Cruise Love Quotes

Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like who wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird singing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.

I’m not interested in driving a racecar, but I would love to cruise around in a palindrome.

Both the five-year-olds looked at me with bewilderment and a bit of fearful uncertainty. I had a sudden horrifying image of the woman I might become if I'm not careful: Crazy Aunt Liz. The divorcee in the muumuu with the dyed orange hair who doesn't eat dairy but smokes menthols, who's always just coming back from her astrology cruise or breaking up with her aroma-therapist boyfriend, who reads the Tarot cards of kindergarteners and says things like, "Bring Aunty Liz another wine cooler, baby, and I'll let you wear my mood ring...

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.If you say "No! I don't want it right now," that's when you'll get it for sure. Love will make a way out of no way. Love is an exploding cigar which we willingly smoke.

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.

And yet ... But what if ... I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect.

Listen,” he says, pulling a curled fist out of his pocket. He takes one of Alex’s hands and turns it to press something small and heavy into his palm. “I want you to know, I’m sure. A thousand percent.” He removes his hand and there, sitting in the center of Alex’s callused palm, is the signet ring. “What?” Alex’s eyes flash up to search Henry’s face and find him smiling softly. “I can’t—” “Keep it,” Henry tells him. “I’m sick of wearing it.” It’s a private airstrip, but it’s still risky, so he folds Henry in a hug and whispers fiercely, “I completely fucking love you.” At cruising altitude, he takes the chain off his neck and slides the ring on next to the old house key. They clink together gently as he tucks them both under his shirt, two homes side by side.

Caring is open-hearted, keeping us available to transmit love to a stranger through simple eye contact and without condition. This is not the opportunistic sizing-up of sexual cruising; instead, it’s the felt recognition of the divinity and humanity in another individual.

If you love category-five rapids on a river that can drown you, dissolve your skin, and corrode your sense of self all at the same time, I highly recommend a giant serpent cruise on the Styx.

After you give yourself the chance to get to know yourself, love on yourself, and finally put yourself first, you’ll be like a kid in the candy store, because your life is so sweet. This is because you’ve accepted your flaws, you’ve learned how to say no without regret, you’re giving yourself so much attention and are loving yourself to the moon and back. You are in your ‘Ahah’ moment, and goodness gracious, you are in the zone where nobody can interrupt your inner peace. As others’ houses of cards fall down, you press forward because that isn’t your problem. You are taking happy steps, your mind is on cruise control, and you’ve created a new and improved plan for your life. Life is good!

You know when you’re on a course that you know is the right one. You can’t explain it, you can’t define it, you don’t know how you got there or what all the obstacles will be, you just know the end result will be amazing and it will be worth it. That was the road I was on. Full speed ahead, no blinkers or turn signals, just cruise control.

But we want more than love. We want a lifelong wingman/wingwoman who completes us and can handle the truth, to mix metaphors from three different Tom Cruise movies.

We live in a world of unimaginable surprises - from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this light’s dancing for eons upon the earth - and yet paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn't know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.

she thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul—but all that, which was no small thing, just got you to first base. There were many, many other trips to take to deeper levels of greater acceptance and understanding. That was where you found the happy. And the ever-after was the work you were always willing to put in to stay close, to learn, and to grow as people together.

Infatuation doesn't last because it's conditional and conditions change, but if it's real love, it turns into mature, unconditional love, and new chemicals are released in the brain, Endorphins that make you feel warm and peaceful and satisfied and content whenever you're with the one you love.... And miserable when you're without him because if he's not there, the brain won't produce chemicals.

Tom Cruise isn't that big of a guy," my mom always says. I love how she tries to avoid using the word "short." Yeah," I tell her in return, "but he compensates by being Tom Cruise." Not that anyone really wants to BE Tom Cruise anymore now that he's a crazy couch jumper. But whatever.

Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked--the angel in her dream--but she didn't know how to find him. Should she roller-skate through the streets in the evenings when the streetlights flicker on? Should she stow away to Jamaica on a cruise ship and search for him in the rain forests and along the beaches? Would he come to her? Was he waiting, dreaming of her in the same way she waited and dreamed?

The last time I was on a cruise it was through the Greek islands with Justin, and I was positively glowing with love and post-sex hormones. Now, huddled in a corner with three Aldi bags of knitting needles, crochet hooks and wool, accompanied by an ex-hippy and a sardine sandwich, I can no longer deny the fact that my life has taken a turn for the worse.

You will never know your destiny ... You'll never know where your cruise will stop for the last time .. life is a journey that can not be in guessed .. only heaven know ^^ but whatever, just love and live your life with courage .. and die without regret ! ( andry lavigne )

she thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control.

Perhaps I had never had a grip on myself to start with, living life on cruise-control while I waited for a home that would never be mine. It would be warm. Loving. Wonderfully chaotic, occasionally tempestuous, but full of good intentions and laughter. It would be all of the great things embodied by your run-of-the-mill greeting card, and it was still the last thing that I thought of each night as I let myself believe for a moment or two that such things were possible.

...it's been amazing- not perfect, but amazing. I'm actually glad of the nonperfection because that has made our relationship feel more grounded, solid, and real than what I had (...), which just cruised blithely along, deceptively perfect, until it crashed and burned in a fiery wreck.

As he kissed her back, she thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul—but all that, which was no small thing, just got you to first base. There were many, many other trips to take to deeper levels of greater acceptance and understanding. That was where you found the happy. And the ever-after was the work you were always willing to put in to stay close, to learn, and to grow as people together.

...good drivers are people who can put their brains on cruise control.

LOVE IT! :) Yeah. They've been doing BIG billboards of this in the gayborhoods in NYC, LA and SanFran. Although I wouldn't fuck a Scientologist on a dare. 8|

Love comes to us unexpectedly to teach us the art of devotion.

A pang of love and regret; the name of an old amour on your cruise ship’s passenger list.

Attempting to Soar" A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights. As soon as he’d hit sixty he’d hold his hand out the window, cupping it around the wind. He’d been assured this is exactly how a woman’s breast feels when you put your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew, and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up. For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting to soar. One winter’s night, holding his wife’s breast in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep. He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now. As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings, he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow. He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared.

He lied,” she said. “There is no way for us to seize bitcoins. Well, there is no current way for the federal government to seize bitcoins at will; in order to do that we’d need one of the creators of the currency.” She paused and watched me very closely for a reaction. This was all still gibberish to me. This was something out of a science fiction novel, or a Stephen King movie with Tom Cruise where Tom Cruise has to run someplace from some people—because that’s what Tom Cruise does, he runs while looking concerned and futuristic. Therefore, I decided to look surprised and thoughtful. “Yes.” She nodded; she believed I was following her train of thought. I wasn’t following her train because mine had derailed on thoughts of a running Tom Cruise…weird little man.

You’re going to be my wife soon. Even if you weren’t, I would still have invested in you. I believe in you, angel, you’re talented, and I’m proud to be the man who gets to place his bets on you.

Ah Camilla, you lost girl! Open your long fingers and give me back my tired soul! Kiss me with your mouth because I hunger for the bread of a Mexican hill. Breathe the fragrance of lost cities into fevered nostrils, and let me die here, my hand upon the soft contour of your throat, so like the whiteness of some half-forgotten southern shore. Take the longing in these restless eyes and feed it to lonely swallows cruising an Autumn cornfield, because I love you Camilla, and your name is sacred like that of some brave princess who died with a smile for a love that was never returned.” I

So let me get this straight,” she made finger quotes in the air, “Doctor Jeffery Scott is looking for a butt ugly woman with zero personality, no skills, and no goals, right?” She leaned forward. “Do those even exist anymore?” “Not that I know of. I think he hates the competition. He may have to start cruising the feed stores and bait shops to find some babe with overalls and a crew cut. That might suit him.

