Cavity Quotes

I wonder if there's such a thing as a spiritual dentist? I think my whole personality is full of cavities!

Can you die from a broken heart, do you know? And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He's killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I'm afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go?

You're so sweet, you're going to give me a cavity.

My love affair with (him) had a wonderful element of romance to it, which I will always cherish. But it was not an infatuation, and here’s how I can tell: because I did not demand that he become my Great Emancipator or my Source of All Life, nor did I immediately vanish into that man’s chest cavity like a twisted, unrecognizable, parasitical homonculus. During our long period of courtship, I remained intact within my own personality, and I allowed myself to meet (him) for who he was.

When she opened her eyes, she was both in her body and watching it, nowhere near the cavity of the tree. The Blue that was before her stood inches from a boy in an Aglionby sweater. There was a slight stoop to his posture, and his shoulders were spattered darkly with rain. It was his fingers that Blue felt on her face. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Tears coursed down the other Blue's face. Though some strange magic, Blue could feel them on her face as well. She could feel, too, sick, rising misery she'd felt in the churchyard, the grief that felt bigger than her. The other Blue's tears seemed endless. One drop slid after another, each following an identical path down her cheeks. The boy in the Aglionby sweater leaned his forehead against Blue's. She felt the pressure of his skin against hers, and suddenly she could smell mint. It'll be okay. Gansey told the other Blue. She could tell that he was afraid. It'll be okay. Impossibly, Blue realized that this other Blue was crying because she loved Gansey. And that the reason Gansey touched her like that, his fingers so careful with her, was because he knew that her kiss could kill him. She could feel how badly the other Blue wanted to kiss him, even as she dreaded it. Though she couldn't understand why, her real, present day memories in the tree cavity were clouded with other false memories of their lips nearly touching, a life this other Blue had already lived. Okay, I'm ready- Gansey's voice caught, just a little. Blue, kiss me.

Explore me,' you said and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: what is success to us? More money? That's fine. A healthy family? A happy marriage? Helping others? To be famous? Spiritually sound? To express ourselves? To create art? To leave the world a better place than we found it? What is success to me? Continue to ask yourself that question. How are you prosperous? What is your relevance? Your answer may change over time and that's fine but do yourself this favor – whatever your answer is, don't choose anything that would jeopardize your soul. Prioritize who you are, who you want to be, and don't spend time with anything that antagonizes your character. Don't depend on drinking the Kool-Aid – it's popular, tastes sweet today, but it will give you cavities tomorrow. Life is not a popularity contest. Be brave, take the hill. But first answer the question.

Julian, sometimes girls are like junk food. They look good, and they sure taste good… but you know they're not healthy for you and cause cavities so it's better to just leave 'em alone. Got me?

Primitive societies are largely free of cardiovascular disease, cancer, dental cavities, economic theories, lounge music, and other modern ailments.

He was fantastic eye candy, and I earned the right to have a few cavities.

We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better. Then it melts. The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don't know what just happened. They can't remember.

I thought I was going to be the first person to die from gum build up clogging my stomach cavity

One can only go for so long without asking ‘who am I?’, ‘where do I come from?’, ‘what does all this mean?’, ‘what is being?’, ‘what came before me and what might come after?’. Without answers there is only a hole. A hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities.

No worries.You go save the world.I'm gonna finish getting a cavity.

There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a number fourteen needle and a good strong arm.

Incidentally, I only have one cavity, and as much as my dentist asks me to, I just can't bring myself to floss.

People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids.

The bigger they are, the easier it is to fly up their nasal cavity.

Overmodulation By Charlotte M Liebel-Fawls You're a cavity in my oasis, You're a porthole in my sea, You're a stretch of the imagination every time you look at me. You're an ocean in my wineglass, You're a Steinway on the beach, You're a captivating audience, an exciting Rembrandt, A Masterpiece.

The guards had asked the Doctor to please wait in the hallway until Mr McCavity had time to see him. So it seemed only polite, the Doctor thought, to wait until they had gone before he wandered off to explore the house.

He imagined dying and being cut open and there were all his bones and muscles and his bared arteries and capillaries leading to a cavity in his chest where instead of a heart he had his camera.

Am I worried about the future? I don't know. When I think of the word it's like seeing a cavity, a space where a tooth used to be.

Put your currency where your oral cavity is.

The thing about a cavity search is this: it has nothing to do with the dentist.

She would try anything, she would do anything. She would open her own veins, her own body cavity, and give him her blood, her heart, her organs, if it would do the slightest good.

And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she'd felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist's gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.

Ultimately, the loss becomes immortal and hole is more familiar than tooth. The tongue worries the phantom root, the mind scans the heart's chambers to verify its emptiness. There is the thing itself and then there is the predicament of its cavity.

I'm a uniter not a divider. That means when it comes time to sew up your chest cavity, we use stitches as opposed to opening it up.

...our moral and practical attitude....impulses, inhibitions.... how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent with the cavity of a jar.... It becomes our subconscious. [p. 287]

Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of water drops in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear becomes a cavity sculpted in the interior of the mind.

Zero cavities. Two abortions. One divorce. Thirty years on Earth.

In the cavity were two handguns with ammunition clips.

It is a common belief that we breathe with our lungs alone, but in point of fact, the work of breathing is done by the whole body. The lungs play a passive role in the respiratory process. Their expansion is produced by an enlargement, mostly downward, of the thoracic cavity and they collapse when that cavity is reduced. Proper breathing involves the muscles of the head, neck, thorax, and abdomen. It can be shown that chronic tension in any part of the body's musculature interferes with the natural respiratory movements. Breathing is a rhythmic activity. Normally a person at rest makes approximately 16 to 17 respiratory incursions a minute. The rate is higher in infants and in states of excitation. It is lower in sleep and in depressed persons. The depth of the respiratory wave is another factor which varies with emotional states. Breathing becomes shallow when we are frightened or anxious. It deepens with relaxation, pleasure and sleep. But above all, it is the quality of the respiratory movements that determines whether breathing is pleasurable or not. With each breath a wave can be seen to ascend and descend through the body. The inspiratory wave begins deep in the abdomen with a backward movement of the pelvis. This allows the belly to expand outward. The wave then moves upward as the rest of the body expands. The head moves very slightly forward to suck in the air while the nostrils dilate or the mouth opens. The expiratory wave begins in the upper part of the body and moves downward: the head drops back, the chest and abdomen collapse, and the pelvis rocks forward. Breathing easily and fully is one of the basic pleasures of being alive. The pleasure is clearly experienced at the end of expiration when the descending wave fills the pelvis with a delicious sensation. In adults this sensation has a sexual quality, though it does not induce any genital feeling. The slight backward and forward movements of the pelvis, similar to the sexual movements, add to the pleasure. Though the rhythm of breathing is pronounced in the pelvic area, it is at the same time experienced by the total body as a feeling of fluidity, softness, lightness and excitement. The importance of breathing need hardly be stressed. It provides the oxygen for the metabolic processes; literally it supports the fires of life. But breath as "pneuma" is also the spirit or soul. We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss. That is why breathing is the dominant factor in the practice of Yoga.

I mean, what do you do, when you find that things are not what you were taught they’re supposed to be? What do you do with the desperation that boils up from your stomach when you know there’s a road out there with your destination at the end of it, but it’s too damned dark to even find the road? You turn and turn and turn around like a dog trying to escape. Shrieks in the cavity of your head that so urgently needs to be filled with facts and challenges.

All I was allowed to keep for myself was missing you. Which is what? The tears that pricked the inside of my face, the emotion catching at the top of my throat, the cavity in my chest that was larger than I am. Was that all I had now?

This choreography of ruin, the world breaking like glass under a microscope, the way it doesn’t crack all at once, but spreads out from the damaged cavities. Still for a moment it all recedes. The backyard potatoes swell quietly buried beneath their canopy of leaves. The wind rubs its hands through the trees.

Love is not a profession genteel or otherwise sex is not dentistry the slick filling of aches and cavities you are not my doctor you are not my cure, nobody has that power, you are merely a fellow/traveler.

Eventually she came. She appeared suddenly, exactly like she'd done that day- she stepped into the sunshine, she jumped, she laughed and threw her head back, so her long ponytail nearly grazed the waistband of her jeans. After that, I couldn't think about anything else. The mole on the inside of her right elbow, like a dark blot of ink. The way she ripped her nails to shreds when she was nervous. Her eyes, deep as a promise. Her stomach, pale and soft and gorgeous, and the tiny dark cavity of her belly button. I nearly went crazy.

Jesus,” Kiernan said as he stepped from the Bronco and a gust of frigid wind lifted his hair. “I think my testicles just climbed up into my abdominal cavity in fear.” Matt chuckled. “Lovely visual.” He cautiously joined him on the icy sidewalk. “They’ll come back out of hiding as soon as you warm up.” “So you say. The poor things aren’t used to this kind of weather. It’s traumatizing. I’m going to expect you to check later to make sure they’re still where they belong.” “I can certainly make an inspection of the general area. I’m a detective. It’s all about gathering evidence.

His cynicism - a veteran's cynicism - was a thing that disturbed him all the time. It seemed to him after the war that the world was thoroughly altered. It was not even a thing you could explain to anybody, why it was that everything was folly. People appeared enormously foolish to him. He understood that they were only animated cavities full of jelly and strings and liquids. He had seen the insides of jaggedly ripped-open dead people. He knew, for instance, what brains looked like spilling out of somebody's head. In the context of this, much of what went on in normal life seemed wholly and disturbingly ridiculous.

Grandma Baker shook her head. “More lies. What’s wrong with milk? Milk is healthy and great for your bones.” “Yes, raw cow’s milk is very healthy. It’s been drunk for centuries the world over because of its health benefits. That’s exactly why we had to poison it. Like the idiotic fluoride lie about cavities, we informed the public that raw milk contains harmful bacteria and needs to be pasteurized and homogenized to ensure people’s health. After milk is pasteurized and homogenized, it’s not only not healthy anymore, it’s very unhealthy and has the same rap sheet as the other culprits we’ve talked about.” Mrs. Baker shook her head. “Again with the lies. There’s evidence that shows unpasteurized milk may contain bacteria and pathogens that could make people ill. That’s why it’s pasteurized.” “You’re not wrong there, just misinformed on how to correctly fix the problem. Milk being unpasteurized wasn’t the problem, like I said, people safely drank raw milk for centuries. Livestock being subjected to unsanitary and poor hygiene practices in the modern age was the reason milk started containing bacteria and pathogens. To correct this, you fix the livestock issue, the source of the problem. You don’t put healthy raw milk through a process that eliminates possible pathogens by pasteurizing and homogenizing it so it becomes unhealthy and slowly kills you over time. That’s obviously not an intelligent move.” Karver laughed. “But again, thank you for illustrating how effective the great design is at keeping humans weak and brainwashed. The only reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m going to kill you anyway. I’m merely letting you know how stupid you and your species are before I do you in.

Folks don’t give themselves enough credit. The mother who endures cavities so her children can get braces. The father who works a dead-end job so his kids can have a roof over their heads. The daughter who sacrifices college so she can take care of her disabled mother. They are all heroes, and don’t you believe otherwise.

Did the dentist hurt you when he drilled your tooth to remove the cavity?” “Yes.” “Did he harm you?” “No, he made me feel better.” “Hurt and harm are different,” I pointed out. “When you ate the sugar that gave you the cavity, did that hurt?” “No, it tasted good,” he said, with a smile that told me he was catching on. “Did it harm you?” “Yes.” “That’s my point. Things can hurt and not harm us. In fact they can even be good for us. And things that feel good can be very harmful to us.

