Dappled Light Quotes

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.

You think I'm playing at some game? You think iron will keep you safe? Hear my words, manling. Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath. Listen. You cannot hurt me. You cannot run or hide. In this I will not be defied. I swear by all the salt in me: if you run counter to my desire, the remainder of your brief mortal span will be an orchestra of misery. I swear by stone and oak and elm: I'll make a game of you. I'll follow you unseen and smother any spark of joy you find. You'll never know a woman's touch, a breath of rest, a moment's peace of mind. And I swear by the night sky and the ever-moving moon: if you lead my master to despair, I will slit you open and splash around like a child in a muddy puddle. I'll string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while I dance. You are an educated man. You know there are no such things as demons. There is only my kind. You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me. -Bast

I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light.

Where he saw a page of words, his friend saw the field of hesitations, black holes, and possibilities between the words. Where his friend saw dappled light, the felicity of flight, the sadness of gravity, he saw the solid form of a common sparrow.

Light is important to us humans. It influences our moods, our perceptions, our energy levels. A face glimpsed among trees, dappled by the shadows and the green-tinged light reflected from the forest, will seem quite different to the same face seen on a beach in hard, dry, sunlight, or in a darkening room at twilight, with the shadows of a venetian blind striped across it like a convict’s uniform.

I thought: maybe death isn’t darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us— as soft as feathers— that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica, to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow— that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light— in which we are washed and washed out of our bones.--White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Dance me slowly along a moonlit path, Soaked with light from moon and stars above, Hold my hand and whistle a tune, Dance me slowly to the edge of Love. Waltz here with me on forest grass, Soft ballet pirouettes round sun dappled trees, Hold my hand and hum a tune, Catch my freshly blown kiss off the breeze.

But then he was awake, his lips forming a half-sleepy greeting, and his hand was already reaching for mine. We lay there, like that, until the cave was bright with morning, and Chiron called. We ate, then ran to the river to walk. I savored the miracle of being able to watch him openly, to enjoy the play of dappled light on his limbs, the curving of his back as he drove beneath the water. Later, we lay on the riverbank, learning the lines of each other's bodies anew. This, and this and this. We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light.

We, too, are shadow and light. We are not supposed to know this, or be all these different facets of humanity, bright and dark. We are raised to be bright and shiny, but there is meaning in the acceptance of our dusky and dappled side, and also in defiance.

It gets me thinking about the history of this land, of this whole world, even. How someone got it in their head that ripping down thousand-year-old trees was a-okay. How people who grow gardens are crunchy; how people who grow their stock portfolios are sophisticated. How Tenn’s mom’s land, with its birdsong and dappled light and ancient mushrooms, will be destroyed in just a few days because a few rich people want more money and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

Beyond the slumpstone wall lay a backyard, a swimming pool. Dappled with morning light and tree shadows, the water glimmered in shades of blue from sapphire to turquoise, as might a trove of jewels left by long-dead pirates who had sailed a sea since vanished.

The trees were dappling again. They loved to dapple, it seemed to be their favorite pastime.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

I thought of many an autumn I had known: Seemly autumns approaching deliberately, with amplitude. I thought of wild asters, Michaelmas daisies, mushrooms, leaves idling down the air, two or three at a time, warblers twittering and glittering in every bush ('Confusing fall warblers,' Peterson calls them, and how right he is): the lingering yellow jackets feeding on broken apples; crickets; amber-dappled light; great geese barking down from the north; the seesaw noise that blue jays seem to make more often in the fall. Hoarfrost in the morning, cold stars at night. But slow; the whole thing coming slowly. The way it should be.

maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us-- as soft as feathers-- that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica, to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow-- that is nothing but light--scalding, aortal light-- in which we are washed and washed out of our bones.

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite…. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories.

I’m lying on the ground looking up at the branches of an oak tree. Dappled light is shining through the canopy, the leaves whisper ancient incantations. This tree, in its living stage, rooted in sights and sounds that I’ll never know, has witnessed extinctions and wars, loves and losses. I wish we could translate the language of trees – hear their voices, know their stories. They host such an astonishing amount of life – there are thousands of species harbouring in and on and under this mighty giant. And I believe trees are like us, or they inspire the better parts of human nature. If only we could be connected in the way this oak tree is connected with its ecosystem.

In the river meadows, alders, brambles and wild vines formed a magical jungle, dappled with shimmering, greenish light and spangled with twirling forest particles. Marshy pools lay sparkling among the elderberries and leaning beeches.

Sophie raised her head. Light filtering through the trees dappled her face. “Hawk.” Charlotte looked up as well. A bird of prey soared above the treetops, circling around them. “It’s dead,” Sophie said. “George is guiding it. He is very powerful.”The realization washed over Charlotte in a cold gush of embarrassment. “Is George spying on Richard and me?” “Always,” Sophie said. “All those perfect manners are a sham. He spies on everyone and everything. Declan hasn’t been able to conduct a single business meeting in the past year without George’s knowing all the details. He does let go when you make love. He is a prude.” “‘Prude’ is a coarse word. He has a sense of tact,” Charlotte corrected before she caught herself. “A sense of tact,” Sophie repeated, tasting the words. “Thank you. The other one is somewhere around here, too.” “The other one?” Sophie surveyed the woods. “I can smell you, Jack!” “No, you can’t,” a distant voice answered

The Redwood Tree My father once told me a story about an old redwood tree—how she stood tall and proud—her sprawling limbs clothed in emerald green. With a smile, he described her as a mere sapling, sheltered by her elders and basking in the safety of the warm, dappled light. But as this tree grew taller, she found herself at the mercy of the cruel wind and the vicious rain. Together, they tore relentlessly at her pretty boughs, until she felt as though her heart would split in two. After a long, thoughtful pause, my father turned to me and said, “My daughter, one day the same thing will happen to you. And when that time comes, remember the redwood tree. Do not worry about the cruel wind or the vicious rain—but do as that tree did and just keep growing.

He thought of the next Saturday. [...] He thought of the picnic by the dipping pool on the river, where oaks and willows dappled the sun on water the color of tea; and girls in light summer dresses would sit in pools of pale cotton. And he knew he would not go.

There were kind lies. You still look beautiful. I love you. I forgive you. There were frightened lies. Someone else must have taken it. Of course I am Anglican. I never saw that baby before. There were predatory lies. Buy this tonic if you want your child to recover. I will look after you. Your secret is safe with me. Half-lies, and the tense little silences where a truth should have been. Lies like knives, lies like poultices. The tiger's stripe, and the fawn's dusky dapple. And everywhere, everywhere, the lies that people told themselves. Dreams like cut flowers, with no nourishing root. Will-o'-the-wisp lights to make them feel less alone in the dark. Hollow resolutions and empty excuses.

