Dandelion Sayings Quotes

Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.

The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.

Somewhere someone thinks they love someone else exactly like I love you. Somewhere someone shakes from the ripple of a thousand butterflies inside a single stomach. Somewhere someone is packing their bags to see the world with someone else. Somewhere someone is reaching through the most terrifying few feet of space to hold the hand of someone else. Somewhere someone is watching someone else’s chest rise and fall with the breath of slumber. Somewhere someone is pouring ink like blood onto pages fighting to say the truth that has no words. Somewhere someone is waiting patient but exhausted to just be with someone else. Somewhere someone is opening their eyes to a sunrise in someplace they have never seen. Somewhere someone is pulling out the petals twisting the apple stem picking up the heads up penny rubbing the rabbits foot knocking on wood throwing coins into fountains hunting for the only clover with only 4 leaves skipping over the cracks snapping the wishbone crossing their fingers blowing out the candles sending dandelion seeds into the air ushering eyelashes off their thumbs finding the first star and waiting for 11:11 on their clock to spend their wishes on someone else. Somewhere someone is saying goodbye but somewhere someone else is saying hello. Somewhere someone is sharing their first or their last kiss with their or no longer their someone else. Somewhere someone is wondering if how they feel is how the other they feels about them and if both theys could ever become a they together. Somewhere someone is the decoder ring to all of the great mysteries of life for someone else. Somewhere someone is the treasure map. Somewhere someone thinks they love someone else exactly like I love you. Somewhere someone is wrong.

you call me to tell me you miss me i turn to face the front door of the house waiting for a knock days later you call to say you need me but still aren't here the dandelions on the lawn are rolling their eyes in disappointment the grass has declared you yesterday's news what do i care if you love me or miss me or need me when you aren't doing anything about it if i'm not the love of your life i'll be the greatest loss instead

Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.

What I know about living is the pain is never just ours Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window When I can see what I couldn’t see before, through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds. So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better

I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!

What I say is, don't go playing unless you can win. Only sit down to chess with idiots, only kick a dog what's dead already, and don't love a lady unless she loves you first.

Tom," said Douglas, "just promise me one thing, okay?" "It's a promise. What?" "You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right?" "You mean you'll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes?" "Well . . . sure . . . even that. What I mean is, don't go away, huh? Don't let any cars run over you or fall of a cliff." "I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway?" "'Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real old--say forty or forty-five some day-- we can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing bears." "Growing beards! Boy!" "Like I say, you stick around and don't let nothing happen." "You can depend on me," said Tom. "It's not you I worry about," said Douglas. "It's the way God runs the world." Tom thought about this for a moment. "He's all right, Doug," said Tom. "He tries.

And, after all, isn’t that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people’s heads to look out at the damned fool miracle and say: oh, so that’s how you see it!? Well, now, I must remember that.

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple.

I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I’d never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can’t say I’m greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don’t fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it.

I have ridden with death, and walked beside it. Some say I have sought it. The search would not have been difficult, but I look for the death of my enemies first. That is much harder to find.

MY MOTHER GETS DRESSED It is impossible for my mother to do even the simplest things for herself anymore so we do it together, get her dressed. I choose the clothes without zippers or buckles or straps, clothes that are simple but elegant, and easy to get into. Otherwise, it's just like every other day. After bathing, getting dressed. The stockings go on first. This time, it's the new ones, the special ones with opaque black triangles that she's never worn before, bought just two weeks ago at her favorite department store. We start with the heavy, careful stuff of the right toes into the stocking tip then a smooth yank past the knob of her ankle and over her cool, smooth calf then the other toe cool ankle, smooth calf up the legs and the pantyhose is coaxed to her waist. You're doing great, Mom, I tell her as we ease her body against mine, rest her whole weight against me to slide her black dress with the black empire collar over her head struggle her fingers through the dark tunnel of the sleeve. I reach from the outside deep into the dark for her hand, grasp where I can't see for her touch. You've got to help me a little here, Mom I tell her then her fingertips touch mine and we work her fingers through the sleeve's mouth together, then we rest, her weight against me before threading the other fingers, wrist, forearm, elbow, bicep and now over the head. I gentle the black dress over her breasts, thighs, bring her makeup to her, put some color on her skin. Green for her eyes. Coral for her lips. I get her black hat. She's ready for her company. I tell the two women in simple, elegant suits waiting outside the bedroom, come in. They tell me, She's beautiful. Yes, she is, I tell them. I leave as they carefully zip her into the black body bag. Three days later, I dream a large, green suitcase arrives. When I unzip it, my mother is inside. Her dress matches her eyeshadow, which matches the suitcase perfectly. She's wearing coral lipstick. "I'm here," she says, smiling delightedly, waving and I wake up. Four days later, she comes home in a plastic black box that is heavier than it looks. In the middle of a meadow, I learn a naked more than naked. I learn a new way to hug as I tighten my fist around her body, my hand filled with her ashes and the small stones of bones. I squeeze her tight then open my hand and release her into the smallest, hottest sun, a dandelion screaming yellow at the sky.

Hmm…’ Ciri bit her lower lip, then leaned over and put her eye closer to the hole. ‘Madam Yennefer is standing by a willow… She’s plucking leaves and playing with her star. She isn’t saying anything and isn’t even looking at Geralt… And Geralt’s standing beside her. He’s looking down and he’s saying something. No, he isn’t. Oh, he’s pulling a face… What a strange expression…’ ‘Childishly simple,’ said Dandelion, finding an apple in the grass, wiping it on his trousers and examining it critically. ‘He’s asking her to forgive him for his various foolish words and deeds. He’s apologising to her for his impatience, for his lack of faith and hope, for his obstinacy, doggedness. For his sulking and posing; which are unworthy of a man. He’s apologising to her for things he didn’t understand and for things he hadn’t wanted to understand—’ ‘That’s the falsest lie!’ said Ciri, straightening up and tossing the fringe away from her forehead with a sudden movement. ‘You’re making it all up!’ ‘He’s apologising for things he’s only now understood,’ said Dandelion, staring at the sky, and he began to speak with the rhythm of a balladeer. ‘For what he’d like to understand, but is afraid he won’t have time for… And for what he will never understand. He’s apologising and asking for forgiveness… Hmm, hmm… Meaning, conscience, destiny? Everything’s so bloody banal…’ ‘That’s not true!’ Ciri stamped. ‘Geralt isn’t saying anything like that! He’s not even speaking. I saw for myself. He’s standing with her and saying nothing…’ ‘That’s the role of poetry, Ciri. To say what others cannot utter.’ ‘It’s a stupid role. And you’re making everything up!’ ‘That is also the role of poetry. Hey, I hear some raised voices coming from the pond. Have a quick look, and see what’s happening there.’ ‘Geralt,’ said Ciri, putting her eye once more to the hole in the wall, ‘is standing with his head bowed. And Yennefer’s yelling at him. She’s screaming and waving her arms. Oh dear… What can it mean?’ ‘It’s childishly simple.’ Dandelion stared at the clouds scudding across the sky. ‘Now she’s saying sorry to him.

