In my heart, I knew that Whorf was right. I knew I thought differently in Turkish and English - not because thought and language were the same, but because different languages forced you to think about different things. Turkish, for example, had a suffix, -mis, that you put on verbs to report anything you didn't witness personally. You were always stating your degree of subjectivity. You were always thinking about it, every time you opened your mouth. The suffix -mis had not exact English equivalent. It could be translated as "it seems" or "I heard" or "apparently." I associated it with Dilek, my cousin on my father's side - tiny, skinny, dark-complexioned Dilek, who was my age but so much smaller. "You complained-mis to your mother," Dilek would tell me in her quiet, precise voice. "The dog scared-mis you." "You told-mis your parents that if Aunt Hulya came to America, she could live in your garage." When you heard -mis, you knew that you had been invoked in your absence - not just you but your hypocrisy, cowardice, and lack of generosity. Every time I heard -mis, I felt caught out. I was scared of the dogs. I did complain to my mother, often. The -mis tense was one of the things I complained to my mother about. My mother thought it was funny.

All of us have two minds, a private one, which is usually strange, I guess, and symbolic, and a public one, a social one. Most of us stream back and forth between those two minds, drifting around in our private self and then coming forward into the public self whenever we need to. But sometimes you get a little slow making the transition, you drag out the private part of your life and people know you’re doing it. They almost always catch on, knowing that someone is standing before them thinking about things that can’t be shared, like the one monkey that knows where a freshwater pond is. And sometimes the public mind is such a total bummer and the private self is alive with beauty and danger and secrets and things that don’t make any sense but that repeat and repeat and demand to be listened to, and you find it harder and harder to come forward. The pathway between those two states of mind suddenly seems very steep, a hell of a lot of work and not really worth it. Then I think it becomes a matter of what side of the great divide you get caught on. Some people get stuck on the public, approved side and they’re all right, for what it’s worth. And some people get stuck on the completely strange and private side of the divide, and that’s what we call crazy and its not really completely wrong to call it that but it doesn’t say it as it truly is. It’s more like a lack of mobility, a transportation problem, getting stuck, being the us we are in private but not stopping…

Finn caught my gaze. "I know things seem rough with him right now, but he'll come around. He went nuts when you were missing." "He has a temper." Which wasn't surprising, considering his tragic background. "No, Evie. He was ... frantic, out of control. I'm talking Hulk-smash on ye olde cabin. When he realized our lack of transportation was the sole thing keeping him from you, he stormed back into that militia's camp, striding into a hail of bullets. Dude didn't duck, didn't sidestep, just rolled in, killed, took that jeep." My lips parted as I stared at Jackson in amazement. "He loves you," Finn insisted.

I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen. I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man... Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing. Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object. ...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration: 'The world is my country; to do good my religion.' Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'. Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him. 'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.' Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France. So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument. But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part. Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

I give you my word that, until I started to tramp the place with this child, I never had a notion that it was such a difficult job restoring a son to his parents. How kidnappers ever get caught is a mystery to me. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound, but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You would have thought, from the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself in a cottage of his own.

My Worst Habit My worst habit is I get so tired of winter I become a torture to those I’m with. If you’re not here, nothing grows. I lack clarity. My words tangle and knot up. How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river. How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you. When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools, dig a way out through the bottom to the ocean. There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can’t hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew. Look as long as you can at the friend you love, no matter whether that friend is moving away from you or coming back toward you. How to cure bad water ? Send it back to the river ! How to cure bad habits ? Send me back to you.

The bright hours when the young rebelled against the descending sun had to give way to twenty-four-hour periods called “days” that were named as well as numbered. The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

If you’re black, you were born in jail,” Malcolm said. And I felt the truth of this in the blocks I had to avoid, in the times of day when I must not be caught walking home from school, in my lack of control over my body.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The

I've seen your kind, time and time again. Every fleeing man must be caught. Every secret must be unearthed. Such is the conceit of the self-proclaimed seeker of truth. But in the end, you lack the stomach. For the agony you'll bring upon yourself...

Reasoning never works with narcissists. When caught in the game they get stroppy and angry. Their lack of emotional maturity and empathy is why the narcissistic parent cannot respond to the emotional needs of their children. They are too busy trying to get the validation they need, and that consumes a lot of their energy and effort.

Imagine a peaceful river running through the countryside. That’s your river of well-being. Whenever you’re in the water, peacefully floating along in your canoe, you feel like you’re generally in a good relationship with the world around you. You have a clear understanding of yourself, other people, and your life. You can be flexible and adjust when situations change. You’re stable and at peace. Sometimes, though, as you float along, you veer too close to one of the river’s two banks. This causes different problems, depending on which bank you approach. One bank represents chaos, where you feel out of control. Instead of floating in the peaceful river, you are caught up in the pull of tumultuous rapids, and confusion and turmoil rule the day. You need to move away from the bank of chaos and get back into the gentle flow of the river. But don’t go too far, because the other bank presents its own dangers. It’s the bank of rigidity, which is the opposite of chaos. As opposed to being out of control, rigidity is when you are imposing control on everything and everyone around you. You become completely unwilling to adapt, compromise, or negotiate. Near the bank of rigidity, the water smells stagnant, and reeds and tree branches prevent your canoe from flowing in the river of well-being. So one extreme is chaos, where there’s a total lack of control. The other extreme is rigidity, where there’s too much control, leading to a lack of flexibility and adaptability. We all move back and forth between these two banks as we go through our days—especially as we’re trying to survive parenting. When we’re closest to the banks of chaos or rigidity, we’re farthest from mental and emotional health. The longer we can avoid either bank, the more time we spend enjoying the river of well-being. Much of our lives as adults can be seen as moving along these paths—sometimes in the harmony of the flow of well-being, but sometimes in chaos, in rigidity, or zigzagging back and forth between the two. Harmony emerges from integration. Chaos and rigidity arise when integration is blocked.

Because when you kiss your first boy or girl, you don't want to be so caught up in your lack of self-worth that you forget to enjoy the kiss, that you forget that you deserve the pleasure of that moment. You don't want to be so caught up in your lack of self-worth that you become an object of his or her desire, a grateful unworthy slave to his or her attention.

Where was Bewcastle? But then he was there, standing on the terrace some distance away, and such was the power of his presence that everyone seemed to sense it an fell back away from Alleyne even as they stopped talking. There was still all sorts of noise, of course - horses, carriage wheels, voices, the water spouting out of the fountain - but it seemed to Alleyne as if complete silence fell. Bewcastle had already seen him. His gaze was steady and silver-eyed and inscrutable. His hand reached for the gold-handled, jewel-studded quizzing glass he always wore with formal attire and raised it halfway to his eyes in a characteristic gesture. Then he came striding along the terrace with uncharacteristic speed and did not stop coming until he had caught Alleyne up in a tight, wordless embrace that lasted perhaps a whole minute while Alleyne dipped his forehead to his brother's shoulder and felt at last that he was safe. It was an extraordinary moment. He had been little more than a child when his father died, but Wulfric himself had been only seventeen. Alleyne had never thought of him as a father figure. Indeed, he had often resented the authority his brother wielded over them with such unwavering strictness, and often with apparant impersonality and lack of humor. He had always thought of his eldest brother as aloof, unfeeling, totally self sufficient. A cold fish. And yet it was in Wulfric's arm that he felt his homecoming most acutely. He felt finally and completely and unconditionally loved. An extraordinary moment indeed.

Then a dark shape would glide across the star-covered sky, everyone would look up and the laughter would stop. It wasn't exactly what you'd call fear, rather a strange sadness--a sadness that had nothing human about it any more, for it lacked both courage and hope. This was how animals waited to die. It was the way fish caught in a net watch the shadow of the fisherman moving back and forth above them.

To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; he is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his condition, of his society -- for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events. We already have mentioned man's inability to consider several facts or events simultaneously and to make a synthesis of them in order to face or to oppose them. One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. Moreover, there is a spontaneous defensive reaction in the individual against an excess of information and -- to the extent that he clings (unconsciously) to the unity of his own person -- against inconsistencies. The best defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing, man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he lives on the surface of events and makes today's events his life by obliterating yesterday's news, he refuses to see the contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented. This situation makes the "current-events man" a ready target for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he follows all currents. He is unstable because he runs after what happened today; he relates to the event, and therefore cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist. No confrontation ever occurs between the event and the truth; no relationship ever exists between the event and the person. Real information never concerns such a person. What could be more striking, more distressing, more decisive than the splitting of the atom, apart from the bomb itself? And yet this great development is kept in the background, behind the fleeting and spectacular result of some catastrophe or sports event because that is the superficial news the average man wants. Propaganda addresses itself to that man; like him, it can relate only to the most superficial aspect of a spectacular event, which alone can interest man and lead him to make a certain decision or adopt a certain attitude. But here we must make an important qualification. The news event may be a real fact, existing objectively, or it may be only an item of information, the dissemination of a supposed fact. What makes it news is its dissemination, not its objective reality.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

Often what keeps us stuck and continually doing penance is the very feeling that we must pay for lack of action. We become caught in a circle of blame, condemn ourselves, feel hopeless, and feed the fire—or slow burn—by reciting like a mantra our history of inertia and self-judged wrong choices. Well, let's break that dead-end cycle of waste and regret.

I’m playing catch with Nisha and Nena. They’re standing against the opposite wall shrieking with enjoyment. They’re teenagers, but they’ve never played catch before and lack any sense of coordination; when they throw the ball to me it flies in any direction. Sometimes it hits the wall behind them. We’ve been playing for half an hour and they have only caught it twice.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind. We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place, But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome. With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch; They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know." On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death." In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die." Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more. As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire; And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

As a species, we haven’t evolved to plan 20 years into the future. As a rule, our decision-making is myopic, shortsighted, and lacks imagination. We’re heavily incentivized to seek rewards in the present, which can greatly cost our long-term Future Selves. [If you don't] think and strategize long term, [you'll be distracted by the short-term.] You’ll be caught up by endless distractions throughout your day. Your decisions will be myopic. You’ll cost your Future Self greatly, putting them deeper in debt in all ways.

The New World is a great lack, a yearning, an ache of despair. Deprivation and crippling shrinkage. The fish caught in the shrinking pond.

It is not law, in any conceivable form, that is responsible for the tensions and alienation besetting modern man; rather, it is the increasing lack of law. The perpetual denunciation of the law arises from a typically modern sense of resentment - a feedback of desire that purports to be directed against the law but one that is actually aimed at the model-obstacle whose dominant position the subject stubbornly refuses to acknowledge. The more frenzied the mimetic process becomes, caught up in the confusion of constantly changing forms, the more unwilling men are to recognize that they have made an obstacle of the model and a model of the obstacle. Here we encounter a true "unconscious" and one that can obviously assume many forms.