Overhead, trees dappled in sunlight. You can’t know how beautiful the sun is there, how it touches everything and soaks it through, succulent, like water, like moisture. Light beading on the skin, dew, glistening. So much light, an ocean of it, a sea of light spread across everything.

dappled sunlight and looked at the silver vapor swirling inside. “Mist gathered at first light on the first day of the new moon on the Isle of Avalon,” he said. “Yep. Good for one hour of great talent,” said Annie. Jack smiled, remembering their hour as horse trainers and their hour as stage magicians. “I wonder what we’ll be great at this time,” he said. “Maybe great nurses?” said Annie. “We’ll see,” said Jack. He put the tiny bottle in his backpack; then he picked up the piece of paper from the floor. On the paper he had written the two secrets of greatness they’d

on a bright fall day, I had what I believed at the time to be an apprehension of death. It was an effect of light: quick sunlight dappling, yellow leaves falling (but from what? were there even trees on West Fifty-seventh Street?), a shower of gold, spangled, very fast, a falling of the bright.

The island cried out to me. I longed to feast my senses on its light and air, and restore my spirit with its peace. If I answered its call, soon enough I would live again in the familiar rhythms of its seasons—the wincing winters and dappled summers, its shy, reluctant springtide and gleaming, bronzed leaf fall.

The familiar cold rush hit Evelyn. Thirteen degrees against the high twenties of the air, the inner gasp and the letting go. She swam eye-level to the green water, as clouds were bothered by the breeze, and wavelets crested by sunlight. These were Evelyn’s favourite days, her spring awakening. (Past the water lilies again, and the bulrushes.) Dappled light on overhanging tree trunks brought motion to the static monsters, and willows draped low to meet their vivid reflection. She breathed steadily through her nose and the ducks matched the ponderous ease of her breaststroke. A heron took off majestically from the bank and flew low across her path. She was in heaven.

He was among trees then, spring trees tender with the new matchless green of young leaves, and a clear sun dappling them; summer trees full of leaf, whispering, massive; dark winter firs that fear no master and let no light brighten their woods. He learned the nature of all trees, the particular magics that are in oak and beech and ash.

Holly helped hoist me into the saddle, then mounted her own horse, a silvery animal that took the lead as we jogged across the traffic of Central Park West and entered a riding path dappled with leaves denuding breezes danced about. 'See?' she shouted. 'It's great!' And suddenly it was. Suddenly, watching the tangled colors of Holly's hair flash in the red-yellow leaf light, I loved her enough to forget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.

and they lit up like gemstones, painted a full landscape of me, dappled with light and complexity, weeds and miraculous flowers, much like the meadow I was currently gazing at.

So—I went on, on my own—deeper and deeper into the silent Tunnel of the Ride—not so sure of where I was and yet not anxious either, not concerned about my companions nor even about the nearness of—certain friends. The trees were beech, and the buds, just breaking, fiercely brilliant, and the new, the renewed light on them—intermittent diamond—but the depths were dark, a silent Nave. And no birds sang, or I heard none, no woodpecker tapped, no thrush whistled or hopped. And I listened to the increasing Quiet—and my horse went softly on the beech-mast—which was wet after rain—not crackling, a little sodden, not wet enough to plash. And I had the sensation, common enough, at least to me, that I was moving out of time, that the way, narrow and dark-dappled, stretched away indifferently before and behind, and that I was who I had been and what I would become—all at once, all wound in one—and I moved onward indifferently, since it was all one, whether I came or went, or remained still. Now to me such moments are poetry. [Randolph Henry Ash]

What a wonderful day it was to get into the outdoors. The sky above the tree branches was blue, dappled by fast-running clouds shifting the autumn sunlight between sharp spangles of yellow light and an amber haze.

Soon Rapunzel's hair spilled out around her like a silver pond sparkling in the sunlight, or a frozen one in the moonlight. When the breeze shifted the branches above, the sun hit her tresses and its light scattered everywhere. The whole area under the tree was illuminated with shifting, dappled scintillations. Rapunzel wondered what it would look like from far away, from high above: would she look like a funny star? Were all the stars out there maidens with strange hair?

A phone beeped quietly and she woke. It was morning. Friday the 30th of April. One day before May 1st, and Greta Dapple's birthday, and the Summer of Light, when the world would tear itself apart. What a cheery, happy thought to wake up to.

A breeze, vanilla-scented, nutmeg milk, dark roast of cocoa beans over a slow fire. It isn't magic. Really it isn't. It's just a trick, a game I play. There's no such thing as real magic- and yet it works. Sometimes, it works. Can you hear me? I said. Not in my voice, but a shadow-voice, very light, like dappled leaves. She felt it then. I know she did. Turning, she stiffened; I made the door shine a little, ever so slightly, the color of the sky. Played with it, pretty, like a mirror in the sun, shining it on and off her face. Scent of woodsmoke in a cup; a dash of cream, sprinkle of sugar. Bitter orange, your favorite, 70 percent darkest chocolate over thick-cut oranges from Seville. Try me. Taste me. Test me.

The Ashley Barton who drove the Ford was different from the one Logan had met at the police station. She was unbothered, casually slouched in her seat, T-shirt shifted carelessly above her belly button. The sun-kissed skin of her stomach was dappled with light brown freckles.

Four construction workers sit around four greasy bowls in silence. The cook, an old man who died several days ago, has been allowed to rot on his stool. The single round light is dappled with the bodies of dead insects, and the walls are decorated with spatters and dribbles of grease.

The blue-grey river, still ice dappled, the soft rucking of the water, creased like sheets between a lover's fingers, to mark our passage. Behind us, transient arrows left upon the surface fading into nothing but dreams and stillness. And everything else—the promise of sky. Endless, unreachable light.

The woods were definitely changing. Aurora and Phillip could no longer see the sky at all because of the ancient tall trees that stretched far overhead. Pines and other shaggy-barked species shot a hundred feet straight up on massive trunks, some of which were as thick around as a small house. The canopies that spread out at their tops blocked out most of the sun; only a rare dappled shaft made it through. But it didn't feel claustrophobic. The absence of light kept the underbrush low: moss on ancient fallen logs, puddles of shade flowers, mushrooms and tiny lilies. It was airy and endless like the largest cathedral ever imagined.

