“
Most of us knew in our bones that things with the world weren’t right, long before it became a crisis.
”
”
Pernell Plath Meier (In Our Bones)
“
It is the poets, artists, and musicians that will carry us through the pandemic attacks into a new reality. They are the ones who tell us how to navigate, breathe, feel, think, enjoy, and fully live our lives. (“Because the world had corona”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
If riotous protests create rampant polarization, fear may create fear, fear of the others, and fear of oneself. In the end, it might kill healing feels, universal goodwill, and mutual understanding. (“Because the world has corona”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
She’d worn anxiety like a thick robe for so long that it was hard for her to take it off.
”
”
Pernell Plath Meier (In Our Bones)
“
When the whole world is entrenched in the bunker of physical and often emotional isolation, only flexibility and ingenuity can revive us to remain grounded and imbibe the bolstering sunlight piercing through the canvas of chaos. (Because the world has corona)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Embedded in their psyche was the story of what had happened to the world, and the boys felt glorious to be on the other side of the madness
”
”
Pernell Plath Meier (In Our Bones)
“
Ignorance is killing poison. When people do not communicate, they are doomed to remain ignorant. If people do not get together and share views and exchange ideas, they remain unconscious and unaware. A world without dialogue is a universe of darkness. (“Because the world had corona”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
The global Corona conflict has rammed people into trenches. Invisible, lethal, viral weapons have replaced visible whistling bullets and thunderous bombs. As we don’t know who is calling the shots, it is difficult to tell how we can call a truce with imperceptible enemies. (“What do they hide behind their dirty aprons”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Through living in a space that we do not understand, everything may become meaningless, incoherent, and forcefully scary. If fear rules our lives, we lose the core of our being, since 'fear' disrupts the schedule of our existence and blocks the soothing waves of the sound vibrations. (“Because the world has corona”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Although the writing has been present on the wall for some time, many may have ignored the clear signs that some viral diseases are more than a little touch of the flu. If they grow into a worldwide misfortune, remaining willfully unaware might be a sin against the human self. (“Because the world has corona”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Remember that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away!
”
”
Vicki Corona (Tahitian Choreographies: Intermediate to Advanced Level Female Instruction)
“
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA: WHY IT'S A BAD TITLE
I admit that "Love in the time of . . ." is a great title, up to a point. You're reading along, you're happy, it's about love. I like the way the word time comes in - a nice, nice feeling. Then the morbid Cholera appears. I was happy till then. Why not "Love in the Time of the Blue, Blue, Bluebirds"? "Love in the Time of Oozing Sores and Pustules" is probably an earlier title the author used as he was writing in a rat-infested tree house on an old Smith Corona. This writer, whoever he is, could have used a couple of weeks in Pacific Daylight Time.
”
”
Steve Martin (Pure Drivel)
“
She has been through hell, so believe me when I say, fear her when she looks into a fire and smiles.
E. CORONA
”
”
Darynda Jones (Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson, #11))
“
Yo te he nombrado reina.
Hay más altas que tú, más altas.
Hay más puras que tú, más puras.
Hay más bellas que tú, hay más bellas.
Pero tú eres la reina.
Cuando vas por las calles
nadie te reconoce.
Nadie ve tú corona de cristal, nadie mira
la alfombra de oro rojo
que pisas cuando pasas,
la alfombra que no existe.
Y cuando asomas
suenan todos los ríos
en mi cuerpo, sacuden
el cielo las campanas,
y un himno llena el mundo
Sóló tú y yo,
sóló tú y yo, amor mío,
lo escuchamos.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Captain's Verses)
“
Fireflies out on a warm summer's night, seeing the urgent, flashing, yellow-white phosphorescence below them, go crazy with desire; moths cast to the winds an enchantment potion that draws the opposite sex, wings beating hurriedly, from kilometers away; peacocks display a devastating corona of blue and green and the peahens are all aflutter; competing pollen grains extrude tiny tubes that race each other down the female flower's orifice to the waiting egg below; luminescent squid present rhapsodic light shows, altering the pattern, brightness and color radiated from their heads, tentacles, and eyeballs; a tapeworm diligently lays a hundred thousand fertilized eggs in a single day; a great whale rumbles through the ocean depths uttering plaintive cries that are understood hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, where another lonely behemoth is attentively listening; bacteria sidle up to one another and merge; cicadas chorus in a collective serenade of love; honeybee couples soar on matrimonial flights from which only one partner returns; male fish spray their spunk over a slimy clutch of eggs laid by God-knows-who; dogs, out cruising, sniff each other's nether parts, seeking erotic stimuli; flowers exude sultry perfumes and decorate their petals with garish ultraviolet advertisements for passing insects, birds, and bats; and men and women sing, dance, dress, adorn, paint, posture, self-mutilate, demand, coerce, dissemble, plead, succumb, and risk their lives.
To say that love makes the world go around is to go too far. The Earth spins because it did so as it was formed and there has been nothing to stop it since. But the nearly maniacal devotion to sex and love by most of the plants, animals, and microbes with which we are familiar is a pervasive and striking aspect of life on Earth. It cries out for explanation. What is all this in aid of? What is the torrent of passion and obsession about? Why will organisms go without sleep, without food, gladly put themselves in mortal danger for sex? ... For more than half the history of life on Earth organisms seem to have done perfectly well without it. What good is sex?... Through 4 billion years of natural selection, instructions have been honed and fine-tuned...sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, manuals written out in the alphabet of life in competition with other similar manuals published by other firms. The organisms become the means through which the instructions flow and copy themselves, by which new instructions are tried out, on which selection operates.
'The hen,' said Samuel Butler, 'is the egg's way of making another egg.' It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. ... The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon--often within hours of spawning--they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic.
They've served their purpose.
Nature is unsentimental.
