Converse Shoes Quotes

Be a light unto the world, and hurt it not. Seek to build not destroy. Bring My people home. How? By your shining example. Seek only Godliness. Speak only in truthfulness. Act only in love. Live the Law of Love now and forever more. Give everything require nothing. Avoid the mundane. Do not accept the unacceptable. Teach all who seek to learn of Me. Make every moment of your life an outpouring of love. Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, do the highest deed. In this, glorify your Holy Self, and thus too, glorify Me. Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for boast. Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention. Speak gently, that all might know of Love. Speak openly, lest someone think you have something to hide. Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken. Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth. Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored. Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal. Speak of Me with every utterance. Make of your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift! Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift. (You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift—yet sometimes you don’t let yourself know that.) When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.

Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it.

Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again." Catherine turned away her head, not knowing whether she might venture to laugh. "I see what you think of me," said he gravely -- "I shall make but a poor figure in your journal tomorrow." My journal!" Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings -- plain black shoes -- appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense." Indeed I shall say no such thing." Shall I tell you what you ought to say?" If you please." I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr. King; had a great deal of conversation with him -- seems a most extraordinary genius -- hope I may know more of him. That, madam, is what I wish you to say." But, perhaps, I keep no journal." Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting by you. These are points in which a doubt is equally possible. Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies' ways as you wish to believe me; it is this delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.

Horses are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full-tilt all day without a rest. Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame or put their hooves down holes, except when the Management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the Dark Lord are only half an hour behind. They never otherwise stumble. Nor do they ever make life difficult for Tourists by biting or kicking their riders or one another. They never resist being mounted or blow out so that their girths slip, or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world. For instance, they never shy and seldom whinny or demand sugar at inopportune moments. But for some reason you cannot hold a conversation while riding them. If you want to say anything to another Tourist (or vice versa), both of you will have to rein to a stop and stand staring out over a valley while you talk. Apart from this inexplicable quirk, horses can be used just like bicycles, and usually are. Much research into how these exemplary animals come to exist has resulted in the following: no mare ever comes into season on the Tour and no stallion ever shows an interest in a mare; and few horses are described as geldings. It therefore seems probable that they breed by pollination. This theory seems to account for everything, since it is clear that the creatures do behave more like vegetables than mammals. Nomads appears to have a monopoly on horse-breeding. They alone possess the secret of how to pollinate them.

All in all, I'd say, the world is strangling. And I, in my bed each night, listen to my twenty shoes converse about it. And the moon, under its dark hood, falls out of the sky each night, with its hungry red mouth to suck at my scars.

y—what did I tell you two about secret Telepath conversations?” Keefe asked as he shoved his way between them. “Unless you’re talking about me , keep it out loud.” Fitz laughed. “Keefe just wishes he could swap secret messages with you.” “Please, I don’t need your little mind tricks. I can feel Foster’s secrets”—he fanned the air around her—“and I feel some pretty intense emotions right now.” “Probably because I’m wondering if I should strangle you or beat you with my shoe!” “The shoe would be funnier,” Fitz jumped in

We have a soul at times. No one’s got it non-stop, for keeps. Day after day, year after year may pass without it. Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood’s fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old. It rarely lends a hand in uphill tasks, like moving furniture, or lifting luggage, or going miles in shoes that pinch. It usually steps out whenever meat needs chopping or forms have to be filled. For every thousand conversations it participates in one, if even that, since it prefers silence. Just when our body goes from ache to pain, it slips off-duty. It’s picky: it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds, our hustling for a dubious advantage and creaky machinations make it sick. Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings for it. It attends us only when the two are joined. We can count on it when we’re sure of nothing and curious about everything. Among the material objects it favors clocks with pendulums and mirrors, which keep on working even when no one is looking. It won’t say where it comes from or when it’s taking off again, though it’s clearly expecting such questions. We need it but apparently it needs us for some reason too.

A Mexican newspaper recently ran a story about how the Converse shoe company was making tennis shoes in China using Mexican glue. “The whole article was about why are we giving them our glue,” said Zedillo, “when the right attitude would be, How much more glue can we sell them? We still need to break some mental barriers.

How’re the cats?” he asked, smiling a little. He did miss Angel Marie. Hell, he missed them all. “Feral,” Benny sniffed. “And horny. Every time one of us walks in, they all start humping our shoes.” “They’re fixed,” Shane mumbled, but the conversation was oddly reassuring. It sounded normal, and like home. “Tell that to the big fuzzy brown one….” “Orlando Bloom?” “Yeah, whatever. Last time I was there that damned animal violated my knitting.” Shane lost a battle with a laugh and then whined because it hurt his ribs. “Violated?” [...] “Let’s just say that wool is no longer virgin,” she quipped dryly, and Shane’s chest shook.

None of this is real, my dear. Not this house, not this conversation, not those shoes you're wearing--which are several years out of style if you're trying to reacclimatize yourself to the ways of your peers, and are not proper mourning shoes if you're trying to hold fast to your recent past--and not either one of us. 'Real' is a four-letter-word, and I'll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof.

They are conversation-openers in the arcane femine language of Shoe.

He steps out of his Converse shoes and reaches down and takes his socks off individually.

THE OPENING OF EYES After R. S. Thomas That day I saw beneath dark clouds, the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before, life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off things seen for the silence they hold. It is the heart after years of secret conversing, speaking out loud in the clear air. It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground.

Their home is white and precise, an advertisement for right angles. When he’s sure no one’s looking, Benji silently nudges the shoe-rack one inch out of line and touches a couple of the photos on the wall so that they’re hanging ever so slightly crooked, and as he walks across the rug in the living room he lets his big toe fleetingly mess up some of the fringe. When he reaches the terrace door he sees Kevin’s mom’s reflection in the glass. She’s going around mechanically putting everything back to how it was, without missing a beat of her telephone conversation.

It seems right now that all I’ve ever done in my life is making my way here to you.’ I could see that Rosie could not place the line from The Bridges of Madison County that had produced such a powerful emotional reaction on the plane. She looked confused. ‘Don, what are you…what have you done to yourself?’ ‘I’ve made some changes.’ ‘Big changes.’ ‘Whatever behavioural modifications you require from me are a trivial price to pay for having you as my partner.’ Rosie made a downwards movement with her hand, which I could not interpret. Then she looked around the room and I followed her eyes. Everyone was watching. Nick had stopped partway to our table. I realised that in my intensity I had raised my voice. I didn’t care. ‘You are the world’s most perfect woman. All other women are irrelevant. Permanently. No Botox or implants will be required. ‘I need a minute to think,’ she said. I automatically started the timer on my watch. Suddenly Rosie started laughing. I looked at her, understandably puzzled at this outburst in the middle of a critical life decision. ‘The watch,’ she said. ‘I say “I need a minute” and you start timing. Don is not dead. 'Don, you don’t feel love, do you?’ said Rosie. ‘You can’t really love me.’ ‘Gene diagnosed love.’ I knew now that he had been wrong. I had watched thirteen romantic movies and felt nothing. That was not strictly true. I had felt suspense, curiosity and amusement. But I had not for one moment felt engaged in the love between the protagonists. I had cried no tears for Meg Ryan or Meryl Streep or Deborah Kerr or Vivien Leigh or Julia Roberts. I could not lie about so important a matter. ‘According to your definition, no.’ Rosie looked extremely unhappy. The evening had turned into a disaster. 'I thought my behaviour would make you happy, and instead it’s made you sad.’ ‘I’m upset because you can’t love me. Okay?’ This was worse! She wanted me to love her. And I was incapable. Gene and Claudia offered me a lift home, but I did not want to continue the conversation. I started walking, then accelerated to a jog. It made sense to get home before it rained. It also made sense to exercise hard and put the restaurant behind me as quickly as possible. The new shoes were workable, but the coat and tie were uncomfortable even on a cold night. I pulled off the jacket, the item that had made me temporarily acceptable in a world to which I did not belong, and threw it in a rubbish bin. The tie followed. On an impulse I retrieved the Daphne from the jacket and carried it in my hand for the remainder of the journey. There was rain in the air and my face was wet as I reached the safety of my apartment.

These are among the people I've tried to know twice, the second time in memory and language. Through them, myself. They are what I've become, in ways I don't understand but which I believe will accrue to a rounded truth, a second life for me as well as them. Cracking jokes in the mandatory American manner of people self-concious about death. This is the humor of violent surprise. How do you connect things? Learn their names. It was a strange conversation, full of hedged remarks and obscure undercurrents, perfect in its way. I was not a happy runner. I did it to stay interested in my body, to stay informed, and to set up clear lines of endeavor, a standard to meet, a limit to stay within. I was just enough of a puritan to think there must be some virtue in rigorous things, although I was careful not to overdo it. I never wore the clothes. the shorts, tank top, high socks. Just running shoes and a lightweight shirt and jeans. I ran disguised as an ordinary person. -When are you two going to have children? -We're our own children. In novels lately the only real love, the unconditional love I ever come across is what people feel for animals. Dolphins, bears, wolves, canaries. I would avoid people, stop drinking. There was a beggar with a Panasonic. This is what love comes down to, things that happen and what we say about them. But nothing mattered so much on this second reading as a number of spirited misspellings. I found these mangled words exhilarating. He'd made them new again, made me see how they worked, what they really were. They were ancient things, secret, reshapable.The only safety is in details. Hardship makes the world obscure. How else could men love themselves but in memory, knowing what they know? The world has become self-referring. You know this. This thing has seeped into the texture of the world. The world for thousands of years was our escape, was our refuge. Men hid from themselves in the world. We hid from God or death. The world was where we lived, the self was where we went mad and died. But now the world has made a self of its own.

Still kneeling, he grasps my foot and undoes my Converse, pulling off my shoe and sock.

At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who they belonged to. Grampar’s chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as he did himself. Gramma’s shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her missing breast. My mother’s shoes positively vibrated with consciousness. Our toys looked out for us. There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma couldn’t use. It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she’d cut herself with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood. If I rummaged through the kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding. After she died, that faded. Then there were the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present. They were made of silver, and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special. None of these things did anything. The coffee spoons didn’t stir the coffee without being held or anything. They didn’t have conversations with the sugar tongs about who was the most cherished. I suppose what they really did was physiological. They confirmed the past, they connected everything, they were threads in a tapestry.

Just for fun, they tried to speak French to each other. Hazel had some Creole blood on her mother’s side. Frank had taken French in school. Neither of them was very fluent, and Louisiana French was so different from Canadian French it was almost impossible to converse. When Frank asked Hazel how her beef was feeling today, and she replied that his shoe was green, they decided to give up.

unshaven storekeeper in Arab headdress and busted shoes who deals in chipped green glassware. He lights up at our question. Yes, of course, he knows. Engaging us in conversation, he offers us coffee.

Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, and pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you.

As you’re creating your story, think through where you’d want pauses. Try to put yourself in the listener’s shoes–if you were the listener and you were being told your story, where would you want pauses?

I pretended to be interested in their secret undertaking, but in fact I was very sorry about it. Although the two siblings had involved me by choosing me as their confidant, it was still an experience that I could enter only as witness: on that path Lila would do great things by herself, I was excluded. But above all, how, after our intense conversations about love and poetry, could she walk me to the door, as she was doing, far more absorbed in the atmosphere of excitement around a shoe?...What did I care about shoes. I still had, in my mind's eye, the most secret stages of that affair of violated trust, passion, poetry that became a book, and it was as if she and I had read a novel together, as if we had seen, there in the back of the shop and not in the parish hall on Sunday, a dramatic film.

It doesn't talk back,' he said ruefully as I approached, without looking round. I glanced up at the griffin. 'No,' I said. Then something, an impulse of gaiety perhaps, made me add, 'Perhaps you need to stroke it between the ears. Timothy likes that.' Timothy is my cat. Although the Doctor was evidently an eccentric man - who else talks to a statue - I was nonetheless taken aback when he jumped up into the air like a circus performer and, holding on to the iron standard of a lamp, swung himself on to the narrow sill above the carving. There he teetered for a moment, arms extended flat against the wall, his shoes dislodging small pieces of debris which clattered on to the yard. He somehow found a secure foothold, then reached down and petted the stone animal between the ears, or what would have been the ears if it hadn't been a relief carving. 'Hello, Timothy. Would you care for a stick of liquorice?' There was a brief silence, and I was struck by the puzzled, almost grief-stricken expression that crossed the Doctor's face when the carving made no reply. It could have been drollery, but it seemed genuine. Then he looked down at me, and grinned, as if it had been a joke. 'He still doesn't talk! Did you say he was called Timothy?' I decided it was time to inject some sanity into the conversation. 'Timothy.' I said, precisely and quietly, ' is the name of my cat.

