Desert Rose Quotes

She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).

When I was in the desert, I woke each day and carried on with my life, but it wasn’t living; it was merely existing. I want to live. You are where I live.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it? It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

I can't believe this," I muttered, cradling the skein of water up close to my chest. "Two weeks in the desert all on account of some assassin who doesn't know how to look out for snakes."     "If you hadn't killed that snake," Naji said calmly, "I would have killed you." " Oh, shut up.

I remembered a song, it reminded me of you It made me think of a city I might pass through. The sky turned gray, and the clouds turned blue and the flowers all bowed under a misty dew.

In the desert, the only god is a well.

I'll tell you how the sun rose A ribbon at a time... It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be. So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification. And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

But we’re not trying to empty the Thames,” she told him. “Look at what we’re doing with the water we remove. It doesn’t go to waste. We’re using it to water our gardens, sprout by sprout. We’re growing bluebells and clovers where once there was a desert. All you see is the river, but I care about the roses.

A rose in a desert can only survive on its strength, not its beauty.

...to experience the reality was to suffer a boredom as endless as the illness itself...the boredom of insanity was a great desert, so great that anyone's violence or agony seemed an oasis, and the brief companionship seemed like a rain in the desert that was numbered and counted and remembered long after it was gone.

He got out of bed and peeped through the blinds. To the east and opposite to him gardens and an apple-orchard lay, and there in strange liquid tranquility hung the morning star, and rose, rilling into the dusk of night the first grey of dawn. The street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed, deserted.

A song of despair The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked. In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose. You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank! In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on. Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar. There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle. Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms! How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid. Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds. Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies. Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired. And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips. This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel. You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well. Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank! It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables. The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands. Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air" A good many flowers bloom and fade away in deserted places, seen by no one. In its context in Thomas Gray's "Elegy" it is actually a metaphor for common folk who do heroic things that are never reported in the news or recorded in history. Like a precious stone unmined at the bottom of the ocean or a beautiful flower blooming in the deep woods, their work may not be seen or known, but it is nevertheless heroic. Rubies and roses are beautiful, Gray would say, whether anyone ever sees them or not.

The sun was just down and to the west lay reefs of bloodred clouds up out of which rose little desert nighthawks like fugitives from some great fire at the earth's end.

The weak grey light that serves as harbinger of red and golden dawn faintly lit my window. I fumbled for a candle, found and lit it, and by its little light saw that the rose floating in the bowl was dying. It had already lost most of its petals, which floated on the water like tiny, un-seaworthy boats, deserted for safer craft. "Dear God," I said. "I must go back at once.

God, I love your skin.” “My skin?” She glanced uncomprehendingly at her own arm when he rose from nibbling at her. “It’s brown.” “It’s melted chocolate and coffee with cream, exotic as the fucking desert, and so damn erotic. I have wet dreams about you naked on my sheets, your skin smooth and hot from the sun’s rays.” She swallowed, chest heaving. “You make me sound edible.” He purred. “You are.

Dawn rose from the desert and turned the river to wine

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

I hadn’t noticed how muted my world was until Isabella burst in, full of life and color and energy, like a rose blossoming in the middle of an arid desert.

Sweet desert rose Each of her veils, a secret promise This desert flower No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree. Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other...

Nothing good comes easily. You have to lose things you thought you loved, give up things you thought you needed. You have to get over yourself, beyond your past, out from under the weight of your future. The good stuff never comes when things are easy. It comes when things are all heavily weighted down like moving trucks. It comes just when you think it never will, like a shimmering Las Vegas rising up out of the dry desert, sparkling and humming with energy, a blessing that rose up out of a bone-dry, dusty curse.

She raised her chin and looked him in the eye. “You see a river rushing by without end. You see a sad collection of women with thimbles, all dipping out an inconsequential amount.” He didn’t say anything. “But we’re not trying to empty the Thames,” she told him. “Look at what we’re doing with the water we remove. It doesn’t go to waste. We’re using it to water our gardens, sprout by sprout. We’re growing bluebells and clovers where once there was a desert. All you see is the river, but I care about the roses.

Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours.

A daisy in a garden fits in; a rose in a desert stands out.

A daisy blooming in a desert is worth more than a rose blossoming in a rainforest.

A cactus is a desert's rose.

He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. “You are my country, Desdemona.” Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. “My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.” She gasped. His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. “You’ll never hear old Blake say something like that.” She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in anticipation? Trepidation? “Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose.

The cactus of the high desert is a small grubby, obscure and humble vegetable associated with cattle dung and overgrazing, interesting only when you tangle with it the wrong way. Yet from this nest of thorns, this snare of hooks and fiery spines, is born once each year a splendid flower. It is unpluckable and except to an insect almost unapproachable, yet soft, lovely, sweet, desirable, exemplifying better than the rose among thorns the unity of opposites

Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin?

It is poetic and lyrical; words that spill forth like cool waters into the dusty dry rock bed of the Soul desiring love. It has been said that I’ve lived in the desert all my life and do not know what it means to be wet.

A rose that blooms in the desert has the privilege of being the only flower for miles.

In the driest whitest stretch of pain’s infinite desert, I lost my sanity and found this rose.

Not a breath, not a sound—except at intervals the muffled crackling of stones that the cold was reducing to sand—disturbed the solitude and silence surrounding Janine. After a moment, however, it seemed to her that the sky above her was moving in a sort of slow gyration. In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually towards the horizon. Janine could not tear herself away from contemplating those drifting flares. She was turning with them, and the apparently stationary progress little by little identified her with the core of her being, where cold and desire were now vying with each other. Before her the stars were falling one by one and being snuffed out among the stones of the desert, and each time Janine opened a little more to the night. Breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the dead weight of others, the craziness or stuffiness of life, the long anguish of living and dying. After so many years of mad, aimless fleeing from fear, she had come to a stop at last. At the same time, she seemed to recover her roots and the sap again rose in her body, which had ceased trembling. Her whole belly pressed against the parapet as she strained towards the moving sky; she was merely waiting for her fluttering heart to calm down and establish silence within her. The last stars of the constellations dropped their clusters a little lower on the desert horizon and became still. Then, with unbearable gentleness, the water of night began to fill Janine, drowned the cold, rose gradually from the hidden core of her being and overflowed in wave after wave, rising up even to her mouth full of moans. The next moment, the whole sky stretched out over her, fallen on her back on the cold earth.

In the country neighbor­hood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight-sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disap­pointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away.

The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size was an elephant's; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace. He was more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert.

An oasis in the desert, surely, for a boy raised without a home. A boy who’d grown into an ambitious man . . . Osla knew Philip so well; of course he was ambitious. What man in his lonely, barebones position would turn down such a chance—status, wealth, power, allied to a loving family and a girl he thought he might very well be able to love?

The world rumbled around them. The Kins walked away from the long line of sand that rose into the air. An extensive tunnel emerged like a ginormous serpent, shaking off the desert as if it was done its play.

He grasped the knob. It was engraved with a wild rose wound around a revolver, one of those great old guns from his father and now lost forever. Yet it will be yours again, whispered the voice of the Tower and the voice of the roses—these voices were now one. What do you mean ? To this there was no answer, but the knob turned beneath his hand, and perhaps that was an answer. Roland opened the door at the top of the Dark Tower. He saw and understood at once, the knowledge falling upon him in a hammerblow, hot as the sun of the desert that was the apotheosis of all deserts. How many times had he climbed these stairs only to find himself peeled back, curved back, turned back? Not to the beginning (when things might have been changed and time's curse lifted), but to that moment in the Mohaine Desert when he had finally understood that his thoughtless, questionless quest would ultimately succeed? How many times had he traveled a loop like the one in the clip that had once pinched off his navel, his own tet-ka can Gan? How many times would he travel it? "Oh, no!" he screamed. "Please, not again! Have pity! Have mercy!" The hands pulled him forward regardless. The hands of the Tower knew no mercy. They were the hands of Gan, the hands of ka, and they knew no mercy.

I wanted you the moment I saw you run. You're everything I want. Not a rose, but a desert flower, enduring scorching heat to flower in darkness with a rare and singular beauty. My night-blooming cereus, bristling with spines.

There is no desert in the memory I have of you And no enemies from now on for the rose That bursts forth from the ruins of your house!

Beneath hot sun, desert roses bloomed. Under cold moon, I still refused to.

The sound of his anguish spiraled up into a desert night, across a vast spread of tiny stars. Through Shahrzad’s very skin. Without a word, Shahrzad took his hand and led him into the desert, far beyond the enclave of tents. When she finally turned to face him, Tariq appeared to have aged a decade in a matter of moments. They stared at each other across a small sea of glittering sand. Across years of friendship and trust, seemingly lost in an instant.

The worst part ever is discoursing about the abuse to anyone you trust in the family or friends and when they prefer not to believe in you, that feeling of being deserted by people you trusted and spoke to is even more painful than the whole trauma of the abuse and insult.

You were a pirate queen who stole a treasure from Cortés and then ended up deserting your crew to man-hungry sharks,” Rose tells her. “We’re your punishment for every lifetime to come.

Stars were falling deep in the darkness as prayers rose softly, petals at dawn And as I listened, your voice seemed so clear so calmly you were calling your god Somewhere the sun rose, o'er dunes in the desert such was the stillness, I ne'er felt before Was this the question, pulling, pulling, pulling you in your heart, in your soul, did you find rest there? Elsewhere a snowfall, the first in the winter covered the ground as the bells filled the air You in your robes sang, calling, calling, calling him in your heart, in your soul, did you find peace there?

He was the wind and she water, and together they created a cyclone. One fueled by extremes. Love and hate, the rose and the thorn, the desert and the ocean, fire and water, light and dark.

The stranger was still smiling. He transformed himself into a rose bush and entwined me. My Christian education meant that ever since childhood I have had a horror of vice and it was not without a quite understandable terror that I discerned the pleasure I felt in the embrace of this vigorous bush whose branches gradually mingled with my limbs, my hair and my looks. When one of its flowers came apart in my mouth, I could feel myself grasping the sorcerer in my arms in my turn. He was transformed into a torrent, and I was a barge, into desert and I was smoke, into a car and I was a road, into a man and I was a woman. 'What we are doing is very wrong,' he said and was off.

What do you know about me? What do you know about love that comes into a life in which everything has become questionable? What is your cheap intoxication compared to that? When falling and falling suddenly changes, when the endless Why becomes the final You, when like a fata morgana above the desert of silence feeling suddenly arises, takes shape, and inexorably the delusion of the blood becomes a landscape compared with which all dreams are pale and commonplace? A landscape of silver, a city of filigree and rose quartz, shining like the bright reflection of blooming blood—what do you know about it? Do you think that one can talk about it so easily? That a glib tongue can quickly press it into a cliché of words or even of feelings? What do you know about graves that open and how one stands in dread of the many colorless empty nights of yesterday—yet they open and no skeletons now lie bleaching there, only earth is there, earth, fertile seeds, and already the first green. What do you know about that? You love the intoxication, the conquest, the Other You that wants to die in you and that will never die, you love the stormy deceit of the blood, but your heart will remain empty because one cannot keep anything that does not grow from within oneself. And not much can grow in a storm. It is in the empty nights of loneliness that it grows, if one does not despair. What do you know about it?

Having reached the end of my poor sinner’s life, my hair now white, I grow old as the world does, waiting to be lost in the bottomless pit of silent and deserted divinity, sharing in the light of angelic intelligences;

At most, a hundred paces separated him from them. The powerful beast, seeing the riders and horses, rose on his fore paws and began to gaze at them. The sun, which now stood low, illuminated his huge head and shaggy breasts, and in that ruddy luster he was like one of those sphinxes which ornament the entrances to ancient Egyptian temples.

Where there are no bees there is no honey. Where there are no flowers there is no perfume. Where there are no clouds there is no rain. Where there are no stars there is no light. Where there are no roses there are no thorns. Where there are no skies there are no stars. Where there are no storms there are no rainbows. Where there are no animals there are no forests. Where there are no plants there are no jungles. Where there are no seeds there are no harvests. Where there are no spiders there are no webs. Where there are no ants there are no colonies. Where there are no worms there are no fish. Where there are no mice there are no serpents. Where there are no carcasses there are no vultures. Where there are no stones there are no pebbles. Where there are no rocks there are no mountains. Where there are no deserts there are no oases. Where there are no stars there are no galaxies. Where there are no worlds there are no universes.

Even though May came in accompanied by rain, all the fields were bright with the loveliest green imaginable. A sunbeam pierced a little gap in the dark sea of cloud, and the world laughed and glittered in the light of heaven. I stood there marveling and thought, Does God take us for fools, that he should light up the world for us with such consummate beauty in the radiance of his glory, in his honor? And nothing, on the other hand, but rapine and murder? Where does the truth lie? Should one go off and build a little house with flowers outside the windows and a garden outside the door and extol and thank God and turnone’s back on the world and its filth? Isn’t seclusion a form of treachery of desertion? I’m weak and puny, but I want to do what is right.

Ash swirls in the air and the landscape is gray rubble that falls away into the sea. They kept saying global warming wan't going to be the end of us, that it was just threats from the fanatics, that we didn't have to make changes. But every year there were more earthquakes and flood and hurricanes and fires- every element expressing its imbalance. Every year the temperatures soared and the ice melted and no one did anything. My pink house - no longer mine - stands on the edge of nowhere like a rose in a Salvador Dali surrealist desert landscape . . .

The landscape of the desert changes very gradually as little breezes lift grains of sand and move them, sometimes a few feet, sometimes miles and miles, so that at the end of the day, when the sun sets, the face of the desert is completely different from the landscape it had in the morning when the sun rose on it.

It was very quiet. No one else would have seen if not for the desert. But when the desert heard Pete Wyatt singing a love song, it took notice. The desert loved him, after all, and wanted him happy. So when it heard Pete singing, it rose a wind around them until the breeze sang gently like strings, and when it heard Pete singing, it provoked the air to heat and cool around every stone and plant so that each of these things sounded in harmony with his voice, and when it heard Pete singing, it roused Colorado's grasshoppers to action and they rubbed their legs together like a soft horn section, and when it heard Pete singing, it shifted the very ground beneath Bicho Raro so that the sand and the dirt pounded a beat that matched the sound of the incomplete heart that lived in Pete Wyatt.

Tell me the truth of it, Ead. Was it your own choice to sleep with me last night, or did you feel compelled because of my rank?” Her hair was a tangle about her shoulders. Ead softened. “Fool,” she said. “I would not be compelled by you or anyone. Have I not always given you the truth?” Sabran smiled at that. “Too much of it,” she said. “You are the only one who does.” Ead leaned in to kiss her brow, but before she could, Sabran caught her face in her hands and pressed her parted lips to hers. When they broke apart a last, Sabran smiled a true smile, rare as a desert rose. “Come.” Ead draped the mantle over her shoulders. “I would see you walk under the sun today.

American muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land, As mountainous-deep, as flowered with blue rivers, Thirsty with deserts, buried under snows, As native as the shape of Navajo quivers, And native, too, as the sea-voyaged rose.

You wrote to me. Do not deny it. I’ve read your words and they evoke My deep respect for your emotion, Your trusting soul… and sweet devotion. Your candour has a great appeal And stirs in me, I won’t conceal, Long dormant feelings, scarce remembered. But I’ve no wish to praise you now; Let me repay you with a vow As artless as the one you tendered; Hear my confession too, I plead, And judge me both by word and deed. 13 ’Had I in any way desired To bind with family ties my life; Or had a happy fate required That I turn father, take a wife; Had pictures of domestication For but one moment held temptation- Then, surely, none but you alone Would be the bride I’d make my own. I’ll say without wrought-up insistence That, finding my ideal in you, I would have asked you—yes, it’s true— To share my baneful, sad existence, In pledge of beauty and of good, And been as happy … as I could! 14 ’But I’m not made for exaltation: My soul’s a stranger to its call; Your virtues are a vain temptation, For I’m not worthy of them all. Believe me (conscience be your token): In wedlock we would both be broken. However much I loved you, dear, Once used to you … I’d cease, I fear; You’d start to weep, but all your crying Would fail to touch my heart at all, Your tears in fact would only gall. So judge yourself what we’d be buying, What roses Hymen means to send— Quite possibly for years on end! 15 ’In all this world what’s more perverted Than homes in which the wretched wife Bemoans her worthless mate, deserted— Alone both day and night through life; Or where the husband, knowing truly Her worth (yet cursing fate unduly) Is always angry, sullen, mute— A coldly jealous, selfish brute! Well, thus am I. And was it merely For this your ardent spirit pined When you, with so much strength of mind, Unsealed your heart to me so clearly? Can Fate indeed be so unkind? Is this the lot you’ve been assigned? 16 ’For dreams and youth there’s no returning; I cannot resurrect my soul. I love you with a tender yearning, But mine must be a brother’s role. So hear me through without vexation: Young maidens find quick consolation— From dream to dream a passage brief; Just so a sapling sheds its leaf To bud anew each vernal season. Thus heaven wills the world to turn. You’ll fall in love again; but learn … To exercise restraint and reason, For few will understand you so, And innocence can lead to woe.

It seemed as if we were driving through a golden haze. The violet shadows were creeping up between the hills, while away back of us the snow-capped peaks were catching the sun's last rays. On every side of us stretched the poor, hopeless desert, the sage, grim and determined to live in spite of starvation, and the great, bare, desolate buttes. The beautiful colors turned to amber and rose, and then to the general tone, dull gray. Then we stopped to camp, and such a scurrying around to gather brush for the fire and to get supper! Everything tasted so good! Jerrine ate like a man. Then we raised the wagon tongue and spread the wagon sheet over it and made a bedroom for us women.

He is a fire I long to burn in, a river I beg to drown in, a desert I search to get lost in.

Whenever we see a deserted rose, we immediately think about a broken relationship and we imagine the sadness they went through without thinking the poor dead rose ever!

I like a woman with meat on her bones." She laughed. "My hips express their deepest appreciation, Major Winslow.

Dubai, with all of its glitz and glamour rose in the heart of the desert.

that would be a lot like planting a rose in the desert; you’d survive but you’d never really bloom.

