Coincidence I Think Not Quotes

i think of all the thousands of billions of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that have brought me here. Brought you here, and it feels like the biggest miracle in the world.

You know, I never believed in fate until I met you... then I started thinking coincidence didn't have near so cruel a sense of humor

I often feel like I want to think something but I can't find the language that coincides with the thoughts, so it remains felt, not thought. Sometimes I feel like I'm thinking in Swedish without knowing Swedish.

I don't think that anything happens by coincidence... No one is here by accident... Everyone who crosses our path has a message for us. Otherwise they would have taken another path, or left earlier or later. The fact that these people are here means that they are here for some reason"...

Ok, let me just write that down for you since you seem to think I'm you personal assistant," Sally responded, her tone clipped. "You ever noticed how assistant starts with ass? Do you think that's a coincidence?" Jen shrugged her shoulders as she raised her eyebrows at Sally.

You'll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do. If you're very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide.

I don't believe that. I don't believe that there are bad things about you. Only things that you think are bad.

Hermione, if Harry’s seen a Grim, that’s — that’s bad,” he said. “My — my uncle Bilius saw one and — and he died twenty-four hours later!” “Coincidence,” said Hermione airily, pouring herself some pumpkin juice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Ron, starting to get angry. “Grims scare the living daylights out of most wizards!” “There you are, then,” said Hermione in a superior tone. “They see the Grim and die of fright. The Grim’s not an omen, it’s the cause of death! And Harry’s still with us because he’s not stupid enough to see one and think, right, well, I’d better kick the bucket then!

I don't believe in fate," she said at last. "But I do believe in... loopholes. I think a lot of what keeps the world going is the result of accidents — happy or otherwise — and taking advantage of these.

It's because you aren't thinking very clearly tonight." "I know. Being Drunk is weird." "Oh my god. I love you so much. Especially when you say stuff like that." "Like what?" "Nothing. Never mind. Although I'm dying to know why your shoe is green.

I ain't no Psy, Ms. Aleine, but even us dumb animals know when two people start exchanging thoughts, something's going on." She narrowed her eyes at his smug tone. "It was a coincidence." "Baby, when I think about my body, I don't focus on my cock.

Kayden: Yeah, but you're a girl. Me: Oh, I forgot for a sec. Thanx for reminding me. Kayden: I haven't forgotten at all. In fact, it's all I think about all the time. Me: That I'm a girl?? Kayden: That ur a girl I very badly want to touch right now

Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Travelling companion’. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.

Why is Santa an anagram for Satan? I mean, besides the fact that both have the same amounts of the same letters. Just consider the many other similarities between the two figures: both of them are red, both of them like to laugh, both of them give presents to children and both of them are kings of an ungodly underworld of unspeakable horror and suffering. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

But I don't believe coincidences are chance events. I think they're the times we happen to see the mysterious pattern connecting everything.

I think that sometimes people misinterpret understand and acceptance and make it into something that it isn't.

There's an old, frequently-used definition of insanity, which is "performing the same action over and over, expecting different results."... Now, I'm no doctor, but I am on TV. And in my professional opinion, George Bush is a paranoid schizophrenic. ... ...Other symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia are: Do you see things that aren't there? Such as a link between 9/11 and Iraq? Do you - do you feel things that you shouldn't be feeling, like a sense of accomplishment? Do you have trouble organizing words into a coherent sentence? Do you hear voices that aren't really there? Like, oh, I don't know, your imaginary friend, Jesus? Telling you to start a war in the Middle East. Well, guess what? There are a large number of people out there also suffering from the same delusions, because there are Republicans, there are conservatives, and then there are the Bushies. This is the 29 percent of Americans who still think he's doing "a heck of a job, Whitey." And I don't believe that it's coincidence that almost the same number of Americans - 25 percent - told a recent pollster that they believe that this year - this year, 2007 - would bring the Second Coming of Christ! I have a hunch these are the same people. Because, if you think that you're going to meet Jesus before they cancel "Ugly Betty," then you're used to doing things by faith. And if you have so much blind faith that you think this war is winnable, you're nuts and you shouldn't be allowed near a voting booth.

Because I think to myself, even today, how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?

He stops rocking the cage. "Oh, come on, Callie. It won't be fun if we don't rock it. In fact, the more we rock it, the better it'll feel." His voice drops to a deep whisper. "We can rock it nice and slow or really, really fast."... "Do I have your permission to rock away and give you the ride of your life?" Why does it feel like he's secretly talking dirty to me? "Yeah, go ahead, rock it nice and hard," I say without thinking, then bite down on my lip as the dirty section of my brain catches up with me. Honestly, I didn't even know that side existed.

It is coincidence, I decide, and I am getting old and batty, thinking the universe revolves around me.

Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race." (Republic 473c-d)

But who is screenwriting our lives? Fate or coincidence? I want to believe it’s the latter. I want that with all my heart and soul. When I think of Charles Jacobs—my fifth business, my change agent, my nemesis—I can’t bear to believe his presence in my life had anything to do with fate. It would mean that all these terrible things—these horrors—were meant to happen. If that is so, then there is no such thing as light, and our belief in it is a foolish illusion. If that is so, we live in darkness like animals in a burrow, or ants deep in their hill. And not alone.

What's your name?" I ask. I don't need to know. In fact, don't want to know. Giving him a name makes it sound like we're somehow on the same side, which we can never be. It's like acknowledging that we could become friends. But that's not possible. It's pointless to make friends with your executioner. "Raffe." I only asked him his name to distract him from thinking about having to use his feet instead of his wings. But now that I know his name, it feels right. "Rah-fie," I repeat slowly. "I like the sound of that." His eyes soften as though he smiles even though his expression doesn't change from his stony look. For some reason, it makes my face heat up. I clear my throat to break the tension. "Raffe sounds like Raw Feet. Coincidence?" That gets a smile out of him. When he smiles, he really does look like someone you'd want to get to know. Some otherworldly handsome guy a girl could dream about. Only he's not a guy. And he's too otherworldly. Not to mention that this girl is beyond dreaming about anything other than food, shelter, and the safety of her family.

Is it just a coincidence that as the portion of our income spent on food has declined, spending on health care has soared? In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on heath care has climbed to 16 percent of national income. I have to think that by spending a little more on healthier food we could reduce the amount we have to spend on heath care.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this crisis in paying attention has taken place at the same time as the worst crisis of democracy since the 1930s. People who can't focus will be more drawn to simplistic authoritarian solutions--and less likely to see clearly when they fail. A world full of attention-deprived citizens alternating between Twitter and Snapchat will be a world of cascading crises where we can't get a handle on any of them.

The interplay of the aesthetic with the erotic is complex. The peacock's tail is beautiful to us, sexy to the peahen. Beauty and sexual attractiveness overlap, coincide. They may be deeply related. I think they should not be confused.

When you smile I want to do awful things to you,” Oliver said, leering wolfishly. “A lucky coincidence, because when I’m smiling it’s because I’m thinking of you doing filthy things to me.” Jack grinned back at him.

Are we going somewhere?” “To the river.” “But why?” “To see what we can see.” “I really d-don’t think . . .” We were going to end up as newspaper headlines: Pensioner and Homosexual Found Dead in River—Coincidence, Tragedy, or Satanic Ritual Gone Wrong?

Reason like a sphere? What type of reasoning does a wooden sphere do?" "The circular type, I should think. And, by coincidence, it is my favorite type as well. Perhaps that's why I'm so good at the game.

I think it's because it's startling every time - every single time - that such beauty and such loss coincide in every life, in every soul, in every memory.

You probably think that being a guest in your aunt's house I would hesitate to butter you all over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It would be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!' So saying, and recognising a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. (Spode to Wooster)

I went down, giving you my arm, at least one million of stairs and now that you are no more here it’s the void on every step. Also in such way our long journey has been short too. Mine still goes on, and I need no more coincidences, reservations, traps, shames of those who think that reality is that what you see. I went down millions of stairs giving you my arm not just because it’s better to see with four eyes than two. With you I went down because I knew that between us the only true pupils, though so much darkened, were yours

I don't think any of the things that happened are coincidence. I think life is a series of stepping stones that branch out in all different directions. We have no idea what path we're supposed to follow, so we tend to walk a straight line and follow the biggest stones, because that's the easiest thing to do. Coincidences are the smaller stones that lead you on a path that veers off. If you're brave enough, you follow those stones, and you wind up exactly where you're supposed to be.

On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not quiet and modest at first, the works seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egotistic. There's no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except with someone who doesn't know what you're doing.