Mr. Kadam bowed and said, “Miss Kelsey, I will leave you to your dining companion. Enjoy your dinner.” Then he walked out of the restaurant. “Mr. Kadam, wait. I don’t understand.” Dining companion? What is he talking about? Maybe he’s confused. Just then, a deep, all-too-familiar voice behind me said, “Hello, Kells.” I froze, and my heart dropped into my stomach, stirring up about a billion butterflies. A few seconds passed. Or was it a few minutes? I couldn’t tell. I heard a sigh of frustration. “Are you still not talking to me? Turn around, please.” A warm hand slid under my elbow and gently turned me around. I raised my eyes and gasped softly. He was breathtaking! So handsome, I wanted to cry. “Ren.” He smiled. “Who else?” He was dressed in an elegant black suit and he’d had his hair cut. Glossy black hair was swept back away from his face in tousled layers that tapered to a slight curl at the nape of his neck. The white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the collar. It set off his golden-bronze skin and his brilliant white smile, making him positively lethal to any woman who might cross his path. I groaned inwardly. He’s like…like James Bond, Antonio Banderas, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one. I decided the safest thing to do would be to look at his shoes. Shoes were boring, right? Not attractive at all. Ah. Much better. His shoes were nice, of course-polished and black, just like I would expect. I smiled wryly when I realized that this was the first time I’d ever seen Ren in shoes. He cupped my chin and made me look at his face. The jerk. Then it was his turn to appraise me. He looked me up and down. And not a quick look. He took it all in slowly. The kind of slow that made a girl’s face feel hot. I got mad at myself for blushing and glared at him. Nervous and impatient, I asked, “Are you finished?” “Almost.” He was now staring at my strappy shoes. “Well, hurry up!” His eyes drifted leisurely back up to my face and he smiled at me appreciatively, “Kelsey, when a man spends time with a beautiful woman, he needs to pace himself.” I quirked an eyebrow at him and laughed. “Yeah, I’m a regular marathon alright.” He kissed my fingers. “Exactly. A wise man never sprints…in a marathon.” “I was being sarcastic, Ren.” He ignored me and tucked my hand under his arm then led me over to a beautifully lit table. Pulling the chair out for me, he invited me to sit. I stood there wondering if I could sprint for the nearest exit. Stupid strappy shoes, I’d never make it. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going to let you escape again. You can either take a seat and have dinner with me like a normal date,” he grinned at his word choice, “or,” he paused thoughtfully then threatened, “you can sit on my lap while I force-feed you.” I hissed, “You wouldn’t dare. You’re too much of a gentleman to force me to do anything. It’s an empty bluff, Mr. Asks-For-Permission.” “Even a gentleman has his limits. One way or another, we’re going to have a civil conversation. I’m hoping I get to feed you from my lap, but it’s your choice.” He straightened up again and waited. I unceremoniously plunked down in my chair and scooted in noisily to the table. He laughed softly and took the chair across from me. I felt guilty because of the dress and readjusted my skirt so it wouldn’t wrinkle.

[...] "I owe you", says "Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood, you must want something, just tell me, and it’s yours." But I can’t look at him, can hardly speak, I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, I’d just as soon kill you myself, I say. You keep saying "I owe you, I owe…" but you say the same thing every time. Let’s not talk about it, let’s just not talk. Not because I don’t believe it, not because I want it any different, but I’m always saving and you’re always owing and I’m tired of asking to settle the debt. Don’t bother. You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed. There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it, just get me bandages, I’m bleeding, I’m not just making conversation. There’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It’s a Western, Henry, it’s a downright shoot-em-up. We’ve made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon. It’s another wrong-man-dies scenario and we keep doing it, Henry, keep saying until we get it right… but we always win and we never quit, see, we’ve won again, here we are at the place where I get to beg for it [...]

On sentry duty with Hazel, he would try to take his mind off it. He loved spending time with her. He asked her about growing up in New Orleans, but she got edgy at his questions, so they made small talk instead. Just for fun, they tried to speak French to each other. Hazel had some Creole blood on her mother’s side. Frank had taken French in school. Neither of them was very fluent, and Louisiana French was so different from Canadian French it was almost impossible to converse. When Frank asked Hazel how her beef was feeling today, and she replied that his shoe was green, they decided to give up. Then Percy Jackson had arrived. Sure, Frank had seen kids fight monsters before. He’d fought plenty of them himself on his journey from Vancouver. But he’d never seen gorgons. He’d never seen a goddess in person. And the way Percy had controlled the Little Tiber—wow. Frank wished he had powers like that.

I’ll Open the Window Our embrace lasted too long. We loved right down to the bone. I hear the bones grind, I see our two skeletons. Now I am waiting till you leave, till the clatter of your shoes is heard no more. Now, silence. Tonight I am going to sleep alone on the bedclothes of purity. Aloneness is the first hygienic measure. Aloneness will enlarge the walls of the room, I will open the window and the large, frosty air will enter, healthy as tragedy. Human thoughts will enter and human concerns, misfortune of others, saintliness of others. They will converse softly and sternly. Do not come anymore. I am an animal very rarely.

She's probably just tired of seeing you miserable.Like we all are," I add. "I'm sure...I'm sure she's as crazy about you as ever." "Hmm." He watches me put away my own shoes and empty the contents of my pockets. "What about you?" he asks, after a minute. "What about me?" St. Clair examines his watch. "Sideburns. You'll be seeing him next month." He's reestablishing...what? The boundary line? That he's taken, and I'm spoken for? Except I'm not. Not really. But I can't bear to say this now that he's mentioned Ellie. "Yeah,I can't wait to see him again. He's a funny guy, you'd like him.I'm gonna see his band play at Christmas. Toph's a great guy, you'd really like him. Oh. I already said that,didn't I? But you would. He's really...funny." Shut up,Anna. Shut.Up. St. Clair unbuckles and rebuckles and unbuckles his watchband. "I'm beat," I say. And it's the truth. As always, our conversation has exhausted me. I crawl into bed and wonder what he'll do.Lie on my floor? Go back to his room? But he places his watch on my desk and climbs onto my bed. He slides up next to me. He's on top of the covers, and I'm underneath. We're still fully dressed,minus our shoes, and the whole situation is beyond awkward. He hops up.I'm sure he's about to leave,and I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed,but...he flips off my light.My room is pitch-black. He shuffles back toward my bed and smacks into it. "Oof," he says. "Hey,there's a bed there." "Thanks for the warning." "No problem." "It's freezing in here.Do you have a fan on or something?" "It's the wind.My window won't shut all the way.I have a towel stuffed under it, but it doesn't really help." He pats his way around the bed and slides back in. "Ow," he says. "Yes?" "My belt.Would it be weird..." I'm thankful he can't see my blush. "Of course not." And I listen to the slap of leather as he pulls it out of his belt loops.He lays it gently on my hardwood floor. "Um," he says. "Would it be weird-" "Yes." "Oh,piss off.I'm not talking trousers. I only want under the blankets. That breeze is horrible." He slides underneath,and now we're lying side by side. In my narrow bed. Funny,but I never imagined my first sleepover with a guy being,well,a sleepover. "All we need now are Sixteen Candles and a game of Truth or Dare." He coughs. "Wh-what?" "The movie,pervert.I was just thinking it's been a while since I've had a sleepover." A pause. "Oh." "..." "..." "St. Clair?" "Yeah?" "Your elbow is murdering my back." "Bollocks.Sorry." He shifts,and then shifts again,and then again,until we're comfortable.One of his legs rests against mine.Despite the two layers of pants between us,I feel naked and vulnerable. He shifts again and now my entire leg, from calf to thigh, rests against his. I smell his hair. Mmm. NO! I swallow,and it's so loud.He coughs again. I'm trying not to squirm. After what feels like hours but is surely only minutes,his breath slows and his body relaxes.I finally begin to relax, too. I want to memorize his scent and the touch of his skin-one of his arms, now against mine-and the solidness os his body.No matter what happens,I'll remember this for the rest of my life. I study his profile.His lips,his nose, his eyelashes.He's so beautiful.

I released a breath I didn’t remember holding. Turned to Ben. Found him looking at me, face inches from mine on Sewee’s deck. Panic flared, white hot, paralyzing me as I lay beside him. Our gazes met. I saw fear in his dark brown eyes. Indecision. Doubt. Ben went rigid, his chest rising and falling like a bellows. Then something changed. His face relaxed, a small smile playing on his lips. Before I could blink, his mouth covered mine. We shared a breath. A tingle ran my spine. Then I pulled back, breathing hard, unsure what either my mind or body were doing. Ben’s unsure look returned. Then vanished. He pulled me near again, his lips melting into mine. Strong, calloused fingers stroked the side of my face. His smell enveloped me. Earthy. Masculine. Ben. Fire rolled through my body. So this is what it’s like. I broke away again, gasping slightly for breath. Reality crashed home. I sat up and scooted a few feet away, rubbing my face with both hands. What was I doing? “Ben, I—” His hand rose to cut me off. He leaned against the bench, face suddenly serious. “I’m not going to pretend anymore. One way or another, I’m going to say how I feel.” Ben snorted softly. “Make my case.” We sat still in the darkness, Sewee rocking gently, the scene dream-like and surreal. “You don’t have to make a case.” I stared at my shoes, had no idea where I wanted this conversation to go. “It’s just, things are—” “YO!” Our heads whipped in the voice’s direction. Ben scrambled to a crouch, scanning the silent bulk of Tern Point, as if just now recalling we were adrift at sea. The voice called down again, suddenly familiar. “What, are you guys paddling around the island? I don’t have a boat license, but that seems dumb.” “Shut up, Hi!” Ben shouted, with more heat than was necessary. Scowling, he slid behind the controls and fired the engine. I scurried to the bow, as far from the captain’s chair as I could manage and stay dry. You’ve done it now, Tory Brennan. Better hope there’s a life preserver somewhere. A glance back. Ben was watching me, looking for all the world like he had more to say. I quickly turned away. Nope. Nope nope nope. I needed some time to think about this one. Perhaps a decade? “Where are we?” I asked, changing the subject. Ben must’ve sensed that my “personal” shop was closed for business.

Do you have any tattoos?" he's asking me, smiling as he leans back against the wall in his undershirt; pants on, socks on, shoes off. "Everyone seems to have tattoos these days." This is not a conversation I ever thought I'd have with Warner. "No," I tell him. "I've never had an opportunity to get one. Besides, I don't think anyone would ever want to get that close to my skin." He studies his hands. Smiles. Says, "Maybe someday.

The one who answered his questions certainly had pointed ears, though the same observer might be hard pressed to make out any ears- or actual answers at all. The boy spoke to what appeared to be little more than a golden light that bobbled and sparkled and tinkled like bells. In fact, the whole scene resembled a mesmerist quizzing a pendulum held from a long golden chain, glittering in the sunlight, whose vague swings returned meanings known only to the occultist himself. But upon looking more closely, one would see that inside the golden bauble was a tiny woman with very pointed ears, a serious face, a green dress, and sparkling wings. Her body was like a series of energetic globes, from her golden hair in its messy bun to her hips to the round silver bells that decorated her shoes. Throughout the conversation every part of her was as animated as her friend's face.

It is a wondrous thing, the human foot—like the human hand; even more so, perhaps; but, unlike the hand, with which we are so familiar, it is seldom a thing of beauty in civilized adults who go about in leather boots or shoes. So that it is hidden away in disgrace, a thing to be thrust out of sight and forgotten. It can sometimes be very ugly indeed—the ugliest thing there is, even in the fairest and highest and most gifted of her sex; and then it is of an ugliness to chill and kill romance, and scatter love’s young dream, and almost break the heart. And all for the sake of a high heel and a ridiculously pointed toe—mean things, at the best! Conversely, when Mother Nature has taken extra pains in the building of it, and proper care or happy chance has kept it free of lamentable deformations, indurations, and discolorations—all those gruesome boot-begotten abominations which have made it so generally unpopular—the sudden sight of it, uncovered, comes as a very rare and singularly pleasing surprise to the eye that has learned how to see! Nothing else that Mother Nature has to show, not even the human face divine, has more subtle power to suggest high physical distinction, happy evolution, and supreme development; the lordship of man over beast, the lordship of man over man, the lordship of woman over all!

With 21 million people following her on Facebook and 18 million on Twitter, pop singer Ariana Grande can’t personally chat with each of her loves, as she affectionately calls her fans. So she and others are spreading their messages through new-style social networks, via mobile apps that are more associated with private, intimate conversation, hoping that marketing in a cozier digital setting adds a breath of warmth and a dash of personality. It’s the Internet’s equivalent of mailing postcards rather than plastering a billboard. Grande could have shared on Twitter that her most embarrassing moment on stage was losing a shoe. The 21-year-old instead revealed the fact during a half-hour live text chat on Line, an app built for close friends to exchange instant messages. It’s expensive to advertise on Facebook and Twitter, and the volume of information being posted creates uncertainty over what people actually notice. Chat apps including Line, Kik, Snapchat, WeChat and Viber place marketing messages front and center. Most-used apps The apps threaten to siphon advertising dollars from the social media leaders, which are already starting to see chat apps overtake them as the most-used apps on smartphones, according to Forrester Research. Chat apps “demand attention,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at consulting firm Altimeter Group.