It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, ‘How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?

Often, he felt as though he were sitting alone in the middle of a theater while the same performance was put on every night around him, with different actors saying the same lines in various settings.

Dear Yesteryear, I do not feel alone anymore. I have found love. Maybe I should say love has found me. Well, to be fair, we found each other. Yesterday, I didn’t have a home. Yesterday, I didn’t have a pillow where I could lay my head. Yesterday, it was hard to find peace. Yesterday, I wondered if morning would ever come. Yesterday, I was unable to love, dream, and trust. Yesterday, I didn’t understand life. Yesterday, I was walking in my shadow. I didn’t know if I had meaning or a purpose. I am healing from my yesteryears. However, I am still rough around the edges and still have a lot to learn. I used to be so empty inside, but now I have lovely people to fill my no-longer-empty arms. Yesterday, my path was different. I was confused, not knowing if I should go right or left— move forward or turn around. I do not know what life has in store, but I know for a fact that I do not have to worry about the deadly and narrow path anymore. Yesterday, my sun was blocked by my shadows and everything thing else that came along that didn’t serve me. However, today, the sun is shining brighter than it ever has in my entire life. Yesterday, I will never forget you. You’ve taught me many lessons. I was taught lessons that a young person should never experience or even know about. Some lessons in life leave permitted marks. There have been many lessons I’ve learned that have left so many scars on my heart, but life goes on. I use to be overwhelmed by hate, disbelief, and not knowing if I was going to make it. Now, I am surrounded by warm hugs, smiles, love, and peace. Yesteryear, you will never be forgotten. I am healing, and it is a beautiful thing.

The wine still waits in the cellars below. My beloved family still sits on the porch in the dark. The fire balloon still drifts and burns in the night sky of an as yet unburied summer. Why and how? Because I say it is so.

I been figuring, what to put in. Motion pictures? Radios? Stereoscopic viewers? All those in one place so any man can run his hand over it and smile and say, ‘Yes, sir, that’s happiness.

No one wants a dandelion. They crop up all over the place, ugly and unfortunate, an average blossom in a world desperatly seeking beauty. They're weeds, people say. They're uninteresting and offer no fragrance and there are too many of them, too much of them, we don't want them, destroy them. Dandelions are a nuisance, We desire the buttercups, the daffodils, the morning glories. We want the azalea, the poinsettia, the calla lily. We pluck them from our gradens and plant them in our homes and we don't seem to remember their toxic nature. We don't seem to care that if you get too close? if you take a small bite? The beauty is replaced wit pain and laced with a posion that laughs in your blood, destroys your organs, infevts your heart. But pick a dandelion. Pick a dandelion and make a salad, eat the leaves, the flower, the stem. Thread it in your hair, plant it in the ground and watch it thrive. Pick a dandelion and close your eyes make a wish blow it into the wind. Watch it change the world.

Someday you'll be as old as I. People will say the same. 'Oh, no,' they'll say, 'those vultures were never hummingbirds, those owls were never orioles, those parrots were never bluebirds!" One day you'll be like me!

purple threaded evening. a torn goddess laying on the roof. milk sky. lavender hued moan against hot asphalt. the thickness of evening presses into your throat. polaroids taped to the ceiling. ivy pouring out of the cracks in the wall. i found my courage buried beneath molding books and forgot to lock the door behind me. the old house never forgets. opened my mouth and a dandelion fell out. reached behind my wisdom teeth and found sopping wet seeds. pulled all of my teeth out just to say i could. he drowned himself in a pill bottle and the orange really brought out his demise. lay me down on a bed of ground spices. there’s a song there, i know it. amethyst geode eyes. cracked open. no one saw it coming. october never loved you. the moon still doesn’t understand that.

Those children are right," he would have said. "They stole nothing from you, my dear. These things don't belong to you here, you now. They belonged to her, that other you, so long ago." Oh, thought Mrs. Bentley. And then, as though an ancient phonograph record had been set hissing under a steel needle, she remembered a conversation she had once had with Mr. Bentley--Mr. Bentley, so prim, a pink carnation in his whisk-broomed lapel, saying, "My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You've always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear." But Mrs. Bentley had stubbornly kept them. "It won't work," Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. "No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen." It had been one of the few, but gentle, disputes of their quiet marriage. He had never approved of her bric-a-brackery. "Be what you are, bury what you are not," he had said. "Ticket stubs are trickery. Saving things is a magic trick, with mirrors." If he were alive tonight, what would he say? "You're saving cocoons." That's what he'd say. "Corsets, in a way, you can never fit again. So why save them? You can't really prove you were ever young. Pictures? No, they lie. You're not the picture." "Affidavits?" No, my dear, you are not the dates, or the ink, or the paper. You're not these trunks of junk and dust. You're only you, here, now--the present you." Mrs. Bentley nodded at the memory, breathing easier. "Yes, I see. I see." The gold-feruled cane lay silently on the moonlit rug. "In the morning," she said to it, "I will do something final about this, and settle down to being only me, and nobody else from any other year. Yes, that's what I'll do." She slept . . .

Dear Deborah, Words do not come easily for so many men. We are taught to be strong, to provide, to put away our emotions. A father can work his way through his days and never see that his years are going by. If I could go back in time, I would say some things to that young father as he holds, somewhat uncertainly, his daughter for the very first time. These are the things I would say: When you hear the first whimper in the night, go to the nursery leaving your wife sleeping. Rock in a chair, walk the floor, sing a lullaby so that she will know a man can be gentle. When Mother is away for the evening, come home from work, do the babysitting. Learn to cook a hotdog or a pot of spaghetti, so that your daughter will know a man can serve another's needs. When she performs in school plays or dances in recitals, arrive early, sit in the front seat, devote your full attention. Clap the loudest, so that she will know a man can have eyes only for her. When she asks for a tree house, don't just build it, but build it with her. Sit high among the branches and talk about clouds, and caterpillars, and leaves. Ask her about her dreams and wait for her answers, so that she will know a man can listen. When you pass by her door as she dresses for a date, tell her she is beautiful. Take her on a date yourself. Open doors, buy flowers, look her in the eye, so that she will know a man can respect her. When she moves away from home, send a card, write a note, call on the phone. If something reminds you of her, take a minute to tell her, so that she will know a man can think of her even when she is away. Tell her you love her, so that she will know a man can say the words. If you hurt her, apologize, so that she will know a man can admit that he's wrong. These seem like such small things, such a fraction of time in the course of two lives. But a thread does not require much space. It can be too fine for the eye to see, yet, it is the very thing that binds, that takes pieces and laces them into a whole. Without it, there are tatters. It is never too late for a man to learn to stitch, to begin mending. These are the things I would tell that young father, if I could. A daughter grown up quickly. There isn't time to waste. I love you, Dad

Magic, you say?" asked Douglas. "Magic six ways from Sunday." "You believe it?" "Yes I do and no I don't.