Do you want to know what finally changed things for me?” “What?” My voice is barely above a whisper. Dappled sunlight falls across his face, highlighting his flushed cheeks. “I met someone. She’s about five-six, golden brown hair, devastating smile. The kind that warms you from the inside out. And she made me so mad. Not two weeks after I started the job, she called to grill me about a story I posted on Facebook. She insisted I edit it because I didn’t get the wording right.” He adopts a mock falsetto voice. “ ‘It isn’t the “Panama Canal” cruise. It’s “Panama Canal and the Wonders of Azuero.” Fix it, please.’ ” My muscles go limp and my knees nearly buckle. Because he’s talking about me. “Finally, someone who wasn’t walking on eggshells. She actually snapped at me, and it was like she snapped me out of my fog. I may have been unnecessarily combative after that, just to get a rise out of her, but I started to feel again. Irritation, at first, but then more. After a while, I began getting out of the house. Seeing a therapist. Playing hockey. I adopted Winnie—best decision ever. I actually started looking forward to waking up in the morning.” Graeme steps closer, but I’m glued to the spot. Heat sizzles through my veins when he reaches up to run his knuckles along my cheek. “And staff meeting Thursdays? They became my favorite day of the week. Because I got to see her face.” My heart is hammering and my lungs seize. The sound of guests approaching rumbles closer, but I don’t look away. I swallow past the lump that’s lodged in my throat. “After this cruise, they’re my favorite day of the week too.” Reaching up, I run my fingers lightly along the hand that’s cupping my cheek. Graeme’s eyes widen and his lips part. Gathering every ounce of resolve I can muster, I step away just as Nikolai and Dwight crest a nearby hill. We continue through the highlands, fastening our platonic coworker facades into place. But an unspoken understanding hangs in the space between us, heavy and undeniable… This just went way past any bet.

Entranced. She lifts up a trembling hand and paints what I think might be a flower on Peeta’s cheek. “Thank you,” he whispers. “That looks beautiful.” For a moment, the morphling’s face lights up in a grin and she makes a small squeaking sound. Then her blood-dappled hand falls back onto her chest, she gives one last huff of air, and the cannon fires. The grip on my hand releases.

In the night I was asleep,’ Christophe says. ‘It was some old ghost, I suppose.’ ‘Surely not,’ Riche says. ‘I never heard of ghosts that walk in June.’ There’s something in that. It was the veiled ladies—living women, as far as one knows—who attended him, till dawn came and they faded into the wall. He remembers the dappling of their garments, the streaks of darkness where they had wiped the queen’s blood on their robes.

Einstein had been fascinated by Bernstein’s People’s Book of Natural Science, a popularization of science that described on its very first page the astonishing speed of electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look like if you could travel on a wave of light. To travel at the speed of light? What an engaging and magical thought for a boy on the road in a countryside dappled and rippling in sunlight.

In the courtyard, jasmine sugared the air, great white sprays tumbling from the top of a wooden arbor at the side of the lawn. Huge goldfish swam slowly near the surface of the pool, listing their plump bodies backwards and forwards to court the afternoon sun. It was heavenly, but I didn't stick around; a distant band of trees was calling to me and I wove my way towards it, through the meadow dusted with buttercups, self-sown amid the long grass. Although it wasn't quite summer, the day was warm, the air dry, and by the time I reached the trees my hairline was laced with perspiration. I spread the rug in a patch of dappled light and kicked off my shoes. Somewhere nearby a shallow brook chattered over stones and butterflies sailed the breeze. The blanket smelled reassuringly of laundry flakes and squashed leaves, and when I sat down the tall meadow grasses enclosed me so I felt utterly alone.

The fortnight in Venice passed quickly and sweetly- perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless. On some days life kept pace with the gondola, as we nosed through the side canals and the boatman uttered his plaintive musical bird-cry of warning; on other days with the speed-boat bouncing over the lagoon in a stream of sun-lit foam; it left a confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands and cool, marble interiors; of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone, reflected in a dapple of light on painted cielings; of a night at the Corombona palace such as Byron might have known, and another Byronic night fishing for scampi in the shallows of Chioggia, the phosphorescent wake of the little ship, the lantern swinging in the prow, and the net coming up full of weed and sand and floundering fishes; of melon and prosciutto on the balcony in the cool of the morning; of hot cheese sandwiches and champagne cocktails at Harrys Bar.

Across the lilies was a pond, its waters a vibrant green from reflecting the trees around it. In the center of the pond swam two elegant white birds, their long necks curved toward one another. "Swans!" Cinderella breathed. She leaned against the bridge's rail and gazed at the pair of swans gliding across the pond. At her side, Charles rested his elbows on the bridge. "They're here every evening before sundown. Sometimes, during sunset, you can see the light dapple their feathers. Look." Rays of golden light stroked the swans' wings, which shimmered against the still waters. "I used to come here whenever I could to watch them," said Prince Charles. "I'm certain it's been the very same pair of swans for years. When I saw them, I'd feel a little less lonely." "How happy they look," mused Cinderella, watching as the swans took flight, their feet skidding across the pond before they soared into the sky. "Free to come and go as they please.

Maybe death isn’t darkness at all, but so much light wrapping itself around us — as soft as feathers — that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow — that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light — in which we are washed and washed out of our bones. “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field,” House of Light (1990)

The Dream" I met her as a blossom on a stem Before she ever breathed, and in that dream The mind remembers from a deeper sleep: Eye learned from eye, cold lip from sensual lip. My dream divided on a point of fire; Light hardened on the water where we were; A bird sang low; the moonlight sifted in; The water rippled, and she rippled on. She came toward me in the flowing air, A shape of change, encircled by its fire. I watched her there, between me and the moon; The bushes and the stones danced on and on; I touched her shadow when the light delayed; I turned my face away, and yet she stayed. A bird sang from the center of a tree; She loved the wind because the wind loved me. Love is not love until love’s vulnerable. She slowed to sigh, in that long interval. A small bird flew in circles where we stood; The deer came down, out of the dappled wood. All who remember, doubt. Who calls that strange? I tossed a stone, and listened to its plunge. She knew the grammar of least motion, she Lent me one virtue, and I live thereby. She held her body steady in the wind; Our shadows met, and slowly swung around; She turned the field into a glittering sea; I played in flame and water like a boy And I swayed out beyond the white seafoam; Like a wet log, I sang within a flame. In that last while, eternity’s confine,

The arborist has determined: senescence beetles canker quickened by drought but in any case not prunable not treatable not to be propped. And so. The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries. The trunk where the ant. The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground. The bark cambium pine-sap cluster of needles. The Japanese patterns the ink-net. The dapple on certain fish. Today, for some, a universe will vanish. First noisily, then just another silence. The silence of after, once the theater has emptied. Of bewilderment after the glacier, the species, the star. Something else, in the scale of quickening things, will replace it, this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.

IN A LOFTY ANTECHAMBER, DAYLIGHT STREAMED THROUGH A stained-glass window, splashing colorful patterns across the floor. Briggan explored the area, sniffing the corners and the furniture. When the wolf passed through the tinted light, dappled hues glossed his gray-white coat. Conor had lost track of how long they had waited. It frustrated him that even though he was no longer a servant to Devin, he was still stuck inside a castle all the time. He could tell that Briggan didn’t love being cooped up either. The door opened and Rollan emerged with Essix on his shoulder. Conor and Briggan looked up expectantly. Apparently Lenori and Rollan were finally done. “Your turn,” Rollan said. “How was it?” Conor asked. Rollan shrugged. “She wanted to know about my dreams. If it was a test, I don’t think I passed. Have fun.

