Curtain Is Raised Quotes

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.

Neal stood, kicking free of the clinging curtain. "I'll kill you." I drew the firestar and pointed it at him. "I don't think so." "She is pack now," Sylvie said. "You fight one of us, and you fight all of us." Edward raised his eyebrows at me. "What is going on, Anita?" "I think I've been adopted," I said.

I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin...

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

Non...I am DANCING IN MY NUDDY-PANTS!!!' And we both laughed like loons on loon tablets. I danced for ages round the house in my nuddy-pants. Also, I did this brilliant thing-I danced in the front window just for a second whilst Mr. Across the Road was drawing his curtains. He will never be sure if he saw a mirage or not. That is the kind of person I am. Not really the kind of person who goes and raises elks in Whakatane.

You grow old when you lose interest in life, when you cease to dream, to hunger after new truths, and to search for new worlds to conquer. When your mind is open to new ideas, new interests, and when you raise the curtain and let in the sunshine and inspiration of new truths of life and the universe, you will be young and vital.

At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

I want to know what your five-dollar wish was for.” “Is that all?” He smiled beneath her exploring fingertips. “I wished you would find someone who wanted you as much as I did. But I knew it wouldn’t come true.” The candlelight slid over Daisy’s delicate features as she raised her head to look at him. “Why not?” “Because I knew no one could ever want you as much as I do.” Daisy levered herself farther over him until her hair tumbled in a dark curtain around them both. “What was your wish?” Matthew asked, combing his fingers through the fall of shimmering hair. “That I could find the right man to marry.” Her tender smile stopped his heart. “And then you appeared.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it may be said: "It is bad to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of all." If

One of the thousand reasons I quit going to the theater when I was about twenty was that I resented like hell filing out of the theater just because some playwright was forever slamming down his silly curtain. (What ever became of that stalwart Fortinbras? Who eventually fixed his wagon?) Nonetheless, I’m done here… Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he never wrong? Just go to bed, now. Quickly. Quickly and slowly.

She asked us to raise the curtain that was covering the window and she looked at the golden leaves of the trees. 'How lovely. I shouldn't see that from my flat!' She smiled. And both of us, my sister and I, had the same thought: it was that same smile that had dazzled us when we were little children, the radiant smile of a young woman. Where had it been between then and now?

Privilege implies exclusion from privilege, just as advantage implies disadvantage," Celine went on. "In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom—in anarchy—such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor—raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is—and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws—the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side—are slightly different; that's all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us," he concluded, strongly emphasizing the last clause, staring at Drake, not at the professor.

With all her love of knowledge she had a natural shrinking from raising curtains and looking into unlighted corners.

The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

The dial of the clock wears out unevenly; Most worn Is the area round eight. As it is stared at with abrasive glances unfailingly twice a day, It is weathered away. On the other side The area at two Is only half as worn, For closed eyes at night Pass without stopping. If there is one who possesses a flat watch evenly worn, It is he who, failing at the start, is running one lap behind. Thus the world is always A lap fast-- The world he thinks he sees Has not yet begun. Illusory time, When the hands stand vertically on the dial; Without the bell announcing the raising of the curtain, The play has come to an end.

It was sometime in the winter of 1974 when Glenda,† a sixteen-year-old who lived on West Feemster, was pulling her curtains shut and happened to glance down, noticing a marbly, moon-shaped object in the bushes. Curious, she raised her bedroom window for a closer inspection. The moon-faced object returned her stare, a screwdriver clenched in its left hand.

If it’s true we only live once, then raise your red velvet curtain every chance you get.

Aren’t you a little young to be a captain? Not that I’m sure you weren’t wonderful at it,” I added hastily, “but Frank’s got to be your same age, and Mr. Graces and Mr. Liu are both older than you. How on earth did it happen?” He shut down. It was like a curtain being pulled across a window. This was a subject he definitely did not wish to discuss. “The title is honorary,” he said, not meeting my gaze. “I can’t stop them calling me that, even though I’ve asked them not to. I was the highest-ranking officer to survive the…accident.” Accident? I supposed this was another one of those things he didn’t want to tell me because it would make me hate him. Recognizing that dropping that particular topic-for now at least-would probably be best. I said, “John, I can warn you about the Furies. And I know exactly where the coffin is. All you have to do is take me back to Isla Huesos-just this one time, to help Alex-and I’ll never mention going there again. I’ll even,” I said, reaching up to straighten the collar of his leather jacket, which had gone askew, “forgive you for the waffles-“ John seized me by both shoulders, pulling me towards him so abruptly that Hope gave an alarmed flap of her wings. “Pierce,” he said. “Do you mean that?” When I pushed back some of the hair that had tumbled into my face and raised my dark eyes to meet his light ones, I saw that he was staring down at me with an intensity that burned. “You’ll never mention going back to Isla Huesos again if I take you there right now, this once, to talk to your cousin Alex?” he demanded. “You’ll give…cohabitation another chance?” His sudden fierceness was making me nervous. “Of course, John,” I said. “But it’s not like I have a choice.” “What if you did?” he asked, his grip tightening. I blinked. “But I can’t. You said-“ He gave me a little shake. “Never mind what I said. What if I was wrong?” I reached up to lay a hand on his cheek. It felt a little scratchy, because he hadn’t shaved. I didn’t care about stubble. What I cared about was the desperate need I saw in his eyes. The need for me. “I’d come back,” I said, simply, “to stay with you.” A second later, the late-and everything around it-was gone.

She nearly stopped forever just outside Ashton, because she came to a tiny cottage buried in a garden. I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin.

He was telling her here, in this cellar, as he kissed her feet, he had understood love for the first time - not just from other people's words, but in his heart, in his blood. She was dearer to him than all his past, dearer to him than his mother, than Germany, than his future with Maria... He had fallen in love with her. Great walls raised up by states, racist fury, the heavy artillery and its curtain of fire were all equally insignificant, equally powerless in the face of love.. He gave thanks to fate for allowing him to understand this before he died.

Duncan climbed out my bedroom window, practically falling onto the roof. After he was out, he half jumped, half fell off the roof. Finn watched him apprehensively for a moment, holding my curtain open, but he didn't follow after immediately. Instead,he straightened up, looking over at me. My anger and resolution were fading, leaving me hopeful that Finn wouldn't really leave things this way. "Once I'm out this window, lock it behind me," Finn commanded. "Make sure all the doors are locked, and never go anywhere alone. Never go anyplace at night, and if at all possible, always take Matt and Rhys with you." He looked past me for a moment, thinking of something. "Although neither of them are really good for much of anything..." His dark eyes rested on mine once again. His expression was imploring, and he raised his hand as if he meant to touch my face, but he lowered it again. "You must be careful." "Okay," I promised him. With Finn standing right in front of me, I could feel the warmth of his body and smell his cologne. His eyes were locked on mine, and I remembered the way it felt when he tangled his fingers in my hair and held me so close to him I couldn't breathe. He was so strong and controlled. In the brief moments he allowed himself to let go of his passion with me, it was the most wonderfully suffocating feeling I'd ever had. I didn't want him to leave, and he didn't want to leave. But we had both made choices we were unwilling to change. He nodded once more, breaking eye contact, and then turned and slid out the window.

Adopted children are self invented because we have to be. There's an absence, a void, a question mark at the very beginning of our lives. A crucial part of our story is gone, and violently. Like a bomb in the womb, the baby explodes into an unknown world and it's only knowable through some kind of story. Of course, that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after its started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after a curtain up, the feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you, and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something is missing. That isn't of its nature negative, the missing part, the missing past can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record. The imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life your fingers trace the space where it might have been and your fingers learn a kind of braille. There are markings here, raised like welts.

She averted her eyes from his naked chest and reached up to close her window. He lifted his arms, curling his hands around the sash of his own window. Between his upraised arms, he stared at her, and his smile widened. "What's wrong, Lily? Are you shutting your window because you're afraid I'll breathe the same air you do?" She met his gaze across the short distance that separated them. "I didn't know leeches could breathe." He didn't get angry at the insult. Instead, he laughed. "You're a worthy opponent. I don't think I've ever met a woman with a quicker wit than you. If you'd been a man, there's no telling what you might have accomplished." "If I'd been a man, I'd have called you out in the fine old Southern tradition five years ago and shot you. That would have been a fine accomplishment." She slammed the window shut and closed the curtains. Daniel was right, of course. Within minutes, the room became suffocatingly hot. She desperately wanted to open the window again, but she didn't want to give him any victory, no matter how small. So, she waited in the dark as her bedroom became an oven, listening to the clock on her dressing table tick away the minutes. When the clock chimed the quarter hour twice, she got out of bed and walked to the window. He was sure to be asleep by now. She slipped the curtains open, and as quietly as possible, she raised the sash. "Told you so," a sleepy male voice murmured. Lord, she hated him.