Fears arise when you look back, and they arise when you look ahead. If you're prone to disaster fantasies, you may even find yourself caught in the middle, staring at your half-finished canvas and fearing both that you lack the ability to finish it, and that no one will understand it if you do. Fears arise when you look back, and they arise when you look ahead. If you're prone to disaster fantasies, you may even find yourself caught in the middle, staring at your half-finished canvas and fearing both that you lack the ability to finish it, and that no one will understand it if you do. To which the Master replied, 'What makes you think that ever changes?' That's why they're called Masters. When he raised David's discovery from an expression of self-doubt to a simple observation of reality, uncertainty became an asset. Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution -- and it should be. Vision, Uncertainty, and Knowledge of Materials are inevitabilities that all artists must acknowledge and learn from: vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue.

This is exactly what it means to be caught in the colonial matrix of power. It is to be constantly suffering from lack of options, and constantly finding oneself in such a position that all the choices available have already been chosen for you. As a result, you are constantly trapped and unable to think or do otherwise. You are consistently deprived of the possibility of working with other possibilities.

For if there are no waving flags and marching songs at the barricades as Walter marches out with his little battalion, it is not because the battle lacks nobility. On the contrary, he has picked up in his way, still imperfect and wobbly in his small view of human destiny, what I believe Arthur Miller once called "the golden threat of history." He becomes, in spite of those who are too intrigued with despair and hatred of man to see it, King Oedipus refusing to tear out his eyes, but attacking the Oracle instead. He is that last Jewish patriot manning his rifle at Warsaw; he is that young girl who swam into sharks to save a friend a few weeks ago; he is Anne Frank, still believing in people; he is the nine small heroes of Little Rock; he is Michelangelo creating David and Beethoven bursting forth with the Ninth Symphony. He is all those things because he has finally reached out in his tiny moment and caught that sweet essence which is human dignity, and it shines like the old star-touched dream that it is in his eyes.

Information on dissociative disorders, trauma, and mind control had been deliberately suppressed from the American psychiatric and psychological associations for so-called “reasons of national security.” The founder of the APA, Dr. Ewen Cameron, had been caught using CIA mind control methods at the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada. The CIA was forced to compensate the victims, yet it took years2. In the meantime, educational institutions for mental health professionals lacked the facts necessary for treating the vast number of victims/survivors who were filling their offices in search of help and understanding.

These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus. Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town. Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men? I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer. I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The universe may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis. To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.

A person devolves his or her hardiness from the ark-like powers of love to create, protect, and destroy. When we are in love, we discover what we long to become, we also discover what we lack. When we are in love, we are empowered to seek out our destiny. When we lose at love, our confidence is devastated. In the wake of a breakup with a lover, we languish in solitude. Caught in the riptide of incompleteness, we suffer terribly.

I knew Derek didn't lack empathy—he couldn't forget what he'd done to that kid who attacked Simon. But it was like what he held some weird list of checks and balances, and if you got on the wrong side, like Tori had, he had no problem 'kicking you on the curb,' to face whatever fate waited. "No," I said. "It isn't up for negotiation. She's not coming." "Okay." I stood and brushed off my jeans. "Come on, Tori." When Simon rose, I thought he was going to stop me. Instead, he followed me to the door. Tori caught up, and we made it into the next room before Derek jogged out, catching my arm with a wrench that yanked me off my feet. I winced and peeled off his fingers. "Wrong one." He dropped my arm quickly, realizing he'd grabbed my injured one. A long minute of silence, then, "Fine." He turned to Tori. "Three conditions. One, whatever your problem is with Chloe, get over it. Go after her again, you're gone." "Understood," Tori said. "Two, get over Simon. He's not interested." She flushed and snapped, "I think I've figured that out. And number three?" "Get over yourself."

They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the “existential vacuum.

But behind the counter sat a twenty-year-old, London, deeply immersed in the sort of social media that dismantles a person’s social competence to the extent that when she caught sight of the bank robber she instinctively exclaimed: “Are you some kind of joke, or what?” (The fact that she didn’t phrase her question as “Is this some kind of joke?” but went straight for “Are you a joke?” perhaps says a lot about the younger generation’s lack of respect for older bank robbers.)

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

Unhealthy to the point of diseased, he’d say—he had caught something from her, some decay transmitted from soul to soul, but then he recollected contemptuously that by her own admittance she lacked a soul. At the intersection ahead they could see

One participant described her frustration when she joined the Asian American Association in high school: 'I totally did not fit in...It kind of made me mad because I looked like them, so I felt like I identified with them, but once I got in, I learned I really don't at all.' Caught between the expectations of two groups, [transracial adoptees] often felt rejected by White people due to physical differences and by people of their birth ethnicity due to lack of language and cultural knowledge.

I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me. I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool. And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one.

Anna’s attention was focused on a single patient. Ariadne Bridgestock lay quietly against the white pillows. Her eyes were shut, and her rich brown skin was ashen, stretching tightly over the branching black veins beneath her skin. Anna slipped in between the screens surrounding Ariadne’s cot, and Cordelia followed, feeling slightly awkward. Was she intruding? But Anna looked up, as if to assure herself that Cordelia was there, before she knelt down at the side of Ariadne’s bed, laying her walking stick on the floor. Anna’s bowed shoulders looked strangely vulnerable. One of her hands dangled at her side: she reached out the other, fingers moving slowly across the white linen sheets, until she was almost touching Ariadne’s hand. She did not take it. At the last moment, Anna’s fingers curled and dropped to rest, beside Ariadne but not quite touching. In a low and steady voice, Anna said, “Ariadne. When you wake up—and you will wake up—I want you to remember this. It was never a sign of your worth that Charles Fairchild wanted to marry you. It is a measure of his lack of worth that he chose to break it off in such a manner.” “He broke it off?” Cordelia whispered. She was stunned. The breaking off of a promised engagement was a serious matter, undertaken usually only when one of the parties in question had committed some kind of serious crime or been caught in an affair. For Charles to break his promise to Ariadne while she lay unconscious was appalling. People would assume he had found out something dreadful about Ariadne. When she awoke, she might be ruined. Anna did not reply to Cordelia. She only raised her head and looked at Ariadne’s face, a long look like a touch. “Please don’t die,” she said, in a low voice, and rose to her feet. Catching up her walking stick, she strode from the infirmary, leaving Cordelia staring after her in surprise.

Another five minutes, thought Olivia, and shut her eyes. Not to fall asleep again; but to go back as it were and do the thing gradually---detach oneself softly, float up serenely from the clinging delectable fringes. Oh, heavenly sleep! Why must one cast it from one, all unprepared, unwilling? Caught out again by Kate in the very act! You're not trying , you could wake up if you wanted to: that was their attitude. And regularly one began the day convicted of inferiority, of a sluggish voluptuous nature, seriously lacking in will-power.

Guts,” never much of a word outside the hunting season, was a favorite noun in literary prose. People were said to have or to lack them, to perceive beauty and make moral distinctions in no other place. “Gut-busting” and “gut-wrenching” were accolades. “Nerve-shattering,” “eye-popping,” “bone-crunching”—the responsive critic was a crushed, impaled, electrocuted man. “Searing” was lukewarm. Anything merely spraining or tooth-extracting would have been only a minor masterpiece. “Literally,” in every single case, meant figuratively; that is, not literally. This film will literally grab you by the throat. This book will literally knock you out of your chair… Sometimes the assault mode took the form of peremptory orders. See it. Read it. Go at once…Many sentences carried with them their own congratulations, Suffice it to say…or, The only word for it is…Whether it really sufficed to say, or whether there was, in fact, another word, the sentence, bowing and applauding to itself, ignored…There existed also an economical device, the inverted-comma sneer—the “plot,” or his “work,” or even “brave.” A word in quotation marks carried a somehow unarguable derision, like “so-called” or “alleged…” “He has suffered enough” meant if we investigate this matter any further, it will turn out our friends are in it, too… Murders, generally, were called brutal and senseless slayings, to distinguish them from all other murders; nouns thus became glued to adjectives, in series, which gave an appearance of shoring them up… Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn’t remember it, but if they had done it or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether. It was in the interest of absolutely nobody to get to the bottom of anything whatever. People were no longer “caught” in the old sense on which most people could agree. Induction, detection, the very thrillers everyone was reading were obsolete. The jig was never up. In every city, at the same time, therapists earned their living by saying, “You’re being too hard on yourself.

The problem here is that most people who get caught cheating apologize and give the 'It will never happen again' spiel and that's that, as if penises fell into various orifices completely by accident. Many cheatees accept this response at face value, and don't question the values and fucks given by their partner (pun totally intended); they don't ask themselves whether those values and fucks make their partner a good person to stay with. They're so concerned with holding on to their relationship that they fail to recognize that it's become a black hole consuming their self respect. If people cheat, it's because something other than the relationship is more important to them. It may be power over others. It may be validation through sex. It may be giving in to their own impulses. Whatever it is, it's clear that the cheater's values are not aligned in a way to support a healthy relationship. And if the cheater doesn't admit this or come to terms with it, if he just gives the old 'I don't know what I was thinking; I was stressed out and drunk and she was there' response, then he lacks the serious self-awareness necessary to solve any relationship problems.

It wasn’t exactly what you’d call fear, rather a strange sadness – a sadness that had nothing human about it any more, for it lacked both courage and hope. This was how animals waited to die. It was the way fish caught in a net watch the shadow of the fisherman moving back and forth above them.

namely, the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the “existential vacuum.

. I thought that was why, as I stood before a painting of a young girl in half-light, there was something that was both guarded and vulnerable in her gaze. It was not the contradiction of a single instant, but rather it was as if the painter had caught her in two separate states of emotion, two different moods, and managed to contain them within the single image. There would have been a multitude of such instants captured in the canvas, between the time she first sat down before the painter and the time she rose, neck and upper body stiff, from the final sitting. That layering—in effect a kind of temporal blurring, or simultaneity—was perhaps ultimately what distinguished painting from photography. I wondered if that was the reason why contemporary painting seemed to me so much flatter, to lack the mysterious depth of these works, because so many painters now worked from photographs.

Lend finished texting someone and slipped his phone into his back pocket, then stood up. I’d never paid much attention to guys’ jeans before (not for lack of desire, but rather lack of opportunity in the Center), but in the past few months I’d come to realize that most guys’ jeans are really, truly horrendous. Too baggy, too tight, too low, etc. It’s like guys don’t realize that they can look great in a good pair of jeans. Shockingly enough girls, too, enjoy a well-framed butt. Another area Lend was perfect in. His jeans choice, I mean. Well, his butt, too. I smiled and stared at his face, watching his two profiles—the glamour one, which fit snugly over his real one. He looked down and caught me staring. “Evie?” “You, my dear boyfriend, are kind of beautiful, you know that?” “That’s what all the old ladies tell me before pinching my cheek.” “Which cheek?” I reached out and goosed him. He jumped and swatted my hand away, laughing.