Ten Best Song to Strip 1. Any hip-swiveling R&B fuckjam. This category includes The Greatest Stripping Song of All Time: "Remix to Ignition" by R. Kelly. 2. "Purple Rain" by Prince, but you have to be really theatrical about it. Arch your back like Prince himself is daubing body glitter on your abdomen. Most effective in nearly empty, pathos-ridden juice bars. 3. "Honky Tonk Woman" by the Rolling Stones. Insta-attitude. Makes even the clumsiest troglodyte strut like Anita Pallenberg. (However, the Troggs will make you look like even more of a troglodyte, so avoid if possible.) 4. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard. The Lep's shouted choruses and relentless programmed drums prove ideal for chicks who can really stomp. (Coincidence: I once saw a stripper who, like Rick Allen, had only one arm.) 5. "Amber" by 311. This fluid stoner anthem is a favorite of midnight tokers at strip joints everywhere. Mellow enough that even the most shitfaced dancer can make it through the song and back to her Graffix bong without breaking a sweat. Pass the Fritos Scoops, dude. 6. "Miserable" by Lit, but mostly because Pamela Anderson is in the video, and she's like Jesus for strippers (blonde, plastic, capable of parlaying a broken nail into a domestic battery charge, damaged liver). Alos, you can't go wrong stripping to a song that opens with the line "You make me come." 7. "Back Door Man" by The Doors. Almost too easy. The mere implication that you like it in the ass will thrill the average strip-club patron. Just get on all fours and crawl your way toward the down payment on that condo in Cozumel. (Unless, like most strippers, you'd rather blow your nest egg on tacky pimped-out SUVs and Coach purses.) 8. Back in Black" by AC/DC. Producer Mutt Lange wants you to strip. He does. He told me. 9. "I Touch Myself" by the Devinyls. Strip to this, and that guy at the tip rail with the bitch tits and the shop teacher glasses will actually believe that he alone has inspired you to masturbate. Take his money, then go masturbate and think about someone else. 10. "Hash Pipe" by Weezer. Sure, it smells of nerd. But River Cuomo is obsessed with Asian chicks and nose candy, and that's just the spirit you want to evoke in a strip club. I recommend busting out your most crunk pole tricks during this one.

Sometimes I think the city is naturally conducive to coincidences in the same way that Plains states like Nebraska and Oklahoma are conducive to twisters, in the same way that mountain lakes are conducive to lightning.

Because destiny had a different plan. They were supposed to meet later. People come into our lives at certain times for various reasons having to do with lessons to be learned. It is not a coincidence that they didn’t meet at a much earlier age when they did not have other commitments. I think the reason people meet later is to learn about love in many different ways and about how to balance this with responsibility and commitment. They’ll meet again in a different lifetime. They must be patient.

A proper sense of proportion leaves no room for superstition. A man says, "I have never been in a shipwreck," and becoming nervous touches wood. Why is he nervous? He has this paragraph before his eyes: "Among the deceased was Mr. ——. By a remarkable coincidence this gentleman had been saying only a few days before that he had never been in a shipwreck. Little did he think that his next voyage would falsify his words so tragically." It occurs to him that he has read paragraphs like that again and again. Perhaps he has. Certainly he has never read a paragraph like this: "Among the deceased was Mr. ——. By a remarkable coincidence this gentleman had never made the remark that he had not yet been in a shipwreck." Yet that paragraph could have been written truthfully thousands of times.

IT’S HARDLY a coincidence that “Shipping Out,” Wallace’s most well-known essay, appeared only a month before Infinite Jest, his most well-known novel, was published. Both are about the same thing (amusing ourselves to death), with different governing données (lethally entertaining movie, lethally pampering leisure cruise). In an interview after the novel came out, Wallace, asked what’s so great about writing, said that we’re existentially alone on the planet—I can’t know what you’re thinking and feeling, and you can’t know what I’m thinking and feeling—so writing, at its best, is a bridge constructed across the bridge of human loneliness.

I think you'll be satisfied if you become disappointed in yourself,' she said quietly. 'It would further support the conclusion that you've already drawn anyway. It would reinforce your negative opinions about yourself. You don't do enough and then become angry at yourself for not doing enough.

I think careful cooking is love, don’t you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who’s close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give. —JULIA CHILD

I’m not trying to impress you,” he replied, glancing up at the front of the room. “Gads,” he said, blinking in surprise. “What is that ?” Hyacinth followed his gaze. Several of the Pleinsworth progeny, one of whom appeared to be costumed as a shepherdess, were milling about. “Now that’s an interesting coincidence,” Gareth murmured. “It might be time to start bleating,” she agreed. “I thought this was meant to be a poetry recitation.” Hyacinth grimaced and shook her head. “An unexpected change to the program, I’m afraid.” “From iambic pentameter to Little Bo Peep?” he asked doubtfully. “It does seem a stretch.” Hyacinth gave him a rueful look. “I think there will still be iambic pentameter.” His mouth fell open. “From Peep?” She nodded, holding up the program that had been resting in her lap. “It’s an original composition,” she said, as if that would explain everything. “By Harriet Pleinsworth.The Shepherdess, the Unicorn, and Henry VIII .” “All of them? At once?” “I’m not jesting,” she said, shaking her head. “Of course not. Even you couldn’t have made this up.” Hyacinth decided to take that as a compliment. “Why didn’t I receive one of these?” he asked, taking the program from her. “I believe it was decided not to hand them out to the gentlemen,” Hyacinth said, glancing about the room. “One has to admire Lady Pleinsworth’s foresight, actually. You’d surely flee if you knew what was in store for you.

They know what the “perfumes” are going to say because they always say the same thing, but they pretend to believe them anyway. (a)“I could change your life.” (b)“A lot of women would like to be in your shoes.” (c)“You’re young now, but what will become of you in a few years’ time? You need to think about making a longer-term investment.” (d)“I’m married, but my wife . . .” (This opening line can have various endings: “. . . is ill,” “. . . has threatened to commit suicide if I leave her,” etc.) (e)“You’re a princess and deserve to be treated like one. I didn’t know it until now, but I’ve been waiting for you. I don’t believe in coincidences and I really think we ought to give this relationship a chance.

I think it was probably both the coincidence and the beer that made Miralles say at some point that we were going to end up the same, defeated and alone and punch-drunk in a dead-end city, pissing blood before going into the ring to fight to the death against our own shadows in an empty stadium.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers. And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it." There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." Thank you.

However tortured the rationalizations we prefer, the thirst of one human being for another can be so--humbling--but I preferred to think of it as fate. And then mad desire. Anything but a fortress built on the back of a whim...How much easier to say there is no coincidence, and certainly no mistakes, and carry on to our destruction in defense of...how shall I put it? My idea of myself. One will sacrifice anything for that.

Creepy little girl Sarah says, sometimes I see their faces in the mirror crazy old lady Sarah totally said the same thing. Coincidence? I think not.

I soaked the conversations up like a sponge, pulled them apart, rearranged them to make their origins disappear, and when I told them to the same people who had told the stories earlier, they were bewildered by the coincidence between what I said and what they were thinking.

I think it simply comes down to fantasy being the language I speak. While I cannot get into epic sword and sorcery, I see the world as having the potential to be slightly off-kilter. I have run into people who do not quite seem human – though of course they are – and have been privy to coincidences that almost make me believe in magic. Fantasy is sometimes just asking yourself, “Well, what if you are wrong? What if the world doesn’t work the way you think? What would that mean?

Because a lot has happened on this earth in four and a half billion years to think that a God would give a shit about me or my problems. But, I recently concluded that there’s no other explanation for how you and I could end up on the same planet, in the same species, in the same century, in the same country, in the same state, in the same town, in the same hallway, in front of the same door for the same reason at the exact same time. If God didn’t believe in me, then I’d have to believe you were just a coincidence. And you being a coincidence in my life is a lot harder for me to fathom than the mere existence of a higher power.

We're all creatures of complex needs and desires. The only certain thing in a romantic relationship is that you will both change, and one morning you will wake up, go the mirror, and see a stranger. You will have what you wanted, and discover you want something different. You think you know who you are, and then you'll surprise yourself. In all the choices in front of you, Restless, one thing is clear: love is not something to be thrown away lightly. There was something about this man, beyond coincidences of timing and opportunity, that drew you to him. Before you give up on the marriage . . . give him a chance. Be honest with him about the needs that aren't being met, the dreams you want to pursue. Let him find out who you really are. Let him help you in the work of opening that door, so the two of you can finally meet after all these years. How do you know he can't satisfy your emotional needs? How can you be sure he doesn't long for magic and passion just as you do? Can you state with absolute certainty that you know everything there is to know about him? There are rewards to be gained from the effort, even if it fails. And it will take courage as well as patience, Restless. Try everything you can . . . fight to stay with a man who loves you. Just for now, put aside the question of what you might have had with someone else, and focus on what you can have, what you do have, at this very moment. I hope you'll find new questions, and that your husband might be the answer.

there's three ways to look at it. Either (1) it's a massive coincidence that all the girls I ever liked happen to share the same nine letters, or (2) I just happen to think it particularly beautiful name, or (3) I never got over our two-and-a-half-minute relationship." "I remember thinking that. You were dork chic before dork chic was chic.

I suspect that it was simply that I had admired the earth, and the universe. The more I say and think that I admire it, and love it, the more it gives me what I admire, or strange coincidences that leave me in more awe than I was before.