Touch? Other guys? He knew she’d have to, but to hear her say it, to know she’d tried… A terrible pressure condensed in his chest cavity and his skull, and then he heard some sort of monster in the room—

Some cultures ate nothing but meat, while others were mostly vegetarian. Some relied primarily on homemade cheese; others consumed no dairy at all. Their teeth were almost always perfect; their mouths were exceptionally wide, nasal apertures broad. They suffered few, if any, cavities and little dental disease.

Angry Girl has no cavity. She has teeth.

She’ll never leave me. I won’t give her that option. Either she chooses me back or we both leave this earth in two dark cavities, dug out next to one another.

What ever happened to mental hygiene?” he asked rhetorically. “It doesn’t exist—and never did. When you went through high school, you were never taught how to deal with stress, how to deal with trauma, how to deal with tension and anxiety—with the whole list of mood impairments. There’s no preventive maintenance. We know how to prevent cavities. But we don’t teach children how to be resilient, how to cope with stress on a daily basis.

He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been, in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away, by the fervour of this reproach.

Manic depression — or bipolar disorder — is like racing up to a clifftop before diving headfirst into a cavity. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the psychic equivalent of an extreme sport. The manic highs — that exhilarating rush to the top of the cliff — make you feel bionic in your hyper-energized capacity for generosity, sexiness and soulfulness. You feel like you have ingested stars and are now glowing from within. It’s unearned confidence-in-extremis — with an emphasis on the con, because you feel cheated once you inevitably crash into that cavity. I sometimes joke that mania is the worst kind of pyramid scheme, one that the bipolar individual doesn’t even know they’re building, only to find out, too late, that they’re also its biggest casualty.

The cavity formed between a planetary body and its ionosphere acts as a natural resonator; most people who lived on Earth were unaware that they lived on a gigantic gong that boomed out exactly sixty-nine times every day.

LAWS OF THE HOUSE OF GOD I Gomers don’t die. II Gomers go to ground. III At a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse. IV The patient is the one with the disease. V Placement comes first. VI There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a #14 needle and a good strong arm. VII Age + BUN = Lasix dose. VIII They can always hurt you more. IX The only good admission is a dead admission. X If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever. XI Show me a BMS who only triples my work and I will kiss his feet. XII If the radiology resident and the BMS both see a lesion on the chest X ray, there can be no lesion there. XIII The delivery of medical care is to do as much nothing as possible.

The vampire gagged. The muscles of its neck constricted, widened, constricted again, and it disgorged a six-inch-long metal cylinder onto my desk. The bloodsucker grasped it, twisted the cylinder’s halves apart, and retrieved a roll of papers. “Photographs,” Ghastek said, handing me a couple of sheets from the roll. “That’s disgusting.” “He is thirty years old,” Ghastek said. “All his internal organs, with the exception of the heart, atrophied long ago. The throat makes for a very good storage cavity. People seem to prefer it to the anus.” Translation: be happy I didn’t pull it out of my ass. Thank the gods for small favors.

was pleasurable, but in a terrible way, like when she’d had a cavity and kept pressing her tongue against

you abandon yourself in a cavity of pain a butterfly in a hurricane: vital, fragile and obscene

A cavity seemed to open within Thomas,widening and sucking the hope out of him.

Yeah. You know what I think?" What?" So intense was Tibby, she had practically shoved the phone into her ear cavity. She has big boobies.

She often wished she were a body with hinges, that she might throw open a door in her chest and fill its cavity.

Unfulfilled passion creates a cavity between our present and our potential—a void that can drip with destruction and despair.

Here, I have something for you.” “It had better not be an engagement ring.” He paused, his lips puckering as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him and he was regretting it. “Or gloves,” added Cinder. “That didn’t work out too well last time.” Grinning, Kai took a step closer to her and dropped to one knee. Her eyes widened. “Cinder…” Her heart thumped. “Wait.” “I’ve been waiting a long time to give this to you.” “Kai—” With an expression as serious as politics, he pulled his hand from behind his back. In it was cupped a small metal foot, frayed wires sticking up from the cavity and the joints packed with grease. Cinder

When the nasal cavity gets congested, airflow decreases and bacteria flourish. These bacteria replicate and can lead to infections and colds and more congestion. Congestion begets congestion, which gives us no other option but to habitually breathe from the mouth.

I often use the hypothetical out-of-control ice-cream truck. What would happen if you were walking across the street and were suddenly hit by a careening Mister Softee truck? As you lie there, in your last few moments of consciousness, what kind of final regrets flash through your mind? 'I should have had a last cigarette!' might be one. Or, 'I should have dropped acid with everybody else back in '74!' Maybe: 'I should have done that hostess after all!' Something along the lines of: 'I should have had more fun in my life! I should have relaxed a little more, enjoyed myself a little more . . .' That was never my problem. When they're yanking a fender out of my chest cavity, I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.

As his inner masochist came to bloom against the door of Cooper’s trailer, Chenco felt like he’d pulled his chest cavity wide open and stood ready for Steve. He wanted this, he got off on this, not so much with his dick but with something so deep inside him it made dicks seem cheap.

Let's here it for modern dentistry, eh?" I said, and he grimaced. Actually, as much as people dislike going to the dentist now, try doing it two hundred years ago, when having a cavity meant some quack knocking it out with a chisel and a hammer in the market square. With no anesthetic.

I had forgotten about the pleasures of college radio, the exquisite randomness of what got played, the twenty-minute between-songs banter of nineteen-year-olds, the smack of music I'd never heard against my brain cavity.

Only a sister could be thoroughly unimpressed with your public accomplishments and accolades but would screech in joy and support when you finally learned how to parallel park or make it through a cavity filling without fainting.

I knew even then that I was going to hell, that I couldn’t make sense of the space in me that was supposed to be where God slept but in me was just a cavity like a tooth waiting to turn to rot, my soul a blackness, a wound gone sour.

Then it hit me and I grinned at him. “You want to suck my dick!” His face grew redder. “You don’t have to say it like that,” he grumbled. I almost felt contrite. “I’m sorry. How about you want to make love to my member with your oral cavity? Or how about you want to fellate me until I let loose my love juice? Is that better?

Dennis's superior mental health was obvious from the first date, like a cleft palate. The other thing about him was that he had shapely, muscular legs. His calves were so sculpted they looked artificial, like silicone implants. This is a look I'm fond of. In fact, if I had been born a girl there is no doubt in my mind that my chest cavity would have been stuffed with two softball-sized orbs of silicone before my eleventh birthday. In this way my own mental health is somewhat like a cleft palate.

He's dead: Internal bleeding. When they opened him up they found a toothbrush shiv lodged in the anal cavity. It was never determinded whether he'd put it up there for safe keeping himself or somebody else did it for him, but it was a good lesson for the rest of the inmates. They even put up a sign. "Never put sharp objects up your ass.

As the Greeks see it, elegance arises from excavation, from the cavity.

The inside of life became far smaller than the outside, creating a cavity, an emptiness.

..Like the cavities of missing teeth in some giant denture, into which new ones were to be fitted.

i am estranged from most men. my american express card says simply: multicellular animal with specialized digestive cavities -- requires corrective glasses

I felt myself floating between two worlds. There was the ocean, effectively infinite, falling away forever to the horizon. This morning it was placid, its grip on me loose and languorous. But I was lashed to its moods now. The attachment felt limitless, irresistible. I no longer thought of waves being carved in celestial workshops. I was getting more hardheaded. Now I knew they originated in distant storms, which moved, as it were, upon the face of the deep. But my utter absorption in surfing had no rational content. It simply compelled me; there was a deep mine of beauty and wonder in it. Beyond that, I could not have explained why I did it. I knew vaguely that it filled a psychic cavity of some kind—connected, perhaps, with leaving the church, or with, more likely, the slow drift away from my family—and that it had replaced many things that came before it. I was a sunburnt pagan now. I felt privy to mysteries.

I went on to explain that it is an honour, and also that we need a transport policy. "If by 'we' you mean Britain, that's perfectly true," he acknowledged. "But if by 'we' you mean you and me and this Department, we need a transport policy like an aperture in the cranial cavity.

Somewhere across the interstate Exposure to the drug trade of emotions And the tsunami and typhoon of feelings Has made us all cops and robbers Of what we keep in the cavities In our chests

Folks don’t give themselves enough credit. The mother who endures cavities so her children can get braces. The father who works a dead-end job so his kids can have a roof over their heads. The daughter who sacrifices college so she can take care of her disabled mother. They are all heroes.

Today, unsatisfied with simply weighing me down, grief finds a way to slip inside me, filling me up like some tar-like creature that clogs my throat and lungs and crams itself into the cavities between my organs. You’ve only been gone a few hours and already I am turgid with the lack of you.

With a degree of privacy assured, I squatted down and crapped out the biopackage I’d brought along. The human anal cavity has traditionally been a smuggler favorite for most of our existence on Earth. It made me really proud to carry that fine institution on into the starflight era. Yeah, right.

She raised the dagger and plunged it into Cath’s chest. Catherine gasped, and though there were screams in the courtroom, she barely heard them over the cackle of the Three Sisters. Cold seeped into her from the blade, colder than anything she had ever known. It leached into her veins, crackling like winter ice on a frozen lake. It was so cold it burned. Lacie pulled out the blade. A beating heart was skewered on its tip. It was broken, cut almost clean in half by a blackened fissure that was filled with dust and ash. “It has been bought and paid for,” said the Sister. Then she yipped and launched herself back to the courtroom floor. She was joined by her sisters, cackling and crowding around the Queen’s heart. A moment later, a Fox, a Raccoon, and an Owl were skittering out the door, leaving behind the echo of victorious laughter. CHAPTER 54 CATH STARED AT THE DOORS still thrust wide open, her body both frozen and burning, her chest a hollow cavity. Empty and numb. She no longer hurt. That broken heart had been killing her, and it was gone. Her sorrow. Her loss. Her pain, all gone. All that was left was the rage and the fury and the desperate need for vengeance that would soon, soon be hers.

Words being spoken with my mouth, my face, yet the brain behind them had no idea of their content or meaning. The un-remembered noise reverberated within the cavities of my ears, and I could feel it despite my confusion about the rest of me. I needed to get out, now. And I was taking the faceless man with me.

(I’d learned to fish because Mel taught me, not because I longed to impale small invertebrates on barbed hooks and rip hell out of piscine oral cavities and smother fellow oxygen breathers in an alien medium

She says she is aware of the irony of being a medical examiner who smokes, but that for all the blackened lungs she's seen, it is more disturbing to open the chest cavity of a veteran and find it is pristine.

A fig is not exactly a fruit, you see. It is a synconium – a fascinating structure that hides flowers and seeds in its cavity, with a barely visible opening through which wasps can enter and deposit their pollen. And sometimes, seizing the opportunity, ants, too, crawl through that opening and eat what they can.

I thought of my father, alone and elsewhere, his head cradled in his hands. I thought of the day he'd punched a hole straight through the kitchen wall, thinking she'd be tucked away inside. All those places he'd looked and never found. Inside their mattress. In stained-glass windows. How he'd scoured the carpet for her stray hair and strung them all together with a ribbon; how he'd slept with that one lock swathed across his nostrils, hugging a pillow fitted with a nightshirt. How he'd dug up the backyard, stripped and sweating. How he'd played her favorite album on repeat and loud, a lure. How when we took up the carpet in my bedroom to find her, under the carpet was wood. Under the wood there was cracked concrete. Under the concrete there was dirt. Under the dirt there was a cavity of water. I swam down into the water with my nose clenched and lungs burning in my chest but I could not find the bottom and I couldn't see a thing.

