Dice With Death Quotes

There once was a girl who found herself dead. She peered over the ledge of heaven and saw that back on earth her sister missed her too much, was way too sad, so she crossed some paths that would not have crossed, took some moments in her hand shook them up and spilled them like dice over the living world. It worked. The boy with the guitar collided with her sister. "There you go, Len," she whispered. "The rest is up to you.

What the hell, if you are going to roll the dice with Lucifer, I say go the distance.

There is some delight in ale and wine And some in girls with ankles fine But my delight, yes always mine Is to dance with Jak O’ the Shadows We will toss the dice however they fall And snuggle the girls be they short or tall Then follow Lord Mat whenever he calls To dance with Jak O’ the Shadows.

I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward.  I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer. We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?” He, of course, replied, “No.” “Well, we’re going to a better place.” When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds. Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.” “Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked. “My father’s a ghost,” he whispered. I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined.  Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path. “Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.

For all but our most recent history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn’t matter whether you were five or fifty. Every day was a roll of the dice.

death never comes at the right time, despite what mortals believe. Death always comes like a thief.

The exciting isolation of leaning against the wind on the highway hitchhiking, waiting for someone to stop and offer me a lift, perhaps to a town three miles down the road, perhaps to new friendship, perhaps to death.

Everything may evaporate at any instant. Everything!’ I said with surprising vehemence. ‘You, me, the most rocklike personality since Calving Coolidge; death, destruction, despair may strike. To live your life assuming otherwise is insanity.

Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.

Buckley followed the three of them into the kitchen and asked, as he had at least once a day, “Where’s Susie?” They were silent. Samuel looked at Lindsey. “Buckley,” my father called from the adjoining room, “come play Monopoly with me.” My brother had never been invited to play Monopoly. Everyone said he was too young, but this was the magic of Christmas. He rushed into the family room, and my father picked him up and sat him on his lap. “See this shoe?” my father said. Buckley nodded his head. “I want you to listen to everything I say about it, okay?” “Susie?” my brother asked, somehow connecting the two. “Yes, I’m going to tell you where Susie is.” I began to cry up in heaven. What else was there for me to do? “This shoe was the piece Susie played Monopoly with,” he said. “I play with the car or sometimes the wheelbarrow. Lindsey plays with the iron, and when you mother plays, she likes the cannon.” “Is that a dog?” “Yes, that’s a Scottie.” “Mine!” “Okay,” my father said. He was patient. He had found a way to explain it. He held his son in his lap, and as he spoke, he felt Buckley’s small body on his knee-the very human, very warm, very alive weight of it. It comforted him. “The Scottie will be your piece from now on. Which piece is Susie’s again?” “The shoe?” Buckley asked. “Right, and I’m the car, your sister’s the iron, and your mother is the cannon.” My brother concentrated very hard. “Now let’s put all the pieces on the board, okay? You go ahead and do it for me.” Buckley grabbed a fist of pieces and then another, until all the pieces lay between the Chance and Community Chest cards. “Let’s say the other pieces are our friends?” “Like Nate?” “Right, we’ll make your friend Nate the hat. And the board is the world. Now if I were to tell you that when I rolled the dice, one of the pieces would be taken away, what would that mean?” “They can’t play anymore?” “Right.” “Why?” Buckley asked. He looked up at my father; my father flinched. “Why?” my brother asked again. My father did not want to say “because life is unfair” or “because that’s how it is”. He wanted something neat, something that could explain death to a four-year-old He placed his hand on the small of Buckley’s back. “Susie is dead,” he said now, unable to make it fit in the rules of any game. “Do you know what that means?” Buckley reached over with his hand and covered the shoe. He looked up to see if his answer was right. My father nodded. "You won’t see Susie anymore, honey. None of us will.” My father cried. Buckley looked up into the eyes of our father and did not really understand. Buckley kept the shoe on his dresser, until one day it wasn't there anymore and no amount of looking for it could turn up.

The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people -- eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin.

Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty. Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.

Wine there! Wine and dice! Tomorrow's fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. 'Live!' he whispers softly, 'Live! I come.

The particular way in which he was choosing to dice recklessly with death today was by trying to pay for a drinks bill the size of a small defence budget with an American Express card, which was not acceptable anywhere in the known Universe.

Since I encountered death, met death on every mountain path,conversed with death in my sleep, wrestled with death in the snow, gambled at dice with death, I have come to the conclusion that death is not an enemy but a brother. Death is a beautiful naked man who looks like Apollo, and he is notsatisfied with those who wither away in old age. Death is a perfectionist, he likes the young and beautiful, he wants to stroke our hair and caress the sinew that binds our muscle to the bone. He does all he can to meet us, our faces gladden his heart, and he stands in our path to challenge us because he likes a clean fair fight, and after the fight he likes to befriend us, clap us on the shoulder, and make us laugh at all the pettiness and folly of the living. At the conclusion of a battle he wanders amongst the dead, raising them up, placing laurels upon the brows of those most comely, and he gathers them together as his own children and takes them away to drink wine that tastes of honey and gives them the sense of proportion that they never had in life.