Cassandra caught my quizzical look and shrugged. “Problems adjusting. You just missed the latest of the new souls. It would seem none of us are quite as good with people as you are.” That was an understatement. With any luck, Cassandra hadn’t caused any psychological scarring with her “Yeah, you’re dead, get over it” speech. She wasn’t a people person. Ordinarily, I greeted the new souls and took special care to deal with any “adjustment problems.” I enjoyed that part of my work. It was one of the few good deeds I could credit myself with. But as much as I’d love to tell myself otherwise, I wasn’t settling in the souls out of the goodness of my heart. Just lack of better alternatives. The other gods had difficulties relating to humans. But those difficulties were nothing compared to the problems the humans in my court had relating to each other. Souls lose something the longer they’re dead. They forget what it was like to worry, to be scared, to be human. Just yesterday, I’d caught Cassandra telling a frightened new soul I’d gone through a dark phase back when Dante passed through, but not to worry. I hadn’t gone off my meds for centuries. Fucking Dante.

But to me, the argument is just semantics, an exercise in mental masturbation. True, Degas painted neither plein air nor spontaneously, but he had his own way of bringing his impressions into the heart of the viewer: his focus on the movement of racehorses and ballet dancers, his depiction of the ordinary milliner or washer woman or bather, caught in a complete lack of self-consciousness.

Your rival has ten weak points, whereas you have ten strong ones. Although his army is large, it is not irresistible. “Yuan Shao is too caught up in ceremony and show while you, on the other hand, are more practical. He is often antagonistic and tends to force things, whereas you are more conciliatory and try to guide things to their proper courses, giving you the advantage of popular support. His extravagance hinders his administrative ability while your better efficiency is a great contribution to the government, granting you the edge of a well-structured and stable administration. On the outside he is very kind and giving but on the inside he is grudging and suspicious. You are just the opposite, appearing very exacting but actually very understanding of your followers’ strengths and weaknesses. This grants you the benefit of tolerance. He lacks commitment where you are unfaltering in your decisions, promptly acting on your plans with full faith that they will succeed. This shows an advantage in strategy and decisiveness. He believes a man is only as good as his reputation, which contrasts with you, who looks beyond this to see what kind of person they really are. This demonstrates that you are a better judge of moral character. He only pays attention to those followers close to him, while your vision is all-encompassing. This shows your superior supervision. He is easily misled by poor advice, whereas you maintain sound judgment even if beset by evil council. This is a sign of your independence of thought. He does not always know what is right and wrong but you have an unwavering sense of justice. This shows how you excel in discipline. He has a massive army, but the men are poorly trained and not ready for war. Your army, though much smaller, is far superior and well provisioned, giving you the edge in planning and logistics, allowing you to execute effectively. With your ten superiorities you will have no difficulty in subduing Yuan Shao.

There is a premium on conformity, and on silence. Enthusiasm is frowned upon, since it is likely to be noisy. The Admiral had caught a few kids who came to school before class, eager to practice on the typewriters. He issued a manifesto forbidding any students in the building before 8:20 or after 3:00—outside of school hours, students are "unauthorized." They are not allowed to remain in a classroom unsupervised by a teacher. They are not allowed to linger in the corridors. They are not allowed to speak without raising a hand. They are not allowed to feel too strongly or to laugh too loudly. Yesterday, for example, we were discussing "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars/ But in ourselves that we are underlings." I had been trying to relate Julius Caesar to their own experiences. Is this true? I asked. Are we really masters of our fate? Is there such a thing as luck? A small boy in the first row, waving his hand frantically: "Oh, call on me, please, please call on me!" was propelled by the momentum of his exuberant arm smack out of his seat and fell on the floor. Wild laughter. Enter McHabe. That afternoon, in my letter-box, it had come to his attention that my "control of the class lacked control.

The desire to “do more in less time” is not a neutral force in our culture; it is the handmaiden of miserable experts, specialists, and leaders. Not everyone has rushed to become efficient. Something else exists on the periphery: an inefficient utopia, a culture of consensus, collectives, and do-it-yourself ethics. A place where time is not bought, sold, or leased and no clock is the final arbiter of our worth. For many people in North America, the problem is not just poverty but lack of time to do the things that are actually meaningful. This is not a symptom of personal failures but the consequence of a time-obsessed society. Today, desire for efficiency springs from the scarcity model, which is the foundation of capitalism. Time is seen as a limited resource when we get caught up in meaningless jobs, mass-produced entertainment, and – the common complaint of activists – tedious meanings.

...there are enormous regions where I have never been, and what one has not known is what one has not been. An anxiety to start running, go into a house, into that store, jump on a train, devour all of Jouhandeau, know German... What is defective is felt more as an intuitive poverty than as a mere lack of experience. It really doesn't afflict me not having read all of Jouhandeau, at most the melancholy feeling of too short a life for so many libraries, etc. The lack of experience is inevitable, if I read Joyce I am automatically sacrificing another book and vice versa, etc. The feeling of lack is sharper in... zones for detention of your eyes, your smell, your taste, and you can't get beyond that limit when you think you've caught anything fully, just like an iceberg the thing has a small piece outside and shows it to you, and the enormous rest of it is beyond our limits and that's why the Titanic went down.

Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs. In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production. Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal. Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness. Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.' Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature. Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.

Should one of them after having caught the greatness of Abraham's deed, but also the appallingness of it, venture out on the road, I would saddle my horse and ride along with him. At every stop before we came to the mountain in Moriah I would explain to him that he could still turn back, could rue the misunderstanding that he was called to be tried in a conflict of this nature, could confess that he lacked the courage, so that if God wanted Isaac God must take him himself.

I come in contact with mixed-up people, young men and women caught in the anguish of their own unpreparedness, intellectuals who have been seduced by false science, and rich men held in the grip of insecurity. They have no commitment to any goal. They lack an anchorage for their real self. And I long to take every one of them by the hand and lead them into the presence of the One who said, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” [Matthew 11:28 KJV].

It's this human porosity that bothers me and that I can't escape since it is the faith of my skin, the extra sense which is everywhere in my being, this lack of eyelids on the face of the soul, or perhaps this imaginary lack of imaginary lids, this excessive facility I have for catching others, I am caught by persons or things animated or unanimated that I don't even frequent, and even the verb catch I catch or rather I am caught by it, for, note this please, it's not I who wish to change, it's the other who gets his hooks in me for lack of armor. All it takes is for me to be plunged for an hour or less into surroundings where the inevitable occurs--cafe, bus, hair salon, train carriage, recording studio--there must be confinement and envelopment, and there I am stained intoxicated, practically any speaker can appropriate my mental cells and poison my sinuses, shit, idiocies, cruelties, vulgar spite, trash, innumerable particles of human hostility inflame the windows of my brain and I get off the transport sick for days. It isn't the fault of one Eichmann or another. I admit to being guilty of excessive receptivity to mental miasma. The rumor of a word poisons me for a long time. Should I read or hear such and such a turn of phrase or figure of speech, right away I can't breathe my mucous membranes swell up, my lips go dry, I am asthmaticked, sometimes I lose my balance and crash to the ground, or on a chair if perchance one is there, in the incapacity of breathing the unbreathable.

Despite the controversy over whether psychopaths exist, psychiatrists generally agree that one of the defining characteristics of those we refer to as psychopaths is the lack of interpersonal empathy, what one might call a flat emotional playing field. Psychopaths may not hate, but they also may not love the way most of us would prefer to love and be loved. Psychopaths are usually manipulative, are champion liars, and can be quite glib and disarmingly charming. They don’t fear consequences the way most people do, and while they may react to the stress of being caught in a lie or violent act like anyone would, some remain cool as cucumbers. Even the most dangerous can appear jovial, carefree, and social at times, but sooner or later they will display a telling distance, a quiet coldheartedness and disregard for others. They are often impulsive, yet lack guilt and remorse, meaning they may invite you to join in on their reckless, even dangerous fun, and then shrug their shoulders if someone gets hurt.

She dropped her coat on the back of a chair and crept quietly up to Jay’s room. She did her best not to wake him as she pulled the door closed behind her. She watched him sleep, stretched out on his back, feeling herself coming back to life in his presence. “What are you doing?” he mumbled without opening his eyes. Violet startled, feeling like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. Like when they were little and they were busted for looking at a dirty magazine one of the other kids brought to school. Jay rolled onto his side and squinted one eye open at Violet, grinning. “Come over here,” he growled, lifting the corner of his sheet up, inviting her in. He looked rumpled and messy and alluring. Violet slipped off her shoes and climbed in beside him. He wrapped his arm around her back, pulling her close. His breath was warm, his body warmer, and she felt herself thawing for the first time since she’d stepped out into the shipyard that morning. Even the heat blasting inside her car on the way home hadn’t helped. She tucked her feet between his legs. “What are you doing here so early?” His voice was rough from sleep but it sounded like soft velvet. He stroked her back lazily. “Are you feeling better today?” Neither question really needed an answer; they were just Jay’s way of letting her know he’d been worried about her. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered as she let herself get comfortable against him. She’d been cold and tired, and now that she was warm again she thought she might actually be able to fall asleep, right there in his arms. He rested his chin against the top of her head. “You didn’t,” he assured her. “I was already awake.” Violet sighed. It felt so good to be here. It was the first time she’d felt comfortable since she’d gone to Seattle yesterday with Chelsea. Jay made her feel safe—among other things—and she needed that right now. She closed her eyes; they were gritty and raw from lack of sleep. She breathed deeply, inhaling him, and relaxing as she sank further into him . . . and into the pillow beneath her head. She fell asleep like that, wrapped in warmth. Wrapped in Jay.

The practice of using credit scores in hirings and promotions creates a dangerous poverty cycle. After all, if you can’t get a job because of your credit record, that record will likely get worse, making it even harder to land work. It’s not unlike the problem young people face when they look for their first job—and are disqualified for lack of experience. Or the plight of the longtime unemployed, who find that few will hire them because they’ve been without a job for too long. It’s a spiraling and defeating feedback loop for the unlucky people caught up in it.

RESURRECTION OF DJANGO He was born in a gypsy caravan and spent his early years on the road in Belgium, playing the banjo for a dancing bear and a goat. He was eighteen when his wagon caught fire and he was left for dead. He lost a leg, a hand. Goodbye road, goodbye music. But as they were about to amputate, he regained the use of his leg. And from his lost hand he managed to save two fingers and become one of the best jazz guitarists in history. There was a secret pact between Django Reinhardt and his guitar. If he would play her, she would lend him the fingers he lacked.