She says she is aware of the irony of being a medical examiner who smokes, but that for all the blackened lungs she’s seen, it is more disturbing to open the chest cavity of a veteran and find that it is pristine.

Well?" Dad asked. "How do I look?" "Like you want us to follow you into an alley so you can flash us," Nick said. "Like you own sixteen birds with complicated backstories for each," Seth said. "Like you're the bass player in a Christian punk band called Please Us, Jesus," Jazz said, leaning her head out of Matilda. "Like you have red satin sheets on your bed and mirrors on the ceiling," Gibby said, her head just above Jazz's. "Like you know how to show a guy a good time," Burrito Jerry said. 'they've got a point, man," Trey said as Bob nodded. "I feel like you want to give me a body-cavity search with gloves you brouqht from home.

And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He’s killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I’m afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go? I’m letting it go.

The classic honeymoon stage where everyone feels like they’re riding a unicorn on floating rainbows while drinking Skittle smoothies. But eventually you realize the unicorn was just a horse in costume and now you have cavities.

It was the most private thing we had left—held even closer than our bodies, because our bodies were searched, all holes and crevices and cavities in every horrible way that could be imagined. But no one could shake out the truth from inside us. They couldn’t search us for that. Our guilt and our innocence were only our own, and she should know to keep it that way.

She proceeded with a rather credible and sharply focused verbal flensing that included commentary on parentage, unlikely applications of bodily parts, and ended with imprecations of toxic levels of insectile infestation of certain body cavities.

Anubis is associated with the mummification and protection of the dead for their journeys through Denver International Airport to the afterlife. He is usually portrayed as being half human and half jackal, and holding a metal detector in his hand ... Anubis is employed by the Department of Homeland Security to examine the hearts of all travellers to make sure they have not exceeded the weight limit for psychological baggage ... He is also shown frisking mummies and confiscating firearms and other contraband. It doesn't take much to tip the scales in favour of a dead body cavity search or an afterlifetime travel ban.

While working at a sawmill, he slipped and fell against the whirring blade, which tore through his upper body at the shoulder, creating a hole so large that his internal organs were exposed—one witness claimed he could see the poor man’s beating heart—and leaving his arm attached by just a few strands of glistening sinew. The millworkers bound the injuries as best they could and carried Lindbergh home, where he lay in silent agony for three days awaiting the arrival of a doctor from St. Cloud, forty miles away. When the doctor at last reached him, he took off the arm and sewed up the gaping cavity. It was said that Lindbergh made almost no sound. Remarkably, August Lindbergh recovered and lived another thirty years. Stoicism became the Lindbergh family’s most cultivated trait.

Aristotle tells us that the high-pitched voice of the female is one evidence of her evil disposition, for creatures who are brave or just (like lions, bulls, roosters and the human male) have large deep voices…. High vocal pitch goes together with talkativeness to characterize a person who is deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control. Women, catamites, eunuchs and androgynes fall into this category. Their sounds are bad to hear and make men uncomfortable…. Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death…. Woman is that creature who puts the inside on the outside. By projections and leakages of all kinds—somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual—females expose or expend what should be kept in…. [As Plutarch comments,] “…she should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders as she would guard against stripping off her clothes. For in her voice as she is blabbering away can be read her emotions, her character and her physical condition.”… Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public. A piece of inside projected to the outside. The censorship of such projections is a task of patriarchal culture that (as we have seen) divides humanity into two species: those who can censor themselves and those who cannot…. It is an axiom of ancient Greek and Roman medical theory and anatomical discussion that a woman has two mouths. The orifice through which vocal activity takes place and the orifice through which sexual activity takes place are both denoted by the wordstoma in Greek (os in Latin) with the addition of adverbs ano and kato to differentiate upper mouth from lower mouth. Both the vocal and the genital mouth are connected to the body by the neck (auchen in Greek, cervix in Latin). Both mouths provide access to a hollow cavity which is guarded by lips that are best kept closed.

It’s kind of adorable how every minute counts for him. The classic honeymoon stage where everyone feels like they’re riding a unicorn on floating rainbows while drinking Skittle smoothies. But eventually you realize the unicorn was just a horse in costume and now you have cavities.

What is so frightening about [writing]? I still don't know. Perhaps it's the horrible knowledge that no matter how well you write, the resultant product will never correlate exactly to the truth, will never arrive with quite the melodious voice you hear in the acoustic cavity of your mind.

His entire chest cavity had been opened up. Ice crystals glittered like jewels festooning his ribs, lining the walls of his ripped-open stomach; his lungs looked like two enormous multifaceted diamonds; his frozen viscera shone as brightly as wet marble. It was terrible. And it was beautiful.

We are connected to our children no matter what. They are interwoven into each cell and inseparable from every neuron. They supersede our consciousness, dwell in our every hollow and cavity and recess with our most primitive instincts, deeper even than our identities, deeper even than our selves.

It hasn't even been twenty-four hours and already, when I'm not with him, I'm marking time until I am--as if my own life has ceased to exist and is only the time in between him and him. It angers me, this endless jangling. I picture my stomach cavity filled to the brim with little pieces of bitten fingernails. A lifetime's worth of pain that never got digested. When they cut me open, that's what they will find. Strange deposits, sharp and brittle.

It wasn't easy to develop a healthy personality when the canals of your flagellate chambers were held in common with an invaginated mother, incestuous sisters and a bisexual father. When the only anatomical features on which you could construct an identity were the gastral cavity and the aperture of your osculum. The tragedy of being a vegetable was that you couldn't commit suicide. The advantage of being a sponge was that you could drown your sorrows.

The story we taught our kids and dramatized with silly hats during the Founder’s Day pageant—that story was killing everything. There were cavities in Uz’s story that needed to be filled in, before a more permanent collapse occurred. We had to look at the real origins of this blowing soil, this degraded land.

I would like those who are not at all versed in anatomy to take the trouble, before reading this, to have the heart of some large animal that has lungs dissected in their presence (for such a heart is in all respects sufficiently similar to that of a man), and to be shown the two chambers or cavities that are in it.

A source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn't have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible - the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums.

This here," he said playing with it, "is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it importance. Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past. But today I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything— and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.

i dreamt i crawled on top of you and kissed your hips, one at a time, my lips a smolder. i straddled your waist and pressed both shaking hands against your torso. spongy, like an old tree on the forest floor. i push and your flesh sinks inwardly, collapsing with decay, a soft shushing sound. a yawning hole where your organs should be. maggots used to live here until your own poison killed them off. i laid my cheek into the loam and three little mushrooms brushed over my eyelid. peat, decomposing matter, all of it, whatever you wish to call it, rested in the cavity of your chest. and there i planted seeds in the hopes something good would come out of you.

Critics do not have the satisfaction of working on things that actually exist, like sick dogs or dental cavities. So they are tempted to pluck a virtue out of necessity and claim that they toil in an altogether superior realm, that of the imagination. This implies, rather oddly, that things which do not exist are inevitably more precious than those that do, which is a fairly devastating comment on the latter. What kind of a world is it in which possibility is unquestionably preferable to actuality?

What had spoken to her in that scoured-out cavity of the granite? What dwelt in the first of the caves? Something very old and very small. Before time, it was before space also. Something snub-nosed, incapable of generosity -- the undying worm itself. Since hearing its voice, she had not entertained one large thought, she was actually envious of Adela. All this fuss over a frightened girl! Nothing had happened, 'and if it had,' she found herself thinking with the cynicism of a withered priestess, 'if it had there are worse evils than love.' The unspeakable attempt presented itself to her as love: in a cave, in a church -- Boum, it amounts to the same. Visions are supposed to entail profundity, but -- Wait till you get one, dear reader! The abyss also may be petty, the serpent of eternity made of maggots; her constant thought was: 'Less attention should be paid to my future daughter-in-law and more to me, there is no sorrow like my sorrow,' although when the attention was paid she rejected it irritably.

If you strip sex down to its physical components, it’s an act during which a man inserts a rod-shaped mass of engorged tissue into a woman’s lubricated cavity, also made of tissue. A man rubs his rod in and out, stimulating pleasure receptors in his brain until it decides to eject a genetic package that’s important in continuing the species.

To reach the farthest chamber of Lascaux, it's likely a man had to snuff out his light, lower himself down a shaft with a rope made of twisted fibers, and then rekindle his lamp in the dark so as to draw the woolly rhinoceros, the half horse, and the raging bison there. A long spear transfixes that bison, and entrails pour from its side. Beneath its front hooves lies the one painted man in all of Lascaux: prone, spindly wounded, disguised behind a bird mask. And below him, until its discovery in 196o, lay a spoon-shaped lamp carved of red sandstone ... Hold it again as it once was held, and the animals will emerge out of darkness as you pass. Nothing stays still. Shadows nestle in the cavities; a flicker of light across pale protruding rock turns a hoof or raises a head. One shape recedes as another emerges, and everything lingers in the imagination.

And once a thing enters a person’s mind, it’s always there, like woodworm in the leg of a chair, like cells of cancer, like rats in the cavities of the earth; it can’t ever be fully eradicated. Even things long forgotten remain in the dark infinity of the mind; there’s no unlearning. What’s said can’t be unsaid. And no law in this universe is immutable.

The homeland is stuck in our teeth. It’s filling our cavities. It rests on our tongues. My God. How we yearn for its olive trees. How it haunts our dreams.

Regan felt some second self slip out from the cavity of her chest to revel in it,

The Aztecs had to tear open a human chest cavity every day just to make sure that the sun would rise.

Looking at this town with an honest eye was like biting into candy with a mouthful of cavities.

Her chest felt like it was a hollow cavity encasing a cold, hard rock.

A soft growl came from somewhere deep in his chest cavity, the manifestation of a predator mesmerized by his prey.

In the act of creation, as in all the arts, the soul should be felt in the face and the fingers and the tongue, even in the cavities.

Be careful of sweet talkers, their words are like cavities

Secrets are always hardest at the beginning. After a while they settle in like the cavities in your teeth, and you only think about them when they hurt.

Busted knuckles? You one of those cage fighters? What’s your ring name? Captain Cavity?

When the silence of the night becomes the chanting of poetry, the departure of con-cavity

She was very busy fighting a full-facial, saltwater cavity wash when two big hands gripped her arms and hauled her upright.

In the same way, filling a cavity restores to the tooth its natural function of chewing. Healing does not transcend our nature; it respects it.