The airport in Sofia was a tiny place; I'd expected a palace of modern communism, but we descended to a modest area of tarmac and strolled across it with the other travelers. Nearly all of them were Bulgarian, I decided, trying to catch something of their conversations. They were handsome people, some of them strikingly so, and their faces varied from the dark-eyed pale Slav to a Middle-Eastern bronze, a kaleidoscope of rich hues and shaggy black eyebrows, noses long and flaring, or aquiline, or deeply hooked, young women with curly black hair and noble foreheads, and energetic old men with few teeth. They smiled or laughed and talked eagerly with one another; one tall man gesticulated to his companion with a folded newspaper. Their clothes were distinctly not Western, although I would have been hard put to say what it was about the cuts of suits and skirts, the heavy shoes and dark hats, that was unfamiliar to me.

It was... it was like all the girls I was with. They were fun, and I liked their company, but their touch didn't... didn't make anything get warm. Didn't make it pop or zing or ache." The hand moved up to Talker's neck, so that his pulse throbbed against Brian's palm. "Didn't make me feel any of the things I feel when you touch me or smile or... you know, sing in the shower or leave your shoes in the hallway or have conversations with the rat when you think I can't hear you.

A third problem is called “co-reference.” Say you start talking about an individual by referring to him as the tall blond man with one black shoe. The second time you refer to him in the conversation you are likely to call him the man; the third time, just him. But the three expressions do not refer to three people or even to three ways of thinking about a single person; the second and third are just ways of saving breath. Something in the brain must treat them as the same thing; English isn’t doing it.

I know you’re in there, Mercedes,” Faye says. “I can see your dirty Converse shoes. You really should get a new pair.” “Did you see it?” I croak. “If you saw it, you probably saw a lot more of me. You probably shouldn’t be seen talking to me. And I should probably switch schools.” “That’s the thing,” Faye says, stopping right outside the stall door and rapping on the metal with her fist. “What’s the thing?” I say, pushing my shoe against the toilet paper dispenser, making no move to let her in. “I never was any good at doing what people tell me.” And like that, her head appears under the stall door, followed by her body. She pulls herself in and wipes her hands on her jeans. I raise my eyebrows. “You know how disgusting that floor is?” I say. “Janitorial service at this school leaves a lot to be desired.” She cocks her head and puts her hands on her hips. She looks like what I imagine a stern parent would look like, not that I know from experience. I wonder if she got that posture from Lydia. “First of all, you didn’t let me in, so I had no choice.

If observing Trump’s schoolboy act in relationship to North Korea felt like watching a disaster movie, then witnessing his Greenland bid and subsequent tantrum was more like seeing a guest at a fancy dinner party blow his nose in an embroidered napkin and proceed to use a silver fork to scratch his foot under the table. But not only did most journalists cover the debacle with restraint—many also provided historical and political context. Explanations of the strategic and economic importance of the Arctic proliferated; many media outlets noted that President Harry S Truman had also wanted to buy Greenland. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, a consistent Trump critic, tried the opposite approach and wrote a piece explaining why the United States needs a tiny country like Denmark to be its ally. The media were doing what media should do—providing context, organizing relevant information, creating narrative—and this too had a normalizing effect, simply by helping media consumers to absorb the unabsorbable. It was as though the other dinner guests had carried on with their polite conversation and even handed the disruptive, deranged visitor a clean fork so that he wouldn’t have to eat dessert with the utensil he had stuck in his shoe.

We almost began a perfect conversation, F. said as he turned on the six o'clock news. He turned the radio very loud and began to shout wildly against the voice of the commentator, who was reciting a list of disasters. Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer! Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white, and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the Ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. Do you know how to do this? Do you know how to see the akropolis like the Indians did who never even had one? Fuck a saint, that's how, find a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar, dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of these quaint impossible cunts and fuck her for your life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled in her airy robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the senseless blows again and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help! help! it's my time, my second, my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, fire men! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in crayon like the akropolis rose! And so on.

[…] He sees the hair that grows on her legs between waxings, the black roots that emerge between appointments at the salon, and in these moments, these glimpses, he believes he has known no greater intimacy. He learns that she sleeps, always, with her left leg straight and her right leg bent, ankle over knee, in the shape of a 4. He learns that she is prone to snoring, ever so faintly, sounding like a lawn mower that will not start, and to gnashing her jaws, which he massages for her as she sleeps. At restaurants and bars, they sometimes slip Bengali phrases into their conversation in order to comment with impunity on another diner's unfortunate hair or shoes.

May I cut in?” Ken asks as the next song begins. Hardin frowns and looks at me, then back to his father. “Yeah, but only one song,” he grumbles. Ken laughs and repeats his son’s words: “One song.” Hardin lets go of me, and Ken’s hand goes around my back. I swallow down the uneasy feelings I hold for him. He keeps the conversation light as we dance and my ill feelings are further muted as we laugh at an obviously drunk couple swaying back and forth next to us. “Would you look at that?” Ken then says, his voice full of wonder. I turn to see what he’s referring to and hear my own small gasp as I spot Hardin awkwardly swaying back and forth with Karen. She laughs as he steps on her white shoes, and he smiles an embarrassed smile. Tonight has been better than I could have dreamed.

Yeah, Jules!" Chelsea said in a voice thick with envy. "Go away, you're making the rest of us look bad." She winked at Jule's date wickedly. "I bet you just want to eat her up, don't ya?" He stared at Chelsea with bewilderment and glanced back at Jules for help. "Just ignore her," Jules explained over the noise from the sound system. "She doesn't get out much." Chelsea tried to look hurt by Jule's words, but she couldn't quite pull it off. "I'm just sayin', Jules, he'd better watch his back tonight, or I might be trying to take you away from him." Chelsea loved to play the potentially bi-curious card, even though everyone knew she liked boys far too much to go to bat for the other team. "Gross!" cried Claire, who wasn't pretending at all. Claire hated it when the conversation deviated too far off her straight and narrow path. The operative word being straight. "Don't worry, Claire-bear," Chelsea soothed condescendingly. "I'm not going to hook up with Jules." She wrapped her arm around Claire's waist and then said suggestively in he ear, "I'm much more likely to make a move on you." "Eww!" Claire shrieked, shoving Chelsea away. "Get away from me!" "Leave her alone, Chels," Jules interrupted. "Or you're gonna make her start her 'It's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' speech. And sorry, Claire, but none of us really want to hear that." Jay pulled Violet close to him as they listened to the familiar, playful bantering. He slid his arm around her waist from behind, and let his lips gently tease her earlobe while no one was paying attention to the two of them. Violet wanted to turn around right there, in his arms, and forget this whole dance thing altogether. "Hey!" Chelsea's voice interrupted them, and Violet jumped a little, realizing that everyone was staring at them. "Did you hear me?" Violet leaned forward on her crutches and away from Jay, still feeling bemused by the close and intimate contact. "What?" she asked, trying to focus on what had been said. "I said, 'I gotta pee.' Let's go to the bathroom," Chelsea repeated as if Violet were some sort of imbecile, incapable of understanding normal human speech. "Keep it up, Chels, and none of us is gonna want to hook up with you tonight," Violet promised jokingly. Chelsea grinned at Violet. "I like the way you think, Violet Ambrose. Maybe you'll be the lucky girl I choose.' And then she turned to Jay. "Don't worry, I've got her from here," Chelsea announced. Jules and Claire followed. Violet laughed and glanced back at him. "I'll only be a few." Jay gave her a skeptical look that no one else would have even noticed, as he assessed the three girls who would be escorting Violet. And then he finally nodded. "Okay, I'm gonna show these guys my car." He was beaming again. "I'll be right outside, but I won't be long." Violet did her best to keep up with the trio ahead of her, but it was hard on one high heel and two crutches. Finally she yelled at them exasperatedly, "If you guys don't wait, I'm not going!" They all three stopped and turned around. Chelsea tapped her lovely silver shoe impatiently. "Hurry up, Violet, or I swear I'll take you off my list.

Out, in Henry’s view, is a madhouse. Historians of social lunacy will confirm that this is literally the case, that the mad have been let out of the asylums and allowed to walk the streets. But Henry doesn’t mean that. By mad, nerve-strung Henry means revving when you’re stationary and driving with your hand on your horn – read that sexually if you like, but Henry has in mind incessant honking – he means text messaging the person standing next to you, or being wired up so that you can speak into thin air, conversing with God is how it looks to Henry, or wearing running shoes when you’re not running, or coming up to Henry with a bad face and a dog on a piece of string and asking him for money. Why would Henry give someone with a bad face money? Because of the dog? Because of the string?

When Sebastian, cearly delighted to be treated like one of the guys, didn't move, Alex bared his teeth. "Depeche-toi!" Sebastian depeched. Alex turned back, all Cheshire cat smile. "No," I said. "No what?" "No,you are not going to teach me all the cool words so I can go to Chamonix and be conversational." "Good." He leaned in so I could see the faint dusting of freckles on his nose and smell spearmint gum. "Chamonix is so 1990s. Everyone who is anyone goes to Courchevel these days." I turned on my heel and started to walk off. "Jeez. Ella." He loped after me. "What if your problem? Conversational, my ass. Talking to you is like dancing around a fire in paper shoes." I stopped. "What is that supposed to mean?" "It's an expression my Ukranian babushka likes. I'll explain it at our first turtoring session." I scowled at his shirt. This one had what looked like a guy riding a dolphin instead of the ubiquitos alligator or polo player. "There isn't going to be a tutoring session." "Winslow seems to think otherwise." "Wouldn't be the first thing she's wrong about," I muttered. He gave an impressive sigh. The dolphin lurched, but the little guy on it held tight. "You don't want to fail French, do you? That would be a serious admission of weakness from an Italian girl." I almost smiled. Instead, I announced. "Fuhgeddaboudit. I'll buy a 'Teach Your Poodle French in Ten Easy Lessons' online. Problem solved, and Winslow will never be the wiser." "Yeah. Good luck with that. So how's this Friday? I don't have practice." When I shook my head, he demanded, " What is it? I'm a good tutor. Ask Sebastian. I was just teaching him how to tell the obnoxious French dudes on the slopes that they suck.

When I got home, I thought about the fact that Einstein supposedly used to stock his wardrobe with the same suits and shoes so he’d never have to think about what he was going to wear. I lack the intellect it takes to solve problems that way. I’ve advanced nothing in the field of psychology, and my paper on PTSD was given little attention; I wrote that psychological disorders with a genetic link, such as borderline personality disorder, might seem impossible to treat, while PTSD, which is based in trauma that has been experienced, seems easy to tackle, at least to the layperson. The opposite is true. It can be difficult to find the right medication for genetic disorders, but they can be sufficiently treated. Conversely, PTSD never goes away. One might think that our genes are so elementary that we cannot escape them, but our experiences have the ability to do far greater damage.

It had been obvious to me from a young age that my parents didn’t like one another. Couples in films and on television performed household tasks together and talked fondly about their shared memories. I couldn’t remember seeing my mother and father in the same room unless they were eating. My father had “moods.” Sometimes during his moods my mother would take me to stay with her sister Bernie in Clontarf, and they would sit in the kitchen talking and shaking their heads while I watched my cousin Alan play Ocarina of Time. I was aware that alcohol played a role in these incidents, but its precise workings remained mysterious to me. I enjoyed our visits to Bernie’s house. While we were there I was allowed to eat as many digestive biscuits as I wanted, and when we returned, my father was either gone out or else feeling very contrite. I liked it when he was gone out. During his periods of contrition he tried to make conversation with me about school and I had to choose between humoring and ignoring him. Humoring him made me feel dishonest and weak, a soft target. Ignoring him made my heart beat very hard and afterward I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Also it made my mother cry. It was hard to be specific about what my father’s moods consisted of. Sometimes he would go out for a couple of days and when he came back in we’d find him taking money out of my Bank of Ireland savings jar, or our television would be gone. Other times he would bump into a piece of furniture and then lose his temper. He hurled one of my school shoes right at my face once after he tripped on it. It missed and went in the fireplace and I watched it smoldering like it was my own face smoldering. I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish. Afterward my mother said: why didn’t you lift it out of the fire? Can’t you at least make an effort? I shrugged. I would have let my real face burn in the fire too. When he came home from work in the evening I used to freeze entirely still, and after a few seconds I would know with complete certainty if he was in one of the moods or not. Something about the way he closed the door or handled his keys would let me know, as clearly as if he yelled the house down. I’d say to my mother: he’s in a mood now. And she’d say: stop that. But she knew as well as I did. One day, when I was twelve, he turned up unexpectedly after school to pick me up. Instead of going home, we drove away from town, toward Blackrock. The DART went past on our left and I could see the Poolbeg towers out the car window. Your mother wants to break up our family, my father said. Instantly I replied: please let me out of the car. This remark later became evidence in my father’s theory that my mother had poisoned me against him.

In living our lives let us never forget that the deeds of our fathers and mothers are theirs, not ours; that their works cannot be counted to our glory; that we can claim no excellence and no place, because of what they did, that we must rise by our own labor, and that labor failing we shall fail. We may claim no honor, no reward, no respect, nor special position or recognition, no credit because of what our fathers were or what they wrought. We stand upon our own feet in our own shoes. There is no aristocracy of birth in this Church; it belongs equally to the highest and the lowliest; for as Peter said to Cornelius, the Roman centurion, seeking him: “… Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. (Acts 10: 34, 35.)” (They of the Last Wagon, President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., Conference Report, October 1947, Afternoon Meeting, p.160.)