The avengers outside are the worst kind, the ones in silver cross necklaces, baseball caps, and Life is Good T-shirts. The ones who stay up until midnight to build their first-graders’ Alamo projects out of sugar cubes, cancel a Thanksgiving cruise to bring Grandma some turkey in the hospital, spend a full paycheck on ACL surgery for the family dog. Their love for God and family is just as manic as their hate.

Ageing Woman I am invisible now, indistinguishable in a passing crowd - just another woman blending in. I remember, not long ago, in that whimsical way memory measures time, I ached with the desire to be desired. I was catcalled as soon I stepped out on the street, I was groped and pawed at sidewalk lights, pinched by Italian teenagers cruising on Vespas. My sex smelled then of camphor and oranges. It now smells musty books and cucumbers - And I love it. I am content in my ageing cloak of invisibility, I breathe a sigh of relief, free from the man-handling, unwelcome fondling, free from the incessant gaze of strangers, free from the foolishness of sex. There, I've said it. I'M FREE, FREE, FREE OF SEX. Free at last. I have faith in the wisdom of this old body which no longer craves what I can no longer have and I sleep like a baby, peacefully in my single bed.

pass on a love of lifelong learning. This isn’t always easy, but it’s certainly simple. We provide a safe haven for exploration, and through our own behavior we model what it is like to eagerly learn. We don’t have to be like a cruise ship director, with one scheduled activity after another.

I replied that I did not quite know what my ailment had been, but that I had certainly suffered a good deal especially in mind. Further, on this subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for the details of what I had undergone belonged to a portion of my existence in which I never expected my godmother to take a share. Into what a new region would such a confidence have led that hale, serene nature! The difference between her and me might be figured by that between the stately ship cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old, dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide between them the rule of the great deep. No, the "Louisa Bretton" never was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own counsel, and spins no yarns.

I don’t have any fancy story, about the way we fell in love. It was that one awkward move, and the next I remember, I was looking at you. I don’t have any fancy allegory, about how we decided to marry, It was over the deck of that cruise, that you made an awkward move, And the next I remember, I conceived in your eye, some purer truth, and I was looking at you. I don’t have any fancy history, about how I know you so deeply, It always was that one awkward move, which I have trusted to pursue. Who said lovers are complex? All you need is their, one awkward move. Their soul in an instant, is engulfed, In that one tick of drool. That’s all what love is, that one awkward move, which is only meant only for you.

Make up your mind as she makes up her face She'll never really know her place You'll lay on her frame and give her a new name And bless her with all you can spare Empty as wire, violent as fire You'll carve her out of thin air She's crashed home and cruised your world But you can't get the Belfast out of the girl This is how you throw her, you think you know her Empty as wire, violent as fire She hasn't left you yet but she will By airplane ticket or kill-me pills Sewn into her dress, she can't refuse (careful what you love, what you abuse) She knows violence, she knows please Her hands for cuffing and she says nothing And hooks her hands behind her knees You fuck her flag and feel it unfurl But you can't get the Belfast out of the girl.

The Three-Decker "The three-volume novel is extinct." Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail. It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail; But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best— The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest. Fair held the breeze behind us—’twas warm with lovers’ prayers. We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs. They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed, And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest. By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook, Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed, And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest. We asked no social questions—we pumped no hidden shame— We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came: We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but—Zuleika didn’t tell. No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered. ’Twas fiddle in the forc’s’le—’twas garlands on the mast, For every one got married, and I went ashore at last. I left ’em all in couples a-kissing on the decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed, I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain. They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws. Swing round your aching search-light—’twill show no haven’s peace. Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas! Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest— And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest! But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail, At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale, Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed, You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest. You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread; You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ’neath her leaping figure-head; While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine! Hull down—hull down and under—she dwindles to a speck, With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck. All’s well—all’s well aboard her—she’s left you far behind, With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind. Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make? You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake? Well, tinker up your engines—you know your business best— She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!

Up before sunrise. Marjorie hated getting out of bed in the dark, but loved the payoff once she was dressed and rolling down the country roads in the first light, cruising and owning them almost alone. The countryside here used to be a lot more interesting, though. She remembered it in her girlhood - orchards, small ranches, farmhouses, each one of these houses a distinct personality... Money, she thought wryly, scanning the endless miles of grapevines, all identically wired and braced and drip-lined, mile after mile - money was such a powerful organizer. As the dawn light gained strength, and bathed the endless vines in tarnished silver, it struck her that there was, after all, something scary about money, that it could run loose in the world like a mythic monster, gobbling up houses and trees, serving strictly its own monstrous appetite. ("The Growlimb")

Like a cup of coffee or a hot shower, William’s smile was the perfect way to begin the day. Before school, Kelly would often open the front door to discover that smile waiting for him. Or if it was his turn to drive, he would cruise over to William’s house, park in the driveway and sit on the hood of the car , casually waiting for it to appear. And there it would be. That smile, lighting up the world and making Kelly’s insides buzz.

He was the one, however, with whom no one wanted his or her picture taken, the one to whom no one wanted to introduce his son or daughter. Louis and Gage knew him; they had met him and faced him down in New England, some time ago. He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boggie of electricity—Available at Your Nearest Switchplate or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nurdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too—Shower with a Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who’s out there? you howled into the dark when you were frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don’t be afraid, it’s just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let’s go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar blue cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation—in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all the oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name’s Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want—hell, we’re old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can’t stay, got to see a woman about a breach birth, then I’ve got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha. And that thin voice is crying, “I love you, Tigger! I love you! I believe in you, Tigger! I will always love you and believe in you, and I will stay young, and the only Oz to ever live in my heart will be that gentle faker from Nebraska! I love you . . .” We cruise . . . my son and I . . . because the essence of it isn’t war or sex but only that sickening, noble, hopeless battle against Oz the Gweat and Tewwible. He and I, in our white van under this bright Florida sky, we cruise. And the red flasher is hooded, but it is there if we need it . . . and none need know but us because the soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can . . . and tends it.

We both saw on the cruise how one of the very diamonds they brag about tore your parents apart. It brought the end of love, and forever has no end. But I think of our love, Bella, and our love is unbreakable. Our love is stronger than the hardest stones and more beautiful than the greatest jewels. Our love is worth more than infinite wealth and more precious than the rarest gemstones. Our love is superior to diamonds, the greatest treasure known to man.

I can live with that.” Each morning they rose at dawn and, while Tate percolated coffee, Kya fried corn fritters in Ma’s old iron skillet—blackened and dented—or stirred grits and eggs as sunrise eased over the lagoon. The heron posing one-legged in the mist. They cruised estuaries, waded waterways, and slipped through narrow streams, collecting feathers and amoebas. In the evenings, they drifted in her old boat until sunset, then swam naked in moonlight or loved in beds of cool ferns.

In South Texas I saw three interesting things. The first was a tiny girl, maybe ten years old, driving in a 1965 Cadillac. She wasn't going very fast, because I passed her, but still she was cruising right along, with her head tilted back and her mouth open and her little hands gripping the wheel. Then I saw an old man walking up the median strip pulling a wooden cross behind him. It was mounted on something like a golf cart with two spoked wheels. I slowed down to read the hand-lettered sign on his chest. JACKSONVILLE FLA OR BUST I had never been to Jacksonville but I knew it was the home of the Gator Bowl and I had heard it was a boom town, taking in an entire county or some such thing. It seemed an odd destination for a religious pilgrim. Penance maybe for some terrible sin, or some bargain he had worked out with God, or maybe just a crazed hiker. I waved and called out to him, wishing him luck, but he was intent on his marching and had no time for idle greetings. His step was brisk and I was convinced he wouldn't bust. The third interesting thing was a convoy of stake-bed trucks all piled high with loose watermelons and cantaloupes. I was amazed. I couldn't believe that the bottom ones weren't crushed under all that weight, exploding and spraying hazardous melon juice onto the highway. One of nature's tricks with curved surfaces. Topology! I had never made it that far in mathematics and engineering studies, and I knew now that I never would, just as I knew that I would never be a navy pilot or a Treasury agent. I made a B in Statics but I was failing in Dynamics when I withdrew from the field. The course I liked best was one called Strength of Materials. Everybody else hated it because of all the tables we had to memorize but I loved it, the sheared beam. I had once tried to explain to Dupree how things fell apart from being pulled and compressed and twisted and bent and sheared but he wouldn't listen. Whenever that kind of thing came up, he would always say - boast, the way those people do - that he had no head for figures and couldn't do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.