Those clothes are Susie's,' my father said calmly when he reached him. Buckley looked down at my blackwatch dress that he held in his hand. My father stepped closer, took the dress from my brother, and then, without speaking, he gathered the rest of my clothes, which Buckley had piled on the lawn. As he turned in silence toward the house, hardly breathing, clutching my clothes to him, it sparked. I was the only one to see the colors. Just near Buckley's ears and on the tips of his cheeks and chin he was a little orange somehow, a little red. Why can't I use them?' he asked. It landed in my father's back like a fist. Why can't I use those clothes to stake my tomatoes?' My father turned around. He saw his son standing there, behind him the perfect plot of muddy, churned-up earth spotted with tiny seedlings. 'How can you ask me that question?' You have to choose. It's not fair,' my brother said. Buck?' My father held my clothes against his chest. I watched Buckley flare and light. Behind him was the sun of the goldenrod hedge, twice as tall as it had been at my death. I'm tired of it!' Buckley blared. 'Keesha's dad died and she's okay?' Is Keesha a girl at school?' Yes!' My father was frozen. He could feel the dew that had gathered on his bare ankles and feet, could feel the ground underneath him, cold and moist and stirring with possibility. I'm sorry. When did this happen?' That's not the point, Dad! You don't get it.' Buckley turned around on his heel and started stomping the tender tomato shoots with his foot. Buck, stop!' my father cried. My brother turned. You don't get it, Dad,' he said. I'm sorry,' my father said. These are Susie's clothes and I just... It may not make sense, but they're hers-something she wore.' ... You act like she was yours only!' Tell me what you want to say. What's this about your friend Keesha's dad?' Put the clothes down.' My father laid them gently on the ground. It isn't about Keesha's dad.' Tell me what it is about.' My father was now all immediacy. He went back to the place he had been after his knee surgery, coming up out of the druggie sleep of painkillers to see his then-five-year-old son sitting near him, waiting for his eyes to flicker open so he could say, 'Peek-a-boo, Daddy.' She's dead.' It never ceased to hurt. 'I know that.' But you don't act that way.' Keesha's dad died when she was six. Keesha said she barely even thinks of him.' She will,' my father said. But what about us?' Who?' Us, Dad. Me and Lindsey. Mom left becasue she couldn't take it.' Calm down, Buck,' my father said. He was being as generous as he could as the air from his lungs evaporated out into his chest. Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go. 'What?' my father said. I didn't say anything.' Let go. Let go. Let go. I'm sorry,' my father said. 'I'm not feeling very well.' His feet had grown unbelievably cold in the damp grass. His chest felt hollow, bugs flying around an excavated cavity. There was an echo in there, and it drummed up into his ears. Let go. My father dropped down to his knees. His arm began to tingle on and off as if it had fallen asleep. Pins and needles up and down. My brother rushed to him. Dad?' Son.' There was a quaver in his voice and a grasping outward toward my brother. I'll get Grandma.' And Buckley ran. My father whispered faintly as he lay on his side with his face twisted in the direction of my old clothes: 'You can never choose. I've loved all three of you.

Because in a man’s mind, why else would a woman mention bombykol on a Friday evening in an empty parking lot when the soft breeze was coming out of the west carrying the scent of her extremely expensive shampoo directly into his nasal cavity unless it was all part of a plot to get more beakers? She couldn’t think of another reason. Except for the real one. She was falling in love with him.

Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!

sugar itself doesn’t cause cavities; it’s the acidic metabolites of the bacteria that feed on the sugar. As with acidic foods, saliva dilutes the acid and brings the mouth back to a neutral pH. You

It was difficult and exhausting, but he quickly accepted the fact that life had to go on without her. He’d lost love, and yet the world was not the slightest bit shaken by his loss. The part of his life that had had J in it went away, leaving behind a cavity, a hollow, and still the world was unmoved. Nothing would ever fill in that empty space. But Oghi’s world would keep on spinning regardless.

Unlike real tissue, human tissue simulant doesn’t snap back: The cavity remains, allowing ballistics types to judge, and preserve a record of, a bullet’s performance. Plus, you don’t need to autopsy a block of human tissue simulant; because it’s clear, you just walk up to it after you’ve shot it and take a look at the damage. Following which, you can take it home, eat it, and enjoy stronger, healthier nails in thirty days.

It was as if she had just discovered the irreversible process. It astonished her to think that so much could be lost, even the quantity of hallucination belonging just to the sailor that the world would bear no further trace of. She knew, because she had held him, that he suffered DT’s. Behind the initials was a metaphor, a delirium tremens, a trembling unfurrowing of the mind’s plowshare. The saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost. Oedipa did not know where she was. Trembling, unfurrowed, she slipped sidewise, screeching back across grooves of years, to hear again the earnest, high voice of her second or third collegiate love Ray Glozing bitching among “uhs” and the syncopated tonguing of a cavity, about his freshman calculus; “dt,” God help this old tattooed man, meant also a time differential, a vanishingly small instant in which change had to be confronted at last for what it was, where it could no longer disguise itself as something innocuous like an average rate; where velocity dwelled in the projectile though the projectile be frozen in midflight, where death dwelled in the cell though the cell be looked in on at its most quick. She knew that the sailor had seen worlds no other man had seen if only because there was that high magic to low puns, because DT’s must give access to dt’s of spectra beyond the known sun, music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright. But nothing she knew of would preserve them, or him.

Here, I have something for you." "It had better not be an engagement ring." He paused, his lips puckering as if the thought hadn't occurred to him and he was regretting it. "Or gloves," added Cinder. "That didn't work out too well last time." Grinning, Kai took a step closer to her and dropped to one knee. Her eyes widened. "Cinder ..." Her heart thumped. "Wait." "I've been waiting a long time to give this to you." "Kai -" With an expression as serious as politics, he pulled his hand from behind his back. In it was cupped a small metal foot, frayed wires sticking up from the cavity and the joints packed with grease. Cinder released her breath, then started to laugh. "You - ugh." "Are you terribly disappointed, because I'm sure Luna has some great jewelry stores if you wanted me to -" "Shut up," she said, taking the foot. She turned it over in her palms, shaking her head. "I keep trying to get rid of this thing, but somehow it keeps finding its way back to me. What made you keep it?" "It occurred to me that if I could find the cyborg that fits this foot, it must be a sign we were meant to be together." He twisted his lips to one side. "But then I realized it would probably fit an eight-year-old." "Eleven, actually." "Close enough." He hesitated. "Honestly, I guess it was the only thing I had to connect me to you when I thought I'd never see you again." She slid her gaze off the foot. "Why are you still kneeling?" Kai reached for her prosthetic hand and brushed his lips against her newly polished knuckles. "You'll have to get used to people kneeling to you. It kind of comes with the territory." "I'm going to make it a law that the correct way to address your sovereign is by giving a high five." Kai's smile brightened. "That's genus. Me too.

Frost lurched away, gagging. The nude man hung upside down, his ankles bound with orange nylon cord. Like a pig carcass hanging in a slaughterhouse, his abdomen had been sliced open, the cavity stripped of all organs. Both arms

Where are we heading?” “The closest wooded area to here is Kenwood Academy’s estate. Good place to hide, especially at night.” “If we’re going into the woods, I definitely need to change.” I glanced back at her as we returned to the curb where the cab had dropped us off. “Or you could just go home.” She crossed her arms and avoided my gaze, scowling. “You’re sick of me already? That must be a record.” I lifted my eyes to the heavens. Women. “This creature tore out a woman’s throat and busted her chest cavity open like a piñata. I don’t like the thought of it being anywhere near you.” “Did it ever occur to you that I feel the same way?” Surprise flooded over me. “No, it…actually didn’t.” “I know I’m not as strong or as smart as you are, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help. We’re partners, aren’t we?” “Yeah,” I said, and couldn’t stop the smile creeping across my lips. “I guess we are.” She tossed a quick look at me and frowned. “Quit it.” “What?” “I hate it when you do that.” “You hate it when I smile?” “No, when you make that, ‘aw, she does have a heart’ face. You look like a Disney prince.” I laughed. “My bad. I’ll work on that.

Whether one calls slime molds, fungi, and plants “intelligent” depends on one’s point of view. Classical scientific definitions of intelligence use humans as a yardstick by which all other species are measured. According to these anthropocentric definitions, humans are always at the top of the intelligence rankings, followed by animals that look like us (chimpanzees, bonobos, etc.), followed again by other “higher” animals, and onward and downward in a league table—a great chain of intelligence drawn up by the ancient Greeks, which persists one way or another to this day. Because these organisms don’t look like us or outwardly behave like us—or have brains—they have traditionally been allocated a position somewhere at the bottom of the scale. Too often, they are thought of as the inert backdrop to animal life. Yet many are capable of sophisticated behaviors that prompt us to think in new ways about what it means for organisms to “solve problems,” “communicate,” “make decisions,” “learn,” and “remember.” As we do so, some of the vexed hierarchies that underpin modern thought start to soften. As they soften, our ruinous attitudes toward the more-than-human world may start to change. The second field of research that has guided me in this inquiry concerns the way we think about the microscopic organisms—or microbes—that cover every inch of the planet. In the last four decades, new technologies have granted unprecedented access to microbial lives. The outcome? For your community of microbes—your “microbiome”—your body is a planet. Some prefer the temperate forest of your scalp, some the arid plains of your forearm, some the tropical forest of your crotch or armpit. Your gut (which if unfolded would occupy an area of thirty-two square meters), ears, toes, mouth, eyes, skin, and every surface, passage, and cavity you possess teem with bacteria and fungi. You carry around more microbes than your “own” cells. There are more bacteria in your gut than stars in our galaxy. For humans, identifying where one individual stops and another starts is not generally something we

They were like magnets completely drawn to each other, mirroring one another’s movements and stances. They were like the opposite poles north and south completely different to one another yet they seemed to reflect and bring out the rare pure beauty and goodness within each other. Her heart thumped and walloped around in her chest cavity as if she had just completed a marathon. Her stomach fluttered nervously at the mere sight of him looking at her like that way.

Twelve,” she said, her tone sweet enough to induce a cavity. “I’m happy to lend it to you. It might help loosen you up so you don’t die of a stress-induced heart attack before age forty.” I’d much rather have you loosen me up instead.

My anxiety clothes itself in concerns about body image or financial security, doubts regarding lovability or the ability to love, self-disparagement and existential pessimism about life’s meaning and purpose—or, on the other hand, it manifests itself as grandiosity, the need to be admired, to be seen as special. At bottom it is nameless and formless. I feel sure it was forged in my chest cavity somewhere between my lungs and heart long before I knew the names of things.

Can you die from a broken heart, do you know? And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He’s killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I’m afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go? I’m letting it go.

Thomas,” Inez interrupted with exasperation. “I’m trying to tell you I love you.” “You do?” he asked, a smile spreading halfway across his face. “But then why did you tell Terri that you wanted to delay the turn?” “It wasn’t you. It was because of the pain involved,” she said with a grimace and then admitted, “I don’t like pain, Thomas. I mean I’m practically phobic about it. My whole life, I’ve avoided any situation that might involve pain. My dentist even has to gas me to fill a cavity.” Inez shrugged unhappily. “I probably would have delayed and put it off as long as I possibly could if you hadn’t had to change me to save my life. In truth, Blondie probably did us both a favor by precipitating the events that forced you to turn me.

NASA didn't invent Tang, but their Gemini and Apollo astronauts made it famous. (Kraft Foods invented it, in 1957.) NASA still uses Tang, despite periodic bouts of bad publicity. In 2006, terrorists mixed Tang into a homemade liquid explosive intended for use on a transatlantic flight. In the 1970's, Tang was mixed with methadone to discourage rehabbing heroin addicts from injecting it to get high. They did anyway. Consumed intravenously, Tang causes joint pain and jaundice, though fewer cavities.

Although it seems that most people with endometriosis begin having symptoms at or around the time of their first period (whether they know it or not), calling endometriosis a “period problem” doesn’t account for the phenomenon of endometrial lesions found in the pelvic cavities of fetuses. Fetuses who have, clearly, not menstruated. Endometriosis has been discovered during fetal autopsies, a finding that seriously challenges the widely held belief that endometriosis is strictly a menstruation-dependent disease.

I spend most of my days up to my elbows in someone’s chest cavity. Really, I know zip about music." He didn’t bother hiding his surprise. “Wow. That must be...messy.” “That didn’t sound too great, did it? Let me reassure you—I’m a doctor, not a serial killer.