So it wasn’t a total surprise that Jay would turn a few heads while they were out tonight. She just hadn’t anticipated the power of the two of them together. Two good-looking guys more than doubled the attention they drew. Even among people they knew at the Java Hut that night, Violet and Chelsea became instantly invisible. Girls not only noticed the pair of boys but also giggled behind cupped hands and waved at the two of them. Jay was either unaware or chose to ignore them altogether. Mike, on the other hand, was not. And did not. Not only did he notice the interest he attracted, he seemed to enjoy it. Violet recognized it immediately for what it was: Mike was as much an attention whore as Chelsea. Violet was fine with that. Chelsea, not so much. Violet let Jay draw her through the crowds that bottlenecked near the entrance. She liked knowing that he belonged to her while all those envious eyes looked on. “I guess Chelsea’s not the only one who’s into Mike,” Violet whispered while Jay dragged her over to stand in line at the counter. Jay glanced back to where Chelsea stood on the outskirts of three girls from school who were animatedly chatting with Mike. “Yeah. She’s not doing too good, is she?” Jay agreed. “I thought she’d have him eating out of her hand by now.” Violet wrinkled her nose, worrying over her friend. “You mean like you have me doing?” Violet smiled up at him and then bumped him with her shoulder. “Yes. Exactly like that.” Chelsea caught the two of them spying on her, and Violet flashed an apologetic smile. Chelsea rolled her eyes in response. She sulked as she made her way over to join them. “Get me some fries.” The lack of a question in her statement was somewhat reassuring. She was still Chelsea. Disheartened but bossy.

The believer caught between the flesh and Spirit is also caught between death and life. That is what happens when God intervenes in a human life. That intervention does not necessarily bring tranquility. In fact, it is more likely to bring tension and conflict. It is the life surrendered to the flesh which lacks inner conflict, for the decline through sin to death can be so easy. It is when the Spirit enters a life to contest the sway of sin and counter the weakness of the flesh that conflict ensues. The presence of moral conflict is a sign of the Spirit presence, not the Spirit's absence.

Blind Heart’s. In the circle of life, a sorrowful tale, Where death and life dance an endless wail. Hungry eyes search for morsels to devour, Survival's cruel game with each passing hour. Angst and fear grip hearts, cold and bleak, Aching souls yearning for solace they seek. In a world that lacks fairness, unjust and unkind, Tears fall like rain, leaving scars behind. Hatred and love, a twisted embrace, In this nature of existence, a bitter chase. For when darkness looms, Love hides in despair, Yet hate finds its mark, leaving hearts threadbare. We, people who turn blind eyes to the cries, As if suffering and anguish were mere lies. Ignoring the plight that surrounds us all, Humanity's downfall, a deafening fall. But what of the animals, creatures so dear? Caught in this cycle, their voices unclear. Silently they suffer, their pain left unheard, In nature's cruel script, an unspoken word. Children on ground, black and white Dying, Drying while survival trying. Scars defining not body, but soul Oh light, forgive us Lord. The circle spins on, in sorrow it turns, A tragic symphony, where hope rarely burns. In this poem of life, where sadness takes hold, Let us open our eyes, let compassion unfold.

There were no such stipulations made when we discussed the agreement." "Nor were they expressly not made. I am making them now. You received what you requested. Or, have you forgotten?" The words sent a shiver down her spine. He was standing behind her, and she could feel the warm kiss of his breath on her bare neck, sending a river of heat through her. "I have not forgotten." The words came unbidden, and she closed her eyes. He laid a hand on her arm and, with virtually no pressure, turned her face to him. When he met her eyes, the anger that had been there was gone, replaced by something much more complex. "Neither have I. And not for lack of trying." Before she could begin to consider the meaning behind his words, he settled his mouth upon hers, robbing her of thought. "I've tried to forget that kiss... and the carriage ride... and the fencing club... but you seem to have taken up residence... in my memory." As he spoke between long, drugging kisses that consumed her senses, he guided Callie across the study and into a large chair near the fireplace. Kneeling in front of her, he cupped one cheek in a strong, warm hand, and met her gaze with a searing look. Shaking his head as though he couldn't quite understand what had come over him, he kissed her again, growling low in the back of his throat. Her hands found their way into his thick, dark hair as he caught her bottom lip in his teeth, nibbling and licking at it until she thought she might perish from the intensity of the feeling. She whimpered at the sensation, and he rewarded the sound by deepening the kiss, giving her everything she desired. He broke off the kiss as one of his hands found its way under her skirts, caressing up the inside of her leg. He shifted her against him, running his lips across her cheek to the curl of her ear, sucking and nibbling and licking as he spoke to her, the scandalous words more sensation than sound. "Such soft skin..." he said, as his fingers played along the inside of her thighs, driving her mad with desire as heat pooled at their juncture. "I've been wondering what you felt like here..." He shifted to gain better access to the skin high on the inside of her thighs, so close to the spot where she most wanted him. "Now that I know... I'm going to be consumed with thoughts of how this soft, lovely skin will feel against me..." He placed a soft, lush kiss on the column of her neck as his hand moved higher, closer to the center of her.

[Silent Messages 2] She sat to rearrange the contents of her disorganized handbag At the crowded bus terminal When she lifted her head for a short interval, Her eyes caught a young couple kissing, touching, and hugging In a performative and exaggerated manner... When the couple noticed her, The young woman gave her a mean and malicious look as if asking: Are you jealous of all the love I am surrounded by? She returned the look with a sly one as if responding: The love that exaggerates in displaying itself in public Is either immature, dead, or dying… [Original poem published in Arabic on December 5, 2022 at ahewar.org]

It’s hard for the timeless to perceive the flow. Hard to see the change from this to that. Everything simply is. And yet, contrary to my nature, I struggle to do just that. I look into the current.” He raised a hand to clutch the back of his neck, a curiously alive gesture, at odds with the animated statue that he had first seemed. “And it is difficult for the timely, those carried in the flow, bubbling to its surface, borne along, ultimately drowned in it, to see the crystalline glory of eternity, reflected and refracted through many dimensions, perfect in its imperfections. Language is also caught in the flow and ever-changing. It lacks the capacity to exchange those experiences between us.

I have lost some fundamental part of my knowing, some elemental human feeling. Without it, the world feels like tap water left overnight, flat and chemical, devoid of life. I am like lightning seeking earth. Uneasy, I carry the prickle of potential energy in my limbs, ever deferred from the point of contact, the moment of release. Instead, it gathers in me, massing like a storm that never comes. I lack the language to even describe it, this vast unsettled sense that I am slipping over the glassy surface of things, afraid of what lurks beneath. I need a better way to walk through this life. I want to be enchanted again. Enchantment is small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. It relies on small doses of awe, almost homeopathic: those quiet traces of fascination that are found only when we look for them. It is the sense that we are joined together in one continuous thread of existence with the elements constituting this earth, and that there is a potency trapped in this interconnection, a tingle on the border of our perception. It is the forgotten seam of our geology, the elusive particle that binds our unstable matter: the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it. Without it, I feel I am lacking some essential nutrient, some vitamin found only when you go digging in your own soil.

In his magnum opus, The Nature of Prejudice, Allport reasoned that bigotry often boils down to a lack of acquaintance. Its antidote was just as simple: Bring people together, and they’ll awaken to their common humanity. A similar thought led Mark Twain to quip, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” In psychology, this idea came to be known as “contact theory,” and it caught fire. Allport’s book, published in 1954, became a bestseller; he delighted in spotting it at airports and malls alongside beach novels. Thanks to him, optimists everywhere came to believe that hatred was a misunderstanding and that contact could fix it.

As you entered the room the thing drew your eyes: you turned sharply as to a sound, expecting movement. But it was marble, it could not move. And when you tore your eyes away and turned your back on it at last, you got again untarnished and high and clean that sense of swiftness, of space encompassed; but on looking again it was as before: motionless and passionately eternal — the virginal breastless torso of a girl, headless, armless, legless, in marble temporarily caught and hushed yet passionate still for escape, passionate and simple and eternal in the equivocal derisive darkness of the world. Nothing to trouble your youth or lack of it: rather something to trouble the very fibrous integrity of your being.

Okay,” Max said. “Now I’m terrified that I, um, said it too late?” His uncertainty turned his words into a question. “Am I too late?” he asked again, as if he actually thought . . . As much as Gina enjoyed watching him squirm, she forced her lungs and vocal cords to start working again. “Are you . . .” She had to clear her throat, but then it really didn’t matter what she said, because the tears in her eyes surely told him everything he wanted to hear. She saw his relief, and yes, he was still scared, she saw that, too, but mixed in with that was hope. And something that looked a heck of a lot like happiness. Happiness—in Max’s eyes. “Are you really asking me for a second chance?” she managed to get it all out in a breathless exhale. He kissed her then, as if he couldn’t bear to stand so close and not kiss her. “Please,” he breathed, as he kissed her again, as he licked his way into her mouth and . . . God . . . She could’ve stood there, kissing Max forever, but the man on the megaphone just shouldn’t shut up. Besides, she wanted to be sure that this was about more than just sex. “Do you want me in your life?” Gina asked him. “I mean, need is nice, but . . .” It implied a certain lack of free will. Want on the other hand . . . “Want,” he said. “Yes. I want you. Very much. In my life. Gina, I was lost without you.” He caught himself. “More lost, or . . .” He shook his head. “Fuck it, I’m a mess, but if for some reason you still love me anyway . . . If you really meant what you said, about . . .” There it was gain, in his eyes. Hope. “Loving me anyway . . .” “I don’t love you anyway,” she told him, her heart in her throat. “I love you because.” She touched his face, his smoothly shaven cheeks. “Although now that you mention it, you are something of a mess, and I’m probably entitled to . . . compensation in certain areas. I mean, in any relationship, you need to negotiate a certain amount of compromise, right?” He actually thought she was serious. “Well, yeah.” “So if, say, I were to point out how incredibly hot you’d look wearing that thong—” Max laughed his relief. “Shit, I thought you were serious.” “Shit,” Gina teased. “I am.” He cupped her face between both of his hands, and the heat in his eyes made her knees weak. “I’ll wear one if you wear one . . .

Tell me what to do," she said, the words blowing against him. Whatever sanity Ross had left promptly burned to cinders. He gasped out instructions, his hands trembling as he clasped her head. "Use your tongue on the tip... yes... now take as much as you can in your... oh, God..." Sophia's fervor more than made up for her lack of experience. She did things that Eleanor would never have tried, tugging at his aching flesh, her velvety tongue swirling and lapping. Ross sank to his knees and pulled at her clothes, tearing them, and she gave a breathless laugh at his roughness. His mouth caught greedily at hers, while she wriggled to help him strip the shredded gown down her legs. A primal sound of satisfaction escaped him when Sophia's naked body was finally revealed. He lifted her to the bed, pausing only to remove his trousers before he joined her. Eagerly she slid between his legs and took his sex into her mouth once more, resisting his efforts to bring her face up to his. Groaning repeatedly, he surrendered to her ministrations, his fingers tangling in the locks of her hair. However, he was not satisfied for long- he wanted more, he craved the taste of her. Impatiently he seized her hips, maneuvering her until she was positioned at his mouth. He buried his face amid the intimate curls, his hands gripping her thighs as she jerked with surprise. He searched her with his tongue, licking deeply into the seam of moist folds. Avidly he hunted for the tiny engorged peak where her pleasure was concentrated. Finding it, he nibbled, stroked, darted his tongue at it, as he felt her stiffen in approaching climax. He backed off, gentling, while she moaned pleadingly around his cock. Twice more he brought her to the edge, making her suffer, tormenting until she responded with desperate tugs of her mouth. Each time Sophia drew on him, Ross sank his tongue deep inside her, matching his rhythm to hers, until she shuddered hard as her pleasure finally reached its zenith. She cried out against his groin, her mouth still clamped around him. His own culmination approached rapidly, and he moved his hands to her head. But she resisted his attempts to dislodge her, and the silly strokes of her tongue became too much to bear. The climax broke over him, and he arched and gasped as he was consumed in an explosion of pure white fire.