As he kissed her back, she thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul—but all that, which was no small thing, just got you to first base. There were many, many other trips to take to deeper levels of greater acceptance and understanding. That was where you found the happy. And the ever-after was the work you were always willing to put in to stay close, to learn, and to grow as people together. “I

And lastly were the single women. They would run the gamut from somewhat pretty to somewhat plain, dreadful, incurable diseases that had relegated them to lives of obscurity and boredom. They were hardly unattractive, each having something special to offer, but their figures and faces were more real than the latest Hollywood celebrity gracing the magazine cover at their local supermarket checkout. Outcasts in a non-substantive culture which worshipped only facade, they were hoping for the romance found in the pages of the Harlequins and Harold Robbins novels they read in their bedrooms, a pint of ice cream at their side. Their bedroom was their sanctuary, a place where they could dream of being taken and loved, worshipped and lusted after. If they were lucky, they would take home from Cozumel a sweet memory they would make last a lifetime. Evidence that they had lived. If they were unlucky, they would cross paths with a swarthy local Lothario or worse, a butch cruising for the vulnerable. The unsafe mix of inexperience and loneliness would lead them to acts so shameful and degrading they would never be able to enjoy the innocence of another Harlequin.

Cesca sipped from her coffee cup as she peered through the windshield into the darkness. Rain was falling hard on a San Francisco she didn’t recognize from her own universe, or from her time in the other Matt’s universe. The real darkness here had nothing to do with night. This San Francisco mirrored the moral corruption and decay of the society which inhabited it. She and Ariel had been here two days, scouring streets filled with perversion and hopelessness; alleyways inhabited by the homeless and mentally ill; sex shops catering to every perversion imaginable and unimaginable; sidewalks teeming with drug addicts and male prostitutes — some dressed as women; street corners inhabited by once lovely young women prematurely aging from selling their bodies to all takers — male and female; children of both sexes, from as young as seven and eight, dressed by pimps to attract pedophiles who cruised this part of the city nightly. Many of the children would be sold on the spot, never to be seen again. Sun-faded and now graffitied wall mosaics of galvanizing yet transient political cult personalities, erected by their blinded followers centuries ago, marked this alternate world’s gradual slide into an ethical, and finally moral abyss, from which it had never crawled out. "God, I can’t believe this is San Francisco,” whispered Ariel from the seat next to Cesca. “I feel like I need to run a bar of soap over my soul.

One time, on a pleasure cruise, he saw a young couple, fiancés, sitting and looking at the water--the boy had his right arm around the girl's shoulder and held her right wrist tight and she had put her left hand on his right hand, and they sat like that, pressed close together. The little poet looked at them, it's so lovely to see a nice young couple like that. That these children are excited because they want more, that they are only getting each other worked up for what they can't do and don't dare to do, that they never know where to stop--no one ever notices that or thinks about that. It was very lovely, and maybe the truth was that they had just recently gotten engaged and were still satisfied with being madly in love with each other.

today’s psychologists tend to agree on several important points: for example, that introverts and extroverts differ in the level of outside stimulation that they need to function well. Introverts feel “just right” with less stimulation, as when they sip wine with a close friend, solve a crossword puzzle, or read a book. Extroverts enjoy the extra bang that comes from activities like meeting new people, skiing slippery slopes, and cranking up the stereo. “Other people are very arousing,” says the personality psychologist David Winter, explaining why your typical introvert would rather spend her vacation reading on the beach than partying on a cruise ship. “They arouse threat, fear, flight, and love. A hundred people are very stimulating compared to a hundred books or a hundred grains of sand.

Now the moment had arrived. Birgit took her place beside him in the command car. She pulled up her large striped cotton dirndl skirt made by her fellow national, Katya of Sweden, and looked around with an excited smile. But to onlookers it was more like the strained expression of a Swedish farm woman in a Swedish outhouse in the dead of a Swedish winter. She was trying to restrain her excitement at the sight of all those naked limbs in the amber light. From the shoulders up she had the delicate neckline and face of a Nordic goddess, but below her body was breastless, lumpy with bulging hips and huge round legs like sawed-off telegraph posts. She felt elated, sitting there with her man who was leading these colored people in this march for their rights. She loved colored people. Her eyeblue eyes gleamed with this love. When she looked at the white cops her lips curled with scorn. A number of police cruisers had appeared at the moment the march was to begin. They stared at the white woman and the colored man in the command car. Their lips compressed but they said nothing, did nothing. Marcus had got a police permit. The marchers lined up four abreast on the right side of the street, facing west. The command car was at the lead. Two police cars brought up the rear. Three were parked at intervals down the street as far as the railroad station. Several others cruised slowly in the westbound traffic, turned north at Lenox Avenue, east again on 126th Street, back to 125th Street on Second Avenue and retraced the route. The chief inspector had said he didn’t want any trouble in Harlem. “Squads, MARCH!” Marcus shouted over the amplifier.

IX. Drunk With Pines" Drunk with pines and long kisses, like summer I steer the fast sail of the roses, bent towards the death of the thin day, stuck into my solid marine madness. Pale and lashed to my ravenous water, I cruise in the sour smell of the naked climate, still dressed in grey and bitter sounds and a sad crest of abandoned spray. Hardened by passions, I go mounted on my one wave, lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once, becalmed in the throat of the fortunate isles that are white and sweet as cool hips. In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles charged to insanity with electric currents, heroically divided into dreams and intoxicating roses practicing on me. Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves, your parallel body yields to my arms like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul, quick and slow, in the energy under the sky.

In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose Kill the headlights and put it in neutral Stock car flamin' with a loser in the cruise control Baby's in Reno with the Vitamin D Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love seat Someone came in sayin' I'm insane to complain About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt Don't believe everything that you breathe You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve So shave your face with some mace in the dark Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park Yo, cut it Soy un perdedor I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? (Double barrel buckshot) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber 'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job The daytime crap of the folksinger slob He hung himself with a guitar string A slab of turkey neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing You can't write if you can't relate Trade the cash for the beef, for the body, for the hate And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite That's chokin' on the splinters Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (Get crazy with the cheese whiz) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (Drive-by body pierce) Yo, bring it on down I'm a driver, I'm a winner Things are gonna change, I can feel it Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (I can't believe you) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (Sprechen sie Deutsche, baby) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? (Know what I'm sayin'?)

We got into the car. It was my first time. The car was spotless and I liked its smell, the smell of old leather and old steel. When, two minutes later, we reached my building, I began to feel sorry for him but didn't know what to say or how to help. I was too shy to ask him to open up and tell me about the cloud that had cast such a gloomy shadow over him. Instead I suggested something so flatfooted that I'm surprised it did not irritate him even more than he was already. I told him to head home and sleep the whole thing off, as if sleep could free a castaway from his island. No, he needed to work, he replied. Besides, her was looking forward to driving at night. He loved cruising Boston by night. He loved jazz, old jazz, Gene Ammons — especially played en sardine, with the volume really low — as the tenor sax invariably blocked all bad feelings and made him think of romance and of sultry summer nights where a woman dances cheek to cheek with you to the saxophone's prolonged lyrical strains that made you want love even after you'd stopped trusting love exists on this planet.