Later when they would mention, they would say, and everyone would know, but not nearly as well as they meant.

I have a crush on my school counselor. If that doesn’t say trouble I don’t know what does.

There is far more happiness in a life that is your own than a life in which you are handed the lines to say and shown the gestures to make. Do not ever be ambitious.

There may no longer be faith nor truth in the world, but surely good sense still exists. What say you, Dandelion? Is there still good sense in the world? Or do only contemptibility and contempt remain?

I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.

That's the trouble with your generation,' said Grandpa. 'Bill, I'm ashamed of you, you a newspaperman. All the things in life that were put here to savor, you eliminate. Save time, save work, you say.' He nudged the grass trays disrespectfully. 'Bill, when your'e my age, you'll find out it's the little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because it's full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. You've time to seek and find. I know--you're after the broad effect now, and I suppose that's fit and proper. But for a young man working on a newspaper, you got to look for grapes as well as watermelons. You greatly admire skeletons and I like fingerprints; well and good. Right now such things are bothersome to you, and I wonder if it isn't because you've never learned to use them. If you had your way you'd pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you'd leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you'd have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn't go crazy. Instead of that, why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son.

Though plucking artichoke leaves doesn't mend all cracked spirits as firmly as pea shelling, it has its own curative power. There is a Dutch saying: “Bitter in the mouth cures the heart.” If you happen to have a friend shaken by heartache, hand over a bag of raw artichokes. Once she has relieved them of their leaves, encourage one brave bite. Between the meditative peeling and the bitter taste, she should be completely healed. If there are no artichokes around, raw dandelion greens are a good substitute.

Maybe that's what love is all about. That some love stories only end in a 'happily'... without the ever after. That some girls end up loving one man for all their lives and some men kept loving one girl, even after he met a lot. Maybe that's what love is all about. Maybe...

Cut. Take gazillion and one. This time with a little less weepy-weepy, please. A little less improvisation. A little less lip. A little more faith. A little more higher power. A little more prayer, a little less wine. Cut the crap. Cut the line. Tuck the chin. Look left, right, faster, slower. Pick seven dandelions on the first day of spring. Hate less or more. Work harder. Chew slower. Be better. Look to god, God, GOD. Watch your language. Watch your back. Collect rocks. Lick 'em clean. Count the pigeons in the backyard and multiply times forever. Give it up, let it go, take it back, take control. Say yes, say no. Say no, no, no. Stick to the script. Steps One through Twelve. One through Twelve. Keep coming back. It works if you work it.

We’re meant to be washed clean, June,” Issa says. “To let our burdens fall away and moments come apart like dandelions.

know what I am. I’m lace and daisies and a fiddle on my grandparents’ back porch. Dirt roads and dandelions, like Papa says. Vinyl records in a world of digital downloads.

This I also promise you, she says, and Astrid’s face is kind as a field of dandelions.

We’re born into one family, but then we must build another for ourselves. As my big sister used to say, we’re always the heroes of our own stories.

Fred, and this is Dandelion,” he says. “Just call me Dandy,” she says with a wink.

We're meant to be washed clean, June", Issa says. "To let our burdens fall away and moments come apart like dandelions.

He had truly meant to pay her a compliment when he told her how different she was from “those silly young noblewomen,” had truly believed that she would be flattered to be thought extraordinary from her sex. It was men like him who had made her into a symbol, had put her into this impossible position. But, in a way, that made the task easy. She knew exactly what she needed to say and do, and she even enjoyed the challenge of playing the role of his ideal: She was worthy only insofar as she oriented herself to men, like a sunflower adoring the sun.

Forgive me again.” He lifts the carafe and refreshes his goblet. “What happened to those two children who laughed at dandelion fuzz?” he says softly. “Are they gone forever, do you think?

I guess the saying goes just when you think people aren’t looking— they are. I see now that saying goes for the good and the bad. Therefore, I always have to be aware, not only of my surroundings but of myself.

Tom," she said, faintly, far away, "in the Southern Seas there's a day in each man's life when he knows it's time to shake hands with all his friends and say good-by and sail away, and he does, and it's natural-it's just his time. That's how it is today. I'm so like you sometimes, sitting through Saturday matinees until nine at night when we send your dad to bring you home. Tom, when the time comes that the same cowboys are shooting the same Indians on the same mountaintop, then it's best to fold back the seat and head for the door, with no regrets and no walking backward up the aisle. So, I'm leaving while I'm still happy and still entertained.

The scattered drizzle of rain that was on my window pane no longer was crying for help. It rained the whole night. I understood what the rain was saying. My tears spoke to the rain, and the rain always returned the favor.

But Mata understood that Jizu had been made into something like a saint, a symbol around which people could rally. Such symbols were the most dangerous because they could be made to say whatever those who held the symbol wished.

I’m not an object you can own, I’m not a possession!” I fist the back of her hair and force her to look up at me. I’m firm, but gentle. She needs to calm down, and she needs to hear me say this. “No, dandelion. Not a possession. A fucking treasure.

Merriem goes to the kitchen and quickly returns with a wooden tray piled high with thickly sliced bread and brightly patterned dishes of olive oil and dark vinegar. The bread is vivid yellow. It crumbles in my mouth and tastes sweet, honeyed. "Dandelions," Merriem says to me. Papa is staring at his half-eaten piece. "I thought dandelion was a weed?" "It is," Merriem replies with a grin. "Isn't it marvelous?" "Yes, it's very nice," Papa says, still looking a little puzzled. "Dad and I call it sunshine bread, eh, Dad?" Huia says.

The bonds between men and women predate language, and while the words we have used to express those ties may have grown exceptionally subtle and refined since language first arose, they are still just words. Words make our loves richer and more complicated, yes, but much has also been lost on their account - shrouded in the trappings of the age, drunk on the vacuity of artificial thrills. The progress of language is both a friend to love between the sexes and its enemy. Such love abides, it seems, in the mysterious depths where language cannot reach. Perhaps it's a slight exaggeration to say that the language of love is a stimulant, a drug; but whatever led us humans to create such a language , it was not life itself - which is the root of love - and therefore that language cannot engender the life that is the root of all else.

To feel safe, you need to control what the people around you are going to say and do. This is not achieved by going after the root causes of violence. This is not even achieved by working to slowly improve social conditions. It is achieved through silence and disappearance, by moving the offending object or person out of sight. . . . [However] [d]o we want to live in a world that is safe? Do we want to push the homeless out of our cities and call that a victory over poverty? . . . Or do we want to do the very hard work of recognizing and addressing the actual causes of harm to women? Safety is a short-term goal and it is unsustainable. Eventually, the unaddressed causes will find new ways of manifesting themselves as problems. Pull up the dandelions all you want, but unless you dig up that whole goddamn root it's just going to keep showing back up.