It was just possible too of course that he might meet— But suddenly the Calle Nicaragua rose up to meet him. The Consul lay face downward on the deserted street.

Life without strife is a rose without thorns. Alive as one is thriving today towards tomorrow, Nowhere is the past but simply a school of memory. Dreams, wishes, goals then becomes a wheel of “wills,” Spirit of a unique being on each soul breathing. Care to ponder some matter or another? Awareness sliding towards discovery gliding… Peace, contentment, fulfillment, Enwrapped like a mirage enchantment. Soaring freely, excitingly, happily home-love-bound! Over precious moments in a breathing of a soul, Flowing high emotions, feelings, hearts in bliss. All around any season of one's existence, one asks: “Anyone out there? A heart of a soul that didn’t harden? A touch of a soul that didn’t hurt? A life of a soul that didn't love?” Sands of time, rough, warm, indefinite, simply spreading, transforming, mounting. Oasis of a soul from a desert journey, flourishing with endless beauty and security. Utmost bliss, fulfillment and contentment, under covers a struggling, hopeful soul, Laboring service, living justice, loving peace and tranquillity passed on to humanity!�

But these two children were still young and knew little about these religious or any other kinds of differences. They saw each other as quite similar – both of them were humans and had the will to play and socialize. So what if they spoke different languages? – Their games didn’t need any language. So what if they were of different genders? – Their games could be played by anyone. So what if they were of different nationalities? – Their games didn’t concern any national affairs. To play their games, they just needed one thing – each other.

Should you see the light of your future, within the shadows of your present, The resilience of life dancing over vast deserts of death, Witness if you so shall, the majesty of Creation. The connectedness of All was and always will be. Entanglement? No. We call it Love.” ~ Sargon of Akkad 2345 B.C. Excerpt from Andulairah's upcoming book "The Erunisis Medallion

Postcolonial Love Poem (excerpt) I’ve been taught bloodstones can cure a snakebite, Can stop the bleeding-most people forgot this When the war ended. The war ended Depending on which war you mean: those we started, Before those, millennia ago and onward, Those which started me, which I lost and won- Those ever-blooming wounds. --- There are wildflowers in my desert which take up to twenty years to bloom. The seeds sleep like geodes beneath hot feldspar sand until a flash flood bolts the arroyo, lifting them in its copper current, opens them with memory— they remember what their god whispered into their ribs: Wake up and ache for your life. Where your hands have been are diamonds on my shoulders, down my back, thighs- I am your culebra. I am in the dirt for you. Your hips are quartz-light and dangerous, two rose-horned rams ascending a soft desert wash before the November sky untethers a hundred-year flood- the desert returned suddenly to its ancient sea. --- The rain will eventually come, or not. Until then, we touch our bodies like wounds- The war never ended and somehow begins again.

Do you know why we will win this war?” Vosch asks us after we’re locked inside. “Why we cannot lose? Because we know how you think. We’ve been watching you for six thousand years. When the pyramids rose in the Egyptian desert, we were watching you. When Caesar burned the library at Alexandria, we were watching you. When you crucified that first-century Jewish peasant, we were watching. When Columbus set foot in the New World…when you fought a war to free millions of your fellow humans from bondage…when you learned how to split the atom…when you first ventured beyond your atmosphere…What

Self-control is an important part of living a Christian life. But you don’t have to do it on your own. God gives you a lot of help along the way. When you’re tempted to do the wrong thing, go the wrong direction, He’s there for you.

But these two children were children, and they knew little about these religious or any other kinds of differences, they saw each other as normal beings, and quite similar – both of them had two eyes, two hands, two feet, and the will to play and socialize… So what if they spoke different languages? Their games didn't need any language… So what if they were of the different gender? Their games could be played by anyone… So what if they were of different nationalities? Their games didn't concern any national affairs… To play their games, they just needed one thing – each other… And they had each other once every week, so there every week they played, smiling, giggling, having fun… That was all they needed…

whom one would care to share a desert island. My subjects represent a range of nationalities, but are chiefly Anglo-Saxon, for this is my own culture. Three rose to lead large forces, most did not. This is a study of fighters, not commanders.

The boredom of insanity was a great desert, so great that anyone's violence or agony seemed an oasis, and the brief simple moments of companionship seemed like a rain in the desert that was numbered and counted and remembered long after it was gone.

I vow with all my heart to love you with the constancy of the sun, to protect you as the thorn protects the rose, to sustain you as a river in the wilderness, to stand beside you when all others desert. This is my promise to you, my halayda, until the world fades to nothing.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. VI.

I am totally lost in the folds of Love, totally free of worry and care. I have passed beyond the four qualities. My heart has torn away the veil of pretense. There was a time I circled with the nine spheres, rolling with the stars across the sky. There was a time I stayed by his side— I lived in his world and he gave me everything. With the best of intentions I became a prisoner in this form. How else did I get here? What crime did I commit? But I’d rather be in a prison with my Friend than in a rosegarden all alone. I came to this world To have a sight of Joseph’s purity. Like a baby born of its mother’s womb, I was brought here with blood and tears. People think they are born only once But they have been here so many times. In the cloak of this ragged body I have walked countless paths. How many times I have worn out this cloak! With ascetics in the desert I watched night turn into day. With pagans in the temple I slept at the foot of idols. I’ve been a charlatan and a king; I’ve been a healer, and fraught with disease. I’ve been on my death-bed so many times. . . . Floating up like the clouds Pouring down like the rain. As a darvish I sought the dust of annihilation but it never touched my robe. So I gathered armfuls of roses in this faded garden of existence. I am not of wind nor fire nor of the stormy seas. I am not formed out of painted clay. I am not even Shams-e Tabriz— I am the essence of laughter, I am pure light. Look again if you see me— It’s not me you have seen!

The forest reveals what was in the seed. The hen reveals what was in the egg. The storm reveals what was in the clouds. The light reveals what was in the star. The perfume reveals what was in the flower. The honey reveals what was in the bee. The fruit reveals what was in the tree. The rose reveals what was in the thorn. The web reveals what was in the spider. The butterfly reveals what was in the caterpillar. The venom reveals what was in the serpent. The pearl reveals what was in the oyster. The diamond reveals what was in the rock. The flame reveals what was in the spark. The nest reveals what was in the bird. The roar reveals what was in the lion. The leaf reveals what was in the plant. The fire reveals what was in the wood. The droplet reveals what was in the ocean. The rainbow reveals what was in the storm. The ocean reveals what was in the shark. The desert reveals what was in the camel. The sky reveals what was in the eagle. The jungle reveals what was in the elephant. The team reveals what was in the coach. The flock reveals what was in the shepherd. The crew reveals what was in the captain. The army reveals what was in the general. The tower reveals what was in the architect. The sculpture reveals what was in the sculptor. The painting reveals what was in the painter. The symphony reveals what was in the composer. The sensation reveals what was in the body. The tongue reveals what was in the mind. The action reveals what was in the heart. The character reveals what was in the soul. Spring reveals what was in winter. Summer reveals what was in spring. Autumn reveals what was in summer. Summer reveals what was in spring. The past reveals what was in the beginning. The present reveals what was in the past. The future reveals what was in the present. The afterlife reveals what was in the future.

He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother's uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead. In four days' riding he crossed the Pecos at Iraan Texas and rode up out of the river breaks where the pumpjacks in the Yates Field ranged against the skyline rose and dipped like mechanical birds. Like great primitive birds welded up out of iron by hearsay in a land perhaps where such birds once had been…..The desert he rode was red and red the dust he raised, the small dust that powdered the legs of the horse he rode, the horse he led. In the evening a wind came up and reddened all the sky before him. There were few cattle in that country because it was barren country indeed yet he came at evening upon a solitary bull rolling in the dust against the bloodred sunset like an animal in sacrificial torment. The bloodred dust blew down out of the sun. He touched the horse with his heels and rode on. He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west across the evening land and the small desert birds flew chittering among the dry bracken and horse and rider and horse passed on and their long shadows passed in tandem like the shadow of a single being. Passed and paled into the darkening land, the world to come.

On all sides, as far as the eye could reach, rose the grass-covered heaps marking the site of ancient habitations. The great tide of civilisation had long since ebbed, leaving these scattered wrecks on the solitary shore. Are those waters to flow again, bearing back the seeds of knowledge and of wealth that they have wafted to the West? We wanderers were seeking what they had left behind, as children gather up the coloured shells on the deserted sands. At my feet there was a busy scene, making more lonely the unbroken solitude which reigned in the vast plain around, where the only thing having life or motion were the shadows of the lofty mounds as they lengthened before the declining sun.

The man who is not thankful for things received is not likely to be the recipient of many gifts from the same source. Until this quality of the mind is disciplined, man will not see the desert blossom as the rose. Praise and thanksgiving are to the invisible gifts of God (one's desires) what rain and sun are to the unseen seeds in the bosom of the earth.

I lingered at the edge of an open field of lanky meadow buttercups. The vibrant green-and-yellow field was deserted. Behind me arose a gnarled crab apple tree in full, glorious bloom, the petals of its flowers littering the shaded bench on which I'd been about to sit. A breeze set the branches rustling, a waterfall of white petals flittering down like snow.

I. IN WINTER Myself Pale mornings, and I rise. Still Morning Snow air--my fingers curl. Awakening New snow, O pine of dawn! Winter Echo Thin air! My mind is gone. The Hunter Run! In the magpie's shadow. No Being I, bent. Thin nights receding. II. IN SPRING Spring I walk out the world's door. May Oh, evening in my hair! Spring Rain My doorframe smells of leaves. Song Why should I stop for spring? III. IN SUMMER AND AUTUMN Sunrise Pale bees! O whither now? Fields I did not pick a flower. At Evening Like leaves my feet passed by. Cool Nights At night bare feet on flowers! Sleep Like winds my eyelids close. The Aspen's Song The summer holds me here. The Walker In dream my feet are still. Blue Mountains A deer walks that mountain. God of Roads I, peregrine of noon. September Faint gold! O think not here. A Lady She's sun on autumn leaves. Alone I saw day's shadow strike. A Deer The trees rose in the dawn. Man in Desert His feet run as eyes blink. Desert The tented autumn, gone! The End Dawn rose, and desert shrunk. High Valleys In sleep I filled these lands. Awaiting Snow The well of autumn--dry.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

They finished their coffees. Nadia asked if Saeed had been to the deserts of Chile an seen the stars an was it all he had imagined it would be. He nodded and said if she had an evening free he would take her, it was a sight worth seeing in this lie, and she shut her eyes and said she would like that very much, and they rose and embraced and parted and did not know, then, if that evening would ever come.

Just think! The only reason the world knows anything about them [Jesus’ Apostles] is because having met the Savior, they made Him their guide in life. If they hadn’t, nobody now would know that such men had ever lived. They would have lived and died and been forgotten just as thousands of other men in their day lived and died and nobody knows or cares anything about them; just as thousands and thousands are living today, wasting their time and energy in useless living, choosing the wrong kind of men for their ideals, turning their footsteps into the road of Pleasure and Indulgence instead of the road of Service. Soon they will reach the end of their journey in life, and nobody can say that the world is any better for their having lived in it. At the close of each day such men leave their pathway as barren as they found it—they plant no trees to give shade to others, nor rose-bushes to make the world sweeter and brighter to those who follow—no kind deeds, no noble service—just a barren, unfruitful, desert-like pathway, strewn, perhaps, with thorns and thistles. Not so with the disciples who chose Jesus for their Guide. Their lives are like gardens of roses from which the world may pluck beautiful flowers forever.

He wasn’t sure what to do. If he left the rock, it would only take a few minutes of desert air to dry his pool, and then all that would remain of him would be a small crucible of brown powder, a powder the wind would find and scatter. He wished to stay there, to protect the pool. But after a time, he thought differently. He understood that if he stayed upon the rock, he would simply disappear as well. And so, he rose.

The heat of the day had long since retreated into the desert, and the city, which had drowsed through the hot afternoon, was finally coming alive. The streets filled with people drinking tea and gossiping, laughing, and visiting friends. Old men played chatrang on boards set up outside cafes; children stayed up long past their bedtimes playing their own games on the sidewalks. Men and women bought rose-flavored ices and trinkets from nighttime vendors.

The house fostered an easier and more candid exchange of ideas and opinions, encouraged by the simple fact that everyone had left their offices behind and by a wealth of novel opportunities for conversation—climbs up Beacon and Coombe Hills, walks in the rose garden, rounds of croquet, and hands of bezique, further leavened by free-flowing champagne, whiskey, and brandy. The talk typically ranged well past midnight. At Chequers, visitors knew they could speak more freely than in London, and with absolute confidentiality. After one weekend, Churchill’s new commander in chief of Home Forces, Alan Brooke, wrote to thank him for periodically inviting him to Chequers, and “giving me an opportunity of discussing the problems of the defense of this country with you, and of putting some of my difficulties before you. These informal talks are of the very greatest help to me, & I do hope you realize how grateful I am to you for your kindness.” Churchill, too, felt more at ease at Chequers, and understood that here he could behave as he wished, secure in the knowledge that whatever happened within would be kept secret (possibly a misplaced trust, given the memoirs and diaries that emerged after the war, like desert flowers after a first rain). This was, he said, a “cercle sacré.” A sacred circle. General Brooke recalled one night when Churchill, at two-fifteen A.M., suggested that everyone present retire to the great hall for sandwiches, which Brooke, exhausted, hoped was a signal that soon the night would end and he could get to bed. “But, no!” he wrote. What followed was one of those moments often to occur at Chequers that would remain lodged in visitors’ minds forever after. “He had the gramophone turned on,” wrote Brooke, “and, in the many-colored dressing-gown, with a sandwich in one hand and water-cress in the other, he trotted round and round the hall, giving occasional little skips to the tune of the gramophone.” At intervals as he rounded the room he would stop “to release some priceless quotation or thought.” During one such pause, Churchill likened a man’s life to a walk down a passage lined with closed windows. “As you reach each window, an unknown hand opens it and the light it lets in only increases by contrast the darkness of the end of the passage.” He danced on. —

My life fans out like a string of paper dolls. I am malleable, chameleonlike. Each life eats the last until I'm a Russian doll, containing ten women of decreasing size. Across the desert, the midlands, creeping back into the South. To Virginia where you can feel the water in the pages of a book and the light rain makes the leaves tender as skin. I will plant a rose garden and I will wait in that garden for the flick of the snake's tongue that will change me again.

As he strode through the deserted city, he thought of the New Years of his childhood, before he was ten, before the Change, when the city had still glowed with the soft, deep enchantment of sugared angels spreading their sparkling wings in bakery windows, and bells whose limpid sounds rose like the sea at a moonlit tide, and glass ornaments turning slowly this way and that on dark tree branches, gathering in their reflections the whole wondrous, promise-filled world.

When they got back in the Corvette, Gretel fished around in her shopping bad. "What is this?" She had chosen a black tank suit, but somehow a pink bikini had wound up among her purchases. "Don't be mad," Margot pleaded. "I'm not wearing this." Gretel tossed the bikini back in the bag. All the same, she couldn't help but notice the fabric was the same exact shade as the palest climbing roses. The tint of seashells on a deserted beach, or the mouth of someone you might want to kiss.

He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors, -- songs so clear and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes been taken down, -- he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis in the desert; then, as his boat drew nearer, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the enchanter, intended there to build a city. At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, without shock, as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains of most delicious melody. He descended, or rather seemed to descend, several steps, inhaling the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from such perfumes as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure. They were the same statues, rich in form, in attraction, and poesy, with eyes of fascination, smiles of love, and bright and flowing hair. They were Phryne, Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated courtesans. Then among them glided like a pure ray, like a Christian angel in the midst of Olympus, one of those chaste figures, those calm shadows, those soft visions, which seemed to veil its virgin brow before these marble wantons. Then the three statues advanced towards him with looks of love, and approached the couch on which he was reposing, their feet hidden in their long white tunics, their throats bare, hair flowing like waves, and assuming attitudes which the gods could not resist, but which saints withstood, and looks inflexible and ardent like those with which the serpent charms the bird; and then he gave way before looks that held him in a torturing grasp and delighted his senses as with a voluptuous kiss. It seemed to Franz that he closed his eyes, and in a last look about him saw the vision of modesty completely veiled; and then followed a dream of passion like that promised by the Prophet to the elect. Lips of stone turned to flame, breasts of ice became like heated lava, so that to Franz, yielding for the first time to the sway of the drug, love was a sorrow and voluptuousness a torture, as burning mouths were pressed to his thirsty lips, and he was held in cool serpent-like embraces. The more he strove against this unhallowed passion the more his senses yielded to its thrall, and at length, weary of a struggle that taxed his very soul, he gave way and sank back breathless and exhausted beneath the kisses of these marble goddesses, and the enchantment of his marvellous dream.

Whence came Natohk?” rose the Shemite’s vibrant whisper. “Out of the desert on a night when the world was blind and wild with mad clouds driven in frenzied flight across the shuddering stars, and the howling of the wind was mingled with the shrieking of the spirits of the wastes. Vampires were abroad that night, witches rode naked on the wind, and werewolves howled across the wilderness. On a black camel he came, riding like the wind, and an unholy fire played about him, the cloven tracks of the camel glowed in the darkness. When Natohk dismounted before Set’s shrine by the oasis of Aphaka, the beast swept into the night and vanished. And I have talked with tribesmen who swore that it suddenly spread gigantic wings and rushed upward into the clouds, leaving a trail of fire behind it. No man has seen that camel since that night, but a black brutish man-like shape shambles to Natohk’s tent and gibbers to him in the blackness before dawn. I will tell you, Conan, Natohk is – look, I will show you an image of what I saw that day by Shushan when the wind blew aside his veil!