When she looked at him again she had raised windows for eyes, with curtains blowing out of them, framing a yellow-lit room. Below them, her face declined in wet shingles, flowing with little rivulets of rainwater.

Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.

She ran to the window and nearly ripped the curtains from their hangings as she opened them to the gray mountains and bleakness of Endovier. The guards positioned beneath the window didn’t glance upward, and she gaped at the bluish-gray sky, at the clouds slipping on their shoes and shuffling toward the horizon. I will not be afraid. For the first time in a while, the words felt true. Her lips peeled into a smile. The captain raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

Little by little, Elizabeth started to heal. She felt “the curtains raising.” She compared the feeling to looking for a valuable antique in a dark attic filled with junk—she knew that it was in there somewhere but couldn’t see it because of all the clutter. When she finally did spot it, she couldn’t get to it because it was “buried under a pile of useless garbage.” But now and then she could see a clear path to the object, as if a flash of lightning had illuminated the room for a brief instant.

About midnight, the storm in one half-hour fell to a dead calm. The fire, which had been burning dead, glowed up vividly. I felt the air change, and become keen. Raising blind and curtain, I looked out, and saw in the stars the keen sparkle of a sharp frost.

Sophie opened one sleepy eye. A chink of light had found its way through a gap in the bedroom curtains and was falling on her face. She felt her husband slide his cold body down under the duvet and raised her head. She spotted a steaming mug of tea on her beside cabinet.

If they [the Russians] … take Berlin, will not their impression that they have been the overwhelming contributor to our common victory be unduly imprinted in their minds, and may this not lead them into a mood which will raise grave and formidable difficulties in the future?

He climbed on the bed, lay back and raised his knees back to his chest, hoping that Francis' first sight on entering the curtain would be Joe’s hole inviting him in. Maybe it was a reaction to shock or the close proximity of death or anticipation of Francis’ return, but Joe had never felt so turned on.

The intruder took a step forward, and Moody’s voice asked, “Severus Snape?” Then the dust figure rose from the end of the hall and rushed him, raising its dead hand. “It was not I who killed you, Albus,” said a quiet voice. The jinx broke: The dust-figure exploded again, and it was impossible to make out the newcomer through the dense gray cloud it left behind. Harry pointed his wand into the middle of it. “Don’t move!” He had forgotten the portrait of Mrs. Black: At the sound of his yell, the curtains hiding her flew open and she began to scream, “Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my house--” Ron and Hermione came crashing down the stairs behind Harry, wants pointing, like his, at the unknown man now standing with his arms raised in the hall below. “Hold your fire, it’s me, Remus!” “Oh, thank goodness,” said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at Mrs. Black instead; with a bang, the curtains swished shut again and silence fell.

I looked over at the colorful pile of small shoes. Their neon colors glowed dimly in the shadows. I raised the curtain of the mosque to bring light into this dark place. Herat’s warm winds covered us in the dust. I believe that on that day in that sacred place, God smiled on us and loved us more than ever before.

Touch the back of your neck, Jack. If you don’t want me to pull back this curtain and show myself, do it now.” Hoskins raised a hand and pressed it to the nape of his neck. His body’s reaction was immediate: terrifying bolts of pain which ran up to his temples and down to his shoulders. He looked at his hand and saw it was smeared with blood.

In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom—in anarchy—such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor—raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is—and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws—the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side—are slightly different; that’s all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us,

The two things clearest in my mind were, that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life—which seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby's. No one has ever raised that curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.

She nearly stopped forever just outside Ashton, because she came to a tiny cottage buried in a garden. I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin. . . .

When I raised a corner of the heavy curtain of habit (the stupefying habit which during the whole course of our life conceals from us almost the whole universe, and in the dead of night, without changing the label, substitutes for the most dangerous or intoxicating poisons of life some kind of anodyne which does not procure any delight), such a memory would come back to me

And then I saw it. The mirror fogged over as I squinted at my reflection, and I scrubbed it with the heel of my palm. My skin squeaked against the glass, I turned my head to the side. I peered at my reflection from the corner of my eye. Toothmarks. Jesus. "You left a bite mark on my neck!" Jacob opened the shower curtain just far enough to look out at me. He knuckled water out of his eyes and grinned at me. "Good thing you don't have to woke tomorrow." "You shit." He grinned wider and whisked the curtain shut. Way to go. I'd look real slick reporting for duty at the Fifth Precinct covered in hickeys like a slutty teenaged girl. Damn it. I rubbed at the toothmarks, which raised a pinkish blotch around them. "It better be gone by Thursday," I said. I'm sure Jacob felt very chastised. Not.

All that you can do is to raise the level of sattva. And then when sattva’s level is high, we have to wait one moment, any moment knowledge can dawn there. All that you can do to have sunlight in this room, is to open the curtains and keep the windows open. And when dawn comes, it just dawns. You have the sunlight inside. If you close your curtains, even if it’s midsummer afternoon, you will still find your room dark, because the gunas are cloudy.

No one has ever raised that curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.

She replaced her wardrobe with marvels of the season bought from boutiques of the Palais-Royal and rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin. Outfits for a ball detailed in the fashion pages of the January 1839 edition of Paris Elegant describe dresses of pale pink crépe garnished with lace and velvet roses and accessorized with white gloves, silk stockings, and white cashmere or taffeta shawls. In the spring of that year, misty tulle bonnets came into fashion worn with capes of Alencon lace - “little masterpieces of lightness and freshness.“ Her bed was her stage, raised on a platform and curtained with sumptuous pink silk drapes. The adjoining cabinet de toilette was also a courtesan’s natural habitat, its dressing table a jumble of lace, bows, ribbons, embossed vases, crystal bottles of scents and lotions, brushes and combs of ivory and silver. She indulged her sweet tooth with cakes from Rollet the patissier, glaceed fruit from Boissier, and on one occasion sent for twelve biscuits, macaroons, and maraschino liqueur.

I’ll have tea,” Clary said, realizing how long it had been since she had eaten or drunk anything. She felt as if she’d been running on pure adrenaline since she woke up. Jace succumbed. “All right. As long as it isn’t Earl Grey,” he added, wrinkling his fine-boned nose. “I hate bergamot.” Madame Dorothea cackled loudly and disappeared back through the bead curtain, leaving it swaying gently behind her. Clary raised her eyebrows at Jace. "You hate bergamot?" Jace had wandered over to the narrow bookshelf and was examining its contents. "You have a problem with that?" "You may be the only guy my age I've ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it's in Earl Grey tea." "Yes, well," Jace said, with a supercilious look, "I'm not like other guys. Besides," he added, flipping a book off the shelf, "at the Institute we have to take classes in basic medicinal uses for plants. It's required." "I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners.” Jace flipped a page. "Very funny, Fray.

The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay, Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept. He leaned above me, thinking that I slept And could not hear him; but I heard him say, ‘Poor child, poor child’: and as he turned away Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept. He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold That hid my face, or take my hand in his, Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head: He did not love me living; but once dead He pitied me; and very sweet it is To know he still is warm though I am cold.

He is tangled in Isabelle's arms, he is curtained by Isabelle's hair, he is touching Isabelle's body, he is lost in Isabelle, in her smell and her taste and the silk of her skin. He is onstage, the music pounding, the floor shaking, the audience cheering, his heart beating beating beating in time with the drumbeat. He is laughing with Clary, dancing with Clary, eating with Clary, running through the streets of Brooklyn with Clary, they are children together, they are one half of a whole, they hold hands and squeeze tight and pledge never to let go. He is going cold, stiff, the life draining out of him, he is below, in the dark, clawing his way to the light, fingernails scraping dirt, mouth filled with dirt, eyes clogged with dirt, he is straining, reaching, dragging himself up toward the sky, and when he reaches it, he opens his mouth wide but does not breathe, for he no longer needs to breathe, only to feed. And he is so very hungry. He is sinking his teeth into the neck of an angel's child, he is drinking the light. He is bearing a Mark, and it burns. He is raising his face to meet the gaze of an angel, he is flayed by the fury of angel fire, and yet still, impudent and bloodless, he lives. He is in a cage. He is in hell. He is bent over the broken body of a beautiful girl, he is praying to whatever god that will listen, please let her live, anything to let her live. He is giving away that which is most precious to him, and he is doing so willingly, so that his friends will survive. He is, again, with Isabelle, always with Isabelle, the holy flame of their love encompassing them both, and there is pain, and there is exquisite joy, and his veins burn with angel fire and he is the Simon he once was and the Simon he now will be, he endures and he is reborn, he is blood and flesh and a spark of the divine. He is Nephilim.

I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin....