When we are thrust out into the world just as we are, we first have to identify with that particular throw of the dice, with that accident organized by the divine computer: to get over our surprise that precisely this (what we see facing us in the mirror) is our self. Without the faith that our face expresses our self, without that basic illusion, that arch-illusion, we can not live or at least we cannot take life seriously. And it isn‘t enough for us to identify with our selves, it is necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way we can regard ourselves not merely as a variant of a human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence.

The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is not possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.

El mundo solo dice siempre una cosa, e interesa, después cansa.

The non-scientist in the street probably has a clearer notion of physics, chemistry and biology than of statistics, regarding statisticians as numerical philatelists, mere collector of numbers.

Who said death is dead? He's fully alive, traveling around the world, throwing shadows and soaking in the sun. Visiting the young and old; placing bets and dicing regrets, for the worse or a better off place.

If you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that thunder will deafen us, then one of those things will turn out to be true and you'll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.

I swore as the knife I’d been using to dice our dinner bit into my finger. I dropped it on the floor, blood spattering the counter and cupboard doors a furious red. I watched, mesmerised, as the blood welled up and began to seep down my hand; I tried to catalogue the amount of pain I was in. Surprisingly little, I concluded, pushing at the edges of the wound to see how deep it went. Deep enough. I was starting to feel it now, but it didn’t hurt so much. I’d endured far worse. If it came to it, I could do it. There was comfort in that knowledge.

The river of life, of mysterious laws and mysterious choice, flows past a deserted embankment; and along that other deserted embankment Charles now begins to pace, a man behind the invisible gun carriage on which rests his own corpse. He walks towards an imminent, self-given death? I think not; for he has at which to build; has already begun, though he would still bitterly deny it, thought there are tears in his eyes to support his denial, to realize that life, however advantageously Sarah may in some ways seem to fit the role of Sphinx, is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the city's iron heart, endured. And out again, upon the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter. And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins, But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.

This is indeed only a game, but it is a game of life and death!” the Reverend John Hollidge of Gold Hill Baptist Church in Buckinghamshire said in a letter to parents.

Of course the one type of sashimi you really must try is fugu,” Alexander said expansively, smoothing his napkin across his straining cummerbund. “It’s simply the most exquisite taste.” “Fugu?” I said, trying to insert myself into the conversation. “Isn’t that the horribly poisonous one?” “Absolutely, and that’s what makes the experience. I’ve never been a drug taker—I know my own weaknesses, and I am very aware of being one of life’s lotus-eaters, so I’ve never trusted myself to dabble in that sort of thing—but I can only assume that the high one experiences after eating fugu triggers a similar neuron response. The diner has diced with death, and won.

—Estás despierto, despierto de verdad. Asiente y dice: —Más o menos. —Me alegro de que hayas vuelto. —Y es verdad, no cabe en sí de felicidad—. ¡Has vuelto de veras! —Nunca me fui. —Me salvaste en el río. —Y tú a mí aquí.

I’ve been in your skin,” he taunted. “I know you inside and out. There’s nothing there. Do us all a favor and die so we can start working on another plan and quit thinking maybe you’ll grow the fuck up and be capable of something.” Okay, enough! “You don’t know me inside and out,” I snarled. “You may have gotten in my skin, but you have never gotten inside my heart. Go ahead, Barrons, make me slice and dice myself. Go ahead, play games with me. Push me around. Lie to me. Bully me. Be your usual constant jackass self. Stalk around all broody and pissy and secretive, but you’re wrong about me. There’s something inside me you’d better be afraid of. And you can’t touch my soul. You will never touch my soul!” I raised my hand, drew back the knife, and let it fly. It sliced through the air, straight for his head. He avoided it with preternatural grace, a mere whisper of a movement, precisely and only as much as was required to not get hit. The hilt vibrated in the wood of the ornate mantel next to his head. “So, fuck you, Jericho Barrons, and not the way you like it. Fuck you—as in, you can’t touch me. Nobody can.” I kicked the table at him. It crashed into his shins. I picked up a lamp from the end table. Flung it straight at his head. He ducked again. I grabbed a book. It thumped off his chest. He laughed, dark eyes glittering with exhilaration. I launched myself at him, slammed a fist into his face. I heard a satisfying crunch and felt something in his nose give. He didn’t try to hit me back or push me away. Merely wrapped his arms around me and crushed me tight to his body, trapping my arms against his chest. Then, when I thought he might just squeeze me to death, he dropped his head forward, into the hollow where my shoulder met my neck. “Do you miss fucking me, Ms. Lane?” he purred against my ear. Voice resonated in my skull, pressuring a reply. I was tall and strong and proud inside myself. Nobody owned me. I didn’t have to answer any questions I didn’t want to, ever again. “Wouldn’t you just love to know?” I purred back. “You want more of me, don’t you, Barrons? I got under your skin deep. I hope you got addicted to me. I was a wild one, wasn’t I? I bet you never had sex like that in your entire existence, huh, O Ancient One? I bet I rocked your perfectly disciplined little world. I hope wanting me hurts like hell!” His hands were suddenly cruelly tight on my waist. “There’s only one question that matters, Ms. Lane, and it’s the one you never get around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It’s the truth you can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die. Prove yourself. How much truth can you take, Ms. Lane?” Dreamfever