From east to west, in fact, her gaze swept slowly, without encountering a single obstacle, along a perfect curve. Beneath her, the blue-and-white terraces of the Arab town overlapped one another, splattered with the dark-red spots of the peppers drying in the sun. Not a soul could be seen, but from the inner courts, together with the aroma of roasting coffee, there rose laughing voices or incomprehensible stamping of feet. Father off, the palm grove, divided into uneven squares by clay walls, rustled its upper foliage in a wind that could not be felt up on the terace. Still farther off and all the way to the horizon extended the ocher-and-gray realm of stones, in which no life was visible. At some distance from the oasis, however, near the wadi that bordered the palm grove on the west could be seen broad black tents. All around them a flock of motionless dromedaries, tiny at the distance, formed against the gray ground the black signs of a strange handwriting, the meaning of which had to be deciphered. Above the desert, the silence was as vast as the space. Janine, leaning her whole body against the parapet, was speechless, unable to tear herself away from the void opening before her. Beside her, Marcel was getting restless. He was cold; he wanted to go back down. What was there to see here, after all? But she could not take her gaze from the horizon. Over yonder, still farther south, at that point where sky and earth met in a pure line - over yonder it suddenly seemed there was awaiting her something of which, though it had always been lacking, she had never been aware until now. In the advancing afternoon the light relaxed and softened; it was passing from the crystalline to the liquid. Simultaneously, in the heart of a woman brought there by pure chance a knot tightened by the years, habit, and boredom was slowly loosening. She was looking at the nomads' encampment. She had not even seen the men living in it' nothing was stirring among the black tents, and yet she could think only of them whose existence she had barely known until this day. Homeless, cut off from the world, they were a handful wandering over the vast territory she could see, which however was but a paltry part of an even greater expanse whose dizzying course stopped only thousands of miles farther south, where the first river finally waters the forest. Since the beginning of time, on the dry earth of this limitless land scraped to bone, a few men had been ceaselessly trudging, possessing nothing but serving no one, poverty-stricken but free lords of a strange kingdom. Janine did not know why this thought filled her with such a sweet, vast melancholy that it closed her eyes. She knew that this kingdom had been eternally promised her and yet that it would never be hers, never again, except in this fleeting moment perhaps when she opened her eyes again on the suddenly motionless sky and on its waves of steady light, while the voices rising from the Arab town suddenly fell silent. It seemed to her that the world's course had just stopped and that, from that moment on, no one would ever age any more or die. Everywhere, henceforth, life was suspended - except in her heart, where, at the same moment, someone was weeping with affliction and wonder.

She was too compelling to look at directly. Bright like the sun, bright and terrible. Only one other being could look upon her, and that was Death. And so…they became lovers.” He said the word like a caress, like velvet again, and my face began to heat. “Together they forged great and hellish things,” Jesse murmured. “Lightning and waterfalls that churned into clouds off the tip of the world. Chasms so winding deep that daylight never traced their endings. They dreamed through golden days and silvered nights. All the other creatures envied or adored them, because Death and the Elemental were destruction and creation joined as One. In the natural order of things, they should not have been stronger joined. And yet they were.” He shifted, coming closer to me. A hand settled lightly atop my chest, directly over my heart. At our feet the seawater splashed a little, as if disturbed by something rolling over in the dark, distant deep. “Centuries passed, and mankind began to devour the earth, even the wildest places. They had tools to invent and wars to fight and grubby, short lives. Nothing about them dwelled in the magic of the ancient spirits. So although Death, the Great Hunter, prospered as he sieved through their villages, the Elemental, strong as she once was, thinned into a web of gossamer. Human lives simply tore her apart.” His hand was so warm. Warmer than I, warmer than the air, and still just barely touching me. The light behind my lids never lifted, so I knew he wasn’t glowing, but it felt as if he held a tame coal to my skin. It felt like something painless and ablaze, drawing my heart upward into it. “The time had come for them to divide. Like all the rest of her kind, the goddess would cease to exist; she had no other course. So Death and the Elemental severed their joined hearts. For a few generations more, she drifted alone through the last of the sacred places, deserts, and fjords, lands so savage no human had yet desecrated them.” Jesse’s voice dropped to a whisper. Without moving his hand, he bent down, his breath in my ear. “And Death, who had tasted her brightness, who would never cease to crave it-who knew her better than all the collected souls of all mankind’s weeping dead-became her Hunter.” I was hot and strange. I was light and lighter, and curiously my breath came so slow. “Until at last, one starry night beneath the desert moon, she surrendered to him. She allowed him to come to her, to make love to her. To unravel her…” It was happening. He sat next to her and bore witness to her change, her pulse slowing, her skin blanching, the fans of her lashes stark against the contours of her face. He kept his palm there against her chest, up and down with her respiration, and watched the smoke begin to curl around his fingers. “And by his hand, in the bliss of her unraveling, she touched the stars…” Lora’s breath hitched. Her heart skipped-then stopped. If I could take this from you, Jesse thought fiercely. If I could take this one moment away from you and keep the agony for myself- Her eyes opened, went instantly to his. Panic lit her gaze. Then she was gone. His fingers sank to the floor through her empty blouse, and the blue dragon smoke that was all of Eleanore Jones rose into strands above him.

forward to it, and Cooper, coatless and chilly in the desert evening, was thinking that the radio man was an asshole. He’d chased Vasquez for nine days now. Someone had warned the programmer just before Cooper got to the Boston walk-up, a brick rectangle where the only light had been a window onto an airshaft and the glowing red eyes of power indicators on computers and routers and surge protectors. The desk chair had been against the far wall as if someone had leaped out of it, and steam still rose from an abandoned bowl of ramen. Vasquez had run, and

I shall meditate upon normality. I shall meditate upon my little son. He does not walk. He does not speak a word. He is still swaddled in white bands. But he is pink and perfect. He smiles so frequently. I have papered his room with big roses, I have painted little hearts on everything. I do not will him to be exceptional. It is the exception that interests the devil. It is the exception that climbs the sorrowful hill Or sits in the desert and hurts his mother’s heart. I will him to be common, To love me as I love him, And to marry what he wants and where he will.

Harriet turned round, and we both saw a girl walking towards us. She was dark-skinned and thin, not veiled but dressed in a sitara, a brightly coloured robe of greens and pinks, and she wore a headscarf of a deep rose colour. In that barren place the vividness of her dress was all the more striking. On her head she balanced a pitcher and in her hand she carried something. As we watched her approach, I saw that she had come from a small house, not much more than a cave, which had been built into the side of the mountain wall that formed the far boundary of the gravel plateau we were standing on. I now saw that the side of the mountain had been terraced in places and that there were a few rows of crops growing on the terraces. Small black and brown goats stepped up and down amongst the rocks with acrobatic grace, chewing the tops of the thorn bushes. As the girl approached she gave a shy smile and said, ‘Salaam alaikum, ’ and we replied, ‘Wa alaikum as salaam, ’ as the sheikh had taught us. She took the pitcher from where it was balanced on her head, kneeled on the ground, and gestured to us to sit. She poured water from the pitcher into two small tin cups, and handed them to us. Then she reached into her robe and drew out a flat package of greaseproof paper from which she withdrew a thin, round piece of bread, almost like a large flat biscuit. She broke off two pieces, and handed one to each of us, and gestured to us to eat and drink. The water and the bread were both delicious. We smiled and mimed our thanks until I remembered the Arabic word, ‘Shukran.’ So we sat together for a while, strangers who could speak no word of each other’s languages, and I marvelled at her simple act. She had seen two people walking in the heat, and so she laid down whatever she had been doing and came to render us a service. Because it was the custom, because her faith told her it was right to do so, because her action was as natural to her as the water that she poured for us. When we declined any further refreshment after a second cup of water she rose to her feet, murmured some word of farewell, and turned and went back to the house she had come from. Harriet and I looked at each other as the girl walked back to her house. ‘That was so…biblical,’ said Harriet. ‘Can you imagine that ever happening at home?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘That was charity. Giving water to strangers in the desert, where water is so scarce. That was true charity, the charity of poor people giving to the rich.’ In Britain a stranger offering a drink to a thirsty man in a lonely place would be regarded with suspicion. If someone had approached us like that at home, we would probably have assumed they were a little touched or we were going to be asked for money. We might have protected ourselves by being stiff and unfriendly, evasive or even rude.

They stood around a bleeding stump of a man lying on the ground. His right arm and left leg had been chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, he had crawled to the camp. The chopped-off arm and leg were tied in terrible bleeding chunks onto his back with a small wooden board attached to them; a long inscription on it said, with many words of abuse, that the atrocity was in reprisal for similar atrocities perpetrated by such and such a Red unit—a unit that had no connection with the Forest Brotherhood. It also said that the same treatment would be meted out to all the partisans unless, by a given date, they submitted and gave up their arms to the representatives of General Vitsyn’s army corps. Fainting repeatedly from loss of blood, the dying man told them in a faltering voice of the tortures and atrocities perpetrated by Vitsyn’s investigating and punitive squads. His own sentence of death had been allegedly commuted; instead of hanging him, they had cut off his arm and leg in order to send him into the camp and strike terror among the partisans. They had carried him as far as the outposts of the camp, where they had put him down and ordered him to crawl, urging him on by shooting into the air. He could barely move his lips. To make out his almost unintelligible stammering, the crowd around him bent low. He was saying: “Be on your guard, comrades. He has broken through.” “Patrols have gone out in strength. There’s a big battle going on. We’ll hold him.” “There’s a gap. He wants to surprise you. I know. ... I can’t go on, men. I am spitting blood. I’ll die in a moment.” “Rest a bit. Keep quiet.—Can’t you see it’s bad for him, you heartless beasts!” The man started again: “He went to work on me, the devil. He said: You will bathe in your own blood until you tell me who you are. And how was I to tell him, a deserter is just what I am? I was running from him to you.” “You keep saying ‘he.’ Who was it that got to work on you?” “Let me just get my breath. ... I’ll tell you. Hetman, Bekeshin. Colonel, Strese. Vitsyn’s men. You don’t know out here what it’s like. The whole town is groaning. They boil people alive. They cut strips out of them. They take you by the scruff of the neck and push you inside, you don’t know where you are, it’s pitch black. You grope about—you are in a cage, inside a freight car. There are more than forty people in the cage, all in their underclothes. From time to time they open the door and grab whoever comes first—out he goes. As you grab a chicken to cut its throat. I swear to God. Some they hang, some they shoot, some they question. They beat you to shreds, they put salt on the wounds, they pour boiling water on you. When you vomit or relieve yourself they make you eat it. As for children and women—O God!” The unfortunate was at his last gasp. He cried out and died without finishing the sentence. Somehow they all knew it at once and took off their caps and crossed themselves. That night, the news of a far more terrible incident flew around the camp. Pamphil had been in the crowd surrounding the dying man. He had seen him, heard his words, and read the threatening inscription on the board. His constant fear for his family in the event of his own death rose to a new climax. In his imagination he saw them handed over to slow torture, watched their faces distorted by pain, and heard their groans and cries for help. In his desperate anguish—to forestall their future sufferings and to end his own—he killed them himself, felling his wife and three children with that same, razor-sharp ax that he had used to carve toys for the two small girls and the boy, who had been his favorite. The astonishing thing was that he did not kill himself immediately afterward.

In Memory of My Feelings" My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets. He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals. My quietness has a number of naked selves, so many pistols I have borrowed to protect myselves from creatures who too readily recognize my weapons and have murder in their heart! though in winter they are warm as roses, in the desert taste of chilled anisette. At times, withdrawn, I rise into the cool skies and gaze on at the imponderable world with the simple identification of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to my nape, speaks, but I do not hear him, I'm too blue. An elephant takes up his trumpet, money flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its mirror across shoulder blades. A gun is "fired." One of me rushes to window #13 and one of me raises his whip and one of me flutters up from the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes, and underneath their hooves as they round the last turn my lips are scarred and brown, brushed by tails, masked in dirt's lust, definition, open mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the lungs of earth. So many of my transparencies could not resist the race! Terror in earth, dried mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets, a flaking moon drifting across the muddied teeth, the imperceptible moan of covered breathing, love of the serpent! I am underneath its leaves as the hunter crackles and pants and bursts, as the barrage balloon drifts behind a cloud and animal death whips out its flashlight, whistling and slipping the glove off the trigger hand. The serpent's eyes redden at sight of those thorny fingernails, he is so smooth! My transparent selves flail about like vipers in a pail, writhing and hissing without panic, with a certain justice of response and presently the aquiline serpent comes to resemble the Medusa.

Epilogue to Book I. Alas! the forbidden fruits were eaten, And thereby the warm life of reason was congealed. A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun Of Adam, l Like as the Dragon's tail 2 dulls the brightness of the moon. Behold how delicate is the heart, that a morsel of dust Clouded its moon with foul obscurity! When bread is "substance," to eat it nourishes us; When 'tis empty "form," it profits nothing. Like as the green thorn which is cropped by the camel, And then yields him pleasure and nutriment; When its greenness has gone and it becomes dry, If the camel crops that same thorn in the desert, It wounds his palate and mouth without pity, As if conserve of roses should turn to sharp swords. When bread is "substance," it is as a green thorn; When 'tis "form," 'tis as the dry and coarse thorn. And thou eatest it in the same way as of yore Thou wert wont to eat it, O helpless being, Eatest this dry thing in the same manner, After the real "substance" is mingled with dust; It has become mingled with dust, dry in pith and rind. O camel, now beware of that herb! The Word is become foul with mingled earth; The water is become muddy; close the mouth of the well, Till God makes it again pure and sweet; Yea, till He purifies what He has made foul. Patience will accomplish thy desire, not haste. Be patient, God knows what is best.

The air was steeped with the heady fragrance of roses, as if the entire hall had been rinsed with expensive perfume. "Good Lord!" she exclaimed, stopping short at the sight of massive bunches of flowers being brought in from a cart outside. Mountains of white roses, some of them tightly furled buds, some in glorious full bloom. Two footmen had been recruited to assist the driver of the cart, and the three of them kept going outside to fetch bouquet after bouquet wrapped in stiff white lace paper. "Fifteen dozen of them," Marcus said brusquely. "I doubt there's a single white rose left in London." Aline could not believe how fast her heart was beating. Slowly she moved forward and drew a single rose from one of the bouquets. Cupping the delicate bowl of the blossom with her fingers, she bent her head to inhale its lavish perfume. Its petals were a cool brush of silk against her cheek. "There's something else," Marcus said. Following his gaze, Aline saw the butler directing yet another footman to pry open a huge crate filled with brick-sized parcels wrapped in brown paper. "What are they, Salter?" "With your permission, my lady, I will find out." The elderly butler unwrapped one of the parcels with great care. He spread the waxed brown paper open to reveal a damply fragrant loaf of gingerbread, its spice adding a pungent note to the smell of the roses. Aline put her hand over her mouth to contain a bubbling laugh, while some undefinable emotion caused her entire body to tremble. The offering worried her terribly, and at the same time, she was insanely pleased by the extravagance of it. "Gingerbread?" Marcus asked incredulously. "Why the hell would McKenna send you an entire crate of gingerbread?" "Because I like it," came Aline's breathless reply. "How do you know this is from McKenna?" Marcus gave her a speaking look, as if only an imbecile would suppose otherwise. Fumbling a little with the envelope, Aline extracted a folded sheet of paper. It was covered in a bold scrawl, the penmanship serviceable and without flourishes. No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears will keep me from coming back to you. There was no signature... none was necessary. Aline closed her eyes, while her nose stung and hot tears squeezed from beneath her lashes. She pressed her lips briefly to the letter, not caring what Marcus thought. "It's a poem," she said unsteadily. "A terrible one." It was the loveliest thing she had ever read. She held it to her cheek, then used her sleeve to blot her eyes. "Let me see it." Immediately Aline tucked the poem into her bodice. "No, it's private." She swallowed against the tightness of her throat, willing the surge of unruly emotion to recede. "McKenna," she whispered, "how you devastate me.

The Dying Man" in memoriam W.B. Yeats 1. His words I heard a dying man Say to his gathered kin, “My soul’s hung out to dry, Like a fresh salted skin; I doubt I’ll use it again. “What’s done is yet to come; The flesh deserts the bone, But a kiss widens the rose I know, as the dying know Eternity is Now. “A man sees, as he dies, Death’s possibilities; My heart sways with the world. I am that final thing, A man learning to sing. 2. What Now? Caught in the dying light, I thought myself reborn. My hand turn into hooves. I wear the leaden weight Of what I did not do. Places great with their dead, The mire, the sodden wood, Remind me to stay alive. I am the clumsy man The instant ages on. I burned the flesh away, In love, in lively May. I turn my look upon Another shape than hers Now, as the casement blurs. In the worst night of my will, I dared to question all, And would the same again. What’s beating at the gate? Who’s come can wait. 3. The Wall A ghost comes out of the unconscious mind To grope my sill: It moans to be reborn! The figure at my back is not my friend; The hand upon my shoulder turns to horn. I found my father when I did my work, Only to lose myself in this small dark. Though it reject dry borders of the seen, What sensual eye can keep and image pure, Leaning across a sill to greet the dawn? A slow growth is a hard thing to endure. When figures our of obscure shadow rave, All sensual love’s but dancing on a grave. The wall has entered: I must love the wall, A madman staring at perpetual night, A spirit raging at the visible. I breathe alone until my dark is bright. Dawn’s where the white is. Who would know the dawn When there’s a dazzling dark behind the sun. 4. The Exulting Once I delighted in a single tree; The loose air sent me running like a child– I love the world; I want more than the world, Or after image of the inner eye. Flesh cries to flesh, and bone cries out to bone; I die into this life, alone yet not alone. Was it a god his suffering renewed?– I saw my father shrinking in his skin; He turned his face: there was another man, Walking the edge, loquacious, unafraid. He quivered like a bird in birdless air, Yet dared to fix his vision anywhere. Fish feed on fish, according to their need: My enemies renew me, and my blood Beats slower in my careless solitude. I bare a wound, and dare myself to bleed. I think a bird, and it begins to fly. By dying daily, I have come to be. All exultation is a dangerous thing. I see you, love, I see you in a dream; I hear a noise of bees, a trellis hum, And that slow humming rises into song. A breath is but a breath: I have the earth; I shall undo all dying with my death. 5. They Sing, They Sing All women loved dance in a dying light– The moon’s my mother: how I love the moon! Out of her place she comes, a dolphin one, Then settles back to shade and the long night. A beast cries out as if its flesh were torn, And that cry takes me back where I was born. Who thought love but a motion in the mind? Am I but nothing, leaning towards a thing? I scare myself with sighing, or I’ll sing; Descend O gentlest light, descend, descend. I sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds, They sing, they sing, but still in minor thirds. I’ve the lark’s word for it, who sings alone: What’s seen recededs; Forever’s what we know!– Eternity defined, and strewn with straw, The fury of the slug beneath the stone. The vision moves, and yet remains the same. In heaven’s praise, I dread the thing I am. The edges of the summit still appall When we brood on the dead or the beloved; Nor can imagination do it all In this last place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.