Death is built in.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Earth Before Humans by ANN DRUYAN' 'CARL SAGAN (1992-05-03))
“
The key question is, no matter how much you absorb of another person, can you have absorbed so much of them that when that primary brain perishes, you can feel that that person did not totally perish from the earth... because they live on in a 'second neural home'?... In the wake of a human being's death, what survives is a set of afterglows, some brighter and some dimmer, in the collective brains of those who were dearest to them... Though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain... a collective corona that still glows.
”
”
Douglas R. Hofstadter
“
She has been through hell, so believe me when I say, fear her when she looks into a fire and smiles. —E. CORONA Two
”
”
Darynda Jones (Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson, #11))
“
Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical. The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at … something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible.
”
”
David Nicholls
“
I am no longer amazed by how quickly a man will justify his change of heart when a spear is leveled his way.
”
”
R.A. Salvatore (The Bear (Corona: Saga of the First King, #4))
“
Once Gideon would have loved to hear Corona talk to her with that low, breathy intensity, maybe saying “Your biceps … they’re eleven out of ten,” but right now she did not want anyone to talk to her at all.
”
”
Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1))
“
Whatever it is that hurts you, don't talk to anyone about it.
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
Non consorte, non moglie.
Feyre è la Signora Suprema della Corte della Notte.
La mia pari in ogni senso;
avrebbe portato la mia corona, si sarebbe seduta su un trono accanto al mio.
Mai destinata a partorire e a organizzare feste a ad allevare i figli.
La mia regina.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas
“
What had been so funny? But you can never remember what you were laughing about, and even if you could, it seems doubtful that it would still be funny.
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
If the world after coronavirus is not going to be a much more greener, much more environmentally friendly and much more vegetarian world, human beings will deserve a much worse virus than coronavirus!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
To those who advocate that America follow the Chinese model of a totalitarian lockdown because of a virus or flu strain, must remember that the Maoist principle of Chinese rule is founded on total control of the populace, with the loss of freedom on every front: of speech, movement, work, information. Americans shouldn't be drinking the green tea so unquestioningly.
”
”
Brian D'Ambrosio
“
In the wake of a human being's death, what survives is a set of afterglows, some brighter and some dimmer, in the collective brains of those who were dearest to them...Though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain...a collective corona that still glows. - Douglas Hofstadter
”
”
Lauren Redniss (Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout)
“
His first glimpse of Izzy Goodnight was to see her bathed in gold. The sunlight showed him, in blazing relief, a slender, gracefully curved silhouette and a corona of wild, loose hair that seemed to be afire.
Holy God.
”
”
Tessa Dare (Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After, #1))
“
L’uomo è un incauto infelice e insoddisfatto coglione. Un coglione che non s’accorge di esserlo. Quando sta bene fa di tutto per rendersi la vita amara.
”
”
Mauro Corona (La fine del mondo storto)
“
Era hermoso jinete,
y ahora montón de nieve.
Corrió ferias y montes
y brazos de mujeres.
Ahora, musgo de noche
le corona la frente
”
”
Federico García Lorca (Bodas de sangre)
“
la virtud que corona la perfección es la paciencia".
”
”
Geoffrey Chaucer (Cuentos de Canterbury (Spanish Edition))
“
No has más corona de
espinas que los recuerdos
que se clavan en la carne
y hacen aullar como
aullaban
en el Gólgota los dos ladrones.
”
”
Leopoldo María Panero (Poemas del manicomio de Mondragón)
“
Y supuso que aquellos que nacían con una corona en las venas no la necesitaban de oro en sus sienes.
”
”
Irene Morales (Tras tres soles)
“
Human now exactly look like Aliens on the Earth with those Corona Space Suit, save Nature
”
”
P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
“
Al gemir la santa niña,
quiebra el cristal de las copas.
La rueda afila cuchillos
y garfios de aguda comba:
brama el toro de los yunques,
y Mérida se corona
de nardos casi despiertos
y tallos de zarzamora.
”
”
Federico García Lorca (Romancero gitano)
“
The goddess of dreams, she thought, if there were such a person, would wear gossamer and moonlight. No sooner did she think it than she was it. Her skin let off a subtle glow. Her dress floated like evaporating mist, and a corona of stars and fireflies perched on her red-brown hair.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer, #2))
“
The night taught me never to fear the dark times, by giving way to the dawn of a new day.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson (Song of a Nature Lover)
“
It’s is their “will” that plays part in the solidarity, not their socio-economic status!
”
”
Mohith Agadi
“
Desire gives pain to the heart from which springs both hope and worry.
Out of suspicion I make mistakes that grow into lasting ills. And from my stubborn delusions come a thousand deceits, which later I accept as damage I’ve done.
”
”
Laurel Corona (The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice)
“
The world will somehow manage to get rid of the coronavirus, most probably with extraordinary death tolls. But then guess what happens? The world will go back to its routine stupidities, namely the wars, supporting the dictators, voting for stupid politicians, destroying the forests, killing earth's climate etc.!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. “Life is a journey; we all are born and will die someday. Some celebrate their silver jubilees, some celebrate golden ones and some may score a century, but life cannot be evaluated on the basis of the number of years spent alive. The quality of life is
”
”
Ajay K. Pandey (You are the Best Wife)
“
I am going to give my heart what it desires, & give my soul what it yearns for.. Since no one else is capable of doing it.
”
”
Lorinda Corona
“
We like to position education as the great leveler. But in fact it has become a caste system, a means of passing privilege on to the next generation.
”
”
Scott Galloway (Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity)
“
El cetro y la corona acaban derrumbándose Y todo se hace igual en la tierra Sólo la memoria de los justos Deja una dulce fragancia en el mundo y florece en el polvo.
”
”
Javier Moro (Pasión india)
“
The sliding door opened, and then Michael was clomping across the porch. Gabriel didn’t look at him, just kept his gaze on the tree line.
Michael dropped into the chair beside him. “Here."
Gabriel looked over. His brother was holding out a bottle of Corona.
Shock almost knocked him out of the chair. They never had alcohol of any kind in the house. When Michael had turned twenty-one, they’d all spent about thirty seconds entertaining thoughts of wild parties supplied by their older brother.