You're beautiful." The words dropped from his lips before he could stop them. She was wearing a cherry red dress with white polka dots that hugged all her curves and dipped low at the top, giving him a delicious glimpse of the soft swell of her breasts. "Thank you." Her gaze dropped and she pulled her phone out of a small red purse that matched her shoes. Liam had never thought much about a woman's shoes before, but Daisy's shoes demanded to be noticed. Curvy and round with bows on top and a big, graceful heel that made his mouth water, they were sweet and sexy all at once---the kind of shoes a man could admire when his lover was bent over his table in her fancy dress, skirt flipped up, and... fuck, why had he locked his helmet to his bike? Shrugging off his leather jacket, he held it discreetly in front of him and forced his mind back to the conversation because, holy hell, when had he ever let his Daisy fantasies get this out of control?

We almost began a perfect conversation, F. said as he turned on the six o'clock news. He turned the radio very loud and began to shout wildly against the voice of the commentator, who was reciting a list of disasters. Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer! Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white, and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the Ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. Do you know how to do this? Do you know how to see the akropolis like the Indians did who never even had one? Fuck a saint, that's how, find a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar, dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of these quaint impossible cunts and fuck her for your life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled in her airy robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the senseless blows again and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help! help! it's my time, my second, my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, fire men! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in crayon like the akropolis rose! And so on.

At such a time [at dawn] I would dream of being a baker who delivers bread, a fitter from the electric company, or an insurance man collecting the weekly installments. Or at least a chimney sweep. In the morning, at dawn, I would enter some half-opened gateway, still lighted by the watchman's lantern. I would put two fingers to my hat, crack a joke, and enter the labyrinth to leave late in the evening, at the other end of the city. I would spend all day going from apartment to apartment, conducting one never-ending conversation from one end of the city to the other, divided into parts among the householders; I would ask something in one apartment and receive a reply in another, make a joke in one place and collect the fruits of laughter in the third or fourth. Among the banging of doors I would squeeze through narrow passages, through bedrooms full of furniture, I would upset chamberpots, walk into squeaking perambulators in which babies cry, pick up rattles dropped by infants. I would stop for longer than necessary in kitchens and hallways, where servant girls were tidying up. The girls, busy, would stretch their young legs, tauten their high insteps, play with their cheap shining shoes, or clack around in loose slippers.

I am Fenris,” said the man. He started to say something more, to add another name or rank, but cut himself short. “Fenris,” he repeated. “Marra.” “Fenris,” said the dust-wife. She snorted, looking over at Marra. “So you built yourself a dog and found yourself a wolf. If a fox shows up looking for you, we’ll have a proper fairy tale and I’ll start to worry.” “Why?” asked Marra. “If I’m in a fairy tale, I might actually have a chance.” “Fairy tales,” said the dust-wife heavily, “are very hard on bystanders. Particularly old women. I’d rather not dance myself to death in iron shoes, if it’s all the same to you.” “Perhaps you’re the fox,” said Marra. “Ha!” the dust-wife’s laugh really did have a bit of a fox’s bark to it. “I deserved that.” “Do you have a name, Lady Fox?” asked Fenris. Marra could not tell if he was amused or irked by the conversation. “Yes,” said the dust-wife. The silence stretched out. Marra picked at a thread of the nettle cloak, waiting. If there was a battle of wills, the dust-wife won. Fenris’s laugh was not terribly unlike the dust-wife’s, the short, self-deprecating sound of a man who could still recognize absurdity. “What do you wish me to call you, ma’am?” “Ma’am will work very well indeed. I am a dust-wife.

This felt like a golden opportunity to alert Dan to some non-negotiables I had regarding men. "Bear with me," I told Dan. "This is going to be a long list. I don't like strong scents, so that kind of prohibits waking up next to someone of the opposite sex, or any sex, really. I'm extremely sensitive to smell. I have a problem with smelling anyone's breath. I'm not the kind of person who can get past that. I get turned off very easily. It could be anything. It could be finding out they have a cat, or seeing their apartment, or they could love room temperature water...Feet are tricky. That's why I like to lead with them. When I meet a guy I like, I take out a foot and show him what he'll be dealing with if things go any further. Put your worse foot forward. That's how I like to start a conversation. And then, when they're gracious enough to tolerate me and my feet, God forbid they have a weird foot or a double-decker toe - I can't deal with it...Also, I have too many questionable habits that no man would be cool with, and by the way, if there was a guy that was cool with them, I'm not sure I'd be interested in him..I can get icked out so easily. I'm aware this behavior is unreasonable and immature, and I'd like it to stop. I don't want to get turned off so easily, but I just don't know how to get past a bad pair of shoes, or...male jewelry.

For most of our history, walking wasn’t a choice. It was a given. Walking was our primary means of locomotion. But, today, you have to choose to walk. We ride to work. Office buildings and apartments have elevators. Department stores offer escalators. Airports use moving sidewalks. An afternoon of golf is spent riding in a cart. Even a ramble around your neighborhood can be done on a Segway. Why not just put one foot in front of the other? You don’t have to live in the country. It’s great to take a walk in the woods, but I love to roam city streets, too, especially in places like New York, London, or Rome, where you can’t go half a block without making some new discovery. A long stroll slows you down, puts things in perspective, brings you back to the present moment. In Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Viking, 2000), author Rebecca Solnit writes that, “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.” Yet in our hectic, goal-oriented culture, taking a leisurely walk isn’t always easy. You have to plan for it. And perhaps you should. Walking is good exercise, but it is also a recreation, an aesthetic experience, an exploration, an investigation, a ritual, a meditation. It fosters health and joie de vivre. Cardiologist Paul Dudley White once said, “A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.” A good walk is anything but pedestrian. It lengthens your life. It clears, refreshes, provokes, and repairs the mind. So lace up those shoes and get outside. The most ancient exercise is still the best.

This is an enormous claim, but there is a certain logic to it. One of the most recent people to note this logic is Bono, the lead singer of U2, in a conversation with Michka Assayas: Assayas: Christ has his rank among the world’s great thinkers. But Son of God, isn’t that far-fetched? Bono: No, it’s not far-fetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: He was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn’t allow you that. He doesn’t let you off that hook. Christ says, No. I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: ‘I’m the Messiah.’ I’m saying: ‘I am God incarnate.’ And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet we can take. You’re a bit eccentric. We’ve had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don’t mention the ‘M’ word! Because, you know, we’re gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no, I know you’re expecting me to come back with an army and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he’s gonna keep saying this. So what you’re left with is either Christ was who He said He was – the Messiah – or a complete nutcase. I mean, we’re talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. . . . I’m not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilisation for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me that’s far-fetched . . . Bono is describing how Jesus’ statements about himself force us all into an all-or-nothing choice.

There is a porter at the door and at the reception-desk a grey-haired woman and a sleek young man. 'I want a room for tonight.' 'A room? A room with bath?' I am still feeling ill and giddy. I say confidentially, leaning forward: 'I want a light room.' The young man lifts his eyebrows and stares at me. I try again. 'I don't want a room looking on the courtyard. I want a light room.' 'A light room?' the lady says pensively. She turns over the pages of her books, looking for a light room. 'We have number 219,' she says. 'A beautiful room with bath. Seventy-five francs a night.' (God, I can't afford that.) 'It's a very beautiful room with bath. Two windows. Very light,' she says persuasively. A girl is called to show me the room. As we are about to start for the lift, the young man says, speaking out of the side of his mouth: 'Of course you know that number 219 is occupied.' 'Oh no. Number 219 had his bill before yesterday.' the receptionist says. 'I remember. I gave it to him myself.' I listen anxiously to this conversation. Suddenly I feel that I must have number 219, with bath - number 219, with rose-coloured curtains, carpet and bath. I shall exist on a different planet at once if I can get this room, if only for a couple of nights. It will be an omen. Who says you can't escape from your faith? I'll escape from mine, into room number 219. Just try me, just give me a chance. 'He asked for his bill,' the young man says, in a voice which is a triumph of scorn and cynicism. 'He asked for his bill but that doesn't mean that he has gone.' The receptionist starts arguing. 'When people ask for their bills, it's because they are going, isn't it?' 'Yes,' he says, 'French' people. The others ask for their bills to see if we're going to cheat them.' 'My God,' says the receptionist, 'foreigners, foreigners, my God. ...' The young man turns his back, entirely dissociating himself from what is going on. Number 219 - well, now I know all about him. All the time they are talking I am seeing him - his trousers, his shoes, the way he brushes his hair, the sort of girls he likes. His hand-luggage is light yellow and he has a paunch. But I can't see his face. He wears a mask, number 219. ... 'Show the lady number 334.

Finally, he allowed me to turn the key in the lock and the front door, with its porthole-shaped window, swung open. I don’t know what I’d expected. I’d tried not to conjure up fantasies of any kind, but what I saw left me inarticulate. The entire apartment had the feel of a ship’s interior. The walls were highly polished teak and oak, with shelves and cubbyholes on every side. The kitchenette was still located to the right where the old one had been, a galley-style arrangement with a pint-size stove and refrigerator. A microwave oven and trash compactor had been added. Tucked in beside the kitchen was a stacking washer-dryer, and next to that was a tiny bathroom. In the living area, a sofa had been built into a window bay, with two royal blue canvas director’s chairs arranged to form a “conversational grouping.” Henry did a quick demonstration of how the sofa could be extended into sleeping accommodations for company, a trundle bed in effect. The dimensions of the main room were still roughly fifteen feet on a side, but now there was a sleeping loft above, accessible by way of a tiny spiral staircase where my former storage space had been. In the old place, I’d usually slept naked on the couch in an envelope of folded quilt. Now, I was going to have an actual bedroom of my own. I wound my way up, staring in amazement at the double-size platform bed with drawers underneath. In the ceiling above the bed, there was a round shaft extending through the roof, capped by a clear Plexiglas skylight that seemed to fling light down on the blue-and-white patchwork coverlet. Loft windows looked out to the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Along the back wall, there was an expanse of cedar-lined closet space with a rod for hanging clothes, pegs for miscellaneous items, shoe racks, and floor-to-ceiling drawers. Just off the loft, there was a small bathroom. The tub was sunken with a built-in shower and a window right at tub level, the wooden sill lined with plants. I could bathe among the treetops, looking out at the ocean where the clouds were piling up like bubbles. The towels were the same royal blue as the cotton shag carpeting. Even the eggs of milled soap were blue, arranged in a white china dish on the edge of the round brass sink.

Gentleman,” I purr smoothly in greeting. Ezra and Cort circle me like sharks scenting blood. I know who they are, but not who is who since they’re wearing black hoods over their heads. It covers them to the shoulder and has holes for the eyes and mouth. Their clothing is identical Italian designer label suits. Even their shoes are the same. Their eyes glow like steel ball-bearings from the safety of their masks. The mouths are different- one serious, one snarky- both ruby-red and kissable. While they circle Fate and me several times taking our measure, the other Master stands in a sphere of his own confidence. He’s older and I don’t mean just in age, but knowledge. Ezra and Cortez feel like babies compared to this man. I bet he’s who I really have to impress. I wait, always meeting their eyes when their path moves them back to my face. I don’t follow them with my gaze- I wait. “Hello,” the hood with the serious lips speaks in a smooth deep tone. I know it’s not his true voice, but the one Kris calls The Boss. His eyes are kind and assessing. No one pays Fate any mind as she cowers at my thigh. I hold their undivided attention. Curly-locks is quiet- watchful- a predator sighting its quarry. Snarky mouth is leering at my chest and I smirk. Caught ya, Cortez Abernathy. “I seem to be at a disadvantage conversing with you while you’re hooded. I can’t see you, but you can see me.” I try to get them to out themselves. It’s a longshot. “And who are you, Ma’am?” Ezra asks respectfully. “Please call me Queen.” I draw on all of my lessons from Hillbrook to pull me through this conversation. The power in the air is stifling. I wonder if it’s difficult for them to be in the same room without having a cage match for dominance. I feel like I’m on Animal Planet and the lions are circling. “Queen, indeed,” Cort says snidely under his breath and I wince. I turn my face from them in embarrassment. I should have gone with something less- less everything. I know I’m strong, but the word also emulates elegance and beauty. I’m neither. Have to say, tonight has sucked for my self-esteem. First, the dominant one overlooks me for Fate and now Cortez makes fun of me- lovely. “What did you say to upset her?” Ezra accuses Cortez. “Nothing,” Cort complains in confusion. “Please excuse my partner. Words are his profession and it seems they have failed him this evening. I will apologize for not sharing our names, but this gentleman is Dexter.” He gestures to the dominant man. I wait for him to shake my hand like a civilized person. He does not- he actually crosses his arms over his chest in disobedience. This shit is going to be a piece of cake.