A lesson from my earliest memories of my grandmother Dilsey, who was true-blood Iron Lake Ojibwe: Land is not insentient; it is possessed of spirit. Gazing down, I couldn’t help feeling that the fence and all it represented was a great violation of the spirit of the land. The mind-set that gave rise to the fence was a great folly, the idea that a thin wall of steel and the imaginary line it demarcated could stand against the tide that swept across the desert, which was the tide of time and changing circumstance. Politics were of a moment. Sentiments shifted. Nations rose and fell. Steel rusted and crumbled. But the desert and the flow of life across it would continue after that fence was nothing but scattered rubble among the cacti and the fear that built it was long forgotten.

Letter from Hans Scholl to Rose Naegele on May 2, 1941: Even though May came in accompanied by rain, all the fields were bright with the loveliest green imaginable. A sunbeam pierced a little gap in the dark sea of cloud, and the world laughed and glittered in the light of heaven. I stood there marveling and thought, Does God take us for fools, that he should light up the world for us with such consummate beauty in the radiance of his glory, in his honor? And nothing, on the other hand, but rapine and murder? Where does the truth lie? Should one go off and build a little house with flowers outside the windows and a garden outside the door and extol and thank God and turnone’s back on the world and its filth? Isn’t seclusion a form of treachery of desertion? I’m weak and puny, but I want to do what is right.

For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. The discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little low-lying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim.

Knowledge of physical laws can, in some cases, give you the confidence to confront surly people. A few years ago I was having a hot cocoa nightcap at a desert in Pasadena, California. Ordered it with whipped cream, of course. When it arrived at the table, I saw no trace of the stuff. After I told the waiter my cocoa had no whipped cream, he asserted I couldn't see it because it sank to the bottom. But whipped cream has low density, and floats on all liquids that humans consume. So I offered the waiter two possible explanations: either somebody forgot to add the whipped cream to my hot cocoa or the universal laws of physics were different in his restaurant. Unconvinced, he defiantly brought over a dollop of whipped cream to demonstrate his claim. After bobbing once or twice the whipped cream rose to the top, safely afloat. What better proof do you need of the universality of physical law?

You’re as beautiful as you were the night we made our son,” she whispered, bending to kiss him tenderly. His fingers traced her dark eyebrows, her cheeks, her mouth. “I wish we could have another baby,” he said heavily. “So do I. But I’m too old,” she said sadly. She lay her cheek against his broad, damp chest and stroked the silver-tipped hair that covered it. “We’ll have to hope for grandchildren, if he ever forgives us.” He held her tightly, as if by holding her he could keep her safe. What he felt for her was ferociously protective. She misunderstood the tightening of his arms. She smiled and sighed. “We can’t, again. Cecily will think we’ve deserted her.” His hand smoothed her long hair. “She probably knows exactly what we’re doing,” he said on a chuckle. “She loves you.” “She likes you. Maybe we could adopt her.” “Better if our son marries her.” She grinned. “We can hope.” She sat up and stretched, liking the way he watched her still-firm breasts. “The last time I felt like this was thirty-six years ago,” she confided. “The same is true for me,” he replied. She searched his eyes, already facing her departure. She would have to go back to the reservation, home. He could still read her better than she knew. He drew her hand to his mouth. “It’s too late, but I want to marry you. This week. As soon as possible.” She was surprised. She didn’t know what to say. “I love you,” he said. “I never stopped. Forgive me and say yes.” She considered the enormity of what she would be agreeing to do. Be his hostess. Meet his friends. Go to fund-raising events. Wear fancy clothes. Act sophisticated. “Your life is so different from mine,” she began. “Don’t you start,” he murmured. “I’ve seen what it did to Cecily when Tate used that same argument with her about all the differences. It won’t work with me. We love each other too much to worry about trivial things. Say yes. We’ll work out all the details later.” “There will be parties, benefits…” He pulled her down into his arms and kissed her tenderly. “I don’t know much about etiquette,” she tried again. He rolled her over, pinning her gently. One long leg inserted itself between both of hers as he kissed her. “Oh, what the hell,” she murmured, and wrapped her legs around his, groaning as the joints protested. “Arthritis?” he asked. “Osteoarthritis.” “Me, too.” He shifted, groaning a little himself as he eased down. “We’ll work on new positions one day. But it’s…too late…now. Leta…!” he gasped. She didn’t have enough breath to answer him. He didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t. Bad joints notwithstanding, they managed to do quite a few things that weren’t recommended for people their ages. And some that weren’t in the book at all.

It is a resurrection to spiritual life wherein power is given to the just over the heaven of his soul and the earth of his body, it is a constant reverence towards God by which we stand in holy fear before him, it is a tree bearing roses of virtues, it is the kingdom of God which we must gain by violence and by art, for we have it within us and daily pray for it, it is a royal priesthood by which, having the mastery over ourselves, we may offer ourselves to God. It is a silence in the heaven of our soul, though brief, and not lasting as the devout man desires; it is a service that we render to God alone, adoring solely his Majesty; it is a seat we hold ready for him that he may stay in our interior house; it is a tent for the wanderer in the desert; it is a strong watch-tower of our defense, from which we must keep guard on heavenly matters, and a golden vessel for the manna in the ark of our heart;

Now this is grand, she thought, the white linen well-pressed, the warm light glimmering from a score of candles, the silver plate polished like mirrors. It was a feast in a picture book, a queen's banquet in a fairy castle. At the centre rose a vast Desert Island molded from sugar-paste, just as Aunt Charlotte had used to make it. A stockade of licorice crowned the peak, and a pathway of pink sugar sand stretched to the shore. The whole was surrounded by a sea of broken jelly, swimming with candied fish. First off, she ate the two tiny sugar castaways from the lookout on her island- very sweet and crisp they were, too. She stood to make a toast. "To you, Jack, my own true love," and took a long draught. Sugarplums next; a whole pyramid to herself, of every color: raspberry, orange, violet, pistachio. She was eating dinner back to front, and she recommended it heartily. Next, her teeth sank into a sticky mass of moonshine jelly- it was good, very good.

What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was a human being, and had a human being’s wants: I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. I rose; I looked back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but this—that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be carried; the want provided for; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled. I set out.

A cavalry of sweaty but righteous blond gods chased pesky, unkempt people across an annoyingly leaky Mexican border. A grimy cowboy with a headdress of scrawny vultures lay facedown in fiery sands at the end of a trail of his own groveling claw marks, body flattened like a roadkill, his back a pincushion of Apache arrows. He rose and shook his head as if he had merely walked into a doorknob. Never mind John Wayne and his vultures and an “Oregon Trail” lined with the Mesozoic buttes of the Southwest, where the movies were filmed, or the Indians who were supposed to be northern plains Cheyenne but actually were Navajo extras in costume department Sioux war bonnets saying mischievous, naughty things in Navajo, a language neither filmmaker nor audience understood anyway, but which the interpreter onscreen translated as soberly as his forked tongue could manage, “Well give you three cents an acre.” Never mind the ecologically incorrect arctic loon cries on the soundtrack. I loved that desert.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. Chapter 6 — Hundreds of People The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had roiled over the trial for treason, and carried

It was delicious in the garden. The storm had passed over long since, and it was still and warm; the sweetness of the stocks and roses filled the air with the peculiar intensity of fragrance of flowers after rain - in the evening light they had the unnatural shadowy vividness of a coloured photograph. The rain had stirred up the nightingales too - near and far, their bubbling ecstasy welled out from the dark shelter of ilexes and cypresses, and through the open windows of the villa there came presently the cool elusive sequences of Debussy's music - ghosts of melody rather than melodies, evocations rather than statements; gleams on water and pale lights in spring skies, a single star, slow waves beating in mist on a deserted shore. Grace leant back in the corner of her seat, listening, watching the leaves of the buckthorns, like little curved pencils, against the sky above her head; in the relaxation of fatigue her attention was fixed on nothing, but some part of her was profoundly aware of all these things - the scent of the flowers, the song of the nightingales, the cool western music, with its memories of her own Atlantic shores.

Seeing that I would never manage to fall asleep, I arose, lit a candle, and after dressing went outside. Beneath the dull glow of the winter moon the snow glowed like pale blue china. The sidewalks sparkled weakly beneath the rays of the flickering street lamps; the benumbed streets slumbered forlornly. I walked, passing one corner after the other, and suddenly found myself on the edge of town. Further, beyond the square, an endless expanse began to glisten with a somber silverness. I stopped just before the gates. My intent gaze could distinguish nothing in the distant white expanse. Before me rose the imposing bank of the Volga like a gigantic snowdrift. So barren and uninviting was this deserted view resembling eternity that my heart contracted. I turned to the right and approached quite close to the monastery enclosure. From behind the bronze gates, glimmered a dense net of crosses and gravestones. The ancient eyes of the church gazed forbiddingly down on me, and with an eerie feeling I thought of the monks sleeping at this moment in tomb-like cells together with corpses. Were any of them thinking of the hour of death on this night? ("Lamia")

The Highest Octaves of Light Sands, in wild winds of surging waves Over the desert dunes, sing with the tones Of tiny pebbles moving all together, a shifting Of dust grains humming and moaning Over the growing and diminishing dunes. His body in the mirror is the color Of sands. The song he sings in the voice Of light shining like waves of wind Passing over his body inside the glass. The mirror sings with the color of sand In the highest octaves of light. Have you ever listened to sands sing With gold light as they fall in threads Through the needle-eye opening At the center of a hour-glass globe? Why not arrange such globes in rows Before a window of sun, each globe A different width, a different height Of refined or rudimentary glass, clear Amber rose, a tinted blue of noon sky, And listen to the chorus? And then why not turn the globes Upside down and over again to hear Sands sing one more time? The desert dunes are singing, wind-risen Voices from a primeval earth, haunting, Pacific, pining and irate. we listen For the repeating message we remember. The songs are only tumbling pebble grains; Their words are only notes of swirling dust, Sings the eternal light, Emanuel.

The purpose of the Genesis story is to explain the loss of that long, slow paradise that today we call the Paleolithic—an epoch of history in which our ancestors lived not only in a sustainable relationship to the Earth but in a joyous and loving one as well. In one of the greatest bait and switches of all time, that loss is blamed on Eve, whose name means, tellingly, “Mother of All Life.” In a final bid for patriarchal power, the Bible separates the Goddess from one of her oldest animal allies. For tens of thousands of years before Genesis was written, the serpent was the ultimate symbol of reincarnation and renewal. The ouroboros (a snake swallowing its own tail) signified the eternal cycles of birth, death, and rebirth that were the source of the Goddess’s power. In Genesis that life-sustaining circle is broken, and the serpent becomes evil instead. The natural world was no longer considered sentient and divine. The mutilation and exploitation of our Mother’s body could continue uninterrupted down to the present day. And yet, the final victory is always hers. Empires rise and fall. Whole civilizations vanish into vast deserts of geological time. But life remains. The Mother remains.

My mouth- always so active, alert- could now generally identify forty of fifty states in the produce or meat I ate. I had taken to tracking those more distant elements on my plate, and each night, at dinner, a U.S. map would float up in my mind as I chewed and I'd use it to follow the nuances in the parsley sprig, the orange wedge, and the baked potato to Florida, California, and Kansas, respectively. I could sometimes trace eggs to the county. All the while, listening to my mother talk about carpentry, or spanking the bottle of catsup. It was a good game for me, because even though it did command some of my attention, it also distracted me from the much louder and more difficult influence of the mood of the food maker, which ran the gamut. I could be half aware of the conversation, cutting up the meat, and the rest of the time I was driving truck routes through the highways of America, truck beds full of yellow onions. When I went to the supermarket with my mother I double-checked all my answers, and by the time I was twelve, I could distinguish an orange slice from California from an orange slice from Florida in under five seconds because California's was rounder-tasting, due to the desert ground and the clear tangy water of far-flung irrigation.

He: "I mean, are you happy and are you fully alive?" I laughed: ''As you can see, you wove witty jokes into the lecture to please your listeners. You heaped up learned expressions to impress them. You were restless and hasty, as if still compelled to snatch up all knowledge. You are not in yourself" Although these words at first seemed laughable to me, they still made an impression on me, and reluctantly I had to / credit the old man, since he was right. Then he said: "Dear Ammonius, I have delightful tidings for you: God has become flesh in his son and has brought us all salvation." ""What are you saying," I called, "you probably mean Osiris, who shall appear in the mortal body?" "No," he replied, "this man lived in Judea and was born from a virgin." I laughed and answered: "I already know about this; a Jewish trader has brought tidings of our virgin queen to Judea, whose image appears on the walls of one of our temples, and reported it as a fairy tale." "No," the old man insisted, "he was the Son of God." "Then you mean Horus the son of Osiris, don't you?" I answered. "No,hewasnotHorus,butarealman,andhewashung from a cross." "Oh, but this must be Seth, surely; whose punishments our old ones have often described." But the old man stood by his conviction and said: "He died and rose up on the third day." "Well, then he must be Osiris," I replied impatiently. "No," he cried, "he is called Jesus the anointed one." ''Ah, you really mean this Jewish God, whom the poor honor at the harbor, and whose unclean mysteries they celebrate in cellars." "He was a man and yet the Son of God," said the old man staring at me intently. "That's nonsense, dear old man," I said, and showed him to the door. But like an echo from distant rock faces the words returned to me: a man and yet the Son of God. It seemed significant to me, and this phrase was what brought me to Christianity. I: "But don't you think that Christianity could ultimately be a transformation ofyour Egyptian teachings?" A: "If you say that our old teachings were less adequate expressions of Christianity, then I'm more likely to agree with you." I: "Yes, but do you then assume that the history of religions is aimed at a final goal?" A: "My father once bought a black slave at the market from the region of the source of the Nile. He came from a country that had heard ofneither Osiris nor the other Gods; he told me many things in a more simple language that said the same as we believed about Osiris and the other Gods. I learned to understand that those uneducated Negroes unknowingly already possessed most of what the religions of the cultured peoples had developed into complete doctrines. Those able to read that language correctly could thus recognize in it not only the pagan doctrines but also the doctrine of Jesus. And it's with this that I now occupy myself I read the gospels and seek their meaning which is yet to come.We know their meaning as it lies before us, but not their hidden meaning which points to the future. It's erroneous to believe that religions differ in their innermost essence. Strictly speaking, it's always one and the same religion. Every subsequent form of religion is the meaning of the antecedent." I: "Have you found out the meaning which is yet to come?" A: "No, not yet; it's very difficult, but I hope I'll succeed. Sometimes it seems to me that I need the stimulation of others, but I realize that those are temptations of Satan." I: "Don't you believe that you'd succeed ifyou were nearer men?" A: "maybeyoureright." He looks at me suddenly as if doubtful and suspicious. "But, I love the desert, do you understand? This yellow, sun-glowing desert. Here you can see the countenance of the sun every day; you are alone, you can see glorious Helios-no, that is - pagan-what's wrong with me? I'm confused-you are Satan- I recognize you-give way; adversary!" He jumps up incensed and wants to lunge at me. But I am far away in the twentieth century.

Eventually, the men’s talk of politics turned to poetry. The recitations could begin with a quatrain from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat: I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, Half a loaf for a bite to eat, Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm. To which a voice might answer with a poem by Rumi: My arrow of love has arrived at the target I am in the house of mercy and my heart is a place of prayer. These gatherings went on for hours, with one guest after another reciting poems of the Persian masters—Rumi, Khayyam, Sa’adi, snd Hafez. That my father, the Colonel, who could make us cower with a single sidelong glance, produced the most skillful recitations both bewildered and fascinated me. His voice had a deep timbre perfectly suited to reciting verse, and the frequent cries of “Lovely!” and “Exquisite!” roused him to ever more passionate declamation. I listened from behind the window, enraptured by the music of a language that can sometimes sound like susurrations of a lover and sometimes like the reed’s plaintive song. The words hooked into me and wouldn’t let me go. Rivers, oceans, and deserts, the nightingale and the rose—the perennial symbols of Persian poetry first grew familiar to me through these late-night scenes in the garden, and even though I was still a young girl, only just a child, the verses called me away to different lands.

So now Nathan had a new partner, who, by all accounts, was a dour old drudge with nary a daughter to his name. She’d seen Nathan in town once since then. He had not looked happy. But she was insanely happy, especially after what the doctor had hold her yesterday. With only a few days left at home, she and Freddy had dragged Jane and Oliver on a romantic picnic. So far, it wasn’t going all that well. Poor Jane darted up at every sound. Freddy’s mischievous brothers had convinced her that wild Indians might descend upon them any minute, and no amount of Freddy’s posturing with the sword could relieve her fears. Oliver was no help, either. He kept pretending to see feather headdresses behind every bush, though Maria had told him repeatedly that the only tribes in their area had left long ago. He was every bit as devilish as her cousins, who’d embraced him instantly as a man after their own heats. Aunt Rose had pronounced Oliver a smooth-tongued rogue the first time he told her how fetching she looked in her peacock bonnet. Little did she know. “Are you sure there’s a fish pond back there, Freddy?” Jane asked skeptically as Freddy led her around a deserted cabin. “Quite sure.” He puffed out his chest. “I’ve caught many a fine trout in that pond.” “More like trout bait,” Maria told Oliver, who was stretched out on the blanket beside her, reading a letter from Jarret. “I’ve never seen a fish longer than my thumb in that pond.

