Crossroads Book Quotes

Books are not meant to remain in your mind, but in your heart. Maybe they exist in your mind too, but as something more than memories. At a crossroads in life, a forgotten sentence or a story from years ago can come back to offer an invisible hand and guide you to a decision. Personally, I feel like the books I've read led me to make the choices I've made in life. While I may not remember all the details, the stories continue to exert a quiet influence on me.

Shayna lunged and swiped her sword just inches from Brigara's face. Brigara instinctively reacted by raising both hands to block the blade. The Book of Grimoire dropped to the floor. Brigara's eyes narrowed as she became aware that she'd been caught off guard. She scanned the room quickly, and her lips tightened as she returned her glare to meet Shayna's tear-filled eyes. Shayna's hands trembled, and the sword felt heavier than usual. She teetered slightly and blinked hard. Her heart was beating double time and ached in her chest. She gulped and told herself to stay steady. She struggled against the impulse that beckoned her to end the despised druid's life. "You killed Dreya! You're a miserable piece of trash!" Shayna shouted. Her mouth was dry, and she strained to fight back tears, but they spilled over. She repositioned her sword and aimed it at Brigara’s heart. 

Books are not meant to remain in your mind, but in your heart. Maybe they exist in your mind too, but as something more than memories. At a crossroads in life, a forgotten sentence or a story from years ago can come back to offer an invisible hand and guide you to a decision.

Indecision is the reluctance or inability to pass a judgment on an issue under consideration. Indecision means you have come to crossroads and you cannot make your mind.

Nietzsche is a marvelous antidote to all fundamentally anti-Biblical efforts to turn mythology into a kind of Bible, and that is the project of the Jungians of this world, or to boil the Bible down to myth, and that is the project of more or less everyone else

Thus it has come about that our theoretical and critical literature, instead of giving plain, straightforward arguments in which the author at least always knows what he is saying and the reader what he is reading, is crammed with jargon, ending at obscure crossroads where the author loses its readers. Sometimes these books are even worse: they are just hollow shells. The author himself no longer knows just what he is thinking and soothes himself with obscure ideas which would not satisfy him if expressed in plain speech.

What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as thought he were rewriting the past.It was the only way

Relationship and connection happen in an indefinable space between people, a space that will never be fully known or understood by us.

Lares of the Crossroads

you’re not holding a book of answers, because only you know those; you’re holding a collection of the most effective questions

You don't want to shoot me." "Don't push me. I'm having a bad day.

Someone has to warn you." "That's novel. A stalker warning his victim.

Friend, you were on my heart when I mapped out this book. You were made for more than the daily grind. More than making ends meet. More than the list of should's, can'ts or wish I hads.

How and why, then, did California go about the biggest prison-building project in the history of the world? In my view, prisons are partial geographical solutions to political economic crises, organized by the state, which is itself in crisis. Crisis means instability that can be fixed only through radical measures, which include developing new relationships and new or renovated institutions out of what already exists.

You need more hugs.” I glanced up at the ghost. “Excuse me?” “There’s a chapter in the psychology book I’m reading that says you need a minimum of four hugs a day just to survive.” “Four per day? That sounds like a lot.

Just looking at her mother made Cami think about how having another mouth to feed in the house would be a huge burden. She was working her butt off at two jobs already as a registered nurse and a waitress. With a mortgage payment, student loan debt, credit card debt, and loads of other bills that she once did not think about twice, her mother was forced to work longer hours after her now ex-husband abandoned his family for another woman.

I stand now at a crossroads. I see before me the route to virtue, at an intersection with the route to love. Do I step to the left or the right, to the wrong or the right? M foot wavers in the air; where shall I set it down?

The more militant anticapitalism and international solidarity became everyday features of U.S. antiracist activism, the more vehemently the state responded by, as Allen Feldman (1991) puts it, “individualizing disorder” into singular instances of criminality.

In the history of the United States,” the literary scholar Lisa Lowe writes, “capital has maximized its profits not through rendering labor ‘abstract’ but precisely through the social productions of ‘difference,’ . . . marked by race, nation, geographical origins, and gender.

First, you understand that Spirit is neutral. The forces of positive and negative are all around, and within all. There is no good or bad energy, per se; it’s the intention behind the use of that energy. The responsibility lies with each of us for how we access and manifest this Energy.

Nina opened the book to the first painting and widened her eyes. It was of a dark forest with a hint of glowing blue light in the background. The trees stood like the silhouettes of soldiers in formation, awaiting commands. Nina couldn’t turn the page – this painting was luring her into an enchanted and mysterious world.

Another way to look at the problem is to investigate shifts in the structure of taxation, which both reveal profound reconfigurations of power (understood here as responsibility, which is also authority and autonomy) between levels of the state, and newly emerging relationships between all kinds of capitalists and all kinds of workers.

She and Kaci were as different as day was from night. She was sensitive while Kaci was more thick-skinned; she was more passive while Kaci was more assertive. She hated to think of herself as sensitive and passive but she knew that it was true. She yearned to be more like her younger sister but she just wasn’t sure if she had it in her.

I found myself in this world one day, I don't know when, and until then, from birth I presume, I had lived without feeling. If I asked where I was, everyone deceived me, everyone contradicted everyone else. If I asked them to tell me what to do, everyone lied and told me something different. If I became lost and stopped along the road, everyone was shocked that I did not just continue on to wherever the road led (though no one knew where that was), or did not simply retrace my steps - I, who did not even know whence I came, having only woken up at the crossroads. I realized that I was on a stage and did not know the words that everyone else picked up instantly even though they did not know them either. I saw that though I was dressed as a page they had given me no queen to wait on and blamed me for that. I saw that I had in my hands a message to deliver and when I told them the paper was blank, they laughed at me. I still don't know if they laughed because all such pieces of paper are blank or because all messages are only hypothetical.