Everyone knew there had never been a cowardly Confederate soldier and they found this statement peculiarly irritating. He always referred to the soldiers as “our brave boys” or “our heroes in gray” and did it in such a way as to convey the utmost in insult. When daring young ladies, hoping for a flirtation, thanked him for being one of the heroes who fought for them, he bowed and declared that such was not the case, for he would do the same thing for Yankee women if the same amount of money were involved. Since Scarlett’s first meeting with him in Atlanta on the night of the bazaar, he had talked with her in this manner, but now there was a thinly veiled note of mockery in his conversations with everyone. When praised for his services to the Confederacy, he unfailingly replied that blockading was a business with him. If he could make as much money out of government contracts, he would say, picking out with his eyes those who had government contracts, then he would certainly abandon the hazards of blockading and take to selling shoddy cloth, sanded sugar, spoiled flour and rotten leather to the Confederacy. Most of his remarks were unanswerable, which made them all the worse. There had already been minor scandals about those holding government contracts. Letters from men at the front complained constantly of shoes that wore out in a week, gunpowder that would not ignite, harness that snapped at any strain, meat that was rotten and flour that was full of weevils. Atlanta people tried to think that the men who sold such stuff to the government must be contract holders from Alabama or Virginia or Tennessee, and not Georgians. For did not the Georgia contract holders include men from the very best families? Were they not the first to contribute to hospital funds and to the aid of soldiers’ orphans? Were they not the first to cheer at “Dixie” and the most rampant seekers, in oratory at least, for Yankee blood? The full tide of fury against those profiteering on government contracts had not yet risen, and Rhett’s words were taken merely as evidence of his own bad breeding. He not only affronted the town with insinuations of venality on the part of men in high places and slurs on the courage of the men in the field, but he took pleasure in tricking the dignified citizenry into embarrassing situations. He could no more resist pricking the conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist putting a pin into a balloon. He neatly deflated the pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted, and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they never were quite certain what had happened until they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly ridiculous.

This Girl I Knew Glasses, bad bangs, patched blue jeans, creek-stained tennis shoes caked in mud, a father who sells vacuum cleaners, a mother skinny as a nun, a little brother with straw-colored hair and a scowling, confused look in the pews at church: this girl I knew. House at the edge of town, crumbling white stucco. Dog on a chain. Weeds. Wildcat Creek trickling brown and frothy over rocks out back, past an abandoned train trestle and the wreck of an old school bus left to rot. This girl I knew, in whatever room is hers, in that house with its dust-fogged attic windows, its after-dinner hours like onions soft in a pan. Her father sometimes comes for her, runs a hand through her hair. Her mother washes every last stick of silverware, every dish. The night sky presses down on their roof, a long black yawn spiked with stars, bleating crickets. The dog barks once, twice. Outside town, a motorcycle revs its engine: someone bearing down. Then nothing. Sleep. This girl I knew dreams whatever this girl I knew dreams. In the morning it’s back to school, desks, workbooks, an awkwardly held pencil in the cramped claw of a hand. The cigarette and rosewater scent of Ms. Thompson at the blackboard. The flat of Ms. Thompson’s chest, sunburned and freckled, where her sweater makes a V. You should be nice to her, my mother says about this girl I knew. I don’t want to be nice to her, I say to my mother. At recess this girl I knew walks around the playground, alone, talking to herself: elaborate conversations, hand gestures, hysterical laughing. On a dare from the other girls this girl I knew picks a dandelion, pops its head with her thumbnail, sucks the milky stem. I don’t want to be nice to her. Scabbed where she’s scratched them, mosquito bites on her ankles break and bleed. Fuzzy as a peach, the brown splotch of a birthmark on her arm. The way her glasses keep slipping down her nose. The way she pushes them up.

At my church, we worked through a Bible study by Beth Moore. A video series, entitled “A Heart Like His”, Beth invited us to join her on a journey to know King David, a man after God’s own heart.   Beth explained that when we ask God for something we shouldn’t be expecting Him to talk to us through the clouds. Instead, God speaks to us through His Word, the Bible. If we have a concern or problem or issue, we need to read the Bible to “listen” for God’s voice and His answer. Before opening the Bible, we need to pray that God would reveal Himself to us through the words on the page.   Beth gives the example of how God revealed Himself to Samuel through His Word, the Bible. Samuel 3:21 says, “The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.”   We often want to see God in a situation. Beth shares:   “I need to know You’re here with me. I need to know You’re working here. O, God, if I can just see You in the midst of this I can get through almost anything. Would You reveal Yourself to me? And He reminded me I’ll reveal Myself to you through My word.”   This also shows us the importance of memorizing scripture. When we are up against a problem, we can relate back to our memory of the Word and find the answers within.   God will reveal Himself to you through His word. He will make His presence known to you. Expect Him. That is His promise. He is looking for receptive hearts. So whether you are reading your Bible in the kitchen, the den or your bedroom, expect Him to reveal Himself to you.       Prayer is my half of an ongoing conversation between my God and me. ~ Donna Fawcett         Why Worry When We Can Pray?     “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27)     The hill in the distance looked daunting. “You want to climb that?” I stopped walking to re-lace my shoes.

Prayer is my half of an ongoing conversation between my God and me. ~ Donna Fawcett         Why Worry When We Can Pray?     “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27)     The hill in the distance looked daunting. “You want to climb that?” I stopped walking to re-lace my shoes.   Helen giggled. “Yes, of course. I do it almost every day. The dogs love it.” Her two dogs ran ahead, eager to get going.   “Well, I suppose. But I’m not sure if I’ll make it.” I shifted my water bottle to my hip. The hill loomed ahead, a 5 kilometre walk upwards. I wasn’t a stranger to a good hike; I loved to tromp through the woods and along the trails. But a walk straight up a steep hill was not my usual repertoire.   To pass the time and keep my mind off the pain in my calves, we talked. Enjoying a good chat is one of my favourite things to do in combination with a walk. Helen explained how she normally walks alone and she agreed that having a partner makes the upwards strain that much easier. She shared with me a story of how she had been walking the same road the day before and suffered from blasts of dust from cars that raced by with no consideration for her and her dogs. Her frustration was compounded by the heat. She threw her arms up in irritation as cars sped past. “Why are you not slowing down? Have you no consideration?” she called after them. But as her anger and indignation rose, she felt convicted in her spirit. Why worry when you could pray? So as the next car came into vision, instead of complaining and getting agitated waiting for the dust to swirl around her, she chose to pray instead. “Dear Lord, please make this driver slow down.” As she watched the vehicle approach, it slowed to such a degree that she expected the driver to pull over and ask directions. Instead he gave a wave and continued on.   “Thank You, Jesus!” Helen exclaimed. As each car came into view, Helen prayed to God and He came through every time. The walk became enjoyable and a real testament to the fact that God cares about our every need.   As Helen finished her story, a farm vehicle, large and spewing dust all around came over the hill. “Let’s pray!” Helen enthusiastically challenged. We prayed and the truck passed without a flicker of dust. “God

I am the girl who prefers to send her Friday night curled up with her pillow, reading a good novel, and I am also the girl who likes to go out on a Saturday night and dance until the DJ plays his last song. I am the girl who wants to wear beat up converses and an over-sized sweatshirt, and I am also the girl who owns over sixty dresses and too many shoes to count. Why did it become okay to say one is better than the other? Because I am all of that.

shoulder, so lightly that he hardly noticed, was a small creature exactly the color of his shirt. “Allow me to introduce all of us,” the creature went on. “We are the Lethargarians, at your service.” Milo looked around and, for the first time, noticed dozens of them—sitting on the car, standing in the road, and lying all over the trees and bushes. They were very difficult to see, because whatever they happened to be sitting on or near was exactly the color they happened to be. Each one looked very much like the other (except for the color, of course) and some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” said Milo, not sure whether or not he was pleased at all. “I think I’m lost. Can you help me please?” “Don’t say ‘think,’ ” said one sitting on his shoe, for the one on his shoulder had fallen asleep. “It’s against the law.” And he yawned and fell off to sleep, too. “No one’s allowed to think in the Doldrums,” continued a third, beginning to doze off. And as each one spoke, he fell off to sleep and another picked up the conversation with hardly any interruption. “Don’t you have a rule book? It’s local ordinance 175389-J.

That’s a cool hat. Where did you buy it? 2. I like your shoes. Where did you get them? 3. I like your necklace (or jewelry). Where did you get it? 4. I like your energy. You seem very fun and spontaneous (or something you sense

Since Paul wasn’t a big conversationalist—he was the anti-Mac, in other words, and today had been the longest she’d ever heard him speak in consecutive sentences—Jena watched the scenery for a while. Then she decided to study the inside of Paul’s truck to see what she could learn about him. Technically, it was exactly like hers and Gentry’s. It had a black exterior with a blue light bar across the top and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement Division logo on the doors. It was tech heavy on the front dash, just like theirs, with LDWF, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, and Louisiana State Police Troop C radios, a laptop, a GPS unit, and a weather unit. In her truck and in Gentry’s, the cords and wires were a colorful tangle of plastic and metal, usually with extra plugs dangling around like vines. Paul’s cords were all black, and he had them woven in pairs and tucked underneath the dash, where they neatly disappeared. She leaned over to see how he’d achieved such a thing, and noticed identical zip ties holding them in place. “Sinclair, I hate to ask, but what are you doing?” He sounded more bemused than annoyed, so she said, “I’m psychoanalyzing you based on the interior of your truck.” He almost ran off the road. “Why?” “Your scintillating conversation was putting me to sleep.” His dark brows knit together but he seemed to have no answer to that. She turned around in her seat, as much as the seat belt allowed, and continued her study. Paul had a 12-gauge shotgun and a .223 carbine mounted right behind the driver’s seat, same as in her own truck. The mounts had hidden release buttons so the agents could get the guns out one-handed and quickly. But where her truck had a catch-all supply of stuff, from paper towels to zip ties to evidence bags to fast-food wrappers thrown in the back, Paul’s backseat was empty but for a zippered storage container normal people used for shoes. Each space held different things, all neatly arranged. Jena spotted evidence bags in one. Zip ties in another. Notebooks. Citation books. Paperwork. A spare uniform hung over one window, with a dry-cleaner’s tag dangling from the shirt’s top button. Good Lord. She turned back around. “What did you learn?” Paul finally asked. “You’re an obsessive-compulsive neat freak,” she said. “Accent on freak.

She was trying--for Carolyn, for herself, for her darling Mr. Darcy, she was trying to live this, and Martin’s presence had the effect of shining a light on how shallow it all was, besides reminding her of every guy who had tossed her aside. She was having a grand time and his judgment was souring the punch. She turned her shoulder to him and addressed Mr. Nobley. “Thank you, sir. Thus far the highlight of my stay has been making love to you.” Mr. Nobley bowed in acknowledgment. The conversation completely quieted. Jane thought she detected Martin sort of slump his shoulders. “Well, good night, all,” Jane said, and made a quick getaway to her room… …where she lay on her bed, stared at her canopy, and wished that encounter didn’t stick to her still, that she could just scrape it off her shoe. What would Martin have said if she’d let him speak? No, never mind, these things never end well. Wait, there had been something good, coiling on the edge of her memory…ah yes, Mr. Nobley had been about to kiss her. She closed her eyes and held to that moment as she would to the tatters of a really great dream in the waking gray of dawn.

I’ve been waiting for a long time,” he said. “We need to talk.” “You talk; I’ll sleep. Feel free to make up my side of the conversation in case you get bored. I recommend throwing in the occasional ‘fuck you’ on my behalf, just to keep things true to life.” I bent down and, after succeeding in not falling over, began undoing my shoes.

May I ask you a personal question?” She looked up in query and made the graceful little gesture that I had learned was an invitation. “Isn’t Shevraeth a friend of yours?” “Yes,” she said cautiously. “Then why the fan, and the careful words when you asked about your friend Elenet?” Nee set her cup down, her brow slightly furrowed. “We are friends to a degree…Though we all grew up at Court, I was never one of his intimates, nor even one of his flirts. Those all tended to be the leaders of fashion. So I don’t really know how close he was to any of them, except perhaps for Savona. It took everyone by surprise to find out that he was so different from the person we’d grown up with.” She shrugged. “He was always an object of gossip, but I realized recently that though we heard much about what he did, we never heard what he thought.” “You mean he didn’t tell anyone,” I said. “Exactly. Anyway, Elenet is an old friend, of both of us, which is complicated by her family’s machinations. Her safety is important to me. Yet in referring to it, I don’t want to seem one of the busybodies or favor-seekers.” “I don’t think you could,” I said. She laughed. “Anyone can do anything, with determination and an inner conviction of being right. Whether they really are right…” She shrugged. “Well, if he wants to be king, he’ll just plain have to get used to questions and toadies and all the rest of it,” I said. Remembering the conversation at dinner and wondering if I’d made an idiot of myself, I added crossly, “I don’t have any sympathy at all. In fact, I wish he hadn’t come up here. If he needed rest from the fatigue of taking over a kingdom, why couldn’t he go to that fabulous palace in Renselaeus? Or to Shevraeth, which I’ll just bet has an equally fabulous palace?” Nee sighed. “Is that a rhetorical or a real question?” “Real. And I don’t want to ask Bran because he’s so likely to hop out with my question when we’re all together and fry me with embarrassment,” I finished bitterly. She gave a sympathetic grin. “Well, I suspect it’s to present a united front, politically speaking. You haven’t been to Court, so you don’t quite comprehend how much you and your brother have become heroes--symbols--to the kingdom. Especially you, which is why there were some murmurs and speculations when you never came to the capital.” I shook my head. “Symbol for failure, maybe. We didn’t win--Shevraeth did.” She gave me an odd look midway between surprise and curiosity. “But to return to your question, Vidanric’s tendency to keep his own counsel ought to be reassuring as far as people hopping out with embarrassing words are concerned. If I were you--and I know it’s so much easier to give advice than to follow it--I’d sit down with him, when no one else is at hand, and talk it out.” Just the thought of seeking him out for a private talk made me shudder. “I’d rather walk down the mountain in shoes full of snails.