Not long after I'd first met Doc, we were sitting on our rock on the hill behind the rose garden and I had asked him why I was a sinner and what I had done to be condemned to eternal hell fire unless I was born again. He sat for a long time looking over the valley, and then he said, :Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man ants always God should be there to condemn this on and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business."He paused and smiled "In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this, Peekay, is heaven.: He looked at me, his deep blue eyes sharp and penetrating. "This is the faith in God the cactus has". We had sat for a while before he spoke again. "it is better just to get on with the business living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day. Absoloodle.

The spirit ofthis time considers itselfextremely clever, like every such spiritofthetime.Butwisdomissimpleminded,notjustsimple.Becauseof this, the clever person mocks wisdom, since mockery is his weapon. He uses thepointed,poisonousweapon,becauseheisstruckbynaivewisdom.Ifhe were not struck, he would not need the weapon. Only in the desert do we become aware ofour terrible simplemindedness, but we are aftaid ofadmitting it. {(Thatiswhywearescornful. Butmockery / doesnotattain ness. The mockeryfalls on the mocker, and in the desert where no one hears and answers, he sufficatesfrom his own scorn. The cleverer you are, the morefoolish your simplemindedness. The totally clever are total fools in their simplemindedness. We cannot save ourselves from the cleverness ofthe spirit ofthis time through increasing our cleverness, but through accepting what our cleverness hates most, namely ness. Yet we also do not want to be artificial fools because we have fallen into simplemindedness, rather we will be cleverfools. That leads to the supreme meaning. Cleverness couples itselfwith intention. Simplemindedness knows no intention. Cleverness conquers the world, but simplemindedness, the soul. So take on the vow ofpoverty ofspirit in order to partake ofthe soul.79 Against this the scorn ofmy cleverness rose Up.80 Many will laugh at my foolishness. But no one will laugh more than I laughed at myself. So I overcame scorn. But when I had overcome it, I was near to my soul, and she could speak to me, and I was soon to see the desert becominggreen.

There was a ruined church along the way, an old Methodist meetinghouse, which reared its shambles at the far end of a frost-heaved and hummocked lawn, and when you walked past the view of its glaring, senseless windows your footsteps became very loud in your ears and whatever you had been whistling died on your lips and you thought about how it must be inside the overturned pews, the rotting hymnals, the crumbling altar where only mice now kept the sabbath, and you wondered what might be in there besides mice what madmen, what monsters. Maybe they were peering out at you with yellow reptilian eyes. And maybe one night watching would not be enough; maybe some night that splintered, crazily hung door would be thrown open, and what you saw standing there would drive you to lunacy at one look. And you couldn’t explain that to your mother and father, who were creatures of the light. No more than you could explain to them how, at the age of three, the spare blanket at the foot of the crib turned into a collection of snakes that lay staring at you with flat and lidless eyes. No child ever conquers those fears, he thought. If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered. And the fears locked in small brains are much too large to pass through the orifice of the mouth. Sooner or later you found someone to walk past all the deserted meetinghouses you had to pass between grinning babyhood and grunting senility. Until tonight. Until tonight when you found out that none of the old fears had been staked only tucked away in their tiny, child-sized coffins with a wild rose on top.

Although leaves remained on the beeches and the sunshine was warm, there was a sense of growing emptiness over the wide space of the down. The flowers were sparser. Here and there a yellow tormentil showed in the grass, a late harebell or a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal. But most of the plants still to be seen were in seed. Along the edge of the wood a sheet of wild clematis showed like a patch of smoke, all its sweet-smelling flowers turned to old man's beard. The songs of the insects were fewer and intermittent. Great stretches of the long grass, once the teeming jungle of summer, were almost deserted, with only a hurrying beetle or a torpid spider left out of all the myriads of August. The gnats still danced in the bright air, but the swifts that had swooped for them were gone and instead of their screaming cries in the sky, the twittering of a robin sounded from the top of a spindle tree. The fields below the hill were all cleared. One had already been plowed and the polished edges of the furrows caught the light with a dull glint, conspicuous from the ridge above. The sky, too, was void, with a thin clarity like that of water. In July the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare, the sun slipped sooner to the west and, once there, foretold a touch of frost, sinking slow and big and drowsy, crimson as the rose hips that covered the briar. As the wind freshened from the south, the red and yellow beech leaves rasped together with a brittle sound, harsher than the fluid rustle of earlier days. It was a time of quiet departures, of the sifting away of all that was not staunch against winter.

Hymn to Mercury : Continued 71. Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might Of winning music, to his mightier will; His left hand held the lyre, and in his right The plectrum struck the chords—unconquerable Up from beneath his hand in circling flight The gathering music rose—and sweet as Love The penetrating notes did live and move 72. Within the heart of great Apollo—he Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure. Close to his side stood harping fearlessly The unabashed boy; and to the measure Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free His joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure Of his deep song, illustrating the birth Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth: 73. And how to the Immortals every one A portion was assigned of all that is; But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son Clothe in the light of his loud melodies;— And, as each God was born or had begun, He in their order due and fit degrees Sung of his birth and being—and did move Apollo to unutterable love. 74. These words were winged with his swift delight: 'You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you Deserve that fifty oxen should requite Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now. Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight, One of your secrets I would gladly know, Whether the glorious power you now show forth Was folded up within you at your birth, 75. 'Or whether mortal taught or God inspired The power of unpremeditated song? Many divinest sounds have I admired, The Olympian Gods and mortal men among; But such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired, And soul-awakening music, sweet and strong, Yet did I never hear except from thee, Offspring of May, impostor Mercury! 76. 'What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use, What exercise of subtlest art, has given Thy songs such power?—for those who hear may choose From three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven, Delight, and love, and sleep,—sweet sleep, whose dews Are sweeter than the balmy tears of even:— And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow: 77. 'And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise Of song and overflowing poesy; And sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrillingly; But never did my inmost soul rejoice In this dear work of youthful revelry As now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove; Thy harpings and thy song are soft as love. 78. 'Now since thou hast, although so very small, Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,— And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall, Witness between us what I promise here,— That I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall, Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear, And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee, And even at the end will ne'er deceive thee.' 79. To whom thus Mercury with prudent speech:— 'Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill: I envy thee no thing I know to teach Even this day:—for both in word and will I would be gentle with thee; thou canst reach All things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill Is highest in Heaven among the sons of Jove, Who loves thee in the fulness of his love. 80. 'The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude Of his profuse exhaustless treasury; By thee, 'tis said, the depths are understood Of his far voice; by thee the mystery Of all oracular fates,—and the dread mood Of the diviner is breathed up; even I— A child—perceive thy might and majesty.

His words explained, but they did not convince. Was this sudden-bursting glory only the sun rising behind storm clouds? She could see the clouds moving while they were being colored. The universal gray surrendered under some magic paint brush. The rifts widened, and the gloom of the pale-gray world seemed to vanish. Beyond the billowy, rolling, creamy edges of clouds, white and pink, shone the soft exquisite fresh blue sky. And a blaze of fire, a burst of molten gold, sheered up from behind the rim of cloud and suddenly poured a sea of sunlight from east to west. It trans-figured the round foothills. They seemed bathed in ethereal light, and the silver mists that overhung them faded while Carley gazed, and a rosy flush crowned the symmetrical domes. Southward along the horizon line, down-dropping veils of rain, just touched with the sunrise tint, streamed in drifting slow movement from cloud to earth. To the north the range of foothills lifted toward the majestic dome of Sunset Peak, a volcanic upheaval of red and purple cinders, bare as rock, round as the lower hills, and wonderful in its color. Full in the blaze of the rising sun it flaunted an unchangeable front. Carley understood now what had been told her about this peak. Volcanic fires had thrown up a colossal mound of cinders burned forever to the hues of the setting sun. In every light and shade of day it held true to its name. Farther north rose the bold bulk of the San Francisco Peaks, that, half lost in the clouds, still dominated the desert scene. Then as Carley gazed the rifts began to close. Another transformation began, the reverse of what she watched. The golden radiance of sunrise vanished, and under a gray, lowering) coalescing pall of cloud the round hills returned to their bleak somberness, and the green desert took again its cold sheen.

The Equator runs close to the Rongai Valley, and, even at so high an altitude as this we hunted in, the belly of the earth was hot as live ash under our feet. Except for an occasional gust of fretful wind that flattened the high, corn-like grass, nothing uttered — nothing in the valley stirred. The chirrup-like drone of grasshoppers was dead, birds left the sky unmarked. the sun reigned and there were no aspirants to his place. We stopped by the red salt-lick that cropped out of the ground in the path of our trail. I did not remember a time when the salt-lick was as deserted as this. Always before it had been crowded with grantii, impala, kongoni, eland, water-buck, and a dozen kinds of smaller animals. But it was empty today. It was like a marketplace whose flow and bustle of life you had witnessed ninety-nine times, but, on your hundredth visit, was vacant and still without even an urchin to tell you why. I put my hand on Arab Maina’s arm. ‘What are you thinking, Maina? Why is there no game today?’ ‘Be quiet, Lakweit, and do not move.’ I dropped the butt of my spear on the earth and watched the two Murani stand still as trees, their nostrils distended, their ears alert to all things. Arab Kosky’s hand was tight on his spear like the claw of an eagle clasping a branch. ‘It is an odd sign,’ murmured Arab Maina, ‘when the salt-lick is without company!’ I had forgotten Buller, but the dog had not forgotten us. He had not forgotten that, with all the knowledge of the two Murani, he still knew better about such things. He thrust his body roughly between Arab Maina and myself, holding his black wet nose close to the ground. And the hairs along his spine stiffened. His hackles rose and he trembled. We might have spoken, but we didn’t. In his way Buller was more eloquent. Without a sound, he said, as clearly as it could be said — ‘Lion.

But Rhys interlocked his fingers in the space between his knees before he said, “Five hundred years ago, in the years leading up to the War, there was a Fae kingdom in the southern part of the continent. It was a realm of sand surrounding a lush river delta. The Black Land. There was no crueler place to be born a human—for no humans were born free. They were all of them slaves, forced to build great temples and palaces for the High Fae who ruled. There was no escape; no chance of having their freedom purchased. And the queen of the Black Land … ” Memory stirred in his face. “She made Amarantha seem as sweet as Elain,” Mor explained with soft venom. “Miryam,” Rhys continued, “was a half-Fae female born of a human mother. And as her mother was a slave, as the conception was … against her mother’s will, so, too, was Miryam born in shackles, and deemed human—denied any rights to her Fae heritage.” “Tell the full story another time,” Amren cut in. “The gist of it, girl,” she said to me, “is that Miryam was given as a wedding gift by the queen to her betrothed, a foreign Fae prince named Drakon. He was horrified, and let Miryam escape. Fearing the queen’s wrath, she fled through the desert, across the sea, into more desert … and was found by Jurian. She fell in with his rebel armies, became his lover, and was a healer amongst the warriors. Until a devastating battle found her tending to Jurian’s new Fae allies—including Prince Drakon. Turns out, Miryam had opened his eyes to the monster he planned to wed. He’d broken the engagement, allied his armies with the humans, and had been looking for the beautiful slave-girl for three years. Jurian had no idea that his new ally coveted his lover. He was too focused on winning the War, on destroying Amarantha in the North. As his obsession took over, he was blind to witnessing Miryam and Drakon falling in love behind his back.

Thou art the Bright Messenger - the Shining One, the being of pure Spirit. Thou art not the man thou hast been, lo these many years. Thou art new - born, fresh, clean, and pure. Thou art not an old creature patched up by various treatments. Thou, Bright Messenger, Golden One, hast never descended to the level of belief, and therefore hast not consorted with the shadows of the play - life. Thou art the Bright Messenger, with winged feet, who goeth where he will, and knoweth no obstruction, nor condition. Thou art the unconditioned, the untrammeled, the free - the individualized yet inseparable manifestation of the All God. Thou art the Bright Messenger. Thou art full of light - bathed in All Light. Whithersoever thou goest is light - not consciously projected, but unconsciously conveyed; a natural effect of thy presence. Thou art the Bright Messenger. Thine eye is single to the Allness of God, the Oneness of creation. Thou therefore seest with the eye of light. Thou lookest into a universe of All Light, and seest through the shadows of belief. Thou seest the world in a world, the rose in a rose, and the Man in a man. Thou perceivest with thine eye of Light that which IS and always has been - not that which shall be changed by begging, beseeching, or praying to a tyrant called God to make whole. With the eye of Light thou seest nothing to heal, for thy sight is perfect in the understanding: " I AM of too pure eyes to behold iniquity. " Thou art the Bright Messenger - the being of light. In the touch of thy hand is light. As the warmth of Spring touches the frozen earth, so thy touch of light causes the seed to swell and burst and the flower to leap from her chalice. Thy touch of light is like the soft rain on the parched desert, which causes it to bloom as a rose. Whomsoever thou touchest - in the true sense of the word - thou transformest, instantly, gloriously, freely, joyously.

Miryam,” Rhys continued, “was a half-Fae female born of a human mother. And as her mother was a slave, as the conception was … against her mother’s will, so, too, was Miryam born in shackles, and deemed human—denied any rights to her Fae heritage.” “Tell the full story another time,” Amren cut in. “The gist of it, girl,” she said to me, “is that Miryam was given as a wedding gift by the queen to her betrothed, a foreign Fae prince named Drakon. He was horrified, and let Miryam escape. Fearing the queen’s wrath, she fled through the desert, across the sea, into more desert … and was found by Jurian. She fell in with his rebel armies, became his lover, and was a healer amongst the warriors. Until a devastating battle found her tending to Jurian’s new Fae allies—including Prince Drakon. Turns out, Miryam had opened his eyes to the monster he planned to wed. He’d broken the engagement, allied his armies with the humans, and had been looking for the beautiful slave-girl for three years. Jurian had no idea that his new ally coveted his lover. He was too focused on winning the War, on destroying Amarantha in the North. As his obsession took over, he was blind to witnessing Miryam and Drakon falling in love behind his back.” “It wasn’t behind his back,” Mor snapped. “Miryam ended it with Jurian before she ever laid a finger on Drakon.” Amren shrugged. “Long story short, girl, when Jurian was slaughtered by Amarantha, and during the long centuries after, she told him what had happened to his lover. That she’d betrayed him for a Fae male. Everyone believed Miryam and Drakon perished while liberating her people from the Black Land at the end of the War—even Amarantha.” “And they didn’t,” I said. Rhys and Mor nodded. “It was all a way to escape, wasn’t it? To start over somewhere else, with both their peoples?” Another set of nods. “So why not show the queens that? You started to tell them—” “Because,” Rhys cut in, “in addition to it not proving a thing about my character, which seemed to be their biggest gripe, it would be a grave betrayal of our friends. Their only wish was to remain hidden—to live in peace with their peoples. They fought and bled and suffered enough for it. I will not bring them into this conflict.

Yatima found verself gazing at a red-tinged cluster of pulsing organic parts, a translucent confusion of fluids and tissue. Sections divided, dissolved, reorganised. It looked like a flesher embryo – though not quite a realist portrait. The imaging technique kept changing, revealing different structures: Yatima saw hints of delicate limbs and organs caught in slices of transmitted dark; a stark silhouette of bones in an X-ray flash; the finely branched network of the nervous system bursting into view as a filigreed shadow, shrinking from myelin to lipids to a scatter of vesicled neurotransmitters against a radio-frequency MRI chirp. There were two bodies now. Twins? One was larger, though – sometimes much larger. The two kept changing places, twisting around each other, shrinking or growing in stroboscopic leaps while the wavelengths of the image stuttered across the spectrum. One flesher child was turning into a creature of glass, nerves and blood vessels vitrifying into optical fibres. A sudden, startling white-light image showed living, breathing Siamese twins, impossibly transected to expose raw pink and grey muscles working side by side with shape-memory alloys and piezoelectric actuators, flesher and gleisner anatomies interpenetrating. The scene spun and morphed into a lone robot child in a flesher's womb; spun again to show a luminous map of a citizen's mind embedded in the same woman's brain; zoomed out to place her, curled, in a cocoon of optical and electronic cables. Then a swarm of nanomachines burst through her skin, and everything scattered into a cloud of grey dust. Two flesher children walked side by side, hand in hand. Or father and son, gleisner and flesher, citizen and gleisner... Yatima gave up trying to pin them down, and let the impressions flow through ver. The figures strode calmly along a city's main street, while towers rose and crumbled around them, jungle and desert advanced and retreated. The artwork, unbidden, sent Yatima's viewpoint wheeling around the figures. Ve saw them exchanging glances, touches, kisses – and blows, awkwardly, their right arms fused at the wrists. Making peace and melting together. The smaller lifting the larger on to vis shoulders – then the passenger's height flowing down to the bearer like an hourglass's sand.

The enemy won some points at the very beginning. On both of the two days preceding his remarks about Worth, Hitchcock notes that American deserters had been shot while crossing the Rio Grande. Probably they were just bored with army rations but there was some thought that they might be responding to a proclamation of General Ampudia’s which spies had been able to circulate in camp. Noting the number of Irish, French, and Polish immigrants in the American force, Ampudia had summoned them to assert a common Catholicism, come across the river, cease “to defend a robbery and usurpation which, be assured, the civilized nations of Europe look upon with the utmost indignation,” and settle down on a generous land bounty. Some of them did so, and the St. Patrick Battalion of American deserters was eventually formed, fought splendidly throughout the war, and was decimated in the campaign for Mexico City — after which its survivors were executed in daily batches.… This earliest shooting of deserters as they swam the Rio Grande, an unwelcome reminder that war has ugly aspects, at once produced an agitation. As soon as word of it reached Washington, the National Intelligencer led the Whig press into a sustained howl about tyranny. In the House J. Q. Adams rose to resolve the court-martial of every officer or soldier who should order the killing of a soldier without trial and an inquiry into the reasons for desertion. He was voted down but thereafter there were deserters in every Whig speech on the conduct of the war, and Calm Observer wrote to all party papers that such brutality would make discipline impossible. But a struggling magazine which had been founded the previous September in the interest of sports got on a sound financial footing at last. The National Police Gazette began to publish lists of deserters from the army, and the War Department bought up big editions to distribute among the troops. Taylor sat in his field works writing prose. Ampudia’s patrols reconnoitered the camp and occasionally perpetrated an annoyance. Taylor badly needed the Texas Rangers, a mobile force formed for frontier service in the Texas War of Independence and celebrated ever since. It was not yet available to him, however, and he was content to send out a few scouts now and then. So Colonel Truman Cross, the assistant quartermaster general, did not return from one of his daily rides. He was still absent twelve days later, and Lieutenant Porter, who went looking for him with ten men, ran into some Mexican foragers and got killed.