The phone was laid on a desk thousands of miles away. Once more, with that clear familiarity, the footsteps, the pause, and, at last, the raising of the window. "Listen," whispered the old man to himself. And he heard a thousand people in another sunlight, and the faint, tinkling music of an organ grinder playing "La Marimba"— oh, a lovely, dancing tune. With eyes tight, the old man put up his hand as if to click pictures of an old cathedral, and his body was heavier with flesh, younger, and he felt the hot pavement underfoot. He wanted to say, "You're still there, aren't you? All of: you people in that city in the time of the early siesta, the shops closing, the little boys crying loteria nacional para hoy! to sell lottery tickets. You are all there, the people in the city. I can't believe I was ever among you. When you are away I: from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a ' quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living . . .

—Mr. Bentley, so prim, a pink carnation in his whisk-broomed lapel, saying, "My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear.

I was talking about you, my little dandelion." I faked shock. "A dandelion? Are you comparing me to a weed?" "Ah-ah," she chastised. "Don't you know the saying about how some see a weed, while others see a wildflower? Dandelions are wildflowers, and they're the picture of survival, resilience, determination. Just like my Emme.

They say, you are a wildfire that is out of control. It doesn’t matter because nobody sees it; they only feel it. I burn and set fire to everyone who crosses me because they deserve it. Nobody deserves my kindness. My kindness to them is a weakness, so I created a wildfire in my mind and around me. My skin is brass, and I do not burn easily.

But there is a way of despising the dandelion which is not that of the dreary pessimist, but of the more offensive optimist. It can be done in various ways; one of which is saying, "You can get much better dandelions at Selfridge's," or "You can get much cheaper dandelions at Woolworth's." Another way is to observe with a casual drawl, "Of course nobody but Gamboli in Vienna really understands dandelions," or saying that nobody would put up with the old-fashioned dandelion since the super-dandelion has been grown in the Frankfurt Palm Garden; or merely sneering at the stinginess of providing dandelions, when all the best hostesses give you an orchid for your buttonhole and a bouquet of rare exotics to take away with you. These are all methods of undervaluing the thing by comparison; for it is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt. And all such captious comparisons are ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all; and above all no wonder at being thought worthy to receive them. Instead of saying, like the old religious poet, "What is man that Thou carest for him, or the son of man that Thou regardest him?" we are to say like the discontented cabman, "What's this?" or like the bad-tempered Major in the club, "Is this a chop fit for a gentleman?" Now I not only dislike this attitude quite as much as the Swinburnian pessimistic attitude, but I think it comes to very much the same thing; to the actual loss of appetite for the chop or the dish of dandelion-tea. And the name of it is Presumption and the name of its twin brother is Despair. This is the principle I was maintaining when I seemed an optimist to Mr. Max Beerbohm; and this is the principle I am still maintaining when I should undoubtedly seem a pessimist to Mr. Gordon Selfridge. The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

What are you two doing?” Her uncle’s teasing voice came into the room before he did. But his voice was the second warning that they were no longer alone, since Violet had tasted his presence long before he’d actually stepped into her house. Ever since saving her and Jay at Homecoming, her uncle carried an imprint of his own. The bitter taste of dandelions still smoldered on Violet’s tongue whenever he was near. A taste that Violet had grown to accept. And even, to some degree, to appreciate. “Nothing your parents wouldn’t approve of, I hope,” he added. Violet flashed Jay a wicked grin. “We were just making out, so if you could make this quick, we’d really appreciate it.” Jay jumped up from beside her. “She’s kidding,” he blurted out. “We weren’t doing anything.” Her uncle Stephen stopped where he was and eyed them both carefully. Violet could’ve sworn she felt Jay squirming, even though every single muscle in his body was frozen in place. Violet smiled at her uncle, trying her best to look guilty-as-charged. Finally he raised his eyebrows, every bit the suspicious police officer. “Your parents asked me to stop by and check on you on my way home. They won’t be back until late. Can I trust the two of you here . . . alone?” “Of course you can—” Jay started to say. “Probably not—“ Violet answers at the same time. And then she caught a glimpse of the horror-stricken expression on Jay’s face, and she laughed. “Relax, Uncle Stephen, we’re fine. We were just doing homework.” Her uncle looked at the pile of discarded books on the table in front of the couch. Not one of them was open. He glanced skeptically at Violet but didn’t say a word. “We may have gotten a little distracted,” she responded, and again she saw Jay shifting nervously. After several warnings, and a promise from Violet that she would lock the doors behind him, Uncle Stephen finally left the two of them alone again. Jay was glaring at Violet when she peeked at him as innocently as she could manage. “Why would you do that to me?” “Why do you care what he thinks we’re doing?” Violet had been trying to get Jay to admit his new hero worship of her uncle for months, but he was too stubborn—or maybe he honestly didn’t realize it himself—to confess it to her. “Because, Violet,” he said dangerously, taking a threatening step toward her. But his scolding was ruined by the playful glint in his eyes. “He’s your uncle, and he’s the police chief. Why poke the bear?” Violet took a step back, away from him, and he matched it, moving toward her. He was stalking her around the coffee table now, and Violet couldn’t help giggling as she retreated. But it was too late for her to escape. Jay was faster than she was, and his arms captured her before she’d ever had a chance. Not that she’d really tried. He hauled her back down onto the couch, the two of them falling into the cushions, and this time he pinned her beneath him. “Stop it!” she shrieked, not meaning a single word. He was the last person in the world she wanted to get away from. “I don’t know . . .” he answered hesitantly. “I think you deserve to be punished.” His breath was balmy against her cheek, and she found herself leaning toward him rather than away. “Maybe we should do some more homework.” Homework had been their code word for making out before they’d realized that they hadn’t been fooling anyone. But Jay was true to his word, especially his code word, and his lips settled over hers. Violet suddenly forgot that she was pretending to break free from his grip. Her frail resolve crumbled. She reached out, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulled him closer to her. Jay growled from deep in his throat. “Okay, homework it is.

When I was born, I was a wildfire, but the flames were smothered by me, always having to find a way to survive. Wildfire defines me perfectly because, just like a wildfire, I was unplanned, unwanted, and now I am uncontrollable. Everyone says, Ember, you’ve come so far, and they are shocked by my actions. I don’t know why they are surprised. After all, it is not my fault. I was born this way. I have officially exploded.

Grandma, he had often wanted to say, Is this where the world began? For surely it had begun in no other than a place like this. The kitchen, without doubt, was the center of creation, all things revolved about it; it was the pediment that sustained the temple. Eyes shut to let his nose wander, he snuffed deeply. He moved in the hell-fire steams and sudden baking-powder flurries of snow in this miraculous climate where Grandma, with the look of the Indies in her eyes and the flesh of two warm hens in her bodice, Grandma of the thousand arms, shook, basted, whipped, beat, minced, diced, peeled, wrapped, salted, stirred. Blind, he touched his way to the pantry door. A squeal of laughter rang from the parlor, teacups tinkled. But he moved on into the cool underwater green and wild-persimmon country where the slung and hanging odor of creamy bananas ripened silently and bumped his head. Gnats fizzed angrily about vinegar cruets and his ears. He opened his eyes. He saw bread waiting to be cut into slices of warm summer cloud, doughnuts strewn like clown hoops from some edible game. The faucets turned on and off in his cheeks. Here on the plum-shadowed side of the house with maple leaves making a creek-water running in the hot wind at the window he read spice-cabinet names.