For the historian John Demos, the primary motivation of witchcraft accusations against women of middle or advanced age in New England was their “uppity” attitude, especially in regard to their husbands. Back then, if you fitted the stereotype of the nag—still alive and kicking today!—you were dicing with death.

Hablamos de ganar y perder una guerra con la misma naturalidad con que se habla de ganar y perder un partido. En un anuncio televisivo del ejército norteamericano aparece un carro de combate que destruye a otro en unas maniobras, después de lo cual el jefe del vehículo victorioso dice: «Cuando ganamos, no gana una sola persona, sino todo el equipo.» La relación entre deporte y combate resulta por demás clara. Los fans (abreviatura de «fanáticos») llegan a cometer toda clase de desmanes, incluso a matar, cuando se sienten vejados por la derrota de su equipo, se les impide celebrar la victoria o consideran que el arbitro ha cometido una injusticia.

He was shaking his head as he read some of the words that were written in the pie sections of the wheel; Meat Snatch, Gash and Stitch, Jaws of Life, Tongue Twister, Enema of Horror, Nailed, Dissection, Musical Hair Patches, Eye Deflation, Intestinal Jump Rope, Cooked Until Dripping, Spoon of Pain, Needle Works, Ball Squats, Cut and Rip, Two Headed Cock, Bone Collector, Joint Screws, Fused, Human Tesla Coil, Barbed Wired, Shit Faced, Root and Rod, Colon Blow, Skin Deep, Boiling Nuts, Sewn, Muscle Stimulator, Urethra Tug-o-war, Crack a Cap, Tendon Rubber Bands, Weenie Roast, Musical Extremities, Root Canal, Needle Mania, Tattooed Wall Art, Rod and Prod, Slice and Dice, Sex Change and Torched Beyond Recognition. I

Torture Cuisine by Stewart Stafford Kitchen death growls, Whipping that cream, Beating those eggs, Burning all the toast. Knifing diced cheese, Drawn, quartered ham, Straining tomato sauce, Crushed-down walnuts. Peeling potatoes naked, Then smashing them up, You say purée, I say mash, Turkey and chicken skewers. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Perhaps,” thought Robin, “the soldiers didn’t actually mock Jesus at all. It was just a game, which they let him join in. He might even have thrown dice with them. The crown and the purple robe were just dressing-up. It was the Romans’ idea of fun. I don’t believe when a prisoner is condemned to death the people guarding him are beastly. They try and make the time go quickly, because they feel sorry for him.

Our profession is amongst the hardest there is, for there is only a very fine line between life and death. As officers, we do everything we can to load the dice for our side, and yet the enemy does not always play by our rules, even when we cheat. No matter how well you plan or train your men, there will always be a cost. We work to limit that cost, while at the same time discharging our duty to the best of our ability.

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured. And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death’s bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in corridors of shells. Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil, Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled, Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars; And silent answers crept across the stars. Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps Monody shall not wake the mariner. This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

Funny thing about death. It seems to come so unexpectedly to those who aren’t looking for it. They’re not thinking this could be their last day on earth. They drink their coffee, go to work, or hang with their friends. They laugh. They talk. They easily forget about the people they’ve hurt, even a little bit, because there’s always time to say sorry. Always tomorrow. They don’t seek out their family members and forgive them. Forgiveness is powerful, and when we hurt, we wield this gift like a weapon, choosing to slice and dice as we please. Sometimes, all people want is that smile and the words of forgiveness that follow. Sometimes that’s the hardest gift to give or receive.

Listen, my friend! [Siddhartha speaking] I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this ‘someday’ is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on the way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people—eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good, death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it….