You might have been my first, Kenna, but I’m a grown man with a brain and a heart. And I know it isn’t going to feel like that with just anyone. I know.” His arm tightened around her, crushing her even harder against his body. “Now, you’re going to walk out of here holding my hand.” “I don’t hold hands,” she breathed, staunchly ignoring the flip-flop in her chest cavity. “You hold my hand.” In direct contradiction of his harshly delivered command, he kissed her temple with devastating gentleness. “You hold my hand, darlin’.

For most of a day we walked through alkali flats, the white crust like a frosted layer of salt that rose in a powder when your boots punched through. We wore the chalk on us everywhere—up to our knees, in the creases of our fingers clenching the rifle strap, down in the cavity between my breasts, and in my mouth, too. I couldn’t keep it out and stopped trying. I couldn’t keep anything out, I realized, and that was something I loved about Africa. The way it got at you from the outside in and never let up, and never let you go.

And now Snape stood again in the headmaster’s study as Phineas Nigellus came hurrying into his portrait. “Headmaster! They are camping in the Forest of Dean! The Mudblood--” “Do not use that word!” “--the Granger girl, then, mentioned the place as she opened her bag and I heard her!” “Good. Very good!” cried the portrait of Dumbledore behind the headmaster’s chair. “Now, Severus, the sword! Do not forget that it must be taken under conditions of need and valor--and he must not know that you give it! If Voldemort should read Harry’s mind and see you acting for him--” “I know,” said Snape curtly. He approached the portrait of Dumbledore and pulled at its side. It swung forward, revealing a hidden cavity behind it from which he took the sword of Gryffindor. “And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the sword?” said Snape as he swung a traveling cloak over his robes. “No, I don’t think so,” said Dumbledore’s portrait. “He will know what to do with it. And Severus, be very careful, they may not take kindly to your appearance after George Weasley’s mishap--” Snape turned at the door. “Don’t worry, Dumbledore,” he said coolly. “I have a plan…” And Snape left the room. Harry rose up out of the Pensieve, and moments later he lay on the carpeted floor in exactly the same room: Snape might just have closed the door.

Fate had struck while she sat unsuspecting, had struck somewhere on one of the many curves of this cursed course. The seconds became leaden, the minutes hours. The carrousel on the white ribbon existed now only like a bad dream; her chest became a black cavity, hollowed out with waiting.

This individualistic ethos, which has sometimes been called 'selfism,' was pumped into the boomers with their breast milk, and will be drained from every cavity by their morticians. It is an empancipation narrative. The idea was to be liberated from dogma, political oppression, social prejudice, and group conformity. The movement had a right-wing variant - the individual should be economically unregulated - and it had a left-wing variant - each person's individually chosen lifestyle should be socially unregulated. But it was all about individual emancipation all the way down.

The eyes have been used to signify a perverse capacity - honed to perfection in the history of science tied to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and male supremacy - to distance the knowing subject from everybody and everything in the interests of unfettered power. The instruments of visualization in multinationalist, postmodernist culture have compounded these meanings of dis-embodiment. The visualizing technologies are without apparent limit; the eye of any ordinary primate like us can be endlessly enhanced by sonography systems, magnetic resonance imaging, artificial intelligence-linked graphic manipulation systems, scanning electron microscopes, computer-aided tomography scanners, colour enhancement techniques, satellite surveillance systems, home and office VDTs, cameras for every purpose from filming the mucous membrane lining the gut cavity of a marine worm living in the vent gases on a fault between continental plates to mapping a planetary hemisphere elsewhere in the solar system. Vision in this technological feast becomes unregulated gluttony; all perspective gives way to infinitely mobile vision, which no longer seems just mythically about the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere, but to have put the myth into ordinary practice. And like the god-trick, this eye fucks the world to make techno-monsters. Zoe Sofoulis (1988) calls this the cannibal-eye of masculinist extra-terrestrial projects for excremental second birthing.

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

With almost reverential silence, Vivian reached deep into the chest cavity. She seemed to caress the heart, her fingers stroking the walls, tracing the course of each coronary artery. The organ pulsed vigorously in her hands. 'It's beautiful'she said softly. Eyes shining, she looked across at Abby. 'It's just the heart for Josh.

A nutritive centre, anatomically considered, is merely a cell, the nucleus of which is the permanent source of successive broods of young cells, which from time to time fill the cavity of their parent, and carrying with them the cell wall of the parent, pass off in certain directions, and under various forms, according to the texture or organ of which their parent forms a part.

The entire corpus of Sappho’s work burned with the great Library of Alexandria, so today we know her only through the bits other writers quoted, shadows of Sappho cast on our cave wall. Time marbled silence throughout the texts, and those gaps, those cavities, beg readers to wonder them full, to complete the poet’s circuits of cognition – twenty-six centuries after they were made.

I don’t believe in secrets or lies as “protection” because secrets rust. They make your chest cavity look like the hull of some ship at the bottom of the sea—eaten by salt, corroded. I’ll say that I believe in honesty as care. I’ll say that I know my children love me, and they love their father, and I hope they forgive us for all the things we are not, because what we are is human.

The B-52 was flying so high it was invisible to us, but I knew exactly what was happening up there: They were dropping the first bomb. When you are this close to a big explosion it rocks your chest cavity. You want to make sure your mouth is open so the contained impact doesn’t burst your lungs. Brad got the call: We were seconds from impact. We opened our mouths, dropped and rolled.

Cooked fat is delicious. Uncooked fat is not. Why do you stuff a goose or duck? Chefs today don’t know because they don’t learn the basics anymore. You stuff the bird so it cooks more slowly. With the empty cavity, you let in the heat, and the bird is cooked inside and out, and the meat is done before your fat is rendered. Stuff your bird with apple and sage, and the fat is rendered first.

Telling you all this, Camilo, the stab of pain that sliced through my chest that day comes back in full force; it’s a recurring pain that ambushes me out of nowhere. There can’t be a pain worse than that one, so great it has no name. I know, I know, who am I to complain? My daughter’s death wasn’t a punishment. I’m just a statistic, this is the oldest and most common suffering in human history. Before, no one even expected children to survive, so many died in childhood, and it’s still that way in a large part of the world, but that does nothing to lessen the horror when you’re the mother. I felt like I’d been emptied out from the inside, I was a bloody cavity, I couldn’t breathe, my bones were made of wax, my soul had taken flight. And the world still turned as if nothing had happened: I stand up, take one step then another, find my voice and respond, I haven’t lost my mind, I drink water, my mouth full of sand, my eyes burning, and my little girl stiff, frozen, sculpted in alabaster—my daughter who will never again call me Mom, who left a tremendous imprint in her passage through my life, the memory of her laughter, her grace, her rebelliousness, her suffering.

With a sudden pressure heralded by pricks of sweat along my drastically receding hairline, I swab the bottom of my salad plate with a vast hunk of bread and jam it into my mouth like a dentist packing a tooth. And just then-ah yes-I feel the niggling onset of a sneeze; here it comes, Hail Mary, bread or no bread, nothing can halt the shouting simultaneous eruption of every cavity in my head.

The demands of the marketplace eventually outstripped the chicken’s physical capacity to support them. The bird’s breasts became too big for its legs and skeleton to support. The animals grew so fast they couldn’t supply oxygen to all their tissue and muscle, causing fluid to build up in their body cavity. The chicken’s immune system suffered, and some birds simply keeled over after a few weeks.

Some biblical scholars believe that the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” 79 So why did our foraging ancestors leave Eden? For many, it was never an explicit choice: they had multiplied themselves into a Malthusian trap in which the fat of the land could no longer support them, and they had to grow their food themselves. The states emerged only later, and the foragers who lived at their frontiers could either be absorbed into them or hold out in their old way of life. For those who had the choice, Eden may have been just too dangerous. A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple of inches in height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared

At night, in the garden, it occurs to you that it might have been your heart that left you as you reached the capital. Your heart might not have travelled well, closed up in its cavity, quivering and gnawing at the bars of your ribcage during the commute. It might be tracking north now, along edgelands, past spoil-heaps and stands of pylons, under motorway passes, back to the higher ground. Back to him.

Because just before I arrived, he showed up on the bus. He, meaning Damien. He reminded me of the pain I'd felt when he died. He reminded me of what it's like to feel your heart explode in your chest cavity at the realization of living your life without the only person you've ever loved. And he reminded me of the promise I'd made to him months ago. I told him that I'd love him forever. That I'd never let go. But part of me wants to let go. Deep down inside I know that I can't go on loving a ghost forever. I tell myself this every day. Then I see him and I forget about having those thoughts. Because when I do see him, he looks like the Damien I met on that humid summer day, who was smirking at me, and driving his candy apple red Cadillac in reverse. When I see him he looks so vivid. So full of life. Not so...so... So dead.

The unforgiving November wind blows me toward the building. Pointy snowflakes spiral down from the cake-frosting clouds overhead. The first snow. Magic. Everybody stops and looks up. The bus exhaust freezes,trapping all the noise in a gritty cloud. The doors to the school freeze, too. We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better. Then it melts. The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don't know what just happened. They can't remember.

His quarry parties were the stuff of legend—trash cans brimming with wapatuli, music that was cool on the coasts but wouldn’t reach Midwest airwaves for another six months, daring leaps from the highest granite cliffs into the inky pools below, some more than a hundred feet straight down. No gradual decline, just a fathomless, aching cavity scooped out of the earth, a wound that cold water seeped in to fill like blood.

You are not in love with Rinaldo Damiani whose hair smells like Sunday morning in the sun, you do not even know him, he doesn’t know you. You can rest your hands on the scars of his shoulders and long to rid him of every breath of pain and still, you will not be in love with him, because this isn’t love. Love is a home and a mortgage and the promise of permanence; love is measured and paced, and this, the too-hasty sprint of your pulse, that’s drugs. You know drugs, don’t you, Charlotte? Euphoria can be bottled, it can be smoked, it will dissolve on your tongue and burn through the vacant cavity of your empty fucking chest. His hands on you, that can be preserved, it can be painted, it can be committed to the canvas of your imagination, and it can stay in the vaults of your private longings, your little reveries, your twisted dreams.

A swaddled silence would be over the island, nights like that: if they complained, or had to cry for some lesion or cramp, it was baffled by the thick mists and all you heard was the tide, slapping ever sideways along the strand, viscous, reverberating; then seltzering back to sea, violently salt, leaving a white skin on the sand it hadn't taken. And only occasionally above the mindless rhythm, from across the narrow strait, over on the great African continent itself, a sound would arise to make the fog colder, the night darker, the Atlantic more menacing: if it were human it could have been called laughter, but it was not human. It was a product of alien secretions, boiling over into blood already choked and heady; causing ganglia to twitch, the field of night-vision to be grayed into shapes that threatened, putting an itch into every fiber, an unbalance, a general sensation of error that could only be nulled by those hideous paroxysms, those fat, spindle-shaped bursts of air up the pharynx, counter-irritating the top of the mouth cavity, filling the nostrils, easing the prickliness under the jaw and down the center-line of the skull: it was the cry of the brown hyena called the strand wolf, who prowled the beach singly or with companions in search of shellfish, dead gulls, anything flesh and unmoving.