Epicurus shared that during his illness, he didn't dwell on his physical discomfort. Instead, he continued his philosophical discussions, focusing on how the mind can remain calm and maintain its integrity despite the body's sufferings. He didn't dramatize his condition or give doctors the chance to act as if they were performing some grand action. His life continued to be positive and content. So, he advises, should we approach life, whether in sickness or health. We shouldn't abandon our philosophical principles or get caught up in meaningless conversations with those who lack understanding of nature's ways. Instead, our focus should be solely on our present actions and the means we use to carry them out. This approach, respected by all philosophical traditions, keeps us centered and purposeful, no matter what life throws at us.

Alongside this was the king who remained a conservative to his dying day. He never accepted the central Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, despite all Cranmer’s efforts to persuade him, especially in the revision of the Bishops’ Book; so he had lost his hold on purgatory while not finding his way to a coherent replacement doctrine on salvation.49 To see this is to make some sense at last of the apparently baffling twists of policy and inconsistencies in the king: he was caught between his lack of full belief in two mutually opposed ways of seeing the road to salvation. What did he have instead? A ragbag of emotional preferences. He cherished his beautiful personal rosary, which still exists; he maintained the mass in all its ancient Latin splendour and he left instructions in his will for a generous supply of requiems, in line with his new rationale for them in the King’s Book.

As he stood with his fingers in the iceflower bowls, he heard his mom and Cyra talking. “My son was eager for me to meet you, I could tell,” his mom said. “You must be a good friend.” “Um…yes,” Cyra said. “I think so, yes.” You think so, Akos thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He’d given her clear enough labels, back in the stairwell, but she still couldn’t quite believe it. That was the problem with being so convinced of your own awfulness--you thought other people were lying when they didn’t agree with you. “I have heard that you have a talent for death,” his mom said. At least Akos had warned Cyra about Sifa’s lack of charm. He glanced at Cyra. She held her armored wrist against her gut. “I suppose I do,” she said. “But I don’t have a passion for it.” Vapor slipped from the nose of the water kettle, not yet thick enough for Akos to pour. Water had never boiled so slowly. “You two have spent a lot of time together,” his mom said. “Yes.” “Are you to blame for his survival these past few seasons?” “No,” Cyra said. “Your son survives because of his own will.” His mom smiled. “You should defensive.” “I don’t take credit for other people’s strength,” Cyra said. “Only my own.” His mom’s smile got even bigger. “And a little cocky.” “I’ve been called worse.” The vapor was thick enough. Akos grabbed the hook with the wooden handle that hung next to the stove, and attached it to the kettle. It caught, and locked in place as he poured water in each of the mugs. Isae came forward for one, standing on tiptoe so she could whisper in his ear. “If it hasn’t already, it should be dawning on you right about now that your girl and your mother are very similar people,” she said. “I will pause as that irrefutable fact chills you to the core.” Akos eyed her. “Was that humor, Chancellor?” “On occasion, I have been known to make a humorous remark.

Hermione’s eyes were swimming with tears again. Ron got back off the bed, put his arm around her once more, and frowned at Harry as though reproaching him for lack of tact. Harry could not think of anything to say, not least because it was highly unusual for Ron to be teaching anyone else tact. “I--Hermione, I’m sorry--I didn’t--” “Didn’t realize that Ron and I know perfectly well what might happen if we come with you? Well, we do. Ron, show Harry what you’ve done.” “Nah, he’s just eaten,” said Ron. “Go on, he needs to know!” “Oh, all right. Harry, come here.” For the second time Ron withdrew his arm from around Hermione and stumped over to the door. “C’mon.” “Why?” Harry asked, following Ron out of the room onto the tiny landing. “Descendo,” muttered Ron, pointing his wand at the low ceiling. A hatch opened right over their heads and a ladder slid down to their feet. A horrible, half-sucking, half-moaning sound came out of the square hole, along with an unpleasant smell like open drains. “That’s your ghoul, isn’t it?” asked Harry, who had never actually met the creature that sometimes disrupted the nightly silence. “Yeah, it is,” said Ron, climbing the ladder. “Come and have a look at him.” Harry followed Ron up the few short steps into the tiny attic space. His head and shoulders were in the room before he caught sight of the creature curled up a few feet from him, fast asleep in the gloom with its large mouth wide open. “But it…it looks…do ghouls normally wear pajamas?” “No,” said Ron. “Nor have they usually got red hair or that number of pustules.” Harry contemplated the thing, slightly revolted. It was human in shape and size, and was wearing what, now that Harry’s eyes became used to the darkness, was clearly an old pair of Ron’s pajamas. He was also sure that ghouls were generally rather slimy and bald, rather than distinctly hairy and covered in angry purple blisters. “He’s me, see?” said Ron. “No,” said Harry. “I don’t.” “I’ll explain it back in my room, the smell’s getting to me,” said Ron.

Everybody needs a place where they feel protected, secure, and welcome. Everybody yearns for a place where they can relax and be fully themselves. Ideally, the childhood home was one such place. For those of us who felt accepted and loved by our parents, our home provided this warmth. It was a heartwarming place—the very thing that everybody yearns for. And we internalize this feeling from childhood—that of being accepted and welcome—as a fundamental, positive attitude toward life that accompanies us through adulthood: we feel secure in the world and in our own life. We’re self-confident and trusting of others. There’s the notion of basic trust, which is like a home within ourselves, providing us with internal support and protection. Many people, however, associate their childhood with largely negative experiences, some even traumatic. Others had an unhappy childhood, but have repressed those memories. They can barely recall what happened. Then there are those who believe their childhood was “normal” or even “happy,” only to discover, upon closer examination, that they have been deluding themselves. And though people may attempt to repress or, as an adult, downplay childhood experiences of insecurity or rejection, there are moments in everyday life that will reveal how underdeveloped their basic trust remains. They have self-esteem issues and frequently doubt that they are welcome and that their coworkers, romantic partner, boss, or new friend truly likes them. They don’t really like themselves all that much, they have a range of insecurities, and they often struggle in relationships. Unable to develop basic trust, they therefore lack a sense of internal support. Instead, they hope that others will provide them with these feelings of security, protection, stability, and home. They search for home with their partner, their colleagues, in their softball league, or online, only to be disappointed: other people can provide this feeling of home sporadically at best. Those who lack a home on the inside will never find one on the outside. They can’t tell that they’re caught in a trap.

Business leadership is based on two elements: vision and technical competence. Top people in a given industry always embody at least one of those two elements. Sometimes, but rarely, they embody both of them. Simply put, vision is the ability to see what other people don’t. It’s a Ford executive named Lee Iacocca realizing that a market existed for an automobile that was both a racing car and a street vehicle—and coming up with the Mustang. It’s Steven Jobs realizing that computers needed to be sold in a single box, like a television sets, instead of piece by piece. About one hundred years ago, Walter Chrysler was a plant manager for a locomotive company. Then he decided to go into the car business, which was a hot new industry at the time. The trouble was, Walter Chrysler didn’t know a lot about cars, except that they were beginning to outnumber horses on the public roadways. To remedy this problem, Chrysler bought one of the Model T Fords that were becoming so popular. To learn how it worked, he took it apart and put it back together. Then, just to be sure he understood everything, he repeated this. Then, to be absolutely certain he knew what made a car work, he took it apart and put it together forty-eight more times, for a grand total of fifty. By the time he was finished, Chrysler not only had a vision of thousands of cars on American highways, he also had the mechanical details of those cars engraved in his consciousness. Perhaps you’ve seen the play called The Music Man. It’s about a fast-talking man who arrives in a small town with the intention of hugely upgrading a marching band. However, he can’t play any instruments, doesn’t know how to lead a band, and doesn’t really have any musical skills whatsoever. The Music Man is a comedy, but it’s not totally unrealistic. Some managers in the computer industry don’t know how to format a document. Some automobile executives could not change a tire. There was once even a vice president who couldn’t spell potato. It’s not a good idea to lack the fundamental technical skills of your industry, and it’s really not a good idea to get caught lacking them. So let’s see what you can do to avoid those problems.

There once was a female snake that roamed around a small village in the countryside of Egypt. She was commonly seen by villagers with her small baby as they grazed around the trees. One day, several men noticed the mother snake was searching back and forth throughout the village in a frenzy — without her young. Apparently, her baby had slithered off on its own to play while she was out looking for food. Yet the mother snake went on looking for her baby for days because it still hadn't returned back to her. So one day, one of the elder women in the village caught sight of the big snake climbing on top of their water supply — an open clay jug harvesting all the village's water. The snake latched its teeth on the big jug's opening and sprayed its venom into it. The woman who witnessed the event was mentally handicapped, so when she went to warn the other villagers, nobody really understood what she was saying. And when she approached the jug to try to knock it over, she was reprimanded by her two brothers and they locked her away in her room. Then early the next day, the mother snake returned to the village after a long evening searching for her baby. The children villagers quickly surrounded her while clapping and singing because she had finally found her baby. And as the mother snake watched the children rejoice in the reunion with her child, she suddenly took off straight for the water supply — leaving behind her baby with the villagers' children. Before an old man could gather some water to make some tea, she hissed in his direction, forcing him to step back as she immediately wrapped herself around the jug and squeezed it super hard. When the jug broke burst into a hundred fragments, she slithered away to gather her child and return to the safety of her hole. Many people reading this true story may not understand that the same feelings we are capable of having, snakes have too. Thinking the villagers killed her baby, the mother snake sought out revenge by poisoning the water to destroy those she thought had hurt her child. But when she found her baby and saw the villagers' children, her guilt and protective instincts urged her to save them before other mothers would be forced to experience the pain and grief of losing a child. Animals have hearts and minds too. They are capable of love, hatred, jealousy, revenge, hunger, fear, joy, and caring for their own and others. We look at animals as if they are inferior because they are savage and not civilized, but in truth, we are the ones who are not being civil by drawing a thick line between us and them — us and nature. A wild animal's life is very straightforward. They spend their time searching and gathering food, mating, building homes, and meditating and playing with their loved ones. They enjoy the simplicity of life without any of our technological gadgetry, materialism, mass consumption, wastefulness, superficiality, mindless wars, excessive greed and hatred. While we get excited by the vibrations coming from our TV sets, headphones and car stereos, they get stimulated by the vibrations of nature. So, just because animals may lack the sophisticated minds to create the technology we do or make brick homes and highways like us, does not mean their connections to the etheric world isn't more sophisticated than anything we could ever imagine. That means they are more spiritual, reflective, cosmic, and tuned into alternate universes beyond what our eyes can see. So in other words, animals are more advanced than us. They have the simple beauty we lack and the spiritual contentment we may never achieve.