Many potential readers will skip the shopping cart or cash-out clerk because they have seen so many disasters reported in the news that they’ve acquired a panic mentality when they think of them. “Disasters scare me to death!” they cry. “I don’t want to read about them!” But really, how can a picture hurt you? Better that each serve as a Hallmark card that greets your fitful fevers with reason and uncurtains your valor. Then, so gospeled, you may see that defeating a disaster is as innocently easy as deciding to go out to dinner. Remove the dread that bars your doors of perception, and you will enjoy a banquet of treats that will make the difference between suffering and safety. You will enter a brave new world that will erase your panic, and release you from the grip of terror, and relieve you of the deadening effects of indifference —and you will find that switch of initiative that will energize your intelligence, empower your imagination, and rouse your sense of vigilance in ways that will tilt the odds of danger from being forever against you to being always in your favor. Indeed, just thinking about a disaster is one of the best things you can do —because it allows you to imagine how you would respond in a way that is free of pain and destruction. Another reason why disasters seem so scary is that many victims tend to see them as a whole rather than divide them into much smaller and more manageable problems. A disaster can seem overwhelming when confronted with everything at once —but if you dice it into its tiny parts and knock them off one at a time, the whole thing can seem as easy as eating a lavish dinner one bite at a time. In a disaster you must also plan for disruption as well as destruction. Death and damage may make the news, but in almost every disaster far more lives are disrupted than destroyed. Wit­ness the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 and killed 158 people. The path of death and destruction was less than a mile wide and only 22 miles long —but within thirty miles 160,000 citizens whose property didn’t suffer a dime of damage were profoundly disrupted by the carnage, loss of power and water, suspension of civic services, and inability to buy food, gas, and other necessities. You may rightfully believe your chances of dying in a disaster in your lifetime may be nearly nil, but the chances of your life being disrupted by a disaster in the next decade is nearly a sure thing. Not only should you prepare for disasters, you should learn to premeditate them. Prepare concerns the body; premeditate concerns the mind. Everywhere you go, think what could happen and how you might/could/would/should respond. Use your imagination. Fill your brain with these visualizations —run mind-movies in your head —develop a repertoire —until when you walk into a building/room/situation you’ll automatically know what to do. If a disaster does ambush you —sure you’re apt to panic, but in seconds your memory will load the proper video into your mobile disk drive and you’ll feel like you’re watching a scary movie for the second time and you’ll know what to expect and how to react. That’s why this book is important: its manner of vivifying disasters kickstarts and streamlines your acquiring these premeditations, which lays the foundation for satisfying your needs when a disaster catches you by surprise.

They lived in a world of destruction and fortuitous death. All was chance, and it was not even the Devil who threw the dice, for he was part of the fairy-tale and perished with it. It had hardly been worth while to pick a bone with it, for the only thing to quarrel with was one's own credulity in having ever believed a tale that broke down at so many points when put to the test. Year by year boys fresh from school joined in the dance of death, and sweltered in the reeking, stinking heat, when they should have been playing cricket or swimming in cool waters, and they got trench-fever and were gassed, and young limbs swift to run and ripe for love were gashed by bullets and sawn off in hospitals. The fate of the world rested on their shoulders: they were the bewildered scapegoats who were driven out into this desert of death, to expiate the criminal pride and folly of those who had been in charge of world-affairs while they were yet unbreeched. Save for rare moments of panic, they maintained a cheerful carelessness, a studied unconsciousness of the surrounding horror, for to think about it, to realize it and speak of it was to go mad. A few went mad, and with bandaged eyes awaited the volley they would never hear. The rest carried on, dumb and gallant, saying nothing, except in a few blurted words to a friend, of that smouldering focus of resentment and despair.

As the pumping engines for the circulatory system, ventricles must have a particular ovoid, lemonlike shape for strong, swift ejection of blood. If the end of the left ventricle balloons out, as it does in takotsubo hearts, the firm, healthy contractions are reduced to inefficient spasms—floppy and unpredictable. But what’s remarkable about takotsubo is what causes the bulge. Seeing a loved one die. Being left at the altar or losing your life savings with a bad roll of the dice. Intense, painful emotions in the brain can set off alarming, life-threatening physical changes in the heart. This new diagnosis was proof of the powerful connection between heart and mind. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy confirmed a relationship many doctors had considered more metaphoric than diagnostic. As a clinical cardiologist, I needed to know how to recognize and treat takotsubo cardiomyopathy. But years before pursuing cardiology, I had completed a residency in psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Having also trained as a psychiatrist, I was captivated by this syndrome, which lay at the intersection of my two professional passions. That background put me in a unique position that day at the zoo. I reflexively placed the human phenomenon side by side with the animal one. Emotional trigger … surge of stress hormones … failing heart muscle … possible death. An unexpected “aha!” suddenly hit me. Takotsubo in humans and the heart effects of capture myopathy in animals were almost certainly related—perhaps even the same syndrome with different names.

Listen well, my dear, listen well! The sinner, which I am and which you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha—and now see: these "times to come" are a deception, are only a parable! The sinner is not on his way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things. No, within the sinner is now and today already the future Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is not possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.—These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind.

