Clam Up Quotes

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.

When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. You are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalise everything, and you are so scared that people will alienate you further you clam up and don’t speak about it, which is a shame, as speaking about it helps.

I know women. And when they clam up like this? They’re not just working one thought over in their brains. Nope, they’re constructing a complicated web of scenarios and what ifs, each thread layering over another, thickening and twisting until suddenly they’re mad about something that never even occurred to you.

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

Standing Here My entire world far beneath my feet, I should be filled with pride. Instead, I feel overwhelmed by a sense of defeat. Suddenly it comes to me, toes tempted to test the ledge, that there is a way out of this. Clam surety flows through my veins, and as I turn to wave good-bye, I wonder if it will hurt or if a single person will cry at my funeral. I take a deep breath, a final taste of sweet mountain air. I conjure Leona, Emily. Move my feet closer. Closer There's Grandma One, Grandma Two, and their spouses, waiting for me. I see Dad. Cara. Mommy. I screw up my courage, step over

I tell lies sometimes. The last time I lied was a year ago. I absolutely detest lying. You could say that lying and silence are the two greatest sins of present day society. Actually, I lie a lot, and I'm always clamming up.

His lyrical whistle beckoned me to adventure and forgetting. But I didn't want to forget. Hugging my grudge, ugly and prickly, a sad sea urchin, I trudged off on my own, in the opposite direction toward the forbidding prison. As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin; I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over. The Tide ebbed, sucked back into itself. There I was, a reject, with the dried black seaweed whose hard beads I liked to pop, hollowed orange and grapefruit halves and a garbage of shells. All at once, old and lonely, I eyed these-- razor clams, fairy boats, weedy mussels, the oyster's pocked gray lace (there was never a pearl) and tiny white "ice cream cones." You could always tell where the best shells were-- at the rim of the last wave, marked by a mascara of tar. I picked up, frigidly, a stiff pink starfish. It lay at the heart of my palm, a joke dummy of my own hand. Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.

If you don't want her to go, you should say it. Those jerks who can't say a word no matter how much time passes ... I just don't get them. If they're doing whatever the hell they want ... then you should do what you want too. I hate those jerks who fool themselves into thinking that just because they clam up, nobody knows what's going on with them!!

Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.

More often than not, your best move is to keep quiet.

I talked with the admiral’s staff. Military personnel are the worst, no disrespect intended. They clam up tighter than a bullfrog’s ass.

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.

in the hospital, Jenny Fields felt she was making up for lost time; she was discovering that people weren't much more mysterious, or much more attractive, than clams.

If someone talks trash, you can just trash them back. Clamming up in a corner makes the thing half your fault." "[...] There are people out there who get crushed by that logic.

What can I do? I can only breathe in deeply. I can only bellow in a church that is deep inside of myself. I can only blast a shell-shaped horn that would shake down the oldest buildings. I can only leap for joy in my sacred inner caves and ring out the message: I am alive. I woke up again. I might as well be sprouting leaves, I might as well be covered in little clams.

I tried to utter, but could not. The tongue had got all tangled up with the uvula, and the brain seemed paralyzed. I was feeling the same stunned feeling which, I imagine, Chichester Clam must have felt as the door of the potting shed slammed and he heard Boko starting to yodel without -- a nightmare sensation of being but a helpless pawn in the hands of Fate.

Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.

Some things are hard to talk about, and then the world clams up and pretends like it was nothing. Or they act like it never happened in the first place. But maybe that's a mistake. Just because people won't talk about something, it doesn't mean that it's any less true or important.

A Faint Music by Robert Hass Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days— likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears— that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one— except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend told once about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,” that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs, and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child—the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house. There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,” she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. “You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?” “Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now, “I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while— Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall— and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up. It’s not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,” which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps— First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing

Let’s say that your significant other has been paying less and less attention to you. You realize he or she has a busy job, but you still would like more time together. You drop a few hints about the issue, but your loved one doesn’t handle it well. You decide not to put on added pressure, so you clam up. Of course, since you’re not all that happy with the arrangement, your displeasure now comes out through an occasional sarcastic remark. “Another late night, huh? I’ve got Facebook friends I see more often.” Unfortunately (and here’s where the problem becomes self-defeating), the more you snip and snap, the less your loved one wants to be around you. So your significant other spends even less time with you, you become even more upset, and the spiral continues. Your behavior is now actually creating the very thing you didn’t want in the first place. You’re caught in an unhealthy, self-defeating loop.

Seeing the look in his eye, I shake my head. “Uh uh. I really am sleepy. No sexy times.” He laughs. “Sure.” I cross my arms. “I’m serious. My puss pearl is clammed up for the night. My tuna pot pie is already put away in the Tupperware. This fun hatch is closed for business, Evert.

When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. You are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalise everything, and you are so scared that people will alienate you further you clam up and don’t speak about it, which is a shame, as speaking about it helps. Words—spoken or written—are what connect us to the world, and so speaking about it to people, and writing about this stuff, helps connect us to each other, and to our true selves.

Fragrances linger for decades, and our loved ones may remember us by them, but the legend in each vial clams up the moment we're gone. Our genie speaks to no one. He simply watches as those he's love open and investigates. He's dying to scream with the agony of then Rosetta stones begging to be heart across centuries.

The other night I took her on-out of pity-and what do you think the crazy bitch had done to herself? She had shaved it clean ... not a speck of hair on it. Did you ever have a woman who shaved her twat? It's repulsive, ain't it? And it's funny, too. Sort of mad like. It doesn't look like a twat any more: it's like a dead clam or something." He describes to me how, his curiosity aroused, he got out of bed and searched for his flashlight. "I made her hold it open and I trained the flashlight on it. You should have seen me ... it was comical. I got so worked up about it that I forgot all about her. I never in my life looked at a cunt so seriously.

He had scooped up another handful of sand and stared at each grain as it fell through his fingers. 'You are like these. Each a trifling speck. A hundred, many hundreds—what matter? Cast them into the air. You cannot even find them when they land upon the ground. But there are more grains than you can count. There is no end to them. You will pour across this land, and we will be smothered. Your stone walls, your dead trees, the hooves of your strange beasts trampling the clam beds. My uncle sees these things, here and now. And in his trance, he sees that worse is coming. You walls will rise everywhere until they shut us out. You will turn the land upside down with your ploughs until all the hunting grounds are gone. This, and more, my uncle sees.

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.

Whenever I see my teachers out in the real world I clam up, get a sort of weird feeling, and look for the nearest exit.

She patted the bed. “Come here.” “We both are experts at clamming up, so let’s make an agreement to talk right now like even-tempered, reasonable people.

I've learned that people clam up if they know I'm Wallis Wallace. So out in public I pretend I'm Mavin Green, just a regular person, not a mystery writer.

Many introverted kids clam up in groups of strangers, and you will not get even a glimpse of what these kids are like once they’re relaxed and comfortable.

tangerine clam, and a professional desktop computer that suggested a Zen ice cube. Like bell-bottoms that turn up in the

Roddy clammed up, trying to figure out how to argue his point without arguing.

Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.

I smiled back faintly, knowing I was already clamming up, shutting the doors and windows between us, blowing out the candles because the sun was finally up again and shame cast long shadows.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank ANNE’S DIARY ENDS HERE.

This may have looked like a cookbook, but what it really is is an annotated list of things worth living for: a manifesto of moments worth living for. Dinner parties, and Saturday afternoons in the kitchen, and lazy breakfasts, and picnics on the heath; evenings alone with a bowl of soup, a or a heavy pot of clams for one. The bright clean song of lime and salt, and the smoky hum of caramel-edged onions. Soft goat's cheese and crisp pastry. A six-hour ragù simmering on the stove, a glass of wine in your hand. Moments, hours, mornings, afternoons, days. And days worth living for add up to weeks, and weeks worth living for add up to months, and so on and so on, until you've unexpectedly built yourself a life worth having: a life worth living.