Then they’d remembered it was Michael, a guy who said if he ever caught them drinking, he’d call the cops himself. Really, he’d driven the point home so thoroughly that by the time he and Nick started going to parties, they rarely touched the stuff.
Gabriel took the bottle from his hand. "Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”
Michael tilted the botle back and took a long draw. "I thought you could use one. I sure can."
Gabriel took a sip, but tentatively, like Michael was going to slap it out of his hand and say Just kidding. "Where did this even come from?"
"Liquor store."
Well, that was typical Michael. "No, jackass, I meant-"
"I know what you meant." Michael paused to take another drink. "There's a mini-fridge in the back corner of the garage, under the old tool bench.
”
”
Brigid Kemmerer (Spark (Elemental, #2))
“
Corona virus is not a cult, perception or religion to discuss if it is real or not.
People who don’t believe that Corona Virus is real. Are inconveniencing and endangering the lives of others. They become the carriers of the virus and spreading it everywhere. For your own sake. Stay at HOME.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
It wasn't that Lorrie Ann was becoming a Goody Two-shoes. It wasn't that she wanted to be perfect or loved or approved of. No. She wanted something much more dangerous. She wanted meaning. And she thought it could be gotten by following the rules.
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
Thousands and thousands are dying due to coronavirus and yet when this thing is over the humanity will declare a victory! What victory? Fools! There is no victory for the dead people! And when it comes to the living people, everyone should have a deep sadness in their soul, not a brag of victory!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
Sabes, cuando era niño, me engañaron para que pensara que las princesas llevaban coronas y celebraban fiestas del té. Ahora que he conocido a una princesa de verdad, debo admitir que estoy un poco decepcionado.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
The coronavirus has revealed a very important fact: There are 206 countries in the world, but there are only a few first-class countries that are very successful in protecting their citizens against the virus, that behaved early and swiftly! And the remaining so-called states should be called tribes instead of the state!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
In silence he lifted her into his arms, cradling her like a child, and Lacey thought that it was God Himself, come to take her to His home in heaven. His eyes were hooded in shadow; his hair was a dark corona, wild and beautiful, like his beard, a dense mass of gray upon his face. He carried her through the smoking ruins, and she saw that he was weeping. Those are God's own tears, Lacey thought, yearning to reach out and touch them. It had never occurred to her that God would cry, but of course that was wrong. God would be crying all the time. He would cry and cry and never stop.
”
”
Justin Cronin (The Passage (The Passage, #1))
“
Quizá la música y el arte poseyesen su propia magia inherente que los hacía intocables.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Corona de medianoche (Trono de cristal, #2))
“
A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction. —Kurt Vonnegut
”
”
Scott Galloway (Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity)
“
If you've got a Mexican last name, you've got a strike against you.
”
”
Tracy Kidder (The Road to Yuba City: A Journey into the Juan Corona Murders)
“
Prevention by severing the chain is the immediate solution.
”
”
Mohith Agadi
“
To be 'radical', after all, means aiming at the roots of troubles; to be radical in the chronic emergency is to aim at the ecological roots of perpetual disasters.
”
”
Andreas Malm (Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century)
“
A person in public without a mask during a pandemic is a walking septic tank.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar
“
Distance means so little, when life means so much.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Saving a life just got much more important than savouring a lifestyle.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Roman candles and Saturn missiles spark and whistle. Bigger fireworks light up the night with flares while smoke and the scent of black powder blows with the breeze. Dogs bark and locusts buzz while kids ride their bikes up and down the streets. As other families relax together, sipping lemonade and cold Coronas, I’m sitting on the roof, listening to mine tear itself apart.
”
”
Mary Elizabeth (Innocents (Dusty, #1))
“
Pero nada en este mundo puede ocurrir como lo hemos imaginado, imaginarlo es anular el futuro, qué maravilloso podríamos tornar el destino si jamás tratáramos de anticiparlo en la fantasía,
”
”
Germán Espinosa (La Tejedora de coronas)
“
¿Quién lee para llegar al final, por deseable que éste sea? ¿Acaso no hay ocupaciones que practicamos porque son buenas en sí mismas, y placeres que son absolutos? ¿Y no está éste entre ellos? A veces he soñado que cuando llegue el Día del Juicio y los grandes conquistadores y abogados y estadistas vayan a recibir sus recompensas - sus coronas, sus laureles, sus nombres grabados indeleblemente en mármol imperecedero-, el Todopoderosos se volverá hacia Pedro y le dirá, no sin cierta envidia cuando nos vea llegar con nuestros libros bajo el brazo: "Mira, ésos no necesitan recompensa. No tenemos nada que darles. Han amado la lectura.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (The Common Reader)
“
The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at… something..
”
”
David Nicholls (One Day)
“
La noche se avecina, ahora empieza mi guardia. No terminará hasta el día de mi muerte. No tomaré esposa, no poseeré tierras, no engendraré hijos. No llevaré corona, no alcanzaré la gloria. Viviré y moriré en mi puesto. Soy la espada en la oscuridad. Soy el vigilante del Muro. Soy el fuego que arde contra el frío, la luz que trae el amanecer, el cuerno que despierta a los durmientes, el escudo que defiende los reinos de los hombres. Entrego mi vida y mi honor a la Guardia de la Noche, durante esta noche y todas las que estén por venir.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
“
Sometimes an earthquake or a volcano shake the world, sometimes a virus, sometimes a huge typhoon, sometimes a tsunami! All of them have a common message: Awake to the Truth! And what is the truth? The truth is that Earth and the universe are not a region of order, but a region of chaos and survival!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
This is the challenge with owning a restaurant. A large fixed cost—your lease—and little or nothing you can do about it, and because it’s a low-margin business with few sources of funding, there’s typically no capital cushion to survive lean times.
”
”
Scott Galloway (Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity)
“
Io ti ho nominato regina.
Ve n'è di più alte di te, di più alte.