Life has a way of showing you how strong you are and how much you can take. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I guess there’s some kind of truth in that. As for me, what didn’t kill me broke me into a trillion pieces. What didn’t kill me made me bitter. What didn’t kill me caused a lot of hurt and pain. What didn’t kill me made me want more out of life. What didn’t kill me after all the shit I’d been through finally showed me mercy.

St. Clair tucks the tips of his fingers into his pockets and kicks the cobblestones with the toe of his boots. "Well?" he finally asks. "Thank you." I'm stunned. "It was really sweet of you to bring me here." "Ah,well." He straightens up and shrugs-that full-bodied French shrug he does so well-and reassumes his usual, assured state of being. "Have to start somewhere. Now make a wish." "Huh?" I have such a way with words. I should write epic poetry or jingles for cat food commercials. He smiles. "Place your feet on the star, and make a wish." "Oh.Okay,sure." I slide my feet together so I'm standing in the center. "I wish-" "Don't say it aloud!" St. Clair rushes forward, as if to stop my words with his body,and my stomach flips violently. "Don't you know anything about making wishes? You only get a limited number in life. Falling stars, eyelashes,dandelions-" "Birthday candles." He ignores the dig. "Exactly. So you ought to take advantage of them when they arise,and superstition says if you make a wish on that star, it'll come true." He pauses before continuing. "Which is better than the other one I've heard." "That I'll die a painful death of poisoning, shooting,beating, and drowning?" "Hypothermia,not drowning." St. Clair laughs. He has a wonderful, boyish laugh. "But no. I've heard anyone who stands here is destined to return to Paris someday. And as I understand it,one year for you is one year to many. Am I right?" I close my eyes. Mom and Seany appear before me. Bridge.Toph.I nod. "All right,then.So keep your eyes closed.And make a wish." I take a deep breath. The cool dampness of the nearby trees fills my lungs. What do I want? It's a difficult quesiton. I want to go home,but I have to admit I've enjoyed tonight. And what if this is the only time in my entire life I visit Paris? I know I just told St. Clair that I don't want to be here, but there's a part of me-a teeny, tiny part-that's curious. If my father called tomorrow and ordered me home,I might be disappointed. I still haven't seen the Mona Lisa. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower.Walked beneath the Arc de Triomphe. So what else do I want? I want to feel Toph's lips again.I want him to wait.But there's another part of me,a part I really,really hate,that knows even if we do make it,I'd still move away for college next year.So I'd see him this Christmas and next summer,and then...would that be it? And then there's the other thing. The thing I'm trying to ignore. The thing I shouldn't want,the thing I can't have. And he's standing in front of me right now. So what do I wish for? Something I'm not sure I want? Someone I'm not sure I need? Or someone I know I can't have? Screw it.Let the fates decide. I wish for the thing that is best for me. How's that for a generalization? I open my eyes,and the wind is blowing harder. St. Clair pushes a strand of hair from his eyes. "Must have been a good one," he says.

Writing a poem is like trying to halt a supertanker by holding a dandelion up to it. You can laugh at the frivolity of it. You can ridicule the person for doing such a thing. But—and I’m not saying this makes you one of them—when you laugh at poets, you laugh alongside tyrants. You are standing next to the powerful and the angry and the rich, and you might as well be a bully too, laughing at the weak person cutting snowflakes out of tissue paper. Yes, you are right. But is right everything you want to be?

The remoter poetry in particular was replete with effects, an effect being something hypnotic we cannot quite understand, whiteness of moon and wave related to the setting of Time in a manner "too subtle for the intellect." And all over Europe, by the late 19th century, poets had decided that effects were intrinsic to poetry, and were aiming at them by deliberate process. By the end of the century, in France, whole poems have been made "too subtle for the intellect," held together, as effects are, by the extra-semantic affinities of their words. Picking up a name that was once thrown around as their authors, we have learned to call them "Symbolist" poems. In the Symbolist poem the Romantic effect has become a structural principle, and we may say that Symbolism is scientific Romanticism, thus an effort to anticipate the work of time by aiming directly at the kind of existence a poem may have when a thousand years have deprived it of its dandelions and its mythologies, an existence purely linguistic, determined by the molecular bonds of half-understood words.

Tell me," she said quietly. "If that [happiness] machine is like you say, has it got an answer to making babies in it somewhere? Can that machine make seventy-year-old people twenty? Also, how does death look when you hide in there with all that happiness?" "Hide!" "If you died from overwork, what should I do today, climb in that big box down there and be happy? Also tell me, Lee, how is our life? You know how our house is. Seven in the morning, breakfast, the kids; all of you gone by eight thirty and it's just me and washing and me and cooking and socks to be darned, weeds to be dug, or I run to the store or polish silver. Who's complaining? I'm just reminding you how the house is put together, Lee, what's in it! So now answer: How do you get all those things I said in one machine?" "That's not how it's built!" "I'm sorry. I got no time to look, then." And she kissed his cheek and went from the room and he lay smelling the wind that blew from the hidden machine below, rich with the odor of those roasted chestnuts that sold in the autumn streets of a Paris he had never known . . .

Lena?" He glanced at the dictionary. "Are you 'pleased, contented, joyful, delighted'? Do you feel 'Lucky, fortunate'? Are things 'clever and fitting,' 'successful and suitable' for you?" Lena stopped slicing vegetables and closed her eyes. "Read me the list again, please," she said. He shut the book. "What have I done, you got to stop and think an hour before you can tell me. All I ask is a simple yes or no! You're not contented, delighted, joyful?" "Cows are contented, babies and old people in second childhood are delighted, God help them," she said. "As for 'joyful,' Lee? Look how I laugh scrubbing out the sink . . ." He peered closely at her and his face relaxed. "Lena, it's true. A man doesn't appreciate. Next month, maybe, we'll get away." "I'm not complaining!" she cried. "I'm not the one comes in with a list saying/stick out your tongue. Lee, do you ask what makes your heart beat all night? No! Next will you ask, What's marriage? Who knows, Lee? Don't ask. A man who thinks like that, how it runs, how things work, falls off the trapeze in the circus, chokes wondering how the muscles work in the throat. Eat, sleep, breathe, Lee, and stop staring at me like I'm something new in the house!