Well, if he wants to be king, he’ll just plain have to get used to questions and toadies and all the rest of it,” I said. Remembering the conversation at dinner and wondering if I’d made an idiot of myself, I added crossly, “I don’t have any sympathy at all. In fact, I wish he hadn’t come up here. If he needed rest from the fatigue of taking over a kingdom, why couldn’t he go to that fabulous palace in Renselaeus? Or to Shevraeth, which I’ll just bet has an equally fabulous palace?” Nee sighed. “Is that a rhetorical or a real question?” “Real. And I don’t want to ask Bran because he’s so likely to hop out with my question when we’re all together and fry me with embarrassment,” I finished bitterly. She gave a sympathetic grin. “Well, I suspect it’s to present a united front, politically speaking. You haven’t been to Court, so you don’t quite comprehend how much you and your brother have become heroes--symbols--to the kingdom. Especially you, which is why there were some murmurs and speculations when you never came to the capital.” I shook my head. “Symbol for failure, maybe. We didn’t win--Shevraeth did.” She gave me an odd look midway between surprise and curiosity. “But to return to your question, Vidanric’s tendency to keep his own counsel ought to be reassuring as far as people hopping out with embarrassing words are concerned. If I were you--and I know it’s so much easier to give advice than to follow it--I’d sit down with him, when no one else is at hand, and talk it out.” Just the thought of seeking him out for a private talk made me shudder. “I’d rather walk down the mountain in shoes full of snails.” It was Nee’s turn to shudder. “Life! I’d rather do almost anything than that--” A “Ho!” outside the door interrupted her. Bran carelessly flung the tapestry aside and sauntered in. “There y’are, Nee. Come out on the balcony with me? It’s actually nice out, and we’ve got both moons up.” He extended his hand. Nee looked over at me as she slid her hand into his. “Want to come?” I looked at those clasped hands, then away. “No, thanks,” I said airily. “I think I’ll practice my fan, then read myself to sleep. Good night.” They went out, Bran’s hand sliding round her waist. The tapestry dropped into place on Nee’s soft laugh. I got up and moved to my window, staring out at the stars. It seemed an utter mystery to me how Bran and Nimiar enjoyed looking at each other. Touching each other. Even the practical Oria, I realized--the friend who told me once that things were more interesting than people--had freely admitted to liking flirting. How does that happen? I shook my head, thinking that it would never happen to me. Did I want it to? Suddenly I was restless and the castle was too confining. Within the space of a few breaths I had gotten rid of my civilized clothing and soft shoes and had pulled my worn, patched tunic, trousers, and tough old mocs from the trunk in the corner. I slipped out of my room and down the stair without anyone seeing me, and before the moons had traveled the space of a hand across the sky, I was riding along the silver-lit trails with the wind in my hair and the distant harps of the Hill Folk singing forlornly on the mountaintops.

Well, if he wants to be king, he’ll just plain have to get used to questions and toadies and all the rest of it,” I said. Remembering the conversation at dinner and wondering if I’d made an idiot of myself, I added crossly, “I don’t have any sympathy at all. In fact, I wish he hadn’t come up here. If he needed rest from the fatigue of taking over a kingdom, why couldn’t he go to that fabulous palace in Renselaeus? Or to Shevraeth, which I’ll just bet has an equally fabulous palace?” Nee sighed. “Is that a rhetorical or a real question?” “Real. And I don’t want to ask Bran because he’s so likely to hop out with my question when we’re all together and fry me with embarrassment,” I finished bitterly. She gave a sympathetic grin. “Well, I suspect it’s to present a united front, politically speaking. You haven’t been to Court, so you don’t quite comprehend how much you and your brother have become heroes--symbols--to the kingdom. Especially you, which is why there were some murmurs and speculations when you never came to the capital.” I shook my head. “Symbol for failure, maybe. We didn’t win--Shevraeth did.” She gave me an odd look midway between surprise and curiosity. “But to return to your question, Vidanric’s tendency to keep his own counsel ought to be reassuring as far as people hopping out with embarrassing words are concerned. If I were you--and I know it’s so much easier to give advice than to follow it--I’d sit down with him, when no one else is at hand, and talk it out.” Just the thought of seeking him out for a private talk made me shudder. “I’d rather walk down the mountain in shoes full of snails.

While I sipped at my coffee, one by one the staff finished their chores and vanished through the tent flaps, until at last Shevraeth and I were alone. He turned to face me. “Questions?” “Of course! What happened?” He sat down across from me. “Took ’em by surprise,” he said. “That part was easy enough. The worst of it has been the aftermath.” “You captured the commanders, then. The Marquise and--” “Her daughter, the two mercenary captains, the two sellout garrison commanders, the Denlieff wing commander, Barons Chaskar and Hurnaev, and Baroness Orgaliun, to be precise. Grumareth’s nowhere to be found; my guess is that he got cold feet and scampered for home. If so, he’ll find some of my people waiting for him.” “So the Marquise is a prisoner somewhere?” I asked, enjoying the idea. He grimaced. “No. She took poison. A constitutional inability to suffer reverses, apparently. We didn’t find out until too late. Fialma,” he added drily, “tried to give her share to me.” “That must have been a charming scene.” “It took place at approximately the same time you were conversing with your forty wagoneers.” He smiled a little. “Since then I have dispatched the real mercenaries homeward, unpaid, and sent some people to make certain they get over the border. What they do in Denlieff is their ruler’s problem. Fialma is on her way back--under guard--to Erev-li-Erval, where I expect she’ll become a permanent Imperial Court leech. The Denlieff soldiers I’m keeping in garrison until the ambassador can squeeze an appropriate trade agreement from his soon-to-be apologetic king and queen. The two sellouts we executed, and I have trusted people combing through the rest to find out who was coerced and who not.” “Half will be lying, of course.” “More. It’s a bad business, and complete justice is probably a dream. But the word will get out, and I hope it won’t be so easy to raise such a number again.” I sighed. “Then the Merindar threat is over.” “I sincerely hope so.” “You do not sound convinced.” He said, “I confess I’ll feel more convinced when the courier from Athanarel gets here.” “Courier?” “Arranged with my parents. Once a day, even if the word was ‘no change.’ Only she’s late.” “How late?” I asked, thinking of a couple of measures, or maybe a candle, or even two. “The rain was bad yesterday--” “A day.” Warning prickled at the back of my neck. “Oh, but surely if there was a problem, someone would either send a runner or come in person.” “That’s the most rational way to consider it,” he agreed. “And of course you sent someone to see if something happened to the expected courier? I mean something ordinary, like the horse threw a shoe, or the courier fell and sprained her leg?” He nodded. “I’ll wait until the end of blue, and make a decision then.” He looked up. “In the meantime, do you have any more questions for me?” His voice was uninflected, but the drawl was gone. I knew that the time for the political discussion was past, for now, and that here at last were the personal issues that had lain between us for so long.

But Charles, at that very moment, was roving the house in search of Amy.  He had stayed at the ball only long enough to claim the first dance with his sister; then, when the dancing was in full swing, he'd melted into the crush, strode through the doors leading back to the main part of the castle, and gone looking for Amy. But she was not in her rooms.  She was not in the dining room, the library, or wandering the halls.  It wasn't until he strode into the Gold Parlor and found Juliet — who would not, of course, be attending the ball in her advanced condition — quietly working on a piece of embroidery, that Charles got the first clue to her whereabouts. He bowed to his sister-in-law, who looked up at him in some surprise. "Why, hello, Charles.  What are you doing out here?  You look most annoyed." "Amy.  I can't find her anywhere, haven't seen her all day and I'm sick to death of everyone monopolizing her time.  You haven't seen her, have you?" Juliet looked at him peculiarly, then lowered her needlework, a little smile touching her lips.  "Actually, I have.  You might try checking the ballroom." "She wouldn't be in there." Juliet's eyes sparkled with mirth.  "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure." At that moment Gareth, who was dividing his time between his wife and the ball, entered the room, fashionably splendid in raspberry silk, tight breeches, and shoes sporting huge Artois buckles.  In his hand were two glasses, one of sherry, the other of cider, the latter of which he handed to his wife.  He had caught the tail end of the conversation. "Yes, you really should check the ballroom, Charles," he said, his own blue eyes twinkling. Was there some damned conspiracy going on here? 

I ran into a friend of Lisa’s today,” he told her, enjoying the way Lisa’s eyes got big and she started trying to communicate with him by way of frantic facial expressions behind her mother-in-law’s back. “Emma Shaw.” “Emma Shaw…Oh! The one who does the landscaping, right?” Lisa nodded. “She’s such a nice girl, but I haven’t seen her in ages. Not since I ran into you two at the mall and overheard you talking about her engagement. How are she and her fiancé doing?” Lisa opened her mouth, but closed it again when Sean folded his arms and looked at her, waiting to see how—or even if—she was going to get out of the conversation without lying outright to Aunt Mary. “I…think they’re having some problems,” she finally said. Nice hedge, but an understatement. “Oh, that’s too bad. What’s her fiancé’s name? I meant to ask that day, but you started talking about some shoe sale and I forgot.” It was a few seconds before Lisa sighed in defeat. “Sean.” “Isn’t that funny,” Mary said, smiling at him before turning back to her daughter-in-law. “What’s his last name? Maybe I know his family.” That was a pretty safe bet.

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends?

Looking down, she felt heat traveling up her face when she saw that, in her mad dash to get away from the goat, she’d completely neglected to realize that not only had she forgotten her shoes and stockings, she’d also forgotten that she hadn’t buttoned her gown up all the way. “Goodness,” she muttered as she yanked the neckline of her dress up as high as she could. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t believe anyone took note of your somewhat questionable state of dishabille.” Her head shot up as she met Bram’s eyes. “You obviously noticed.” He sent her a charming smile. “Noticed what?” He extended her his arm. “There’s a lovely grove right through those trees, which is nowhere near the barn, I might add. It’ll afford you a bit of privacy to set yourself to rights since I don’t believe you’ll be keen to face all the people still lingering outside the castle doors.” Glancing to where Bram was now looking, Lucetta found a small cluster of people looking her way, although Mr. Kenton and Archibald were walking back toward the castle, the skirts of their dresses fluttering in the breeze. Abigail, however, seemed to be in the midst of a heated conversation with her daughter, both women gesturing wildly with their hands as the remaining members of Bram’s staff edged ever so slowly away from them. “Should we intervene?” she asked with a nod Abigail’s way. “I willingly admit I’m not that familiar with my grandmother when she’s in a temper, but my mother is not a woman who would appreciate an intervention. I suggest you get yourself straightened about, and then I’ll take you for a lovely walk around the grounds. By the time we get back, they’ll have hopefully settled a few of their differences from the past thirty years.” “It’s fortunate your grounds seem to be extensive.” “Quite,” Bram agreed as she took the arm he was still holding out to her. He turned his attention back to Abigail and Iris. “I’m taking Miss Plum for a tour of the grounds,” he called. “We’ll be back in an hour or two.” Abigail and Iris stopped arguing and turned their attention Bram and Lucetta’s way. It was immediately clear that Abigail took no issue with Bram giving Lucetta a tour of the grounds. She lifted her arm and sent them a cheery wave before she spun on her heel and headed back toward the castle, spinning around again a moment later. Putting her hands on her hips, she marched her way back to Iris—who’d not moved at all—took her daughter’s arm, and with what looked to be a bit of wrestling, hauled Iris inside with her. “Perhaps we’ll mosey around the grounds for more than an hour or two,” Bram said as he steered Lucetta toward the trees.

He was an erudite man and began our conversation with a history of slave religion, telling me about the Africans who, newly landed on hostile shoes, had sat circled around a fire mixing newfound myths with ancient rhythms, their songs becoming a vessel for those most radical of ideas – survival, and freedom, and hope.