She stood on the willow bank. It was bright as mid-afternoon in the openness of the water, quiet and peaceful. She took off her clothes and let herself into the river. She saw her waist disappear into reflection less water; it was like walking into sky, some impurity of skies. All seemed one weight, one matter -- until she put down her head and closed her eyes and the light slipped under her lids, she felt this matter a translucent one, the river, herself, the sky all vessels which the sun filled. She began to swim in the river, forcing it gently, as she would wish for gentleness to her body. Her breasts around which she felt the water curving were as sensitive at that moment as the tips of wings must feel to birds, or antennae to insects. She felt the sand, grains intricate as little cogged wheels, minute shells of old seas, and the many dark ribbons of grass and mud touch her and leave her, like suggestions and withdrawals of some bondage that might have been dear, now dismembering and losing itself. She moved but like a cloud in skies, aware but only of the nebulous edges of her feeling and the vanishing opacity of her will, the carelessness for the water of the river through which her body had already passed as well as for what was ahead. The bank was all one, where out of the faded September world the little ripening plums started. Memory dappled her like no more than a paler light, which in slight agitations came through leaves, not darkening her for more than an instant. the iron taste of the old river was sweet to her, though. If she opened her eyes she looked at blue bottles, the skating waterbugs. If she trembled, it was at the smoothness of a fish or a snake that crossed her knees. In the middle of the river, whose downstream or upstream could not be told by a current, she lay on her stretched arm, not breathing, floating. Virgie had reached the point where in the next moment she might turn into something without feeling it shock her. She hung suspended in the Big Black River as she would know how to hang suspended in felicity. Far to the west, a cloud running fingerlike over the sun made her splash the water. She stood, walked along the soft mud of the bottom, and pulled herself out of the water by a willow branch, which like a warm rain brushed her back with its leaves. The moon, while she looked into the high sky, took its own light between one moment and the next. A wood thrush, which had begun to sing, hushed its long moment and began again. Virgie put her clothes back on. She would have given much for a cigarette, always wishing for a little more of what had just been. (from the short story The Wanderers)

In this strain did Sancho bewail himself, and his ass listened to him, but answered him never a word, such was the distress and anguish the poor beast found himself in. At length, after a night spent in bitter moanings and lamentations, day came, and by its light Sancho perceived that it was wholly impossible to escape out of that pit without help, and he fell to bemoaning his fate and uttering loud shouts to find out if there was anyone within hearing; but all his shouting was only crying in the wilderness, for there was not a soul anywhere in the neighbourhood to hear him, and then at last he gave himself up for dead. Dapple was lying on his back, and Sancho helped him to his feet, which he was scarcely able to keep; and then taking a piece of bread out of his alforjas which had shared their fortunes in the fall, he gave it to the ass, to whom it was not unwelcome, saying to him as if he understood him, "With bread all sorrows are less.

At all times and in all places, in season and out of season, time is now and England, place is now and England; past and present inter-penetrate. The best days an angler spends upon his river – the river which is Heraclitus’ river, which is never the same as the angler is never the same, yet is the same always – are those he recollects in tranquillity, as wintry weather lashes the land without, and he, snug and warm, ties new patterns of dry-fly, and remembers the leaf-dapple upon clear water and the play of light and the eternal dance of ranunculus in the chalk-stream. A cricket match between two riotously inexpert village Second XIs is no less an instance of timeless, of time caught in ritual within an emerald Arcadia, than is a Test at Lord’s, and we who love the greatest of games know that we do indeed catch a fleeting glimpse of a spectral twelfth man on every pitch, for in each re-enactment of the mystery there is the cumulation of all that has gone before and shall come after. Et ego in Arcadia.

After many years the woman died, of natural causes. And a few years after that, the ogre died. Eventually, his mistresses died, down on the ground, in the people village, over decades. The war men and women died. The human girl who had escaped her early death died, across the land, over by the ocean, in her shack of blue bowls and rocking chairs. The witch, who had originally made the cake and made up up the spell and given it as a gift to her beloved ogre friend, died. The cake went on and on. Time passed... And the cake, always wanting to please, the cake who had found a way to survive its endlessness by recreating its role over and over again, tried to figure out, in its cake way, what this light-dappled object might want to eat. So it became darkness, a cake of darkness. It did not have to be human food. It did not have to be digestible through a familiar tract. It lay there on the dirt, waiting, a simmering cake of darkness. Through time, and wind, and earthquakes, and chance. At last the cloak fell out of the tree and blew across the land and happened upon the cake where it ate its darkness and extinguished its own dappled light. The cloak disappeared into night and was not seen again, as it was only a piece of coat shaped darkness now and could not be spotted so easily, had there been any eyes left to see it. It floated and joined with nowhere. Darkness was overtaking everything, anyway, pouring over the land and sky. The cake itself, still in the shape of darkness, sat on the hillside. 'What's left?' said the cake. It thought in blocks of feeling. It felt the thick darkness all around it. 'What is left to eat me, to take me in?' Darkness did not want to eat more darkness, not especially. Darkness did not care for carrot cake, or apple pie. Darkness did not seem interested in a water cake or a cake of money. Only when the cake filled with light did it come over. The darkness circling around the light, devouring the light. But the cake kept refilling, as we know. This is the spell of the cake. And the darkness eating light, and again, light, and again, light, lifted.

There was a fire in the grate, too far away for Lara to feel its heat. Goose bumps rose on her chilled skin. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to obey, taking one step, then another, the fine Aubusson carpet prickling beneath her bare feet. As she came near him, the firelight shone through the transparent black silk. She knew he could see everything, the flashes of ivory skin, the shape of her body, the dark triangle between her legs. Her face burned as she stopped before him. Hunter sat like a statue, his face and hair dappled with light from the dancing flames. "Oh, Lara," he said softly. "You're so damned beautiful, I..." He stopped and swallowed, as if it were difficult for him to speak. His faint smile had died away, and he set aside the wine bottle as if his fingers had become nerveless. He barely seemed to breathe as his gaze swept from her bare feet to her breasts, lingering at the pink tips that strained against the delicate lace. The room no longer seemed cold, but Lara continued to tremble. "I made a promise not to touch you," he said hoarsely, "but I'll be damned if I can keep it.

There were many skies. The sky was invaded by great white clouds, flat on the bottom but round and billowy on top. The sky was completely cloudless, of a blue quite shattering to the senses. The sky was a heavy, suffocating blanket of grey cloud, but without promise of rain. The sky was thinly overcast. The sky was dappled with small, white, fleecy clouds. The sky was streaked with high, thin clouds that looked like a cotton ball stretched a part. The sky was a featureless milky haze. The sky was a density of dark and blustery rain clouds that passed by without delivering rain. The sky was painted with a small number of flat clouds that looked like sandbars. The sky was a mere block to allow a visual effect on the horizon: sunlight flooding the ocean, the vertical edges of between light and shadow perfectly distinct. The sky was a distant black curtain of falling rain. The sky was many clouds at many levels, some thick and opaque, others looking like smoke. The sky was black and spitting on my smiling face. The sky was nothing but falling water, a ceaseless deluge that wrinkled and bloated my skin and froze me stiff.