And now he learned how men can consider other men as beasts and that the easiest way to get along with such men was to be a beast. A clean face, an open face, an eye raised to meet an eye—these drew attention and attention drawn brought punishment. Adam thought how a man doing an ugly or a brutal thing has hurt himself and must punish someone for the hurt. To be guarded at work by men with shotguns, to be shackled by the ankle at night to a chain, were simple matters of precaution, but the savage whippings for the least stir of will, for the smallest shred of dignity or resistance, these seemed to indicate that guards were afraid of prisoners, and Adam knew from his years in the army that a man afraid is a dangerous animal. And Adam, like anyone in the world, feared what whipping would do to his body and his spirit. He drew a curtain around himself. He removed expression from his face, light from his eyes, and silenced his speech. Later he was not so much astonished that it had happened to him but that he had been able to take it and with a minimum of pain. It was much more horrible afterward than when it was happening. It is a triumph of self-control to see a man whipped until the muscles of his back show white and glistening through the cuts and to give no sign of pity or anger or interest. And Adam learned this.

I’ll have tea,” Clary said, realizing how long it had been since she had eaten or drunk anything. She felt as if she’d been running on pure adrenaline since she woke up. Jace succumbed. “All right. As long as it isn’t Earl Grey,” he added, wrinkling his fine-boned nose. “I hate bergamot.” Madame Dorothea cackled loudly and disappeared back through the bead curtain, leaving it swaying gently behind her. Clary raised an eyebrow at Jace. “You hate bergamot?” Jace had wandered over to the narrow bookshelf and was examining its contents. “You have a problem with that?” “You may be the only guy my age I’ve ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it’s in Earl Grey tea.

Blinking and it's dripping, the wet eyes The cold tears or foggy breath Pitter patter, but the melting one The deafening silence, shining My amusement, my curtains The cold, behind the landscape The conscious of aftermath Missing, night lamp lighting A symbolic gesture, raising my arm My bewilderment, this work done The cost of life, my uneven quilts These slurks of cold air, slowly entering By and by grabbed, a handful of curtain Failed to judge, the end of same Eventually, discovered the light Flashing my eyes, my un-dilated pupil The pane partiality covered, but visible The range of Bimar Narsar, like a bride It's blanket of white, flashing everywhere It's been snowing throughout the dark

What touched our hearts that day was the way she noticed the slightest agreeable sensation: it was as though, at the age of seventy eight, she were waking afresh to the miracle of living. While the nurse was settling her pillows the metal of a tube touched her thigh—“It’s cool! How pleasant!” She breathed in the smell of eau de Cologne and talcum powder—“How good it smells”…She asked us to raise the curtain that was covering the window and she looked at the golden leaves of the trees. “How lovely. I shouldn’t see that from my flat!” She smiled. And both of us, my sister and I, had the same thought: it was that same smile that had dazzled us when we were little children, the radiant smile of a young woman. Where had it been between then and now?

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,’ he declared, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe: Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow . . . The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.

I stop crying for a moment when light from the street steals into my bedroom as Silas gently pushes the curtain aside. He leans against the wall, arms folded across his bare chest and hair falling in front of his eyes. Almost silently, he moves to the tiny space between my bed and the wall and lowers himself to the floor. Raising his knees to his chest, he drops his head and reaches for my hand, running his thumb across my knuckles silently. I slide off the bed, sheets wrapped around my legs, and ease into his lap, tucking my face against his neck. He cradles me against him like he’s afraid to let me go. I know I should shy away, that I should climb back into my bed out of loyalty to my sister. But there’s something that locks me in place, something that won’t let me stray from the gentle rise and fall of his chest or from his arms, supporting me like I’m something precious as his lips brush across my forehead. Without speaking, we finally fall asleep.

Ron and Hermione came crashing down the stairs behind Harry, wands pointing, like his, at the unknown man now standing with his arms raised in the hall below. “Hold your fire, it’s me, Remus!” “Oh, thank goodness,” said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at Mrs. Black instead; with a bang, the curtains swished shut again and silence fell. Ron too lowered his wand, but Harry did not. “Show yourself!” he called back. Lupin moved forward into the lamplight, hands still held high in a gesture of surrender. “I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder’s Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag.” “Oh, all right,” said Harry, lowering his wand, “but I had to check, didn’t I?” “Speaking as your ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, I quite agree that you had to check. Ron, Hermione, you shouldn’t be quite so quick to lower your defenses.

He raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get this? Is our Anne Boleyn suddenly from Mars?" He chuckled. "I always thought she hailed from Wiltshire." Luce's mind raced to catch up. She was playing Anne Boleyn? She'd never read this play, but Daniel's costume suggested he was playing the king, Henry VIII. "Mr. Shakespeare-ah,Will-thought it would look good-" "Oh,Will did?" Daniel smirked, bot believing her at all but seeming not to care. It was strange to feel that she could do or say almost anything and Daniel would still find it charming. "You're a little bit mad, aren't you, Lucinda?" "I-well-" He brushed her cheek with the back of his finger. "I adore you." "I adore you,too." The words tumbled from her mouth,feeling so real and so true after the last few stammering lies. It was like letting out a long-held breath. "I've been thinking, thinking a lot,and I wanted to tell you that-that-" "Yes?" "The truth is that what I feel for you is...deeper than adoration." She pressed her hands over his heart. "I trust you. I trust your love. I know how strong it is,and how beautiful." Luce knew that she couldn't come right out and say what she really meant-she was supposed to be a different version of herself,and the other times,when Daniel had figured out who she was, where she'd come from,he'd clammed up immediately and told her to leave. But maybe if she chose her words carefully, Daniel would understand. "It may seem like sometimes I-I forgot what you mean to me and what I mean to you,but deep down...I know.I know because we are meant to be together.I love you, Daniel." Daniel looked shocked. "You-you love me?" "Of course." Luce almost laughed at how obvious it was-but then she remembered: She had no idea which moment from her past she'd walked into.Maybe in this lifetime they'd only exchanged coy glances. Daniel's chest rose and fell violently and his lower lip began to quiver. "I want you to come away with me," he said quickly.There was a desperate edge to his voice. Luce wanted to cry out Yes!, but something held her back.It was so easy to get lost in Daniel when his body was pressed so close to hers and she could feel the heat coming off his skin and the beating of his heart through his shirt.She felt she could tell him anything now-from how glorious it had felt to die in his arms in Versailles to how devastated she was now that she knew the scope of his suffering. But she held back: The girl he thought she was in this lifetime wouldn't talk about those things, wouldn't know them. Neither would Daniel. So when she finally opened her mouth,her voice faltered. Daniel put a finger over her lips. "Wait. Don't protest yet. Let me ask you properly.By and by, my love." He peeked out the cracked wardrobe door, toward the curtain.A cheer came from the stage.The audience roared with laughter and applause. Luce hadn't even realized the play had begun. "That's my entrance.I'll see you soon." He kissed her forehead,then dashed out and onto the stage.

Anyone who’s spent time below the Mason-Dixon line knows this truth: Southern women are anything but ordinary. Our unique, often unspoken code of conduct has allowed us to survive good times and bad, and never lose the sense of who we are. Margaret Mitchell, the belle of Southern female writers, got it right when she had Scarlett O’Hara come down the stairs in a dress made out of curtains: a Southern girl knows that pride and endurance always come before vanity. Our character is both created by, and essential to, the fabric of our society. Without the strength of the Southern girl, the South couldn’t have survived its rich and rocky history; without history, on the other hand, the Southern girl wouldn’t be who she is today. It’s sometimes suggested (by Yankees, we’d wager) that Grits are one-dimensional. This is not surprising: those who don’t understand us see only our outward devotion to femininity and charm. What they are missing is the fact that, like the magnolia tree, our beautiful blossoms are the outward expression of the strength that lies beneath.

I am suprised to a mad extent that people who claim to be intelligent and truth seeking go to church, hear their religious leaders say something, and without vetting it to a reasonable extent swallow it hook and all. Now the church has moved from speaking truth to power but has now aced her game by canvassing for politicians who have no business with God or his people. "by the use of simple propaganda even the most spiritual among us can be sold for the price of an orange," and the church is already falling into this snare. Without sentiments my prayers has been that God should raise us leaders who will futher his enterprise, leaders who will put God and the masses first. So it does not matter if it is Buhari or Jonathan, after all God used Cyrus who was a full blooded gentile(Isaiah 45 verses 1-8) to futher His cause. I strongly urge Nigerians to continue in their prayers for this Jerusalem. Left to some of our religious leaders they will even go the extent of helping God to decide who gets the votes. Let's not allow ourselves to be blinded by the curtains of religion and politics. And instead of using social media to spread bad blood and create feuds, let's encourage and spread the message of peace. Come the D day, we will go out there, vote (at least we have that right), and leave the rest to God. I am a Patriot

Umar came one morning to the house of the Messenger, and as he approached he heard the sound of women’s voices raised to a pitch which he considered unseemly in the prophetic presence. The women were moreover of Quraysh, that is, of the Emigrants, which confirmed his opinion that they were learning bad ways from the women of Medina who for generations had been less restrained and more self-assertive than the women of Mecca. The Prophet hated to refuse a request, as well they knew, and they were now asking him with some insistence to give them various garments which had come to him as part of his fifth in the spoils of war. There was a curtain spread across part of the room, and when ‘Umar’s voice was heard asking permission to enter there was a sudden total silence and the women hid themselves behind the curtain with such speed that he entered to find the Prophet speechless with laughter. “May God fill thy life with laughter, O Messenger of God,” he said. “Wondrous it was,” said the Prophet, “how these women who were with me even now - how speedily upon hearing thy voice they were gone behind that curtain!” “It is rather thy right, not mine, that they should stand in awe of thee, not of me,” said ‘Umar. Then, addressing the women, he said “O enemies of yourselves, fear ye me, and fear ye not God’s Messenger?” “It is even so,” they said, “for thou art rougher and harsher than God’s Messenger.” “That is true, O son of Khattab,” said the Prophet. Then he added: “By Him in whose hand is my soul, if Satan found that thou wert travelling upon a certain path, he would choose to go himself by any other path but thine.