Oh no, Jack, you're mixing up premonitions with intuition now. Come, now, Sir Alington, you must admit that premonitions are real?" To a certain extent, perhaps," admitted the physician cautiously. "But coincidence accounts for a good deal,and then there is the invariable tendency to make the most of a story afterwards -- you've always got to take that into account." "I don't think there is any such thing as premonition," said Claire Tent, rather abruptly. "Or intuition, or a sixth sense, or any of the things we talk about so glibly. We go through life like a train rushing through the darkness to an unknown destination.

And if you, the reader, hadn’t picked this book, the narrative would be different still. When I think of the trajectory created by these converging choices, I hallucinate a constellation of coincidences floating in front of my eyes. I’m a speck of dust, you’re a speck of dust; we float around in space until we meet by chance and pull each other closer. And then we swirl together, growing hotter and hotter, until we combine into a single sun. Summer 2020. From that tranquil, single sun. Yun Ko-eun © Lee Sang-min

I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you now love other people in a way that you never imagined possible. You may even experience feelings of bliss while praying. I do not wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out, however, that billions of other human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences--but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the beauty of nature.

I think of a person I haven't seen or thought of for years, and ten minutes later I see her crossing the street. I turn on the radio to hear a voice reading the biblical story of Jael, which is the story that I have spent the morning writing about. A car passes me on the road, and its license plate consists of my wife's and my initials side by side. When you tell people stories like that, their usual reaction is to laugh. One wonders why. I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that's going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten.

I think I was born making up stories in my head. I wrote my first play when I was 5. No, I couldn’t write yet. It was with a stick on a piece of paper that floated by on the wind, and it was about a girl named Cindy. The fact that it closely resembled Cinderella is pure coincidence.

Finally I find it, the book, but as I’m pulling it out of the stack I hear a noise coming from my toy room. It sounds like scratching or scraping maybe and my mind instantly goes to the possibility that maybe it’s a monster or a dragon or something else with claws. My hand shakes a little as I stand up and turn back toward the room. When I step into it, I feel the wind hit my cheeks. I shine the light around and notice one of the windows is open. I don’t understand why. I didn’t open it and I don’t think it was open when I came down here. What if it was a monster? I sweep the flashlight around the room at all my toys as I start back toward the corner. Then the light lands on something tall… I hear voices. Ones that don’t sound like they belong to a monster, but just people. But that’s what they end up being. Terrible, horrible monsters.

In the moments after she spoke I remember thinking that if she was in some way correct she was, however, not right. That of course life is random, a series of coincidences, etc., but that to live you must attempt to make sense of it, and that's what narrative's for. I believe this, people of a certain sensibility believe this. Mostly it's harmless. Though perhaps sometimes you find yourself doing things because you think the narrative arc calls for it, or because you've grown bored with your own plot, things you shouldn't do because they will, these things, hurt the other characters in your story, who are not characters after all, but people. But then people do evil often and with less elaborate justifications.

There will always be some delay between the first neuropsychological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if they weren't — even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states — I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know — it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

What is Destiny? Is it a doctrine formulated by aristocrats and philosophers arguing that there is some unseen driving force predicting the outcomes of every minuscule and life altering moment in one's life? Or is it the artistry illustrated by those under-qualifed and over-eager to give their future meaning and their ambitions hope? Is it a declaration by those who refuse to accept that we are alone in this universe, spinning randomly through a matrix of accidental coincidences? Or is it the assumptions made by those who concede that there is a divine plan or pre-ordained path for each human being,regardless of their current station? I think destiny is a bit of a tease.... It's syndical taunts and teases mock those naive enough to believe in its black jack dealing of inevitable futures. Its evolution from puppy dogs and ice cream to razor blades and broken mirrors characterizes the fickle nature of its sordid underbelly. Those relying on its decisive measures will fracture under its harsh rules. Those embracing the fact that life happens at a million miles a minute will flourish in its random grace. Destiny has afforded me the most magical memories and unbelievably tragic experiences that have molded and shaped my life into what it is today...beautiful. I fully accept the mirage that destiny promises and the reality it can produce. Without the invisible momentum carried with its sincere fabrication of coming attraction, destiny is the covenant we rely on to get ourselves through the day. To the destiny I know awaits me, I thank you in advance. Don't cry because it's over....smile because it happened.

Everyone can do a bit,” I said, wondering where Kevin Zipp was. “If you’re thinking of somebody and the phone rings and it’s them, that’s magic. If you get a curious feeling that you’ve been or done something before, then that’s magic, too. It’s everywhere. It seeps into the fabric of the world and oozes out as coincidence, fate, chance, luck, or what have you. The big problem is having enough magic to make it work for you in some useful manner.

Maybe if I separate the coincidences out, push them further apart, you might believe them more. One the other hand, I don't care whether you believe them, because they're true. And in any case, I still can't decide whether they are coincidences or not, these things: Perhaps getting something you want is never a coincidence. If you want a cheese sandwich and you get a cheese sandwich, that can't be a coincidence, can it? And by the same token, if you want a job and you get a job, that can't be a coincidence either. These things can only be coincidental if you think you have no power over your life at all.

I would not hurt you, little man,' he said. 'I think that I got the disorder in Mullingar,' I explained. I knew that I had gained his confidence and that the danger of violence was now passed. He then did something which took me by surprise. He pulled up his own ragged trouser and showed me his own left leg. It was smooth, shapely and fairly fat but it was made of wood also. 'That is a funny coincidence,' I said. I now perceived the reason for his sudden change of attitude. 'You are a sweet man,' he responded, 'and I would not lay a finger on your personality. I am the captain of all the one-legged men in the country. I knew them all up to now except one—your own self—and that one is now also my friend into the same bargain. If any man looks at you sideways, I will rip his belly.' 'That is very friendly talk,' I said. 'Wide open,' he said, making a wide movement with his hands. 'If you are ever troubled, send for me and I will save you from the woman.' 'Women I have no interest in at all,' I said smiling. 'A fiddle is a better thing for diversion.' 'It does not matter. If your perplexity is an army or a dog, I will come with all the one-leggèd men and rip the bellies. My real name is Martin Finnucane.' 'It is a reasonable name,' I assented. 'Martin Finnucane,' he repeated, listening to his own voice as if he were listening to the sweetest music in the world.

But then it came time for me to make my journey—into America. [... N]o coincidence that my first novel is called Americana. That became my subject, the subject that shaped my work. When I get a French translation of one of my books that says 'translated from the American', I think, 'Yes, that's exactly right.

Aunt Jayne asks if we'd like to stop somewhere for dessert, and since nodding and smiling is easier than shaking our heads and inventing a reason for not wanting dessert, we okay it without thinking. And since the universe has worked in its own mysterious way all vacation, tonight shouldn't be any different, which is why neither of us is particularly surprised to discover that Jayne is craving a smoothie. ... Once Sam returns to his post behind the counter, Frankie stops kicking me and we slurp down our drinks in about two minutes, anxious to get out of here before anyone recognizes us. Uncle Red and Aunt Jayne, on the other hand, act like this is the last smoothie shop they'll ever see, like smoothies are an endangered species to be appreciated and savored and drawn out as long as possible. With each passing minute, Frankie and I sink lower in our chairs, praying to the God of Annoying Coincidences that Jake doesn't show up and blow our cover.

I don't think it's a coincidence that so many people are drawn to communities where they can pursue physical challenges alongside others. It's a joy to watch people to exert themselves, face their fears and overcome their obstacles. (...) Sometimes you are the one crushing the goal and ringing the bell. Sometimes you get to be part of the crowd that hugs and cheers the person ringing the bell. And sometimes it's enough to simply immerse yourself in a space where such a joyful noise gets made.

Devil-boy Jack: "A higher power than ours directs us against the wych-kin. There is no turning back." Thaniel Fox: "There is no higher power, Devil-boy! And I am no-one's pawn, neither man nor wych nor whatever entity you speak of." Devil-boy Jack: "I do not speak of entities. I speak of the force that created the physics of the universe, the force that makes time flow forward and not allow everything to happen at once, the force that sets the patterns to which the planets turn. Its weapons are coincidence, unlikelihood, happenstance. It is there when a man stops suddenly to pick up a coin dropped by another man ten days before, and the woman who is to be his wife bumps into him, and five hundred years hence their offspring rules half the world. It is there when a chance comment causes a scientist to think, What if...? and ten years later a great plague is cured. It is so vast that what we call chaos is simply another part of its order, with a shape too big to see. It has no name, nor will it ever have, though man may hint darkly at fate and destiny. It is what it is... the pattern. We may choose our own paths, but the pattern is always ahead of us. It is a way. It is the way.