POEM – MY AMAZING TRAVELS [My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures] My very first trip I still cannot believe Was planned and executed with such great ease. My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man, He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan. I got my first long vacation while working as a banker One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner. She visited my father and discussed the matter Arrangements were made without any flutter. We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany, In each of those places, there was somebody, To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places, It was a dream come true at our young ages. We even visited Holland, which was across the Border. To drive across from Germany was quite in order. Memories of great times continue to linger, I thank God for an understanding father. That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more, I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe. Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo, Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando. I was accompanied by my husband on many trips. Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit. Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah, Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla. We sailed aboard the Creole Queen On the Mississippi in New Orleans We traversed the Rockies in Colorado And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico. We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome, The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum. To explore the countryside in Florence, And to sail on a Gondola in Venice. My fridge is decorated with magnets Souvenirs of all my visits London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona. And the Leaning Tower of Pisa How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome? Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born. CN Tower in Toronto so very high I thought the elevator would take me to the sky. Then there was El Poble and Toledo Noted for Spanish Gold We travelled on the Euro star. The scenery was beautiful to behold! I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia, Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina, Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines, Places I love to lime. Of course, I would like to make special mention, Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean. Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas Two ships which grace the Seas. Last but not least and best of all We visited Paris in the fall. Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin Amazing places, which made my head, spin. Copyright@BrendaMohammed

But I believe that another important explanation for introverts who love their work may come from a very different line of research by the influential psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the state of being he calls “flow.” Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity—whether long-distance swimming or songwriting, sumo wrestling or sex. In a state of flow, you’re neither bored nor anxious, and you don’t question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing. The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings. Although flow does not depend on being an introvert or an extrovert, many of the flow experiences that Csikszentmihalyi writes about are solitary pursuits that have nothing to do with reward-seeking: reading, tending an orchard, solo ocean cruising. Flow often occurs, he writes, in conditions in which people “become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself.” In a sense, Csikszentmihalyi transcends Aristotle; he is telling us that there are some activities that are not about approach or avoidance, but about something deeper: the fulfillment that comes from absorption in an activity outside yourself. “Psychological theories usually assume that we are motivated either by the need to eliminate an unpleasant condition like hunger or fear,” Csikszentmihalyi writes, “or by the expectation of some future reward such as money, status, or prestige.” But in flow, “a person could work around the clock for days on end, for no better reason than to keep on working.

The girl circled in my arm was clean and fresh, and her sleeping breath was humid against the base of my throat. Something stirred in me in response to her helplessness, and yet at the same time I resented her. I had seen too damn many of these brisk and shining girls, so lovely, so gracious, and so inflexibly ambitious. They had counted their stock in trade and burnished it and spread it right out there on the counter. It was all yours for the asking. All you had to do was give her all the rest of your life, and come through with the backyard pool, cookouts, Eames chairs, mortgage, picture windows, two cars, and all the rest of the setting they required for themselves. These gorgeous girls, with steel behind their eyes, were the highest paid whores in the history of the world. All they offered was their poised, half-educated selves, one hundred and twenty pounds of healthy, unblemished, arrogant meat, in return for the eventual occupational ulcer, the suburban coronary. Nor did they bother to sweeten the bargain with their virginity. Before you could, in your hypnoid state, slip the ring on her imperious finger, that old-fashioned prize was long gone, and even its departure celebrated many times, on house parties and ski weekends, in becalmed sailboats and on cruise ships. This acknowledged and excused promiscuity was, in fact, to her advantage. Having learned her way through the jungly province of sex, she was less likely to be bedazzled by body hunger to the extent that she might make a bad match with an unpromising young man. Her decks were efficiently cleared, guns rolled out, fuses alight, cannonballs stacked, all sails set. She stood on the bridge, braced and ready, scanning the horizon with eyes as cold as winter pebbles. One

Well,that was fun," she said lightly as he maneuvered out of the lot. "I'm really glad you talked me into going out. My day was a blank page until seven." That long, quiet moment lingered in his mind even as it lingered in Shelby's. Alan shifted, hoping to ease the thudding in the pit of his stomach. "Always happy to help someone fill in a few empty spaces." Alan controlled the speed of the car through force of will. Holding her hadn't soothed him but rather had only served to remind him how much time had passed since he had last held her. "Actually you're an easy man to be with, Alan, for a politician." Easy? Shelby repeated to herself as she pressed the button to lower her window. Her blood was still throbbing from a meeting of eyes that had lasted less than ten seconds. If he was any easier, she'd be head over heels in love with him and headed for disaster. "I mean,you're not really pompous." He shot her a look, long and cool, that boosted her confidence. "No?" he murmured after a humming silence. "Hardly at all." Shelby sent him a smile. "Why,I'd probably vote for you myself." Alan paused at a red light, studying it thoughtfully before he turned to her. "Your insults aren't as subtle today, Shelby." "Insults?" Shelby gave him a bland stare. "Odd,I thought it was more flattery.Isn't a vote what it all comes down to? Votes, and that all-encompassing need to win." The light stayed green for five full seconds before he cruised through it. "Be careful." A nerve,she thought,hating herself more than a little. "You're a little touchy. That's all right." She brushed at the thigh of her jeans. "I don't mind a little oversensitivity." "The subject of my sensitivity isn't the issue,but you're succeeding in being obnoxious." "My,my,aren't we all Capitol Hill all of a sudden.

Dear Mom and Dad How are you? If you are reading this it means your back from the wonderful cruise my brothers and I sent you on for your anniversary. We’re sure you both had a wonderful time. We want you to know that, while you were away, we did almost everything you asked. All but one thing, that is. We killed the lawn. We killed it dead. You asked us not to and we killed it. We killed it with extreme prejudice and no regard for its planty life. We killed the lawn. Now we know what you’re thinking: “But sons, whom we love ever so much, how can this be so? We expressly asked you to care for the lawn? The exactly opposite of what you are now conveying to us in an open digital forum.” True enough. We cannot dispute this. However, we have killed the lawn. We have killed it good. We threw a party and it was quite a good time. We had a moon bounce and beer and games and pirate costumes, oh it was a good time. Were it anyone else’s party that probably would have been enough but, hey, you know us. So we got a foam machine. A frothy, wet, quite fun yet evidently deadly, foam machine. Now this dastardly devise didn’t kill the lawn per se. We hypothesize it was more that it made the lawn very wet and that dancing in said area for a great many hours over the course of several days did the deed. Our jubilant frolicking simply beat the poor grass into submission. We collected every beer cap, bottle, and can. There is not a single cigarette butt or cigar to be found. The house is still standing, the dog is still barking, Grandma is still grandmaing but the lawn is no longer lawning. Now we’re sure, as you return from your wonderful vacation, that you’re quite upset but lets put this in perspective. For one thing whose idea was it for you to leave us alone in the first place? Not your best parenting decision right there. We’re little better than baboons. The mere fact that we haven’t killed each other in years past is, at best, luck. Secondly, let us not forget, you raised us to be this way. Always pushing out limits, making sure we thought creatively. This is really as much your fault as it is ours, if not more so. If anything we should be very disappointed in you. Finally lets not forget your cruise was our present to you. We paid for it. If you look at how much that cost and subtract the cost of reseeding the lawn you still came out ahead so, really, what position are you in to complain? So let’s review; we love you, you enjoyed a week on a cruise because of us, the lawn is dead, and it’s partially your fault. Glad that’s all out in the open. Can you have dinner ready for us by 6 tonight? We’d like macaroni and cheese. Love always Peter, James & Carmine

I love to take visitors on a monuments cruise along the Potomac. The ones that leave from the Georgetown and Alexandria docks are great because they leave every 15 minutes and are, of course, close to dining and shopping.

destiny is like the cruise control systems you have in your car. You set the speed and the momentum carries you through no matter if the road is under construction or freshly paved. As the driver, you decide how smooth the ride is by steering into or around (the road hazards) or even choosing to remain on the road at all. Destiny is a driving force that can be altered by freewill.