It is raining.  The clock ticks.  I am leaning on my elbow.  The wind blows through the cracks.  The door rattles in its frame.  My arm is tired of staying in one position.  There is a pressure on the wrist.  My temple burns on one side.  I wonder what will happen next.  Someone laughs.  If he had heard the rain, the clock, and the door, he would have kept silent.  Had I been laughing, I would not have heard these things. Gaze into a cat's eye or a gorilla's.  You will notice a peculiar thing that will make you shudder.  sometimes cats claw at human eyes.  Some- times gorillas enrage. Telepathy and death are wound inextricably together.  To see why this is so, you must understand consciousness.  When, late at night in your bed, you hear a distant automobile, you and the driver are parts of yourself.  When you speak, you are alone and the listener is both you and himself.  Two men, one on the mountain and the other in the village, cannot communicate.  Each is looking into a mirror.  Wave, and *he* waves - shout, and *he* replies.  All of us see the same moon and feel the same heartbeat, but we can never admit it.  One says the moon is a pale disc, another that it is a satellite of the Earth, a third that it is a silver world.  My heart thumps, yours clatters, and his booms.  Consciousness is distortion. But much telepathy passes unnoticed.  Dogs in the night, a dream of Mabel, Dr. Rhines' dice games - these are self-conscious tricks that mean nothing.  What of the more obvious examples?  You know when another is lying.  You know who is going down the stair.  You know emotion without seeing it.  You know the intelligence of others.  Some sign gives them away.  It is coincidence?  Guessing games again?   Then think of what you could not possibly know, what no one could tell you.  Is there any doubt you do not know that fellow on the gibbet or the thought of that girl on the stake?  Watch someone die and you may read his mind at ease. You need not got so far.  We human beings understand one another better than we think.  Argue, deny, shout, denounce, destroy.  Nothing alters truth.  You, reader, see my flaws and concentrate on them.  You wonder why I choose this word and not that. My arguments are weak and you can drum up stronger ones against them.  But we are eye to eye for all of that.

The day-to-day horror of writing gave me a notion of tournament time. Writing novels is tedious. When will this book be finished, when will it reveal its bright and shining true self? it takes freakin’ years. At the poker table, you’re only playing a fraction of the hands, waiting for your shot. If you keep your wits, can keep from flying apart while those around you are self-destructing, devouring each other, you’re halfway there. … Let them flame out while you develop a new relationship with time, and they drift away from the table. 86-7 Coach Helen’s mantra: It’s OK to be scared, but don’t play scared. 90 [During a young adult trip to Los Vegas] I was contemplating the nickel in my hand. Before we pushed open the glass doors, what the heck, I dropped it into a one-armed bandit and won two dollars. In a dank utility room deep in the subbasements of my personality, a little man wiped his hands on his overalls and pulled the switch: More. Remembering it now, I hear a sizzling sound, like meat being thrown into a hot skillet. I didn't do risk, generally. So I thought. But I see now I'd been testing the House Rules the last few years. I'd always been a goody-goody. Study hard, obey your parents, hut-hut-hut through the training exercises of Decent Society. Then in college, now that no one was around, I started to push the boundaries, a little more each semester. I was an empty seat in lecture halls, slept late in a depressive funk, handed in term papers later and later to see how much I could get away with before the House swatted me down. Push it some more. We go to casinos to tell the everyday world that we will not submit. There are rules and codes and institutions, yes, but for a few hours in this temple of pure chaos, of random cards and inscrutable dice, we are in control of our fates. My little gambles were a way of pretending that no one was the boss of me. … The nickels poured into the basin, sweet music. If it worked once, it will work again. We hit the street. 106-8 [Matt Matros, 3x bracelet winner; wrote The Making of a Poker Player]: “One way or another you’re going to have a read, and you’re going to do something that you didn’t expect you were going to do before, right or wrong. Obviously it’s better if you’re right, but even if you’re wrong, it can be really satisfying to just have a read, a feeling, and go with it. Your gut.” I could play it safe, or I could really play. 180 Early on, you wanted to stay cool and keep out of expensive confrontations, but you also needed to feed the stack. The stack is hungry. 187 The awful knowledge that you did what you set out to do, and you would never, ever top it. It was gone the instant you put your hands on it. It was gambling. 224

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.