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset, There must be one (which, I am not sure) That I by now have walked for the last time Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws, Sets up a secret and unwavering scale for all the shadows, dreams, and forms Woven into the texture of this life. If there is a limit to all things and a measure And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness, Who will tell us to whom in this house We without knowing it have said farewell? Through the dawning window night withdraws And among the stacked books which throw Irregular shadows on the dim table, There must be one which I will never read. There is in the South more than one worn gate, With its cement urns and planted cactus, Which is already forbidden to my entry, Inaccessible, as in a lithograph. There is a door you have closed forever And some mirror is expecting you in vain; To you the crossroads seem wide open, Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus. There is among all your memories one Which has now been lost beyond recall. You will not be seen going down to that fountain Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon. You will never recapture what the Persian Said in his language woven with birds and roses, When, in the sunset, before the light disperses, You wish to give words to unforgettable things. And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake, All that vast yesterday over which today I bend? They will be as lost as Carthage, Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt. At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent Murmur of crowds milling and fading away; They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by; Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

I have always felt a strange, vague presence near me: shadowy at night, a paler whiteness in the day, and changing shapes to the point of havingg none at the moments when I feared it most. Fascinated, I found myself at a crossroad; but in front of a hole. There, night and day did not know each other. I approached a death which did not know death because it had not known life, a death without dead, an orphaned life without lives, where nothing was ever other than nothing.

Non-time imposes on time the tyranny of its spatiality: in every life there is a north and a south, and the orient and the occident. At the extreme limit or, at the least, at the crossroads, as one’s eyes fly over the seasons, there is the unequal struggle of life and death, of fervor and lucidity, albeit one of despair and collapse, the strength as well to face tomorrow. So goes every life. So goes this book, between sun and shadow, between mountain and mangrove, between dawn and dusk, stumbling and binary. Time also to settle the score with several fantasies and a few phantoms. from “i, laminaria…

Baby, when everything and everyone is telling you that you can't do something, there's still a way. When you get to the crossroads and start feeling like you can do it, but you can't figure out what's next, I want you to whisper this to yourself: Patricia Blackstock Johnson. I want you to remember that if Tab's mama can put a pencil in her mouth to hit record on her tape recorder, what can you not do? Where there's a will, there's a way. All you have to do is have the willpower to keep going. Even when it looks like it's going to be over or the storm is too powerful, honey, stay in a state of gratitude. Give God praise in advance.

When I started this book, I worried that my strong sense that we’d arrived at a historic crossroads equivalent to the 1770s or 1860s or 1930s, America’s Fourth Testing, might seem like a stretch. By the end, I was no longer concerned about overstatement, particularly after the pandemic arrived—a new virus requiring new behaviors and policies, work and life suddenly more than ever dependent on the Internet, government failure by leaders ideologically dedicated to undermining government, maximizing corporate profit at all costs, and an American hyperindividualism whipped up by the right that makes a huge common problem harder to solve.

renovating its welfare-warfare capacities into something different by molding surplus finance capital, land, and labor into the workfare-warfare state. The result was an emerging apparatus that, in an echo of the Cold War Pentagon’s stance on communism, presented its social necessity in terms of an impossible goal—containment of crime, understood as an elastic category spanning a dynamic alleged continuum of dependency and depravation. The crisis of state capacity then became, peculiarly, its own solution, as the welfare-warfare state began the transformation, bit by bit, to the permanent crisis workfare-warfare state, whose domestic militarism is concretely recapitulated in the landscapes of depopulated urban communities and rural prison towns. We shall now turn to the history of this “prison fix.

The Sabbath had passed and in the gray Monday dawn a procession of schoolchildren dressed in blue uniforms all alike were being led along the gritty walkway. The woman had stepped from the curb to take them across at the intersection when she saw the man coming up the street all dark with blood bearing in his arms the dead body of a friend. She held up her hand and the children stopped and huddled with their books at their breasts. He passed. They could not take their eyes from him. The dead boy in his arms hung with his head back and those partly opened eyes beheld nothing at all out of that passing landscape of street or wall or paling sky or the figures of the children who stood blessing themselves in the gray light. This man and his burden passed on forever out of that nameless crossroads and the woman stepped once more into the street and the children followed and all continued on to their appointed places which as some believe were chosen long ago even to the beginning of the world.

OPTIONS FOR REDUCING While thrift stores such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army can be a convenient way to initially let go, many other outlets exist and are often more appropriate for usable items. Here are some examples: • Amazon.com • Antiques shops • Auction houses • Churches • Consignment shops (quality items) • Craigslist.org (large items, moving boxes, free items) • Crossroads Trading Co. (trendy clothes) • Diggerslist.com (home improvement) • Dress for Success (workplace attire) • Ebay.com (small items of value) • Flea markets • Food banks (food) • Freecycle.org (free items) • Friends • Garage and yard sales • Habitat for Humanity (building materials, furniture, and/or appliances) • Homeless and women’s shelters • Laundromats (magazines and laundry supplies) • Library (books, CDs and DVDs) • Local SPCA (towels and sheets) • Nurseries and preschools (blankets, toys) • Operation Christmas Child (new items in a shoe box) • Optometrists (eyeglasses) • Regifting • Rummage sales for a cause • Salvage yards (building materials) • Schools (art supplies, magazines, dishes to eliminate class party disposables) • Tool co-ops (tools) • Waiting rooms (magazines) • Your curb with a “Free” sign