if they label you soft, feather weight and white-livered, if the locker room tosses back its sweaty head, and laughs at how quiet your hands stay, if they come to trample the dandelions roaring in your throat, you tell them that you were forged inside of a woman who had to survive fifteen different species of disaster to bring you here, and you didn’t come to piss on trees. you ain’t nobody’s thick-necked pitbull boy, don’t need to prove yourself worthy of this inheritance of street-corner logic, this blood legend, this index of catcalls, “three hundred ways to turn a woman into a three course meal”, this legacy of shame, and man, and pillage, and man, and rape, and man. you boy. you won’t be some girl’s slit wrists dazzling the bathtub, won’t be some girl’s, “i didn’t ask for it but he gave it to me anyway”, the torn skirt panting behind the bedroom door, some father’s excuse to polish his gun. if they say, “take what you want”, you tell them you already have everything you need; you come from scabbed knuckles and women who never stopped swinging, you come men who drank away their life savings, and men who raised daughters alone. you come from love you gotta put your back into, elbow-grease loving like slow-dancing on dirty linoleum, you come from that house of worship. boy, i dare you to hold something like that. love whatever feels most like your grandmother’s cooking. love whatever music looks best on your feet. whatever woman beckons your blood to the boiling point, you treat her like she is the god of your pulse, you treat her like you would want your father to treat me: i dare you to be that much man one day. that you would give up your seat on the train to the invisible women, juggling babies and groceries. that you would hold doors, and say thank-you, and understand that women know they are beautiful without you having to yell it at them from across the street. the day i hear you call a woman a “bitch” is the day i dig my own grave. see how you feel writing that eulogy. and if you are ever left with your love’s skin trembling under your nails, if there is ever a powder-blue heart left for dead on your doorstep, and too many places in this city that remind you of her tears, be gentle when you drape the remains of your lives in burial cloth. don’t think yourself mighty enough to turn her into a poem, or a song, or some other sweetness to soften the blow, boy, i dare you to break like that. you look too much like your mother not t

Do you know what it's like to be left to yourself, when you're left alone with you, given up to yourself? I can't say it's necessarily so terrible, but it's one of the most fantastic adventures that one can have in this world: To meet one's self. To meet like this in Cell 432: naked, helpless, concentrated on nothing but one's self, without attribute or diversion and without the power to act. That's the most degrading thing: to be quite without the power to act. To have no bottle to drink from or smash, no towel to hang up, no knife to break out or cut veins with, no pen for writing-to have nothing-other than one's self.

Gavin appeared and vanished numerous times each day checking up on me. Now and then he’d randomly pop the question, often disguising it within our conversations. “Did you know that bubbleberries are in season right now? They’re blooming all over Dreamland.” “I love those berries. They’re fun and strange.” I recalled the time that Gavin and I had burped up iridescent-purple bubbles after swallowing handfuls of berries. They were deliciously sweet. Gavin nudged me with his elbow. “Not half as strange as you are.” I laughed. “So, Annabelle, will you come with me?” I nearly spoke without thinking, but caught myself, careful not to slip and say the word, yes. “Sorry, Gavin. I can’t.

They say, you are a wildfire that is out of control. It doesn’t matter because nobody sees it; they only feel it. I burn and set fire to everyone who crosses me because they deserve it. Nobody deserves my kindness. My kindness to them is a weakness, so I created a wildfire in my mind and around me. My skin is brass, and I do not burn easily. I am a human hazard because I destroy everything and everyone who gets in my way. They made me this way. Every time they neglected me, I was slowly fuming with heat. Every time they ignored me the fumes grew hotter from the smoke. Therefore, I became a human being gone bad. Every time they inhaled my fumes, I would cut them with my tongue's quadruple swords and kill them with my words.

Listening to my heartbeat was the only comfort I had. However, my heavy heart sinks from carrying what seems like everlasting pain. My heart is now ripped from my soul because I cannot feel the warm blood in my veins. I feel a cold front coming, and now my heart is frozen. I am cold—a cold-hearted soul. My heart no longer beats for borrowed peace because it is paralyzed from continually having to start over again. I have officially lost hope. What is hope? In my eyes, hope is a teaser. I had hoped that things will get better, but when? Hope is not for now—it is for the future. Therefore, I guess hope is saying that things will not be better today, but maybe years or decades from now. With that being said, hope is not faith. Hope is wishful thinking. Hope is always shattered by one disappointment after another.

How can you say such things?!' demanded Kon Fiji. 'Our lives may have changed, but death has not. Respect for the elderly and honor given for a life well lived connect us to the accumulated wisdom of the past. When you die, do you wish to be buried as a common peasant instead of as a great scholar worthy of admiration?' 'In a hundred years, Master Kon Fiji, you and I will both be dust, and even the worms and birds who feast on our flesh will also have traveled through multiple revolutions of the wheel of life. Our lives are finite, but the universe is infinite. We are but flashes of lightning bugs on a summer night against the eternal stars. When I die, I wish to be laid out in the open so that the Big Island will act as my coffin, and the River of Heavenly Pearls my shroud; the cicadas will play my funeral possession, and the blooming flowers will be my incense burners; my flesh will feed ten thousand lives, and my bones will enrich the soil. I will return to the great Flow of the universe. Such honor can never be matched by mortal rites enacted by those obeying dead words copied out of a book.

Dear Orphan Soul, I never thought it is was easy to wipe away your tears when you are used to crying endlessly on the inside. Today was the first time ever that I felt a sense of relief. I laughed for the first time in a long time, or maybe my first time ever. I used to think I was permanently damaged, but Nurse Hope told me that it is okay for me to be myself. However, I do not know who I am. All my life, my mind and actions have been like loaded guns. I never knew when or where the bullets were coming from—most of the time, they came from someone else, and sometimes they came from me. My eyes are wet with tears as I write because of my life struggles. Sadness still remains because Nurse Hope says this is not permanent. Well, to give myself hope, nothing lasts forever. Therefore, nothing in life is permanent. Right? I am an orphaned soul. Nurse Hope's love reminds me of the ocean’s tide. It is a cycle of crashes as it knocks against the stones and shells as it gradually rolls up on the shore. I wonder if her love is going to say farewell to Kace and me as it sucks and pulls itself back into the ocean. Well, we’ve been washed up since we’ve been born. I hope instead of the tides sucking Nurse Hope's love away, I hope it sucks up our memories as they fade away with the tides, never to be found or returned again. Nothing is permanent.

Dear Hopeless Soul, Listening to my heartbeat was the only comfort I had. However, my heavy heart sinks from carrying what seems like everlasting pain. My heart is now ripped from my soul because I cannot feel the warm blood in my veins. I feel a cold front coming, and now my heart is frozen. I am cold—a cold-hearted soul. My heart no longer beats for borrowed peace because it is paralyzed from continually having to start over again. I have officially lost hope. What is hope? In my eyes, hope is a teaser. I had hoped that things will get better, but when? Hope is not for now—it is for the future. Therefore, I guess hope is saying that things will not be better today, but maybe years or decades from now. With that being said, hope is not faith. Hope is wishful thinking. Hope is always shattered by one disappointment after another. Right now, I am in my own shadow. It is dark and lonely. I am a nightwalker trying to find the light within me somewhere. I can’t find myself in my own shadow. Well, what do I expect? My heart is cold. Hope has played with my emotions one too many times, and the only thing I can count on as of right now is my shadow. I do not have anything in life. I am a soul that is trying to find my way. Where am I going? I do not know. Everything has been taken from me, but they cannot take my shadow, and they cannot own my name. Faded from within.