Beauty Void lay the world, in nothingness concealed, Without a trace of light or life revealed, Save one existence which second knew- Unknown the pleasant words of We and You. Then Beauty shone, from stranger glances free, Seen of herself, with naught beside to see, With garments pure of stain, the fairest flower Of virgin loveliness in bridal bower. No combing hand had smoothed a flowing tress, No mirror shown her eyes their loveliness No surma dust those cloudless orbs had known, To the bright rose her cheek no bulbul flown. No heightening hand had decked the rose with green, No patch or spot upon that cheek was seen. No zephyr from her brow had fliched a hair, No eye in thought had seen the splendour there. Her witching snares in solitude she laid, And love's sweet game without a partner played. But when bright Beauty reigns and knows her power She springs indignant from her curtained bower. She scorns seclusion and eludes the guard, And from the window looks if doors be barred. See how the tulip on the mountain grown Soon as the breath of genial Spring has blown, Bursts from the rock, impatient to display Her nascent beauty to the eye of day. When sudden to thy soul reflection brings The precious meaning of mysterious things, Thou canst not drive the thought from out thy brain; Speak, hear thou must, for silence is such pain. So beauty ne'er will quit the urgent claim Whose motive first from heavenly beauty came When from her blessed bower she fondly strayed, And to the world and man her charms displayed. In every mirror then her face was shown, Her praise in every place was heard and known. Touched by her light, the hearts of angels burned, And, like the circling spheres, their heads were turned, While saintly bands, whom purest at the sight of her, And those who bathe them in the ocean sky Cries out enraptured, "Laud to God on high!" Rays of her splendour lit the rose's breast And stirred the bulbul's heart with sweet unrest. From her bright glow its cheek the flambeau fired, And myriad moths around the flame expired. Her glory lent the very sun the ray Which wakes the lotus on the flood to-day. Her loveliness made Laila's face look fair To Majnún, fettered by her every hair. She opened Shírín's sugared lips, and stole From Parvíz' breast and brave Farhád's the soul. Through her his head the Moon of Canaan raised, And fond Zulaikha perished as she gazed. Yes, though she shrinks from earthly lovers' call, Eternal Beauty is the queen of all; In every curtained bower the screen she holds, About each captured heart her bonds enfolds. Through her sweet love the heart its life retains, The soul through love of her its object gains. The heart which maidens' gentle witcheries stir Is, though unconscious, fired with love of her. Refrain from idle speech; mistake no more: She brings her chains and we, her slaves, adore. Fair and approved of Love, thou still must own That gift of beauty comes from her alone. Thou art concealed: she meets all lifted eyes; Thou art the mirror which she beautifies. She is that mirror, if we closely view The truth- the treasure and the treasury too. But thou and I- our serious work is naught; We waste our days unmoved by earnest thought. Cease, or my task will never end, for her Sweet beauties lack a meet interpreter. Then let us still the slaves of love remain For without love we live in vain, in vain. Jámí, "Yúsuf and Zulaikha". trans. Ralph T. H. Griffith. Ballantyne Press 1882. London. p.19-22

There are things I can confess only after swallowing a bottle of ink. How i crushed a moth between my palms before it rushed to the fireplace. These hands that are used to killing things midflight. Like my mother tongue. Before I can roll out my rounded R and O. Because women like me are believed to practise witchcraft and blackmagic. We swallow men and spit out their bones. These hands that danced with your ghosts on the bluest 4 AMs. These hands that raised a knife to its throat. How deep was the longing to be nothing more than an empty bed, an empty room. If someone asks you tell them writing was the closest I came to witchcraft. Poetry was the closest I came to being possessed. I wanted to leave behind more than emptiness so I wrote. . They say it takes 7 seconds for the eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. I glide across the dark room like the light was never here. Your body imprint on the mattress lost to the frenzied waltz of sunray and dust. How easy was it to just grab a handful of you before you dissolved. If someone asks tell them loving you was the closest I came to seeing god. . On some nights I open the curtains and you are the moon. I am the darkness surrounding it. Which is to say I don't know how to love without being consumed. If they ask you tell them remembrance was the closest I came to being sick. . Once I met a homeless man who spoke in madness because he had forgotten his mother tongue. How long do you hide yourself from the world before you forget your beginning. Like him - I too am full of silence. My beloved - a handful of you, your body. There are things I could only tell the moths but they no longer visit. I have put off the fireplace. Which is to say they too don't know how to love something that won't kill them. . My phone always autocorrects I love you to I live you and what is love if not living the other person. One summer afternoon our bodies turned into each other's. Your breath played lye strings on my neck. If they ask you tell them that was the closest I came to being alive.

My mother made me into the type of person who is at ease standing in the middle of moving traffic, the type of person who ends up having more adventures and making more mistakes. Mum never stopped encouraging me to try, fail and take risks. I kept pushing myself to do unconventional things because I liked the reaction I got from her when I told her what I'd done. Mum's response to all my exploits was to applaud them. Great, you're living your life, and not the usual life prescribed for a woman either. Well done! Thanks to her, unlike most girls at the time, I grew up regarding recklessness, risk-taking and failure as laudable pursuits. Mum did the same for Vida by giving her a pound every time she put herself forward. If Vida raised her hand at school and volunteered to go to an old people's home to sing, or recited a poem in assembly, or joined a club, Mum wrote it down in a little notebook. Vida also kept a tally of everything she'd tried to do since she last saw her grandmother and would burst out with it all when they met up again. She didn't get a pound if she won a prize or did something well or achieved good marks in an exam, and there was no big fuss or attention if she failed at anything. She was only rewarded for trying. That was the goal. This was when Vida was between the ages of seven and fifteen, the years a girl is most self-conscious about her voice, her looks and fitting in, when she doesn't want to stand out from the crowd or draw attention to herself. Vida was a passive child – she isn't passive now. I was very self-conscious when I was young, wouldn't raise my voice above a whisper or look an adult in the eye until I was thirteen, but without me realizing it Mum taught me to grab life, wrestle it to the ground and make it work for me. She never squashed any thoughts or ideas I had, no matter how unorthodox or out of reach they were. She didn't care what I looked like either. I started experimenting with my clothes aged eleven, wearing top hats, curtains as cloaks, jeans torn to pieces, bare feet in the streets, 1930s gowns, bells around my neck, and all she ever said was, 'I wish I had a camera.

Ironically,” she commented, “this will be the first time I’ve ever done anything to please my father.” With a sympathetic murmur, Matthew gathered Daisy close against him. He knew her father as well as anyone, having become well acquainted with the man’s tempers, his self-absorption, his impossible standards. And yet he understood what it had required for Bowman to build a great fortune from scratch, the sacrifices he’d had to make. Bowman had discarded everything that would have gotten in the way of achieving his goals. Including closeness with his wife and children. For the first time it occurred to Matthew that Bowman and his family would benefit from someone acting as a mediator, to ease their communications with each other. If such a thing were in his power, he would find a way to do it. “You,” he whispered in Daisy’s hair, “are the best thing he’s ever done. Someday he’ll realize that.” He felt her smile against his skin. “I doubt it. But it’s nice of you to say so. You don’t have to be concerned on that account, you know. I reconciled myself to the way he was a long time ago.” Once again Matthew was taken unaware by the extent of the feelings she inspired in him, his own limitless desire to fill her with happiness. “Whatever you need,” he whispered, “Whatever you want, I’ll get it for you. Just tell me.” Daisy stretched comfortably, a pleasant shiver running through her limbs. She touched his lips with her fingers, tracing the smoothness. “I want to know what your five-dollar wish was for.” “Is that all?” He smiled beneath her exploring fingertips. “I wished you would find someone who wanted you as much as I did. But I knew it wouldn’t come true.” The candlelight slid over Daisy’s delicate features as she raised her head to look at him. “Why not?” “Because I knew no one could ever want you as much as I do.” Daisy levered herself farther over him until her hair tumbled in a dark curtain around them both. “What was your wish?” Matthew asked, combing his fingers through the fall of shimmering hair. “That I could find the right man to marry.” Her tender smile stopped his heart. “And then you appeared.