Once he raised his arm to show his friends the back of his hand, where the veins were laid out in the shape of a tree, and he broke out in the following improvisation: “Here,” he said, “is the tree of life. Here is a tree that tells me more about life and death than the flowering and fading of tree gardens. I don’t remember when exactly I discovered that my wrist was blooming like a tree…but it must have been during that wonderful time when the flowering and fading of trees still spoke to me not of life and death but of the end and beginning of the school year! It was blue then, this tree, blue and slender, and the blood, which at the time I thought of not as a liquid but as light, rose like the dawn over it and turned my metacarpus’s entire landscape into a Japanese watercolor… “The years passed, I changed, and the tree changed, too. “I remember a splendid time; the tree was spreading. The pride I felt, seeing its inexorable flowering! It became gnarled and reddish brown—and therein lay its strength! I could call it my hand’s might rigging. But now, my friends! How decrepit it is, how rotten! “The branches seem to be breaking off, cavities have appeared…It’s sclerosis, my friends! And the fact that the skin is getting glassy, and the tissue beneath it is squishy—isn’t this a fog settling on the tree of my life, the fog that will soon envelop all of me?

Well done,’ whispered one. ‘Let’s go.’ Robin nodded and opened the door to let them out. The moment they stepped foot over the barrier, an awful cacophony split the air – a screaming, a howling, the grinding of metal gears in some invisible mechanism. It was a threat and a warning, the hybrid of ancient horror and the modern capacity for spilling blood. Behind them, the panels in the door shifted, revealing a dark cavity within. Without another word, the Hermes

Leonardo’s initial anatomy studies of 1489 focused on human skulls. He started with a skull that had been sawed in half, top to bottom (fig. 60). Then the front of the left half was sawed off. His groundbreaking technique of drawing the two halves together made it easy to see how the inner cavities were positioned relative to the face. For example, the frontal sinus, which Leonardo is the first person to correctly depict, is shown to rest just behind the eyebrow.

The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day's premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous extent ,though having no great pretensions to height. Many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree: tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at it's bark from year to year; quaint tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of it's forks; and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots.

Yet although I could not resist doing so, my sleep was not interrupted. The door opened and a dark figure entered whom I recognized to my horror as my own self in Capuchin robes, with beard and tonsure. The figure came nearer and nearer my bed: I lay motionless, and every sound I tried to utter was stifled in the trance that gripped me. The figure sat down on my bed and leered mockingly at me. “You must come with me,” it said. “Let us climb on to the roof beneath the weathercock, which is playing a merry tune for the owl's wedding. Up there we will fight with each other, and the one who pushes the other over will become king and be able to drink blood.” I felt the figure take hold of me and lift me up. With a strength born of desperation I screamed: “You are not me, you are the Devil!” - and clawed at the face of the menacing spectre. But my fingers went through his eyes as if they were empty cavities, and the figure burst into strident laughter.

I am embarrassed to admit (don’t tell anybody) that when I first saw the interior doors on the Enterprise slide open automatically as crew members walk up to them, I was certain that such a mechanism would not be invented during my years on Earth. Star Trek was taking place hundreds of years hence, and I was observing future technology. Same goes for those incredible pocket-size data disks they insert into talking computers. And those palm-size devices they use to talk to one another. And that square cavity in the wall that dispenses heated food in seconds. Not in my century, I thought. Not in my lifetime. Today, obviously, we have all those technologies, and we didn’t have to wait till the twenty-third century to get them. But I take pleasure in noting that our twenty-first-century communication and data-storage devices are smaller than those on Star Trek. And unlike their sliding doors, which make primitive whooshing sounds every time they move, our automatic doors are silent.

AMOR FATI Inside every world there is another world trying to get out, and there is something in you that would like to discount this world. The stars could rise in darkness over heartbreaking coasts, and you would not know if you were ruining your life or beginning a real one. You could claim professional fondness for the world around you; the pictures would dissolve under the paint coming alive, and you would only feel a phantom skip of the heart, absorbed so in the colors. Your disbelief is a later novel emerging in the long, long shadow of an earlier one— is this the great world, which is whatever is the case? The sustained helplessness you feel in the long emptiness of days is matched by the new suspiciousness and wrath you wake to each morning. Isn’t this a relationship with your death, too, to fall in love with your inscrutable life? Your teeth fill with cavities. There is always unearned happiness for some, and the criminal feeling of solitude. Always, everyone lies about his life.

Chimpanzees use between fifteen and twenty-five different tools per community, and the precise tools vary with cultural and ecological circumstances. One savanna community, for example, uses pointed sticks to hunt. This came as a shock, since hunting weapons were thought to be another uniquely human advance. The chimpanzees jab their “spears” into a tree cavity to kill a sleeping bush baby, a small primate that serves as a protein source for female apes unable to run down monkeys the way males do.23 It is also well known that chimpanzee communities in West Africa crack nuts with stones, a behavior unheard of in East African communities. Human novices have trouble cracking the same tough nuts, partly because they do not have the same muscle strength as an adult chimpanzee, but also because they lack the required coordination. It takes years of practice to place one of the hardest nuts in the world on a level surface, find a good-sized hammer stone, and hit the nut with the right speed while keeping one’s fingers out of the way.

Dr. Mark Burhenne had been studying the links between mouthbreathing and sleep for decades, and had written a book on the subject. He told me that mouthbreathing contributed to periodontal disease and bad breath, and was the number one cause of cavities, even more damaging than sugar consumption, bad diet, or poor hygiene. (This belief had been echoed by other dentists for a hundred years, and was endorsed by Catlin too.) Burhenne also found that mouthbreathing was both a cause of and a contributor to snoring and sleep apnea. He recommended his patients tape their mouths shut at night.

The aged sisters draw us into life : we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die : over us dead they bend. First saved from water of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles : at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Topher or to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see from what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his whenceness.

It’s time to pack your gear, Kicker,” her father announced, forcing a boisterous grin. “We’re moving to South Korea!” Yup. There it was. Megan went into free fall. Her internal organs turned weightless and started floating around inside her body cavity. She clutched the arms on the chair so tightly her knuckles turned white, just to keep from throwing up. “What?” Megan blurted. Her voice sounded very far away. “It’s been a while since we were transferred, hasn’t it?” her father said matter-of-factly. “This should be exciting.” Exciting? Had he been testing gas masks over at the base today?

Army studies indicate that if a wounded soldier arrives alive at a combat support hospital where surgeons and nurses can treat him, the chances of his surviving are extremely high—greater than 90 percent. “Surviving,” of course, doesn’t necessarily entail keeping arms or legs or retaining the ability to function independently back home. The leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield is bleeding. Having a leg blown off by an IED, for instance, can be fatal if quick steps are not taken to control the blood loss. Even deadlier is internal bleeding, a problem for which medics generally don’t have a good answer. A soldier who is bleeding internally needs to be evacuated and delivered to a surgeon immediately if he is to have any hope of survival. The second-leading cause of preventable death is something called tension pneumothorax. If a bullet punctures a soldier’s lung, air can leak from that hole into the “pleural space,” or cavity outside the lungs. That air can build up and eventually interfere with the functioning of the heart. This can be a relatively simple problem to correct: a medic can simply stick a big needle in the soldier’s chest to relieve the pressure in the pleural space.

Even stranger than our teeth-brushing behaviour is our preference for stripy toothpaste. When it first appeared, in a product called Stripe, it aroused a great deal of debate over how it was made. Many people dissected the empty container; others froze a full tube and then cut it open in a cross section.* What was strange was that nobody ever asked ‘Why?’ After all, the moment toothpaste enters your mouth, all the ingredients are mixed together, so what was the point of keeping them separate in the tube? There are two explanations: 1) simple childish novelty and 2) psycho-logic. Psychologically, the stripes serve as a signal: a claim that a toothpaste performed more than one function (fighting cavities, tackling infection and freshening breath) was thought to be more convincing if the toothpaste contained three visibly separate active ingredients. In general, people are impressed by any visible extra effort that goes into a product: if you simply say ‘this washing powder is better than our old powder’, it is a hollow claim. However, if you replace the powder with a gel, a tablet or some other form, the cost and effort which have gone into the change make it more plausible to the purchaser there may have been some real innovation in the new contents.

cause of cavities, even more damaging than sugar consumption, bad diet, or poor hygiene. (This belief had been echoed by other dentists for a hundred years, and was endorsed by Catlin too.) Burhenne also found that mouthbreathing was both a cause of and a contributor to snoring and sleep apnea. He recommended his patients tape their mouths shut at night. “The health benefits of nose breathing are undeniable,” he told me. One of the many benefits is that the sinuses release a huge boost of nitric oxide, a molecule that plays an essential role in increasing circulation and delivering oxygen into cells. Immune function, weight, circulation, mood, and sexual function can all be heavily influenced by the amount of nitric oxide in the body. (The popular erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil, known by the commercial name Viagra, works by releasing nitric oxide into the bloodstream, which opens the capillaries in the genitals and elsewhere.) Nasal breathing alone can boost nitric oxide sixfold, which is one of the reasons we can absorb about 18 percent more oxygen than by just breathing through the mouth. Mouth taping, Burhenne said, helped a five-year-old patient of his overcome ADHD, a condition directly attributed to breathing difficulties during sleep. It helped Burhenne and his wife cure their own snoring and breathing problems. Hundreds of other patients reported similar benefits. The whole thing seemed a little sketchy until Ann Kearney, a doctor of speech-language pathology at the Stanford Voice and Swallowing Center, told me the same. Kearney helped rehabilitate patients who had swallowing and breathing disorders. She swore by mouth taping. Kearney herself had spent years as a mouthbreather due to chronic congestion. She visited an ear, nose, and throat specialist and discovered that her nasal cavities were blocked with tissue. The specialist advised that the only way to open her nose was through surgery or medications. She tried mouth taping instead. “The first night, I lasted five minutes before I ripped it off,” she told me. On the second night, she was able to tolerate the tape for ten minutes. A couple of days later, she slept through the night. Within six weeks, her nose opened up. “It’s a classic example of use it or lose it,” Kearney said. To prove her claim, she examined the noses of 50 patients who had undergone laryngectomies, a procedure in which a breathing hole is cut into the throat. Within two months to two years, every patient was suffering from complete nasal obstruction. Like other parts of the body, the nasal cavity responds to whatever inputs it receives. When the nose is denied regular use, it will atrophy. This is what happened to Kearney and many of her patients, and to so much of the general population. Snoring and sleep apnea often follow.

Well, after this man had come to believe that no more ways of forming tones could possibly exist- after having observed, in addition to all the things already mentioned, a variety of organs, trumpets, fifes, stringed instruments, and even that little tongue of iron which is placed between the teeth and which makes strange use of the oral cavity for sounding box and of the breath for vehicle of sound when, I say, this man believed he had seen everything, he suddenly found himself once more plunged deeper into ignorance and bafflement than ever. For having captured in his hands a cicada, he failed to diminish its strident noise either by closing its mouth or stopping its wings, yet he could not see it move the scales that covered its body, Or any other thing. At last be lifted up the armor of its chest and there he saw some thin hard ligaments beneath; thinking the sound might come from their vibration, he decided to break them in order to silence it. But nothing happened until his needle drove too deep, and transfixing the creature be took away its life with its voice, so that he was still unable to determine whether the song had originated in those ligaments. And by this experience his knowledge was reduced to diffidence, so that when asked how sounds were created be used to answer tolerantly that although he knew a few ways, he was sure that many more existed which were not only unknown but unimaginable.