Sparks of tension are swirling all around us, filling the air with all the things we’re not addressing. Most of the time, we’re as comfortable as life-long friends. But every now and then, it’s like even the most innocent of remarks will give away more than we can bear, so we clam up.

At times Komatsu’s eyes would take on a sharp glow, like stars glittering in the winter night sky. And if something caused him to clam up, he would maintain his silence like a rock on the far side of the moon. All expression would disappear from his face, and his body seemed to go cold. Tengo

Deciding that he was essentially useless, I made him a large glass of sangre del tigre- "blood of the tiger"- a lethal Bloody Mary that I had picked up in Mexico City. Tomato juice, clam juice, raw egg, fresh horseradish, hot sauce, ground white and black pepper, salt, the juice from pickled jalapeños, orange zest, and a large slug of mezcal.

And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be the Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be.

When it came to my turn in the super spelling bee everyone had already been given really easy words. “Ryan,” Mr H said, “I want you to spell the word icup.” “Icup?” I thought.  I clammed up and my face went all warm and prickly, that feeling you get when you know you’re going to get the answer wrong. It’s a bit like the feeling you get when you walk up on stage to collect an award and you trip going up the stairs in front of everyone, or worse still, your pants fall down. It’s called embarrassment and I was feeling it big time. Actually it was worse than big time. It was humongous, mammoth, big time. All those long, boring afternoons sitting with Mom on the couch spelling word after word meant nothing anymore. I’d never heard of the word ‘icup’. “Oh no,” I thought. If I got this wrong I might not make the necessary criteria to get a raffle ticket before the big draw. Panic stations set in. This was going to be disastrous. ​Mom always said that if you get nervous or frightened, just imagine everyone around you is only in their underwear. It will make you laugh and you’ll forget your nerves. So I did, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. ​ “Ok get a grip of yourself Rino,” I said in my head. “Think about it and just sound the word out.” I could hear my Mom’s words bleating in my head as she so often did when I got stuck on a word. I began slowly, deep in thought and not willing to put one foot wrong sounding out each letter, “I … c.. u .. pee.”  There was silence and then the whole class erupted into hysterics, laughing their heads off, followed by Mr Higginbottom. Then I realised what I had just said when I sounded out the word; “I see you pee,” and I burst out into an embarrassed sort of laughter too. Mr Higginbottom came over and gave me a friendly pat on my head and ruffled my hair. It didn’t worry me that I’d combed it just the right way and put gel in it that morning. It was ok for Mr H to mess it up, but if my sister ever did it, she’d be dead meat. “Well

Even smaller pieces are engulfed by inch-long krill; ant-size copepods; and filter-feeding salps, clams, oysters, and mussels. Large plankton feeders such as whale sharks and manta rays swallow gallons of water at a time, plastic and all. Whether at the large, medium, small, or ultra-small scale, ingested plastic lumps, clumps, pellets, or microscopic mites kill by physically obstructing, choking, clogging, or otherwise stopping up the passage of food.

You come in all clammed up, defences in depth, alibi-systems long established, delusions full-blown. In order to have a chance of staying sober, or rather of staying dry and becoming sober, you've got to change. Nobody likes to change. What you really want, when you come into hospital, even for the second or third or ninth time, is to stay just who you are and not drink. That's not possible, of course. Jack-Who-Drinks has got to alter into Jack-Who-Does-Not-Drink-And-Likes-It.

Stanley Kowalski: I don't go in for that stuff. Blanche DuBois: What stuff? Stanley Kowalski: Compliments to women about their looks. I never met a woman yet that didn't know if she was good-looking or not without being told, and some of them give themselves credit for more than they've got. I once went out with a woman who told me, " I'm the glamorous type," she says, "I am the glamorous type!" I say, "So What?" Blanche DuBois: And what did she say then? Stanley Kowalski: She didn't say nothing. That shut her up like a clam.

All summers take me back to the sea. There in the long eelgrass, like birds' eggs waiting to be hatched, my brothers and sister and I sit, grasses higher than our heads, arms and legs like thicker versions of the grass waving in the wind, looking up at the blue sky. My mother is gathering food for dinner: clams and mussels and the sharply salty greens that grow by the shore. It is warm enough to lie here in the little silty puddles like bathwater left in the tub after the plug has been pulled. It is the beginning of July and we have two months to live out the long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides as they are today, slipping out, out, out as the moon pulls the other three seasons far away wherever it takes things. Out past the planets, far away from Uranus and the edge of our solar system, into the brilliantly lit dark where the things we don't know about yet reside. Out past my childhood, out past the ghosts, out past the breakwater of the stars. Like the silvery lace curtains of my bedroom being drawn from my window, letting in light, so the moon gently pulls back the layers of the year, leaving the best part open and free. So summer comes to me.

Ember looked up when he walked in, and when he saw her face, he felt like he’d been gut shot. Heavy bruising discolored the right side up to her eye, and she seemed to be in pain. Her mouth was pinched and her eyes squinted. When she realized he wasn’t one of the wait staff, she immediately turned away. “No customers allowed back here,” she called. She moved down the cook line and motioned to a Hispanic man she was working with to take her place at the grill. Zeke prowled down the parallel aisle until he was right behind her. “L-look at me.” She shook her head stubbornly. “You can’t be back here, Zeke.” “Look at me, please.” After a long pause, she turned her body toward him, but kept her face turned away. Bending his knees enough to peer into her eyes, he waited until she looked at him. Fury rolled through him as he realized he could see finger marks within the bruise. “Who d-did this to you?” She shook her head and refused to answer. Tears glinted in her eyes. “It’s no big deal, okay? Accidents happen. I was just in the wrong place at the right time. It happens when you own a bar.” Her eyes slid away and he thought there was something she wasn’t telling him, but he had a feeling if he called her on it she’d clam up completely. He reached out to touch a length of her dark hair that had escaped from her braid. Her eyes flickered and a single tear rolled down her cheek. He groaned. “D-d-don’t cry. I didn’t come in here to…up-upset you. Just had to check on you.” *****

Galen doesn’t get truly nervous until he senses the size of the Syrena mass coming toward them. Up until this point, he’d been worried about Emma. What she thought about all this. Her mother’s reunion with Grom. What she planned to do while they were gone. Whether or not she was going to keep her promise and stay out of the water. And…his thoughts keep wandering back to their kiss between the sand dunes. It was an exquisite torture, the way she tasted like a mixture of salt water and herself. A combination of two things he’s come to cherish. Water and land. Syrena world and human world. Love for his kind and love for Emma. Only now, as the party of Syrena approaches, its presence seems to encroach on Galen’s options. For some reason, it feels like a choice between water or land, Syrena world or human world, love for his kind or love for Emma. According to the law, there never was a choice. But that was before Emma. And Galen has the feeling that the time for truly deciding between the two is closing in on him. But haven’t I already made that decision? He steals a glance at Toraf, who’s been wearing the same grim expression since they left Emma’s house. Toraf is never grim. Since they were fingerlings, he’s always had a special talent for finding the positive in a situation, and if not the positive, then he can certainly find mischief in a situation. But not now. Now he’s keeping to himself. Toraf never keeps to himself. Even Grom, the usual sealed-up clam, has become boisterous and enlivened while he and Nalia chatter to each other, laughing and whispering and holding hands, all the while speculating over the events that separated them so long ago. But Toraf seems oblivious to the chatter and to Galen’s internal war of emotions and to the swarm of jellyfish he just narrowly avoided. Galen had thought Toraf might have been anxious about leaving Rayna behind. Usually, though, he comforts himself by talking about her until Galen wishes he’d had a twin brother instead of a twin sister. No, what’s troubling Toraf has nothing to do with leaving Rayna behind. He even persuaded her to stay. Which means he thinks it’s safer for her on land right now. Toraf’s motives are always simple: do what’s best for Rayna, in spite of Rayna.