On the other hand he is in many respects stupider than the animals, and gets into one ridiculous scrape after another. Although he is not really evil, he does the most atrocious things from sheer unconsciousness and unrelatedness. His imprisonment in animal unconsciousness is suggested by the episode where he gets his head caught inside the skull of an elk, and the next episode shows how he overcomes this condition by imprisoning the head of a hawk inside his own rectum. True, he sinks back into the former condition immediately afterwards, by falling under the ice, and is outwitted time after time by the animals, but in the end he succeeds in tricking the cunning coyote, and this brings back to him his saviour nature. The trickster is a primitive “cosmic” being of divine-animal nature, on the one hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, and on the other hand inferior to him because of his unreason and unconsciousness. He is no match for the animals either, because of his extraordinary clumsiness and lack of instinct. These defects are the marks of his human nature, which is not so well adapted to the environment as the animal’s but, instead, has prospects of a much higher development of consciousness based on a considerable eagerness to learn, as is duly emphasized in the myth.

If you’re going to give me the third degree,” she tells him, “let’s get it over with. Best to withhold food or water; water is probably best. I’ll get thirsty before I get hungry.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Do you really think I’m like that? Why would you think that?” “I was taken by force, and you’re keeping me here against my will,” she says, leaning across the table toward him. She considers spitting in his face, but decides to save that gesture as punctuation for a more appropriate moment. “Imprisonment is still imprisonment, no matter how many layers of cotton you wrap it in.” That makes him lean farther away, and she knows she’s pushed a button. She remembers seeing those pictures of him back when he was all over the news, wrapped in cotton and kept in a bombproof cell. “I really don’t get you,” he says, a bit of anger in his voice this time. “We saved your life. You could at least be a little grateful.” “You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That’s not salvation, that’s damnation.” “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Now it’s her turn to get angry. “Yes, you’re sorry I feel that way, everyone’s sorry I feel that way. Are you going to keep this up until I don’t feel that way anymore?” He stands up suddenly, pushing his chair back, and paces, fern leaves brushing his clothes. She knows she’s gotten to him. He seems like he’s about to storm out, but instead takes a deep breath and turns back to her. “I know what you’re going through,” he says. “I was brainwashed by my family to actually want to be unwound—and not just by my family, but by my friends, my church, everyone I looked up to. The only voice who spoke sense was my brother Marcus, but I was too blind to hear him until the day I got kidnapped.” “You mean see,” she says, putting a nice speed bump in his way. “Huh?” “Too blind to see him, too deaf to hear him. Get your senses straight. Or maybe you can’t, because you’re senseless.” He smiles. “You’re good.” “And anyway, I don’t need to hear your life story. I already know it. You got caught in a freeway pileup, and the Akron AWOL used you as a human shield—very noble. Then he turned you, like cheese gone bad.” “He didn’t turn me. It was getting away from my tithing, and seeing unwinding for what it is. That’s what turned me.” “Because being a murderer is better than being a tithe, isn’t that right, clapper?” He sits back down again, calmer, and it frustrates her that he is becoming immune to her snipes. “When you live a life without questions, you’re unprepared for the questions when they come,” he says. “You get angry and you totally lack the skills to deal with the anger. So yes, I became a clapper, but only because I was too innocent to know how guilty I was becoming.” ... “You think I’m like you, but I’m not,” Miracolina says. “I’m not part of a religious order that tithes. My parents did it in spite of our beliefs, not because of ii.” “But you were still raised to believe it was your purpose, weren’t you?” “My purpose was to save my brother’s life by being a marrow donor, so my purpose was served before I was six months old.” “And doesn’t that make you angry that the only reason you’re here was to help someone else?” “Not at all,” she says a little too quickly. She purses her lips and leans back in her chair, squirming a bit. The chair feels a little too hard beneath her. “All right, so maybe I do feel angry once in a while, but I understand why they did it. If I were them, I would have done the same thing.” “Agreed,” he says. “But once your purpose was served, shouldn’t your life be your own?” “Miracles are the property of God,” she answers. “No,” he says, “miracles are gifts from God. To calthem his property insults the spirit in which they are given.” She opens her mouth to reply but finds she has no response, because he’s right. Damn him for being right—nothing about him should be right! “We’ll talk again when you’re over yourself,” he says.

Camille heard the rustle of grass. She opened one eye and saw Oscar settling down beside her. “We can spare a few minutes,” he said. She sat up and cradled her knees in her arms. He plucked a blade of grass and commenced peeling it down the center. They heard the Australian snoring from his spot a few yards away, completely hidden in a blanket of green. “I guess we can spare more than a few minutes.” Oscar smiled and met her gaze, holding it a moment. She suddenly realized how horrible she must look-her hair, her clothes, her skin. “Do you miss him?” he asked, not seeming to notice any of those things. Camille uprooted a purple flower and a white daisy near it. “Of course I do. But I’m hoping with the stone I won’t have to very long.” “Not your father, Camille. Randall.” She took a deep breath, shocked she hadn’t thought of her fiancé for so long. How many days had it been? A full week, maybe more. “Oh. Well…I suppose I do.” Oscar raised an eyebrow and laughed at her clear lack of conviction. Camille shrugged. “What? A lot has happened and right now getting back to San Francisco isn’t something I’m concerned about.” Oscar nodded and chewed on the tip of his blade of grass. “It’s not that Randall isn’t a perfectly good man,” she said, fiddling with the flowers in her hands. The roots crumbled dirt onto her lap. “He’s kind and caring and handsome and an excellent businessman.” Oscar continued to nod. “And he’ll make a fine husband, I’m sure,” she added, knowing he really was all those things. If only all of them combined could make up for what she didn’t feel while with him. “I’m sure,” Oscar repeated. Had he been mocking her? She thought she had caught a trace of sarcasm. All this talk about Randall had her itching. “Why do you ask?” “Just wondered if you missed home,” Oscar answered and threw the mangled blade of grass behind him. “Do you?” she asked, ashamed to her Oscar know how little she desired to return. He thought for a moment, tugging up another switch of grass and rolling it between his fingers. “No,” he answered with stark certainty. “I have everything I’d miss right here.” Every inch of Camille’s body smoldered under Oscar’s gentle, and so very forward, gaze. He’d miss her. She looked into his gray-blue eyes, rimmed by thick, honey-colored lashes-had they always been so full? The bridge of his nose crooked to the left slightly, perhaps broken in a fight after he’d moved from her father’s carriage house to a small apartment along the San Francisco harbor front. She’d never noticed the charming imperfection before. She watched as his eyes traveled over her own features, touching on the wound by her temple and settling on the heart-shaped fullness of her lips. Oscar held his piercing stare. “We probably won’t arrive home in time for your wedding.

Here we immediately face the danger of slipping into another but equally untenable romanticism, namely a call for humans to be humble and come to terms with or appreciate their finitude. The acknowledgement of the inherent lack of unity in the metabolism of humans and the rest of nature should not lead us to conceive of humans as fragile, vulnerable and ontologically homeless creatures destined to remain caught in opaque mediations. Such a way of thinking amounts to a secularisation of the religious demand for humans to display their submissiveness and obedience to God. One finds examples of this in existentialist philosophies of the Heideggerian variant or in Arnold Gehlen's conservative philosophical anthropology, according to which the natural incompleteness of human beings justify the call for stable social institutions (i.e., the shepherd-God is replaced with the shepherd-State). The key to avoid such an ideology of finitude is to recall that it is the very fragility and porosity of the human metabolism which has made humans so evolutionarily successful. Human corporeal organisation is the source of an immense flexibility and has enabled this animal to "break out of a narrow ecological niche". Far from being the sign of an inherent finitude of the human being, the loss of immediacy at the centre of its being is rather a sign of its infinity in the sense that it enables humans to socially mediate their relation to the rest of nature in an infinite number of ways.

329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually " afraid of letting opportunities slip." " Better do anything whatever, than nothing "-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like " to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true " sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. " One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice !

If you’re suddenly as curious as I am to find out if it was as good between us as it now seems in retrospect, then say so.” His own suggestion startled Ian, although having made it, he saw no great harm in exchanging a few kisses if that was what she wanted. To Elizabeth, his statement that it had been “good between us” defused her ire and confused her at the same time. She stared at him in dazed wonder while his hands tightened imperceptibly on her arms. Self-conscious, she let her gaze drop to his finely molded lips, watching as a faint smile, a challenging smile lifted them at the corners, and inch by inch, the hands on her arms were drawing her closer. “Afraid to find out?” he asked, and it was the trace of huskiness in his voice that she remembered, that worked its strange spell on her again, as it had so long ago. His hands shifted to the curve of her waist. “Make up your mind,” he whispered, and in her confused state of loneliness and longing, she made no protest when he bent his head. A shock jolted through her as his lips touched hers, warm, inviting-brushing slowly back and forth. Paralyzed, she waited for that shattering passion he’d shown her before, without realizing that her participation had done much to trigger it. Standing still and tense, she waited to experience that forbidden burst of exquisite delight…wanted to experience it, just once, just for a moment. Instead his kiss was feather-light, softly stroking…teasing! She stiffened, pulling back an inch, and his gaze lifted lazily from her lips to her eyes. Dryly, he said, “That’s not quit the way I remembered it.” “Nor I,” Elizabeth admitted, unaware that he was referring to her lack of participation. “Care to try it again?” Ian invited, still willing to indulge in a few pleasurable minutes of shared ardor, so long as there was no pretense that it was anything but that, and no loss of control on his part. The bland amusement in his tone finally made her suspect he was treating this as some sort of diverting game or perhaps a challenge, and she looked at him in shock, “Is this a-a contest?” “Do you want to make it into one?” Elizabeth shook her head and abruptly surrendered her secret memories of tenderness and stormy passion. Like all her other former illusions about him, that too had evidently been false. With a mixture of exasperation and sadness, she looked at him and said, “I don’t think so.” “Why not?” “You’re playing a game,” she told him honestly, mentally throwing her hands up in weary despair, “and I don’t understand the rules.” “They haven’t changed,” he informed her. “It’s the same game we played before-I kiss you, and,” he emphasized meaningfully, “you kiss me.” His blunt criticism of her lack of participation left her caught between acute embarrassment and the urge to kick him in the shin, but his arm was tightening around her waist while his other hand was sliding slowly up her back, sensuously stroking her nape. “How do you remember it?” he teased as his lips came closer. “Show me.

our government is still breaking our treaty obligations. If you coolly strip away the endless administrative rhetoric about budgets and governance, the endless studies and the endemic lack of broad policies coming from the Department of Indian Affairs, you begin to realize that we are still caught up in the racist assimilation policies of a century ago. Let me take a broader example. We all know that the treaties involved a massive loss of land for First Nations. What most of us pretend we don’t know is that this remarkable generosity was tied to permanent obligations taken on by colonial officials, then by the Government of Canada; that is, by the Crown; that is, by you and me. So we got the use of land – and therefore the possibility of creating Canada – in return for a relationship in which we have permanent obligations. We have kept the land. We have repeatedly used ruses to get more of their land. And we have not fulfilled our side of the agreement. We pretend that we do not have partnership obligations. It’s pretty straightforward. We criticize. We insult. We complain. We weasel. Surely, we say, these handouts have gone on long enough. But the most important handout was to us. Bob Rae put it this way at the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Treaty Conference in June 2014: “It’s ridiculous to think people would say: ‘I have all this land, millions and millions and millions of acres of land, I’m giving it to you for a piece of land that is five miles by five miles and a few dollars a year.’ To put it in terms of a real estate transaction, it’s preposterous. It doesn’t make any sense.” So the generosity was from First Nations to newcomers. And we are keeping that handout – the land – offered in good faith by friends and allies.