Ve né di più pure di te, di più pure.
Ve né di più belle di te, di più belle.
Ma tu sei la regina.
Quando vai per le strade
nessuno ti riconosce.
Nessuno vede la tua corona di cristallo, nessuno guarda
il tappeto d'oro rosso
che calpesti dove passi,
il tappeto che non esiste.
E quando t'affacci
tutti i fiumi risuonano
nel mio corpo, scuotono
il cielo le campane,
e un inno empie il mondo.
Tu sola ed io,
tu sola ed io, amor mio,
lo udiamo.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Captain's Verses)
“
How could it be that I wanted those scary narrow streets and books and coffee shops for her so much more than she wanted them for herself?
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
yes, yes, yes. I was and am awful and terrible.
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
La más tonta de las mujeres puede manejar a un
hombre inteligente, pero es necesario que una mujer
sea muy hábil para manejar a un imbécil.
”
”
Ibéyise Pacheco (Las muñecas de la corona: Los crímenes y las perversiones del chavismo en el poder. (Spanish Edition))
“
My mother's advertising firm specialized in women's accessories. All day long, under the agitated and slightly vicious eye of Mathilde, she supervised photo shoots where crystal earrings glistened on drifts of fake holiday snow, and crocodile handbags-unattended, in the back seats of deserted limousines-glowed in coronas of celestial light. She was good at what she did; she preferred working behind the camera rather than in front of it; and I knew she got a kick out of seeing her work on subway posters and on billboards in Times Square. But despite the gloss and sparkle of the job (champagne breakfasts, gift bags from Bergdorf's) the hours were long and there was a hollowness at the heart of it that-I knew-made her sad.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
“
¿Pero eso no era lo que soñaba cada chica? ¿Despertarse y encontrarse a sí misma como una princesa? ¿o bendecida con poderes mágicos y un gran destino? Tal vez había gente que vivía esas vidas. Tal vez esta chica era una de ellas. Pero ¿qué hay del resto de nosotros? ¿Qué con los donnadies, los nada, las chicas invisibles? Nosotros aprendemos a levantar nuestras cabezas como si usáramos coronas. Nosotras aprendemos a hacer magia a partir de lo ordinario. Así es como sobrevivías cuando no eras escogida, cuando no había sangre real en tus venas. Cuando el mundo no te debía nada, aun así, exigías algo.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
“
It should now be abundantly clear that the comparison between the climate crisis and Covid-19 rests on a category mistake. It's a bit like comparing a war with a bullet. Covid-19 is one manifestation of a secular trend running parallel to the climate crises, a global sickening to match the global heating.
”
”
Andreas Malm (Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century)
“
An astoundingly perfect black void sat where the sun had been, surrounded by a jagged white nimbus of light that nearly brought me to tears. This was the solar corona, the hot outer edges of the sun's atmosphere that drive a flood of particles into space and generate a phenomenon known as a stellar wind, a key property of how our sun and other stars evolve. I had studied this particular aspect of stars for almost my entire life, using a dozen of the best telescopes in the world, but this was the first time I could see a star's wind with my own naked-eye. Around us, the sky was a strangely uniform dome of sunsets in every direction, and the warmth of sunlight had been replaced by an almost primal up-the-neck chill. It felt like the planet itself had been put on pause at this particular place and moment in time, a frozen moment of "look.
”
”
Emily M. Levesque (The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers)
“
Me contó un montón de cosas que yo no quería oír, cosas que mi madre y mi padre nunca supieron, y que odiarían saber. Lo cabrón que era Billy con ella. Cómo en ocasiones la golpeaba, la humillaba, y la trataba en general como un trozo de mierda excepcionalmente corrompida.
"¿Por qué te quedaste con él?"
"Era mi chico. Siempre piensas que será diferente, que puedes hacerle cambiar, que tú puedes suponer la diferencia."
Eso lo entendía, Pero es un error. Los únicos hijoputas que supusieron alguna vez una diferencia para Billy fueron los Provisionales, y ellos también eran unos cabrones. No tengo ninguna ilusión sobre ellos como luchadores de la libertad. Los muy hijoputas convirtieron a mi hermano en un montón de comida para gatos. Pero ellos sólo tiraron de la palanca. Su muerte fue concebida por esos cabrones anaranjaos que venían por aquí todos los meses de julio con sus fajines y sus flautas, llenando la estúpida cabeza de Billy con insensateces acerca de la corona y la nación y toda esa mierda. Ellos irán a casa felices por el día de hoy. Pueden contarles a todos sus colegas cómo murió asesinado por el IRA uno de la familia mientras defendía el Ulster. Eso alimentará su ira sin objeto, hará que les inviten a copas en los pubs, y consolidará su credibilidad memo-bastarda entre otros tontolabas sectarios.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)
“
Come here into the warmth," he said easily. He reached for her, taking her hand and pulling her toward him. "I've been waiting for you." He stroked her hair, shifting a bit to let the light fall on her. "For a very long time."
She, too, reached for him, following a line in the air along the length of the forming scar that marred his chest. A corona flared around him until she moved past the point where the sunlight hit her eyes. She stared at his chest, at the gashed and ill-healed flesh, and he, seeing her attention, took her hand and brought her fingers to his mouth. She felt the warmth of his breath, the pressure of his lips, soft and warm. "I wish you had never been wounded," she said. "Even though it brought you home to me.
”
”
Carolyn Jewel (The Spare)
“
It seems to me, therefore, that the instinctive although seldom articulated purpose of holding a funeral or memorial service is to reunite the people most intimate with the deceased, and to collectively rekindle in them all, for one last time, the special living flame that represents the essence of that beloved person, profiting directly or indirectly from the presence of one another, feeling the presence of that person in the brains that remain, and thus solidifying to the maximal extent possible those secondary personal gemmae that remain aflicker in all these different brains. Though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed, a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word "love" cannot, thus, be separated from the word "I"; the more deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you, the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind.