At the time of the Fourth Fire, the history of another people came to be braided into ours. Two prophets arose among the people, foretelling the coming of the light-skinned people in ships from the east, but their visions differed in what was to follow. The path was not clear, as it cannot be with the future. The first prophet said that if the offshore people, the zaaganaash, came in brotherhood, they would bring great knowledge. Combined with Anishinaabe ways of knowing, this would form a great new nation. But the second prophet sounded a warning: He said that what looks like the face of brotherhood might be the face of death. These new people might come with brotherhood, or they might come with greed for the riches of our land. How would we know which face is the true one? If the fish became poisoned and the water unfit to drink, we would know which face they wore. And for their actions the zaaganaash came to be known instead as chimokman—Vne long-knife people. The prophecies described what eventually became history. They warned the people of those who would come among them with black robes and black books, with promises of joy and salvation. The prophets said that if the people turned against their own sacred ways and followed this black-robe path, then the people would suffer for many generations. Indeed, the burial of our spiritual teachings in the time of the Fifth Fire nearly broke the hoop of the nation. People became separated from their homelands and from each other as they were forced onto reservations. Their children were taken from them to learn the zaaganaash ways. Forbidden by law to practice their own religion, they nearly lost an ancient worldview. Forbidden to speak their languages, a universe of knowing vanished in a generation. The land was fragmented, the people separated, the old ways blowing away in the wind; even the plants and animals began to turn their faces away from us. The time was foretold when the children would turn away from the elders; people would lose their way and their purpose in life. They prophesied that, in the time of the Sixth Fire, “the cup of life would almost become the cup of grief.” And yet, even after all of this, there is something that remains, a coal that has not been extinguished. At the First Fire, so long ago, the people were told that it is their spiritual lives that will keep them strong. They say that a prophet appeared with a strange and distant light in his eyes. The young man came to the people with the message that in the time of the seventh fire, a new people would emerge with a sacred purpose. It would not be easy for them. They would have to be strong and determined in their work, for they stood at a crossroads. The ancestors look to them from the flickering light of distant fires. In this time, the young would turn back to the elders for teachings and find that many had nothing to give. The people of the Seventh Fire do not yet walk forward; rather, they are told to turn around and retrace the steps of the ones who brought us here. Their sacred purpose is to walk back along the red road of our ancestors’ path and to gather up all the fragments that lay scattered along the trail. Fragments of land, tatters of language, bits of songs, stories, sacred teachings—all that was dropped along the way. Our elders say that we live in the time of the seventh fire. We are the ones the ancestors spoke of, the ones who will bend to the task of putting things back together to rekindle the flames of the sacred fire, to begin the rebirth of a nation.

The rose is a symbol of the inner mysteries of Witchcraft. A red rose symbolizes the mysteries as they reside in Nature, within the living things. The white rose symbolizes the Otherworld and the mysteries hidden in secret places. When a single rose appears with white petals in the center of red petals, this represents the mysteries joined together within one reality. Thorns appearing with the rose represent challenges and the dedication required to fully grasp the enlightenment of the rose. One of the symbolisms associated with the rose reveals the covenant between the Witch and the Faery. In this, we find that both are stewards of the portal that opens to the inner mysteries. The Faery holds the celestial key, and the Witch bears the terrestrial key. When the two are joined together, they form an X—the sign of the crossroads. In this formation, where the keys cross we find a third point, the in-between place at the center. This is where the portal exists, and this is where it opens between the worlds. Look at the shape of the X and you can see four pointed tip markers (the V shapes). The upper half of the X points down, and the lower half points up. On the sides of the X, you can see that the left and right halves point to the center. This shows us that when the celestial and terrestrial realms join, they pull together the left ways and the right ways. These are occult terms for esoteric and exoteric modes of consciousness. In the fusion, everything briefly loses its distinction, its ability to mask the opposite reality, and in doing so, the secret third reality emerges in the center of it all. If this sounds confusing or nonsensical, then the guardian of that portal is doing its job well. The material in this book will connect you with an entity connected to the rose and its mystery. This is the previously mentioned She of the Thorn-Blooded Rose. With her guidance, you can be directed to the portal, and through it you can meet a variety of beings and entities. However, her primary task is to connect you with the Greenwood Realm and the plant spirits within it. In your journey to encounter these spirits, you will pass through the organic memory of the earth. You'll walk upon roads of mystical concepts and be accompanied by the Old Ones of

I am in no rush. Let Life happen to me just as Life has planned. Because at the end of the day, when the sun sets there is always a horizon somewhere waiting to call forth another sun, in a paradox of Time. Because at the end of each chapter, the story walks towards its culmination. But just like it is not in the setting or rising of the sun but in the sunshine that one basks, just like it is not the finishing line but the voyage through the storyline where one finds the true understanding of the book, Life is about exploring the voyage all the while knowing full well that each chapter shall find its beginning middle and end just how it's meant to be. It is about the truth that Life is but a dream in Time's illusion and the only sharp truth is to love and be loved, and through that assemble moments in Time that smile beyond Time, to make a garden of experiences through lessons and understandings that Life puts at our journey only to walk us closer to our destination. It is not about the destination rather about the journey, and perhaps about who we share the journey with at each crossroad. And no matter how Time walks by, until and unless we cross all the alleys along the way, until and unless we climb up the peak bit by bit, we cannot reach that destination where we belong. But if we tread along the mountain peak or a winding alley soaking in all the freshness of the air enjoying the crispness of our walk, the journey becomes even more enriching not just to our soul but to all of our senses and our very heart. While if we try to run along the way, we might actually topple down a bad turn, taking in a scar that might demand another cup of our soul's portion to heal. Such is Life. A journey that takes smiles and tears, a voyage that bathes in hope and hopelessness, but in all of it, it never stays stagnant, always tiptoeing to exactly where we are meant to be, at any point of our journey. So when something seems to go stagnant or few things make no sense, I tell myself to pause and pat my soul acknowledging each and every decision or detour of mine as part and parcel of Life's plan. I close my eyes and breathe in the freshness of air that flows in every part of my soul to know, to feel alive to all that this journey has shared with me, while believing in the grace and magnanimity of Time who takes Time but eventually shows and leads us to where we belong. And I hear my heart smiling, Let Life happen to me just as Life has planned. I am in no rush.

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

The Ford Empire is the Hitler Nazi Empire on a small scale. GEORGE SELDES (1943)

Some have speculated that had he succeeded, the road, not the railway, might have remained the conventional way to travel, that the runaway expansion of the railway might never have taken place. In a book called The Suppression of the Automobile: Skulduggery at the Crossroads, David Beasley argues that road transport was more potentially profitable, and failed only because powerful political interests were determined to stop it. ‘If the steam carriage proponents in Parliament had forged a lasting alliance between the radical Whigs and Conservatives,’ he says, ‘the railways would have been stopped in their tracks.