We could call Christianity, in particular, a huge treasure house of the most elegant forms of consolation — there are so many pleasant, soothing, narcotizing things piled up in it, and for this purpose it takes so many of the most dangerous and most audacious chances. It shows such sophistication, such southern refinement, especially when it guesses what kind of emotional stimulant can overcome, at least for a while, the deep depression, leaden exhaustion, and black sorrow of the physiologically impaired. For, generally speaking, with all great religions, the main issue concerns the fight against a certain endemic exhaustion and heaviness. We can from the outset assume as probable that from time to time, in particular places on the earth, a feeling of physiological inhibition must necessarily become master over wide masses of people, but, because of a lack of knowledge about physiology, it does not enter people’s consciousness as something physiological, so they look for and attempt to find its “cause” and remedy only in psychology and morality (—this, in fact, is my most general formula for whatever is commonly called a “religion”). Such a feeling of inhibition can have a varied ancestry; for instance, it can be the result of cross-breeding between different races (or between classes — for classes also always express differences in origin and race: European “Weltschmerz” [pain at the state of the world] and nineteenth-century “pessimism” are essentially the consequence of an irrational, sudden mixing of the classes), or it can be caused by incorrect emigration — a race caught in a climate for which its powers of adaptation are not sufficient (the case of the Indians in India); or by the influence of the age and exhaustion of the race (Parisian pessimism from 1850 on); or by an incorrect diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the inanity of vegetarians, who, of course, have on their side the authority of Squire Christopher in Shakespeare); or by degeneration in the blood, malaria, syphilis and things like that (German depression after the Thirty Years’ War, which spread bad diseases in an epidemic through half of Germany and thus prepared the ground for German servility, German timidity).

Will she be all right?” Gary asked fearfully. In spite of himself, he had checked her pulse several times. “She must be all right,” Gregori said very softly. The voice was like velvet, but there was something in it that sent a shiver of apprehension through Gary. If anything happened to Savannah, Gary realized that no one, nothing in the world, would ever be safe again from the Carpathian. He hadn’t considered that before, and he had no idea where the knowledge came from, but he knew it absolutely. He crawled from the cramped space and picked his way a small distance from the cave. The night noises bothered him, were strange and a bit daunting. Gregori gathered Savannah tenderly into his arms. Come to me, my life and breath. Wake and be with me. He gave the command, and even as he felt her heart flutter, he pressed her mouth to his throat. Feed, ma petite. Feed and replenish what you selflessly gave to me. Savannah turned her head, her first breath a sigh of warmth against his throat. She nuzzled closer, drowsy and weak from lack of blood. Her tongue tasted his skin, caressed his pulse. Gregori’s body tightened alarmingly as her teeth sent white-hot pleasure slicing through him. Slowly her skin warmed, went from ashen to a healthy glow. Her arms slipped around his neck, and she held him close, her body fitting into his, a restless ache of need and hunger. Savannah closed the pinpricks on her lifemate’s neck, feathered kisses up his throat to his jaw, then found the corner of his mouth. Gregori caught her head and held her still, his mouth dominating, taking hers with a need as elemental as the wind. “I thought I lost you,” she whispered into his heart, his soul. “I thought I lost you.” “Are you always going to be pulling me out of trouble?” he asked, some strong, unnamed emotion choking him, blocking his throat. A small smile tugged at her soft mouth. “Back you up, you mean.” He groaned at her terminology. “Je t’ àime, Savannah. More than I can ever express in words of any language.” His arms held her tight, sheltering her against his heart. She was his world, would always be his world. She was his laughter, his light. She showed him how to slip easily between both worlds. She gave him faith in humans that had never been there before.

The final examination came and my mother came down to watch it. She hated watching me fight. (Unlike my school friends, who took a weird pleasure in the fights--and more and more so as I got better.) But Mum had a bad habit. Instead of standing on the balcony overlooking the gymnasium where the martial arts grading and fights took place, she would lie down on the ground--among everyone else vying to get a good view. Now don’t ask me why. She will say it is because she couldn’t bear to watch me get hurt. But I could never figure out why she just couldn’t stay outside if that was her reasoning. I have, though, learned that there is never much logic to my wonderful mother, but at heart there is great love and concern, and that has always shone through with Mum. Anyway, it was the big day. I had performed all the routines and katas and it was now time for the kumite, or fighting part of the black-belt grading. The European grandmaster Sensei Enoeda had come down to adjudicate. I was both excited and terrified--again. The fight started. My opponent (a rugby ace from a nearby college), and I traded punches, blocks, and kicks, but there was no real breakthrough. Suddenly I found myself being backed into a corner, and out of instinct (or desperation), I dropped low, spun around, and caught my opponent square round the head with a spinning back fist. Down he went. Now this was not good news for me. It was bad form and showed a lack of control. On top of that, you simply weren’t meant to deck your opponent. The idea was to win with the use of semicontact strikes, delivered with speed and technique that hit but didn’t injure your opponent. So I winced, apologized, and then helped the guy up. I then looked over to Sensei Enoeda, expecting a disapproving scowl, but instead was met with a look of delight. The sort of look that a kid gives when handed an unexpected present. I guess that the fighter in him loved it, and on that note I passed and was given my black belt. I had never felt so proud as I did finally wearing that belt after having crawled my way up the rungs of yellow, green, orange, purple, brown--you name it--colored belts. I had done this on my own and the hard way; you can’t buy your way to a black belt. I remember being told by our instructor that martial arts is not about the belts, it is about the spirit; and I agree…but I still couldn’t help sleeping with my black belt on that first night. Oh, and the bullying stopped.

Sebastian encountered Cam in the hallway outside the reading room. “Where is he?” he demanded without preamble. Stopping before him with an expressionless face, Cam said shortly, “He’s gone.” “Why didn’t you follow him?” White-hot fury blazed in Sebastian’s eyes. This news, added to the frustration of his vow of celibacy, was the last straw. Cam, who had been exposed to years of Ivo Jenner’s volcanic temper, remained unruffled. “It was unnecessary in my judgment,” he said. “He won’t return.” “I don’t pay you to act on your own damned judgment. I pay you to act on mine! You should have dragged him here by the throat and then let me decide what was to be done with the bastard.” Cam remained silent, sliding a quick, subtle glance at Evie, who was inwardly relieved by the turn of events. They were both aware that had Cam brought Bullard back to the club, there was a distinct possibility that Sebastian might actually have killed him— and the last thing Evie wanted was a murder charge on her husband’s head. “I want him found,” Sebastian said vehemently, pacing back and forth across the reading room. “I want at least two men hired to look for him day and night until he is brought to me. I swear he’ll serve as an example to anyone who even thinks of lifting a finger against my wife.” He raised his arm and pointed to the doorway. “Bring me a list of names within the hour. The best detectives available— private ones. I don’t want some idiot from the New Police, who’ll foul this up as they do everything else. Go.” Though Cam undoubtedly had a few opinions to offer on the matter, he kept them to himself. “Yes, my lord.” He left the room at once, while Sebastian glared after him. Seeking to calm his seething temper, Evie ventured, “There is no need to take your anger out on Cam. He—” “Don’t even try to excuse him,” Sebastian said darkly. “You and I both know that he could have caught that damned gutter rat had he wanted to. And I’ll be damned if I’ll tolerate your calling him by his first name— he is not your brother, nor is he a friend. He’s an employee, and you’ll refer to him as ‘Mr. Rohan’ from now on.” “He is my friend,” Evie replied in outrage. “He has been for years!” “Married women don’t have friendships with young unmarried men.” “Y-you dare to insult my honor with the implication that… that…” Evie could hardly speak for the multitude of protests that jammed inside her. “I’ve done nothing to merit such a lack of tr-tr-trust!” “I trust you. It’s everyone else that I hold in suspicion.