Middle Head: I’m surrounded by idiots. No really, I’ve got one on either side. Between the gardener and the bleeding heart, it’s amazing that we’ve made it this far. Left is right about one thing, though; the pyramid will make a good base of operations while we plan out our next move. And he’s right that we should probably stop blowing up everything on the way there. We’re making a rather obvious trail of destruction. He’s so annoying when he’s right. Well, I guess “Right” isn’t exactly the right word. Right is a complete idiot. And now I’ve confused him again. Well, it’s easier to just wait until he gets distracted than try to explain it. Right Head: But really, though. Left can’t be Right, right? I’m Right! Is there more than one Right? That has to be it. I’m on our right, but Left would be Right to someone else. Right? @_@ Oh no, my head hurts. Oh, more cacti! I like them a lot! They get so tall! =) And sometimes they blow up! =D Middle says those ones are actually creepers, but I know better. I want to grow my own cactus bombs! >=) Day Fourteen Right Head: The pyramid is super fun! =D I blew it all up!! >=D All it took was one little explosion, and then boom, boom, BOOM!!! Middle isn’t very happy with me, but he’s never happy. =/ Left is pretty mad too. And he never gets mad. =( I didn’t mean to blow everything up, but it was so much fun! I had a good day. =) Middle Head: That complete, utter, absolute moron! We finally make it to the pyramid after a whole day’s journey across the hot desert, and he blows it up! First thing! No conversation! Left says that we should check for booby traps, and then the idiot just starts shooting skulls all over the place! It’s a miracle that the explosion wasn’t even bigger! He’s lucky that we don’t have skin. I would tear his off and make it into a coat. Or shoes, if we had feet. All the fires of the Nether wouldn’t be enough to burn the stink of stupidity from my skull. Humph. Well, Left convinced me that we need to keep looking for Steve. He isn’t in this desert, and east still feels like the best way to go. We’ve been asking any skeletons we see about the best places to look. The zombies are all obsessed with some village nearby, and nothing else seems willing to talk to us.

Grace Compassion is a grace that allows for the flow of impersonal love toward others. Compassion expands your heart and anesthetizes your judgment of others. You are often inspired with the desire to embrace the other, but not from sentiment or pity. Rather, the deeper humanitarian cords that unite us as human beings animate within you. Lord, Compassion is a powerful grace. It does not discriminate. Having a compassionate heart can be risky. But what other choice is there? If I look upon others with harsh judgment, I must imagine myself in their shoes—because what I do to another person, I am doing to myself. So, open my heart to Compassion, Lord. Hover over me with endless guidance as I learn to live as one with all sentient beings. 11 Make ME RESILIENT Prayer I MARVEL AT THE RESILIENCE of nature, Lord.

Ruth smiled still more broadly. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Won’t be a mo.’ She moved a shiny copper pan from the bench on to the stove and began to stir it. Addie stared down at her feet. Snow slid from her shoes on to the tiled floor and quickly melted there. She glanced up. Had Ruth noticed? She hadn’t. She was deep in conversation with Penny, over by the stove. Addie pulled at her wet laces, took off her trainers. She held them up for a moment. Where was she supposed to put them? Nobody had said. She pushed them out of sight, under her chair, clutched her damp coat collar closer round her neck. She looked around. It was the kind of kitchen you see in films, or in magazines at the doctor’s surgery. Big tiles on the floor, big wooden furniture, big dark beams across the ceiling. There was an enormous fridge

THE OPENING OF EYES That day I saw beneath dark clouds the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off things seen for the silence they hold. It is the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air. It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground.

In a perfect world, of course, no one person, much less a thirty-three-year-old computer programmer in soccer shoes, would have the power to manipulate a presidential election. And yet this is the world we live in. For too long, the gatekeepers who ran the most powerful information-spreading systems in human history were able to pretend that they weren’t gatekeepers at all. Information wants to be free; besides, people who take offense should blame the author, not the messenger; anyway, the ultimate responsibility lies with each consumer. Now, instead of imagining that we occupy a postgatekeeper utopia, it might make more sense—in the short term, at least—to demand better, more thoughtful gatekeepers.

freeze freeze freeze makes me a little self-conscious too. The words come out a little tentative. Almost like a request. But I had with me the greatest conversation-stopper ever made: a pump-action shotgun. At the cost of one unfired shell, I could make the kind of sound that would freeze any three men to any three spots in the world. The most intimidating noise ever heard. Crunch crunch. My ejected shell hit the leaves at my feet and the three guys froze solid. I said, “Now the rifles hit the deck.” Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone. The sandy-haired guy dropped his rifle first. He was pretty damn quick about it. Then went the older guy, and last of the three came the wiry one. “Stand still now,” I said. “Don’t give me a reason.” Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone. They stood reasonably still. Their arms came up a little, out from their sides, slowly, and they ended up a small distance from their bodies, where they held them. They spread their fingers. No doubt they spread their toes inside their boots and sneakers and shoes. Anything to appear unarmed and undangerous. I said, “And now you take three big paces backward.” They complied, all three guys, all three taking exaggerated stumbling steps, and all three ending up more than a body’s length from their rifles. I said, “And now you turn around.” Chapter 52 I had never seen any of them before. After the slow spin the older guy had ended up facing me on my left. He was completely unknown to me. He was just a guy, not very significant, a little pouchy and worn. The guy in the middle was the sandy-haired one. He was like the older man would have been, had he grown up twenty years later and

Sackcloth (Jonah 3:5). Sackcloth was rough material worn to indicate mourning. It was designed to be uncomfortable. Jonah’s refusal to go (Jonah 1:3; 4:2). As Jonah indicated (chap. 4), he did not want to go because the sequence of events was entirely predictable. He knew that the Assyrians would respond with their appeasement techniques and superficial repentance to his judgment message, but that God would be gracious and relent. He was angry about this easy grace. Object lesson (Jonah 4:5–8). God put Jonah in Nineveh’s shoes. Just as Nineveh faced an impending disaster, Jonah faced an impending weather situation. The Ninevites tried to protect themselves with repentance and Jonah tried to protect himself with his hut. Both were inadequate. God provided extra protection for Jonah through a plant. Then God did to Jonah what Jonah wanted him to do to Nineveh—removed his protection. Jonah was not happy about losing God’s gracious compassion when it was he, not the Ninevites, who had received it. This is how God made the point that his compassion is given as an act of grace. Once that is understood, we realize that if we overestimate the Ninevite response, we minimize the element of God’s compassion. The whole point is that God responds with compassion to even the smallest steps in the right direction. Background Information Nineveh. In the mid-eighth century BC, when Jonah lived (2 Kings 14:25), Nineveh was a major city in the Assyrian province of Nineveh. At this time the kingdom of Assyria was fragmented with provinces acting as almost independent entities. The city was about two and a half miles in circumference, about the same size as Jerusalem. About fifty years later (700 BC), Sennacherib made Nineveh the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, bringing it to prominence in the ancient world. King of Nineveh. One would generally expect the text to refer to the king of Assyria. We would not expect a king of Nineveh, but we would also not expect the king of Assyria to be in Nineveh, because Assyria was fragmented and Nineveh was a province, not the capital. More likely, the ruler of the province would legitimately have been identified with the Hebrew word translated “king.” Mistakes to Avoid Many mistakes are made when teaching the story of Jonah. The inclination is to make Jonah a missionary who brought a message of hope that was followed by a great conversion among the people of Nineveh. But a prophet was not a missionary preaching good news of hope. Jonah did not have a missionary calling, message, or attitude. His message was only one of judgment. The story is also not about salvation or going to heaven. Eternal life in heaven is not set forth in the Old Testament. Therefore, we cannot use the story of Jonah as one to tell our friends about Jesus or about leading people to salvation. When teaching about Jonah’s reluctance to go to Nineveh, we ought not to conclude that his reason was political resentment or prejudice. Furthermore, though it is certainly true that if God is intent on a person doing something or going somewhere, his plan will be irresistible, but the point of the story isn’t that we cannot run from God. God did not allow Jonah to escape the commission, but that does not mean that God will always act in the same way. Focusing on such things detracts from the very important theological message that the book offers: God responds with compassion to small steps in the right direction. God wants people to be responsive to him. New Testament

Elvis starts to sing “Viva Las Vegas” as Sam and I walk side by side down the aisle. I cover my mouth and laugh. “I want you to repeat after me, Sam,” Elvis says. He lifts one corner of his lip in that classic snarl. “I, Sam, promise you, Peck, never to step on your blue suede shoes. I promise never to leave you at Heartbreak Hotel. I promise to be your hunka-hunka burning love, forever and ever, amen.” “Wait,” Sam says. “That’s Randy Travis. Not Elvis.” “Close enough,” Elvis says. Sam rolls his hips like Elvis did when he repeats the words. I can’t stop laughing. I laugh so hard that I have to wipe tears from my eyes. But I don’t feel bad, because Emily is doing the same thing. And the rest of the brothers and their wives are laughing it up too. “Now you, Peck,” Elvis says. He swivels his hips and someone does a rim shot on a set of drums. “I, Peck, solemnly swear to love you tender for the rest of my life, and never leave you with a suspicious mind.” I repeat the words. I barely stutter, and it warms my heart when I realize that. Suddenly, Elvis gets serious. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” Sam’s eyes meet mine, and he takes my hands. I pass my flowers to one of my sisters and look up at him. We recite the official vows, and I have to blink hard to get through them, particularly when I look at the TV screen and see Marta crying into her handkerchief. “Who gives this woman to be married?” Elvis asks. Emilio’s voice rings out. “Her mother and I.” This time, a hot tear tracks down my cheek and Sam very gently wipes it away. “You okay?” he whispers. “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Elvis declares. “Now let’s have a little less conversation and a really big kiss.” He swivels his hips again and I laugh through my tears. Sam

I put my hand on his forearm, I don't know why I do this, and it's not exactly natural, although it's not unnatural, except that I really want to touch his skin. It's smooth and tan just a little bit and feels like summer, like something familiar and warm and good, like my skin did on the first days aboard 'Fishful Thinking' before it salted and burned and peeled. 'We broke up three years after that.' I sit back in my chair and give a sly smile. Relationships are complex and sometimes you can't really explain them to an outside party. 'I can't believe I just told you that' 'YES! YOU! ARE! LIVING! YOUR! FULL! LIFE!' A third time. I am not imagining it. 'There you are.' This time my heart does skip a beat. I look down at his arm, and we are still touching, and he has made no attempt to retract his arm or retreat. All my surroundings, the red formica table top, the pink yogurt, the blue sky, the green vegetables in the market, they all come alive in vibrant technicolor as the sun peers from behind a cloud. I am living my full life. 'Honesty in all things,' Byron adds, lifting his cup of yogurt for a toast of sorts. I pull my hand away from him and the instant my hand is back by his side, I miss the warmth of his arm, the warmth of him. Honesty in all things. I should put my hand back, that's where it wants to be, that's Lily's lesson to me. Be present in the moment, give spontaneous affection. I'm suddenly aware I haven't spoken in a bit. 'Did you know that an octopus has three hearts?' As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I realize I sound like that kid from 'Jerry McGuire.' 'Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?' I hope my question comes off almost a fraction as endearing. 'No,' Byron says with a glint in his eye that reads as curiosity, at least I hope that it does, but even if it doesn't I'm too into the inertia of the trivia to stop it. 'It's true, one heart called the systemic heart that functions much like the left side of the human heart, distributing blood throughout the heart, then two smaller branchial heart with gills that act like the right side of our hearts to pump the blood back.' 'What made you think of that?' I smile. It may be entirely inappropriate first date conversation, but at least it doesn't bore me in the telling. I look up at the winsome August sky, marred only by the contrails of a passing jet, and a vaguely dachshund shaped cloud above the horizon. I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in love at first site. I don't believe in angels. I don't believe in heaven and that our loved ones are looking down on us, but the sun is so warm and the breeze is so cool and the company is so perfect and the whole afternoon so intoxicating, ti's hard not to hear Lily's voice dancing in the gentle wind, 'one! month! is Long! Enough TO! BE! SAD!' ... 'I recently lost someone close to me....I don't know, I feel her here today with us, you, me, her, three hearts, like an octopus,' I shrug. If I were him, I would run. What a ridiculously creepy thing to say. I would run and I would not stop until I was home in my bed with a gallon of ice cream deleting my profile from every dating site I belonged to. Maybe it's because it's not rehearsed, maybe it's because it's as weird a thing to say as it is genuine, maybe it's because this is finally the man for me. Byron stands and offers me his hand, 'Let's take a walk and you can tell me about her.' The gentle untying of a shoe lace. It takes me a minute to decide if I can do this, and I decide that I can, and I throw our yogurt dishes away, and I put my hand in his, and it's soft and warm, and instead of awkward fumbling, our hands clasp together like magnets and metal, like we've been hand-in-hand all along, and we are touching again. ...

Thank you for caring for my hand,” she said. “Of course.” She stopped and turned into the sunlight, her dark hair glowing with touches of deep red. “And I will find a way to make up for the damages Nathaniel, I promise.”  “Aye, you must.” As if pulled by an ethereal rope, he moved closer. “And I know exactly how you will do it.” “Do you?” Her large eyes blinked and her voice whispered of unspoken wishes. “How... how is that?” Negligent of the warning that rang in his ears, he moved another step closer as the urge to pull her near made his hands ache. His eyes grazed her lips as he kissed her already in his mind. Fool! What are you thinking? Blinking, he retraced the conversation to find his place. He cleared his throat. “I will be at supper tomorrow and I request a dish of your delectable carrot pudding.” Her eyes danced as the sun kissed her face and her exhaled breath almost sang of relief. “’Tis not the season for carrots, you know that.” A sweet feminine laugh floated around his shoulders, beckoning him another step closer until their shoes nearly touched. She blinked again and continued though her words came slow and measured. “But, I shall try to find something I can make that will be equally enticing.” She paused and swallowed, her voice airy. “Will you require more in payment?” “To be honest, there is more.”  She stalled. “There is?” A kiss.  Once again his vision narrowed on her mouth. But before writing a passage in the story of his life he would most certainly regret, he pushed that persistent thought away and kept his expression blank, knowing she would detect the jesting lilt in his voice. “I expect you to make carrot pudding every time I come to supper, when carrots are plentiful, and deliver my mending every Saturday.