New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private, for-profit health care "soulless vampire bastards making money off human pain." Now, I know what you're thinking: "But, Bill, the profit motive is what sustains capitalism." Yes, and our sex drive is what sustains the human species, but we don't try to fuck everything. It wasn't that long ago when a kid in America broke his leg, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun stuck a thermometer in his ass, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle, and you were done. The bill was $1.50; plus, you got to keep the thermometer. But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some bean counter decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. The more people who get sick, and stay sick, the higher their profit margins, which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O. Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries were they live longer than us? Oh, it's hardly worth it, they may live longer, but they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you're not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you're coughing up freedom. The problem with President Obama's health-care plan isn't socialism. It's capitalism. When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross Blue Shield. And it's not just medicine--prisons also used to be a nonprofit business, and for good reason--who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition, you're going to have trouble with the tenants. It's not a coincidence that we outsourced running prisons to private corporations and then the number of prisoners in America skyrocketed. There used to be some things we just didn't do for money. Did you know, for example, there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? FDR said he didn't want World War II to create one millionaire, but I'm guessing Iraq has made more than a few executives at Halliburton into millionaires. Halliburton sold soldiers soda for $7.50 a can. They were honoring 9/11 by charging like 7-Eleven. Which is wrong. We're Americans; we don't fight wars for money. We fight them for oil. And my final example of the profit motive screwing something up that used to be good when it was nonprofit: TV news. I heard all the news anchors this week talk about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. And I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.

This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover, a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness, and the North American doubling cascade that (keep going) “this diamond lake is a photo lab” and if predicates really do propel the plot then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble or the appliance failures on Olive Street across these great instances, because “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians” because what does a mirror look like (when it´s not working) but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine. I´m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are, in the interval called slam clicker, Realm of Pacific, because the second language wouldn´t let me learn it because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship. I suppose a broken window is not symbolic unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does, and when the phone jangles what´s more radical, the snow or the tires, and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses in their purses. Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice because we are running out. Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced. Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley and the game of finding meaning in coincidence. Because there is a second mind in the margins of the used book because Judas Priest (source: Firestone Library) sang a song called Stained Class, because this world is 66% Then and 33% Now, and if you wake up thinking “feeling is a skill now” or “even this glass of water seems complicated now” and a phrase from a men´s magazine (like single-district cognac) rings and rings in your neck, then let the consequent misunderstandings (let the changer love the changed) wobble on heartbreakingly nu legs into this street-legal nonfiction, into this good world, this warm place that I love with all my heart, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

But far-fetched things do happen. In fact, many people's entire lives are completely far-fetched. I think we are constantly surrounded by extraordinary possibilities. Whether we are aware of them or not, whether we choose to act on them or not, they are there. What is offered to us that we choose not to act upon falls by the wayside, and the road that is our life is littered with rejected, ignore d and unnoticed opportunities, good and bad. Chance meetings and coincidences become extraordinary only when acted upon. Those that we allow to pass us by are gone forever. We never know where they night have taken us. I think they were never meant to happen. The potiental was there, but only for the briefest moment, before we consciously or unconsciously chose to ignore it.

You fought in the Great War?” a journalist from The Guardian asked me in a long interview to coincide with the presentation of the prize. “I didn’t think it was all that great.” I pointed out. “In fact, if memory serves, it was bloody awful.” “Yes, of course,” said the journalist, laughing uncomfortably. “Only you’ve never written about it, have you?” “Haven’t I?” “Not explicitly, at least.” He said, his face taking on an expression of panic, as if he had suddenly realized that he might have forgotten some major work along the way. “I suppose it depends on one’s definition of explicit,” I replied. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it any number of times. On the surface, occasionally. A little buried, at other times. But it’s been there, hasn’t it? Wouldn’t you agree? Or do I delude myself?” “No, of course not. I only meant—“ “Unless I’ve failed utterly in my work, that is. Perhaps I haven’t made my intentions clear at all. Perhaps my entire writing career has been a busted flush.” “No, Mr. Sadler, of course not. I think you misunderstood me. It’s clear that the Great War plays a significant part in your—“ At eighty-one, one has to find one’s fun where one can.

The truth is you already know what it’s like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes. But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think. But what if you could? Think for a second — what if all the infinitely dense and shifting worlds of stuff inside you every moment of your life turned out now to be somehow fully open and expressible afterward, after what you think of as you has died, because what if afterward now each moment itself is an infinite sea or span or passage of time in which to express it or convey it, and you don’t even need any organized English, you can as they say open the door and be in anyone else’s room in all your own multiform forms and ideas and facets? Because listen — we don’t have much time, here’s where Lily Cache slopes slightly down and the banks start getting steep, and you can just make out the outlines of the unlit sign for the farmstand that’s never open anymore, the last sign before the bridge — so listen: What exactly do you think you are? The millions and trillions of thoughts, memories, juxtapositions — even crazy ones like this, you’re thinking — that flash through your head and disappear? Some sum or remainder of these? Your history? Do you know how long it’s been since I told you I was a fraud? Do you remember you were looking at the respicem watch hanging from the rearview and seeing the time, 9:17? What are you looking at right now? Coincidence? What if no time has passed at all?* The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali — it’s not English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole. So cry all you want, I won’t tell anybody.

Unless,” I said, “the philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philosophize, and political power and philosophy coincide36 in the same place, while the many natures now making their way to either apart from the other are by necessity excluded, there is no rest from ills for the cities, my dear Glaucon, nor I think for human kind, nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible, and see the light of the sun.

Conspiracy theories have long been used to maintain power: the Soviet leadership saw capitalist and counter-revolutionary conspiracies everywhere; the Nazis, Jewish ones. But those conspiracies were ultimately there to buttress an ideology, whether class warfare for Communists or race for Nazis. With today’s regimes, which struggle to formulate a single ideology – indeed, which can’t if they want to maintain power by sending different messages to different people – the idea that one lives in a world full of conspiracies becomes the world view itself. Conspiracy does not support the ideology; it replaces it. In Russia this is captured in the catchphrase of the country’s most important current affairs presenter: ‘A coincidence? I don’t think so!’ says Dmitry Kiselev as he twirls between tall tales that dip into history, literature, oil prices and colour revolutions, which all return to the theme of how the world has it in for Russia. And as a world view it grants those who subscribe to it certain pleasures: if all the world is a conspiracy, then your own failures are no longer all your fault. The fact that you achieved less than you hoped for, that your life is a mess – it’s all the fault of the conspiracy. More importantly, conspiracy is a way to maintain control. In a world where even the most authoritarian regimes struggle to impose censorship, one has to surround audiences with so much cynicism about anybody’s motives, persuade them that behind every seemingly benign motivation is a nefarious, if impossible-to-prove, plot, that they lose faith in the possibility of an alternative, a tactic a renowned Russian media analyst called Vasily Gatov calls ‘white jamming’. And the end effect of this endless pile-up of conspiracies is that you, the little guy, can never change anything. For if you are living in a world where shadowy forces control everything, then what possible chance do you have of turning it around? In this murk it becomes best to rely on a strong hand to guide you. ‘Trump is our last chance to save America,’ is the message of his media hounds. Only Putin can ‘raise Russia from its knees’. ‘The problem we are facing today is less oppression, more lack of identity, apathy, division, no trust,’ sighs Srdja. ‘There are more tools to change things than before, but there’s less will to do so.

Her learning to sew (from a book Yankel brought back from Lvov) coincided with her refusal to wear any clothes that she did not make for herself, and when he bought her a book about animal physiology, she held the pictures to his face and said, "Don’t you think it’s strange, Yankel, how we eat them?" "I’ve never eaten a picture." "The animals. Don’t you find that strange? I can’t believe I never found it strange before. It’s like your name, how you don’t notice it for so long, but when you finally do, you can’t help but say it over and over, and wonder why you never thought it was strange that you should have that name, and that everyone has been calling you that name for your whole life." "Yankel. Yankel. Yankel. Nothing so strange for me." "I won’t eat them, at least not until it doesn’t seem strange to me.

EUGENIO MONTALE I went down, giving you my arm, at least one million of stairs and now that you are no more here it’s the void on every step. Also in such way our long journey has been short too. Mine still goes on, and I need no more coincidences, reservations, traps, shames of those who think that reality is that what you see. I went down millions of stairs giving you my arm not just because it’s better to see with four eyes than two. With you I went down because I knew that between us the only true pupils, though so much darkened, were yours.

THE VOICE I know you can’t see me, But you are a part of me. Like that finger on your hand, Only bigger. Through you and with you, I am living and growing, Learning, Expanding, And having fun. If you think you’re alone, You’re wrong. I’m here in your eyes reading this with you. I’m there, Sitting in your seat with you, Experiencing your surroundings. You’re not alone. I’m not alone. Together we are one, Yet we’re separate and complete in ourselves. With me, We will continue to live together, Apart, And united. When you need something, I need it. When you fear something, I’ll fear it. When you dream of something, I’ll dream it. When you make something, I’ll make it. Because I’m connected to everything else there is, I can orchestrate great things for you without your knowledge. You call this coincidence or fate when you see it. It is neither. It is simply me making things as you and I want them to be. You think the future is already determined. It is not. It is how ever you and I make it. If it were already determined- I would be like a tape recorder, A hologram. I assure you I am neither. I am as real as the oxygen you’re breathing. You don’t have to believe me. I’ll still be here. You don’t have to say hi either. But it would be cool if you did. I love it actually when you do. We’re much like parent and child, Only closer, Because you are an actual piece of me. I can do anything through you- If only you will let me. If you are unwilling, Then I will simply work my magic through someone else. As long as you’re willing though and doing your part, I’ll work through you- And together we’ll live and excel in ways that will not only amaze you, But me as well. Let’s create!