The Hardys led Mr. Worth up a side street. They stopped at a wide, steamy window bearing the lettering: CHARLIE’S CLAM HOUSE “I hear the food’s good,” Joe remarked, and the trio entered the restaurant. It was a typical waterfront eating place, with sawdust on the floor. The place was crowded with diners, despite the late hour. In one corner sat a group of well-dressed people who, like the Hardys, had just left a farewell party on board the liner. But most of the customers were rough-looking men of the waterfront district. The noise of lively conversations and the odor of frying fish filled the air. Frank, Joe, and Bart Worth seated themselves at a plain wooden table in the middle of the room. As soon as the waiter had taken a dinner order for Mr. Worth and sandwiches for the Hardys, the Southerner began his story.

many (some say most) Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, South Americans, and Eastern, Central, or Southern Europeans are deficient in lactase, the enzyme that splits lactose (milk sugar) into glucose and galactose. If these people drink milk or eat milk products, they end up with a lot of undigested lactose in their intestinal tracts. This undigested lactose makes the bacteria living there happy as clams — but not the person who owns the intestines: As bacteria feast on the undigested sugar, they excrete waste products that give their host gas and cramps. To avoid this anomaly, many national cuisines purposely avoid milk as an ingredient. (Quick! Name one native Asian dish that’s made with milk. No, coconut milk doesn’t count.) To get the calcium their bodies need, these people simply substitute high-calcium foods such as greens or calcium-enriched soy products for milk.

As soon as we take our seats, a sequence of six antipasti materialize from the kitchen and swallow up the entire table: nickels of tender octopus with celery and black olives, a sweet and bitter dance of earth and sea; another plate of polpo, this time tossed with chickpeas and a sharp vinaigrette; a duo of tuna plates- the first seared and chunked and served with tomatoes and raw onion, the second whipped into a light pâté and showered with a flurry of bottarga that serves as a force multiplier for the tuna below; and finally, a plate of large sea snails, simply boiled and served with small forks for excavating the salty-sweet knuckle of meat inside. As is so often the case in Italy, we are full by the end of the opening salvo, but the night is still young, and the owner, who stops by frequently to fill my wineglass as well as his own, has a savage, unpredictable look in his eyes. Next comes the primo, a gorgeous mountain of spaghetti tossed with an ocean floor's worth of clams, the whole mixture shiny and golden from an indecent amount of olive oil used to mount the pasta at the last moment- the fat acting as a binding agent between the clams and the noodles, a glistening bridge from earth to sea. "These are real clams, expensive clams," the owner tells me, plucking one from the plate and holding it up to the light, "not those cheap, flavorless clams most restaurants use for pasta alle vongole." Just as I'm ready to wave the white napkin of surrender- stained, like my pants, a dozen shades of fat and sea- a thick cylinder of tuna loin arrives, charred black on the outside, cool and magenta through the center. "We caught this ourselves today," he whispers in my ear over the noise of the dining room, as if it were a secret to keep between the two of us. How can I refuse?

Anchored to her sure-fired eyes I am then followed by a thirst in her that she is still craving to satiate. Grabbing ahold of me upside down with her mesic grasp she warms her sienna-sand skin inverse to me. Feeling her seize my sacral nerve she maneuvers to carefully empty me again. Like brontide building up to a cloudburst she absorbs me drawing a deep squeeze upwards consuming every ounce of my sucré crème. Effleuraging the soft soused petals of her poporo she braces herself feeling an apical and phreatic trembling inside of her. Feeling her squeeze that last lick she cums again into my mouth. Feeling me swill that nectarous haoma sluicing from her pink pearlious clam. Candy flipping her clitoral shaft and tasting the pomaceous pabulum of her inner goddess. Beholding in part that celestial diluvium by which all creation is bathed. Feeling her exultant joy and tactual grip as she releases a beautiful freeing cry

Too often, out of the best of intentions, we do the very thing guaranteed to make matters worse: We hector, lecture, bully, plead, or threaten. Anthony Pratkanis, a social psychologist who investigated how scammers prey on old people, collected heartbreaking stories of family members pleading with relatives who had been defrauded: “Can’t you see the guy is a thief and the offer is a scam? You’re being ripped off!” “Ironically, this natural tendency to lecture may be one of the worst things a family member or friend can do,” Pratkanis says. “A lecture just makes the victim feel more defensive and pushes him or her further into the clutches of the fraud criminal.” Anyone who understands dissonance knows why. Shouting “What were you thinking?” will backfire because it means “Boy, are you stupid.” Such accusations cause already embarrassed victims to withdraw further into themselves and clam up, refusing to tell anyone what they are doing.

He raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get this? Is our Anne Boleyn suddenly from Mars?" He chuckled. "I always thought she hailed from Wiltshire." Luce's mind raced to catch up. She was playing Anne Boleyn? She'd never read this play, but Daniel's costume suggested he was playing the king, Henry VIII. "Mr. Shakespeare-ah,Will-thought it would look good-" "Oh,Will did?" Daniel smirked, bot believing her at all but seeming not to care. It was strange to feel that she could do or say almost anything and Daniel would still find it charming. "You're a little bit mad, aren't you, Lucinda?" "I-well-" He brushed her cheek with the back of his finger. "I adore you." "I adore you,too." The words tumbled from her mouth,feeling so real and so true after the last few stammering lies. It was like letting out a long-held breath. "I've been thinking, thinking a lot,and I wanted to tell you that-that-" "Yes?" "The truth is that what I feel for you is...deeper than adoration." She pressed her hands over his heart. "I trust you. I trust your love. I know how strong it is,and how beautiful." Luce knew that she couldn't come right out and say what she really meant-she was supposed to be a different version of herself,and the other times,when Daniel had figured out who she was, where she'd come from,he'd clammed up immediately and told her to leave. But maybe if she chose her words carefully, Daniel would understand. "It may seem like sometimes I-I forgot what you mean to me and what I mean to you,but deep down...I know.I know because we are meant to be together.I love you, Daniel." Daniel looked shocked. "You-you love me?" "Of course." Luce almost laughed at how obvious it was-but then she remembered: She had no idea which moment from her past she'd walked into.Maybe in this lifetime they'd only exchanged coy glances. Daniel's chest rose and fell violently and his lower lip began to quiver. "I want you to come away with me," he said quickly.There was a desperate edge to his voice. Luce wanted to cry out Yes!, but something held her back.It was so easy to get lost in Daniel when his body was pressed so close to hers and she could feel the heat coming off his skin and the beating of his heart through his shirt.She felt she could tell him anything now-from how glorious it had felt to die in his arms in Versailles to how devastated she was now that she knew the scope of his suffering. But she held back: The girl he thought she was in this lifetime wouldn't talk about those things, wouldn't know them. Neither would Daniel. So when she finally opened her mouth,her voice faltered. Daniel put a finger over her lips. "Wait. Don't protest yet. Let me ask you properly.By and by, my love." He peeked out the cracked wardrobe door, toward the curtain.A cheer came from the stage.The audience roared with laughter and applause. Luce hadn't even realized the play had begun. "That's my entrance.I'll see you soon." He kissed her forehead,then dashed out and onto the stage.

Training—training is everything; training is all there is to a person.  We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.  All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed.  And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me :  the rest may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care.