”
”
Douglas R. Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop)
“
We will come out of this storm. In the coming days, we have to stay calm and confident. And for sure, we will overcome this moment of despair. How long this will last cannot be ascertained. But the one thing that we can be sure of is that we will not be the same anymore. Hopefully, we would have changed for the better. This is the way of life This is how life teaches us its lessons.
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
Escribo para el pueblo, aunque no pueda leer mi poesía con sus ojos rurales. Vendrá el instante en que una línea, el aire que removió mi vida, llegará a sus orejas, y entonces el labriego levantará los ojos, el minero sonreirá rompiendo piedras, el palanquero se limpiará la frente, el pescador verá mejor el brillo de un pez que palpitando le quemará las manos, el mecánico, limpio, recién lavado, lleno de aroma de jabón mirará mis poemas, y ellos dirán tal vez: «Fue un camarada». Eso es bastante; ésa es la corona que quiero.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Antología poética (AUSTRAL EDICIONES ESPECIALES) (Spanish Edition))
“
Sure, and fatherhood is super important too. I'm not trying to make this a women-only club by any means. Just that even men rarely view their role in child rearing as the most important thing they do, when in fact it is clearly the most important thing that anybody does.
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
How would she fill the days? She had no idea. The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you. Go out there with your double first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at....something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. Eat sensibly. Stuff like that.
”
”
David Nicholls (Starter for Ten)
“
In his airport bestseller from 2018, Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker, the leading voice in the choir of bourgeois optimism, revelled in the ‘conquest of infectious disease’ all over the globe – Europe, America, but above all the developing countries – as proof that ‘a rich world is a healthier world’, or, in transparent terms, that a world under the thumb of capital is the best of all possible worlds. ‘ “Smallpox was an infectious disease” ’, Pinker read on Wikipedia – ‘yes, “smallpox was” ’; it exists no more, and the diseases not yet obliterated are being rapidly decimated. Pinker closed the book on the subject by confidently predicting that no pandemic would strike the world in the foreseeable future. Had he cared to read the science, he would have known that waves from a rising tide were already crashing against the fortress he so dearly wished to defend.
He could, for instance, have opened the pages of Nature, where a team of scientists in 2008 analysed 335 outbreaks of ‘emerging infectious diseases’ since 1940 and found that their number had ‘risen significantly over time’.
”
”
Andreas Malm (Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century)
“
—Los dioses hicieron la tierra para que todos los hombres la compartieran. Pero luego vienen los reyes con sus coronas y sus espadas de acero y dicen que todo es suyo. Los árboles son míos, dicen, no os podéis comer las manzanas. El arroyo es mío, aquí no podéis pescar. El bosque es mío, nada de cazar. Mi tierra, mi agua, mi castillo, mi hija... No les pongas las manos encima o te las corto, pero a lo mejor si te arrodillas delante de mí te dejo que lo olisquees. Decís que somos ladrones, pero al menos un ladrón tiene que ser valiente, astuto y rápido. Para arrodillarse sólo hacen falta rodillas.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3))
“
Darian mi aveva travolto come un’onda e io stavo affogando. Brillava con tale intensità da farmi bruciare. Toccato, dalle sue mani, dal suo corpo e dalla sua inconsapevole dolcezza, sentivo il bisogno di ristabilire una distanza tra di noi. Impresa difficile quando la mia pelle sembrava risuonare quando era vicino e io ero ebbro di desiderio. Desideravo premere le labbra sul suo collo, volevo leccare il sudore dagli incavi più reconditi del suo corpo, dove si sarebbe raccolto come polvere di stelle. Lo desideravo nudo tra le mie braccia, come quella notte a Brighton, senza nemmeno l’oscurità a dividerci stavolta. Volevo dargli piacere. Volevo che ne fosse sommerso. Volevo offriglielo in dono come oro a un pirata. Intrecciargli una corona con i miei sogni perduti. Volevo inginocchiarmi ai suoi piedi e succhiargli l’uccello. Lo volevo sulla schiena, così che potessi guardarlo negli occhi mentre lo scopavo.
”
”
Alexis Hall (Glitterland (Spires, #1))
“
It is strange that God, who is beyond the limits of time, manifests Himself within time and its transformations. If you don’t know “where” God is – and people sometimes ask such questions – you have to look at everything that changes and moves, that doesn’t fit into a shape, that fluctuates and disappears: the surface of the sea, the dances of the sun’s corona, earthquakes, the continental drift, snows melting and glaciers moving, rivers flowing to the sea, seeds germinating, the wind that sculpts mountains, a foetus developing in its mother’s belly, wrinkles near the eyes, a body decaying in the grave, wines maturing, or mushrooms growing after a rain.
God is present in every process. God is vibrating in every transformation. Now He is there, now there is less of Him, but sometimes He is not there at all, because God manifests Himself even in the fact that He is not there.
People – who themselves are in fact a process – are afraid of whatever is impermanent and always changing, which is why they have invented something that doesn’t exist – invariability, and recognised that whatever is eternal and unchanging is perfect. So they have ascribed invariability to God, and that was how they lost the ability to understand Him.
”
”
Olga Tokarczuk (Primeval and Other Times)
“
remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with What you felt stirring across the land . . . it was the equinox . . . green spring equal nights . . . canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell . . . human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. This is the World just before men. Too violently pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by men directly. They are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or coal. Alive, it was a threat: it was Titans, was an overpeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona about Earth's body that some spoiler had to be brought in before it blew the Creation apart. So we, the crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. God's spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. It is our mission to promote death. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the Creatures. It was something we had to work on, historically and personally. To build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong.
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
“
The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience. Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card. I assure you, if you send any shepherds a Christmas card on which is printed a three-by-three photograph of the angel of the Lord, the glory of the Lord, and a multitude of the heavenly host, they will not be sore afraid. More fearsome things can come in envelopes. More moving photographs than those of the sun’s corona can appear in magazines. But I pray you will never see anything more awful in the sky.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters)
“
A pale, sweaty Corona bottle invaded my field of vision. It was clamped in a hand attached to a muscular arm with pale blond hair.