In Hiding - coming summer of 2020 WAYNE ANTHONY SEEKS REDEMPTION FROM A BAD DAY - Although warned about getting the stitches wet, he believed a hot shower was the only road to his redemption. Experienced taught him the best way to relieve the tightness in his lower back was by standing beneath the near-scalding water. Dropping the rest of his clothing, he turned the shower on full blast. The hot water rushed from the showerhead filling the tiny room with steam, instantly the small mirror on the medicine cabinet fogged up. The man quietly pulled the shower curtain back and entered the shower stall without a sound. Years of acting as another’s shadow had trained him to live soundlessly. The hot water cascaded over his body as the echo from the pounding water deadened slightly. Grabbing the sample sized soap, he pulled the paper off and tossed the wrapper over the curtain rail. Wayne rubbed the clean smelling block until his large hands disappeared beneath the lather. He ignored the folded washcloth, opting to use his hands across his body. Gently he cleaned the injury allowing the slime of bacterial soap to remove the residual of the rust-colored betadine. All that remained when he finished was the pale orange smear from the antiseptic. This scar was not the only mar to his body. The water cascaded down hard muscles making rivulets throughout the thatches of dark hair. He raised his arms gingerly as he washed beneath them; the tight muscles of his abdomen glistened beneath the torrent of water. Opening a bottle of shampoo-slash-conditioner, he applied a dab then ran his hands across his scalp. Finally, the tension in his square jaw had eased, making his handsome face more inviting. The cords of his neck stood out as he rinsed the shampoo from his hair. It coursed down his chest leading down to his groin where the scented wash caught in his pelvic hair. Wayne's body was one of perfection for any woman; if that was, she could ignore the mutilations. Knife injuries left their mark with jagged white lines. Most of these, he had doctored himself; his lack of skill resulted in crude scars. The deepest one, undulated along the left side of his abdomen, that one had required the art of a surgeon. Dropping his arms, he surrenders himself to the pelting deluge from the shower. The steamy water cascaded down his body, pulling the soap toward the drain. Across his back, it slid down several small indiscernible pockmarks left by gunshot wounds, the true extent of their damage far beneath his skin. Slowly the suds left his body, snaking down his muscular legs. It slithered down the scars on his left knee, the result of replacement surgery after a thug took a bat to it. Wayne stood until the hot water cooled, and ran translucent over his body. Finally, he washes the impact of the long day from his mind and spirit.

What I have been doing lately from my WIP "In Hiding" is available on my website. *Strong language warning* Wayne sat in the hygienic emergency room trying to ignore the bitch of a headache that began radiating at the back of his skull. His worn jeans, a blood-stained t-shirt, and his makeshift bandage sat on a nearby chair. The hysteria created by his appearance in the small hospital ward had died down. A local cop greeted him as soon as he was escorted to the examination room. The conversation was brief, once he revealed he was a bail enforcer the topic changed from investigation to shooting the bull. The experienced officer shook his hand before leaving then joked he hoped this would be their only encounter. The ER doc was a woman about his age. Already the years of long hours, rotating shifts and the rarity of a personal life showed on her face. Her eyelids were pink-rimmed, her complexion sallow; all were earmarks of the effect of long-term exhaustion. Wayne knew it all too well as he rubbed his knuckle against his own grainy eyes. Despite this, she attended to him with an upbeat demeanor and even slid in some ribbing at his expense. He was defenseless, once the adrenaline dropped off Wayne felt drained. He accepted her volleys without a response. All he mustered was a smile and occasional nod as she stitched him up. Across the room, his cell toned, after the brief display of the number a woman’s image filled the screen. Under his breath, he mumbled, “Shit.” He intends for his exclamation to remain ignored, having caught it the doctor glanced his direction with a smile. Without invitation, she retrieved his phone handing it to him without comment. Wayne noted the raised eyebrow she failed to hide. The phone toned again as he glanced at the flat image on the device. The woman’s likeness was smiling brightly, her blue eyes dancing. Just looking at her eased the pain in his head. He swiped the screen and connected the call as the doctor finished taping his injury. Using his free uninjured arm, he held the phone away from him slightly, utilizing the speaker option. “Hey Baby.” “What the hell, Wayne!” Her voice filled the small area, in his peripheral vision he saw the doc smirk. Turning his head, he addressed the caller. “Babe, I was getting ready to call.” The excuse sounded lame, even to him. “Why the hell do I have to hear about this secondhand?” Wayne placed the phone to his chest, loudly he exclaimed; “F***!” The ER doc touched his arm, “I will give you privacy.” Wayne gave her a grateful nod. With a snatch, she grabbed the corner of the thin curtain suspended from the ceiling and pulled it close. Alone again, he refocused on the call. The woman on the other end had continued in her tirade without him. When he rejoined the call mid-rant, she was issuing him a heartfelt ass-chewing. “...bullshit Wayne that I have to hear about this from my cousin. We’ve talked about this!” “Honey...” She interrupts him before he can explain himself. “So what the hell happened?” Wisely he waited for silence to indicate it was his turn to speak. “Lou, Honey first I am sorry. You know I never meant to upset you. I am alright; it is just a flesh wound.” As he speaks, a sharp pain radiates across his side. Gritting his teeth, Wayne vows to continue without having the radiating pain affect his voice. “I didn’t want you to worry Honey; you know calling Cooper first is just business.” Silence. The woman miles away grits her teeth as she angrily brushes away her tears. Seated at the simple dining table, she takes a napkin from the center and dabs at her eyes. Mentally she reminds herself of her promise that she was done crying over this man. She takes an unsteady breath as she returns her attention to the call. “Lou, you still there?” There is something in his voice, the tender desperation he allows only her to see. Furrowing her brow she closes her eyes, an errant tear coursed down her cheek.

There you are,” I told my mother, standing in the hot breeze that had entered along with the rattle of traffic and the voices in the street. “Brooklyn.” My mother turned to Gabe, who was holding her hand. “Show me,” she said again. The strain of this vigil was evident in the shape of his shoulders and the weariness in his eyes. He glanced up at me where I stood by the window and then down at her again. “All right,” he said softly. He got up slowly, pushing back the old dining-room chair. He leaned over the bed, slipping his hands beneath her. I watched in some astonishment as he lifted her, the bedclothes trailing. “Get the door,” he said over his shoulder as he made his way out of the room with our mother in his arms like a child. He turned to his side to fit them both through the passageway, and I overtook them in the living room. We had lined the woodwork here with boric acid, to keep the roaches at bay, and there was something of its pale dust over everything in those days. It sometimes made me recall: sand of Syria and Mount Lebanon. I went ahead to open the door. Gabe slipped through it, our mother in his arms. I followed them down the stairs, astonished, full of objections, but unable to object. I watched him as he gently negotiated the turnings. I wondered briefly if he planned to carry her all the way to the hospital. In the vestibule, the door to the parlor-floor apartment was still patched with plywood. Gabe turned to me and nodded toward the street. My mother’s eyes were closed. In my brother’s arms she seemed as small and light as an infant. I went ahead to pull the first door open, and then slipped around them to get the outer door as well. There was a blast of heat. Gabe carried my mother into the sunlight and down the steps. There were kids on the stoop across the street, there was the tinny music from their transistor radios. They glared, open-mouthed. A pair of dark men passing by looked up as Gabe came down the stairs with my mother in his arms. They walked to the curb, glancing over their shoulders, giving him wide berth. Gabe, too, went to the curb and then turned around to look back up at the house. I rushed to scoop up the sheet and the blanket that was now brushing the sidewalk. “You’re here, Momma,” I heard him say. “Where we’ve always lived.” My mother raised her head. She extricated one thin hand from the winding bedclothes and raised it to her eyes against the sun. She looked down the street and then up at our building, the blue summer light reflecting in the glass of the front door, the bowed parlor window—some plywood there, too—and then up to the fourth floor, where a bit of lace curtain, her handiwork, had been drawn through the opened window. “Not home,” I heard Gabe tell her, reassuring her. “Brooklyn.

Raise me up and cut me down, broken is the Son of Man. Pierce Me, stripe Me, Hide me behind a stone, I am the Ophikomen (that which is hidden and comes later). The rock is rolled, the curtain torn, I am brought to light. We the Three in One. Iam the Father, I am the Son, We send the Spirit, We the Three in One. We are the Son of Man.

The fact that costs rise faster for arts organizations than for other industries is often misread as “artists don’t handle money well” or “artists are wasteful.” Many board members believe that if an arts organization were managed carefully, it would turn a profit. They cannot understand why an organization that makes something people like should run at a perpetual deficit. This corporate prejudice can affect the way they govern their arts organization, encouraging them to try to cut budgets or to avoid addressing annual fund-raising requirements. Such board members start from the belief that arts managers are doing something wrong. They think that if corporate managers could run the arts organization, then it would become profitable, that if arts managers were smarter, fund-raising targets could be lower. They are simply wrong.