The rain-sifted light was weaker now, coming in through the transom windows in pallid silver and dark rainbow dapples. Through heavy-lidded eyes, she watched the play of muted color and shadow across Tom's shirt. Eventually, his long-boned, eloquent hands slid up over her knees and beneath the legs of her drawers. He untied her white lace garters and rolled her silk stockings down into neat circles. After dropping them to the floor, he unfastened his shirt and discarded it, taking his time, letting her look her fill. His body was beautiful, built with the long, efficient lines of a rapier, every inch wrought with tough muscle. A light furring of hair covered his chest and narrowed down toward his midriff. Cassandra sat up on the mattress and touched the black fleece, her fingertips as shy and fleet as a hummingbird in flight. Still standing by the side of the bed, Tom reached out to gather her against his chest. Cassandra shivered at the feel of being surrounded by so much bare skin and body hair, so much hardness. "Did you ever imagine we would be doing this?" she said in a wondering tone. "Sweet darling... I imagined it about ten seconds after we met, and I haven't stopped since.

So, about your classes,” said Doug. “I put in the requirements already. History of Woodsmen and Pirates, Safety Rules for the Internet, and”—he cleared his throat—“Remedial Goodness 101.” “Let me guess...” said Mal. She popped a piece of candy into her mouth. “New class?” Doug nodded sheepishly. “Come on, guys,” Mal said, dropping the wrapper on the floor. “Let’s go find our dorms.” She started up a flight of stairs. Carlos, Jay, and Evie followed her. “Oh! Uh, yeah, your dorms are that way, guys,” said Doug, pointing in the opposite direction. As Mal and her friends came back down the stairs and headed in the direction he indicated, Doug hung back, counting through the dwarves again. “Dopey, Doc, Bashful, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, and...” “Sneezy,” said Carlos, passing him and ascending the opposite staircase. Doug sighed and looked at the ceiling. Upstairs, Mal and Evie opened the door to their dorm room. It was light and airy and dappled in sunlight. The white canopy beds were covered with pink pillows, and flowery curtains fluttered gently in the fresh breeze from the open windows. Evie’s eyes widened with delight as Mal’s narrowed in horror. “Wow,” said Evie. “This place is so amazing—” “Gross,” said Mal. “I know, right?” said Evie, changing her tune. “Amazingly gross. Ew!” When Mal wasn’t looking, Evie couldn’t help giving a silent gasp of joy at her new crib. “I am going to need some serious sunscreen,” said Mal, arms crossed. “Yeah,” said Evie. “E,” said Mal, pointing to the windows. She closed the curtains as Evie moved to other windows in the room and did the same, plunging the dorm into darkness. “Whoa!” said Mal. “That is much better.

SOMETIMES A KIND OF GLORY lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking.

ASITA AWOKE in the forest thinking about demons. He hadn’t for many years. He could remember glimpsing one or two in the past, on the fringes of a famine or a battle, wherever bodies were being harvested. He knew the misery they caused, but misery was no longer Asita’s concern. He had been a forest hermit for fifty years. The affairs of the world had been kept far away, and he passed whole days in a hidden cave when he retreated even from the affairs of animals, much less those of men. Now Asita knelt by a stream and considered. He distinctly saw demons in his mind’s eye. They had first appeared in the dappled sunlight that fell on his eyelids at dawn. Asita slept on boughs strewn over the bare ground, and he liked the play of light and shadow across his eyes in the early morning. His imagination freely saw shapes that reminded him of the market village where he grew up. He could see hawking merchants, women balancing water jugs on their heads, camels and cara-vans—anything, really—on the screen of his closed eyes. But never demons, not before this morning. Asita walked into the nearly freezing mountain stream, his body naked except for a loincloth. As an ascetic, he did not wear clothes, not even the robes of a monastic order. Lately he had felt an impulse to travel very high, nearly in sight of the snowcapped peaks on the north-ern border of the Sakya kingdom. Which put him close to other lokas,worlds apart from Earth. Every mortal is confined to the Earth plane, but like the dense air of the jungle tapering gradually into the thin atmosphere of the mountains, the material world ta-pered off into subtler and subtler worlds. Devas had their own lokas, as did the gods and demons. Ancestors dwelt in a loka set apart for spirits in transition from one lifetime to the next.

Having lost his mother, father, brother, an grandfather, the friends and foes of his youth, his beloved teacher Bernard Kornblum, his city, his history—his home—the usual charge leveled against comic books, that they offered merely an escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf. He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags and crates, from countries and regimes, from the arms of a woman who loved him, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death. The escape from reality was, he felt—especially right after the war—a worthy challenge. He would remember for the rest of his life a peaceful half hour spent reading a copy of 'Betty and Veronica' that he had found in a service-station rest room: lying down with it under a fir tree, in a sun-slanting forest outside of Medford, Oregon, wholly absorbed into that primary-colored world of bad gags, heavy ink lines, Shakespearean farce, and the deep, almost Oriental mistery of the two big-toothed wasp-waisted goddess-girls, light and dark, entangled forever in the enmity of their friendship. The pain of his loss—though he would never have spoken of it in those terms—was always with him in those days, a cold smooth ball lodged in his chest, just behind his sternum. For that half hour spent in the dappled shade of the Douglas firs, reading Betty and Veronica, the icy ball had melted away without him even noticing. That was magic—not the apparent magic of a silk-hatted card-palmer, or the bold, brute trickery of the escape artist, but the genuine magic of art. It was a mark of how fucked-up and broken was the world—the reality—that had swallowed his home and his family that such a feat of escape, by no means easy to pull off, should remain so universally despised.

In the last years of the Republic there were films such as Robert Siodmark's Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930)) and Gerhard Lamprecht's Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1931), which embraced the airy streets, light-dappled forests, and lakes surrounding Berlin. Billie Wilder, a brash young journalist and dance-hall enthusiast, worked on the scripts for both these films. While Kracauer and Eisner saw malevolence in the frequent trope of doubling (one being possessed by another and thus becoming two conflicting psychological presences), Wilder witnessed another form of doubling during the Weimer era: transvestitism, a staple of cabaret. Men dressing as women (as do Reinhold Schünzel in der Himmel auf Erden [Heaven on earth]) and Curti Bois in Der Fürst von Pappenheim [The Masked Mannequin][both 1927]) or women as men (as does Dolly Haas in Liebeskommando [Love's Command, 1931]), in order to either escape detection or get closer to the object of their affection, is an inherently comic situation, especially when much to his or her surprise the cross-dresser begins to enjoy the disguise. Billie left Germany before he directed a film of his own; as Billy he brought to Hollywood a vigorous appreciation of such absurdities of human behavior, along with the dry cynicism that distinguished Berlin humor and an enthusiasm for the syncopations of American jazz, a musical phenomenon welcomed in the German capital. Wilder, informed by his years in Berlin (to which he returned to make A Foreign Affair in 1948 and One, Two, Three in 1961), wrote and directed many dark and sophisticated American films, including The Apartment (1969) and Some Like it Hot (1959), a comedy, set during Prohibition, about the gender confusion on a tonal par with Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria, released in December 1933, eleven months into the Third Reich and the last musical to reflect the insouciance of the late Republic.