“Peace offering,” Curran said.
Did I hear him come in? No.
I took the beer. He paused on the other side of the tub. He was wearing a white gym towel. “I’m about to take the towel off and hop in,” he said. “Fair warning.”
There are times in life when shrugging takes nearly all of your will. “I’ve seen you naked.”
“Didn’t want you to run away screaming or anything.”
“You flatter yourself.”
He took the towel off.
I hadn’t exactly forgotten what he looked like without clothes. I just didn’t remember it being quite so tempting. He was built with survival in mind: strong but flexible, defined but hardly slender. You could bounce a quarter from his abs.
Curran stepped into the tub. He was obviously in no hurry.
It was like walking on a high bridge: don’t look down. Definitely not below his waist . . . Oh my.
He sank into the hot water near me. I remembered to breathe. “How’s your back?”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” It had to be sore.
“Does your side hurt?”
“No.”
His smile told me he knew we were both full of it.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, #3))
“
Such a nasty bruise,” he says, staring straight into my eyes. I am stunned he can see it. Delicate to the touch and tender on every side, the bruise is deeper than days. My hand automatically moves to my chest.
Science taught me with valid assurance that my heart was fixed in my rib cage, but life has since shown me otherwise. My heart in fact dangles from a tangle of strings. The ends are grasped tight by numerous people who yank and release, having caused many painful bruises over time. I cry because they are invisible to most.
“Such a nasty bruise,” he repeats, tugging on my poor heart.
His kind eyes fall away from mine as I feel a squeeze on my arm. He twists it enough to show me a small, round patch of purple surrounded by a sickly yellowish corona.
“Oh. My elbow.” I let the air exhale from my lungs. Another bruise forms where my heart has hit the floor. It is jerked up again.
“Can I do anything for you?” I see in his eyes the mirror image of a finger—his finger—wrapped in one of the dangling strings. He tugs and I feel it.
“No,” I reply to his question. But it is a lie. There is something he could do, along with all who grasp a portion of the web entangling my heart. I wish they would mercifully let go.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year)
“
It's been over a year since they've visited their son's market. As they walk through the parking lot they take in a number of improvements. Brian admires the raised garden beds made of cedar planks that flank the sides of the lot. There are stalks of tomatoes, staked beans, baskets of green herbs- oregano, lavender, fragrant blades of lemongrass and pointed curry leaf. The planter of baby lettuces has a chalkboard hung from its side: "Just add fork." A wheelbarrow parked by the door is heaped with bright coronas of sunflowers, white daisies, jagged red ginger and birds-of-paradise. Avis feels a leap of pride as they enter the market: the floor of polished bamboo, the sky-blue ceiling, the wooden shelves- like bookshelves in a library. And the smells. Warm, round billows of baking bread, roasting garlic and onions and chicken.
”
”
Diana Abu-Jaber (Birds of Paradise)
“
Amor, cuando yo muera no te vistas de viuda,
ni llores sacudiéndote como quien estornuda,
ni sufras «pataletas»
que al vecindario alarmen,
ni para prevenirlas compres gotas del Carmen.
No te sientes al lado de mi cajón mortuorio
usando a tus cuñadas
como reclinatorio;
y cuando alguien, amada, se acerque a darte el pésame,
no te le abras de brazos en actitud de ¡bésame!
Hazte, amada, la sorda cuando algún güelefrito dictamine,
observándome, que he quedado igualito.
Y hazte la que no oye ni comprende ni mira
cuando alguno comente que parece mentira.
Amor, cuando yo muera no te vistas de viuda:
Yo quiero ser un muerto
como los de Neruda;
y por lo tanto, amada, no te enlutes ni llores:
¡Eso es para los muertos esülo Julio Florez!
No se te ocurra, amada, formar la gran «llorona»
cada vez que te anuncien que llegó una corona;
pero tampoco vayas a salir de
indiscreta a curiosear el nombre que üene la tarjeta.
No grites, amada, que te lleve conmigo
y que sin mí te quedas
como en «Tomo y obligo»,
ni vayas a ponerte, con la voz desgarrada,
a divulgar detalles de mi vida privada.
Amor, cuando yo muera no hagas lo que hacen todas;
no copies sus estilos, no repitas sus modas:
Que aunque en nieblas de olvido quede mi nombre extinto,
¡sepa al menos el mundo que fui un muerto distinto!
”
”
Aquiles Nazoa (Humor y Amor)
“
Social democracy as we now know it underwent its moment of speciation when Eduard Bernstein began to question the orthodoxy of revolution. His essential postulate was the absence of crises. The Steven Pinker of socialism, he pointed to the empirical fact that no serious crisis had rocked the capitalist economy for the past two or three decades, which invalidated the Marxian prophecy of a system trending towards collapse. Since it was not prone to malfunctioning, the idea of seizing power, smashing decrepit capitalism and installing a completely different order had become redundant; instead social democracy could continue to grow in strength, extract piecemeal reforms and gradually lift the working class out of the mire. Rosa Luxemburg very famously objected that the crisis tendencies had merely been postponed. In the near future, they would burst forth with even more dreadful violence. Ignoring her prognosis, the social democrats in the making went ahead and presently gave their first demonstration of how they dealt with catastrophe: by expediting it through consent.
”
”
Andreas Malm (Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century)
“
En una calle tranquila, en su caserón emporifollado en medio de un jardín desfallecido...tocada con su corona de plata florecida, había despertado en su sillón junto a la ventana. Pero su sueño no era muy distinto a su vigilia, tan débil estaba. .. Quedaba apenas una llamita de vida en la señora, casi, casi nada de consciencia. Sin embargo, divisó estrellas a través de los vidrios llovidos de la ventana, y como ya no era capaz de distinguir distancia ni cercanía, al ver luces remontando por los regueros de mostacillas del suelo hasta los brillos de su vestido de gran aparato, pensó que también eran estrellas del firmamento, y que la envolvían entera. Supuso que ya había muerto, y que iba subiendo entre tanta y tanta estrella, subiendo muy suavemente camino directo del cielo.