Dear Wildfire, Ember, you are a wildfire that is out of control. It doesn’t matter because nobody sees it; they only feel it. I burn and set fire to everyone who crosses me because they deserve it. If they don’t deserve it, so what, fuck it. Nobody deserves my kindness. My kindness to them is a weakness, so I created a wildfire in my mind and around me. My skin is brass, and I do not burn easily. I am a human hazard because I destroy everything and everyone who gets in my way. They made me this way. Every time they neglected me, I was slowly fuming with heat. Every time they ignored me the fumes grew hotter from the smoke. Therefore, I became a human being gone bad because I was a dangerous person. Every time they inhaled my fumes, I would cut them with my tongue's quadruple swords and kill them with my words. My fumes surrounded everyone with darkness because they couldn’t ever figure me out. They couldn’t read my thoughts; I became fearless in the worst way ever. When I was born, I was a wildfire, but the flames were smothered by me, always having to find a way to survive. Wildfire defines me perfectly because, just like a wildfire, I was unplanned, unwanted, and now I am uncontrollable. Everyone says, Ember, you’ve come so far, and they are shocked by my actions. I don’t know why they are surprised. After all, it is not my fault. I was born this way. I have officially exploded

…It usually starts innocently enough, a friend remarking to you that the co-op has a nice new crop of grapefruit. “Hmm, I don’t really care for grapefruit myself,” you say, entirely without malice. She seems startled, “Really?” she says. If you had a tendency to be sarcastic, you might say, “No, I deliberately misrepresent my taste in citrus to gain the upper hand in conversation.” But you are not sarcastic, so you restate your dislike, a little more timidly now. “Yeah, I just don’t care for grapefruit. It tastes bitter to me.” “Bitter! How can you think grapefruit tastes bitter?” she demands. “I find that difficult to answer — ” you say. “Grapefruit is the single least bitter thing in the world! Sugar is more bitter than grapefruit!” she continues. “Sugar is deliberately bitter,” you say, trying to calm her. “Sugar is pure white hate.” “You want bitter? Radicchio is bitter. Dandelion greens — they’re bitter!” “I hate them. They’re mean,” you say as the situation death-rolls out of control. “I’m going to get you some of that grapefruit right now and show you that it’s not bitter,” she says, marching to the refrigerator. You have apparently run afoul of a committed grapefruit apologist. Soon you are eating extremely bitter chunks of fruit you loathe. “Tell me, is that bitter? Is it?” she asks, leaving you no wiggle room. “Unbelievably not-bitter. Sweet, sure. Sour, you bet. Salty, powerfully so — but bitter? No and again, no. All bitterness has vanished from existence. Even the concept of bitterness has been conquered and bows down before this grapefruit,” you say, nearly gagging from the bitterness.

Dear Borrowed Time, Why do you tease me? It seems like you give me a teeny weenie bit of light for a moment, and then, within the blink of an eye, you blow the light out in less than a second. Then I am left in the dark without a trace of light. What have I done for you to hate me so much? After all, and truth be told, I didn’t ask to be here. You put me here. Do you enjoy my suffering? It seems like you do because every step I take is difficult. You never spare me grace or a grain of mercy. Why do I have to be the one who borrows time as opposed to having time given to me fairly? When I look around, I see people enjoying life and the time that is given to them. It doesn’t seem like they are on borrowed time, but I notice I am. One would say, no, you have the same amount of time, just like everyone else. No, that is not true. The time that is given to me ticks by quickly and runs out faster than it ticks. Borrowed time, have you noticed that I was treated like trash as I was dumped here and there, or wherever they could place me? Did you notice that I didn’t stay in a home long because I was on borrowed time? Time wasn’t given to me because I was never given the ‘time’ to get to know anyone. I guess not, because I was and still am on borrowed time. I am sitting in a tree looking at the clock. The long hand never lends its hand to spare me more time. Instead, it takes more time away than it gives. The short hand always short-changed me on time and my life as well. And the second hand, oh, it is the worst!. It is a make-it-or-break-it moment. As it quickly ticks ... ticks ... ticks ... it slams the door in my face faster than it opened. Borrowed time, I want to be treated as fairly as anyone else. I hope one day you will favor me. If not, I have to continue to live on borrowed time until my time runs out completely. Time is never on my side.

—though the witchman greatly covetous and greedy for gold be,” mumbled the old woman, half-closing her eyes, “giveth ye not such a one more than: for a drowner, one silver penny or three halves; for a werecat, silver pennies two; for a plumard, silver pennies—” “Those were the days,” muttered the witcher. “Thank you Grandma. And now show us where it speaks of the devil and what the book says about devils. This time ‘tis grateful I’d be to heareth more, for to learn the ways and means ye did use to deal with him most curious am I.” “Careful Geralt,” chuckled Dandelion. “You’re starting to fall into their jargon. It’s an infectious mannerism.” The woman, controlling her shaking hands with difficulty, turned several pages. The witcher and the poet leaned over the table. The etching did, in effect, show the ball-thrower: horned, hairy, tailed and smiling maliciously. “The deovel,” recited the woman. “Also called willower” or “sylvan”. For livestock and domestic fowl, a tiresome and great pest is he. Be it your will to chase him from your hamlet, tamest thou—” “Well, well,” murmured Dandelion. “—takers thou of nuts, one fistful,” continued the woman, running her fingers along the parchment. “Next, takest thou of iron balls a second fistful. Of honey and utricle, of birch tar a second. Of grey soap a firkin; of soft cheese another. There where the deovel dwelleth, goest thou when ‘tis night. Commenceth then to eat the nuts. Anon, the deovel who hath great greed, will hasten and ask if they are tasty indeed. Givest to him then the balls of iron—” “Damn you,” murmured Dandelion. “Pox take—” “Quiet,” said Geralt. “Well, Grandma. Go on.” “…having broken his teeth he will be attentive as thou eatest the honey. Of said honey he will himself desire. Givest him of birch tar, then yourself eateth soft cheese. Soon, hearest thou, will the deovel grumbleth and tumbleth, but makest of it as naught. Yet if the deovel desireth soft cheese, givest him soap. For soap the deovel withstandeth not—” “You got to the soap?” interrupted Geralt with a stony expression turning toward Dhun and Nettly. “In no way,” groaned Nettly. “If only we had got to the balls. But he gave us what for when he bit a ball—” “And who told you to give him so many?” Dandelion was enraged. “It stands written in the book, one fistful take. Yet ye giveth of balls a sackful! Ye furnished him with ammunition for two years, the fools ye be!” “Careful,” smiled the witcher. “You’re starting to fall into their jargon. It’s infectious.

oath. In Matthew, it says to ‘swear not at all’, and Quakers felt it implied a double-standard to swear to tell the truth in court when they claimed they maintained

oath. In Matthew, it says to ‘swear not at all’, and Quakers felt it implied a double-standard to swear to tell the truth in court when they claimed they maintained honesty and integrity at all times.