Wilcox welcomed our interest; we had bottles brought up from every bin, and it was during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian that I first made a serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of a rich harvest which was to be my stay in many barren years. We would sit, he and I, in the Painted Parlour with three bottles open on the table and three glasses before each of us; Sebastian had found a book on wine-tasting, and we followed its instructions in detail. We warmed the glass slightly at a candle, filled it a third high, swirled the wine round, nursed it in our hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sipped it, filled our mouths with it, and rolled it over the tongue, ringing it on the palate like a coin on a counter, tilted our heads back and let it trickle down the throat. Then we talked of it and nibbled Bath Oliver biscuits, and passed on to another wine; then back to the first then on to another, until all three were in circulation and the order of the glasses got confused, and we fell out over which was which, and passed the glasses to and fro between us until there were six glasses, some of them with mixed wines in them which we had filled from the wrong bottle, till we were obliged to start again with three clean glasses each, and the bottles were empty and our praise of them wilder and more exotic. '...It is a little, shy wine like a gazelle.' 'Like a leprechaun.' 'Dappled, in a tapestry meadow.' 'Like a flute by still water.' '...And this is a wise old wine.' 'A prophet in a cave.' '...And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck.' 'Like a swan.' 'Like the last unicorn.' And we would leave the golden candlelight of the dining-room for the starlight outside and sit on the edge of the fountain, cooling our hands in the water and listening drunkenly to its splash and gurgle over the rocks. 'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning. 'Yes, I think so.' 'I think so too'.

Chapter 13 - 1 Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken. And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

...whenever you find a clearing like this," Beatrix said, leading Christopher to a small, sun-dappled meadow, "it's most likely an ancient field enclosure from the Bronze Age. They knew nothing about fertilizing, so when a patch of land became unproductive, they simply cleared a new area. And the old areas became covered with gorse and bracken and heather. And here-" she showed him the cavity of an oak tree near the clearing- "is where I watched a hobby chick hatch in early summer. Hobbies don't build their own nests, they use ones made by other birds. They're so fast when they fly, they look like sickles cutting through the air." Christopher listened attentively. With the breeze playing lightly in his dark gold hair, and a slight smile on his lips, he was so handsome that it was difficult not to gape at him. "You know all the secrets of this forest, don't you?" he asked gently. "There's so much to learn, I've only scratched the surface. I've filled books with sketches of animals and plants, and I keep finding new ones to study.

Then comes September and the sun tilts to the south. Yes, autumn in New York: the great song of the city and the great season. Not just for the relief from the brutal extremes of winter or summer, but for that glorious slant of the light, that feeling that in certain moments lances in on that tilt—that you had been thinking you were living in a room and suddenly with a view between buildings out to the rivers, a dappled sky overhead, you are struck by the fact that you live on the side of a planet—that the great city is also a great bay on a great world. In those golden moments even the most hard-bitten citizen, the most oblivious urban creature, perhaps only pausing for a WALK sign to turn green, will be pierced by that light and take a deep breath and see the place as if for the first time, and feel, briefly but deeply, what it means to live in a place so strange and gorgeous.

All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light. Mabel

At this time of year, the path was like a dark green cathedral, dappled with sun, and Biddy told the other two about the words the Japanese had for different kinds of light: Light through leaves was called komorebi.

The light through beech limbs dappled her long indigo-black torso, leafy transluscence, creating a diffuse green glow broken by dancing radiant rays.

Evolution has programmed us to be afraid — of the dark, strangers, changes and even love. We open doors to our hearts because we are compelled. But not completely. We hold it ajar. Unable to step out. Letting the light dapple on our arm and the side of our cheek, while we stand in the shadowy doorway. Hinges crusted with past scabs, the door needs a firm push. We wait. The sun sets without us revelling in its light. Push the door, ignore the screeching hinges, love with all your heart, love generously, fearlessly, in dollops and not dribs.

as soft as feathers— that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica, to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow— that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light— in which we are washed and washed out of our bones.

As soon as they entered the forest, Dina felt something stirring in her magic. Normally it lay dormant within her until she needed it for a spell. But now it was thrumming in her blood, reacting to this place. The trees were tall and thick, little sunlight made it to the forest floor, and the narrow pebbled path they walked along twisted out of sight ahead of them. "There's something here," she whispered to Immy. "Like magic?" "Yeah. Like, I don't know how to put it--- like this is an old and powerful place. Like the land is breathing." "Ooh, I'm going to write that phrase down for my next book," Immy said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. As Immy slowed down to make her note, Dina walked on, feeling the power of this ancient wood flooding through her. She felt as if she were walking into the mouth of a great, slumbering goddess. But it didn't scare her; it wasn't meant to. It was just nature, older than history, older than bone. The path curled around to the left, revealing a small cottage in the dappled light, dwarfed by the surrounding oaks. The lights were on inside, illuminating the ivy and wisteria vines that had twined themselves around the outer walls of the cottage. The windows were sashed in dark green wood, complete with window boxes filled with daisies. Daisies that Dina was sure shouldn't have been able to grow in such little light, but this wood seemed to play by its own rules.

In my mind I saw, clearly, that straight-backed figure on the dapple-gray horse, his long black cloak slung back over the animal’s haunches, his plumed helm of command on his head. With either phenomenal courage or outright arrogance he had ignored the possibility of our arrows, the crowned sun stitched on his tunic gleaming in the noonday light as he directed the day’s battle.

At the age of four, what prompted me to wake, dress and wander down the corridor of our family home and out into the street at dawn, I cannot say. A mystery to myself, I obeyed rules and directives of which I was unaware. All I knew was the feel of wet grass under my feet, the crisp air filling my lungs and the play of dappled light through the trees, strewing clothing as I made my way down the street. Thoughts of direction and safety never enter the mind of a child locked in an Autistic fog - for them there is only the sensing.