Even before African Americans made up the literal majority of foundry workers such work was becoming understood as more “suited” to them, not just at the Rouge but in the array of foundry and metal pressing workplaces in and around Detroit. A Packard spokesperson described this phenomenon to an interviewer: “White and colored get along all right in the foundry because the average white worker doesn’t want a foundry job anyway. White foundry workers are foreigners.” A Ford official said, “Many of the Negroes are employed in the foundry and do work that nobody else would do.”40 As with the myth, specifically subscribed to at times by auto management, that Black workers had higher tolerance for hot and exhausting work, such a statement brings into being the truth it claims to describe—it is a perfect example of how racism becomes race-lore, an a priori assertion claiming to be based in observed and material reality.

Ford’s assembly line came to embody the idea of social improvement through efficiency, mass society, and progress. None of these concepts existed outside of belief in racial and national hierarchies.

The cover was brown and plain like books look when they have lost their dust jacket, sort of forlorn, knowing they are being judged and passed over.

Suddenly, he had a mental image of Xylda so vivid that it almost brought tears to his eyes: this whole rush of past experiences, brought back by that one inhalation. He knew he said something to Creek before he turned to walk back to the car, but he couldn’t recall what it was a minute later. He had to sit in the car for a while before he left to run his errands. He pulled out his list of errands from his pocket and pretended to be studying it until he was calm and composed

Ideals that our nation was founded on, including equality and liberty for all, have yet to be fully realized. In some corners, their very existence is being threatened. The continuation of American democracy also is not a foregone conclusion. In fact, the American Dream that I have lived and still believe in—the notion that everyone should have an equal opportunity to rise from the ground up—is at a crossroads. More people need to have a fair chance at their dreams, however humble or ambitious those dreams may be, and now is the time to talk about what those chances might look like for everyone. Together, we have the potential to reimagine and deliver on the promise of our country, as I hope this book reveals.

Relationship and connection happen in an indefinable space between people, a space that will never be fully known or understood by us.

Is there a different between Attention Deficit Disorder and daydreaming? He mused. Ah, there I go again. Focus,

I want to forget that she’s the reason why Natalie’s dead. I want to forget that she almost killed my sister but I can’t forget it. I think about it all the time.

The only reason I asked is because, in terms of learning how to forgive someone, I’ve been where you’re headed. Don’t let her win; don’t let this eat away at you until there’s nothing left.

One simply cannot understand ethnic diversity in Yunnan, for example, without taking into account the topography of the province. Cut up by complex river systems and marked by rapid fluctuations in elevation, Yunnan’s geography doubtless has contributed to the splintering of communities and linguistic diversification. Likewise, another key factor has been the province’s location at the crossroads of migration and cultural exchange emanating from the civilizational centers of modern-day Southeast Asia, Tibet, and China. This complex and layered history of migration is undoubtedly constitutive of modern Yunnan and its resident communities. The fifty-six-minzu model was not produced by way of discourse alone.

Books have always been my best companions. They have not only provided entertainment but also served as wise, nonjudgmental mentors whenever I needed advice. The problem with my situation was that I had not come across a single book to guide me or at least accompany me as I laid out the roadmap for the rest of my life. In fact, I had no idea how I had arrived at this unfamiliar crossroad. I certainly did not deserve to be in this predicament.

I was at a crossroads: Did I believe him? Or was I just ignoring another red flag, burying myself alive in a graveyard of them?

She peered over to the over side of the car.

Income and employment programs for workers, infrastructural programs for capital, and subsidy programs for farmlands were designed to keep surpluses from again accumulating into the broad and deep crisis that had characterized the Great Depression.

Anglos dominated the prisoner population in 1977 and did not lose their plurality until 1988. Meanwhile, absolute numbers grew across the board—with the total number of those incarcerated approximately doubling during each interval. African American prisoners surpassed all other groups in 1988, but by 1995, they had been overtaken by Latinos; however, Black people have the highest rate of incarceration of any racial/ethnic grouping in California, or, for that matter, in the United States (see also Bonczar and Beck 1997). TABLE 4 CDC PRISONER POPULATION BY RACE/ETHNICITY The structure of new laws, intersecting with the structure of the burgeoning relative surplus population, and the state’s concentrated use of criminal laws in the Southland, produced a remarkable racial and ethnic shift in the prison population. Los Angeles is the primary county of commitment. Most prisoners are modestly educated men in the prime of life: 88 percent are between 19 and 44 years old. Less than 45 percent graduated from high school or read at the ninth-grade level; one in four is functionally illiterate. And, finally, the percentage of prisoners who worked six months or longer for the same employer immediately before being taken into custody has declined, from 54.5 percent in 1982 to 44 percent in 2000 (CDC, Characteristics of Population, various years). TABLE 5 CDC COMMITMENTS BY CONTROLLING OFFENSE (%) At the bottom of the first and subsequent waves of new criminal legislation lurked a key contradiction. On the one hand, the political rhetoric, produced and reproduced in the media, concentrated on the need for laws and prisons to control violence. “Crime” and “violence” seemed to be identical. However, as table 5 shows, there was a significant shift in the controlling (or most serious) offenses for those committed to the CDC, from a preponderance of violent offenses in 1980 to nonviolent crimes in 1995. More to the point, the controlling offenses for more than half of 1995’s commitments were nonviolent crimes of illness or of illegal income producing activity: drug use, drug sales, burglary, motor vehicle theft. The outcome of the first two years of California’s broadly written “three strikes” law presents a similar picture: in the period March 1994–January 1996, 15 percent of controlling offenses were violent crimes, 31 percent were drug offenses, and 41 percent were crimes against property (N = 15,839) (Christoper Davis et al. 1996). The relative surplus population comes into focus in these numbers. In 1996, 43 percent of third-strike prisoners were Black, 32.4 percent Latino, and 24.6 percent Anglo. The deliberate intensification of surveillance and arrest in certain areas, combined with novel crimes of status, drops the weight of these numbers into particular places. The chair of the State Task Force on Youth Gang Violence expressed the overlap between presumptions of violence and the exigencies of everyday reproduction when he wrote: “We are talking about well-organized, drug-dealing, dangerously armed and profit-motivated young hoodlums who are engaged in the vicious crimes of murder, rape, robbery, extortion and kidnapping as a means of making a living” (Philibosian 1986: ix; emphasis added).