There is a boat ride at Epcot across the World Showcase Lagoon and some could argue this is an attraction. However, there is a boat ride from the International Gateway at Epcot that goes all the way to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The ride consists of stops at Epcot, Disney’s Boardwalk, Yacht and Beach Club, Swan and Dolphin Hotel, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s a lovely cruise that connects the two theme parks. Most folks who are not staying in the resorts have no idea this 30-minute ride even exists. It is a fun way to see the different parts of the resort and it gives everyone an idea of how close Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios really is (if you don’t have to drive.) For those adventurous types, there is a walkway too and along the way you could check out the interesting architecture of the buildings.

~~~   “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Behind “The Exciting Story of Cuba” It was on a rainy evening in January of 2013, after Captain Hank and his wife Ursula returned by ship from a cruise in the Mediterranean, that Captain Hank was pondering on how to market his book, Seawater One. Some years prior he had published the book “Suppressed I Rise.” But lacking a good marketing plan the book floundered. Locally it was well received and the newspapers gave it great reviews, but Ursula was battling allergies and, unfortunately, the timing was off, as was the economy. Captain Hank has the ability to see sunshine when it’s raining and he’s not one easily deterred. Perhaps the timing was off for a novel or a textbook, like the Scramble Book he wrote years before computers made the scene. The history of West Africa was an option, however such a book would have limited public interest and besides, he had written a section regarding this topic for the second Seawater book. No, what he was embarking on would have to be steeped in history and be intertwined with true-life adventures that people could identify with. Out of the blue, his friend Jorge suggested that he write about Cuba. “You were there prior to the Revolution when Fidel Castro was in jail,” he ventured. Laughing, Captain Hank told a story of Mardi Gras in Havana. “Half of the Miami Police Department was there and the Coca-Cola cost more than the rum. Havana was one hell of a place!” Hank said. “I’ll tell you what I could do. I could write a pamphlet about the history of the island. It doesn’t have to be very long… 25 to 30 pages would do it.” His idea was to test the waters for public interest and then later add it to his book Seawater One. Writing is a passion surpassed only by his love for telling stories. It is true that Captain Hank had visited Cuba prior to the Revolution, but back then he was interested more in the beauty of the Latino girls than the history or politics of the country. “You don’t have to be Greek to appreciate Greek history,” Hank once said. “History is not owned solely by historians. It is a part of everyone’s heritage.” And so it was that he started to write about Cuba. When asked about why he wasn’t footnoting his work, he replied that the pamphlet, which grew into a book over 600 pages long, was a book for the people. “I’m not writing this to be a history book or an academic paper. I’m writing this book, so that by knowing Cuba’s past, people would understand it’s present.” He added that unless you lived it, you got it from somewhere else anyway, and footnoting just identifies where it came from. Aside from having been a ship’s captain and harbor pilot, Captain Hank was a high school math and science teacher and was once awarded the status of “Teacher of the Month” by the Connecticut State Board of Education. He has done extensive graduate work, was a union leader and the attendance officer at a vocational technical school. He was also an officer in the Naval Reserve and an officer in the U.S. Army for a total of over 40 years. He once said that “Life is to be lived,” and he certainly has. Active with Military Intelligence he returned to Europe, and when I asked what he did there, he jokingly said that if he had told me he would have to kill me. The Exciting Story of Cuba has the exhilaration of a novel. It is packed full of interesting details and, with the normalizing of the United States and Cuba, it belongs on everyone’s bookshelf, or at least in the bathroom if that’s where you do your reading. Captain Hank is not someone you can hold down and after having read a Proof Copy I know that it will be universally received as the book to go to, if you want to know anything about Cuba! Excerpts from a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer Peter Rommel, USA Retired, Military Intelligence Corps, Winter of 2014.

I just run faster and hit the slowest of the lead boys. I wink and race by him. He smells like onions and he has big, wet circles in the pits of his shirt. He speeds up, but can only stay with me for a tenth of a mile before he drops back. Then it’s Nick. I cruise next to him. He’s some sort of running god, because he isn’t close to being winded. His stride is long, powerful, and quick. “Hi.” Why I said this, I do not know. He’s cute. Okay. I am a sucker for cute boys and he was nice to Issie. Plus, he has good hair and he isn’t as pale as most Maine males. He looks like he works in the sun, or at least has seen the sun once, maybe many weeks ago. Plus, life is all supposed to be about making love, not war. My dad listened to John Lennon; I know this stuff. “You’re fast,” he says, easy. No huffing. No puffing. No blowing the house down. “So are you.” We run together, keeping pace. The only one ahead of us is Ian, who is loping around the track as if it’s nothing. Nick shrugs at me while he runs, which is really something, because when I’m running full tilt it’s hard for me to speak, let alone break form to shrug. “You can go faster, can’t you?” I huff out. He just gives a little smile again and then his eyes shift into something cold, like gravestones with just the barest information about a life etched onto them. “Zara,” he whisper-says. I lean in closer to hear him. “What?” My voice is not a whisper. It matches the thudding beat of my heart, the bass of the music that blares out of the speakers. “Awesome job, new girl!” Devyn yells, clapping.

Our publicist, Andrew Bernstein, gave Steve one of his favorite compliments. “I’ve never seen anybody promote a movie harder,” he said, “except maybe Tom Cruise.” Steve and Andrew hit it off quite well, but Steve was concerned that Andrew was single and didn’t have a girlfriend. “Come out with me,” Steve said to Andrew one evening on the plane. “We can go clubbing, and I’ll make sure you have a great time.” Steve added with a laugh, “You know, Andrew, for some reason chicks really dig me. I don’t know why, since I’m such a big ugly bloke, but they will come up and talk to me. Mate, I can pull you chicks, no problem at all.” “Steve,” Andrew said as gently as he could, “I like women, but I don’t like women.” “Oh, don’t worry about it,” Steve blustered on, still not getting it. “We’ll have a great time.” Andrew got up to use the restroom on the plane. I leaned over to Steve. “Andrew is trying to tell you that he’s gay,” I said. Steve’s eyes got really big. As soon as Andrew stepped out of the restroom, Steve piped up, “Andrew, don’t worry about it, blokes love me. We’ll go out and I’ll get you blokes.” I just about died from embarrassment. But Andrew laughed, and then we all started laughing. Andrew and Steve ended up becoming fast friends.

D’aron the Daring, Derring, Derring-do, stealing base, christened D’aron Little May Davenport, DD to Nana, initials smothered in Southern-fried kisses, dat Wigga D who like Jay Z aw-ite, who’s down, Scots-Irish it is, D’aron because you’re brave says Dad, No, D’aron because you’re daddy’s daddy was David and then there was mines who was named Aaron, Doo-doo after cousin Quint blew thirty-six months in vo-tech on a straight-arm bid and they cruised out to Little Gorge glugging Green Grenades and read three years’ worth of birthday cards, Little Mays when he hit those three homers in the Pee Wee playoff, Dookie according to his aunt Boo (spiteful she was, misery indeed loves company), Mr. Hanky when they discovered he TIVOed ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ Faggot when he hugged John Meer in third grade, Faggot again when he drew hearts on everyone’s Valentine’s Day cards in fourth grade, Dim Dong-Dong when he undressed in the wrong dressing room because he daren’t venture into the dark end of the gym, Philadelphia Freedom when he was caught clicking heels to that song (Tony thought he was clever with that one), Mr. Davenport when he won the school’s debate contest in eighth grade, Faggot again when he won the school’s debate contest in eighth grade, Faggot again more times than he cared to remember, especially the summer he returned from Chicago sporting a new Midwest accent, harder on the vowels and consonants alike, but sociable, played well with others that accent did, Faggot again when he cried at the end of ‘WALL-E,’ Donut Hole when he started to swell in ninth grade, Donut Black Hole when he continued to put on weight in tenth grade (Tony thought he was really clever with that one), Buttercup when they caught him gardening, Hippie when he stopped hunting, Faggot again when he became a vegetarian and started wearing a MEAT IS MURDER pin (Oh yeah, why you craving mine then?), Faggot again when he broke down in class over being called Faggot, Sissy after that, whispered, smothered in sniggers almost hidden, Ron-Ron by the high school debate team coach because he danced like a cross between Morrissey and some fat old black guy (WTF?) in some old-ass show called ‘What’s Happening!!’, Brainiac when he aced the PSATs for his region, Turd Nerd when he hung with Jo-Jo and the Black Bruiser, D’ron Da’ron, D’aron, sweet simple Daron the first few minutes of the first class of the first day of college.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 JOHN 4:17–18