I, Prayer (A Poem of Magnitudes and Vectors) I, Prayer, know no hour. No season, no day, no month nor year. No boundary, no barrier or limitation–no blockade hinders Me. There is no border or wall I cannot breach. I move inexorably forward; distance holds Me not. I span the cosmos in the twinkling of an eye. I knowest it all. I am the most powerful force in the Universe. Who then is My equal? Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? None is so fierce that dare stir him up. Surely, I may’st with but a Word. Who then is able to stand before Me? I am the wind, the earth, the metal. I am the very empyrean vault of Heaven Herself. I span the known and the unknown beyond Eternity’s farthest of edges. And whatsoever under Her wings is Mine. I am a gentle stream, a fiery wrath penetrating; wearing down mountains –the hardest and softest of substances. I am a trickling brook to fools of want lost in the deserts of their own desires. I am a Niagara to those who drink in well. I seep through cracks. I inundate. I level forests kindleth unto a single burning bush. My hand moves the Universe by the mind of a child. I withhold treasures solid from the secret stores to they who would wrench at nothing. I do not sleep or eat, feel not fatigue, nor hunger. I do not feel the cold, nor rain or wind. I transcend the heat of the summer’s day. I commune. I petition. I intercede. My time is impeccable, by it worlds and destinies turn. I direct the fates of nations and humankind. My Words are Iron eternaled—rust not they away. No castle keep, nor towers of beaten brass, Nor the dankest of dungeon helks, Nor adamantine links of hand-wrought steel Can contain My Spirit–I shan’t turn back. The race is ne’er to the swift, nor battle to the strong, nor wisdom to the wise or wealth to the rich. For skills and wisdom, I give to the sons of man. I take wisdom and skills from the sons of man for they are ever Mine. Blessed is the one who finds it so, for in humility comes honor, For those who have fallen on the battlefield for My Name’s sake, I reach down to lift them up from On High. I am a rose with the thorn. I am the clawing Lion that pads her children. My kisses wound those whom I Love. My kisses are faithful. No occasion, moment in time, instances, epochs, ages or eras hold Me back. Time–past, present and future is to Me irrelevant. I span the millennia. I am the ever-present Now. My foolishness is wiser than man’s My weakness stronger than man’s. I am subtle to the point of formlessness yet formed. I have no discernible shape, no place into which the enemy may sink their claws. I AM wisdom and in length of days knowledge. Strength is Mine and counsel, and understanding. I break. I build. By Me, kings rise and fall. The weak are given strength; wisdom to those who seek and foolishness to both fooler and fool alike. I lead the crafty through their deceit. I set straight paths for those who will walk them. I am He who gives speech and sight - and confounds and removes them. When I cut, straight and true is my cut. I strike without fault. I am the razored edge of high destiny. I have no enemy, nor friend. My Zeal and Love and Mercy will not relent to track you down until you are spent– even unto the uttermost parts of the earth. I cull the proud and the weak out of the common herd. I hunt them in battles royale until their cries unto Heaven are heard. I break hearts–those whose are harder than granite. Beyond their atomic cores, I strike their atomic clock. Elect motions; not one more or less electron beyond electron’s orbit that has been ordained for you do I give–for His grace is sufficient for thee until He desires enough. Then I, Prayer, move on as a comet, Striking out of the black. I, His sword, kills to give Life. I am Living and Active, the Divider asunder of thoughts and intents. I Am the Light of Eternal Mind. And I, Prayer, AM Prayer Almighty.

Eron had been gawky, and he was a farm boy, and that summer when I had been sixteen and curious, we had indeed explored each other in the deserted moments behind the barn, when no one else was around. I didn’t want to die a virgin. I was certain, then, that I wouldn’t live to see the winter, so I saw all of Eron instead.

Love, if it is true, will awaken you to a festival of seasons. You walk through a desert and it becomes a meadow of roses. You behold the sunset and there you fall in love with the sky. You come to the sea to drink into it for there you find the wine of ecstasy...

The sun rose again. Nader woke up to the sounds of the laughing doves. He giggled as he listened to their lovey chirping. They talked nonstop with the loveliest voices ever. He closed his eyes again, trying to get back to sleep while listening to their lovely chirping. It only took him a minute to remember his task. He opened his eyes wide, astonished that he almost forgot all about his friend.

Please don’t ever change to fit society’s standard, you’re like a rose in the Sahara desert.

NAOMI, THE GODDESS OF OASIS It was a cool evening when destiny called, Naomi. The call that will revive the hearts of the children of men. Destiny presented herself like a Rose. With thorns that makes the crown. Destiny is beautiful. An enigma of peace that ponder the hearts of men. She adores herself with the blood of motherhood. Smiling in tears and with care she nurtures every soul. She's nature's friend, the waters that pushes with the wind and moves in path with her lings. Her nature is beauty and her songs nourishes the soul of men. Her light illuminates their Hope's and tears are wiped with her smiles. Oh daughter of the great land of Ozoro, the pride of her mother land. The rainbow rose that illuminates the garden of doubts. May your voice sends peace to the wailing hearts. May your day never grow dark on the mornings and may your evening be the time your waistline is with tiring and your love round about you. Great daughter of the forest kingdom. Enigma of royalty. Pride of her love. Queen of the Desert Kingdom. Goddess of Oasis Poem by Victor Vote to Atabeh Rezi. ©️2021 by VVF

Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Benjamin mentions that when workers in Paris rose up against the monarchy of Charles X in July 1830, they “simultaneously and independently” began shooting at public clocks around the city.

For precisely that reason, I did not pause at any of the big cities, but adjusted the pointer to the empty space between the radio stations, where no one was sending anything. To these regions, which were as deserted and roadless as the spaces between stars, I returned again and again. As I wandered through their integrity, I felt the happiness of an explorer, and I was bewitched by the ceaseless humming that rose like vapour from their nameless seas. It was secreted from the receiver as a radiation of the same strength, almost unchanging in wavelength, which brought to mind honey and the homes of thousands of bumblebees. It swayed before me like a curtain, like dancing dust; it was ceaseless happening, but nothing changed in it.

The Jaws of the Sahara’ (Le fauci del Sahara) But around me is a silence of death: a word seems to spring from the horizon: – Back! – Back to all of you who want to violate my secret, you who were not born in my restless dunes, you were not burned by my fire, taught not to wait, against the earth, the passage of my rage … Back! – And these words of challenge rose as knights armed with a deadly struggle, only a few men, naked, implacable as the expanse of sand and the scorching sun … and launched by the jaws of the great desert […] Domenico Tumiati, ‘Le fauci del Saara’ in Tripolitania, 1911

The deserter calls me king and has promised me that I may take refuge under his protection at any time. All I have to do is go to the rose bush. There we will always meet.

He ascended onto the back of the divine bird with his umbrella, and rose against the wind amidst the roar of the winter storm, fluttering in his white clothes, as handsome as a god. The herdsmen on the desert uttered a wave of exclamation, all kneeling down to worship him, as if the gods descended on earth.

But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began ten-thousand years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide.

The Waiting Room by Stewart Stafford The waiting room lay empty, Gloom-prowled, leather-studded seats, A ceiling fan spun lonely circles above, Keeping no one in particular cool at all. Portrait of a rose in a shadowy alcove, A pair of empty street scenes framed, Mirroring the deserted room where they hung, Creating the vacuum of an infinity void. A wreath of hope on the door, The first patient of the day lumbers in, Where there's one, there'll be others, Smiles from all at the start of the day. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

So as soon as he’d dumped Nesta at the House, he’d headed to a deserted cliff by the sea where the roar of the surf drowned the raging heat in his bones.

Shortly after that, I was invited by a friend to fly over the desert in his plane. I told my friend about the Jedi thing and asked if Racey could come with us. He said yes, smiling over an idea he had. He made arrangements with the ground crew, and as we landed, we heard a voice over the cabin speakers announcing, “Racey, you are a Jedi! You are a Jedi now!” Racey rolled his little eyes in disbelief. I asked him if he was a Jedi yet. He wouldn’t answer me. When we got home, he ran straight to Darth Vader. He dropped in his coin, the music began, with the heavy breathing, the sword rose, and the deep voice said, “Impressive, but you are not a Jedi yet.” That seemed to be the way of it. I asked him one more time, and he told me, “Grandma, I not.” Many of us judge ourselves as relentlessly as that plastic toy played its recording, telling ourselves over and over what we are and what we’re not.

- Can you keep secrets? - Yesss. - We are going to make one of the biggest coffeeshops in Barcelona with my boss, Adam. - Realllllly? - This Adam guy is kind of my friend and kind of my boss, but I don't trust him; he is a bad guy. “Bad to the bone.” His father is an even darker figure. I am pretty sure that both have killed before, hired to kill people. - I am from Buenos Airessss. - I understand honey but you don’t know this kind of people, these f…g desert roses. - There are Jewish people in Argentina too. - I am sure, baby, but these are not regular Jewish people, not regular Israeli people. These people are dark. Hocus-pocus. Criminal minds. Do you understand? - I guessss. - There are a lot of criminals in this town. They will try to take our club away, just like the Camorra is taking away other people's clubs. Just like that. Do you understand? - Yessss. - I know them; they are one of my clients. If there is anyone in the world who could make a deal with them, it would be me and Adam. He cannot cross me and I cannot cross him either. I would never do that. I am not sure about him though what is on his mind, I can tell there is something he is orchestrating I just don’t know what exactly, but he is as fishy as Sabrina. The problem is that only my ex-girlfriend knows about my signature on the non-profit organization, which is the base of the coffeeshop, the marijuana grow and the smoker club. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - We are talking about millions of Euros monthly cashflow. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - By telling you everything now, you are becoming my trusted; your life is in danger too if they manage to find a gap between us. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - I'm not sure what they're up to. They owe me already more money than anyone in this town would murder for. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - Now you know about it, too. Sabrina didn't care; she didn't think I would make it happen. She doesn’t know about the place. Only you know about it and us. But she will figure it out somehow; she will try to take your position, slipping between the criminals. Do you know how to play chess? - Not really. - OK then. Imagine this as a throne, these chairs you are sitting on top of. OK. No one can remove you from this throne being my girlfriend, no one can stand between us. No one can take the club away from us. They have no chance. Understand? - Yesss. - As long as you stick with me, she cannot do anything; no one can mess with us. Do you understand? - Yes. Everyone in the world would try to take your place, being my girlfriend, and they will try to push you out from this position, which only me I can give you, with Love. They will tell you lies about me and about themselves who’s club is it. Do you understand? - Yes. But why? - Because Rachel and Tom, the other two founding members of the club, Golan, I signed up with, are Adam's puppets. I don't trust any one of them. If they kill me, they never have to pay me what they owe me already, plus they can keep the 33% of the club which belongs to me. 100% Adam would keep. Do you understand now? - Yessss. - We will pull all the trash out and remodel the place without any permit, under the rug, in secret. - I sssseeee. (Eye. See.)

- Can you keep secrets? - Yesss. - We are going to make one of the biggest coffeeshops in Barcelona with my boss, Adam. - Realllllly? - This Adam guy is kind of my friend and kind of my boss, but I don't trust him; he is a bad guy. “Bad to the bone.” His father is an even darker figure. I am pretty sure that both have killed before, hired to kill people. - I am from Buenos Airessss. - I understand honey but you don’t know this kind of people, these f…g desert roses. - There are Jewish people in Argentina too. - I am sure, baby, but these are not regular Jewish people, not regular Israeli people. These people are dark. Hocus-pocus. Criminal minds. Do you understand? - I guessss. - There are a lot of criminals in this town. They will try to take our club away, just like the Camorra is taking away other people's clubs. Just like that. Do you understand? - Yessss. - I know them; they are one of my clients. If there is anyone in the world who could make a deal with them, it would be me and Adam. He cannot cross me and I cannot cross him either. I would never do that. I am not sure about him though what is on his mind, I can tell there is something he is orchestrating I just don’t know what exactly, but he is as fishy as Sabrina. The problem is that only my ex-girlfriend knows about my signature on the non-profit organization, which is the base of the coffeeshop, the marijuana grow and the smoker club. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - We are talking about millions of Euros monthly cashflow. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - By telling you everything now, you are becoming my trusted; your life is in danger too if they manage to find a gap between us. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - I'm not sure what they're up to. They owe me already more money than anyone in this town would murder for. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - Now you know about it, too. Sabrina didn't care; she didn't think I would make it happen. She doesn’t know about the place. Only you know about it and us. But she will figure it out somehow; she will try to take your position, slipping between the criminals. Do you know how to play chess? - Not really. - OK then. Imagine this as a throne, these chairs you are sitting on top of. OK. No one can remove you from this throne being my girlfriend, no one can stand between us. No one can take the club away from us. They have no chance. Understand? - Yesss. - As long as you stick with me, she cannot do anything; no one can mess with us. Do you understand? - Yesss. - Everyone in the world would try to take your place, being my girlfriend, and they will try to push you out from this position, which only me I can give you, with Love. They will tell you lies about me and about themselves who’s club is it. Do you understand? - Yes. But why? - Because Rachel and Tom, the other two founding members of the club, Golan, I signed up with, are Adam's puppets. I don't trust any one of them. If they kill me, they never have to pay me what they owe me already, plus they can keep the 33% of the club which belongs to me. 100% Adam would keep. Do you understand now? - Yessss. - We will pull all the trash out and remodel the place without any permit, under the rug, in secret. - I sssseeee. (Eye. See.)

Desert rose! Like the traveler who wants to go everywhere, Like the sunshine that falls on everything, I want to travel too, but in one direction, that can be anywhere, As long as it leads to you, because without you, the world means nothing, Like the desert I want to spread endlessly, Like the wind I desire to be free, And chase your mirages over sand dunes tirelessly, And then wherever you are, there I shall be, Like the desert let your love be clear and unobstructed, Like the calm of the desert let us spread everywhere, Then in this desert let everything else be restricted, Because I want it to be your representation everywhere, Like an oasis oozing from the bosom of the desert, Like the mirage of water to a thirsty desert wanderer on a hot day, Let your love just one feeling assert, That like an oasis you will flow through me everyday, Like the beautiful desert rose, Like the endless desert, Let your feelings of love within me repose, As I slowly, but surely into your devout disciple convert, Like it first my love, before you begin to love it, Like the desert rose then let me love you, And finally as I, my soul to you shall submit, Let me see the desert, the oasis and the desert rose, and eternity in you!

Sure,” he says. “And how about we wait in here for a while, see if we piss off Brett enough that he’ll ditch us for Ryke or Rose?” “I like that idea.” “Yeah?” I nod. “And maybe a virus will infect everyone, turning them into zombies, and when we leave the bathroom, the bookstore will be completely deserted.” “Nice,” he says, “but I’d rather not be inserted into the plot of 28 Days Later.” Damn. He’s good. “I love you,” I suddenly say. I mean it. Because who else would stay in a bookstore bathroom with me, just to hide out for a little while. Definitely not Rose. Maybe Daisy. Ryke would rather die, I’m sure. And Connor can never be added into any equation without hurting my head. So that leaves Lo. Just Lo.

Nature’s fall There was a theatrical taste to it all, The experiencing of seasons and the morbidness of the fall, When nothing seems to have any sort of animation left, As if everything and everyone is suffering from the trauma of a theft, Where they have been robbed of every lively moment and life’s pleasure, As they were busy indulging in moments of leisure, Unlike nature that only and always grows, And no signs of regression shows, But there is a sort of slight indignation in it all, And you can tell it from every pale leaf falling and tossing against the great wall, The wall that is the only barricade between life and lifelessness, The wall that prevents sensibility from the invasion of senselessness, Where leisure is a moment of enjoyment with one's self and someone you love, It can be a moment in the future or a moment you are experiencing now, But if it indulges with the present to such a degree that it invades the future, Then you are bound to exhaust beforehand life’s true treasure, That of moments of leisure offering life’s authentic pleasure, In quantities with a perfect taste and measure, Because nature too enjoys in summer complete state of leisure, But then spring is for grooming and growing, and not for pleasure, While winter and fall, are for regeneration, A self introspection and kind of inward meditation, But if it spends all seasons in leisure and soaks itself in one feeling alone, that of pleasure, Then it shall be left with no beauty’s treasure, And it shall turn into the desert, where only desert roses grow, And remind you of nature’s follies, its oversights, and its over indulgence in leisure, about which it shall never everything know, Because pleasures have no end, they are a road that has no end, That is why nature created seasons, so that it realised when it was time to bend, And not be left lonely like the desert rose, Who moans the death of beauty lost to nature’s long repose, In the lap of leisure, until it entered a state, Where it was always summer like sunny now, and from this reality it could no longer obviate, Because there was nothing left, to remind it, to end the merriments of summer time, So, it rested in prolonged slumber until the winter robbed it of all its moments sublime, And then, when summer returned and somehow the desert rose bloomed, The nature in this act of callousness was doomed, It was summer always here now, bright light everywhere, Until nature forgot of the desert rose that still bloomed somewhere, And then it all ended and the beauty got buried under the sands of time, And it became the nature’s most infamous crime, To have relied only on summer joys and thinking they will last forever, And when fall took over; the summer and the spring, now returned never!

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!