Caring not for Angoulême’s vulgar October jests,’ Reynart leaned back from the table, his belt loosened, ‘today we drink a fine label and a fine vintage, Witcher. We can afford it, we’ve made some money. We can revel.’ ‘That’s right,’ Geralt beckoned to the innkeeper. ‘After all, as Dandelion says, perhaps there are other motivations for earning money, but I just don’t know any.

Don’t pick the dandelions, she’d say, they’ll make you wet the bed.

How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This" dear reader, with our heels digging into the good mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown & lord knows I have been called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am & I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning, you could scatter his whole mind across a field.

But aren’t dandelions bad?” asked Eddie Dobbs. ​“What makes them bad?” Manuel inquired. ​“My Daddy used to say that they were weeds and they spread so fast,” said Darren Jackson. ​“We give them a bad name, don’t we? We call them a weed.

Don't say it aloud!' St. Clair rushes forward, as if to stop my words with his body, and my stomach flips violently, 'Don't you know anything about making wishes? You only get a limited number in life. Falling stars, eyelashes, dandelions—' 'Birthday candles.

Look at the lovely dandelions growing through a crack in the pavement. Maybe, you’re one of them. Maybe, we all are.

Everybody has room next to us. no one comes to resurrect us. we have room for brides for grooms in the tight places no one comes to say you’re too many. no one. complains of crowding. too understanding with the living we breed like field rabbits per square meter we breathe the same air. crowns of viruses. faraway emperors when we dreamed with a thousand eyes a thousand feet. given what we were no one thought we’d be used against ourselves only the ground bulges at its ends. all on top of each other we make love under pressure in all sorts of positions undiscovered by the kama sutra. we liquefy we ooze dandelion syrup through all our holes. sometimes we think we’re breaking into indian hemp flowers our faces melt down our mouths are parched. we laugh at ourselves from our diaphragms. (in english by Diana Manole)

Who says what’s magic and what isn’t?” said Hal. “There’s only what is. You wouldn’t call it magic when a sunflower turns its head to follow the sun through the sky, because there’s an explanation for it. In a way, everything is magic. The magic is in the sunflowers and the trees and the grass, in the dandelions and the parakeets and earthworms. Even”—he wrinkled his nose—“in Brussels sprouts. It’s in me and you and Napoleon too: in all of us.

Until long past your bedtime and the porch light comes on. No need to rush childhood; it goes by too fast. What you need is the time to make it all last. You belong out in nature, staring up at the sky. Blowing dandelion puffs and watching them fly. Turning clouds into shapes that you want them to be. Fending off dragons if that’s what you see. If only there were a way to be wild + free. We read the great books but ignore their wisdom. Go our own way instead of trusting what’s in them. Childhood is a treasure, a gift to behold. I’m sorry to say you’ve been traded and sold. Oh childhood, where did you go? Oh childhood, say it ain’t so. We’ll bring you back home if it’s the last thing we do. We’ll reclaim the wonder; that’s my promise to you.

Some people turn sad awfully young,” he said. “No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.

I see everything, everything that there is. Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.' It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We have descended into hell.

Dandelions represent the easy way. You pick up a dandelion and it's so soft, and it's so easy and even fun sometimes to blow the seeds everywhere. And you don't even realize what you're doing. Nothing happens right then, except you get a pretty little show in the breeze. It's not until later, sometimes, a long time later, that you look out in your garden and realize what you did. It's easy, love, to pull back, to hide in yourself, to run and say you're just taking some time, to keep all of your emotions inside, maybe even to think you're protecting me from something. It would be easier still for me to let you do that. To watch you blow those dandelion seeds everywhere, and pretend it won't damage anything. To pretend we won't wake up one summer morning to discover we've allowed a huge patch of weeds to grow between us, opening up cracks in the foundation of our marriage. Thorns, on the other hand... they're not easy. They hurt. They make you want to give up on the whole plant sometimes. But if you don't give up, love, if you fight through it, allow yourself to be hurt - the result is beautiful and strong. And it will last forever if you care for it.

Let’s just say, brat, that if the wits beneath your golden hair were any dimmer you would be not a female, but a dandelion,

He wanted to say that he yearned to accomplish something extraordinary, to be admired like a man riding at the head of a great procession.

we cannot say we seek to encounter the Divine in our meetings for worship and also say categorically that there is nothing beyond the material world.

Here again, we have an emphasis on the authenticity of the inward, an insistence that coming outwardly to outward things, such as the Scriptures, gives us no clue as to their real meaning. We have to approach the whole of the created world from this space, a practised place, of inward transformation. We can say nothing in any meaningful spiritual sense unless it is inwardly from God.

I didn’t say I was gonna kill anyone, but come on. I’m the fucking Dead Blue. I didn’t get my reputation from slashing dandelions with a metre stick.

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

Let them say what they want,” Kuni said. He admired the pamphlets and laughed. “I look pretty good as a girl, though I think they are suggesting I lose a few pounds. I have to send some of these to Jia; she could probably use the laugh as I imagine the baby—may the Twins protect the child—is making her life very stressful.” “What is wrong with you?” Mata Zyndu roared and tore the pamphlet in his hands into pieces. He smashed the table in front of him; then, for good measure, smashed the table in front of Kuni as well. He stomped and ground the broken pieces of wood into even smaller pieces against the stone floor. But his rage was not assuaged. Not even a little bit. He paced back and forth in front of Kuni, kicking the wooden splinters every which way. Servants scattered to distant corners of the room, away from the barrage. “What is so bad about being compared to women?” Kuni said. “Half the world is made of women.” Mata

The procedure works along the same principles as a probiotic, but rather than adding just one strain of bacteria, or even 17, it adds all of them. It's an ecosystem transplant-an attempt to fix a faltering community by completely replacing it, like returfing a lawn that's overrun by dandelions. Khoruts showed this process at work by collecting stool samples from Rebecca before and after her transplant. Beforehand, her gut was a mess. The C-diff infection had completely restructured her microbiome, creating a community that "looked like something that doesn't exist in nature-a different galaxy", says Khoruts. Afterwards, her microbiome was indistinguishable from her husband's. His microbes had stormed into her dysbiotic gut and reset it. It was almost as if Khoruts had done an organ transplant, throwing out his patient's diseased and damaged gut microbiome and replacing it with the donor's shiny new one. This makes the microbiome the only organ that can be replaced without surgery.