That Thanksgiving has evolved over hundreds of years into a national holiday of eating is rather ironic given the quality of Thanksgiving food. Stuffing and roasting a twenty-pound turkey is, without a doubt, the worst possible way to enjoy a game bird. The whole notion of eating a game bird is to savor those subtleties of flavor that elude the domesticated hen. Partridge, pheasant, quail are all birds that can be prepared in various ways to delight the senses; but a corn-fed turkey that’s big enough to serve a gathering of ten or more is virtually impossible to cook with finesse. The breasts will inevitably become as dry as sawdust by the time the rest of the bird has finished cooking. Stuffing only exacerbates this problem by insulating the inner meat from the effects of heat, thus prolonging the damage. The intrinsic challenge of roasting a turkey has led to all manner of culinary abominations. Cooking the bird upside down, a preparation in which the skin becomes a pale, soggy mess. Spatchcocking, in which the bird is drawn and quartered like a heretic. Deep frying! (Heaven help us.) Give me an unstuffed four-pound chicken any day. Toss a slice of lemon, a sprig of rosemary, and a clove of garlic into the empty cavity, roast it at 425° for sixty minutes or until golden brown, and you will have a perfect dinner time and again. The limitations of choosing a twenty-pound turkey as the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving meal have only been compounded by the inexplicable tradition of having every member of the family contribute a dish. Relatives who should never be allowed to set foot in a kitchen are suddenly walking through your door with some sort of vegetable casserole in which the “secret ingredient” is mayonnaise. And when cousin Betsy arrives with such a mishap in hand, one can take no comfort from thoughts of the future, for once a single person politely compliments the dish, its presence at Thanksgiving will be deemed sacrosanct. Then not even the death of cousin Betsy can save you from it, because as soon as she’s in the grave, her daughter will proudly pick up the baton. Served at an inconvenient hour, prepared by such an army of chefs that half the dishes are overcooked, half are undercooked,

My adrenal gland gave me a shot of adrenaline, too. I turned purple as my blood pressure skyrocketed. The adrenaline made my heart go like a burglar alarm. It also stood my hair on end. It also caused coagulants to pour into my bloodstream, so, in case I was wounded, my vital juices wouldn’t drain away. Everything my body had done so far fell within normal operating procedures for a human machine. But my body took one defensive measure which I am told was without precedent in medical history. It may have happened because some wire short-circuited or some gasket blew. At any rate, I also retracted my testicles into my abdominal cavity, pulled them into my fuselage like the landing gear of an airplane. And now they tell me that only surgery will bring them down again.

Everyone has been overjoyed with the birth of their first son, bringing celebratory sweets, new clothes for the baby, fennel tea to bolster her milk supply. They have showered on her all the traditional gifts, as if this is her first baby, their first child. What about the other times I’ve carried a baby in my womb, given birth, held my child in my arms? But no one acknowledges this, not even Jasu. Only Kavita has an aching cavity in her heart for what she’s lost. She sees the pride in Jasu’s eyes as he holds his son and forces herself to smile while saying a silent prayer for this child. She hopes she can give him the life he deserves. She prays she will be a good mother to her son, prays she has enough maternal love left in her heart for him, prays it didn’t die along with her daughters.

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

Paced Breathing People who experience anxiety often breathe improperly. They take shallow breaths from their chests instead of deep breaths from their diaphragms. (The diaphragm is the muscle that separates your chest cavity from your abdominal cavity and that makes it possible for you to inhale and exhale.) Breathing from the chest can cause you to hyperventilate, which has a negative effect on your body’s chemistry. Hyperventilation does not only mean panting or gasping for air; it also includes yawning, holding your breath, and sighing. The symptoms of hyperventilation are similar to those associated with anxiety: shortness of breath, lightheadedness, faintness, tingling or numbness in your fingers and toes, and the feeling that you are walking around in a dream. If you deal with anxiety and begin to hyperventilate, it will make the situation even worse.

A woman leaves you because she no longer sees in you the qualities you never had. What better way to enter a stranger’s world than through his library? Without a strong dose of hypocrisy, there would be no social life. The little that a woman knows about her appearance, she learns not from mirrors, but from the words of men. You don’t learn about life through imagination.” “How else do you learn about it? If you’re informed by your experience, you’ll never know much; but thanks to stories, confidences, daydreams, virtual journeys, you begin to find your way through the maze.” Kiss. Exploration of a person’s oral cavity with the intention of undressing him/her. Love. 1. Problem between human beings that some take for a solution. 2. Selfishness that achieves a temporary balance with another person’s selfishness. 3. Unusual ability to take an interest in another person while losing one’s own self-interest.

Did dinosaurs sing? Was there a teeming, singing wilderness with all the species thumping around, tuning up for the next millennia? Of course, dinosaurs sang, I thought. They are the ancestors of the singing birds and cousins to the roaring crocodiles…turns out, no. Turns out the syrinx, the organ that produces birdsong and the larynx, the organ that produces operatic arias, didn’t evolve until after the dinosaur extinction event…Some dinosaurs blew air into their closed mouths and through nasal cavities into resonance chambers, which we see in fossils as bony crests. They made the forest echo with clear, ominous tones, eerily like a cello. I have heard it in recordings scientists made of the sound they produced when they blew air through crests constructed to mimic lambeosaurus’s. Some dinosaurs cooed to their mates like doves…turns out that even if dinosaurs didn’t sing, they danced. There is evidence in vigorous scrape marks found in 100-million year old Colorado sandstone. From the courting behavior of ostriches and grouse, scientists envision the dinosaur males coming together on courting grounds, bobbing and scratching, flaring their brilliant feathers and cooing. Imagine: huge animals, each weighing more than a dozen football teams, shaking the Earth for a chance at love. What the story of the dinosaurs tells me is that if the earth didn’t have music, it would waste no time inventing it. In birds, tantalizing evidence of birdsong is found in 67-million-year old fossils, marking the first know appearance of the syrinx. Now the whole Earth can chime, from deep in the sea to high in the atmosphere with the sounds of snapping shrimp, singing mice, roaring whales, moaning bears, clattering dragonflies, and a fish calling like a foghorn. Who could catalog the astonishing oeuvre of the Earth? And more songs are being created every year.

From Sister by ROSAMUND LUPTON    The rain hammered down onto your coffin, pitter-patter; ‘Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, I hear raindrops’; I was five and singing it to you, just born. Your coffin reached the bottom of the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you. Then Mum stepped forwards and took a wooden spoon from her coat pocket. She loosened her fingers and it fell on top of your coffin. Your magic wand. And I threw the emails I sign ‘lol’. And the title of older sister. And the nickname Bee. Not grand or important to anyone else, I thought, this bond that we had. Small things. Tiny things. You knew that I didn’t make words out of my alphabetti spaghetti but I gave you my vowels so you could make more words out of yours. I knew that your favourite colour used to be purple but then became bright yellow; (‘Ochre’s the arty word, Bee’) and you knew mine was orange, until I discovered that taupe was more sophisticated and you teased me for that. You knew that my first whimsy china animal was a cat (you lent me 50p of your pocket money to buy it) and that I once took all my clothes out of my school trunk and hurled them around the room and that was the only time I had something close to a tantrum. I knew that when you were five you climbed into bed with me every night for a year. I threw everything we had together - the strong roots and stems and leaves and beautiful soft blossoms of sisterhood - into the earth with you. And I was left standing on the edge, so diminished by the loss, that I thought I could no longer be there. All I was allowed to keep for myself was missing you. Which is what? The tears that pricked the inside of my face, the emotion catching at the top of my throat, the cavity in my chest that was larger than I am. Was that all I had now? Nothing else from twenty-one years of loving you. Was the feeling that all is right with the world, my world, because you were its foundations, formed in childhood and with me grown into adulthood - was that to be replaced by nothing? The ghastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody’s sister now. I saw Dad had been given a handful of earth. But as he held out his hand above your coffin he couldn’t unprise his fingers. Instead, he put his hand into his pocket, letting the earth fall there and not onto you. He watched as Father Peter threw the first clod of earth instead and broke apart, splintering with the pain of it. I went to him and took his earth-stained hand in mine, the earth gritty between our soft palms. He looked at me with love. A selfish person can still love someone else, can’t they? Even when they’ve hurt them and let them down. I, of all people, should understand that. Mum was silent as they put earth over your coffin. An explosion in space makes no sound at all.

I fumbled in my pockets for my father’s map. I stared and rubbed the paper between my fingers. I read the sightings’ dot’s dates with my wormed eyes, connecting them in order. There was the first point where my father felt sure he’d seen mother digging in the neighbor’s yard across the street. And the second, in the field of power wires where Dad swore he saw her running at full speed. I connected dots until the first fifteen together formed a nostril. Dots 16 through 34 became an eye. Together the whole map made a perfect picture of my mother’s missing head. If I stared into the face, then, and focused on one clear section and let my brain go loose, I saw my mother’s eyes come open. I saw her mouth begin to move. Her voice echoed deep inside me, clear and brimming, bright, alive. She said, “Don’t worry, son. I’m fat and happy. They have cake here. My hair is clean.” She said, “The earth is slurred and I am sorry.” She said, “You are OK. I have your mind.” Her eyes seemed to swim around me. I felt her fingers in my hair. She whispered things she’d never mentioned. She nuzzled gleamings in my brain. As in: the day I’d drawn her flowers because all the fields were dying. As in: the downed bird we’d cleaned and given a name. Some of our years were wall to wall with wonder, she reminded me. In spite of any absence, we had that. I thought of my father, alone and elsewhere, his head cradled in his hands. I thought of the day he’d punched a hole straight through the kitchen wall, thinking she’d be tucked away inside. All those places he’d looked and never found her. Inside their mattress. In stained-glass windows. How he’d scoured the carpet for her stray hair and strung them all together with a ribbon; how he’d slept with that one lock swathed across his nostrils, hugging a pillow fitted with her nightshirt. How he’d dug up the backyard, stripped and sweating. How he’d played her favorite album on repeat and loud, a lure. How when we took up the carpet in my bedroom to find her, under the carpet there was wood. Under the wood there was cracked concrete. Under the concrete there was dirt. Under the dirt there was a cavity of water. I swam down into the water with my nose clenched and lungs burning in my chest but I could not find the bottom and I couldn’t see a thing.

He approached his head to the dismal cavity, and heard, as at a great depth, the sound of a sullen and, as it seemed, subterranean stream. The sunless waves appeared murmuring for their victim. Death is dreadful at all ages; but in the first springtide of youth, with all the feelings of enjoyment afloat, and eager for gratification, to be snatched forcibly from the banquet to which the individual has but just sat down, is peculiarly appalling, even when the change comes in the ordinary course of nature. But to sit, like young Philipson, on the brink of the subterranean abyss, and ruminate in horrid doubt concerning the mode in which death was to be inflicted, was a situation which might break the spirit of the boldest; and the unfortunate captive was wholly unable to suppress the natural tears that flowed from his eyes in torrents, and which his bound arms did not permit him to wipe away. We have already noticed that, although a gallant young man in aught of danger which was to be faced and overcome by active exertion, the youth was strongly imaginative, and sensitive to a powerful extent to all those exaggerations which, in a situation of helpless uncertainty, fancy lends to distract the soul of him who must passively expect an approaching evil.