I don't like to go to bed with him no more, she say. Used to be when he touch me I'd go all out my head. Now when he touch me I just don't want to be bothered. Once he git on top of me I think bout how that's where he always want to be. She sip her lemonade. I use to love that part of it, she say. I use to chase him home from the field. Git all hot just watching him put the children to bed. But no more. Now I feels tired all the time. No interest. Now, now, I say. Sleep on it some, maybe it come back. But I say this just to be saying something. I don't know nothing bout it. Mr. —— clam on top of me, do his business, in ten minutes us both sleep. Only time I feel something stirring down there is when I think bout Shug. And that like running to the end of the road and it turn back on itself. You know the worst part? she say. The worst part is I don't think he notice. He git up there and enjoy himself just the same. No matter what I'm thinking. No matter what I feel. It just him. Heartfeeling don't even seem to enter into it. She snort. The fact he can do it like that make me want to kill him.

With each new course, he offers up little bites of the ethos that drives his cooking, the tastes and the words playing off each other like a kaiseki echo chamber. Ark shell, a bulging, bright orange clam peeking out of its dark shell, barely cooked, dusted with seaweed salt. "To add things is easy; to take them away is the challenge." Bamboo, cut into wedges, boiled in mountain water and served in a wide, shallow bowl with nothing but the cooking liquid. "How can we make the ingredient taste more like itself?With heat, with water, with knifework." Tempura: a single large clam, cloaked in a pale, soft batter with more chew than crunch. The clam snaps under gentle pressure, releasing a warm ocean of umami. "I want to make a message to the guest: this is the best possible way to cook this ingredient." A meaty fillet of eel wrapped around a thumb of burdock root, glazed with soy and mirin, grilled until crispy: a three-bite explosion that leaves you desperate for more. "The meal must go up and down, following strong flavors with subtle flavors, setting the right tone for the diner." And it does, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, until the last frothy drop of matcha is gone, signaling the end of the meal.

What would you do if Ree became gravely ill?” Father Johnson asked Marlboro Man. “Well, sir,” Marlboro Man replied, “I’d take care of her.” “Who’s going to do the cooking in your household?” Marlboro Man smiled. “Ree’s a great cook,” he answered. I sat up proudly in my chair, trying not to remember the Linguine with Clam Sauce and the Marinated Flank Steak and whatever other well-intentioned meals I’d massacred early in our relationship. “What about the dishes?” Father Johnson continued, channeling Gloria Steinem. “See yourself helping out there?” Marlboro Man scratched his chin and paused. “Sure,” he said. “Honestly, these aren’t really things we’ve sat down and talked about.” His voice was kind. Polite. I wanted to crawl in a hole. I wanted to have my gums scraped. I wanted to go fight that huge prairie fire from a while back. Anything would be better than this. “Have you talked about how many children you’d like to have?” “Yes, sir,” Marlboro Man said. “And?” Father Johnson prodded. “I’d like to have six or so,” Marlboro Man answered, a virile smile spreading across his face. “And what about Ree?” Father Johnson asked. “Well, she says she’d like to have one,” Marlboro Man said, looking at me and touching my knee. “But I’m workin’ on her.

I became expert at making myself invisible. I could linger two hours over a coffee, four over a meal, and hardly be noticed by the waitress. Though the janitors in Commons rousted me every night at closing time, I doubt they ever realized they spoke to the same boy twice. Sunday afternoons, my cloak of invisibility around my shoulders, I would sit in the infirmary for sometimes six hours at a time, placidly reading copies of Yankee magazine ('Clamming on Cuttyhunk') or Reader's Digest (Ten Ways to Help That Aching Back!'), my presence unremarked by receptionist, physician, and fellow sufferer alike. But, like the Invisible Man in H. G. Wells, I discovered that my gift had its price, which took the form of, in my case as in his, a sort of mental darkness. It seemed that people failed to meet my eye, made as if to walk through me; my superstitions began to transform themselves into something like mania. I became convinced that it was only a matter of time before one of the rickety iron steps that led to my room gave and I would fall and break my neck or, worse, a leg; I'd freeze or starve before Leo would assist me. Because one day, when I'd climbed the stairs successfully and without fear, I'd had an old Brian Eno song running through my head ('In New Delhi, 'And Hong Kong,' They all know that it won't be long...'), I now had to sing it to myself each trip up or down the stairs. And each time I crossed the footbridge over the river, twice a day, I had to stop and scoop around in the coffee-colored snow at the road's edge until I found a decent-sized rock. I would then lean over the icy railing and drop it into the rapid current that bubbled over the speckled dinosaur eggs of granite which made up its bed - a gift to the river-god, maybe, for safe crossing, or perhaps some attempt to prove to it that I, though invisible, did exist. The water ran so shallow and clear in places that sometimes I heard the dropped stone click as it hit the bed. Both hands on the icy rail, staring down at the water as it dashed white against the boulders, boiled thinly over the polished stones, I wondered what it would be like to fall and break my head open on one of those bright rocks: a wicked crack, a sudden limpness, then veins of red marbling the glassy water. If I threw myself off, I thought, who would find me in all that white silence? Might the river beat me downstream over the rocks until it spat me out in the quiet waters, down behind the dye factory, where some lady would catch me in the beam of her headlights when she pulled out of the parking lot at five in the afternoon? Or would I, like the pieces of Leo's mandolin, lodge stubbornly in some quiet place behind a boulder and wait, my clothes washing about me, for spring?

Soon, things were heating up in the kitchen. The first course was a variation on a French recipe that had been around since Escoffier, Baccala Brandade. Angelina created a silky forcemeat with milk, codfish, olive oil, pepper, and slow-roasted garlic, a drizzle of lemon juice, and a shower of fresh parsley, then served it as a dip with sliced sourdough and warmed pita-bread wedges, paired with glasses of bubbly Prosecco. The second course had been a favorite of her mother's called Angels on Horseback- freshly shucked oysters, wrapped in thin slices of prosciutto, then broiled on slices of herb-buttered bread. When the oysters cooked, they curled up to resemble tiny angels' wings. Angelina accented the freshness of the oyster with a dab of anchovy paste and wasabi on each hors d'oeuvre. She'd loved the Angels since she was a little girl; they were a heavenly mouthful. This was followed by a Caesar salad topped with hot, batter-dipped, deep-fried smelts. Angelina's father used to crunch his way through the small, silvery fish like French fries. Tonight, Angelina arranged them artfully around mounds of Caesar salad on each plate and ushered them out the door. For the fifth course, Angelina had prepared a big pot of her Mediterranean Clam Soup the night before, a lighter version of Manhattan clam chowder. The last two courses were Parmesan-Stuffed Poached Calamari over Linguine in Red Sauce, and the piece de resistance, Broiled Flounder with a Coriander Reduction.

There was enough intimidation, witness tampering and foul play to go around. Many books have been published about this subject, witnesses have died, some violently, under very suspicious conditions. Over the years, evidence has been tampered with, and fearing for their lives, most other people have decided to clam up and withdraw into the shadows. Personally I still retain a list of convenient deaths after the Kennedy Assassination that happened rounding the Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963! In February 1996, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his brother, Michael, flew to Havana for a meeting with Fidel Castro. As a gesture of goodwill, they brought with them a file of formerly top-secret U.S. documents. These documents were specifically about the Kennedy administration’s attempt to find a peaceful settlement with Cuba. Castro thanked them for the file and shared the impression that it was President Kennedy’s desire to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. “It’s unfortunate,” Castro said, “that things happened as they did.” Castro also indicated that normalization might have been possible, had it not been for President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Although numerous attempts at normalization between the two countries have been attempted since this meeting, powerful anti-Castro factions continued to thwart all of these efforts. Perhaps we are now witnessing the time when ways will be found to improve the relations between the United States and Cuba and then again perhaps not!

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.