A Visit November 30 I REMEMBER AN especially dark time of my life. One of my children was sick, and in my anxiety for her I was in my own way as sick as she was. Then one day the phone rang, and it was a man I didn’t know very well then though he has become a great friend since, a minister from Charlotte, North Carolina, which is about 800 miles or so from where I live in Vermont. I assumed he was calling from home and asked him how things were going down there only to hear him say that no, he wasn’t in Charlotte. He was at an inn about twenty minutes away from my house. He’d known I was having troubles, he said, and he thought maybe it would be handy to have an extra friend around for a day or two. The reason he didn’t tell me in advance that he was coming must have beer that he knew I would tell him for Heaven’s sake not to do anything so crazy, so for Heaven’s sake he did something crazier still which was to come those 800 miles without telling me he was coming so that for all he knew I might not even have been there. But as luck had it, I was there, and for a day or two he was there with me. He was there for me. I don’t think anything we found to say to each other amounted to very much or had anything particularly religious about it. I don’t remember even spending much time talking about my troubles with him. We just took a couple of walks, had a meal or two together and smoked our pipes, drove around to see some of the countryside, and that was about it. I have never forgotten how he came all that distance just for that, and I’m sure he has never forgotten it either. I also believe that although as far as I can remember we never so much as mentioned the name of Christ, Christ was as much in the air we breathed those few days as the smoke of our pipes was in the air, or the dappled light of the woods we walked through. I believe that for a little time we both of us touched the hem of Christ’s garment, were both of us, for a little time anyway, healed.

Julie sat on the wall beside him, her hair swirling around her like she was underwater. He imagined the dappled light flashing across her face. Portrait of the young pinnace racer as a mermaid. She smiled at the idea, and Miller smiled back. She would have been here, he knew. Along with Diogo and Fred and all the other OPA militia, patriots of the vacuum, she’d have been in a crash couch, wearing borrowed armor, heading into the station to get herself killed for the greater good. Miller knew he wouldn’t have. Not before her. So in a sense, he’d taken her place. He’d become her. They made it, Julie said, or maybe only thought.

He’d also gotten close to Prophet, moving next to him to get the right angle on the cast, his hip brushing Prophet’s cock. And now his own had a more pressing need than covering up phone numbers. The light dappled across Prophet’s face. He looked more relaxed, less on guard than he’d ever been. But somehow still lethal. Always lethal. Prophet turned onto his back, arms over his head again, casts sprawled on the pillow. Tom’s erection nudged Prophet’s thigh as he thought about Prophet tied up, and Prophet shook his head. “Did you take Viagra instead of migraine meds?” “Maybe,” Tom murmured, wrapped a hand around Prophet’s cock, which was hard again too.

I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives. Why

All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light. Mabel could not remember the last time she caught such a flicker. She

Light dapples rain-drenched trees soaked in autumn, leaves fluttering to ground with screams of glee. The hammock buried in red and gold leaves sits silent to wait for spring and the grass. In winter the leaves are hanging dead and everything is beyond the pale and pure. Spring is rain, everything returns confused to find the world still seems to look the same.

...an unlikely group pieced together these past few weeks from parties and family references, friend-of-friend happenstance, and (in one case, just now being introduced) sheer, scarcely tolerable intrusiveness-five people who, in normal life back home, would have been satisfied never to have known one another. Five young expatriates hunch around an undersized cafe table: a moment of total insignificance, and not without a powerful whiff of cliche. Unless you were one of them. Then this meaningless, overdrawn moment may (then or later) seem to be somehow the summation of both an era and your own youth, your undeniably defining afternoon (though you can hardly say that aloud without making a joke of it). Somehow this one game of Sincerity becomes the distilled recollection of a much longer series of events. It persistantly rises to the surface of your memory-that afternoon when you fell in love with a person or a place or a mood, when you savored the power of fooling everyone, when you discovered some great truth about the world, when (like a baby duck glimpsing your quacking mother's waddling rear for the first time) an indelible brand was seared into your heart, which is, of course, a finate space with limited room for searing. Despite its insignificance, there was this moment, this hour or two, this spring afternoon blurring into evening on a cafe patio in a Central European capital in the opening weeks of its post-Communist era. The glasses of liqueur. The diamond dapples of light between oval, leaf-shaped shadows, like optical illusions. The trellised curve of the cast-iron fence seperating the patio from its surrounding city square. The uncomfortable chair. Someday this too will represent someone's receding, cruelly unattainable golden age. (4-5)

I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives. Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world. When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks.

I loved it at first sight. It has hardwood floors, a bedroom and bathroom and a tiny kitchen that opens onto the living room. Huge windows let in the dappled sunlight and made a dance of light and shadows across the floors. It's perfect and it's mine. And it's yellow. The way pale yellow should look, like sunshine and butter, mixed with hope and cream.

Beneath the hill where the fox runs lightly, A dappled sun shines brightly Where my one love's still. Beneath the hill in the fennel brake I spy my love who cannot wake He hides in a grave beneath the hill

I paused at the top of the spiral staircase, and soaked in the view. In the daylight, the bookstore took on a new life. Motes of dust danced in the sunlight that streamed through the windows. It looked a lot cozier, as the colored glass window ornaments threw rainbows across the bookshelves and pirouetted across the hardwood floors like flecks of dappled sunlight on sand. Bookcases, filled to the brim, reached up to the ceiling, cluttered with so many colors and kinds of books, short and fat, long and wide, that it almost felt like an assault on the senses. The center of the bookstore was open to the second floor, where tall bookshelves towered so high you had to reach them with ladders. Heavy oak beams supported the roof. Planetariums and glass chimes and other ornaments hung from the rafters, catching the morning's golden light and throwing it across the store. The shelves were made from the same deep oak as the ceiling beams and the banisters on the second floor, signs hanging from the eye-level shelves detailing the different sections of the store: MEMOIR, FANTASY, SCI-FI, ROMANCE, SELF-HELP, NATURE, HOW-TO... This place was beautiful. I wondered, briefly, what it would be like to own a place like this. It was magical. A shop that sold the impossible inked onto soft white paper.

There are many ways to go home; many are mundane, some are divine. My clients tell me these mundane endeavors constitute a return to home for them[...] Rereading passages of books and single poems that have touched them. Spending even a few minutes near a river, a stream, a creek. Lying on the ground in dappled light. Being with a loved one without kids around. Sitting on the porch shelling something, knitting something, peeling something. Walking or driving for an hour, any direction, then returning. Boarding any bus, destination unknown. Making drums while listening to music. Greeting sunrise. Driving out to where the city lights do not interfere with the night sky. Praying. A special friend. Sitting on abridge with legs dangling over. Holding an infant. Sitting by a window in a café and writing. Sitting in a circle of trees. Drying hair in the sun. Putting hands in a rain barrel. Potting plants,being sure to get hands very muddy. Beholding beauty, grace, the touching frailty of human beings.

Then she spread the wings of her coat, revealing the shimmering lining. Except he saw it wasn't a coat. It was wings-- huge, brown, beautiful wings, dappled in the street light. Not a bird's wings, but more like the wings of a moth, all silk and starlight spreading out against the smoky London sky. For a moment, she stood there, wings spread; shock-headed, wild-eyed, a thing from a dream. Then, as Tom watched open-mouthed, she flew off, soundlessly, into the night.