Después cerró los ojos.
Estaba tan agotada que no se dio cuenta de que sólo en ese instante moría, y no antes, cuando creyó ver todas las constelaciones rodeándola.
”
”
José Donoso (Coronación)
“
I'm just saying, when a woman in a maiden, she's in the spotlight. Everybody cares what a pretty, young girl does and says. And she's got some pretty strict archetypes to adhere to: Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or Britney Spears. Pick your poison. But when you become a young mother? People don't give a fuck what you're doing. Their eyes glaze over before they even finish asking you. Once a woman starts doing the most important work of her life, all of a sudden, nobody wants to know a thing about it.
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
Por esta floristería pasan hombres y mujeres que necesitan comunicar una emoción o enviar un mensaje para el que no encuentran las palabras: respeto, agradecimiento, admiración, desamor, pérdida, amor, celebración... Unos compran flores para un nacimiento y otros por una muerte. Unos las encargan para restar sobriedad a sus despachos, otros para dar vida a sus casas. Algunos las prefieren vivas, aún prendidas de la tierra, otros muertas o disecadas. En unos casos las prefieren a punto de abrirse para que duren más, a otros en cambio les gustan perecederas como las margaritas que empiezan a deshojarse. De una en una o de cien en cien... a veces las enviamos al camerino del teatro español, otras forman coronas en la iglesia de San Sebastián, las compras madres a sus madres, infieles a sus mujeres, amantes a sus amantes, el Palace para su retretes, las ancianas para sus balcones... Yo tengo la teoría de que a cada persona le corresponde una flor. Y a cada etapa de su vida, también. Hay mujeres que compran flores y otras que no. Eso es todo
”
”
Vanessa Montfort (Mujeres que compran flores)
“
It will be okay," Franklin said. And even though I felt he was far too optimistic, I also suspected that there was wisdom in his optimism; Franklin's scale for "okay" spanned thousands of years. He didn't worry about someone being unhappy for a few hours or days. He didn't really worry about unhappiness at all. I think he worried about animals and sunlight and possibly grain. He worried about the furtherance of human knowledge as a grand cooperative endeavor that made him coworkers with everyone from Proust to Einstein to the author of Inanna.
”
”
Rufi Thorpe (The Girls from Corona del Mar)
“
We have written the equations of water flow. From experiment, we find a set of concepts and approximations to use to discuss the solution--vortex streets, turbulent wakes, boundary layers. When we have similar equations in a less familiar situation, and one for which we cannot yet experiment, we try to solve the equations in a primitive, halting, and confused way to try to determine what new qualitatitive features may come out, or what new qualitative forms are a consequence of the equations. Our equations for the sun, for example, as a ball of hydrogen gas, describe a sun without sunspots, without the rice-grain structure of the surface, without prominences, without coronas. Yet, all of these are really in the equations; we just haven't found the way to get them out.
...The test of science is its ability to predict. Had you never visited the earth, could you predict the thunderstorms, the volcanoes, the ocean waves, the auroras, and the colourful sunset? A salutary lesson it will be when we learn of all that goes on on each of those dead planets--those eight or ten balls, each agglomerated from the same dust clouds and each obeying exactly the same laws of physics.
The next great era of awakening of human intellect may well produce a method of understanding the qualitative content of equations. Today we cannot. Today we cannot see that the water flow equations contain such things as the barber pole structure of turbulence that one sees between rotating cylinders. Today we cannot see whether Schrodinger's equation contains frogs, musical composers, or morality--or whether it does not. We cannot say whether something beyond it like God is needed, or not. And so we can all hold strong opinions either way.
”
”
Richard P. Feynman
“
. . . waves of desert heat . . . I must’ve passed out, because when I woke up I was shivering and stars wheeled above a purple horizon. . . . Then the sun came up, casting long shadows. . . . I heard a vehicle coming. Something coming from far away, gradually growing louder. There was the sound of an engine, rocks under tires. . . . Finally it reached me, the door opened, and Dirk Bickle stepped out. . . .
But anyway so Bickle said, “Miracles, Luke. Miracles were once the means to convince people to abandon reason for faith. But the miracles stopped during the rise of the neocortex and its industrial revolution. Tell me, if I could show you one miracle, would you come with me and join Mr. Kirkpatrick?”
I passed out again, and came to. He was still crouching beside me. He stood up, walked over to the battered refrigerator, and opened the door. Vapor poured out and I saw it was stocked with food. Bickle hunted around a bit, found something wrapped in paper, and took a bottle of beer from the door. Then he closed the fridge, sat down on the old tire, and unwrapped what looked like a turkey sandwich.
He said, “You could explain the fridge a few ways. One, there’s some hidden outlet, probably buried in the sand, that leads to a power source far away. I figure there’d have to be at least twenty miles of cable involved before it connected to the grid. That’s a lot of extension cord. Or, this fridge has some kind of secret battery system. If the empirical details didn’t bear this out, if you thoroughly studied the refrigerator and found neither a connection to a distant power source nor a battery, you might still argue that the fridge had some super-insulation capabilities and that the food inside had been able to stay cold since it was dragged out here. But say this explanation didn’t pan out either, and you observed the fridge staying the same temperature week after week while you opened and closed it. Then you’d start to wonder if it was powered by some technology beyond your comprehension. But pretty soon you’d notice something else about this refrigerator. The fact that it never runs out of food. Then you’d start to wonder if somehow it didn’t get restocked while you slept. But you’d realize that it replenished itself all the time, not just while you were sleeping. All this time, you’d keep eating from it. It would keep you alive out here in the middle of nowhere. And because of its mystery you’d begin to hate and fear it, and yet still it would feed you. Even though you couldn’t explain it, you’d still need it. And you’d assume that you simply didn’t understand the technology, rather than ascribe to it some kind of metaphysical power. You wouldn’t place your faith in the hands of some unknowable god. You’d place it in the technology itself. Finally, in frustration, you’d come to realize you’d exhausted your rationality and the only sensible thing to do would be to praise the mystery. You’d worship its bottles of Corona and jars of pickled beets. You’d make up prayers to the meats drawer and sing about its light bulb. And you’d start to accept the mystery as the one undeniable thing about it. That, or you’d grow so frustrated you’d push it off this cliff.”