Are you persuaded of what you do or not? Do you need something to happen or not in order to do what you do? Do you need the correlations to coincide always, because the end is never in what you do, even if what you do is vast and distant but is always in your continuation? Do you say you are persuaded of what you do, no matter what? Yes? Then I tell you: tomorrow you will certainly be dead. It doesn't matter? Are you thinking about fame? About your family? But your memory dies with you,with you your family is dead. Are you thinking about your ideals? You want to make a will? You want a headstone? But tomorrow those too are dead, dead. All men die with you. Your death is an unwavering comet. Do you turn to god? There is no god, god dies with you. The kingdom of heaven crumbles with you, tomorrow you are dead, dead. Tomorrow everything is finished—your body, family, friends, country, what you’re doing now, what you might do in the future, the good, the bad, the true, the false, your ideas, your little part, god and his kingdom, paradise, hell, everything, everything, everything. Tomorrow everything is over—in twenty four hours is death. Well, then the god of today is no longer yesterday’s, no longer the country, the good, the bad, friends, or family. You want to eat? No, you cannot. The taste of food is no longer the same; honey is bitter, milk is sour, meat nauseating, and the odor, the odor sickens you: it reeks of the dead. You want a woman to comfort you in your last moments? No, worse: it is dead flesh. You want to enjoy the sun, air, light, sky? Enjoy?! The sun is a rotten orange, the light extinguished, the air suffocating. The sky is a low, oppressive arc. . . .No, everything is closed and dark now. But the sun shines, the air is pure, everything is like before, and yet you speak like a man buried alive, describing his tomb. And persuasion? You are not even persuaded of the sunlight; you cannot move a finger, cannot remain standing. The god who kept you standing,made your day clear and your food sweet, gave you family, country, paradise—he betrays you now and abandons you because the thread of your philopsychia is broken. The meaning of things, the taste of the world, is only for continuation’s sake. Being born is nothing but wanting to go on on: men live in order to live, in order not to die. Their persuasion is the fear of death. Being born is nothing but fearing death, so that, if death becomes certain in a certain future, they are already dead in the present. All that they do and say with fixed persuasion, a clear purpose, and evident reason is nothing but fear of death– ‘indeed, believing one is wise without being wise is nothing but fearing death.

I was amazed, shocked, and sickened by what I heard throughout the day, over and over, by many victims' stories. I can think of no one with whom I didn't recognize a common thread. These monsters, these evil priests, used the same words and methods on all of us. With each session, I would find something that sent a cold chill down my spine. It amazed and frightened me that the actual words used on me, to rape me, to rape me, were the same as the words used on so many others from all over the United States. You would think that all these priests either were educated in how to concur and rape us, or they met privately with each other to compare notes and develop their plan of attack on us. The pattern was so much the same, with the same words, that you would swear it was scripted and disbursed to these priests. Do they secretly have closed-door meetings on how to abuse us? A chilling thought. Neary's routine of saying the “Our Father” during the rape and making me say it with him, repeating the “thy will be done” over and over, the absolution given me after he “finished,” the threats of having God take my parents away, the lectures about offering my suffering up to God, etc., etc., etc. My experience was identical, word-for-word, to that of many others. The exact words during the abuse were not just close, but exactly the same, as if it were some kind of abuse ritual. Ritual abuse is not limited to the religious definition and can include compulsive, abusive behavior performed in an exact series of steps with little variation. How could these similarities occur without the priests taking the same “abuse seminar” together some place, somehow? Was it taught in the seminary? In some dark corner? It goes beyond coincidence—the similarities in deeds and verbiage that these predators use on us. It truly chilled me to the very marrow of my bones.

Women are like goats. It's like . . . Well, reasoning with a woman is like sitting down to a friendly game of dice. Only the woman refuses to acknowledge the basic bloody rules of the game. A man, he'll cheat you - but he'll do it honestly. He'll use loaded dice, so that you think you're losing by chance. And if you aren't clever enough to spot what he's doing, then maybe he deserves to take your coin. And that's that. A woman, though, she'll sit down to that same game and she'll smile, and act like she's going to play. Only when it's her turn to throw, she'll toss a pair of her own dice that are blank on all six sides. Not a single pip showing. She'll inspect the throw, then she'll look up at you and say, 'clearly I just won.' Now, you'll scratch your head and look at the dice. Then you'll look up at her, then down at the dice again 'But there aren't any pips on these dice' you'll say." 'Yes there are,' she'll say. 'And both dice rolled a one.' 'That's exactly the number you need to win,' you'll say. 'What a coincidence,' she'll reply, then begin to scoop up your coins. And you'll sit there, trying to wrap your head 'bout what just happened. And you'll realise something. A pair of ones isn't the winning throw! Not when you threw a six on your turn. That means she needed a pair of twos instead! Excitedly you'll explain what you've discovered. Only then do you know what she'll do?" "No idea, Mat." "Then she'll reach over and rub the blank faces of her dice. And then, with a perfectly straight face, she'll say, 'I'm sorry. There was a spot of dirt on the dice. Clearly you'll see they actually came up as twos!' And she'll believe it. She'll bloody believe it!" "Incredible." "Only that's not the end of it!" "I had presumed it wouldn't be Mat." "She scoops up all of your coins. And then every other wonam in the room will come over and congratulate her on throwing that pair of twos! The more you complain, the more those bloody women will join in the argument. You'll be outnumbered in a moment, and each of those women will explain to you how those dice clearly read twos, and how you really need to stop behaving like a child. Every single flaming one of them will see the twos! even the prudish woman who has hated your woman from birth - since your woman's granny stole the other woman's granny's honeycake recipe when they were both maids - that woman will side against you." "They're nefarious creatures indeed." "By the time they're done, you'll be left with no coin, several lists worth of errands to run and what clothing to wear and a splitting headache. You'll sit there and stare at the table and begin to wonder, just maybe, if those dice didn't read twos after all. If only to preserve what's left of your sanity. That's what it's like to reason with a woman, I tell you.

I'd just put Ed Hickey into a taxi. Ed had been mixing his rye with his gin, and I just felt that he needed conveying. Well, anyway, I was walking down along the street and I heard this voice saying, "Good evening, Mr. Dowd." Well, I turned around and here was this big six-foot rabbit leaning up against a lamp-post. Well, I thought nothing of that because when you've lived in a town as long as I've lived in this one, you get used to the fact that everybody knows your name. And naturally I went over to chat with him. And he said to me... he said, "Ed Hickey was a little spiffed this evening, or could I be mistaken?" Well, of course, he was not mistaken. I think the world and all of Ed, but he was spiffed. Well, we talked like that for awhile and then I said to him, I said, "You have the advantage on me. You know my name and I don't know yours." And, and right back at me he said, "What name do you like?" Well, I didn't even have to think twice about that. Harvey's always been my favorite name. So I said to him, I said, "Harvey." And, uh, this is the interesting thing about the whole thing: He said, "What a coincidence. My name happens to be Harvey.

On Thanksgiving Day, 2011, my pastor Peter Jonker preached a marvelous sermon on Psalm 65 with an introduction from the life of Seth MacFarlane, who had been on NPR’s Fresh Air program with Terry Gross. MacFarlane is a cartoonist and comedian. He’s the creator of the animated comedy show “The Family Guy,” which my pastor called “arguably the most cynical show on television.” Terry Gross asked MacFarlane about 9/11. It seems that on that day of national tragedy MacFarlane had been booked on American Airlines Flight 11, Boston to LA, but he had arrived late at Logan airport and missed it. As we know, hijackers flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. My preacher said, “MacFarlane should have been on that plane. He should have been dead at 29 years of age. But somehow, at the end of that terrible day, he found himself healthy and alive, still able to turn his face toward the sun.” Terry Gross asked the inevitable question: “After that narrow escape, do you think of the rest of your life as a gift?” “No,” said MacFarlane. “That experience didn’t change me at all. It made no difference in the way I live my life. It made no difference in the way I look at things. It was just a coincidence.” And my preacher commented that MacFarlane had created “a missile defense system” against the threat of incoming gratitude — which might have lodged in his soul and changed him forever. MacFarlane, “the Grinch who stole gratitude,” perfectly set up what Peter Jonker had to say to us about how it is right and proper for us to give thanks to God at all times and in all places, and especially when our life has been spared.