The “big stick” approach used by U.S. capital to discipline labor requires an enormous, expensive industrial bureaucracy (David Gordon 1996); the same thing may be true of the capitalist state in crisis.

the CDC has consistently forecast high growth in highest-security (Level IV) prisoners, and, according to both the Blue Ribbon Commission on Prison Population Management (1990) and Rudman and Berthelsen (reporting to the legislature in 1991), it consolidated the tendency to classify those in custody as higher risks than they might actually be.27 Level IV beds are the most expensive to build; and Level IV prisoners are the most expensive to maintain, because of low guard-prisoner ratios. In 1991, California experienced what

The state could build prisons, but not just anywhere. The state could borrow money, but not always openly. The state could round up persons who correspond demographically to those squeezed out of restructured labor markets, but not at the same rate everywhere. After twenty years, $5 billion in capital outlays, and the accumulation of 161,394 prisoners (as of April 2004),26 the CDC has become the state’s largest department, with a budget exceeding 8 percent of the annual general fund—roughly equal to general fund appropriations for postsecondary education. The rapid growth of the

the California case, the rhythms of tax reduction are strong indicators of structural change and, as table 3 demonstrates, show how the Keynesian state’s delegitimation accumulated in waves, culminating, rather than originating, in Tom Bradley’s 1982 and 1986 gubernatorial defeats. The first wave, or capital’s wave, is indicated by the 50 percent decline in the ratio of bank and corporation taxes to personal income taxes between 1967 and 1986 (California State Public Works Board 1987). Starting as early as 1968, voters had agitated for tax relief commensurate with the relief capital had won after putting Ronald Reagan in the governor’s mansion (Mike Davis 1990). But Sacramento’s efforts were continually disappointing under both Republican and Democratic administrations (Kirlin and Chapman 1994). This set in motion the second, or labor’s, wave, in which actual (and aspiring) homeowner-voters reduced their own taxes via Proposition 13 (1978).25 The third, or federal wave, indicates the devolution of responsibility from the federal government onto the state and local levels, as evidenced by declines of 12.5 percent (state) to 60 percent (local) in revenues derived from federal aid. The third wave can be traced to several deep tax cuts the Reagan presidential administration conferred on capital and the wealthiest of workers in 1982 and again in 1986 (David Gordon 1996; Krugman 1994). The sum of these waves produced state and local fiscal crises following in the path of federal crisis that James O’Connor ([1973] 2000) had analyzed early in the period under review when he advanced the “welfare-warfare” concept. As late as 1977–78, California state and local coffers were full (CDF-CEI 1978; Gramlich 1991). By 1983, Sacramento was borrowing to meet its budgetary goals, while county and city governments reached crisis at different times, depending on how replete their reserves had been prior to Proposition 13. Voters wanted services and infrastructure at lowered costs; and when they paid, they tried not to share. Indeed, voters were quite willing to pay for amenities that would stick in place, and between 1977–78 and 1988–89, they actually increased property-based taxes going to special assessment districts by 45 percent (Chapman 1991: 19).

we shall see in the detailed analysis that follows, the new state built itself in part by building prisons.

You of all boys should know that Man is the Storytelling Animal, and that in stories are his identity, his meaning and his lifeblood. Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasise? You know as well as I do that they do not. Man alone burns with books.’ ‘But still, the Fire of Life … it is just a fairy tale,’ insisted Dog the bear and Bear the dog, together. Nobodaddy drew himself up indignantly. ‘Do I look,’ he demanded, ‘like a fairy to you? Do I resemble, perhaps, an elf? Do gossamer wings sprout from my shoulders? Do you see even a trace of pixie dust? I tell you now that the Fire of Life is as real as I am, and that only that Unquenchable Blaze will do what you all wish done. It will turn bear into Man and dog into Dog-Man, and it will also be the End of Me. Luka! You little murderer! Your eyes light up at the very thought! How thrilling! I am amongst assassins! What are we waiting for, then? Are we starting now? Let’s be off! Tick, tock! There is no time to lose!’ At this point Luka’s feet began to feel as if somebody was gently tickling their soles. Then the silver sun rose above the horizon, and something quite unprecedented began to happen to the neighbourhood, the neighbourhood that wasn’t Luka’s real neighbourhood, or not quite. Why was the sun silver, for one thing? And why was everything too brightly coloured, too smelly, too noisy? The sweetmeats on the street vendor’s barrow at the corner looked like they might taste odd, too. The fact that Luka was able to look at the street vendor’s barrow at all was a part of the strange situation, because the barrow was always positioned at the crossroads, just out of sight of his house, and yet here it was, right in front of him, with those oddly coloured, oddly tasting sweetmeats all over it, and those oddly coloured, oddly buzzing flies buzzing oddly all around it. How was this possible? Luka wondered. After all, he hadn’t moved a step, and there was the street vendor asleep under the barrow, so the barrow obviously hadn’t moved either; and how did the crossroads arrive as well, um, that was to say, how had he arrived at the crossroads?