“Is Mr. Kirkpatrick real?” I asked.
After a long gulp of beer, Bickle said, “That’s the neocortex talking again.
”
”
Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife)
“
Ateista imadijaše da prizna veliko ništa od svega svojega: krvi, misli i mesa. Htio je živjeti i vjerovaše da živi. I u klicanju životu zaboravi na smrt. Ponašaše se kao zaborav bluda, kao ekstaza mase. Ne bijaše dubok; bijaše širok. Plovio je površinom, plovio po sebi i rijetko, na mahove, od slučaja zaronjivao bi u sebe i odmah izmiljio na vrh. A sada mu postane jasno, da je zaražen; da ima u njemu nešto, što se ne da prosuditi iz njegovih pjesama, iz njegova smijeha i njegovih lakih razgovora. Bacil je u njemu, razorni bacil, što se baca blatom na rimu njegovu i ideju njegovu. On već nije pristupačan društvu, ne smije pljuvati na pod, ni piti ne smije iz druge čaše.
”
”
Janko Polić Kamov (Isušena kaljuža)
“
Almost a year after the start of the corona crisis, how is the mental health of the population?
MD: For the time being, there are few figures that show the evolution of possible indicators such as the intake of antidepressants and anxiolytics or the number of suicides. But it is especially important to place mental well-being in the corona crisis in its historical continuity. Mental health had been declining for decades. There has long been a steady increase in the number of depression and anxiety problems and the number of suicides. And in recent years there has been an enormous growth in absenteeism due to psychological suffering and burnouts. The year before the corona outbreak, you could feel this malaise growing exponentially. This gave the impression that society was heading for a tipping point where a psychological 'reorganization' of the social system was imperative. This is happening with corona. Initially, we noticed people with little knowledge of the virus conjure up terrible fears, and a real social panic reaction became manifested. This happens especially if there is already a strong latent fear in a person or population.
The psychological dimensions of the current corona crisis are seriously underestimated. A crisis acts as a trauma that takes away an individual's historical sense. The trauma is seen as an isolated event in itself, when in fact it is part of a continuous process. For example, we easily overlook the fact that a significant portion of the population was strangely relieved during the initial lockdown, feeling liberated from stress and anxiety. I regularly heard people say: "Yes these measures are heavy-handed, but at least I can relax a bit." Because the grind of daily life stopped, a calm settled over society. The lockdown often freed people from a psychological rut. This created unconscious support for the lockdown. If the population had not already been exhausted by their life, and especially their jobs, there would never have been support for the lockdown. At least not as a response to a pandemic that is not too bad compared to the major pandemics of the past. You noticed something similar when the first lockdown came to an end. You then regularly heard statements such as "We are not going to start living again like we used to, get stuck in traffic again" and so on. People did not want to go back to the pre-corona normal. If we do not take into account the population's dissatisfaction with its existence, we will not understand this crisis and we will not be able to resolve it. By the way, I now have the impression that the new normal has become a rut again, and I would not be surprised if mental health really starts to deteriorate in the near future. Perhaps especially if it turns out that the vaccine does not provide the magical solution that is expected from it.
”
”
Mattias Desmet
“
I saw the Tracker—but that’s wrong, really. I saw right to where the tracking thing was. I saw those winnowing tentacles come out again, and the front figure pause, and then—it’s the only word that actually describes it—ooze on again on its via dolorosa. And at that the hind figure seemed to summon all its strength. It seemed to open out a fringe of arms or tentacles, a sort of corona of black rays spread out. It gaped with a full expansion, and even I could feel that there was a perfectly horrible attraction, or vacuum drag, being exerted. That was horrible enough, with the face of the super-suffering man now almost under me resonating my own terror. But the worst thing was that, as the tentacles unwrapped and winnowed out toward their prey, I saw they weren’t really tentacles at all. They were spreading cracks, veins, fissures, rents of darkness expanding from a void, a gap of pure blackness. There’s only one way to say it—one was seeing right through the solid world into a gap, an ultimate maelstrom. And from it was spreading out a—I can only call it so—a negative sunrise of black radiation that would deluge and obliterate everything. Of course it was still only a fissure, a vent, but one realized—This is a hole, a widening hole, that has been pierced in the dike that defends the common-sense, sensuous world. Through this vortex-hole that is rapidly opening, over this lip and brink, everything could slip, fall in, find no purchase, be swallowed up.
It was like watching a crumbling cliff with survivors clinging to it being undercut and toppling into a black tide that had swallowed up its base. This negative force could drag the solidest things from their base, melt them, engulf the whole hard, visible world. And we were right on that brink. What was after us, for I knew now I was in its field, was not a thing of any passions or desires. Those are limited things, satiable things—in a way, balanced things, and so familiar, safe even, almost friendly in comparison with this. You know the grim saying, “You can give a sop to Cerberus, but not to his Master.” No, this was—that’s the technical term, I found, coined by those who have been up against this and come back alive—this was absolute Deprivation, really insatiable need, need that nothing can satisfy, absolute refusal to give, to yield. It is the second strongest thing in the universe, and, indeed, outside that. It could swallow the whole universe, and the universe would go for nothing, because in that gap the whole universe could fill not a bit of it. It would remain as empty, as gaping, as insatiable as ever, for it is the bottomless pit made by unstanchable Lack.
”
”
Gerald Heard (Dromenon: The Best Weird Stories of Gerald Heard)