Angry heat tightens my skin. “Never took you for a coward,” I blurt. His head snaps in my direction. “What do you mean by that?” “You came here tonight for a reason. Why don’t you own up to it?” Before I can think about it, I lean across the center console and stare him directly in the face. “Do you always run from what you want?” Maybe I’m going out on a limb to imply he wants me, but the pulse throbbing at his neck tells me it’s so. And he is here, after all. His gaze drops to my mouth. “I can’t think of the last time I had anything I truly wanted,” he says huskily, so low I could hardly hear him. It’s more like I felt him. His words echo through me, striking a chord so deep that I’m sure there’s a reason for all this. A reason we’ve found each other, first in the mountains and now here. A reason. Something more. Something bigger than coincidence. “Me too.” He leans across the console. Sliding a hand behind my neck, he tugs my face closer. I move fluid, melting toward him. “Maybe it’s time to change that then.” At the first brush of his mouth, stinging heat surges through me, shocking me motionless. My veins and skin pop and pulse. I rise on my knees, clutch his shoulders with clawing fingers, trying to get closer. My hands drift, rounding over his smooth shoulders, skimming down a rock-hard chest. His heart beats like a drum beneath my fingers. My blood burns, lungs expand and smolder. I can’t draw enough air through my nose . . . or at least not enough to chill my steaming lungs. His hands slide over my cheeks, holding my face. His skin feels like ice to my blistering flesh, and I kiss him harder. “Your skin,” he whispers against my mouth,” it’s so . . .” I drink him in, his words, his touch, moaning at his taste, at the sudden burning pull of my skin. The delicious tugging in my back. He kisses me deeper with cool, dry lips. Moves his hands down my face, along my jaw to my neck. His fingertips graze beneath my ear, and I shiver. “Your skin is so soft, so warm . . .

I don't know what's happening to me," she says, blinking through a veil of tears as she looks everywhere but at me. "I don't think I can do this anymore." My heart plummets inside my chest, my lips still hovering over hers, my hands on her waist "do what anymore?" I don't want the answer, don't want to hear what follows my question, don't want to lose her. "Fight it." Tears are still flowing from her eyes, but I think she stop crying. She sucks and several breaths when she looks at me, her eyes are clear that I anticipated. She's scared shitless - that's clear - but it's like she stop fighting the fear, giving into it instead. Her lips apart and I'm a stop whatever she's about to say, silence her with my lips, but I don't, forcing myself to hear, needing to know what's got all worked up. "I think I'm in love with you," she says, her chest heaving with every ravenous breath she takes, yet her voice is astonishingly even and she manages to maintain my gaze. My voice however is the exact opposite of even, coming out all high-pitched like I'm a thirteen year old and going through puberty all over again. "What?" She sucks and a breath, then releases is slowly, the fear in her eyes subsiding, as if she just won it. "I think I'm in love with you..." She bites on your lips and shakes her head. "No...I don't think. I know." I gradually process her words and the full extent of what she's saying. I think I'd honestly believed that she might never say them, that this love thing was going to be a one-way street. Hearing her say it... I don't even know how to describe it. It's like my entire life of associated the word with hatred. Every time my mother said it, it felt like she was trying to take something from me and it made me hate her and myself-Love equaled hate for me. But hearing it from Violet's lips, seeing that look in her eyes, the one I've never seen from anyone, is so different. She's not taking something for me right now, she's giving me something. She's giving me everything.

I am interested in your opinion about the myth of the tortured artist, and its usefulness for a society badly in need of healthy models of creativity. Most of the writers I know are struggling to make important art, but they are also struggling, equally hard, to live healthly, connected, value-creating daily lives. Do you think we are moving past praising the glamour of the nonfunctioning creative genius? I hope that we are. I find the idea of unsupported genius deeply distasteful: it disrespects mothers, and fathers, and teachers, and lovers, and all the accidents and opportunities and coincidences that conspire, along the way, to help create and launch an artistic sensibility. We need a new model: one that doesn’t depend on outmoded gender norms, destructive values, and the profoundly ugly idea that to be indebted is to be demeaned. Kindness is a core value for any artist, but most especially for a fiction writer: a self-centered person can’t see the world from another person’s point of view.

Thomas Jefferson's Letter to John Holmes on the Missouri Statehood Question – April 20, 1820 I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a State. This certainly is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the General Government. Could Congress, for example, say, that the non- freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other State? I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect. Th. Jefferson

I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you now love other people in a way that you never imagined possible. You may even experience feelings of bliss while praying. I don’t wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out, however, that billions of other human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences - but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the beauty of Nature. There is no question that it is possible for people to have profoundly transformative experiences. And there is no question that it is possible for them to misinterpret these experiences, and to further delude themselves about the nature of reality. You are, of course, right to believe that there is more to life than simply understanding the structure and contents of the universe. But this does not make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about its structure and contents any more respectable.

WHEN I DESCRIBED THE TUMOR IN MY ESOPHAGUS as a “blind, emotionless alien,” I suppose that even I couldn’t help awarding it some of the qualities of a living thing. This at least I know to be a mistake: an instance of the pathetic fallacy (angry cloud, proud mountain, presumptuous little Beaujolais) by which we ascribe animate qualities to inanimate phenomena. To exist, a cancer needs a living organism, but it cannot ever become a living organism. Its whole malice—there I go again—lies in the fact that the “best” it can do is to die with its host. Either that or its host will find the measures with which to extirpate and outlive it. But, as I knew before I became ill, there are some people for whom this explanation is unsatisfying. To them, a rodent carcinoma really is a dedicated, conscious agent—a slow–acting suicide–murderer—on a consecrated mission from heaven. You haven’t lived, if I can put it like this, until you have read contributions such as this on the websites of the faithful: Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic] was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? Atheists like to ignore FACTS. They like to act like everything is a “coincidence.” Really? It’s just a “coincidence” [that] out of any part of his body, Christopher Hitchens got cancer in the one part of his body he used for blasphemy? Yeah, keep believing that, Atheists. He’s going to writhe in agony and pain and wither away to nothing and then die a horrible agonizing death, and THEN comes the real fun, when he’s sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire. There are numerous passages in holy scripture and religious tradition that for centuries made this kind of gloating into a mainstream belief. Long before it concerned me particularly I had understood the obvious objections. First, which mere primate is so damn sure that he can know the mind of god? Second, would this anonymous author want his views to be read by my unoffending children, who are also being given a hard time in their way, and by the same god? Third, why not a thunderbolt for yours truly, or something similarly awe–inspiring? The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former “lifestyle” would suggest that I got. Fourth, why cancer at all? Almost all men get cancer of the prostate if they live long enough: It’s an undignified thing but quite evenly distributed among saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers. If you maintain that god awards the appropriate cancers, you must also account for the numbers of infants who contract leukemia. Devout persons have died young and in pain. Betrand Russell and Voltaire, by contrast, remained spry until the end, as many psychopathic criminals and tyrants have also done. These visitations, then, seem awfully random. My so far uncancerous throat, let me rush to assure my Christian correspondent above, is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed. And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it’s hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half–aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)

… How can we say that we deeply revere the principles of our Declaration and our Constitution and yet refuse to recognize those principles when they are to be applied to the American Negro in a down-to-earth fashion? During election campaigns and in Fourth of July speeches, many speakers emphasize that these great principles apply to all Americans. But when you ask many of these same speakers to act or vote so that those great principles apply in fact to Negro-Americans, you may be accused of being unfair, idealistic or even pro-Communist. … A person has real moral courage when, being in a position to make decisions or determine policies, he decides that the qualified Negro will be admitted to a school of nursing [as had recently been done at St. Francis Hospital in Wilmington]; that the Negro, like the white, will receive a fair trial no matter what the public feeling may be; that every Catholic school, church and institution shall be open to all Catholics—not at some distant future time when public opinion happens to coincide with Catholic moral teaching—but now. Are these requests of our business, governmental and religious leaders too much to ask? I think not.

What are you thinking you need to do?” “I’m not thinking anything,” I said. “That’s the problem.” “Are you sure? Thoughts feel different once you get connected with the energy.” I gave him a puzzled look. “The words you have habitually willed through your head in an attempt to logically control events,” he explained, “stop when you give up your control drama. As you fill up with inner energy, other kinds of thoughts enter your mind from a higher part of yourself. These are your intuitions. They feel different. They just appear in the back of your mind, sometimes in a kind of daydream or mini-vision, and they come to direct you, to guide you.” I still didn’t understand. “Tell us what you were thinking about when we left you alone earlier,” Father Carl said. “I’m not sure I remember it all,” I said. “Try.” I tried to concentrate. “I was thinking about Wil, I guess, about whether he was close to finding the Ninth Insight, and about Sebastian’s crusade against the Manuscript.” “What else?” “I was wondering about Marjorie, about what happened to her. But I don’t understand how this helps me know what to do.” “Let me explain,” Father Sanchez said. “When you have acquired enough energy, you are ready to consciously engage evolution, to start it flowing, to produce the coincidences that will lead you forward. You engage your evolution, in a very specific way. First, as I said, you build sufficient energy, then you remember your basic life question—the one your parents gave you—because this question provides the overall context for your evolution. Next you center yourself on your path by discovering the immediate, smaller questions that currently confront you in life. These questions always pertain to your larger question and define where you currently, are in your lifelong quest. “Once you become conscious of the questions active in the moment, you always get some kind of intuitive direction of what to do, of where to go. You get a hunch about the next step. Always. The only time this will not occur is when you have the wrong question in mind. You see, the problem in life isn’t in receiving answers. The problem is in identifying your current questions. Once you get the questions right, the answers always come. “After you get an intuition of what might happen next,” he continued, “then the next step is to become very alert and watchful. Sooner or later coincidences will occur to move you in the direction indicated by the intuition.