Another reason why disasters seem so scary is that many victims tend to see them as a whole rather than divide them into much smaller and more manageable problems. A disaster can seem overwhelming when confronted with everything at once —but if you dice it into its tiny parts and knock them off one at a time, the whole thing can seem as easy as eating a lavish dinner one bite at a time. In a disaster you must also plan for disruption as well as destruction. Death and damage may make the news, but in almost every disaster far more lives are disrupted than destroyed. Wit­ness the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 and killed 158 people. The path of death and destruction was less than a mile wide and only 22 miles long —but within thirty miles 160,000 citizens whose property didn’t suffer a dime of damage were profoundly disrupted by the carnage, loss of power and water, suspension of civic services, and inability to buy food, gas, and other necessities. You may rightfully believe your chances of dying in a disaster in your lifetime may be nearly nil, but the chances of your life being disrupted by a disaster in the next decade is nearly a sure thing. Not only should you prepare for disasters, you should learn to premeditate them. Prepare concerns the body; premeditate concerns the mind. Everywhere you go, think what could happen and how you might/could/would/should respond. Use your imagination. Fill your brain with these visualizations —run mind-movies in your head —develop a repertoire —until when you walk into a building/room/situation you’ll automatically know what to do. If a disaster does ambush you —sure you’re apt to panic, but in seconds your memory will load the proper video into your mobile disk drive and you’ll feel like you’re watching a scary movie for the second time and you’ll know what to expect and how to react. That’s why this book is important: its manner of vivifying disasters kickstarts and streamlines your acquiring these premeditations, which lays the foundation for satisfying your needs when a disaster catches you by surprise.

The throw of dice in a gambling match indicates fate while the movement of coins on the board indicates free will. Thus the Vedic game of dice was not just a game but a representation of life controlled by fate and free will. It was a part of fertility rituals. It was said that in the game of life, Yama, god of death and destiny, threw the die while humans guided by Kama, god of life and desire, had the power to move the coins.

Dicing with death is one man’s cup of tea, but another man’s poison. I just didn’t fear anything.

«Be', si capisce cos'hanno pensato. Aveva funzionato bene rapire i ragazzi per far rigare dritto i parenti: era solo questione di tempo prima che cominciassero a fare il contrario. Solo» li guardò e Harry notò con stupore che stava sorridendo, «che hanno trovato un osso duro. La vecchia strega vive da sola e avranno pensato che non valeva la pena di mandare qualcuno di particolarmente potente. Fatto sta» Neville rise «che Dawlish è ancora al San Mungo e la nonna è scappata. Mi ha mandato una lettera» e si battè una mano sulla tasca all'altezza del cuore. «Dice che è fiera di me, che sono il degno figlio dei miei genitori, e di resistere.»

This war has made a mockery of the arrogant fools we were. Our brother’s life ended in a second; my own hung in the balance. And from what we have all heard, you have diced with death on a number of occasions.” He held out his hand, saying, “I no longer have the stomach for finer feelings that are affronted by nothing at all, have you?

Duryodhana came to the village in search of the Pandavas in exile. Thirsty, he asked an old woman for water. Impulsively, she gave him the toddy she was carrying. The parched Prince drank it with relish. It was only then that the woman noticed he was a Kshatriya warrior and he could lose his caste by drinking toddy served by an Untouchable Kurathi woman like herself. Horrified by what she had done, she was certain the Kshatriya Prince would punish her with death if she told him the truth. However, not wishing to cheat someone who had trusted her, she confessed her ‘crime’, risking her life. She waited for certain punishment, but was astonished by Duryodhana’s reaction. “Mother,” he said, “there is no caste for hunger and thirst. Blessed are you for putting the interests of a thirsty man before your own safety.

Sono così i labirinti, hanno vie, traverse e vicoli ciechi, c'è chi dice che il modo più sicuro di uscirne sia di continuare a camminare e girare sempre dallo stesso lato, ma questo, come siamo obbligati a sapere, è contrario alla natura umana.

(He had) hands that felt like a glove full of dice

Life is not about fairness or unfairness. It is often unjust, claiming the good and the innocent as its victims. Life is about making certain choices: between one action and another, between generous self-giving and selfish holding back; and it is also about what we make of the harsh, unlooked-for blows that come to us all: sickness and pain, grief and old age. None of us dare judge the life of another: that is God's prerogative, and his judgement is matched by his mercy. Those who become embittered or lose their faith or take their own life in despair may have had the dice loaded against them from the start, and none of us know whether we should have survived if we had been in their place. All I would dare claim is that it is good if we learn from our own experience of suffering or bereavement, and as a result are wiser, more tolerant, above all more compassionate. There are those who are able to use their sickness, their pain, even their dying as a time for growth and a new-found trust in the God who holds us in death as in life and will not let us go. And perhaps they are not as rare as we think.

long before reality TV and Facebook or Instagram — media analyst Neil Postman ominously warned, “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; [and] culture-death is a clear possibility.