Well, after this man had come to believe that no more ways of forming tones could possibly exist- after having observed, in addition to all the things already mentioned, a variety of organs, trumpets, fifes, stringed instruments, and even that little tongue of iron which is placed between the teeth and which makes strange use of the oral cavity for sounding box and of the breath for vehicle of sound when, I say, this man believed he had seen everything, he suddenly found himself once more plunged deeper into ignorance and bafflement than ever. For having captured in his hands a cicada, he failed to diminish its strident noise either by closing its mouth or stopping its wings, yet he could not see it move the scales that covered its body, Or any other thing. At last be lifted up the armor of its chest and there he saw some thin hard ligaments beneath; thinking the sound might come from their vibration, he decided to break them in order to silence it. But nothing happened until his needle drove too deep, and transfixing the creature he took away its life with its voice, so that he was still unable to determine whether the song had originated in those ligaments. And by this experience his knowledge was reduced to diffidence, so that when asked how sounds were created be used to answer tolerantly that although he knew a few ways, he was sure that many more existed which were not only unknown but unimaginable.

Well, after this man had come to believe that no more ways of forming tones could possibly exist- after having observed, in addition to all the things already mentioned, a variety of organs, trumpets, fifes, stringed instruments, and even that little tongue of iron which is placed between the teeth and which makes strange use of the oral cavity for sounding box and of the breath for vehicle of sound when, I say, this man believed he had seen everything, he suddenly found himself once more plunged deeper into ignorance and bafflement than ever. For having captured in his hands a cicada, he failed to diminish its strident noise either by closing its mouth or stopping its wings, yet he could not see it move the scales that covered its body, Or any other thing. At last be lifted up the armor of its chest and there he saw some thin hard ligaments beneath; thinking the sound might come from their vibration, he decided to break them in order to silence it. But nothing happened until his needle drove too deep, and transfixing the creature he took away its life with its voice, so that he was still unable to determine whether the song had originated in those ligaments. And by this experience his knowledge was reduced to diffidence, so that when asked how sounds were created he used to answer tolerantly that although he knew a few ways, he was sure that many more existed which were not only unknown but unimaginable.

Hunter-gatherers who survive childhood typically live to be old: their most common age of death is between sixty-eight and seventy-two, and most become grandparents or even great-grandparents.70 They most likely die from gastrointestinal or respiratory infections, diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis, or from violence and accidents.71 Health surveys also indicate that most of the noninfectious diseases that kill or disable older people in developed nations are rare or unknown among middle-aged and elderly hunter-gatherers.72 These admittedly limited studies have found that hunter-gatherers rarely if ever get type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, breast cancer, asthma, and liver disease. They also don’t appear to suffer much from gout, myopia, cavities, hearing loss, collapsed arches, and other common ailments. To be sure, hunter-gatherers don’t live in perpetually perfect health, especially since tobacco and alcohol have become increasingly available to them, but the evidence suggests that they are healthy compared to many older Americans today despite never having received any medical care. In short, if you were to compare contemporary health data from people around the world with equivalent data from hunter-gatherers, you would not conclude that rising rates of common mismatch diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes are straightforward, inevitable by-products of economic progress and increased longevity. Moreover,

Noboru managed, while following his own dreamy thoughts, to pay scrupulous attention to the details. The kitten's dead pupils were purple flecked with white; the gaping mouth was stuffed with congealed blood, the twisted tongue visible between the fangs. As the fat-yellowed scissors cut them, he heard the ribs creak. And he watched intently while the chief groped in the abdominal cavity, withdrew the small pericardium, and plucked from it the tiny oval heart. When he squeezed the heart between two fingers, the remaining blood gushed onto his rubber gloves, reddening them to the tips of the fingers. *What is really happening here?* Noboru had withstood the ordeal from beginning to end. Now his half-dazed brain envisioned the warmth of the scattered viscera and the pools of blood in the gutted belly finding wholeness and perfection in the rapture of the dead kitten's large languid soul. The liver, limp beside the corpse, became a soft peninsula the squashed heart a little sun, the reeled-out bowels a white atoll, and the blood in the belly the tepid waters of a tropical sea. Death had transfigured the kitten into a perfect, autonomous world. *I killed it all by myself* - a distant hand reached into Noboru's dream and awarded him a snow-white certificate of merit - *I can do anything, no matter how awful.* The Chief peeled off the squeaky rubber gloves and laid one beautiful white hand on Noboru's shoulder. 'You did a good job. I think we can say this finally made a real man of you - and isn't all this blood a sight for sore eyes!

We all changed into our pajamas, and Taylor and Anika presented me with a wedding gift--a lacy white babydoll nightie with matching panties. “For the wedding night,” Taylor said meaningfully. “Uh, yeah, I got that,” I said, holding up the underwear. I hoped I wasn’t blushing too red. “Thanks, guys.” “Do you have any questions for us?” Taylor asked, perching on my bed. “Taylor! I, like, live in the world. I’m not an idiot.” “I’m just saying…” She paused. “You probably won’t like it that much the first couple of times. I mean, I’m super tiny, which means I’m really little down there, so it hurt a lot. It might not hurt as bad for you. Tell her, Anika.” Anika rolled her eyes. “It didn’t hurt me at all, Iz.” “Well, you probably have a large vagina,” Taylor said. Anika thumped Taylor on the head with a pillow, and we all started giggling and couldn’t stop. Then I said, “Wait, exactly how bad did it hurt, Tay? Did it hurt the way a punch in the stomach hurts?” “Who’s ever punched you in the stomach?” Anika asked me. “I have an older brother,” I reminded her. “It’s a different kind of pain,” Taylor said. “Did it hurt worse than period cramps?” “Yes. But I would say it’s more comparable to getting a shot of Novocain in your gums.” “Great, now she’s comparing losing your virginity to getting a cavity filled,” Anika said, getting up. “Iz, quit listening to her. I promise you it’s more fun than going to the dentist. It would be one thing if you were both virgins, but Jeremiah knows what’s up. He’ll take care of you.” Taylor collapsed into another fit of giggles. “He’ll take care of her!

The watcher’s eyes are likely to swivel forward in a sequence of stately turns as the screen’s pixel glows: each quarter-ounce mass of eyeball tugged by six flat muscles, in a glissando slide within the slippery fat lining the orbital cavity. The eye blinks, the widened pupils are in position, and the incoming electromagnetic waves roar in. Ripping through the thin layer of the cornea, they decelerate slightly, with their outermost edges forming a nearly flat plane as they travel inward, carrying the as-yet-undetected signal from the screen deep into the waiting human. The waves continue through the liquid of the aqueous humor and on to the gaping hole of the pupil. The human may have squinted to avoid the glare, but human reflexes work at the rate of slow thousandths of a second and are no match for these racing intruders. The pupil is crossed without obstruction. The stiff lens just below focuses the incoming waves even more, sending them into the inland sea of the jellylike vitreous humor deeper down in the eye. A very few of the incoming electric waves explode against the organic molecules in their way, but most simply whirl through those soft biological barriers and continue straight down, piercing the innermost wrapping of the eyeball, till they reach the end-point of their journey: the fragile, stalklike projection from the living brain known as the retina. And deep inside there, in the dark, barely slowed from their original 670 million mph, the waves splatter into the ancient, moist blood vessels and cell membranes, and something unexpected happens. An electric current switches on.

This here,” he said playing with it, “is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it importance. Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past. But today I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything — and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship. — But let me speak no more of this. The words are not good for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly — yes, and this is also very good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person.

Some think Grom felt the pull toward Nalia," Toraf says softly. "Maybe it's a family trait." "Well, there's where you're wrong, Toraf. I'm not supposed to feel the pull toward Emma. She belongs to Grom. He's firstborn, third generation Triton. And she's clearly of Poseidon." Galen runs his hand through his hair. "I think that if Grom were her mate, he would have found Emma somehow instead of you." "That's what you get for thinking. I didn't find Emma. Dr. Milligan did." "Okay, answer me this," Toraf says, shaking a finger at Galen. "You're twenty years old. Why haven't you sifted for a mate?" Galen blinks. He's never thought of it, actually. Not even when Toraf asked for Rayna. Shouldn't that have reminded him of his own single status? He shakes his head. He's letting Toraf's gossip get to him. He shrugs. "I've just been busy. It's not like I don't want to, if that's what you're saying." "With who?" "What?" "Name someone, Galen. The first female that comes to mind." He tries to block out her name, her face. But he doesn't stop it in time. Emma. He cringes. It's just that we've been talking about her so much, she's naturally the freshest on my mind, he tells himself. "There isn't anyone yet. But I'm sure there would be if I spent more time at home." "Right. And why is that you're always away? Maybe you're searching for something and don't even know it." "I'm away because I'm watching the humans, as is my responsibility, you might remember. You also might remember they're the real reason our kingdoms are divided. If they never set that mine, none of this would have happened. And we both know it will happen again." "Come on, Galen. If you can't tell me, who can you tell?" "I don't know what you're talking about. And I don't think you do either." "I understand if you don't want to talk about it. I wouldn't want to talk about it either. Finding my special mate and then turning her over to my own brother. Knowing that she's mating with him on the islands, holding him close-" Galen lands a clean hook to Toraf's nose and blood spurts on his bare chest. Toraf falls back and holds his nostrils shut. Then he laughs. "I guess I know who taught Rayna how to hit." Galen massages his temples. "Sorry. I don't know where that came from. I told you I was frustrated." Toraf laughs. "You're so blind, minnow. I just hope you open your eye before it's too late." Galen scoffs. "Stop vomiting superstition at me. I told you. I'm just frustrated. There's nothing more to it than that." Toraf cocks his head to the side, snorts some blood back into is nasal cavity. "So the humans followed you around, made you feel uncomfortable?" "That's what I just said, isn't it?" Toraf nods thoughtfully. Then he says, "Imagine how Emma must feel then." "What?" "Think about it. The humans followed you around a building and it made you uncomfortable. You followed Emma across the big land. Then Rachel makes sure you have every class with her. Then when she tries to get away, you chase her. Seems to me you're scaring her off." "Kind of like what you're doing to Rayna." "Huh. Didn't think of that." "Idiot," Galen mutters. But there is some truth to Toraf's observation. Maybe Emma feels smothered. And she's obviouisly still mourning Chloe. Maybe he has to take it slow with Emma. if he can earn her trust, maybe she'll open up to him about her gift, about her past. But the question is, how much time does she need? Grom's reluctance to mate will be overruled by his obligation to produce an heir. And that heir needs tom come from Emma.

The following simple exercise will give you a clear idea of what the Complete Breath is: (1) Stand or sit erect. Breathing through the nostrils, inhale steadily, first filling the lower part of the lungs, which is accomplished by bringing into play the diaphragm, which decending exerts a gentle pressure on the abdominal organs, pushing forward the front walls of the abdomen. Then fill the middle part of the lungs, pushing out the lower ribs breastbone and chest. Then fill the higher portion of the lungs, protruding the upper chest, thus lifting the chest, including the upper six or seven pairs of ribs. In the final movement, the lower part of the abdomen will be slightly drawn in, which movement gives the lungs a support and also helps to fill the highest part of the lungs. At first reading it may appear that this breath consists of three distinct movements. This, however, is not the correct idea. The inhalation is continuous, the entire chest cavity from the lowered diaphragm to the highest point of the chest in the region of the collar-bone, being expanded with a uniform movement. Avoid a jerky series of inhalations, and strive to attain a steady continuous action. Practice will soon overcome the tendency to divide the inhalation into three movements, and will result in a uniform continuous breath. You will be able to complete the inhalation in a couple of seconds after a little practice. (2) Retain the breath a few seconds. (3) Exhale quite slowly, holding the chest in a firm position, and drawing the abdomen in a little and lifting it upward slowly as the air leaves the lungs. Where the air is entirely exhaled, relax the chest and abdomen. A little practice will render this part of the exercise easy, and the movement once acquired will be afterward performed almost automatically.