After Josh leaves and Kitty goes upstairs to watch TV, I’m tidying up the living room and Peter’s sprawled out on the couch watching me. I keep thinking he’s about to leave, but then he keeps lingering. Out of nowhere he says, “Remember back at Halloween how you were Cho Chang and Sanderson was Harry Potter? I bet you that wasn’t a coincidence. I bet you a million bucks he got Kitty to find out what your costume was and then he ran out and bought a Harry Potter costume. The kid is into you.” I freeze. “No, he isn’t. He loves my sister. He always has and he always will.” Peter waves this off. “Just you wait. As soon as you and I are done, he’s gonna pull some cheesy-ass move and, like, profess his love for you with a boom box. I’m telling you, I know how guys think.” I yank away the pillow he’s got cushioning his bac and put it on the recliner. “My sister will be home for winter break soon. I bet you a million dollars they get back together.” Peter holds his hand out for me to shake on it, and when I take it, he pulls me onto the couch next to him. Our legs touch. He has a mischievous glint in his eye, and I think maybe he’s going to kiss me, and I’m scared, but I’m excited, too. But then I hear Kitty’s footsteps coming down the stairs, and the moment’s over.

Because it wasn’t enough to be accompanied by the beast who scared the crap out of every god in Heaven, Xuanzang was assigned a few more traveling companions. The gluttonous pig-man Zhu Baijie. Sha Wujing, the repentant sand demon. And the Dragon Prince of the West Sea, who took the form of a horse for Xuanzang to ride. The five adventurers, thusly gathered, set off on their— “Holy ballsacks!” I yelped. I dropped the book like I’d been bitten. “How far did you get?” Quentin said. He was leaning against the end of the nearest shelf, as casually as if he’d been there the whole time, waiting for this moment. I ignored that he’d snuck up on me again, just this once. There was a bigger issue at play. In the book was an illustration of the group done up in bold lines and bright colors. There was Sun Wukong at the front, dressed in a beggar’s cassock, holding his Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and the reins of the Dragon Horse in the other. A scary-looking pig-faced man and a wide-eyed demon monk followed, carrying the luggage. And perched on top of the horse was . . . me. The artist had tried to give Xuanzang delicate, beatific features and ended up with a rather girly face. By whatever coincidence, the drawing of Sun Wukong’s old master could have been a rough caricature of sixteen-year-old Eugenia Lo from Santa Firenza, California. “That’s who you think I am?” I said to Quentin. “That’s who I know you are,” he answered. “My dearest friend. My boon companion. You’ve reincarnated into such a different form, but I’d recognize you anywhere. Your spiritual energies are unmistakable.” “Are you sure? If you’re from a long time ago, maybe your memory’s a little fuzzy.” “The realms beyond Earth exist on a different time scale,” Quentin said. “Only one day among the gods passes for every human year. To me, you haven’t been gone long. Months, not centuries.” “This is just . . . I don’t know.” I took a moment to assemble my words. “You can’t walk up to me and expect me to believe right away that I’m the reincarnation of some legendary monk from a folk tale.” “Wait, what?” Quentin squinted at me in confusion. “I said you can’t expect me to go, ‘okay, I’m Xuanzang,’ just because you tell me so.” Quentin’s mouth opened slowly like the dawning of the sun. His face went from confusion to understanding to horror and then finally to laughter. “mmmmphhhhghAHAHAHAHA!” he roared. He nearly toppled over, trying to hold his sides in. “HAHAHAHA!” “What the hell is so funny?” “You,” Quentin said through his giggles. “You’re not Xuanzang. Xuanzang was meek and mild. A friend to all living things. You think that sounds like you?” It did not. But then again I wasn’t the one trying to make a case here. “Xuanzang was delicate like a chrysanthemum.” Quentin was getting a kick out of this. “You are so tough you snapped the battleaxe of the Mighty Miracle God like a twig. Xuanzang cried over squashing a mosquito. You, on the other hand, have killed more demons than the Catholic Church.” I was starting to get annoyed. “Okay, then who the hell am I supposed to be?” If he thought I was the pig, then this whole deal was off. “You’re my weapon,” he said. “You’re the Ruyi Jingu Bang.” I punched Quentin as hard as I could in the face.

But that there is a simple relation between literary and other fictions seems, if one attends to it, more obvious than has appeared. If we think first of modern fictions, it can hardly be an accident that ever since Nietzsche generalized and developed the Kantian insights, literature has increasingly asserted its right to an arbitrary and private choice of fictional norms, just as historiography has become a discipline more devious and dubious because of our recognition that its methods depend to an unsuspected degree on myths and fictions. After Nietzsche it was possible to say, as Stevens did, that 'the final belief must be in a fiction.' This poet, to whom the whole question was of perpetual interest, saw that to think in this way was to postpone the End--when the fiction might be said to coincide with reality--for ever; to make of it a fiction, an imaginary moment when 'at last' the world of fact and the mundo of fiction shall be one. Such a fiction--the last section of Notes toward a Supreme Fiction is, appropriately, the place where Stevens gives it his fullest attention--such a fiction of the end is like infinity plus one and imaginary numbers in mathematics, something we know does not exist, but which helps us to make sense of and to move in the world. Mundo is itself such a fiction. I think Stevens, who certainly thought we have to make our sense out of whatever materials we find to hand, borrowed it from Ortega. His general doctrine of fictions he took from Vaihinger, from Nietzsche, perhaps also from American pragmatism.

There is part of the Manuscript that has never been found. There were eight insights with the original text, but one more insight, the Ninth, was mentioned there. Many people have been searching for it.” “Do you know where it is?” “No, not really.” “Then how are you going to find it?” Wil smiled. “The same way Jose found the original eight. The same way you found the first two, and then ran into me. If one can connect and build up enough energy, then coincidental events begin to happen consistently.” “Tell me how to do that,” I said. “Which insight is it?” Will looked at me as if assessing my level of understanding. “How to connect is not just one insight; it’s all of them. Remember in the Second Insight where it describes how explorers would be sent out into the world utilizing the scientific method to discover the meaning of human life on this planet? But they would not return right away?” “Yes.” “Well, the remainder of the insights represent the answers finally coming back. But they aren’t just coming from institutional science. The answers I’m talking about are coming from many different areas of inquiry. The findings of physics, psychology, mysticism, and religion are all coming together into a new synthesis based on a perception of the coincidences. “We’re learning the details of what the coincidences mean, how they work, and as we do we’re constructing a whole new view of life, insight by insight.” “Then I want to hear about each insight,” I said. “Can you explain them to me before you go?” “I’ve found it doesn’t work that way. You must discover each one of them in a different way.” “How?” “It just happens. It wouldn’t work for me to just tell you. You might have the information about each of them but you wouldn’t have the insights. You have to discover them in the course of your own life.” We stared at each other in silence. Wil smiled. Talking with him made me feel incredibly alive. “Why are you going after the Ninth Insight now?” I asked. “It’s the right time. I have been a guide here and I know the terrain and I understand all eight insights. When I was at my window over the alley, thinking of Jose, I had already decided to go north one more time. The Ninth Insight is out there. I know it. And I’m not getting any younger. Besides, I’ve envisioned myself finding it and achieving what it says. I know it is the most important of the insights. It puts all the others into perspective and gives us the true purpose of life.” He paused suddenly, looking serious. “I would have left thirty minutes earlier but I had this nagging feeling that I had forgotten something.” He paused again. “That’s precisely when you showed up.

SYNCHRONICITY 'The earth is alive, and it feels with you. It follows your footsteps, your search, with equal anxiety, because it will be transfigured in your triumph. The end of Kaliyuga and the entry into a new Golden Age depend on the results of your war. The earth by itself cannot finish the work that Nature leaves incomplete. Today the earth has joined forces with man in his destructive passion. The great catastrophe will occur in the first years of the Age of Aquarius. But if you can find the entrance to the Invisible Double of this earth, fulfilling the mystery of 'loveless A-Mor', the volcanoes will become calm, the earthquake will cease and the catastrophe will be avoided. 'There is an essential 'synchronicity' between the soul and the landscape. What you achieve in yourself will have repercussions in even the remotest corner of the universe, like the ringing of a bell which announces a triumph or a defeat, producing irreversible effects in a secret centre where Destiny acts. The Archetype is indivisible and, if you once confront it in an essential manner, the effects are universal and valid for all eternity. The old Chinese saying expresses it well: 'If a man, sitting in his room, thinks the right thoughts, he will be heard thousands of leagues away.' And the alchemical saying, too: 'It doesn't matter how alone you are. If you do true work, unknown friends will come to your aid.' 'What I have called "synchronicity', Nietzsche called 'lucky occurrences filled with meaning'. It becomes a poetic dialogue, a concerto for two violins, between the man-magician and Nature. The world presents you with a 'lucky occurrence filled with meaning', it hands you a subtle, almost secret message, something which happens without apparent reason, a-causal, but which you feel is full of meaning. This being exactly what the world is looking for, that you should extract that meaning from it, which you alone are capable of seeing, because it 'synchronises', it fully coincides with your immediate state of mind, with an event in your life, so that it is able to transform itself, with your assistance, into legend and destiny. A lucky occurrence which transformed itself into Destiny. And once you have achieved this, everything will appear to become the same as before, as if nothing had happened. Nevertheless, everything has changed fundamentally and for all time, although the only ones to know it will be you and the earth — which is now your earth, your world, since it has given itself up to you so that you can make it fruitful. 'The earth has made itself invisible inside you', as Rilke would say, it has become an individualised universe inside you. And although perhaps nothing may have changed, 'it might seem as if it were so, it might seem as if it were so', to use your own words. And you will be a creative God of the world; because you have conceived a Non-Existent Flower. You have given a meaning to your flower.