She gave a sudden, luminous grin. 'Typical chrysalis,' she said. 'Pretty as peaches. Thick as mince.' Then she turned and made for the door, looking almost insubstantial in the shadows. Tom watched as she vanished down the steps. And looking down on to the street, he saw her hesitate, and then, finding the street deserted, spread out the skirts of the garment that he'd assumed was a long brown coat... Except that it wasn't a coat. It was wings-- wings the color of cobweb, and dappled sunlight on water, and rain... I've seen this before, said a voice in his mind. It came with a fleeting memory-- a voice in the moonlight, the touch of a hand, a scent of smoke and roses. I've seen this before, thought Tom once again, as Charissa flew into the night. His hand crept into his pocket, where something-- a dead leaf? No, a flower-- seemed to be caught in the lining. With the thought came a memory: of a moon like a Christmas bauble; a kiss as light as a moth's wing; a long-necked guitar that fell from a bridge into the moonlit water. I must have dreamed that, Tom thought, and yet it didn't feel like a dream. And it came with the sound of voices of vendors selling flowers and fruit, and the scent of marchpane and gingerbread, burnt sugar, and smoke, and spices. The Market!

Occasionally, the ripples on the surface was shattered or crossed by a curling V-wake that marked the watery trail of a swimming muskrat. At the far north end of the lake, a lithe doe, who had left her dappled fawn hidden in a thicket, sipped, raised a nervous head to look, and lower in to sip again. As though his last dark deed, the murder of a nesting mallard, could not abide the light, a snake-thin mink looked for a den in which he might lie up and found one in a hallow stump. Two crows, busily trying to pick up a dead fish that floated with white belly upward, cawed their disappointment or rising excitement as their fortunes waned or rose. Saucy, red-winged blackbirds tilted on bending rushes and whistled defiance to the rest of the world.

What to do with the lives around us, within us? How to classify them? They are and are not examined lives, monochrome canvases with blots, smudges, freckles scattered over a space made up of shackled time. Examined lives (canvases), crisscrossed with shallow empty spaces, dappled with little bumps—hillocks—and narrow furrows, cuttings, grooves, many alike, in which slow, stagnant waters swirl. Lives with rounded edges, easily catalogued, easily connected, easily nailed onto the shelves of memory. And forgotten there. Then, those others: lives crisscrossed, entangled, knotted wit veins, scars, clefts which continue to breathe under the gravestones over the little mounds of our being, scabbed-over wounds that still bleed within. Impenetrable lives. They flicker in the darkness, sending out little sparks of light, fluorescent, like the bones of corpses. Placed side by side, there is no current between them, because both these kinds of life collapse into themselves, silently and menacingly like rising waters. Kaleidoscopic lives. Like the drawings of schizoid patients.

It is a huge slab of dark stone, square and rough, like the rocks at the bottom of the chasm. A large crack runs through the middle of it, and there are streaks of lighter rock near the edges. Suspended above the slab is a glass tank of the same dimensions, full of water. A light placed above the center of the tank shines through the water, refracting as it ripples. I hear a faint noise, a drop of water hitting the stone. It comes from a small tube running through the center of the tank. At first I think the tank is just leaking, but another drop falls, then a third, and a fourth, at the same interval. A few drops collect, and then disappear down a narrow channel in the stone. They must be intentional. “Hello.” Zoe stands on the other side of the sculpture. “I’m sorry, I was about to go to the dormitory for you, then saw you heading this way and wondered if you were lost.” “No, I’m not lost,” I say. “This is where I meant to go.” “Ah.” She stands beside me and crosses her arms. She is about as tall as I am, but she stands straighter, so she seems taller. “Yeah, it’s pretty weird, right?” As she talks I watch the freckles on her cheeks, dappled like sunlight through dense leaves. “Does it mean something?” “It’s the symbol of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare,” she says. “The slab of stone is the problem we’re facing. The tank of water is our potential for changing that problem. And the drop of water is what we’re actually able to do, at any given time.” I can’t help it—I laugh. “Not very encouraging, is it?” She smiles. “That’s one way of looking at it. I prefer to look at it another way—which is that if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back.” She points to the center of the slab, where there is a small impression, like a shallow bowl carved into the stone. “That, for example, wasn’t there when they installed this thing.” I nod, and watch the next drop fall. Even though I’m wary of the Bureau and everyone in it, I can feel the quiet hope of the sculpture working its way through me. It’s a practical symbol, communicating the patient attitude that has allowed the people here to stay for so long, watching and waiting. But I have to ask. “Wouldn’t it be more effective to unleash the whole tank at once?” I imagine the wave of water colliding with the rock and spilling over the tile floor, collecting around my shoes. Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can’t help yourself.

And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

When Stephanie returned for a Sunday brunch, the terrace returned too. It was resplendent in the afternoon sun, the wooden slats dappled with light and strewn with acorns, gold and orange leaves underfoot. Annie didn’t expect that you could yearn for a place so terribly after visiting it only once. There were other places she missed, treasured territories lifted off the earth, shuttered, gone. But the terrace arrived upon her with the relief of a long-awaited reunion. Annie felt a chill, because it was a reunion with herself. She had been accommodating some unknown injury for years, and it had silently joined the daily landscape of known feeling. Now, standing on the terrace, she woke to find her forgotten wound healed.

All of my friends' tiny acts of generosity and kindness did not pass me by. Instead, they took my breath away. They filled me up. I scrolled through the messages on my phone, and they lit up like gemstones, painted a full landscape of me, dappled with light and complexity, weeds and miraculous flowers, much like the meadow I was currently gazing at. My heart swelled with gratitude for every text, even the silly meme ones.

She lifted her head and gazed at him, studying him like a map. He submitted to it without blinking, lost momentarily in the lovely complexity of her eyes. All those colors. Like the pond dappled in morning light, those eyes were, the shifting play of green and gold,; tears had made spikes of her chestnut lashes. It was all he could not to brush a thumb across them, taste the salt of them, to run the cool back of his hand against her flushed cheek, soothing it. He wondered why it had begun to seem more unnatural not to touch her... than to touch her. At that thought, something kicked sharply inside him, once. And then it unfurled, slowly, slowly, filling him with an ache both unutterably sweet... and as old as time. It occurred to him then: She might very well be right. She might just be a little dangerous after all.

I started thinking about bivalves living down there in the dappled light, how they filter the algae from the water, how they close themselves up against the sea. It must be wonderful to be a bivalve, to be able to shut yourself away in your own mother-of-pearl-lined world, hanging on to the rock while the waves and tides churn outside. Ms Firestorm showed up to help me out. Cloistered in their shimmering watery depths, the loyal bivalves cling passionately together... Yes, we could learn a lot from bivalves.