2014 Andy’s message continues   You know, Young, before you came along, the other students I chaperoned were mere duties to me. Life with them was much simpler. When you came into the picture, it became more difficult for me to separate the sex act and the intimate relationship we shared. I would often end up at an emotional crossroads when you were summoned to perform sexual duties. No matter how I told myself that you were merely performing a sexual favour and that love doesn’t enter into that equation, an acrid taste plagued me, even when I busied myself with passionate projects while waiting for you to complete your tasks. These negativities ate at my core, challenging my sanity and begging me to snatch you away from the sexual situations. A part of me wanted to possess you rather than permit you to come into your own. Yet as soon as I saw you, happy and bouncing into view, my levelheadedness and sound judgement would return. Once again, I could wrap you in my arms and surround you with my love. Although I may have seemed composed, those were indeed trying times. I had to restrain my irrationality so I wouldn’t jeopardise our E.R.O.S. statuses. Like you, I was also pushing the green-eyed monster back into its abysmal lair. Reflecting on those experiences, I’m surprised I managed to constrain myself. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m grateful for my Bahriji training and E.R.O.S. experiences – without them, I would not have been as strong or resilient. I remember Eric Hoffer, the American moral and social philosopher, who wrote, “Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.” Though I don’t consider E.R.O.S. recruits and members sinners, I think our experiences were, in a way, saintly – were they not?               Well, young one (you will always be my ‘young one’), I’ll message you again. For now I bid you au revoir mon ami. I’ll be in touch.               Love,               Andy

The idea of becoming a mother at sixteen was the scariest thing that she’d ever thought of.

As a young sixteen-year-old girl, Camila “Cami” Alderson should’ve been worrying about finding the right dress for the junior prom and goofing off with friends. The possibility of being pregnant should’ve been the last thing on her mind but the scary thought was always there.

She glanced down at the pregnancy test. Her worst fear has become her new reality.

Tammy dips her pickles in mustard and red dirt and everyone knows why,” she whispered as if someone might overhear.

He was her first. She loved him, and she honestly thought that they would spend the rest of their lives together.

She may have been only sixteen years old, but there was a new life growing inside of her. She fought back tears that she could feel forming in her eyes. She hated to admit it but she was scared since she wasn’t even old enough to take care of a baby. She wasn’t even old enough to take care of herself. She was just a kid who still lived at home with her mother, and this kid was not ready to become a mother.

Leena and Kelly Davidson have always lived a comfortable life. Neither girl has ever held a job nor did they intend to get one. All they wanted was to live off their parents’ money for their rest of their lives. What could be better than that?

Although she was older, it seemed as if Kaci was the one who was the older sister. She had always been more mature and was always taking the lead. Many older siblings would hate taking orders from their younger siblings but she didn’t mind. This had always suited her just fine because she didn’t like being the one to take charge. She would rather be the follower than the leader.

Diane had always admired Kaci’s strength and outspoken nature.

No matter where we might travel or who we might meet, everyone has a story they want to share with the world. And the truth of the matter is everyone does have a story worth telling, if he or she knows where to look. And that’s what this book is about─helping readers and writers find that crossroad, locate that milestone, and hone in on that moment in time that has lessons for us all. It’s true not every thing that has ever happened to you will make a good book, however, there are moments in everyone’s life that, with the right spin, could make for a dramatic work of art.

with a mouth of lush church grass I stand at the crossroads drinking the light of faith on the shores of eternity I lead my body, on like a dun horse in the dusk toward the forest somewhere

Book Awards. Stacy has a love of thrillers and crime fiction, and she is always looking for the next dark and twisted novel to enjoy. She started her career in journalism before becoming a stay at home mother and rediscovering her love of writing. She lives in Iowa with her husband and daughter and their three

Mentor Me: ...the crossroads and convergence of where science, metaphysics, religion, and utopian society intersect.

In his book Our Wild Calling, Richard Louv describes this modern human condition as “a desperate hunger for connection with other life.… All of us are meant to live in a larger community, an extended family of other species.” Without this, a number of pathologies grow within us and “the family of humans loses comfort, companionship, and perhaps even the sense of higher power, however one defines it.” Animals, too, have evolved with humans among them—and this distanced relationship in which we currently live may be an incalculable, unknowable loss to them as well. Being in

A mist gathered in his eyes. He’d stuffed the anger so deep, it only took the right trigger to boil ignite. No, he’d never really forgiven Jana. He’d said all the right things in church and covered it over with smiles for the family, but old scars waited for the right moment to reopen

Books are not meant to remain in your mind, but in your heart. Maybe they exist in your mind too, but as something more than memories. At a crossroads in life, a forgotten sentence or a story from years ago can come back to offer an invisible hand and guide you to a decision. Personally, I feel like the books I’ve read led me to make the choices I’ve made in life. While I may not remember all the details, the stories continue to exert a quiet influence on me.

high to the oak’s crown, she napped among the oak’s branches. Lynda wrote about the experience in her book Witness Tree, and told me she has no doubt that in time, the tree recognized her presence—that they belonged to each other. To return and return and return is to come into relatedness with a specific tree and the surrounding land. It is the great lesson.

My love for reading was the only hobby Mom and I had in common. She always let me pack extra books on our trips. In Paris, she’d shopped for handbags at boring designer stores. I’d insisted we go to Princes’ Park, where the Paris Saint-Germain football club played. But the day we’d had the most fun was when we’d bounced from bookshop to bookshop together.

With my legs straddling two oceans, I savour the last of my beer and toss the empty bottle into the water. While it gurgles to the bottom, I realize it’s not a metaphor I’m living; I am at a crossroads.

For hundreds of years, Buddhist monks in Vietnam have meditated in open cemeteries, bodies of their brethren in different states of decay around them. There, they envision the same processes that will inevitably be at work upon their own bodies. Saint Benedict, a fifth-century Italian monk and scholar, authored a famous book-length Rule for living that is still followed by many monastic orders and their oblates (including Benedictines, the Trappist order that drew Thomas Merton to monastic life, and even some Buddhist monasteries). Sisters and brothers following the Rule are counseled to “keep death ever before you.” Such meditations call us to acknowledge more fully the insistent ephemerality of our existence and to live with more intention, generosity, humility, and love.