I found out Si was taking naps every day on Kay’s couch! I went to Phil and told him it was a problem. “Look, I know he’s your brother and he’s my uncle, but he’s not the kind of worker we need to have,” I told Phil, while trying to make a good first impression. I was trying to instill a new work ethic and culture in Duck Commander, and I couldn’t have Si sleeping on the job! “Don’t touch Si,” Phil told me. “You leave him alone. He’s making reeds and that’s the hardest thing we do. Si is the only guy who wants to do it, and he’s good at it. Si is fine.” Amazingly enough, in the ten years I’ve been running Duck Commander, we’ve never once run out of reeds. Six years ago, Si suffered a heart attack. He smoked cigarettes for almost forty years and then quit after his heart attack, so we were all so proud of him. Even before his heart attack, I wasn’t sure about putting Si on our DVDs because I thought he would just come across too crazy. He cracked us up in the duck blind and we all loved him, but I told Jep and the other camera guys to film around him. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would understand what he was saying. When we finally tried to put him on the DVDs, he clammed up in front of the camera and looked like a frog in a cartoon just sitting there. He wouldn’t perform. Finally, we put a hidden camera under a shirt on Si’s desk. We were near the end of editing a DVD and showed a shooting scene to Si. He always takes credit for shooting more ducks than he really did. He’s said before that he killed three ducks with one shot! We were watching patterns hitting the water, and Si started claiming the ducks like he always does and going off on one of his long tangents. After we recorded him, we ran the DVD back and showed it to him. I think Si saw that he was actually pretty funny and entertaining if he acted like himself. We started putting Si on the DVDs and he got more and more popular. Now he’s the star of Duck Dynasty!

We had a second date that night, then a third, and then a fourth. And after each date, my new romance novel protagonist called me, just to seal the date with a sweet word. For date five, he invited me to his house on the ranch. We were clearly on some kind of a roll, and now he wanted me to see where he lived. I was in no position to say no. Since I knew his ranch was somewhat remote and likely didn’t have many restaurants nearby, I offered to bring groceries and cook him dinner. I agonized for hours over what I could possibly cook for this strapping new man in my life; clearly, no mediocre cuisine would do. I reviewed all the dishes in my sophisticated, city-girl arsenal, many of which I’d picked up during my years in Los Angeles. I finally settled on a non-vegetarian winner: Linguine with Clam Sauce--a favorite from our family vacations in Hilton Head. I made the delicious, aromatic masterpiece of butter, garlic, clams, lemon, wine, and cream in Marlboro Man’s kitchen in the country, which was lined with old pine cabinetry. And as I stood there, sipping some of the leftover white wine and admiring the fruits of my culinary labor, I was utterly confident it would be a hit. I had no idea who I was dealing with. I had no idea that this fourth-generation cattle rancher doesn’t eat minced-up little clams, let alone minced-up little clams bathed in wine and cream and tossed with long, unwieldy noodles that are difficult to negotiate. Still, he ate it. And lucky for him, his phone rang when he was more than halfway through our meal together. He’d been expecting an important call, he said, and excused himself for a good ten minutes. I didn’t want him to go away hungry--big, strong rancher and all--so when I sensed he was close to getting off the phone, I took his plate to the stove and heaped another steaming pile of fishy noodles onto his plate. And when Marlboro Man returned to the table he smiled politely, sat down, and polished off over half of his second helping before finally pushing away from the table and announcing, “Boy, am I stuffed!” I didn’t realize at the time just how romantic a gesture that had been.

For Dylan, this electric assault threatened to suck the air out of everything else, only there was too much radio oxygen to suck. “Like a Rolling Stone” was the giant, all-consuming anthem of the new “generation gap” disguised as a dandy’s riddle, a dealer’s come-on. As a two-sided single, it dwarfed all comers, disarmed and rejuvenated listeners at each hearing, and created vast new imaginative spaces for groups to explore both sonically and conceptually. It came out just after Dylan’s final acoustic tour of Britain, where his lyrical profusion made him a bard, whose tabloid accolade took the form of political epithet: “anarchist.” As caught on film by D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back, the young folkie had already graduated to rock star in everything but instrumentation. “Satisfaction” held Dylan back at number two during its four-week July hold on Billboard’s summit, giving way to Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am” and Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” come August, novelty capstones to Dylan’s unending riddle. (In Britain, Dylan stalled at number four.) The ratio of classics to typical pop schlock, like Freddie and the Dreamers’ “I’m Telling You Now” or Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual,” suddenly got inverted. For cosmic perspective, yesterday’s fireball, Elvis Presley, sang “Do the Clam.” Most critics have noted the Dylan influence on Lennon’s narratives. Less space gets devoted to Lennon’s effect on Dylan, which was overt: think of how Dylan rewires Chuck Berry (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) or revels in inanity (“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”). Even more telling, Lennon’s keening vocal harmonies in “Nowhere Man,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “Dr. Robert” owed as much to the Byrds and the Beach Boys, high-production turf Dylan simply abjured. Lennon also had more stylistic stretch, both in his Beatle context and within his own sensibility, as in the pagan balalaikas in “Girl” or the deliberate amplifier feedback tripping “I Feel Fine.” Where Dylan skewed R&B to suit his psychological bent, Lennon pursued radical feats of integration wearing a hipster’s arty façade, the moptop teaching the quiet con. Building up toward Rubber Soul throughout 1965, Beatle gravity exerted subtle yet inexorable force in all directions.

Then he took my arm, in a much softer grip than the one he’d used on our first date when he’d kept me from biting the dust. “No, c’mon,” he said, pulling me closer to him and securing his arms around my waist. I died a thousand deaths as he whispered softly, “What’s wrong?” What could I possibly say? Oh, nothing, it’s just that I’ve been slowly breaking up with my boyfriend from California and I uninvited him to my brother’s wedding last week and I thought everything was fine and then he called last night after I got home from cooking you that Linguine and Clam Sauce you loved so much and he said he was flying here today and I told him not to because there really wasn’t anything else we could possibly talk about and I thought he understood and while I was driving out here just now he called me and it just so happens he’s at the airport right now but I decided not to go because I didn’t want to have a big emotional drama (you mean like the one you’re playing out in Marlboro Man’s kitchen right now?) and I’m finding myself vacillating between sadness over the end of our four-year relationship, regret over not going to see him in person, and confusion over how to feel about my upcoming move to Chicago. And where that will leave you and me, you big hunk of burning love. “I ran over my dog today!” I blubbered and collapsed into another heap of impossible-to-corral tears. Marlboro Man was embracing me tightly now, knowing full well that his arms were the only offering he had for me at that moment. My face was buried in his neck and I continued to laugh, belting out an occasional “I’m sorry” between my sobs, hoping in vain that the laughter would eventually prevail. I wanted to continue, to tell him about J, to give him the complete story behind my unexpected outburst. But “I ran over my dog” was all I could muster. It was the easiest thing to explain. Marlboro Man could understand that, wrap his brain around it. But the uninvited surfer newly-ex-boyfriend dangling at the airport? It was a little more information than I had the strength to share that night. He continued holding me in his kitchen until my chest stopped heaving and the wellspring of snot began to dry. I opened my eyes and found I was in a different country altogether, The Land of His Embrace. It was a peaceful, restful, safe place. Marlboro Man gave me one last comforting hug before our bodies finally separated, and he casually leaned against the counter. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I’ve run over so many damn dogs out here, I can’t even begin to count them.” It was a much-needed--if unlikely--moment of perspective for me.