Mom was very warm and loving. My favorite moments with her were spent in the kitchen, helping her make biscuits or chicken and dumplings. She would use our time together to share life lessons or talk about the Bible. She always had time for me. She used to take me with her to deliver food to some of the hungry people around our part of the river. “We’re all just people,” Mom would say. “Every race, every color, we all have the same blood.” We used to take garden vegetables to a woman who lived nearby. She’d had eighteen children but was older now and very poor. Mom knew I was still young, and she was worried about what I might say, so she tried to prepare me in advance. “Look, her stuff’s going to be different, so don’t make a big to-do about it.” When I walked into the older woman’s rickety house for the first time, I noticed she had a bed sheet hanging in the kitchen doorway instead of a door. “That’s pretty,” I said, pointing to the sheet-curtain. Mom looked at me, raising her eyebrows. I ran through it a couple of times, pretending I was a superhero busting through a wall. Next, I noticed her old-fashioned rotary dial phone. “I never saw a phone that color before,” I said. Mom held her breath, nervous. “That’s pretty,” I added. Mom gave the woman the food we had brought, and as we left, I didn’t want her to think we were going to forget her. “My mom’s going to bring more stuff. She’s got lots of it,” I volunteered. I think I made my mama proud and didn’t embarrass her too much. She always says I have a tender heart and that my oldest brother, Alan, and I are most like her.

Nest box curtains provide the hens extra privacy when laying. They can also help keep drafts away from the eggs and any baby chicks a mama hen might be brooding. In addition, nest curtains can help block the view and thus keep hens from fighting and harassing each other over a box.

Always For the First Time" Always for the first time Hardly do I know you by sight You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle     to my window A wholly imaginary house It is there from one second to the next In the inviolate darkness I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring The one and only rift In the facade and in my heart The closer I come to you In reality The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room Where you appear alone before me At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness The elusive angle of a curtain It’s a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the     vicinity of Grasse With the diagonal slant of its girls picking Behind them the dark falling wing of the planets stripped     bare Before them a T-square of dazzling light The curtain invisibly raised In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough     until sleep You as though you could be The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you You pretend not to know I am watching you Marvelously I am no longer sure you know Your idleness brings tears to my eyes A swarm of interruptions surrounds each of your gestures In a honeydew hunt There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that     may well scratch you in the forest There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de Lorette Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings Flaring out in the center of a great white clover There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy There is By my lening over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the very first time André Breton (1934)

And while she was sad to see me leave, I think she was also happy that I was heading out into the world, escaping the past and moving forward into a different present without even glancing behind me. Because, however painful it might be, that’s what all good parents have to do in the end. I think it was just that what happened had raised a curtain of silence between us that made it impossible to say certain things out loud. I like to think they didn’t need to be. I’m proud of you, she didn’t say. And I understand. Thank you, I didn’t reply. And I love you.

I’m watching the day through a breeze blown slice in my curtains, obscuring nothing but my hour, summer and wind making peace, moving the leaves in the trees standing guard by my window, nervous after my attempts, the sun stroking fronds but leaving others in shadows, seeing the movement of the branches but hearing nothing but the serene sound of cars beyond the garden, limbs waving to me as a bird perches, maybe scouting for a house, onto the bough scratching the glass, knocking to bring me out into contentment while tiny flies shoot in and out of view, their quick existence something I could argue as I smell the fresh air through the dour scent of a depression that hasn’t left my room in days, then swiftly feeling like I’m outside, alive and welcoming the wind to raise the hairs on my arms, a contrast that blossoms into hope.

...But I am the most horrified at the slim young man who is upon his knees, clad in the same white trousers as I, his long, black hair framing his face like soft, shining curtains as he rests his head on his clasped, shackled hands and prays. "Brian," I sob, my anguish causing my voice to break. "I don't want you in this place..." He raises his head and pulls me down beside him. His sightless eyes seem to look straight into mine. "You aren't alone anymore, Obadiah," he says gently. I weep, and take him back against me the best that I can, with my shackled wrists, and we rest against one another...two vessels ready for the last journey. "I couldn't let you go without me, 'Baddy," he says softly. "I'd never find a love like yours again, even if I lived for a million years! There is only one you. When a person is gifted with a love like this, it should be defended at all costs..." I weep then, for real...for this precious child, who will pay the ultimate price for loving me...how he must love me, indeed...

To Eliot Beneath the skin of every colleen, There's a snail. It shrinks looking at another rally of candles, Squeezes too feeling lips of her man, Smeared with different glosses. She screams at times, You raise the volume of your sound system. Ah!silence is peaceful, Only she knows vacant silences draw the curtain. Upon her stage, No great crime or chivalry is performed, As they are patent of the first race. It's like putting out some lamps, There's no word in dictionary Namely hollow women.

Juliet Stollop’s bed was marketed to her mother as fit for a princess, and is more or less like the Archchancellor’s bed, although almost all less, since it consists of some gauze curtains surrounding a very narrow, very cheap bed. Her mother is now dead. This can be inferred from the fact that when the bed collapsed under the weight of a growing girl, someone raised it up on beer crates. A mother would have made sure that at least they were, like everything else in the room, painted pink with little crowns on. Mr Nutt was seven years old before he found out that sleeping, for some people, involved a special piece of furniture.

Finally, it was our turn and my stomach churned with anxiety and nerves. As we raced out onto the stage to form our positions before the curtain went up, Sara turned to me and said, “Break a leg, Julia!” “What?” I frowned. “That’s for good luck,” she smirked and then faced the audience whose applause was deafening once again. We lunged into our routine, with Sara in the front row, doing the somersaults that she was so good at and as usual, her precision and timing were excellent. The applause erupted again and with a flick of her long ponytail, she executed a very tricky interchange with Alex and then moved to the back. Alex attacked his moves with his usual gusto and the sharp, expressive movements which made him the stand out hip-hop dancer that he was. I felt a rush of pride at being a part of such a cool routine but just as I moved to the front position, I felt my leg give way under me. It was a completely involuntary reaction and one I was powerless to prevent. I was supposed to kneel down and support the weight of one of the smaller girls on my bent knee but unfortunately, it was the leg that I had injured that morning. There was no way I could bear her weight and the sharp pain caused my knee to drop just as Abbie pressed down on it to raise herself into the air. With a gasp from the audience, she went tumbling to the ground. Bright red with embarrassment, she glared at me in horror and all I could do was help her up and try to resume the timing and movements of the routine going on around us. Fortunately, Abbie had no trouble getting back into rhythm, but I just seemed to lose my place and was not able to recover. As if in slow motion, I felt myself limping around the stage after the others and then looking down, I realized that blood was oozing from my leg and onto the floor. I tried to ignore it and focus on the moves that I knew so well, but I was simply unable to get it together. Gratefully, Millie took over my spot and I moved once again to the back row, trying to camouflage myself amongst the others. The scene around me was almost surreal and I felt as though I were a spectator watching the event unfold from afar. The swirling, twisting and turning of the dancers in front of me, along with the steady thumping beat of the latest hip-hop song that everyone knew so well, all seemed to mesh together into a whirlpool of crazy colors and sounds. Then, feeling a slight nudge in my lower back, I was pushed towards the front of the stage. An instant flash of recall had me leaping into the air. Everyone still considered this moment the highlight of our routine. It was the grand finale and my chance to relinquish my status as actually being a decent dancer and choreographer. Flinging my arms and legs forward, I came down onto the stage, one foot at a time. Then reminiscent of that morning’s episode in the school driveway, rather than gripping onto the stage in a final dramatic stomp, my foot slid forward and just kept on going until my whole body landed horizontally on the floor with a loud bang. In a blur of dizziness, I sat up and looked around then saw that I had slipped on a pool of blood; blood that had oozed from the gash in my knee and onto the stage. At that very moment, I was overcome with a sudden rush of nausea and unable to stop the sudden convulsion, I vomited all over the floor in front of me. Too terrified to open my eyes, I wished I could turn back the clock. Back to the day of our dress rehearsal when everything had gone so smoothly. My final leap had been the high point of the day, where even Miss Sheldon and also Alex our expert hip hop dancer, had congratulated me on my performance. I dared to glance fearfully out into the audience. Everyone appeared aghast and I could see the shocked expressions of my mom and dad. Then, realizing I was surrounded by worried faces peering down at me, everything suddenly went black.