British geographer and archaeologist Michael Dames, in his book Mythic Ireland, reflects on Tuan: Only by empathising with, and thus becoming, the “lower” species can humanity hope to return from spiritual, moral and physical death.7

I don’t think Jung ever meant for archetypes to be these defanged, declawed, just psychologized things. I mean, if you look at The Red Book, he was working with entities. And I think archetypes were his attempt to really understand the prima materia underneath these different deity forms and forces that arise trans-culturally.

Do you wish… to cross the bridge?

[Reading from her book:] “Before me manifested the Peacock God, a beautiful being with curly dark hair, blue skin and eyes aflame and all I could say was, ‘Lord, welcome, Lord.’ And I bowed not out of subservience, but out of honor and respect. And many different associations began running through my mind as I tried to associate this being, this fairy king, with a deity. At first I thought, is it Krishna? And he responded, ‘I’m like that, Krishna was based on me.’ And I thought, is this Dionysius? And again, he responded, ‘I’m like that, he’s based on me.’ And then I remembered the Peacock God, known as Lucifer from the Anderson Feri tradition. And he responded, ‘I’m like that, he’s based on me.

In Welsh tradition, Gwyn was known as the “King under the hill.” He is associated with certain hills, beneath which he was said to have his palace. Place names like that of the hill-fort of Caer Drewyn near Corwen are thought to have originated from Tref Wyn, “the homestead of Gwyn.” Gwyn is also associated with the tradition of the Wild Hunt, which is found in many lands. Given the nature of the Wild Hunt and the gathering of human souls, it should come as no surprise that Gwyn is a psychopomp and is described very clearly as such in The Black Book of Carmarthen, one of the oldest surviving texts written in Welsh.

the mission of the intercessor on the Day of Judgment, but have abandoned all religions, and denied the after-world and its penalties. . . . They assert that the books which the prophets brought are clear error, and that the Koran, the Torah and the Gospels are nothing but fakes and idle talk. . . . They are wholly given up to villainy and debauchery, and ride the steed of perfidy and presumption, and dive in the sea of delusion and oppression and are united under the banner of Satan.

According to folklorist Máire MacNeill in her 1962 book, The Festival of Lughnasa, the primary narrative that emerges from the Lughnasadh folklore and rites is a conflict between two gods over the harvest. The grain is kept by one god, who is typically referred to as “Crom Dubh.” In the conflict that ensues, Lugh and later St. Patrick wrest the grain from Crom Dubh to share among the people. Crom Dubh is likely the same figure as Crom Cruach and shares some qualities with the Daghdha and Donn,9 further connections to the Dark One.

Imam Mohammed al-Saud died in 1765, and in such a backwater would have remained as obscure as the village that he ruled had he not met Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792). Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab was something of an Arabian Martin Luther with a touch of John Knox thrown in. He was charismatic, possessed significant political skills, and saw himself as a religious reformer. Some would say he was a fanatic; he was certainly fervent in his beliefs and today would be called a fundamentalist. Like all fundamentalists, Abd al-Wahhab accepted a literal interpretation of his holy book and, like Luther, wanted to rid his religion of practices for which he could find no basis in scripture. Among these practices were: sorcery, idol worship, sun worship, fortune-telling, animism, the cult of ancestors, seeking intercession from saints, and even worshiping stones, tombs, and trees.3 Above all, he emphasized the unity of God (tawheed) and the avoidance of innovation (bid’a), by which he meant anything not found in the Quran or known to the Salaf, the pious ancestors of Islam’s first three generations from whom the term Salafi is derived.

Just as I live at many intersections—privilege and wounding, fracturedness and wholeness—so, too, does this book. In pagan mythic terms, it lives at the crossroads where different worlds and realities meet and change is possible.

That’s how music works. It can take your blues, dust them in a wicked mojo, sneak them to that crossroads where the Devil hangs out, and swap them for a veggie burrito made by a blissed-out Deadhead in a parking lot. This might not be exactly what you ordered, but it might inspire you all the same.

Thus we were able to compare our prospects of Habilitation in the spring of 1922 and conclude that our situations were quite different. Both of us stood at a crossroads. Benjamin was still pursuing his aim of achieving an academic career via a Privatdozentur; this was his clear-cut ambition, and because he sought to obtain the resources for it from his parents, his relations with them were in constant turmoil. To me, however, the renunciation of ambition was a primary factor in my decision to go to Palestine, a plan that now approached the stage of realization. Anyone who went over there in those days could not think of a career, and that I would have one later could not be foreseen. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem was not yet in existence, and no one believed that it would become a reality in the foreseeable future. To be sure, I had published a few German essays that had made some impression, as well as a book that no one was going to read. But I had to expect that in Judaic studies there would be far more thoroughly trained experts than I, one of the first in my generation who had taken up such studies quite independently and without any intention of becoming a rabbi. I believe it was the moral element in this decision that contributed to Benjamin’s great trust in me, a trust that he continued to entertain for a long time to come.

The Buddha was born in Kapilavastu (on the Indo–Nepal border) but he attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, just south of the old Magadhan capital of Rajgir. However, he did not deliver his first sermon in Bodh Gaya, the nearby towns and villages or even in the royal capital of Rajgir. Instead, he headed west to Varanasi (also called Kashi). Why did he go all the way to Varanasi to spread his message? According to historian Vidula Jayaswal, this was a natural choice since Varanasi was an important place for the exchange of both goods and ideas because it stood at the crossroads between the Uttara Path and a highway that came down from the Himalayas and then continued south as the Dakshina Path. In some ways, this remains true to this day as the east–west National Highway 2 meets the north–south National Highway 7 at Varanasi” Excerpt From: Sanjeev Sanyal. “Land of the Seven Rivers A Brief History of India's Geography”. Apple Books.