But then the cowboy standing in front of you smiles gently and says, “You sure?” Those two simple words opened up the Floodgates of Hell. I smiled and laughed, embarrassed, even as two big, thick tears rolled down both my cheeks. Then I laughed again and blew a nice, clear explosion of snot from my nose. Of all the things that had happened that day, that single moment might have been the worst. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I insisted as another pair of tears spilled out. I scrambled around the kitchen counter and found a paper towel, using it to dab the salty wetness on my face and the copious slime under my nose. “I am so, so sorry.” I inhaled deeply, my chest beginning to contract and convulse. This was an ugly cry. I was absolutely horrified. “Hey…what’s wrong?” Marlboro Man asked. Bless his heart, he had to have been as uncomfortable as I was. He’d grown up on a cattle ranch, after all, with two brothers, no sisters, and a mother who was likely as lacking in histrionics as I wished I was at that moment. He led a quiet life out here on the ranch, isolated from the drama of city life. Judging from what he’d told me so far, he hadn’t invited many women over to his house for dinner. And now he had one blubbering uncontrollably in his kitchen. I’d better hurry up and enjoy this evening, I told myself. He won’t be inviting me to any more dinners after this. I blew my nose on the paper towel. I wanted to go hide in the bathroom. Then he took my arm, in a much softer grip than the one he’d used on our first date when he’d kept me from biting the dust. “No, c’mon,” he said, pulling me closer to him and securing his arms around my waist. I died a thousand deaths as he whispered softly, “What’s wrong?” What could I possibly say? Oh, nothing, it’s just that I’ve been slowly breaking up with my boyfriend from California and I uninvited him to my brother’s wedding last week and I thought everything was fine and then he called last night after I got home from cooking you that Linguine and Clam Sauce you loved so much and he said he was flying here today and I told him not to because there really wasn’t anything else we could possibly talk about and I thought he understood and while I was driving out here just now he called me and it just so happens he’s at the airport right now but I decided not to go because I didn’t want to have a big emotional drama (you mean like the one you’re playing out in Marlboro Man’s kitchen right now?) and I’m finding myself vacillating between sadness over the end of our four-year relationship, regret over not going to see him in person, and confusion over how to feel about my upcoming move to Chicago. And where that will leave you and me, you big hunk of burning love.

We went to dinner that night and ordered steak and talked our usual dreamy talk, intentionally avoiding the larger, looming subject. When he brought me home, it was late, and the air was so perfect that I was unaware of the temperature. We stood outside my parents’ house, the same place we’d stood two weeks earlier, before the Linguine with Clam Sauce and J’s surprise visit; before the overcooked flank steak and my realization that I was hopelessly in love. The same place I’d almost wiped out on the sidewalk; the same place he’d kissed me for the first time and set my heart afire. Marlboro Man moved in for the kill. We stood there and kissed as if it was our last chance ever. Then we hugged tightly, burying our faces in each other’s necks. “What are you trying to do to me?” I asked rhetorically. He chuckled and touched his forehead to mine. “What do you mean?” Of course, I wasn’t able to answer. Marlboro Man took my hand. Then he took the reins. “So, what about Chicago?” I hugged him tighter. “Ugh,” I groaned. “I don’t know.” “Well…when are you going?” He hugged me tighter. “Are you going?” I hugged him even tighter, wondering how long we could keep this up and continue breathing. “I…I…ugh, I don’t know,” I said. Ms. Eloquence again. “I just don’t know.” He reached behind my head, cradling it in his hands. “Don’t…,” he whispered in my ear. He wasn’t beating around the bush. Don’t. What did that mean? How did this work? It was too early for plans, too early for promises. Way too early for a lasting commitment from either of us. Too early for anything but a plaintive, emotional appeal: Don’t. Don’t go. Don’t leave. Don’t let it end. Don’t move to Chicago. I didn’t know what to say. We’d been together every single day for the past two weeks. I’d fallen completely and unexpectedly in love with a cowboy. I’d ended a long-term relationship. I’d eaten beef. And I’d begun rethinking my months-long plans to move to Chicago. I was a little speechless. We kissed one more time, and when our lips finally parted, he said, softly, “Good night.” “Good night,” I answered as I opened the door and went inside. I walked into my bedroom, eyeing the mound of boxes and suitcases that sat by the door, and plopped down on my bed. Sleep eluded me that night. What if I just postponed my move to Chicago by, say, a month or so? Postponed, not canceled. A month surely wouldn’t hurt, would it? By then, I reasoned, I’d surely have him out of my system; I’d surely have gotten my fill. A month would give me all the time I needed to wrap up this whole silly business. I laughed out loud. Getting my fill of Marlboro Man? I couldn’t go five minutes after he dropped me off at night before smelling my shirt, searching for more of his scent. How much worse would my affliction be a month from now? Shaking my head in frustration, I stood up, walked to my closet, and began removing more clothes from their hangers. I folded sweaters and jackets and pajamas with one thing pulsating through my mind: no man--least of all some country bumpkin--was going to derail my move to the big city. And as I folded and placed each item in the open cardboard boxes by my door, I tried with all my might to beat back destiny with both hands. I had no idea how futile my efforts would be.

Remarkably, we still have a ‘wild’ Indian’s account of his capture and incarceration. In 1878, when he was an old man, a Kamia called Janitin told an interviewer: I and two of my relatives went down ... to the beach ... we did no harm to anyone on the road, and ... we thought of nothing more than catching and drying clams in order to carry them to our village. While we were doing this, we saw two men on horseback coming rapidly towards us; my relatives were immediately afraid and they fled with all speed, hiding themselves in a very dense willow grove ... As soon as I saw myself alone, I also became afraid ... and ran to the forest ... but already it was too late, because in a moment they overtook me and lassoed and dragged me for a long distance, wounding me much with the branches over which they dragged me, pulling me lassoed as I was with their horses running; after this they roped me with my arms behind and carried me off to the Mission of San Miguel, making me travel almost at a run in order to keep up with their horses, and when I stopped a little to catch my wind, they lashed me with the lariats that they carried, making me understand by signs that I should hurry; after much travelling in this manner, they diminished the pace and lashed me in order that I would always travel at the pace of the horses. When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week; the father [a Dominican priest] made me go to his habitation and he talked to me by means of an interpreter, telling me that he would make me a Christian, and he told me many things that I did not understand, and Cunnur, the interpreter, told me that I should do as the father told me, because now I was not going to be set free, and it would go very bad with me if I did not consent in it. They gave me atole de mayz[corn gruel] to eat which I did not like because I was not accustomed to that food; but there was nothing else to eat. One day they threw water on my head and gave me salt to eat, and with this the interpreter told me that I was now Christian and that I was called Jesús: I knew nothing of this, and I tolerated it all because in the end I was a poor Indian and did not have recourse but to conform myself and tolerate the things they did with me. The following day after my baptism, they took me to work with the other Indians, and they put me to cleaning a milpa [cornfield] of maize; since I did not know how to manage the hoe that they gave me, after hoeing a little, I cut my foot and could not continue working with it, but I was put to pulling out the weeds by hand, and in this manner I did not finish the task that they gave me. In the afternoon they lashed me for not finishing the job, and the following day the same thing happened as on the previous day. Every day they lashed me unjustly because I did not finish what I did not know how to do, and thus I existed for many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox; there they seized me by lasso as on the first occasion, and they carried me off to the mission torturing me on the road. After we arrived, the father passed along the corridor of the house, and he ordered that they fasten me to the stake and castigate me; they lashed me until I lost consciousness, and I did not regain consciousness for many hours afterwards. For several days I could not raise myself from the floor where they had laid me, and I still have on my shoulders the marks of the lashes which they gave me then.