Displaying Warmth and Empathy Warmth means showing that you care about another person. Empathy is the capacity to share another person’s experience, to “put yourself in his shoes,” as the saying goes. Some ways to express warmth and empathy: 1. Use verbal and nonverbal signals to encourage the person to continue. 2. If the situation arises, describe experiences you’ve had that are similar to those of the other person, and explain that you can understand how he or she feels. 3. Use the person’s name during the conversation (a person’s own name is the sweetest sound in the world to him or her). 4. Become genuinely interested in other people, and show it. 5. Make the other person feel important. Displaying warmth and empathy is a way of truly demonstrating to another that you value him or her, and is often the source of a person’s immediate positive feeling toward you. In the words of psychologist William James, “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Conveying warmth and empathy, combined with being a good conversationalist, will help you to show appreciation for another person.

Such a shame that I didn’t get to say good-bye to my fellow inmates,” he said sarcastically. “Actually, Puchalski was the only guy I liked. I still can’t figure out what got into him.” As Jordan used her chopsticks to pick up a piece of hamachi, she decided it was best to get her brother off that topic as fast as possible. “Sounds like he just snapped.” “But why would he have a fork in his shoe?” Kyle mused. “That makes me think he was planning the attack, which doesn’t make sense.” Let it go, Kyle. She shrugged. “Maybe he always keeps a fork in his shoe. Who understands why any of these felon types do what they do?” “Hey. I am one of those felon types.” Grey tipped his glass of wine. “And who would’ve thought you would do what you did?” “It was Twitter,” Kyle mumbled under his breath. Maybe we should change the subject,” Jordan suggested, sensing the conversation could only spiral downward from there. “Okay. Let’s talk about you instead,” Grey said. “I never asked—how did Xander’s party go?” Now there was a potential land mine of a topic. “It went fine. Pretty much the same party as usual.” Except for a little domestic espionage. She threw Kyle a look, needing help. Change the subject. Fast. He stared back cluelessly. Why? She glared. Just do it. He made a face. All right, all right. “Speaking of wine, Jordo, how was your trip to Napa?” Great. Leave it to her genius of a brother to pick the other topic she wanted to avoid. “I visited that new winery I told you about. We should have a deal this week so that my store will be the first to carry their wine in the Chicago area.” Grey’s tone was casual. “Did you bring Tall, Dark, and Smoldering with you on the trip?” Jordan set down her chopsticks and looked over at her father. He smiled cheekily as he took a sip of his wine. “You read Scene and Heard, too?” she asked. Grey scoffed at that. “Of course not. I have people read it for me. Half the time, it’s the only way I know what’s going on with you two. And don’t avoid the question. Tell us about this new guy you’re seeing. I find it very odd that you’ve never mentioned him.” He fixed his gaze on her like the Eye of Sauron. Jordan took a deep breath, suddenly very tired of the lies and the secret-agent games. Besides, she had to face the truth at some point. “Well, Dad, I don’t know if you have to worry about Tall, Dark, and Smoldering anymore. He’s not talking to me right now.” Kyle’s face darkened. “Tall, Dark, and Smoldering sounds like a moron to me.” Grey nodded, his expression disapproving. “I agree. You can do a lot better than a moron, kiddo.” “Thanks. But it’s not that simple. His job presents some . . . challenges.” That was definitely the wrong thing to say. “Why? What kind of work does he do?” her father asked immediately. Jordan stalled. Maybe she’d overshot a little with the no more lies promise. She threw Kyle another desperate look. Do something. Again. Kyle nodded. I’m on it. He eased back in his chair and stretched out his intertwined hands, limbering up his fingers. “Who cares what this jerk does? Send me his e-mail address, Jordo—I’ll take care of it. I can wreak all sorts of havoc on Tall, Dark, and Smoldering’s life in less than two minutes.” With an evil grin, he mimed typing at a keyboard. Their father looked ready to blow a gasket. “Oh no—you do not get to make the jokes,” he told Kyle. “Jordan and I make the jokes. You’ve been out of prison for four days and I seriously hope you learned your lesson, young man . . .

To Become an Attentive Listener . . . • Observe a person’s physical presence to see how their body language aligns with their message. • Recognize what is being said on the surface. • Engage your intuition to hear the meaning, purpose, and motivation behind their message. • Be aware of your own internal responses and how you are feeling. • Put yourself in their shoes to better understand their perspective.

...You agreed we would be fearless together. I’m gonna need you to keep your promise,” Haley said a little loudly. Falon’s office door opened, and Del stepped inside. “I heard a raised voice,” she said and gave Haley the eye. “Were you out there listening to our conversation?” Falon snapped. “Yes,” Del said unabashedly with her gaze locked on Haley. “I’m Falon’s bodyguard. Don’t let my manicure, impeccable high and lowlighted hair, and makeup fool you. I can have a shoe off my foot in less than half a second and peck you full of holes with the heel before you even know what hit you.” “Del!” Falon exclaimed as she hopped off her stool. “Honey, that might’ve scared me before I met Falon, but I’ve let monkeys climb in my shirt, and I’m about to get a tattoo.” Haley stepped up to Del. “Bring. It. On.

More recently, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird faced each other on the basketball court as arch-competitors—first in high school, continuing through college, and culminating in the NBA, with Johnson playing for the LA Lakers and Bird playing for the Boston Celtics. The rivalry of these two champions became legendary—as did their dislike for one another, which seemed to grow in intensity with every passing year. Somewhere along the way Converse paid each of them to shoot a shoe commercial; they faced each other on the court, Bird wearing white shoes, Johnson wearing black. Bird insisted that they film the commercial at his farm in Indiana. The shoot began icily, with both superstars circling each other, but when they broke for lunch and started to go their separate ways, Bird’s mother announced that she had made lunch and invited everyone to the table. In Larry Bird’s words, “It was at the table that I discovered Earvin Johnson. I never liked Magic Johnson very much. But Earvin I like, a lot. And Earvin didn’t come out until I met him at Mom’s table.

I leaned against the nearby olive tree.  I dragged a cigarette from my robe pocket, struck a match on my shoe, and cupped my hand over my face.  The cigarette glowed.  I flicked the match to my side and watched the three men.  I could hear smatterings of their mumbled conversation.

When Felix came to this crossroads, the orthopedic shoe to drop wasn’t his. It was Bella’s. Year by year, I witnessed the progression in her difficulties. Felix remained in astonishingly good health right into his nineties. He had no medical crises and maintained his weekly exercise regimen. He continued to teach chaplaincy students about geriatrics and to serve on Orchard Cove’s health committee. He didn’t even have to stop driving. But Bella was fading. She lost her vision completely. Her hearing became poor. Her memory became markedly impaired. When we had dinner, she had to be reminded more than once that I was sitting across from her. She and Felix felt the sorrows of their losses but also the pleasures of what they still had. Although she might not have been able to remember me or others she didn’t know too well, she enjoyed company and conversation and sought both out. Moreover, she and Felix still had their own, private, decades-long conversation that had never stopped. He found great purpose in caring for her, and she, likewise, found great meaning in being there for him. The physical presence of each other gave them comfort. He dressed her, bathed her, helped feed her. When they walked, they held hands. At night, they lay in bed in each other’s arms, awake and nestling for a while, before finally drifting off to sleep. Those moments, Felix said, remained among their most cherished. He felt they knew each other, and loved each other, more than at any time in their nearly seventy years together.

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes—both in an emotional sense, to feel a bit of what they may feel, but also in a cognitive sense, to see the situation from their perspective. If you approach an interaction from an empathic stance, you’re much less likely to have a negative perspective on whatever is going on. And hopefully that will allow you to get to know the person better—even if it’s someone you already know.

It’s alluring to assume that animals feel as we do, especially when we want them to like us. A friend who works with elephants told me of a woman who called herself an animal communicator, who was visiting an aggressive elephant at a zoo. After her telepathic conversation with the elephant, the communicator told the keeper, “Oh, that elephant really likes me. He wants to put his head in my lap.” What was most interesting about this interaction was the part the communicator may have gotten right: Elephants do sometimes put their heads in the laps of people. They do this to kill them. They crush people with their foreheads like you would grind out a cigarette butt with your shoe.

The rules and strategies I put into place weren’t me being a buzzkill, it was just the way things had to be so that everyone could get through this day and the next and the next in one god-damn, dry, shoe-wearing piece.

The thought processes of a man who'd relax with his shoes off, his coat on, were foreign territory to Lech.Then again, the thought processes of Jackson Lamb, as revealed by their subsequent conversation, were probaby terra incognita to the psychiatric profession as a whole.

Be Specific. Be Direct. "The most common way to express admiration is to deliver a direct positive. This type of compliment tells people in a straightforward manner what it is you appreciate about their behavior, appearance, and possessions." - Conversationally Speaking, page 23 Stop speaking vague and general words. Tell others exactly what you like about them. Be specific and be direct. Instead of saying, “I like your shoes”, try this: “Bob, those tan loafers go well with your khaki pants”. Bob would most likely enjoy the second statement because it is thoughtful and observant. People want to be recognized in a genuine, specific way. Providing details and specifics naturally improves your credibility. It’s easy to say, “I like your shoes”, but more challenging to add context to such an opinion. If you improve awareness and strive to be specific, there should be no issue in bringing heartfelt value to another person. Consequently, others will enjoy conversing with you. Additionally, being direct and specific encourages good behavior. Whether it is a complement or reprimand, the listener must clearly understand the sender’s message in order to respond appropriately. This skill develops with premeditation and practice. You should mentally plan and role-play scenarios, and always search for those small opportunities to speak openly.

The vibrating sounds of a big brass bell reached them from the town. Nekhludoff’s driver, who stood by his side, and the other men on the raft raised their caps and crossed themselves, all except a short, dishevelled old man, who stood close to the railway and whom Nekhludoff had not noticed before. He did not cross himself, but raised his head and looked at Nekhludoff. This old man wore a patched coat, cloth trousers and worn and patched shoes. He had a small wallet on his back, and a high fur cap with the fur much rubbed on his head. “Why don’t you pray, old chap?” asked Nekhludoff’s driver as he replaced and straightened his cap. “Are you unbaptized?” “Who’s one to pray to?” asked the old man quickly, in a determinately aggressive tone. “To whom? To God, of course,” said the driver sarcastically. “And you just show me where he is, that god.” There was something so serious and firm in the expression of the old man, that the driver felt that he had to do with a strong-minded man, and was a bit abashed. And trying not to show this, not to be silenced, and not to be put to shame before the crowd that was observing them, he answered quickly. “Where? In heaven, of course.” “And have you been up there?” “Whether I’ve been or not, every one knows that you must pray to God.” “No one has ever seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father he hath declared him,” said the old man in the same rapid manner, and with a severe frown on his brow. “It’s clear you are not a Christian, but a hole worshipper. You pray to a hole,” said the driver, shoving the handle of his whip into his girdle, pulling straight the harness on one of the horses. Some one laughed. “What is your faith, Dad?” asked a middle-aged man, who stood by his cart on the same side of the raft. “I have no kind of faith, because I believe no one--no one but myself,” said the old man as quickly and decidedly as before. “How can you believe yourself?” Nekhludoff asked, entering into a conversation with him. “You might make a mistake.” “Never in your life,” the old man said decidedly, with a toss of his head. “Then why are there different faiths?” Nekhludoff asked. “It’s just because men believe others and do not believe themselves that there are different faiths. I also believed others, and lost myself as in a swamp,--lost myself so that I had no hope of finding my way out. Old believers and new believers and Judaisers and Khlysty and Popovitzy, and Bespopovitzy and Avstriaks and Molokans and Skoptzy--every faith praises itself only, and so they all creep about like blind puppies. There are many faiths, but the spirit is one--in me and in you and in him. So that if every one believes himself all will be united. Every one be himself, and all will be as one.” The old man spoke loudly and often looked round, evidently wishing that as many as possible should hear him. “And have you long held this faith?” “I? A long time. This is the twenty-third year that they persecute me.” “Persecute you? How?” “As they persecuted Christ, so they persecute me. They seize me, and take me before the courts and before the priests, the Scribes and the Pharisees. Once they put me into a madhouse; but they can do nothing because I am free. They say, ‘What is your name?’ thinking I shall name myself. But I do not give myself a name. I have given up everything: I have no name, no place, no country, nor anything. I am just myself. ‘What is your name?’ ‘Man.’ ‘How old are you?’ I say, ‘I do not count my years and cannot count them, because I always was, I always shall be.’ ‘Who are your parents?’ ‘I have no parents except God and Mother Earth. God is my father.’ ‘And the Tsar? Do you recognise the Tsar?’ they say. I say, ‘Why not? He is his own Tsar, and I am my own Tsar.’ ‘Where’s the good of talking to him,’ they say, and I say, ‘I do not ask you to talk to me.’ And so they begin tormenting me.