Edgerton/Assassins of Dreamsongs 174 Their escape was immediately hampered by a confrontation with a huge Knight, as he rose from the ground, to challenge them. Garish buried both fists into the giant's stomach, in hammering blows and then bore his powerfully bulk up over his head. He quickly hurled the Knight into an onrushing mob of tormented soldiers. They all collapsed like multicolored dominoes, in a neat pile, as the three adventurers raced by. "Come on friends and don't stumble!" Garish rushed forward, throwing a crushing blow into the face of another rising Knight. He then filled his arms with the golden Armor Of His Father, which he deposited equally into the reluctant arms of the two bumblers, so he was free to fight, to defend their escape. A swift blow to the chin of a burly, rising Knight and they were at the edge of the camp, making good their escape. "You d-d-don't has to tell us tw-tw-twice not to stumble, oh great Lord!" Humphrey stammered, nearly dropping pieces of the golden armor. He quickly caught up with the others, in trembling, stumbling steps. A mere shoddy group of warriors alarmed by the escape amidst the confusion, were able to arm themselves, and take up pursuit behind the escaping nobleman and his two bumbling friends. The fiery furies continued to dance around the heels and the bare legs of the pursuing Knights, as they ran in torment after them. Edgerton/Assassins of Dreamsongs 175 Brawn however, was not strength enough to overcome the tiny, irritating furies that persisted in their incessant torture of the poor, pursuing, panic stricken Knights. Mammoth swords of steel did not great fly swatters make, as the Knights swung at the fiery furies in their anger, while in pursuit of the giant Nobleman and two trembling bumblers. A frosty wind suddenly began to filter throughout the forest filled with a sparkling, rainbow energy. The currents of the wind seemed to whisper magical words from a small Wizard, hidden deep within the forest: “Danser-silvarum-shadow-ala-sancta!” Within moments, all of the dark shadows within the thick forest seemed to be doing a quaint, little fairy dance, creating a mysterious woodland, filled with darting shadows and dancing shapes. The pursuing Knights were soon filled with uncertainty of which shadows they should chase after. Panic ridden and tormented beyond their endurance, the trail was soon left forgotten by them! The tortured group of tattered warriors instead turned towards the river, like deserting mice. All too eagerly, they plunged into its’ welcome freezing depths; the only real escape from the torment of the relentless “fairy fire bees”. They were soon joined by a host of other warriors, seeking a release from the torment of a Wizard’s vengeful magical touch. Garish's flying feet left deep impressions in the soft, moist forest earth as he ran. Edgerton/Assassins of Dreamsongs 176 The blond Nobleman’s fluid muscles were alive with the act of escape and revitalized at the promise of an extended life. He slowed his pace for a moment and sucked in the frosty night air, waiting for the others to catch up. Humphrey and Godfrey soon collapsed together in an exhausted pile at his feet, panting and wheezing. "Well, we have made good our escape!" Godfrey gasped. "Oh Master, I hope so!" Humphrey whimpered. "I couldn't stagger another struggling step, unless of course we must! Oh, my aching corns and throbbing feet!" A soft voice whispered from somewhere in the trees, “Perhaps that would be a blessing for us all if you didn't." Arkin's voice was like a beautiful melody to their ears. A broad, mischievous smile crept over the face of the tall Nobleman. He again looked into the eyes of the man who had been like a father to him, as well as a friend. Arkin stood, poised like an ancient forgotten statue on a limb of a giant tree, a golden aura surrounding him, to keep out the cold.

Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was an active archaeologist in the region before he rallied the Bedouin and joined the Arab Revolt (1916-1918). He went on a number of research expeditions with his Syrian assistant, Selim "Dahoum" Ahmed.[122] On one such expedition he was joined by archaeologist Leonard Woolley, with whom he surveyed the Negev desert as far south as the Gulf of Aqaba, discovering much about the Nabataean and Babylonian periods of activity in the region. [123] The Australian adventurer and photographer James Francis Hurley visited Petra during the Second World War. Serving under the First Australian Imperial Force, he took a number of photographs of al-Khazneh and the Nabataean tombs that he found in the ruined city.

In 1217 a Christian pilgrim, Master Thetmar, discovered a small chapel with two Greek monks in the deserted ruins of Petra.[114] Petra continued to served as an important stopping-off point on the trade and Hajj routes between the Arabian Peninsula and the rest of the Mamluk and Ottoman lands. The Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Baibars, visited Aaron’s tomb on Mount Hor and one of the crusader castles in 1276 CE.

. . . they beheld its atlas-familiar snowy poles, its blue land-locked seas, its green forests and yellow plains and wide red deserts. They looked down upon Mount Olympus, so tall her summit rose about the highest snow, and the bustling lands of the Grand Valley, thick with cities and towns. As their earth loomed closer, they saw the glittering moonring and here the oracle-eye rested, filling the room with incomprehensible drifting shapes. Some were so huge they took minutes to cross the room, some were tiny and tumbling, some were busy as insects, flitting through the spectators intent upon their small errands; all of them bore the name ROTECH somewhere upon them.

The first hint that something was going on, was learning that Mother wanted to eat in the private dining room that evening. The second was when she bullied me into wearing one of my new gowns, one she consented to my requisition despite it being premade and off the shelf, because, as she said, it suited me so very well. Still, I didn’t step wise to the plan until after we had been served appetizers and wine in the private dining room. There was a knock on the door. One of the serving maids answered. And Erin walked in. My mother was a dead woman. I plastered a smile on my face. “Erin! Come in!” A dead woman. A dead, dead, dead, dead woman. I was going to kill her. Slowly. A lot. Erin grinned, and I had to admit that my heart did skip a beat. “Dunleavy, you look lovely!” “Thank you, Erin. I’m so glad you could come.” My mother was taller than I, but I could reach her throat. That was all I really needed. “Holder Mallorough, I’m so glad you could join us this evening!” I looked at my mother. Who refused to look at me. “Oh, no. I was only keeping Lee company while she waited. I have an engagement with the Yings, and I’m going to be late.” I gaped at her, the significance of her words hitting me hard. Then I shut my mouth. Because I had to be wrong. She wouldn’t dare. She rose from the table and crossed the room to stand by Erin. “I must say you are looking particularly handsome tonight, Erin.” “Thank you, ma’am.” “It is so nice to see young people who know how to dress.” Then she looked at me. “Have a good evening.” She did dare. She was going to leave. She’d set this dinner up, without telling me, and now she was deserting me. I couldn’t believe it. Erin opened the door for her. She stepped out. I sat in my chair and wallowed in the moment of feeling stunned... Damn that woman. And all right, so I couldn’t actually strangle her. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough. But we had to have a talk. A long screaming serious one. No more soft shoes.

A rose struggling in a desert is still braver than a flower flourishing in a rain forest.

16. The Beatitude of Zen. We are far from denying, as already shown in the foregoing chapters, the existence of troubles, pains, diseases, sorrows, deaths in life. Our bliss consists in seeing the fragrant rose of Divine mercy among the thorns of worldly trouble, in finding the fair oasis of Buddha's wisdom in the desert of misfortunes, in getting the wholesome balm of His love in the seeming poison of pain, in gathering the sweet honey of His spirit even in the sting of horrible death. History

The children turned and saw the spinach-green boat coming toward them. “Oh no! Not the Carters!” said Maia. She looked round desperately for somewhere to hide. “If I ran off into the jungle…” But it wasn’t the Carters. In a way it was worse, because from the woman who now rose from her seat in the stern, she would not have tried to hide or run away. “You’re mad!” shouted Miss Minton across the narrowing gap between the boats. “You’re completely mad, Maia. What do you mean by this?” Then she disappeared into the cabin, where--for the first time since Maia had been lost in the fire--she burst into tears. But the relief of seeing Maia safe soon took a different turn. On board the Arabella she complained about Maia’s tangled hair, her bare feet, her strange clothes. She had brought a toothbrush--even a hairbrush--but as she said, it would take days to get Maia to look civilized again. She berated Finn for taking Maia off, she inquired nastily about his Latin, and wanted to know how often they took their quinine pills. By the time she had finished nagging and finding fault, Maia was almost ready to wish that Minty had deserted her.

A dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemployed.'" "But why not employ them?" said Rose, who was not learned in Byron; "you have a home." "Such as it is." "And relations.

It was mid-day when you went away. The sun was strong in the sky. I had done my work and sat alone on my balcony when you went away. Fitful gusts came winnowing through the smells of many distant fields. The doves cooed tireless in the shade, and a bee strayed in my room humming the news of many distant fields. The village slept in the noonday heat. The road lay deserted. In sudden fits the rustling of the leaves rose and died. I glazed at the sky and wove in the blue the letters of a name I had known, while the village slept in the noonday heat. I had forgotten to braid my hair. The languid breeze played with it upon my cheek. The river ran unruffled under the shady bank. The lazy white clouds did not move. I had forgotten to braid my hair. It was mid-day when you went away. The dust of the road was hot and the fields panting. The doves cooed among the dense leaves. I was alone in my balcony when you went away.

Besides, she was always the type to dig in, to nest. What made Rose happiest was sitting in a comfy armchair on a rainy day, reading a good book. Crossing China by train or driving the Mongolian deserts paled in comparison. She was a homebody at heart, like her father. Unsure of

Do you think you would like to test it with me?” Pete asked. He held out his hand, and Beatriz thought for a moment before taking it. Together they climbed onto the amber-brown dance stage and walked across the boards into the very center. They stopped and faced each other. “I don’t know how to dance,” Beatriz admitted. “I don’t either,” Pete said. “I guess we’ll figure it out.” Beatriz took his free hand and put it on her waist. “It’s cold,” Beatriz said. “It is,” Pete said. He stood a little closer to her so that they were warm together. “There’s no music,” Beatriz said. “We need the radio.” But the station had long since gone quiet, and Diablo Diablo had long since turned back into Joaquin. Pete put his voice right by Beatriz’s ear so that his breath warmed her skin, and he began to sing. It was nothing extravagant, just Patsy Cline sung in his low and uneven voice, and they began to dance. It was very quiet. No one else would have seen if not for the desert. But when the desert heard Pete Wyatt singing a love song, it took notice. The desert loved him, after all, and wanted him happy. So when it heard Pete singing, it rose a wind around them until the breeze sang gently like strings, and when it heard Pete singing, it provoked the air to heat and cool around every stone and plant so that each of these things sounded in harmony with his voice, and when it heard Pete singing, it roused Colorado’s grasshoppers to action and they rubbed their legs together like a soft horn section, and when it heard Pete singing, it shifted the very ground beneath Bicho Raro so that the sand and the dirt pounded a beat that matched the sound of the incomplete heart that lived in Pete Wyatt. The sound of this roused the Sorias from their sleep. Francisco looked out of his greenhouse and saw Pete and Beatriz dancing, and he missed Antonia. Antonia looked out the window of her house and saw Pete and Beatriz dancing, and she missed Francisco. Luis the one-handed took out his future love’s box of gloves from beside his bed and counted them. Nana reached for the photograph of her long-dead husband. Michael had been sleeping rolled up in his own lengthy beard, but he woke up and returned to sleep rolled up with Rosa instead. Judith looked out her window and wept with happiness to see her sister happy, and Eduardo wept, too, because he always liked to dress to match his wife when he could.

They tell me I must bruise The rose’s leaf, Ere I can keep and use Its fragrance brief. They tell me I must break The skylark’s heart, Ere her cage song will make The silence start. They tell me love must bleed, And friendship weep, Ere in my deepest need I touch that deep. Must it be always so With precious things? Must they be bruised and go With beaten wings? Ah, yes! by crushing days, By caging nights, by scar Of thorn and stony ways, These blessings are!

We went into the night and for the first time in my life I saw the stars hanging low over the desert, for the atmosphere above us contained no moisture, no dust, no impediment of any kind. It was probably the cleanest air man knows and it displayed the stars as no other could. Not even at Qala Bist, which stood by the river, had the air been so pure. The stars seemed enormous, but what surprised me most was the fact that they dropped right to the horizon, so that to the east some rose out of dunes while to the west other crept beneath piles of shale.” pg 172 Caravans, Michener, 1963.

Charity placed a hand over her heart. “I’ve never felt forgiveness like this.” It was warm sunshine after a cold winter; it was a waterfall in a desert. It gurgled and rose, springing up and chasing away the doubt. Emily smiled. “That’s the thing about forgiveness. It’s contagious.

Like dandelions they flew across the expanse Of desert calm without advance They filtered through the stilled “become” Returning to the land they knew. They knew no more than where they flew. And so they gathered, one and all, And scattered it throughout their path. Only golden-shafted majesty could still their might. And so they flew onward, without a path.

All the verdant growth had been left behind them to the south. Up ahead, the roads dissected what looked like a vast wasteland. Far in the distance rose a lone hill, upon which a Roman fortress held its place like a stone buzzard. The desert plain seemed to go on forever. And over it all, the wind moaned.

The plateau of Mount Hor rose several thousand feet high and overlooked the desert wilderness of Zin. Its rough red rock showed layers of sediment that were claylike at the bottom, but harder limestone on top. Moses, Joshua, Eleazer, and Aaron stood on the mountain looking down upon the people of Israel who filled the plains at the bottom. They were at the very border of Edom, but were not going to enter. Much to Joshua’s dismay, Moses had sent word back to King Rekem assuring him they would respect his demands and not transgress the borders of Edom.

If You are not with, then I feel distressed even in a rose garden If You are with then I enjoy the taste of a rose garden even in a desert. In fact from the silence of the desert he gets the message from his friend. "I have forgotten all the stories of the Rose garden the silence of the desert has given me a message

Sheep's Lament It's nature's way that in the spring Emotions make a lamb's soul sing And so it was my young heart found That love is not by species bound Well cruelly spent, did cupid's dart Pierce deep my foolish woolly heart A wiser sheep would fain desert Such love unwise and bound to hurt. Nor was it then that common sense Came forth to give me sound defence No matter how well meant and groomed My ardent love was clearly doomed. For fate is fickle, fate unkind Fate unhinged my young sheep's mind Though strong inside my true love burns It never wins my love's returns So ardent burn my ovine fires Kindling noble deep desires But I know what e'er I do That four legs never yet won two She lives a life I cannot know And goes to places sheep don't go I patient wait and hope she'll pass But know she'll never share my grass. I know it's doomed, I know I've lost My passion most unkindly crossed For even if she knew my heart I know our lives must stay apart. But maybe she might scratch my nose My love troth's a half-eaten rose With that held in her lovely hand, To think on, she might understand.

We got back on the road, heading west. I remember my thoughts as we ventured into the Simpson Desert. There’s nothing out here. The landscape was flat and lifeless. Except for the occasional jump-up--a small mesa that rose twenty or thirty feet above the desert floor-it just looked like dirt, sticks, and dead trees. The Simpson Desert is one of the hottest places on earth. But Steve brought the desert to life, pointing out lizards, echidnas, and all kinds of wildlife. He made it into a fantastic journey. In the middle of this vast landscape were the two of us, the only people for miles. Steve had become adept at eluding the film crew from time to time so we could be alone. There was a local cattle station about an hour-and-a-half drive from where we were filming, a small homestead in the middle of nowhere. The owners invited the whole crew over for a home-cooked meal. Steve and I stayed in the bush, and Bob and Lyn headed to one of their favorite camping spots. After having dinner, the crew couldn’t locate us. They searched in the desert for a while before deciding to sleep in the car. What was an uncomfortable night for them turned out to be a brilliant night for us! Steve made it romantic without being traditional. His idea of a beautiful evening was building a roaring campfire, watching a spectacular sunset, and cooking a curry dinner for me in a camp oven. Then we headed out spotlighting, looking for wildlife for hours on end. It was fantastic, like the ultimate Easter egg hunt. I never knew what we’d find. When Steve did discover something that night--the tracks of a huge goanna, or a tiny gecko hiding under a bush--he reveled in his discovery. His excitement was contagious, and I couldn’t help but become excited too. The best times in my life were out in the bush with Steve.

We got back on the road, heading west. I remember my thoughts as we ventured into the Simpson Desert. There’s nothing out here. The landscape was flat and lifeless. Except for the occasional jump-up--a small mesa that rose twenty or thirty feet above the desert floor-it just looked like dirt, sticks, and dead trees. The Simpson Desert is one of the hottest places on earth. But Steve brought the desert to life, pointing out lizards, echidnas, and all kinds of wildlife. He made it into a fantastic journey.

Steve and I watched the dingo family play out its drama for a long time. Then we edged our way down to the dam and hopped in. The water was cold, but it felt good. “This is great,” I said, as we swam together. “I’ve been coming here since I was just a little tacker,” Steve said. Bob had brought his young son with him on his research trips, studying the snakes of the region. As I walked in and out of the water, washing up, shampooing my hair, and relishing the chance to clean off some of the desert dust, I noticed something hard underfoot. “Steve, I stepped on something here,” I said. He immediately started clearing the bottom of the pond, tugging on what I had felt beneath the murky water. “Tree limb,” I guessed. “Look around,” Steve said, yanking at the mired object. “No trees here at all.” He couldn’t budge whatever it was, but he didn’t give up. He went back to camp, drove to the dam in his Ute, and tied a chain to the obstacle. As he backed up the truck, the chain tightened. Slowly a cow’s pelvis emerged from the muck. I watched with horror as Steve dislodged an entire cow carcass that had been decomposing right where I had been enjoying my refreshing dip. I must have been poking among its rib cage while I brushed my teeth and washed my hair. Steve dragged the carcass a good distance off. “Do you think we should tell the crew?” he asked me when he came back. “Maybe what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” I said. Steve nodded. “They probably won’t brush their teeth in there, anyway.” “Probably not,” I said, pondering the possibility of future romantic dips with Steve, and what might lurk under the water at the next dam. When we returned to camp, Steve insisted I sit down and not lift a finger while he cooked me a real Aussie breakfast: bacon and sausage with eggs, and toast with Vegemite. This last treat was a paste-like spread that’s an Australian tradition. For an Oregon girl, it was a hard sell. I always thought Vegemite tasted like a salty B vitamin. I chowed down, though, determined to learn to love it. As the sun rose in full, Steve began to get bored. He was antsy. He wanted to go wrangle something, discover something, film anything. Finally, at midmorning, the crew showed up. “Let’s go,” Steve said. “There’s an eagle’s nest my dad showed me when I was just a billy lid. I want to see if it might still be there.” Right, I thought, a nest you saw with Bob years ago. What are the chances we’re going to find that? John looked longingly at the dam. “Thought we might have a tub first,” he said. The grime of the desert covered all of them. “Oh, I think we should go,” I said hastily, the cow carcass fresh in my mind. “You don’t need a bath, do you, guys?” “Come on,” Steve urged. “Wedge-tailed eagles!” No rest for the weary.