time. A new interdisciplinary community of scientists, environmentalists, health researchers, therapists, and artists is coalescing around an idea: neuroconservation. Embracing the notion that we treasure what we love, those concerned with water and the future of the planet now suggest that, as we understand our emotional well-being and its relationship to water, we are more motivated to repair, restore, and renew waterways and watersheds. Indeed, even as water is threatened, or perhaps because of the threat, public interest in water is very high. We treasure it—or, perhaps more accurately, we spend our treasure to access water for pleasure, recreation, and healing. Wealthy people pay a premium for houses on water, and the not so wealthy pay extra for rentals and hotel rooms sited at the oceanfront, on rivers, or at lakes. Those into outdoor sports, especially fishers and hunters, are fiercely protective of it and have founded numerous environmental organizations designed to protect water habitats for fish, birds, and animals. Over the last two decades, spas have become a sort of modern equivalent to ancient healing wells. As an industry, spas are a global business worth about $60 billion, and they generate another $200 billion in tourism. In 2013, there were 20,000 (up from 4,000 in 1999) spas in the United States producing an annual revenue of over $14 billion (a figure that has grown every year for fifteen years, including those of the recession), and tallying 164 million spa visits by clients.12 Ecotourism provides water adventures and guided trips, often in kayaks, rafts, or canoes. Ocean and river cruises are big business. Cities are creating urban architectures focused on waterscapes, happiness, and sustainability. Museums and public memorials of all sorts often feature water to foster reflection and meditation. And many communities are working to transform industrialized and polluted waterfronts into spaces that are pleasant, environmentally sound, and livable.

Emma absorbed the news as she watched a garish, white stretch limo cruise past. A group of laughing girls, heads out

My post-cruise sabbatical would spark the idea for my first book, Cheaper Than Therapy: How to Keep Life’s Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones – The Lesson of the Paper Clips. How? In my data entry job all I did for 20 hours a week was paper clip printouts of computer screens. For three years. I loved it.

All the things you’re not supposed to do on land you’re supposed to do on a cruise because it’s one of America’s official responsibility-free zones, like Mardi Gras, New Year’s Eve or Courtney Love. Twenty-four-hour free buffets all over the place, raunchy stage shows, countless bars that won’t cut you off as long as you can knee-walk into a casino and blow the mortgage—

There was plenty of wildlife to film: water pythons, venomous snakes, numerous beautiful birds, koalas, possums, and all kinds of lizards. But the big croc remained elusive. Finally we found him. But something was wrong. As we approached, he failed to submerge. We were horrified to discover that the poachers had beaten us--and shot him. It was likely that he had been killed some time ago. Crocs often take a long while to die. They have the astonishing ability to shut off blood supply to an injured part of their body. The big croc had shut down and gone to the bottom of the river, at last, to succumb to his wound. He was huge, some fifteen feet long, fat and in good shape. Steve was beside himself; he felt as if the croc’s death was a personal failure. We filmed the croc and talked about what had happened. But eventually, Steve simply had to walk away. When I went to him, there were tears in his eyes. Steve had a genuine love for crocodiles and appreciated each individual animal. This croc could have been fifty years old, with mates, a family, and a history as king of this river. His death wasn’t abstract to Steve. It was personal, as though he had lost a friend, and it fueled his anger toward the poacher who had killed such a magnificent animal. Steve knew there was another croc in the area that was also in potential danger. “Maybe if we save that one,” Steve said, with resolve, “we can salvage something out of this trip.” He didn’t give up. That night we cruised Cattle Creek again to film the trap sites. It seemed that wherever we went, Steve had an uncanny ability as a wildlife magnet.

Later in the evening, Michael spoke highly of Denis Healey’s efforts to maintain party unity during Michael’s brief tenure as leader. Denis had as much love for the party as he did, Michael emphasised and Healey even went out of his way after the 1983 defeat to say that Michael should not be saddled with all the blame.Healey and Michael certainly had their differences, but they worked well together, agreeing to approach Brezhnev and broker a deal that would ease tensions concerning the Cruise missiles in Britain and in other parts of Europe. Michael and Denis were concerned about an escalating Russian response. How to stop this super power competition? “We were protesting about it,” Michael said. “We talked to Brezhnev. We said, ‘What about a zero option? To have no new Cruise missiles on either side of Europe?’” The Tory government claimed the Russians rebuffed Foot and Healey and that “we’d made fools of ourselves,” Michael said. Douglas Hurd in the Foreign Office ridiculed the zero option proposal. “Two weeks later, Reagan came out and used the exact phrase, ‘Why not a zero option?’ The Foreign Office then changed its tune. We had a quite sensible foreign policy,” Michael added, “and we were treated as innocents who did not know what was happening in the bloody world.

Heather walked over to him; it was a path that she had walked a thousand times before. The path from any given place that led her to Harrison.

What Death Is Whenever the weather is half-decent, my dad and his motorcycle are one—cruising up the back roads into the Virginia hills in search of a lunch spot with the best fried chicken. And, on certain warm weekends, for twenty minutes or so around town, my dad and his motorcycle and Benny are one. Freddy has no interest in the bike—he has hated the noise since he was a baby—but Benny has the bug, the need for speed as he and my dad like to say, giving each other five. My broken skeleton and I stay home these days. It’s not like me to allow something so reckless as my kid on a motorcycle. Of course they wear helmets and my Dad is a paragon of safety, but this is objectively not a prudent idea—or possibly even a legal one. It’s something else completely: perilous and fantastic. I think of the five-point harness booster seat in my car and wonder at the incredible contortions that logic can do. I love watching Benny’s arms wrapped firm at my dad’s waist. Benny tells me his favorite part about it is that he likes to holler really loudly when they are going fast. “I scream whooooo-eeeeeeee up into the air and it makes me feel good!” My dad tells me that one time, on one of their more ambitious outings—about fifteen minutes in to a smooth ride just outside town—he could feel Benny’s arms start to slacken their grip. And he could feel the helmet resting on his back. Benny was falling asleep. “Come on, Benny—stay with me!” he said, jostling his torso gently to try to wake him up without startling him. Benny woke up. “You can’t do that again,” my dad said as they waited at a red light. “It’s not safe. You have to stay awake so you can hold on.” “But it sure felt good,” said Benny, who was able to hold it together the rest of the way home. I think of this feeling sometimes—and I can imagine that sort of letting go: warm, dangerous, seductive. What if this is what death is: The engine beneath you steady; those that hold you strong; the sun warm? I think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to fall into that, to loosen the grip at the waist, let gravity and fate take over—like a thought so good you can’t stop having it.

At what point in our relationship will you give in, Ari? How many years would we need to be together before you would feel comfortable telling the world about us?

What can I do to show you that I really love you and want to be with you? Because you say you know that I do, but you act like you think that giving you my love means nothing and it’s driving me insane.

There are only two industries. This has always been true,” said Madame Ping, enfolding a lovely porcelain teacup in her withered fingers, the two-inch fingernails interleaving neatly like the pinions of a raptor folding its wings after a long hard day of cruising the thermals. “There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment. The industry of things comes first. It keeps us alive. But making things is easy now that we have the Feed. This is not a very interesting business anymore. “After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything. This is Madame Ping's business.