Much to Sophie’s extreme lack of surprise, Benedict showed up at his mother’s home the following morning for breakfast. Sophie should have been able to avoid him completely, except that he was loitering in the hall as she tried to make her way down to the kitchen, where she planned to take her morning meal with the rest of the servants. “And how was your first night at Number Five, Bruton Street?” he inquired, his smile lazy and masculine. “Splendid,” Sophie replied, stepping aside so that she might make a clean half circle around him. But as she stepped to her left, he stepped to his right, effectively blocking her path. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself,” he said smoothly. Sophie stepped back to her right. “I was,” she said pointedly. Benedict was far too debonair to step back to his left, but he somehow managed to turn and lean against a table in just the right way to once again block her movement. “Have you been given a tour of the house?” he asked. “By the housekeeper.” “And of the grounds?” “There are no grounds.” He smiled, his brown eyes warm and melting. “There’s a garden.” “About the size of a pound note,” she retorted. “Nonetheless . . .” “Nonetheless,” Sophie cut in, “I have to eat breakfast.” He stepped gallantly aside. “Until next time,” he murmured. And Sophie had the sinking feeling that next time would come quickly indeed. Thirty minutes later, Sophie edged slowly out of the kitchen, half-expecting Benedict to jump out at her from around a corner. Well, maybe not half-expecting. Judging from the way she couldn’t quite breathe, she was probably whole-expecting. But he wasn’t there. She inched forward. Surely he would come bounding down the stairs at any moment, ambushing her with his very presence. Still no Benedict. Sophie opened her mouth, then bit her tongue when she realized she’d been about to call out his name. “Stupid girl,” she muttered. “Who’s stupid?” Benedict asked. “Surely not you.” Sophie nearly jumped a foot. “Where did you come from?” she demanded, once she’d almost caught her breath. He pointed to an open doorway. “Right there,” he answered, his voice all innocence. “So now you’re jumping out at me from closets?” “Of course not.” He looked affronted. “That was a staircase.” Sophie peered around him. It was the side staircase. The servants’ staircase. Certainly not anyplace a family member would just happen to be walking. “Do you often creep down the side staircase?” she asked, crossing her arms. He leaned forward, just close enough to make her slightly uncomfortable, and, although she would never admit it to anyone, barely even herself, slightly excited. “Only when I want to sneak up on someone.” -Benedict & Sophie

And what is the popular color for gowns this Season?” he asked with a smile when it became necessary to announce himself. She gave a little start, and when she raised her face to look up at him, her cheeks were pink, her eyes wide. She looked, for lack of a better comparison, like a child caught doing something she oughtn’t. “Oh! Hello, Grey.” She glanced away. “Um, blue seems to be very favorable this year.” Arching a brow, he nodded at the periodical in her hand. “Beg pardon. I thought you were reading a ladies’ magazine.” “I am,” she replied with a coy smile. “But fashion is not one of its main areas of interest.” With an expression like hers-very much like the Cheshire cat in that book by Lewis Carroll-he doubted it was an article on housekeeping that put such becoming color in her cheeks. “May I?” he asked, holding out his hand. Her grip on the magazine tightened, reluctant to give it up. “Only if you promise not to tell Mama you saw me reading it.” Oh, this was trouble. Still, it was none of his business what a grown woman of three and twenty read. He was curious, that was all. “I promise.” She hesitated, then put the pages into his hand. Placing his fingers between the thin sheaves to mark her spot, Grey flipped to the cover. Christ on a pony! The magazine looked fairly harmless-the sketch on the front showed a demure young lady in a stylish gown and hat, sitting on a park bench. Only upon closer inspection could one notice that the object of her attention-and rapturous smile-was the young man bathing in the lake just on the edge of the page. He was bare-chested-quite possibly bare everywhere, but that key part of anatomy was carefully hidden with a line of text that read, “Ten ways to keep a gentleman at home-and in bed.” He didn’t want to see what she was reading. He had heard of this magazine before. Voluptuous was a racy publication for women, filled with erotic stories, advice, and articles about sexual relationships, how to conduct oneself to avoid scandal, etc. He could take her to task for reading it, but what would be the point? No doubt the information in it would serve her wisely someday. He gave the magazine back to her. “I have to confess, I’m a little surprised to find you reading such…material.” She shrugged. “I was curious. My parents were so happy in their marriage, so very much the opposite of most of what I’ve heard. If I’m to make a match as good as theirs, I need to know as much as I can about how to have a satisfying marriage.” Grey almost groaned. The image of Rose “satisfying” herself filled his mind with such clarity it was difficult to remember he’d never actually seen such a delightful sight. His body stiffened at the delectable images his mind conjured, and he had to fold his hands in front of him to hide his growing arousal.

In Hiding - coming summer of 2020 WAYNE ANTHONY SEEKS REDEMPTION FROM A BAD DAY - Although warned about getting the stitches wet, he believed a hot shower was the only road to his redemption. Experienced taught him the best way to relieve the tightness in his lower back was by standing beneath the near-scalding water. Dropping the rest of his clothing, he turned the shower on full blast. The hot water rushed from the showerhead filling the tiny room with steam, instantly the small mirror on the medicine cabinet fogged up. The man quietly pulled the shower curtain back and entered the shower stall without a sound. Years of acting as another’s shadow had trained him to live soundlessly. The hot water cascaded over his body as the echo from the pounding water deadened slightly. Grabbing the sample sized soap, he pulled the paper off and tossed the wrapper over the curtain rail. Wayne rubbed the clean smelling block until his large hands disappeared beneath the lather. He ignored the folded washcloth, opting to use his hands across his body. Gently he cleaned the injury allowing the slime of bacterial soap to remove the residual of the rust-colored betadine. All that remained when he finished was the pale orange smear from the antiseptic. This scar was not the only mar to his body. The water cascaded down hard muscles making rivulets throughout the thatches of dark hair. He raised his arms gingerly as he washed beneath them; the tight muscles of his abdomen glistened beneath the torrent of water. Opening a bottle of shampoo-slash-conditioner, he applied a dab then ran his hands across his scalp. Finally, the tension in his square jaw had eased, making his handsome face more inviting. The cords of his neck stood out as he rinsed the shampoo from his hair. It coursed down his chest leading down to his groin where the scented wash caught in his pelvic hair. Wayne's body was one of perfection for any woman; if that was, she could ignore the mutilations. Knife injuries left their mark with jagged white lines. Most of these, he had doctored himself; his lack of skill resulted in crude scars. The deepest one, undulated along the left side of his abdomen, that one had required the art of a surgeon. Dropping his arms, he surrenders himself to the pelting deluge from the shower. The steamy water cascaded down his body, pulling the soap toward the drain. Across his back, it slid down several small indiscernible pockmarks left by gunshot wounds, the true extent of their damage far beneath his skin. Slowly the suds left his body, snaking down his muscular legs. It slithered down the scars on his left knee, the result of replacement surgery after a thug took a bat to it. Wayne stood until the hot water cooled, and ran translucent over his body. Finally, he washes the impact of the long day from his mind and spirit.

Come on, lovey, open up. These buckets is heavy.” The plea accompanied another tapping. “Patience, Molly.” Christopher paused for a brief moment, gathering the towel about him again. Then his muscles flexed, and if she had found the breath, Erienne would have shrieked as he lifted her and dumped her onto the bed. She half raised with her mouth open to hotly voice her objection to whatever he had in mind, but he flung the bedcovers over her head, squelching comment. “Lie still.” His whisper bore a tone of command that could prompt immediate obedience from even the most reluctant. Erienne froze, and with a smile Christopher reached across to turn down the other side of the bed to make it seem as if he had just left it. Frantic visions involving her possible fate flew through Erienne’s mind. She considered the horrible humiliation she would suffer if she were discovered in the man’s bed. Her fears burgeoned, her rage peaked, and she threw back the covers, intending to escape the trap he laid for her. In the next brief second she caught her breath sharply and snatched the covers back over her head again, for the sight of him standing stark naked beside the chair where his clothes were draped was too much for her virgin eyes to bear. It had been no more than a glimpse, but the vision of his tall, tanned, wide-shouldered form bathed in the pinkish light of the rising sun was forever branded in her brain. Christopher chuckled softly as Erienne curled into the bed and finally obeyed his warning. He slipped on his breeches, secured them, and moved across the room to unlock the door. Molly knew her trade and her competition, and the village of Mawbry suited her well, since there was an absolute lack of the latter. When Christopher opened the portal, she was through it in a trice and shrugging out of the yoke that bore the pails. Pressing herself tightly against the male form, she rubbed her fingers through the hair on his chest and fluttered her lashes. “Oh, lovey, ye are a wondrous sight for any girl to behold.” “I’ve already told you, Molly. I have no need of yer services,” Christopher stated bluntly. “I only want the water.” “Ah, come now, lovey,” she crooned. “I knows ye’ve been away ter sea and needs a li’l tussle in bed. Why, with such a man as yerself, I’d be more’n willin’ ter give ye all ye need without a hint o’ a coin.” Christopher swept his hand toward the mentioned furnishing, drawing the maid’s eyes to it. “I already have all I desire. Now be along with you.” Molly’s dark eyes widened in surprise as she turned to stare at the bed. Unable to mistake the curvaceous form hidden beneath the quilt, she straightened indignantly and with a swish of her skirts was gone from the room, slamming the door behind her. Erienne waited, not daring to come out from beneath the covering until Christopher tapped her on the shoulder. “ ’Tis safe now. You can come out.” “Are you dressed?” she asked cautiously, her voice muffled beneath the covers. Christopher chuckled. “I’ve got my breeches on, if that’s what you’re worried about." -Molly, Christopher, & Erienne

The man was naked. He was all bones and ribs and snarling mouth. The front of him was caked in blood, a smear of charcoal black in the dim red glow of Palmer’s dive light. There was just a flash of this grisly image before the man crashed into Palmer, knocking him to the ground, desperate hands clenching around his throat. Palmer saw pops of bright light as his head hit the floor. He couldn’t breathe. He heard his own gurgles mix with the raspy hisses from the man on top of him. A madman. A thin, half-starved, and full-crazed madman. Palmer fought for a breath. His visor was knocked from his head. Letting go of the man’s wrists, he reached for his dive knife, but his leg was pinned, his boot too far away. He pawed behind himself and felt his visor, had some insane plan of getting it to his temples, getting his suit powered on, overloading the air around him, trying to shake the man off. But as his fingers closed on the hard plastic—and as the darkness squeezed in around his vision—he instead swung the visor at the snarling man’s face, a final act before the door to that king’s crypt sealed shut on him. A piercing shriek returned Palmer to his senses. Or it was the hands coming off his neck? The naked man howled and lunged again, but Palmer got a boot up, caught the man in the chest, kicked him. He scrambled backward while the man reeled. The other diver. Brock’s diver. Palmer turned and crawled on his hands and knees to get distance, got around a desk, moving as fast as he could, heart pounding. Two divers. There had been two divers. He waited for the man’s partner to jump onto his back, for the two men to beat him to death for his belly full of jangling coin— —when he bumped into the other diver. And saw by his dive light that he was no threat. And the bib of gore on the man chasing him was given sudden meaning. Palmer crawled away, sickened. He wondered how long the men had been down here, how long one had been eating the other. Hands fell onto his boots and yanked him, dragging him backward. A reedy voice yelled for him to be still. And then he felt a tug as his dive knife was pulled from its sheath, stolen. Palmer spun onto his back to defend himself. His own knife flashed above him traitorously, was brought down by those bone-thin arms, was meant to skewer him. There was a crunch against his belly. A painful blow. The air came out of Palmer. The blade was raised to strike him again, but there was no blood. His poor life had been saved by a fistful of coin. Palmer brought up his knee as the man struck again—and shin met forearm with a crack. A howl, and the knife was dropped. Palmer fumbled for it, his dive light throwing the world into pale reds and deep shadows. Hand on the hilt, his knife reclaimed, he slashed at the air, and the man fell back, hands up, shouting, “Please, please!” Palmer scooted away, keeping the knife in front of him. He was weak from fitful sleep and lack of food, but this poor creature before him seemed even weaker. Enraged and with the element of surprise, the man had nearly killed him, but it had been like fighting off a homeless dune-sleeper who had jumped him for some morsel of bread. Palmer dared to turn his dive light up so he could see the man better. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” the man said. “Thought you were a ghost.” The