The Sacred Place of A Loving Mother It felt so unreal The atmosphere surreal Yet, you had serenity As you said your final goodbyes With conviction, you waved at us Until you gave your last breath That was the end of you on Earth Years go by and I realise I hope to see you one more time So, I keep looking around Your departure left in me a gaping wound That wound sometimes bleeds No matter how much I try to hide it I cannot help but long for you Mommy Your beautiful smile calmed my nerves Your warm presence gave me calmness Your gentle kindness changed who I am Your wealth of wisdom helped me grow Your staunch support kept me strong Your sincere sacrifices brought me hope Your powerful prayers made me a conqueror If you could hear my voice I would whisper the words “I love you.” If you could see my face You would realise that I miss you If you could look at me now You would understand how much I need you If you could notice my tears I know you would wipe them there and there If you could get closer to me You would give me a hug and say, “It is okay.” Because right now, I feel it is not Mama! Deep in my heart, there is a vacuum A vacuum that no one can ever fill Every time I am at crossroads I wonder what you would say or do Living next to you was a great blessing You were an amazing parent to me And you will always be my inspiration In sadness, I recall how you prayed In happiness, I recount how you praised the Lord In the wilderness, I remember how you trusted God It is still hard to believe you are gone I will cherish you forever My loving Mother No one can ever take your sacred place

What would you do if it were you at the crossroads?" "That depends on what each one offered," Emma mused. "You got any ideas?" "One road is the path that everyone else tells you that you'll do great on, but you lose everyone in your life that matters; and the other is you spending your life the way you always wanted to... like riding on a Tilt-a-Whirl with the greatest friends you could ask for, no matter how much it made you want to hurl." "You did come close to chucking out your guts, didn't you?" Emma grinned. "Me?" Arnold smiled back. "I was talking about you." "Okay, so it's all about me now, huh?" "Oh, definitely," Arnold chuckled, "it always will be.

Oh Sunshine, don't you just hate when you reach a crossroad day in your life when you have to make a decision that will affect your life forever? It just seems like a few years ago that Astraea's biggest crossroad decision in life was what type of bubble gum she wanted to get stuck in her hair for the day ha-ha!

Dear Daughter, The ups and downs of life can affect your ability to make choices. When you find yourself at crossroads, pray and ask God to help you make the right choice. The right choices will get the right doors to open for you and attract God’s blessings to you.

One day, I don’t know which, I found myself in this world, having lived unfeelingly from the time I was evidently born until then. When I asked where I was, everyone misled me, and they contradicted each other. When I asked them to tell me what I should do, they all spoke falsely, and each one said something different. When in bewilderment I stopped on the road, everyone was shocked that I didn’t keep going to no one knew where, or else turn back – I, who’d woken up at the crossroads and didn’t know where I’d come from. I saw that I was on stage and didn’t know the part that everyone else recited straight off, also without knowing it. I saw that I was dressed as a page, but they didn’t give me the queen, and blamed me for not having her. I saw that I had a message in my hand to deliver, and when I told them that the sheet of paper was blank, they laughed at me. And I still don’t know if they laughed because all sheets are blank, or because all messages are to be guessed. Finally I sat down on the rock at the crossroads as before the fireplace I never had. And I began, all by myself, to make paper boats with the lie they’d given me. No one would believe in me, not even as a liar, and there was no lake where I could try out my truth.

And now tell me"-in the end I could not restrain myself "how did you manage to know?" "My good Adso," my master said, "during our whole journey I have been teaching you to recognize the evidence through which the world speaks to us like a great book. Alanus de Insulis said that omnis mundi creatura quasi liber et pictura nobis est in speculum and he was thinking of the endless array of symbols with which God, through His creatures, speaks to us of the eternal life. But the universe is even more talkative than Alanus thought, and it speaks not only of the ultimate things (which it does always in an obscure fashion) but also of closer things, and then it speaks quite clearly. I am almost embarrassed to repeat to you what you should know. At the cross roads, on the still-fresh snow, a horse's hoofprints stood out very neatly, heading for the path to our left. Neatly spaced, those marks said that the hoof was small and round, and the gallop quite regular --and so I deduced the nature of the horse, and the fact that it was not running wildly like a crazed animal. At the point where the pines formed a natural roof, some twigs had been freshly broken off at a height of five feet. One of the blackberry bushes where the animal must have turned to take the path to his right, proudly switching his handsome tail, still held some long black horsehairs in its brambles. ... You will not say, finally, that you do not know that path leads to the dungheap, because as we passed the lower curve we saw the spill of waste down the sheer cliff below the great south tower, staining the snow; and from the situation of the crossroads, the path could only lead in that direction." "Yes," I said, "but what about the small head, the sharp ears, the big eyes...?" "I am not sure he has those features, but no doubt the monks firmly believe he does. As Isidore of Seville said, the beauty of a horse requires that the head be small, siccum prope pelle ossibus adhae rente, short and pointed ears, big eyes, flaring nostrils, erect neck, thick mane and tail, round and solid hoofs.' If the horse whose passing I inferred had not really been the finest of the stables, stableboys would have been out chasing him, but instead, the cellarer in person had undertaken the search. And a monk who considers a horse excel lent, whatever his natural forms, can only see him as the auctoritates have described him, especially if" and here he smiled slyly in my direction-"the describer is a learned Benedictine." "All right," I said, "but why Brunellus?" "May the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind, son!" my master exclaimed. "What other name could he possibly have? Why, even the great Buridan, who is about to become rector in Paris, when he wants to use a horse in one of his logical examples, always calls it Brunellus This was my master's way. He not only knew how to read the great book of nature, but also knew the way monks read the books of Scripture, and how they thought through them. A gift that, as we shall see, was to prove useful to him in the days to follow. His explanation, moreover, seemed to me at that point so obvious that my humiliation at not having discovered it by myself was surpassed only by my pride at now being a sharer in it, and I was almost congratulat ing myself on my insight. Such is the power of the truth that, like good, it is its own propagator. And praised be the holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ for this splendid revelation I was granted.

I have always felt a strange, vague presence near me: shadowy at night, a paler whiteness in the day, and changing shapes to the point of having none at the moments when I feared it most. Fascinated, I found myself at a crossroad; but in front of a hole. There, night and day did not know each other. I approached a death which did not know death because it had not known life, a death without dead, an orphaned life without lives, where nothing was ever other than nothing.