What I admired most about A Few Good Men was the originality Aaron Sorkin and Rob Reiner showed by not having my character and Tom’s get involved in anything romantic, or even unprofessional. There was an expectation at that time on the part of studios and audiences that if an attractive woman showed up on film, it was only a matter of time before you saw her in bed with the leading man, or at least half naked. But Rob and Aaron had the nerve to buck that convention: they thought this story was about something else, and they were right. Years later Aaron told a film school class: “The whole idea of the movie was that these young lawyers were in way over their heads and two Marines were on trial for their lives, so if Tom Cruise and Demi Moore take time out to roll in the hay, I just didn’t think we would like them as much for doing that.” Sorkin said he wrote to an exec who had been lobbying hard for a sex scene. “I’ll never forget what the executive wrote back, which was, ‘Well if Tom and Demi aren’t going to sleep together why is Demi a woman?’ and that completely stumped me.” I loved that my character didn’t rely on her sex appeal, which was certainly something I hadn’t encountered very often in my roles. They presented a woman who was valuable to her colleagues—and to the story itself—because of her competence.

Okay, then . . .” I stand up. “It’s been real,” I tell David flatly. “Yeah,” he says. “Later.” Ethan has leapt to his feet and joined us. “I’ll walk you guys to your car,” he says. “That’s really nice, but you don’t have to,” I say. “We’re parked a couple of blocks away.” “My brother said I should.” “Yes, I did.” David gets up, jamming his phone in his pocket. “Come on. Let’s accompany these two lovely ladies to their car.” I catch a whiff of sarcasm, but the other two are oblivious to it. Ethan resumes his X-Men discourse, but the rest of us are silent, and the walk feels endless. We come to a halt at our Subaru hatchback. “This is yours?” David says, like he’s surprised. “My mom’s.” “Where’s your car?” “Nonexistent?” “Seriously? I pictured you always cruising around in some hot girl car like a Porsche or something.” “A ‘hot girl car’? What does that even mean? That the girl is hot or the car is?” He flushes. “I don’t know why I used that word. I never do.” “Hot or girl?” I ask sweetly.

For some time now, Germany has had cruise ships visiting Cuba, such as the MS Deutschland, which can accommodate 513 passengers and has a crew of 260 members. She is known as das Traumschiff or the Dream Ship and is Germany’s television answer to the Love boat. With a displacement of 22,400 GT, the ship brought European tourists with their Euros as stimulus money to Cuba. However, on Monday, February 23, 2015, it was announced, that the operating company had declared bankruptcy. It was expected that finding new investors, and restructuring under the German debtor-in-possession management act, known as Eigenverwaltung, would allow the MS Deutschland to continue her scheduled visits. However, on July 27, 2015 with new owners it was announced that the ship would sail using two distinct names. For one part of the year the ship would be the MS World Odyssey having “Semesters at Sea” for students and for the other part of the year it would sail for the travel company Phoenix Reisen, using its regular name, the MS Deutschland.

Sure, I'd love to go. Where will we be heading?" I asked. "My friend, Hadrah Hakim has invited us to spend the weekend on his yacht, The Kahyya’m; we’ll be cruising the Red Sea Riviera," replied my professor.

Yup.” “You should really think about getting a car. They have those electric ones now, so you won’t be ruining the Earth like the rest of us.” “Yes, you’ve mentioned that before.” As much as I’d love to cruise around in my own car, I can’t exactly afford

You must have always wondered why your father and I stayed together for as long as we did,” my mother said—to me, I guessed, although she was looking at the hole. This surprised me even more than the eulogy. In fact, I had not wondered this at all. I had not ever even considered my parents’ not staying together a possibility. I had not ever even considered my wife and me not staying together a possibility either until it actually happened. But I didn’t say this to my mother. I wanted there to be peace between the living and the dead and also between the living and the living. “Why does anyone stay together for as long as they do?” I asked—rhetorically, I thought, although my mother answered anyway. “God,” she said, “family, fear, loyalty, sex, security, compassion, companionship, complacency, children, guilt, money, real estate, health insurance, not wanting to eat alone, not wanting to go on vacation alone, not wanting to watch television alone, not wanting to drink alone, not wanting to go on cruises alone, not wanting to go on cruises at all, not wanting to leave one person and find another person who then wants to go on cruises, not wanting to leave a person and not find another person at all, not wanting to find another person, not knowing what you want, not knowing what your problem is, love.

Without my choosing. Love began cruising. I was finding, not losing! - Soul Introducing

Fond remembrance of Damien lead to the recollection of a few former love relationships that lacked in sobriety and in depth. Cruising through school and university, and not being unpopular or unattractive, Chloe commanded many distinguished young men’s attention even though the mutual interest between both the parties remained short-lived. Despite her current relationship being a classic case of forbidden love, like the romance depicted in Alfred Noyes’ ‘The Highwayman’, she experienced a certitude in the company of Lucien which she never felt before with her previous lovers.

nowhere near even.” I crossed my arms and studied her. “And have you figured your life out?” Samantha drummed her black nails on the counter. “Fuck no.” I winced. “See, this is why I gave you the twenty.” “Keep it up, and Matthew’s college fund will be all set,” she joked. After a quiet moment passed, she said, “In all seriousness, I know you told us that you were only planning to spend three or four months here, but don’t feel rushed. You take all the time you need. I mean, you have become Charleston’s favorite bartender. Who knew you had Tom Cruise’s skills from Cocktail?” “You’re a horrible liar.” I had a lot of skills, none of which helped behind a bar. “I appreciate your offer to stay longer, but you two close the bar in the winter, and I think it’s time I part ways.” “Well, what about going to Charlotte? I’m sure your mother would love to see you.” She clasped her palms together. “Heading home is definitely not the plan.” I owed her a visit, sure. But . . . “So, then . . . what do you

a shrewd and tawdry city, shining like toyland between the swamps and the sea. The night was weighted with derelicts and dancers, terminal breathing in wards, clenched fists of women as they pushed each time the pains came, chips in perfect alignment on green felt as men thumbed up the corners of the hole cards just enough to read the news, giggling young men in a chickenwire apartment painting the body of one of their chums a lovely gold, ambulances and tow trucks moving away in separate directions with a load of torn flesh or a load of ripped metal, thousands and thousands of picture tubes all telling the same jokes at the same instant to a hundred thousand living rooms, frantic rumps ram-packing the beach sand under the spread towelling, the simultaneous squirts of red tomato and yellow mustard in a hundred different places to disguise the flannelly taste of fried meat, a thousand simultaneous sobbings, thrashings, swallowings, vomitings, ejaculations, coughings, scratchings, cursings, shy touchings, whisperings, kickings. . . . He had never considered himself particularly imaginative. Never before had he felt this way about a city, and he knew that it could only be possible in a strange city, and at a time when grief and uncertainty and introspection had sharpened and heightened awareness. This great Gold Coast became a gigantic cruise ship moving through time rather than space, constantly assimilating the foods, the newborn, the gadgetry, spewing aft the unending tonnage of garbage and waste and dead bodies and broken toys, rolling imperceptibly in the slow tides of history, the passengers unaware that no city is forever, that it will end one day and the eternality of time will cover it in a silence of dust, sand and vines.

John Dryden brilliantly captured Lucretius’ remarkable vision: . . . when the youthful pair more closely join, When hands in hands they lock, and thighs in thighs they twine; Just in the raging foam of full desire, When both press on, both murmur, both expire, They grip, they squeeze, their humid tongues they dart, As each would force their way to th’others heart. In vain; they only cruise about the coast. For bodies cannot pierce, nor be in bodies lost, As sure they strive to be, when both engage In that tumultuous momentary rage. So tangled in the nets of love they lie, Till man dissolves in that excess of joy.