AMANDA: Do you realize that we're living in sin? ELYOT: Not according to the Catholics; Catholics don't recognize divorce. We're married as much as ever we were. AMANDA: Yes, dear, but we're not Catholics. ELYOT: Never mind, it's nice to think they'd sort of back us up. We were married in the eyes of heaven, and we still are. AMANDA: We may be alright in the eyes of Heaven, but we look like being in the hell of a mess socially. ELYOT: Who cares? AMANDA: Are we going to marry again, after Victor and Sibyl divorce us? ELYOT: I suppose so. What do you think? AMANDA: I feel rather scared of marriage really. ELYOT: It is a frowsy business. AMANDA: I believe it was just the fact of our being married, and clamped together publicly, that wrecked us before. ELYOT: That, and not knowing bow to manage each other. AMANDA: Do you think we know how to manage each other now? ELYOT: This week's been very successful. We've hardly used Solomon Isaacs at all. AMANDA: Solomon Isaacs is so long, let's shorten it to Sollocks. ELYOT: All right. AMANDA: Darling, you do look awfully sweet in your little dressing-gown. ELYOT: Yes, it's pretty ravishing, isn't it? AMANDA: Do you mind if I come round and kiss you? [...] AMANDA: We're tormenting one another. Sit down, sweet, I'm scared. ELYOT [Slowly]: Very well. [He sits down thoughtfully.] AMANDA: We should have said Sollocks ages ago. ELYOT: We're in love all right. [...] AMANDA: [Victor] had a positive mania for looking after me, and protecting me. ELYOT: That would have died down in time, dear. AMANDA: You mustn't be rude; there's no necessity to be rude. ELYOT: I wasn't in the least rude; I merely made a perfectly rational statement. AMANDA: Your voice was decidedly bitter. ELYOT: Victor bad glorious legs, hadn't he? And fascinating ears. AMANDA: Don't be silly. ELYOT: He probably looked radiant in the morning, all flushed and tumbled on the pillow. AMANDA: I never saw him on the pillow. ELYOT: I'm surprised to hear it. AMANDA [angrily]: Elyot! ELYOT: There's no need to be cross. AMANDA: What did you mean by that? ELYOT: I'm sick of listening to you yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yapping about Victor. AMANDA: Now listen Elyot, once and for all --, ELYOT: Oh my dear, Sollocks! Sollocks! -- two minutes -- Sollocks. AMANDA: But -- ELYOT [firmly]: Sollocks! [They sit in dead silence, looking at each other. AMANDA makes a sign that she wants a cigarette. ELYOT gets up, hands her the box, and lights one for her and himself. AMANDA rises and walks over to the window, and stands there, looking out for a moment. Presently ELYOT joins her. She slips her arm through his, and they kiss lightly. They draw the curtains and then come down and sit side by side on the sofa. ELYOT looks at his watch. AMANDA raises her eyebrows at him and he nods, then they both sigh, audibly] That was a near thing. AMANDA: It was my fault. I'm terribly sorry, darling. ELYOT: I was very irritating, I know I was. I'm sure Victor was awfully nice, and you're perfectly right to be sweet about him. AMANDA: That's downright handsome of you. Sweetheart! [She kisses him.] ELYOT [leaning back with her on the sofa]: I think I love you more than ever before. Isn't it ridiculous? Put your feet up. [She puts her legs across his, and they snuggle back together in the corner of the sofa, his head resting on her shoulder.]

FLUENT LOVE Time dark obscure Faded into love’s magic As we lay out separate hearts, Tragic, Eyes bled the souls’ Hidden secrets as we fled To the goals Of fluent love. Our hearts melting Ran down to our loins, A swollen molten mass united No joins We merged so fluid And raised our single voice in thanks To the druid Of fluent love. We smoked our single Cigarette singing, Our single song Ringing To the sad sun, so certain Of winter’s morning cold Behind the curtain Of fluent love.

I raised my gaze, and my throat closed. No. My knuckles trembled around the handful of velvet curtain. Vale said, after a moment, “What is it?” I didn’t even know how to answer him. The end. That’s what it is.

There is a wind, and the flowers on the window-sill, and their shadows on the curtains, are waving. Like swans dipping their beaks in water. Like the incalculable raising its head, uselessly and wildly, for one moment, before it sinks down, beaten, into the darkness. Like skulls on long, thin necks. Plunging wildly when the wind blows to the end of the curtain, which is their nothingness. Distorting themselves as they plunge. The musty smell, the bugs, the loneliness, this room, which is part of the street outside - this is all I want from life.

In early youth we sit before the impending course of our life like children at the theatre before the curtain is raised, who sit there in happy and excited expectation of the things that are to come. It is a blessing that we do not know what will actually come. For to the man who knows, the children may at times appear to be like innocent delinquents who are condemned not to death, it is true, but to life and have not yet grasped the purport of their sentence. Nevertheless everyone wants to reach old age and thus to a state of life, whereof it may be said: ‘It is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens.

I gave a quick knock on the bathroom door before slipping inside. The water was running, filling the room with steam as Lay poked her head out from behind the curtain. I raised my eyebrows in silent request. “Absolutely not, Chester. Don’t you dare.” I laughed. “Aww come on, Lay-Lay. You’re no fun.” “I mean it. Please don’t.” It’s not like I really thought she’d invite me in for godsakes; I was totally teasing. “Fine. I’ll just wait out here until you’re done.” “Promise?” She looked so adorable, her brown eyes pleading from under her wet lashes, sexy and shy all at once. “Yeah, I promise. But at least give me the play-by-play of what I’m missing out on in there.” She stifled a giggle in response and I figured that was that. I picked up one of the decorative soaps when suddenly, a sultry vixen piped up from behind the curtain. “Wellll, the water is so hot and it’s so steamy in here. God, I’m so wet and it feels so good.” My dick immediately sprang to attention. The rest of me froze in shock. “Now I’m soaping myself down, running my hands allll over my body...” Of course my mind was envisioning her slick soapy hands touching every inch of her gorgeous naked self. Oh Jesus. She chose that moment to peek her head out and check out her handiwork. I was staring at her speechless, my jaw slack, disbelieving. “Layla, what the fuck?

She leans her head on him again. "I have a secret." she says. He stays silent, touching her face. "I’d like to confide in you." She sits up. "But you have to swear not to tell anyone." She looks at him, raising an eyebrow, before lowering her head and a curtain of hair covers her face. "I’d die of shame." Andrea takes her strands of hair and moves them back. "I swear. Cross my heart, like when we were little. Okay?" he makes a sign on his chest. She nods and takes two deep breaths. "It's a little long. I don’t know where to start." "Take all the time you need." He sits up and plays with the grass while he waits. "Well…." She lifts her clasped hands to her mouth. "I've written two novels," she begins. "Really?" Andrea gasps. "Great! Have they been published?" She nods. "How are they doing?" "Well," she says, decisively. "I’m very happy." "I’ll look you up and have a read." She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "I’m under a pseudonym, to be honest." Andrea raises his eyebrows. "Ah, I see. So that you feel more free to express yourself, I guess." Susy shakes her head. That isn’t the reason. "Is it because of the stories? Are they strange?" Susy looks down and puts a finger to her mouth, biting the nail. "A little." "Are they really violent? Do you write Tarantino type stories?" he jokes. "No, no." Andrea senses that they have started a guessing game. One piece of information at a time and then he will get to the answer. "Ah! I’ve got it," he points at her. "Love stories? Or, wait. What are they called....?" He snaps his fingers. "Barbara reads them. Those books with vampires, angels and….." "Paranormal Romance? No, not that either." Andrea scratches his ear. "Thrillers, crime novels, science fiction?" Only biographies and reference books remain. She shakes her head again and Andrea folds his arms in puzzlement. "What books have you written then?" Susy whispers a word, her finger in her mouth, and Andrea doesn’t catch it. He takes away her hand and moves closer to her. "Huh?" "Erotic novels," she says, blushing. Andrea gasps and looks at her, wide-eyed, then bursts out laughing and throws himself onto the ground. He holds his stomach and rolls around. "I don’t believe it..." he says, doubled up with laughter. "I knew I shouldn’t have told you!" she blurts out and starts getting up. Andrea grabs her arm. "Please. Sorry," he says. "It’s just that you don’t seem like a housewife who does S&M in the living room." Susy folds her arms. "No, I don’t write about that kind of fantasy." "What type of fantasy do you write about?" he asks with a mischievous smile. "First love in the classroom? Romance, but with sex?" He waves his eyebrows, amused. "Stupid!" she replies, annoyed. "Alright." He clears his throat. "I won’t make fun of you. I promise. I'm listening." He becomes serious again, biting his lips. Susy

All she could do was hope Sean had put the same consideration into his sleeping attire. He probably didn’t sleep in the buff, despite the deliciously vivid visual of that her imagination had no trouble conjuring. He’d been in the army for twelve years—a good chunk of that deployed overseas—and surely they weren’t in the habit of sleeping nude. Flannel would be nice. And not battered shorts, like hers. Long pants and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to his throat would be nice, like something Ward Cleaver would have worn to bed in his 1950s sitcom. When she finally dropped the curtain on the mental drama and left the bathroom, she was a little disappointed he was already asleep. Clearly he wasn’t struggling to hold back the reins of runaway sexual attraction the way she was. He’d dimmed the overhead light, but she could hear him softly snoring and make out the sheet pulled halfway up his stomach. His naked stomach, which led her gaze to his naked chest and then to his naked shoulders, the muscles nicely highlighted by the way he slept with his arms raised over his head. Was the rest of him naked, too? “When you stare at somebody who’s sleeping,” he mumbled without moving or opening his eyes, “they usually wake up.” Busted. Her face burned as though his words were a blowtorch and she rushed across the room to slap the light switch off. In the faint glow of moonlight penetrating the curtains, she went to the couch to try to get comfortable. It wasn’t quite long enough, but she curled up under the light cotton blanket and closed her eyes. Getting caught staring on the first night was embarrassing, but at least he wasn’t a mind reader. There was no way he could guess she’d been wondering what he wore from the waist down. “Good night, Emma.” The quiet, husky voice in the darkness made her shiver. “Night, Sean.” A little less than seven hours of tossing and turning later, Emma’s question was answered—much to the detriment of her recently revived libido. At some point during the night, Sean had thrown off the sheet. Probably right around the time he rolled onto his stomach. With his hands shoved under his pillow and one knee drawn up a little, she had a clear view of his ass—showcased perfectly in dark blue boxer briefs.