Men always complain that the minute they think they’ve got a woman figured out, the woman does something to completely confuse the man again.”  Daniel nodded. “I would agree with that.” “Well, that’s because men are simple-minded and uncomplicated.” Why was she having this conversation with him?  “All a man needs is food and . . .” she stopped herself. Oh, she really didn’t want to go there! Why did she have to open this can of worms? “Food and what?” Daniel pressed. She took a deep breath. “Give a man food and sex” – there I said it – “and they’re as happy as clams.” Daniel coughed and almost choked on a piece of venison. A split second later, a thoroughly devilish smile spread across his face as he intently peered up at her from across the table. She held her breath. God, why did he have to be so damn good-looking, especially with that heart-stopping smile of his! “Well, your cooking’s been real good so far,” he drawled. His eyes smoldered as he stared at her. She waved her hands in front of her, palms out, and abruptly left the table. “Okay, this conversation has gone far enough. You are a typical man, Daniel, and it brings me to my final point,” “Point?” “Men are pigs.

I had to push him a bit,” I said. “Superstitious folk don’t like to talk about things they’re afraid of. He was about to clam up, and I needed to know what he’d seen in the forest.” “I could have gotten it out of him,” she said. “More flies with honey and all that.

"Get out of here," I said, barely able to open my jaw enough to get the words out. Rafe looked surprised at first but seeing my face, that melted away and his own face hardened. He turned to Nicole. "What'd you do?" he said. "Wh-what did I do?" she squeaked. Her blue eyes rounded and she flinched, like a whipped puppy seeing a raised hand. "I-I don't understand." "What's going on here?" Hayley said. "She..." I clenched my fists tighter and my face started to throb, as if I was about to shift. I took a deep breath and tried to find clam so I could explain. "I-I don't understand," Nicole said again, tears welling up. "Oh, stuff the theatrics," Sam said. She turned to the others. "Nicole killed Serena."

She stopped to think.  “Twice.  It happened so quick.  Rob was just trying to warn Dean, but he accidentally hit him.” “What did you do?” “Well, Dean fell down and started bleeding all over the stairs.  I started freaking out.  Rob was freaking out.  We didn’t know what to do.”  She clammed up all

Pearls vs. Clams If you don't have any pearls of wisdom to offer ~ then clam the fuck up!

...maybe karma isn't a bitch after all, she's just fair." Kate O'Malley CLAMMING UP

A relentless worker, Myers only stopped producing when he was felled in 2006 by an inoperable brain tumor. He died at fifty-four on March 27, 2007; that week the journal Science published his last, groundbreaking paper: it provided convincing evidence that the decimation of sharks in the Atlantic had produced a cascade of unintended effects that were distorting ecosystems up and down the East Coast. He and his colleagues calculated that between 1970 and 2005, the number of scalloped hammerhead and tiger sharks declined by more than 97 percent, and bull, dusky, and smooth hammerhead sharks dropped by more than 99 percent. During that same period nearly all of the sharks’ prey species exploded: the cownose ray population off the East Coast expanded to as much as forty million. They became the thugs of the ocean, rampaging and pillaging in their quest to sustain their ever-rising numbers. Cownose rays eat tremendous amounts of bay scallops, oysters, and soft-shell and hard clams, and by 2004 their consumption of nearly all the adult scallops in the North Carolina sounds forced the state to shutter its century-old bay scallop fishery.

Someone get the camera and start filming!” the oni shouted. A yōkai with a weasel-like face rushed to do as told. The oni then leaned down and whispered in her ear, his grating voice and breath on her neck making Lindsay shiver. “You’re gonna die today, bitch. I’m gonna fucking kill you.” Oh, God! Lindsay felt her bladder threaten to go. Her body was a shivering wreck. She couldn’t control it. Her mind had become overridden with fear. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t do anything. She was helpless! The weasel-faced yōkai turned to face them, the camera on. The oni grinned as he gripped Lindsay’s head between his hands. Lindsay sobbed. This was it. She was going to die. She was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it. I don’t wanna die… Visions flashed before her eyes, images of her friends, of her family, of the people she would leave behind. Please… She thought about Kevin, the boy she still sorta liked, even though he was a male. Someone… She thought about Christine, the girl she did like, and regret welled up inside of her as she realized she would never see the yuki-onna again. Help… “I want everyone to watch this,” the oni said, but his voice sounded far away. Lindsay’s mind was locked, clammed up with fear and overflowing with remorse. “This is what happens to humans who think they can befriend us! You should all learn to fear yōkai!” This… this is the end. Lindsay closed her eyes, hoping against hope that it would make the end less painful, that maybe, just maybe, if she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t suffer as much. “Prepare for trouble!” “And make it double!” What? Lindsay’s eyes snapped wide open upon hearing two very familiar voices. She quickly looked toward where she heard the voices and couldn’t believe her eyes. There, standing in the center of the amphitheater, back to back, was Kevin and Lilian. Hope welled up inside of her breast. It was a hope that suddenly stopped, giving way to confusion instead, when she saw their outfits. Are they wearing leather spandex?

Often, instead of accurately naming our emotions, we’ll use figures of speech. I’m on top of the world. You’re burned up. He’s happy as a clam. I’m down in the dumps. She’s blue. All highly evocative, of course. But still, they allow us to evade having to confront, plainly and exactly, what we feel. These inventive metaphors may be descriptive on the written page, but they often create distance between our feelings and our words.

I could feel the crying vaginas, calling out to all other vaginas in the vicinity to clam up, to turn inside out and run for their damn lives, to never show fold in a salon like this again.

As we age, not all of us will get high blood pressure, dementia, or incontinence. In addition, some species seem immune to senescence. Bowhead whales, giant tortoises, lobsters, tortoises, and some clams can live and reproduce after hundreds of years. (The world record is a clam named Ming who researchers dredged up and, in the cruelest of ironies, then killed to determine it was 507 years old.)28 How and why do certain animals and humans, including those who exercise, tend to senesce more slowly?

I had the sense that I was reading a culinary version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" nearly every dish included numbers: 6 Clams Simmered in Wine & 5 Herb Garlic Butter 2 Slices of Pork Loin with 3 Potato Gallette Tower of 4 Shrimp with 7 Vegetables "Fiiiiive golden rings!" I sang in my head.

The first one is paella-style takikiomi gohan rice ball. You chop up white meat fish, clams, shrimp and squid and fry them in olive oil with garlic and saffron. And in a different pan, you fry finely chopped tomatoes, onions and green pepper in olive oil. You mix those two together and cook them with rice using a broth made from beef shank and chicken bones. Then you make that into a rice ball... ... and wrap it in Parma ham." "Oh my! It sure is something to make a paella-style takikomi gohan into a rice ball." "But when it's wrapped in Parma ham, they match perfectly." "It's completely Western, but it still tastes like a rice ball." "This is a surprise. And the judges seem to like it too." "Next is a rice ball coated in pork flakes. This is a pork flake you often see in Chinese cooking. You cook the lean pork meat in soy sauce seasoned with star anise until it becomes flaky. The filling inside is Dongpo pork--- a Chinese dish made of pork belly that's been slowly braised." "Ooh, the soft Dongpo pork came out as I bit into the rice coated in the sweet and salty pork flakes!" "Ah, the flavor and texture are superb!" "This combination is just wonderful! " "You've made Dongpo pork into such a great rice ball, it's making me cry. It looks Chinese, but it's very much a Japanese rice ball." "Now the judges are taking his side..." "And the last is a deep-fried chicken rice ball. You deep fry chicken that has been marinated in soy sauce with ginger and garlic... ...and then use that as the filling of the rice ball... ... then coat it in red shiso seasonings." "Ah, the rich taste of the deep-fried chicken is something the young people will like. And the red shiso seasoning creates a refreshing aftertaste.

The key to communicating biblically when you are angry is twofold. First, as you’ve already realized, you must direct your anger toward the problem. It’s as if the Lord has given you a special dart, and rather than “blowing up” and throwing that dart at the person who made you angry, or “clamming up” and swallowing the dart yourself, you must remember to throw it at the real problem. Second, you must release your anger under the control of the Holy Spirit. You must depend upon the Spirit of God to help you obey those Scriptures that need to govern your speech. To put it in biblical language, you are to speak, “as it were, the utterances of God” (1 Peter 4:11).