She soaked, washed, and trimmed three artichokes, baby purple Romagnas, which would sadly lose their beautiful hue once they hit hot water, then washed and peeled a bunch of pencil-thin asparagus. She pulled out several small zucchini and sliced them into translucent moons. She washed three leeks, slicing them down their centers and peeling back each layer, carefully rinsing away any sand, then chopped the white, light green, and some of the darker parts into a fine dice. She shelled a couple handfuls of spring peas, collecting them in a ceramic bowl. She chopped a bulb of fennel and julienned one more, then washed and spun the fronds. She washed the basil and mint and spun them dry. Last, she chopped the shallots. With the vegetables prepped, she started on the risotto, the base layer for the torta a strati alla primavera, or spring layer cake, she'd been finessing since her arrival, and which she hoped would become Dia's dish. She'd make a total of six 'torte': three artichoke and three asparagus. The trick was getting the risotto to the perfect consistency, which was considerably less creamy than usual. It had to be firm enough to keep its shape and support the layers that would be placed on top of it, but not gummy, the kiss of death for any risotto. She started with a 'soffritto' of shallot, fennel, and leek, adding Carnaroli rice, which she preferred to arborio, pinot grigio, and, when the wine had plumped the rice, spring-vegetable stock, one ladle at a time. Once the risotto had absorbed all the liquid and cooked sufficiently, she divided it into six single-serving crescent molds, placed the molds in a glass baking dish, and popped them all in the oven, which made the risotto the consistency of a soft Rice Krispies treat. Keeping the molds in place, she added the next layer, steamed asparagus in one version, artichoke in the other. A layer of basil and crushed pignoli pesto followed, then the zucchini rounds, flash-sauteed, and the fennel matchsticks, cooked until soft, and finally, the spring-pea puree. She carefully removed the first mold and was rewarded with a near-perfect crescent tower, which she drizzled with red-pepper coulis. Finally, she placed a dollop of chilled basil-mint 'sformato' alongside the crescent and radiated mint leaves around the 'sformato' so that it looked like a sun. The sun and the moon, 'sole e luna,' all anyone could hope for.

Life and death. He was used to calling the shots, but now we could both only watch as someone else threw the dice.

The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death.

E' proprio vero quel che si dice, cioè che l'uomo è stato costretto a invetnare il lavoro per evitarsi la fatica di essere costretto a pensare!

And, insofar as the Freudian name for this radical negativity is the death drive, Schuster is right to point out how, paradoxically, what Sade misses in his celebration of the ultimate Crime of radical destruction of all life is, precisely, the death drive: “for all its wantonness and havoc, the Sadeian will-to-extinction is premised on a fetishistic denial of the death drive. The sadist makes himself into the servant of universal extinction precisely in order to avoid the deadlock of subjectivity, the “virtual extinction” that splits the life of the subject from within. The Sadeian libertine expels this negativity outside himself in order to be able to slavishly devote himself to it; the apocalyptic vision of an absolute Crime thus functions as a screen against a more intractable internal split. What the florid imagination of the sadist masks is the fact that the Other is barred, inconsistent, lacking, that it cannot be served for it presents no law to obey, not even the wild law of its accelerating auto-destruction. There is no nature to be followed, rivalled or outdone, and it is this void or lack, the non-existence of the Other, that is incomparably more violent than even the most destructive fantasm of the death drive. Or as Lacan argues, Sade is right if we just turn around his evil thought: subjectivity is the catastrophe it fantasizes about, the death beyond death, the “second death.” While the sadist dreams of violently forcing a cataclysm that will wipe the slate clean, what he does not want to know is that this unprecedented calamity has already taken place. Every subject is the end of the world, or rather this impossibly explosive end that is equally a “fresh start,” the unabolishable chance of the dice throw.”[6] Kant characterized the free autonomous act as an act that cannot be accounted for in the terms of natural causality, of the texture of causes and effects: a free act occurs as its own cause, it opens up a new causal chain from its zero-point. So, insofar as “second death” is the interruption of the natural life-cycle of generation and corruption, no radical annihilation of the entire natural order is needed for this—an autonomous free act already suspends natural causality, and the subject as such is already this cut in the natural circuit, the self-sabotage of natural goals. The mystical name for this end of the world is “the night of the world,” while the philosophical name is “radical negativity” as the core of subjectivity. And, to quote Mallarmé, a throw of the dice will never abolish the hazard, i.e., the abyss of negativity remains forever the unsublatable background of subjective creativity. We may even risk here an ironic version of Gandhi’s famous motto “be the change you want to see in the world”: the subject is itself the catastrophe it fears and tries to avoid.

One by Stewart Stafford Death riding a pale horse, Warned it was time to leave, No hiding place as dice rolled, I sank to my knees to grieve. Six hundred and sixty-six morticians, Greeted the thing from the sea, Scuttling sideways down the road, It headed for Washington D.C. Navel-gazing, not my thing at all, But the Day of Judgement came by, Grabbing my phone lightning-fast, A dying breath to scream goodbye. Firestorms, tsunamis, the dead resurrecting, The sun shattered into nine, Winds that flayed skin from bone, Jester bells at dawn's last shine. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

So… you do dumb stuff and take shortcuts like the one I was taking now because maybe… just maybe… someone was gonna make it because I took another risk I couldn’t afford. Rolled the dice. Wrote checks I could only cash in death.