When we returned to camp, Steve insisted I sit down and not lift a finger while he cooked me a real Aussie breakfast: bacon and sausage with eggs, and toast with Vegemite. This last treat was a paste-like spread that’s an Australian tradition. For an Oregon girl, it was a hard sell. I always thought Vegemite tasted like a salty B vitamin. I chowed down, though, determined to learn to love it. As the sun rose in full, Steve began to get bored. He was antsy. He wanted to go wrangle something, discover something, film anything. Finally, at midmorning, the crew showed up. “Let’s go,” Steve said. “There’s an eagle’s nest my dad showed me when I was just a billy lid. I want to see if it might still be there.” Right, I thought, a nest you saw with Bob years ago. What are the chances we’re going to find that? John looked longingly at the dam. “Thought we might have a tub first,” he said. The grime of the desert covered all of them. “Oh, I think we should go,” I said hastily, the cow carcass fresh in my mind. “You don’t need a bath, do you, guys?” “Come on,” Steve urged. “Wedge-tailed eagles!” No rest for the weary. “So, Steve,” I said as gently as I could, not wanting to dissuade him as we headed out. “How old were you when Bob took you to see this nest?” “Must’ve been six,” he said. More than two decades ago. I stared around at the limitless horizon. I had my doubts. I watched Steve’s eyes dart across the landscape. He struck out in a particular direction and led us over a series of jump-ups. Then he’d get his bearings and head off again. One hour. Two hours. If someone had put a gun to my head I could not have led them back to the dam. “I think I know where it is,” Steve said abruptly. We continued on a little farther. Sure enough, in the distance I saw an unusually large eucalypt. In its main fork was what appeared to be a thick pile of debris and sticks, carefully laid together, that must have been eight feet thick. There it was, an eagle’s nest, twenty feet off the ground.

We were taking a DC-10 all the way across the country, from the east coast to the west. Together we flew into the Red Centre, the interior of the continent and the location of Ayers Rock--one of Australia’s most recognizable icons. “Have a look at it,” Steve said when we arrived. “It’s the heart of Australia.” I could see why. A huge red mountain rose up out of the flat, sandy landscape. The rock appeared out of place in the great expanse of the desert. The Aborigines knew it as Uluru, and they preferred that tourists did not clamber over their sacred site. We respectfully filmed only the areas we were allowed to access with the local Aborigines’ blessing. As we approached the rock, Steve saw a lizard nearby. He turned to the camera to talk about it. I was concentrating on Steve, Steve was concentrating on the lizard, and John was filming. Bindi was with us, and she could barely take two steps on her own at this point, so I knew I could afford to watch Steve. But after John called out, “Got it,” and we turned back to Bindi, we were amazed at what we saw. Bindi was leaning against the base of Ayer’s Rock. She had placed both her palms against the smooth stone, gently put her cheek up to the rock, and stood there, mesmerized. “She’s listening,” Steve whispered. It was an eerie moment. The whole crew stopped and stared. Then Bindi suddenly seemed to come out of her trance. She plopped down and started stuffing the red sand of Uluru into her mouth like it was delicious.

We were taking a DC-10 all the way across the country, from the east coast to the west. Together we flew into the Red Centre, the interior of the continent and the location of Ayers Rock--one of Australia’s most recognizable icons. “Have a look at it,” Steve said when we arrived. “It’s the heart of Australia.” I could see why. A huge red mountain rose up out of the flat, sandy landscape. The rock appeared out of place in the great expanse of the desert. The Aborigines knew it as Uluru, and they preferred that tourists did not clamber over their sacred site. We respectfully filmed only the areas we were allowed to access with the local Aborigines’ blessing. As we approached the rock, Steve saw a lizard nearby. He turned to the camera to talk about it. I was concentrating on Steve, Steve was concentrating on the lizard, and John was filming. Bindi was with us, and she could barely take two steps on her own at this point, so I knew I could afford to watch Steve. But after John called out, “Got it,” and we turned back to Bindi, we were amazed at what we saw. Bindi was leaning against the base of Ayer’s Rock. She had placed both her palms against the smooth stone, gently put her cheek up to the rock, and stood there, mesmerized. “She’s listening,” Steve whispered. It was an eerie moment. The whole crew stopped and stared. Then Bindi suddenly seemed to come out of her trance. She plopped down and started stuffing the red sand of Uluru into her mouth like it was delicious. We also filmed a thorny devil busily licking up ants from the sandy soil. The one-of-a-kind lizard is covered with big, lumpy, bumpy scales and spikes. “When it rains,” Steve told the camera, “the water droplets run along its body and end up channeling over its face, so that if there is any rain at all, the thorny devil can get a drink without having to look for water!” It’s a pity she won’t remember any of it, I thought, watching Bindi crouch down to examine the thorny devil’s tongue as it madly ate ants. But we had the photos and the footage. What a lucky little girl, I thought. We’ll have all these special experiences recorded for her to take out and enjoy anytime she wants to remember.

One of the best stories of the early Christian desert hermits goes like this: ‘Abbe Lot came to Abbe Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: Now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire?

At last, when the dust settled, the Queen and the Jinni stood on the mountaintop and looked down on the battlefield and the bodies spread like leaves across the desert. The Queen fell to her knees, wearied and wounded, and her sword dropped from her hand. Before her, the doorway to Ambadya burned with fires of every color. “All I wanted,” said the Queen, “was peace between our peoples. But I see now that this is not possible, for my people are ruled by a dreamer, and the jinn are ruled by a monster. My only consolation is that thou art by my side, my Jinni. I would die in the company of a friend, and give thee my final breath. For I have one wish remaining, and it is for thy freedom, yea, even at the cost of mine own life.” At this the Jinni shook her head, replying, “Nay, my queen. The time for wishing is passed. For here is the Shaitan, Lord of all Jinn and King of Ambadya.” And even as she spoke, the fires in the doorway rose higher, and through them stepped Nardukha the Shaitan, terrible to behold. “O impudent woman,” said the Shaitan, looking down at the Queen. “Wouldst thou dare make the Forbidden Wish?” “I would,” she replied. “For I fear thee not.” “Then thou art a fool.” As the Queen’s heart turned to ashes, realizing her doom was upon her, the Shaitan turned to the Jinni and said, “Dost thou recall the first rule of thy kinsmen, Jinni?” And the Jinni replied, “Love no human.” “And hast thou kept this commandment?” “Lord, I have.” And up she rose, as the Queen cried out in dismay. “Are not we like sisters?” asked the Queen. “Of one heart and one spirit?” And the Jinni replied, “Nay, for I am a creature of Ambadya, and thus is my nature deceitful and treacherous. My Lord has come at last, and I would do all that he commands.” The Shaitan, looking on with approval, said to the Jinni, “This human girl is proud and foolish, thinking she could rule both men and jinn. I am well pleased with thee, my servant, who hast brought her to me. Slay the queen and prove thy loyalty to thy king.” And the Jinni grinned, and in her eyes rose a fire. “With pleasure, my Lord.” Then, with a wicked laugh, she struck down the good and noble Queen, the mightiest and wisest of all the Amulen monarchs, whose only mistake was that she had dared to love a Jinni.

Once every few weeks, beginning in the summer of 2018, a trio of large Boeing freighter aircraft, most often converted and windowless 747s of the Dutch airline KLM, takes off from Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam, with a precious cargo bound eventually for the city of Chandler, a western desert exurb of Phoe­nix, Arizona. The cargo is always the same, consisting of nine white boxes in each aircraft, each box taller than a man. To get these pro­foundly heavy containers from the airport in Phoenix to their des­tination, twenty miles away, requires a convoy of rather more than a dozen eighteen-wheeler trucks. On arrival and family uncrated, the contents of all the boxes are bolted together to form one enormous 160-ton machine -- a machine tool, in fact, a direct descendant of the machine tools invented and used by men such as Joseph Bramah and Henry Maudslay and Henry Royce and Henry Ford a century and more before. "Just like its cast-iron predecessors, this Dutch-made behemoth of a tool (fifteen of which compose the total order due to be sent to Chandler, each delivered as it is made) is a machine that makes machines. Yet, rather than making mechanical devices by the pre­cise cutting of metal from metal, this gigantic device is designed for the manufacture of the tiniest of machines imaginable, all of which perform their work electronically, without any visible mov­ing parts. "For here we come to the culmination of precision's quarter­millennium evolutionary journey. Up until this moment, almost all the devices and creations that required a degree of precision in their making had been made of metal, and performed their vari­ous functions through physical movements of one kind or another. Pistons rose and fell; locks opened and closed; rifles fired; sewing machines secured pieces of fabric and created hems and selvedges; bicycles wobbled along lanes; cars ran along highways; ball bearings spun and whirled; trains snorted out of tunnels; aircraft flew through the skies; telescopes deployed; clocks ticked or hummed, and their hands moved ever forward, never back, one precise sec­ond at a time."Then came the computer, then the personal computer, then the smartphone, then the previously unimaginable tools of today -- and with this helter-skelter technological evolution came a time of translation, a time when the leading edge of precision passed itself out into the beyond, moving as if through an invisible gateway, from the purely mechanical and physical world and into an immobile and silent universe, one where electrons and protons and neutrons have replaced iron and oil and bearings and lubricants and trunnions and the paradigm-altering idea of interchangeable parts, and where, though the components might well glow with fierce lights send out intense waves of heat, nothing moved one piece against another in mechanical fashion, no machine required that mea­sured exactness be an essential attribute of every component piece.

August 19 Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. (2 Corinthians 6:10) Sorrow was beautiful, but his beauty was the beauty of the moonlight shining through the leafy branches of the trees in the woods. His gentle light made little pools of silver here and there on the soft green moss of the forest floor. And when he sang, his song was like the low, sweet calls of the nightingale, and in his eyes was the unexpectant gaze of someone who has ceased to look for coming gladness. He could weep in tender sympathy with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice was unknown to him. Joy was beautiful, too, but hers was the radiant beauty of a summer morning. Her eyes still held the happy laughter of childhood, and her hair glistened with the sunshine’s kiss. When she sang, her voice soared upward like a skylark’s, and her steps were the march of a conqueror who has never known defeat. She could rejoice with anyone who rejoices, but to weep with those who weep was unknown to her. Sorrow longingly said, “We can never be united as one.” “No, never,” responded Joy, with eyes misting as she spoke, “for my path lies through the sunlit meadows, the sweetest roses bloom when I arrive, and songbirds await my coming to sing their most joyous melodies.” “Yes, and my path,” said Sorrow, turning slowly away, “leads through the dark forest, and moonflowers, which open only at night, will fill my hands. Yet the sweetest of all earthly songs—the love song of the night—will be mine. So farewell, dear Joy, farewell.” Yet even as Sorrow spoke, he and Joy became aware of someone standing beside them. In spite of the dim light, they sensed a kingly Presence, and suddenly a great and holy awe overwhelmed them. They then sank to their knees before Him. “I see Him as the King of Joy,” whispered Sorrow, “for on His head are many crowns, and the nailprints in His hands and feet are the scars of a great victory. And before Him all my sorrow is melting away into deathless love and gladness. I now give myself to Him forever.” “No, Sorrow,” said Joy softly, “for I see Him as the King of Sorrow, and the crown on His head is a crown of thorns, and the nailprints in His hands and feet are the scars of terrible agony. I also give myself to Him forever, for sorrow with Him must be sweeter than any joy I have ever known.” “Then we are one in Him,” they cried in gladness, “for no one but He could unite Joy and Sorrow.” Therefore they walked hand in hand into the world, to follow Him through storms and sunshine, through winter’s severe cold and the warmth of summer’s gladness, and to be “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

I think Christ has recommended rising early in the morning, by rising from his grave very early,” observed the theologian Jonathan Edwards in the 1720s. Is that why quiet mornings seem so holy? Perhaps it’s that we’re tapping into the traditions of our ancestors, who also rose early to pray, to farm, to fetch water from the river or the well, to travel across the desert before the sun got too hot.

Autumn Psalm A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest) since I last noticed this same commotion. Who knew God was an abstract expressionist? I’m asking myself—the very question I asked last year, staring out at this array of racing colors, then set in motion by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay. Is this what people mean by speed of light? My usually levelheaded mulberry tree hurling arrows everywhere in sight— its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper my friends say I should do something about, whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper at the provocation of the upstart blue, the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper in savage competition with that red and blue— tohubohu returned, in living color. Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you? My attempted poem would lie fallow a year; I was so busy focusing on the desert’s stinginess with everything but rumor. No place even for the spectrum’s introverts— rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all— and certainly no room for shameless braggarts like the ones that barge in here every fall and make me feel like an unredeemed failure even more emphatically than usual. And here they are again, their fleet allure still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone; I’m through with it, want something fuller— why shouldn’t a person have a little fun, some utterly unnecessary extravagance? Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan when He set up (such things are never left to chance) that one split-second assignation with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision. You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there. Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation, there’s real resistance in the nearby air until the entire universe is swayed. Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen. He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade is actually a fairly detailed outline. David never needed one, but he’s long dead and God could use a little recognition. He promises. It won’t go to His head and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm! Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made. But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him, its palms and fingers crimson with applause, that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem, inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws, I came to talk about the way that violet-blue sprang the greens and reds and yellows into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true though I’m not sure I ever took it in. Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew into my field of vision, to realign that dazzle out my window yet again. It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open though I still wouldn’t be able to explain precisely what happened to these vines, these trees. It isn’t available in my tradition. For this, I would have to be Chinese, Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain, autumn rain converging on the trees, a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine, washerwomen heading home for the day, my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready. Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu! Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun! They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew in order to get inside the celebration, which explains how they wound up where they are in my university library’s squashed domain. Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for, but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish— some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor: the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish squinting at each other, head to head, all silently intoning some version of kaddish. Part 1

Three hours later we broke through the clouds. Chicago sprawled below us, a bristling parasite of steel and stone clinging to the curve of Lake Michigan. Skyscrapers rose up from the urban expanse like the pistons of a mighty engine, standing tall and sharp in the rainy gloom. Home was sin and sleaze and glitz in the desert sun. Vegas would steal every penny in your pocket, but it’d make sure you had a great time on your way to the gutter. Chicago didn’t have time to play games. It was a machine for printing money, moving at the speed of industry, and it only offered two choices: keep up or be left behind. Las Vegas was born from a gangster’s dream of fleecing tourists in paradise. Chicago was born from a trading post, built on the bones of an Indian massacre. Neither city has ever forgotten this.

Mountains, even when they are hidden in darkness, are as real as in the daylight. God’s love is as true now as it has been in our brightest times. We will yet climb Jacob’s ladder with angels, and behold the one who sits enthroned above it - our covenant God – our advocate with the Father – our dearest friend! “Believe me when I say that the indescribable splendors of eternity will make us forget the trials of time, or only remember them enough to bless God for leading us through them and for using them for our lasting good. “It’s because of this that we can sing amid our deepest trouble and rejoice even while passing through the furnace. We see the day coming when He will again make our wilderness blossom like the rose! He will cause the desert to ring with our exulting joys because this earthly pain will soon be over, and then ‘together forever with the Lord,’ our joy will never end!2

I loved the love and i still love of it, because it's a light break in endless darkness, the lake that awaits you on the desert, the rose that cannot wither, the warm nest of birds. Love, between hello and goodbye we never are alone.

Don’t lose yourselves in petty pride. I almost died doing that.” “Don’t die tonight.” Awa gestured and hugged Yari, relishing the scent of desert roses.

A man can travel too far from his point of departure and become lost and never find his way back. All that remains to him then is to keep moving forward and pray that hope does not desert him too.

Miryam freed her people from the queen of the Black Land, she led all of them—nearly fifty thousand of them—across the desert, all the way to the shores of the Erythrian Sea,

My Bride is like a Rock rose, a garden in the desert. She prospers no matter what the natural circumstances are, because I am her Source, her life supply. My bride will go through difficulties and face the thorns of other's rejection, but because she is dead in My death and alive in My resurrection, she is not moved, she is not hurt, because she propers through it and bears the fruit of beauty. In the valley of the shadow of death, because she finds comfort and rest in the shade of Me, she grows to even greater beauty. I take her into the low places of the valley so that she may strip away all the leaves of self that shuts up her heart and her beauty.

The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly. A first knowledge of their sense of the purity of rarefaction was given me in early years, when we had ridden far out over the rolling plains of North Syria to a ruin of the Roman period which the Arabs believed was made by a prince of the border as a desert-palace for his queen. The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, 'This is jessamine, this violet, this rose'. But at last Dahoum drew me: 'Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all', and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace. About them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech. 'This,' they told me, 'is the best: it has no taste.

~Infernal Serpent ~ Winds are venomous these days. Masked under a dark silhouette, their smile parades the fossil roots of deceit. Nibbling wings, of which they learnt to fly. Hands blemished red Have you slaughtered a rose lately? The face bleached in dismay tongue weakened. I ain't, the fear following you Like a cloud passing above your shadow. Run!! How far? There is no path across the desert. Fright of a nomad creates mirage in distance Standing in silence, I want to witness the snake shedding its skin again.

Oh, Wonder of Wonders Oh, wonder of wonders My God, can it be That Jesus has died For one rebel like me He lifted my bondage And soul's misery The Lord, King of glory Was wounded for me They led Him to trial They spit in His face He bore it alone Oh, amazing His grace He bowed neath his burden Was scourged in my place I'll sing it forever Amazing His grace With hands full of mercy With hearts full of good My spotless Redeemer Was nailed to the wood He suffered Hell's torment My soul to set free Deserted by God As He hung on the tree He died, but he rose He extracted death's sting He is living enthroned My savior, my king Let the earth hear His voice Men and angels proclaim 'He's coming! He's coming!' He's coming again With the saints marching in I shall be at that throne In the great 'hallelujahs' I'll join in that song With apostles and prophets My best, Lord with thee I shall live! I shall live! Eternally

The next morning we left the Tower and went past St Mary Grace’s Church to the fields which stretched north from Hog Street to Aldgate, a deserted barren area like the blasted heath in one of Will Shakespeare’s plays.