But things had changed shortly after he turned eleven. He clammed up, got angry, became shifty and secretive. And then suddenly it was like we were speaking entirely different languages. I'd say something and he'd look baffled. Then he'd reply, and it would be my turn to be confused. Being around him became like hosting a foreign exchange student, but without the pleasantries. Or an end date.

The Hardys drove off, heading first for the Morton farm. Chet and Iola were waiting for them, with several baskets of food which included lobsters and a sack of clams. Their next stop was at the Shaw house to pick up Callie, then they drove directly to the waterfront. “Hi!” cried Tony, giving his friends an expansive grin. The Napoli was chugging quietly at her berth. After the food and digging tools had been transferred to the craft and the Hardys had brought their diving gear from the Sleuth, everyone stepped aboard and Tony shoved off. When they reached the end of the bay and turned up the coast, the young people watched for Pirates’ Hill. Minutes later they saw it in the distance. The hill was a desolate hump of sand-covered stone jutting into the sea. There was not a house in sight, except one small cottage about half a mile beyond the crown of the hill.

In the course of psychotherapy with children, innumerable transactions between child and therapist result in an emotionally corrective, relational healing experience. What happens when therapists respond in the expected way?

Highly anxious children or severely traumatized children don’t play.

Watts-English, Fortson, Gibler, Hooper, & DeBellis, 2006). Further compounding this limited verbal and conceptual ability is the observation that children from low verbal families develop language skills even more slowly (Hart & Risley, 2003). This results in protracted immature language usage, fewer words, shorter sentences, and the consideration of fewer details than children from high verbal families (Papalia & Olds, 1979).

While thinking, reasoning, and language abilities are desirable endpoints, children’s immature development largely precludes their use as a medium of treatment.

Researchers have just recently become aware of the magnitude of developmental, health, and behavioral problems—including speech and language problems—that plague maltreated children

bottom-up modalities (primary sensory, somatic, movement, rhythmic) help establish basic homeostatic stability will top-down treatments such as insight, reflection, trauma integration, narrative development, social development, or affect enhancement be effective (Kliem & Jones, 2008; Perry, 2008, 2009).

The multiple consequences of early child maltreatment call for early identification and intervention with strategies that are effective to children with poorly developed cognitive and verbal abilities. Symptoms mediated through the regulatory neural networks originating in lower brain regions are far less responsive to treatment interventions using verbal, logical, rational, or even emotionally expressive treatment modalities. This is also true of play therapy strategies utilizing these methodologies. van der Kolk (2004) pointed out that traumatized individuals show little activity in the left hemisphere, particularly in language areas, resulting in decreased capacity for planning and analyzing while displaying excessive activity in the right limbic hemisphere, suggesting excessive emotional experience, but no ability to communicate it or understand it. Not surprisingly, such individuals respond poorly to cognitive, verbal, and multimodal treatment designs due to their self-regulatory deficits and language-based limitations.

Speech and language development interconnects with all other facets of child development, including physical, cognitive, social, and emotional domains. Each domain affects and is affected by all other domains, assuring that language development and functioning will be altered by trauma. In fact, a history of maltreatment places a child at high risk for numerous speech and language problems, including language production, articulation, language comprehension, and school readiness (McConachy et al., 2013;

Young children are powerfully affected by extreme, unpredictable, or uncontrollable activation of the stress response system through abuse, neglect, prenatal alcohol or drug exposure, or other untoward traumatic experiences. Such excessive and uncontrolled activation of the stress response system can result in overly sensitized and chronically aroused stress response networks (Perry, 2008; Unger & Perry, 2012). The resulting impact on brain architecture can adversely affect cognitive, emotional, behavioral, social, sensorimotor, and physical health problems (Anda et al., 2001; DeBellis et al., 1999; Delima & Vimpani, 2011; Felitti et al., 1998; Perry, 2006, 2008, 2009; Perry & Dobson, 2013;

Taken as a whole, maltreatment and neglect demonstrate a powerful capacity to create enduring dysfunction in multiple domains. The earlier in a child’s life maltreatment occurs, the greater the risk of enduring and pervasive problems into adulthood (Perry, 2005, 2008).

night of the murder on his own to set up his trick on Tony. If there

The clam had shown up 200 million years before the action really began. Virtually all the phyla that have crawled, walked, flown, or swum during the modern era arose roughly 520 million years ago in a blink of geologic time so brief it’s called the “Cambrian explosion.

Nights, they barbecue on the strips of lawn between the cottages, usually pooling their resources, grill hamburgs and hot dogs. Or maybe during the day one of the guys walks over to the docks to see what’s fresh and that night they grill tuna or bluefish or boil some lobsters. Other nights they walk down to Dave’s Dock, sit at a table out on the big deck that overlooks Gilead, across the narrow bay. Dave’s doesn’t have a liquor license, so they bring their own bottles of wine and beer, and Danny loves sitting out there watching the fishing boats, the lobstermen, or the Block Island Ferry come in as he eats chowder and fish-and-chips and greasy clam cakes. It’s pretty and peaceful out there as the sun softens and the water glows in the dusk. Some nights they just walk home after dinner, gather in each other’s cottages for more cards and conversations; other times maybe they drive over to Mashanuck Point, where there’s a bar, the Spindrift. Sit and have a few drinks and listen to some local bar band, maybe dance a little, maybe not. But usually the whole gang ends up there and it’s always a lot of laughs until closing time.

Those are the best evenings, when we fill up on bread bowls stuffed to the brim with clam chowder and then spend the full-moon-drenched night on the empty pier, gathering the thick, swirling clouds of raw magic. I wouldn't be able to spend late nights with Remy, cozied up in my room with magic-infused globes floating around us as we watch the latest episode of Demon Slayer projected on my ceiling, while sipping charmed mugs of yuzu honey tea.

I decided to make the seafood chowder I first ate twenty years ago in the English Market in Cork, Ireland---or at least my own version of that smoky, tomato-based soup with cod, scallops, clams, and shrimp; sometimes (in Ireland), it had periwinkles (sea snails) and enough smoked haddock to give it a wonderful campfire tang. Of course, I had to skip the periwinkles and for the smokiness I made do with frozen finnan haddie. I'd worked on the recipe over the years, cranking the flavors so that when I finally went back to the English Market a couple of years ago, their chowder was so bland and watery that Jack didn't believe it was the same soup I made at home. It was possible that the Irish cook was having a bad day, or someone was trying to stretch the last bit of a used-up batch, or they'd made the recipe from memory for so long, it had ceased being itself---a chef at a good restaurant here in Los Angeles once told me that vigilance is the key to consistency, and that if she or a trusted supervisor didn't keep an eye on the plates as they came out of the kitchen, a dish could become unrecognizable within hours.

Four pounds of fish are enough to make a chowder for four or five people; half a dozen slices of salt pork in the bottom of the pot; hang it high, so that the pork may not burn; take it out when done very high brown; put in a layer of fish, cut in lengthwise slices, then a layer formed of crackers, small or sliced onions, and potatoes sliced as thin as a four pence, mixed with pieces of pork you have fried; then a layer of fish again, and so on. Six crackers are enough. Strew a little salt and pepper over each layer; over the whole pour a bowl-full of flour and water, enough to come up even with the surface of what you have in the pot. A sliced lemon adds to the flavor. A cup of tomato catsup is very excellent. Some people put in beer. A few clams are a pleasant addition. It should be covered so as not to let a particle of steam escape, if possible. Do not open it, except when nearly done, to taste if it be well seasoned. —Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, Boston, 1829