It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted to understand the apocalypse of early modernism in its true complexity it would be Eliot, I fancy, who would demand one's closest attention. He was ready to rewrite the history of all that interested him in order to have past and present conform; he was a poet of apocalypse, of the last days and the renovation, the destruction of the earthly city as a chastisement of human presumption, but also of empire. Tradition, a word we especially associate with this modernist, is for him the continuity of imperial deposits; hence the importance in his thought of Virgil and Dante. He saw his age as a long transition through which the elect must live, redeeming the time. He had his demonic host, too; the word 'Jew' remained in lower case through all the editions of the poems until the last of his lifetime, the seventy-fifth birthday edition of 1963. He had a persistent nostalgia for closed, immobile hierarchical societies. If tradition is, as he said in After Strange Gods--though the work was suppressed--'the habitual actions, habits and customs' which represent the kinship 'of the same people living in the same place' it is clear that Jews do not have it, but also that practically nobody now does. It is a fiction, a fiction cousin to a myth which had its effect in more practical politics. In extenuation it might be said that these writers felt, as Sartre felt later, that in a choice between Terror and Slavery one chooses Terror, 'not for its own sake, but because, in this era of flux, it upholds the exigencies proper to the aesthetics of Art.' The fictions of modernist literature were revolutionary, new, though affirming a relation of complementarity with the past. These fictions were, I think it is clear, related to others, which helped to shape the disastrous history of our time. Fictions, notably the fiction of apocalypse, turn easily into myths; people will live by that which was designed only to know by. Lawrence would be the writer to discuss here, if there were time; apocalypse works in Woman in Love, and perhaps even in Lady Chatterley's Lover, but not n Apocalypse, which is failed myth. It is hard to restore the fictive status of what has become mythical; that, I take it, is what Mr. Saul Bellow is talking about in his assaults on wastelandism, the cant of alienation. In speaking of the great men of early modernism we have to make very subtle distinctions between the work itself, in which the fictions are properly employed, and obiter dicta in which they are not, being either myths or dangerous pragmatic assertions. When the fictions are thus transformed there is not only danger but a leak, as it were, of reality; and what we feel about. all these men at times is perhaps that they retreated inso some paradigm, into a timeless and unreal vacuum from which all reality had been pumped. Joyce, who was a realist, was admired by Eliot because he modernized myth, and attacked by Lewis because he concerned himself with mess, the disorders of common perception. But Ulysses ,alone of these great works studies and develops the tension between paradigm and reality, asserts the resistance of fact to fiction, human freedom and unpredictability against plot. Joyce chooses a Day; it is a crisis ironically treated. The day is full of randomness. There are coincidences, meetings that have point, and coincidences which do not. We might ask whether one of the merits of the book is not its lack of mythologizing; compare Joyce on coincidence with the Jungians and their solemn concordmyth, the Principle of Synchronicity. From Joyce you cannot even extract a myth of Negative Concord; he shows us fiction fitting where it touches. And Joyce, who probably knew more about it than any of the others, was not at tracted by the intellectual opportunities or the formal elegance of fascism.

It was the ultimate sacrilege that Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, was rejected and even put to death. And it continues. In many parts of the world today we see a growing rejection of the Son of God. His divinity is questioned. His gospel is deemed irrelevant. In day-to-day life, His teachings are ignored. Those who legitimately speak in His name find little respect in secular society. If we ignore the Lord and His servants, we may just as well be atheists—the end result is practically the same. It is what Mormon described as typical after extended periods of peace and prosperity: “Then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One” (Helaman 12:2). And so we should ask ourselves, do we reverence the Holy One and those He has sent? Some years before he was called as an Apostle himself, Elder Robert D. Hales recounted an experience that demonstrated his father’s sense of that holy calling. Elder Hales said: "Some years ago Father, then over eighty years of age, was expecting a visit from a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on a snowy winter day. Father, an artist, had painted a picture of the home of the Apostle. Rather than have the painting delivered to him, this sweet Apostle wanted to go personally to pick the painting up and thank my father for it. Knowing that Father would be concerned that everything was in readiness for the forthcoming visit, I dropped by his home. Because of the depth of the snow, snowplows had caused a snowbank in front of the walkway to the front door. Father had shoveled the walks and then labored to remove the snowbank. He returned to the house exhausted and in pain. When I arrived, he was experiencing heart pain from overexertion and stressful anxiety. My first concern was to warn him of his unwise physical efforts. Didn’t he know what the result of his labor would be? "'Robert,' he said through interrupted short breaths, 'do you realize an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ is coming to my home? The walks must be clean. He should not have to come through a snowdrift.' He raised his hand, saying, 'Oh, Robert, don’t ever forget or take for granted the privilege it is to know and to serve with Apostles of the Lord.'" [In CR, April 1992, 89; or “Gratitude for the Goodness of God,” Ensign, May 1992, 64] I think it is more than coincidence that such a father would be blessed to have a son serve as an Apostle. You might ask yourself, “Do I see the calling of the prophets and apostles as sacred? Do I treat their counsel seriously, or is it a light thing with me?” President Gordon B. Hinckley, for instance, has counseled us to pursue education and vocational training; to avoid pornography as a plague; to respect women; to eliminate consumer debt; to be grateful, smart, clean, true, humble, and prayerful; and to do our best, our very best. Do your actions show that you want to know and do what he teaches? Do you actively study his words and the statements of the Brethren? Is this something you hunger and thirst for? If so, you have a sense of the sacredness of the calling of prophets as the witnesses and messengers of the Son of God.

The bonds of family can be wonderful but there is a time to know when to stand apart." She held out a hand to Rycca on the nearby bench. "Besides, we are your family now, all of us, and we know your worth." Deeply touched, Rycca had to blink several times before she could respond. She knew both women spoke pure truth and loved them for it.After a lifetime of emotional solitude unbroken but for Thurlow, it was still difficult for her to comprehend that she was no longer alone. Yet was she beginning to understand it. Softly,she said, "I worry over Dragon. He refuses to talk of my father or of what will happen now that we are here, but I fear he is planning to take matters into his own hands." Cymbra and Krysta exchanged a glance. Quietly,Cymbra said, "Your instinct is not wrong. Dragon simmers with rage at the harm attempted to you. In Landsende I caught a mere glimpse of it,and it was like peering into one of those mountains that belch fire." Despite the heat of the sauna, Rycca shivered. "He came close to losing his life once because of me.I cannot bear for it to happen again." There was silence for a moment,broken only by the crackling of the fire and the hiss of steam.Finally, Cymbra said, "We are each of us married to an extraordinary man. There is something about them...even now I don't really know how to explain it." She looked at Krysta. "Have you told Rycca about Thorgold and Raven?" Krysta shook her head. "There was no time before." She turned on her side on the bench,facing the other two. "Thorgold and Raven are my...friends. They are somewhat unusual." Cymbra laughed at that,prompting a chiding look from Krysta,who went on to say, "I'm not sure how but I think somehow I called them to me when I was a child and needed them very much." "Krysta has the gift of calling," Cymbra said, "as I do of feeling and you do of truthsaying. Doesn't it strike you as odd that three very unusual women, all bearing special gifts, ccame to be married to three extraordinary men who are united by a common purpose,to bring peace to their peoples?" "I had not really thought about it," said Rycca, who also had not known of Krysta's gift and was looking at her with some surprise. All three of them? That was odd. "I believe," said Cymbra, who clearly had been thinking about it, "that there is a reason for it beyond mere coincidence. I think we are meant to be at their sides, to help them as best we can, the better to transform peace from dream to reality." "It is a good thought," Krysta said. Rycca nodded. Very quietly, she said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Cymbra grinned. "And poor things, we appear to be their blessings. So worry not for Dragon, Rycca. He will prevail. We will all see to it." They laughed then,the trio of them, ancient and feminine laughter hidden in a chamber held in the palm of the earth. The steam rose around them, half obscuringm half revealing them. In time,when the heat had become too intense,they rose, wrapped themselves in billowing cloths,and ran through the gathering darkness to the river, where they frolicked in cool water and laughed again beneath the stars. The torches had been lit by the time they returned to the stronghold high on the hill. They dressed and hastened to the hall,where they greeted their husbands, who stood as one when they entered,silent and watchful men before beauty and strength, and took their seats at table. Wine was poured, food brought,music played. They lingered over the evening,taking it into night. The moon was high when they found the sweet,languid sanctuary of their beds. Day came too swiftly.