He raised the leather curtain and showed us into the next room. “Little study” is not how I would have described it; it was spacious, with walls of exquisite antique shelving crammed with handsomely bound books all of venerable age. What impressed me more than the books were some small glass cases filled with objects hard to identify—they looked like stones. And there were little animals, whether stuffed, mummified, or delicately reproduced I couldn’t say. Everything was bathed in a diffuse crepuscular light that came from a large double-mullioned window at the end, with leaded diamond panes of transparent amber. The light from the window blended with that of a great lamp on a dark mahogany table covered with papers. It was one of those lamps sometimes found on reading tables in old libraries, with a dome of green glass that could cast a white oval on the page while leaving the surroundings in an opalescent penumbra. This play of two sources of light, both unnatural, somehow enlivened the polychrome of the ceiling. The ceiling was vaulted, supported on all four sides by a decorative fiction: little brick-red columns with tiny gilded capitals. The many trompe l’oeil images, divided into seven areas, enhanced the effect of depth, and the whole room had the feeling of a mortuary chapel, impalpably sinful, melancholy, sensual.

Dance me through th curtains that our kisses have out worm. Raise a ent of shelter now, though every thread is torn. Dance me to the end of love. Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin.

These boozy and licentious variety halls thrived on the patronage of civil War soldiers on furlough, prompting moralists to persuade the city to require in 1862 that all theatrical and musical performing spaces be licensed and that the sale of liquor and employment of “waitresses” be banned wherever a curtain separated performers from customers. Entrepreneurs of leisure promptly dove through this loophole by inaugurating nightspots that featured a raised platform in the rear, a piano, and an open dance floor surrounded by tables and chairs.

I write to raise the curtain on life's endless possibilities. Because you asked, "Pourquoi?

The curtain of worldly desire must be ripped in half and I must look into my own soul and overcome the pit of hell. ‘I am in hell,’ I blurted to her. She almost struck me with her raised withered hand. After that it was banishment. I was sent to a sister house in Ballinasloe, silence and meditation, excused from all manual work, alone with myself, no patients to occupy the welter of my thoughts.

I have been warned not even to raise the question of animal immortality, lest I find myself 'in company with all the old maids'. I have no objection to the company. I do not think either virginity or old age contemptible, and some of the shrewdest minds I have met inhabited the bodies of old maids. Nor am I greatly moved by jocular enquiries such as 'Where will you put all the mosquitoes?' — a question to be answered on its own level by pointing out that, if the worst came to the worst, a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could very conveniently be combined. The complete silence of Scripture and Christian tradition on animal immortality is a more serious objection; but it would be fatal only if Christian revelation showed any signs of being intended as a système de la nature answering all questions. But it is nothing of the sort: the curtain has been rent at one point, and at one point only, to reveal our immediate practical necessities and not to satisfy our intellectual curiosity.

One of the distinct hallmarks of the fanatic is his fervent desire to change you so that you will be like him. To convince you that you must immediately convert, abandon your world, and move into his. The fanatic does not want there to be any differences between people. He wants us all to be as one. He desires a world with no curtains drawn, no blinds shuttered, no doors locked, no shadow of a private life, for we must all be one body and one soul. We must all march together in threes on the path ascending to redemption, whether this redemption or the opposite one. The fanatic strives to upgrade and improve you, to open your eyes so that you, too, can see the light. Indeed, in that sense the fanatic is a wondrously altruistic and extremely unselfish creature: he is interested in you far more than he is in himself. Day and night he yearns to save your soul, to unshackle you, to take you out of darkness into the light, to redeem you once and for all from error and sin. Here he comes to hug you, sick with worry about your condition, bubbling with goodwill to change your prayer habits (or lack thereof), your voting or smoking habits, your eating habits, your preferences, your entire lifestyle, which is so harmful to you. All the fanatic wants is to take you in his arms and hug you, to raise you from the lowly spot you are stuck in and place you in the sublime place he has discovered, where he has since been basking and to which you must ascend immediately. For your very own good.

Matthew records that at the moment Jesus died, when the temple curtain was torn in two, ‘The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.’ When the power of heaven flooded out through the tear in dimensions, it came in such a sudden rush that people were raised from the dead, right there and then. But Matthew clearly states that they were raised with physical bodies, not just as souls, and that they went into Jerusalem and ‘appeared to many people’ (Matthew 27: 51–53). Furthermore, when the disciples encountered the risen Christ for themselves, they met a physical Jesus who had a body that could be touched and that could eat food. Death had begun to work backwards. The power of heaven was coming to earth not to take the disciples away to a ‘spiritual’ bliss but, just as in the healing miracles of Jesus, it had come to undo all the disintegrating effects of evil and sin that were the result of humanity’s rebellion against God, even the ‘chain of death’ itself.

But as the barber progressed, his hands moved with increasing speed until they leapt and kicked like a Cossack doing the hopak! Upon the execution of the final snip, it would have been perfectly appropriate for a curtain to drop only to be raised again a moment later so that the audience could applaud as the barber took a bow.

She lay there, her arms raised, her hands folded on top of her head, her eyes wide open, and observed how the grey-blue light penetrated into the room through the white-and-red-striped curtains, picking out the washstand, the two crude chairs and the tall yellow wardrobe in the gloom, illuminating the room without bringing it to life, without, as it were, waking it up. And it seemed to Doralice that this room, as small as a ship's cabin, was in no way connected to her.

It was a world made of salt water and stone. I stood on a high bluff surrounded on all sides by an endless silver sea. Far below me, cupped by the curving shore of the island like a pebble in a palm, was a city. At least, I supposed it was a city. It didn't have any of the usual trappings of one: no streetcars hummed and buzzed through it, and no haze of coal smoke curtained above it. Instead, there were whitewashed stone buildings arranged in artful spirals, dotted with open windows like black eyes. A few towers raised their heads above the crowd and the masts of small ships made a tiny forest along the coast.

Well, come on in for crying out loud. How long you gonna stand here and study this door? He ain’t in here, so you can’t will him to walk out of it.” Beau wasn’t here, either, but maybe she knew where he was. I hurried after her as she spun around and headed back inside. The bar was different at three o’clock in the afternoon. The curtains were pulled open, letting sunlight inside, and the windows were open too, allowing a fresh, cool breeze to waft through the place, almost taking away the stench of stale beer and cigarettes…almost. “He left yesterday. Ain’t been home, neither. You messed those two boys up good, girl.” Honey shook her head as she wiped glasses off and hung them back up above the bar. “I know. I need to fix it.” She shook her head and let out a hard laugh. “I reckon that would be nice, but the damage is done. Those boys about beat the shit outta each other in here yesterday. You’ve made them both crazy. Never thought I’d see a girl come between them two, but then I never figured you’d ever look Beau’s way either. Once you started showing him some interest, I knew this was all going to Hell in a handbasket real quick. You’ve always been my boy’s weakness.” I sank down onto a stool across the bar from her. My stomach churned with guilt. What had I done to Beau? How could I say I love him and hurt him so badly? Love wasn’t selfish. “I’m an awful person. I’d take it all away if I could. I can’t believe I’ve done this to him.” Honey paused and raised an artfully sculpted brow. “Him who?” “Beau,” I replied, frowning. A sad smile touched her lips and she shook her head. “Well, I guess he ain’t as stupid as I thought he was. I figured the boy’d thrown everything away for some little gal looking to have a good time. I didn’t think you’d actually care about him, too.

He had learned by this time not to raise his hand and ask, "If people who are good are blessed, why was The Prophet Joseph Smith shot to death?" He knew the answer, which was, "He wasn't shot to death, he was martyred.