6 oz. can tomato paste ¼ cup dark beer (Mom uses a chocolate stout) 1 cup beef stock ¼ cup molasses 2 heaping tablespoons chili powder 2 teaspoons cumin A bunch of fresh cilantro 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon pepper Olive oil Directions: Brown ground beef and stew meat. Drain fat and set aside. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Gently slice an X into the tomato skins and place in boiling water. Remove tomatoes from water when the skin starts to peel. The skins will easily come off. Dice and set aside. Add a large glug of olive oil to a stockpot, and turn burner onto medium-low. Wash cilantro. Cut and dice the stalks. Reserve the cilantro leaves for later. Chop onion, celery, and garlic and sauté with the cilantro stalks until the onions become translucent. Add tomatoes, beans, and beef. Mix well, then add all remaining ingredients. Mom usually finishes off the rest of the beer while she’s cooking. Cover with a lid, turn heat to low, and simmer for 3 to 4 hours. Garnish chili with your favorite toppings. Mom usually puts out: sour cream, shredded cheese, green onions, olives, tortilla chips, peppers, salsa, and fresh cilantro.

The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice with death.

Ahab would be king eventually. He had no chance of becoming nameless. He did not have to fight to make his mark on the land. From the moment of his birth until the day of his death he would be remembered. His name would be recorded in the book of kings even if he was a drunkard king who did nothing but sleep with his concubines and throw dice.

She observes their habits and the games they play to stay alert. Regicide, Nine-gambit and Senet in the officers’ refectory; Ashtapada in cartography; Gow, and Hounds and Wolves, in the war room; games of dice and wager in the billet decks; hands of Tarock on the fuse canisters of the autoloaders; rounds of Song and Cartomance in the dining halls, fast-shuffled turns of Thrice-My-Trick in the boiler sumps.

Rise again from death, shapeshifter. Reroll the dice of your life. Remake the world in your image. Outrun the wolves at your door. Manifest a future where you never have to die again, but know that you could if you had to. You have fallen many times before.

business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; cultural-death is a clear possibility.

time, often the unpredictable wizard that rolls the dice for us and death, there, like a panther in the shadows, discrete yet alert

Tata Ante La Muerte De Don Pablo (para Rosa Amelia González) Mohina y serena, sin la trenza engañosa, en un silencio embalsamado, miras el paso de la muerte llegar. Tu boca firme dice con la pausa del ave en la llanura: La muerte es la mejor de las desgracias porque borra todas las demás.

El arrepentimiento es la cosa más inútil de este mundo, en general quien se dice arrepentido lo único que quiere es conquistar perdón y olvido, en el fondo, cada uno de nosotros continúa satisfecho de sus culpas.

Starting in the Clinton era and continuing through George W. Bush’s two terms, progressive activists mounted direct pressure—either in the form of public protest or lawsuits—against banks. This was aimed at intimidating banks to adopt new lending standards and also to engage the activist groups themselves in the lending process. In 1994, a young Barack Obama, recently graduated from Harvard Law School, joined two other attorneys in suing Citibank for “discriminatory lending” because it had denied home loans to several bank applicants. The case was called Selma S. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank. Citibank denied wrongdoing, but as often happens in such situations, it settled the lawsuit to avoid litigation costs and the negative publicity. Selma Buycks-Roberson and two of her fellow plaintiffs altogether received $60,000, and Obama and his fellow lawyers received nearly a million dollars in legal fees. This was a small salvo in a massive fusillade of lawsuits filed against banks and financial institutions in the 1990s. ACORN, the most notorious of these groups, had its own ally in the Clinton administration: Hillary Clinton. (Around the same time, ACORN was also training an aspiring community activist named Barack Obama.) Hillary helped to raise money for ACORN and also for a closely allied group, the Industrial Areas Foundation. The IAF had been founded by Saul Alinsky and continued to operate as an aggressive leftist pressure group long after Alinsky’s death in 1972. Hillary lent her name to these groups’ projects and met several times with their organizers in the White House. ACORN’s efforts were also supported by progressive politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Jon Corzine, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid. These politicians berated the banks to make loans easier to get. “I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness,” Frank said at a September 25, 2003, hearing. “I want to roll the dice a little more.

Just another version of glade Their sharp thoughts lost the axe’s blade Wooden world requires a chopper Where serpent becomes grasshopper Arm-in-arm with arms; dice with death Ant artilleries curse their breath From the poem: For Them

Medicine and public health have transformed the trajectory of our lives. For all but our most recent history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn’t matter whether you were five or fifty. Every day was a roll of the dice.