But you are destroying yourself with what you believe and how you are living.” Those were precisely the words that changed my life. The cruise missile of wise love blew apart the bunker of self-will in which I lived. My friend’s words were not a product of technique. They were artless. But they had four things going for them. They were true, loving, personal, and appropriate.

Seventeen years. Seventeen years since I pressed replay on my soul. Seventeen years of tears and ecstasies, lessons and experiences, dreams, disappointments, reality checks, and missed opportunities. Seventeen years of life. I have fallen in love with love, fell out of it, been repulsed by it, and fell back into it. Traveled the world, cultured my ignorant woes. Cruised to success, made wrong turns, slammed on my brakes, and speed to my temporary finish line. I have overflowed with rage and injustice, coping with my demons by burying my sorrows in worlds made of prose. I’ve created art from the lessons within those worlds and have laid my creations to rest. Learned the past is as terrifying as the future, but the future shines bright fore it can hold change in its’ palms. It’s been seventeen years since I pressed replay on my soul. Seventeen years full of guidance, love, heartbreak, joy, connections, and I still have a lifetime to fare.

The beaches in Dubai are well-known for their cleanliness and tranquility. While many individuals enjoy a relaxing weekend at the beach, thrill-seekers prefer to participate in thrilling water sports. Jet skiing is one of Dubai's most popular water activities, and adventure seekers love to try it. Do you want to know what the most extraordinary Dubai marine adventures are? What is the best method to see this magnificent city? There is plenty to do in this city-state of the UAE, and we have several fun aquatic activities for you to enjoy while on vacation or to live in the Emirates! How about a Jet Ski Ride along the Dubai waterfront? It can be done with your family, as a couple, with friends, or by yourself. We jet ski around all of Dubai's most famous attractions, skyscrapers, and landmarks. All of our Jet Ski trips include a stop at the luxury Burj Al Arab hotel, which is constructed into the sea, where you can have fun and receive a photo souvenir of Dubai. Jet skiing in Dubai is unquestionably the most acceptable way to see the city and have a good time during your vacation. Dubai Yacht Rental Experience When it comes to a luxury Boat Party in Dubai for those who can afford it, the pleasure and adventure that Yachts can provide cannot be overstated. Yachting is, without a doubt, the most beautiful sport on the planet. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to splash around in the ocean's deep blue waves and lose yourself in an environment that is both soothing and calming to the soul. The sensation you get from a yacht requires a whole new set of words to explain it. It's a fantastic experience that transports people to another zone while also altering their mental state. People who have the advantage of owning private yachts go sailing to have a relaxing excursion and clear their minds whenever they feel the need. Those who cannot afford to purchase a yacht can enjoy the thrill of cruising from one coastal region to the other by renting an economical Dubai yacht. It is not a challenging task to learn to sail. Some people believe that yachting can only be done by experts, which is a ridiculous misconception. Anyone willing to acquire a few tactics and hints can master the art of yachting. READ MORE About Dubai Jet Ski: Get lost in the tranquility of blue waters while waiting to partake in action. With the instructor sitting right behind you, you’ll learn astonishing stunts and skills for riding a Jet ski. This adventure will take your excitement to a new level of adventure in the open sea. While sailing past the picturesque shorelines of the islands, take in stunning views of prominent Dubai monuments such as the Burj Al Arab and more. About the activity: Jumeirah Beach is the meeting site for this activity. You have the option of riding for 30 minutes or 60 minutes Jet Ski around the beaches while being accompanied at all times by an instructor, as your safety is our top priority. Begin your journey from the marina and proceed to the world-famous Burj-Al-Arab, a world well known hotel, for a photo shoot. where you may take as many pictures as you want

Oh very cool, I love sated cruises de greenie.

she thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul—but all that, which was no small

and decided that true love didn’t mean effortless, and ever-after wasn’t about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul—but all that, which was no small thing, just got you to first base. There were many, many other trips to take to deeper levels of greater acceptance and understanding. That was where you found the happy. And the ever-after was the work you were always willing to put in to stay close, to learn, and to grow as people together.

Create Your Love of Life List   How do you know what you like? Well, if someone describes an experience and you get excited or you see something happen that makes you smile, this is a sign that you want to have a similar experience. Write down the signs and your desired experiences. Research how you could make it happen. Keep a journal of all your ideas and mark them off one by one as you do them! Such experiences are food for the soul. Begin to taste the richness of life. Your favorite experiences may be something as simple as taking a walk with your loved ones, playing a board game, listening to old music, and eating together with your family at the dinner table more often than just on holidays. Remember, we all need nourishment of the spirit as much as, if not even more than, we need food. Have you been starving your soul? You can gain access to everything you are searching for and need if you are clear, consistent, and persistent. You may think, “Well, those ideas are nice, Christy, but I could never afford to do this or that.” So I am here to tell you that you are exactly right! Whatever you confirm, you get in your world. Period. This means, if you want something, you have to ask the right questions to get the answer about how to go and get it! These are mind-opening questions like, “What would it cost for me to take a cruise and have my partner with me?” Write down a question about one of the items in your love of life list and then let it go! There are only a couple of tricks in this process. It’s amazing what often unfolds when we follow these three guidelines. Do not put a time limit on when you will experience what you want. It will come once you allow God to work out the right plan to bring it to you. Believe that your desire will come into existence and do not put parameters on how. Move toward your objective by listening carefully to the whispers of God that come your way and acting on them as soon as you can. This is spirit giving you a little help.   Without any further hesitation, I want you to put this book down, grab your journal or a piece of paper and a pen, or a dry erase marker so you can write on your bathroom mirror. Immediately put down your ideas for your love of life list. Keep writing until you feel you have nothing to write anymore. No idea is too silly, too strange, or too expensive to put on your list. Write your list and then pick up this book again later to learn more about loving your life out loud!

Beachcomber Voodoo" I'm swallowing Swallowing you whole You whole Hahhhh .... hahhhh .... hahhhh .... hahhhh .... Love's wondering ... Wonder why so Why so Hahhhh .... hahhhh .... hahhhh .... hahhhh .... I'm breathing Breathing here deeply into me Into me Love's the strangest thing It makes you heal It makes you whole when it goes If it goes ... If it goes ... If it goes ... If it goes ... If it goes ...

Visions of ineffable beauty and harmony, health and exhilaration of body and soul, and grand foundation lessons in Nature's eternal love are the sure reward of every earnest looker in this glorious wilderness.

Second Week Of June 2012 Andy’s reply arrive a couple of days after I email him. My ex-lover wrote: Young, Your emails bring joy to my heart. I’m glad you did the correct thing to help Bernard. I would have done the same if I were in your shoes. What happen to him after he went to a foster home? Did he adjust well in the home? You asked me what happened after I left London for Christchurch. As I had mentioned in my previous correspondence, I plunged wholeheartedly into my engineering studies. The days were easier than the nights when I woke to dreams of you and missed the love we shared terribly. There were times I went for long walks when I suffered chronic insomnia. Much like you, out of incorrigible loneliness I went looking for love in the wrong places. One evening I stumbled upon a cruising park near the university campus. After insouciant sex with different men in the dark whom I did not care to know afterwards; a horrendous sense of self-hatred often befell my person and I regretted endangering myself in these situations. The more I resisted the temptation, the more it became a habitual act. After the dark faceless encounters, I became lonelier than before. I was to a point of nervous breakdown when I noticed an attractive Portuguese Filipino student on campus who reminded me of you.