Different.directions Quotes

TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a different direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.

We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.

I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

A strange passion is moving in my head My heart has become a bird which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions. Is it really so that the one I love is Everywhere?

Phillip is the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead.

It was as though I saw for the first time that life could branch into different paths, take different directions.

Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don't walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don't know how to describe it, but it's much more complex and utterly delightful. They don't move just their feet; everything moves and in different directions . . . and all of it graceful.

I'm sorry to have to tell you this way, but your mother and I are separating." When I pressed my mouth together, he corrected, "Stepmother. We're just - We're going in different directions." "I don't know what to say, Dad. 'Hurray' just seems wrong.

It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.

I feel like I'm being pulled in a hundred different directions and my feet are stuck in cement.

Each person is made of five different elements, she told me. Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind. Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei. Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself.

The one close to me now, even my own body- these too will soon become clouds, floating in different directions.

I'm just confused. I can't read your signals. One moment you're hot, the next you're cold. You tell me you want me, you tell me you don't. If you picked one, that'd be fine, but you keep making me think one thing and then you end up going in a completely different direction. Not just now—all the time.

Has anyone seen a raving bitch with nice hair?” Holly shouted at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone who heard her pointed in a different direction.

Ty laughed, a carefree, boyish sound, and glanced to his side, distracted by what he saw. “You moved the rug.” “I kitty-cornered it.” “Why would you do that?” Ty asked, aghast. “To see you lose your shit when you got home.” Zane leaned closer, grinning evilly. “There are other things out of order too. Books not alphabetized. Coffee mug handles facing different directions.” He lowered his voice to a whisper as Ty’s eyes widened in horror. “The closet isn’t color coded.” “You’re just watching the world burn, huh?” Zane laughed. “God I missed you.” Ty said in a rush of breath.

In this world, time has three dimensions, like space. Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures. Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real. At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.

You haven't seen untidiness until you've seen a room where gravity has failed twice in different directions.

Our emotions pull us in different directions. The stronger the emotion, the greater the pull. Feelings are not always practical, nor do they make any logical sense. That's just the way it goes.

Some of us are born sensitive. And if, on top of that, we are pulled about in different directions (both emotionally and physically), we might just end up becoming writers. No, we don't become writers in schools of creative writing. We become writers before we learn to write. The rest is simply learning how to put it all together.

A dancer on break approached him. She smiled. Each tooth was angled in a different direction, as if her mouth were the masterwork of a mad orthodontist. "Hi," she said. "Hi." "You're really cute." "I don't have any money." She spun and walked away. Ah, romance.

You may be in the same boat as others, but you have the power to sail in a different direction.

My mind was spinning in so many different directions I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or eat a fried calf testicle.

I'm not sure this will make sense to you, but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction, so that I no longer faced backward toward the past, but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would that future be? The moment this question formed in my mind, I knew with as much certainty as I'd ever known anything that sometime during that day I would receive a sign. This was why the bearded man had opened the window in my dream. He was saying to me, "Watch for the thing that will show itself to you. Because that thing, when you find it, will be your future.

At that moment I had a thrilling sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case, we would forever remain just friends.

(for memory and clairvoyance, which are the same thing in two different directions).

The same word we love and hate, leaves in different directions, taking different paths.

I have always been tormented by the image of multiplicity of selves. Some days I call it richness, and other days I see it as a disease, a proliferation as dangerous as cancer. My first concept about people around me was that all of them were coordinated into a WHOLE, whereas I was made up of multiple selves, of fragments. I know that I was upset as a child to discover that we had only one life. It seems to me that I wanted to compensate for this by multiplying experience. Or perhaps it always seems like this when you follow all your impulses and they take you in different directions. In any case, when I was happy, always at the beginning of a love, euphoric, I felt I was gifted for living many lives fully. It was only when I was in trouble, lost in a maze, stifled by complications and paradoxes that I was haunted or that I spoke of my "madness," but I meant the madness of the poets.

The best way to get past any barrier is to come at it from a different direction, which is one reason it is useful to work with a teacher or coach.

I wanted to change my fate, to force it down another road. I wanted to stand in the river of time and make it flow a different direction, if just for a little while.

It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction.

I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be

with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water looking out in different directions back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you in a culture up to its chin in shame living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators remembering wars and the police at the back door and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you in the banks that use us we are saying thank you with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you with the animals dying around us our lost feelings we are saying thank you with the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives we are saying thank you with the words going out like cells of a brain with the cities growing over us like the earth we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening we are saying thank you we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is

Like forearm veins, my interests spread in different directions and eventually led to the hands, to writing.

A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.

Time is a funny thing, it can give and it can take away; and a single moment in time can truly change one’s life forever! The best kind of love is unexpected, unexplainable, undeniable, and unimaginable. Your sweet scent will forever be with me, reminding me of the love we once shared. I will breathe in the memories until we meet again. Before you act on what you have been told, consider your source. It may simply be assumption on their part, and that can be far from fact. Why stand back and wait for someone to fail when you can stand up and offer your support? Love is when the sound of your partner’s snoring lulls you to sleep, and it acts as a reminder that they are there by your side. Building a wall around your heart is a voluntary imprisonment to which only you have the key. Open your heart to life’s possibilities!

It hurts, because we wanted a different outcome, but then we make it hurt even worse by creating a narrative around what happened. So, instead of creating that debilitating narrative, I think we're better served realizing that now, we have an opportunity to pivot - to take our life in a different direction.

It means my luck sucks," she said. "It was nice dating a guy wo treated me like a friend instead of a blow-up doll." "You were the one trying to unzip my pants in the truck!" "Yeah, well, I thought you weren't interested. I didn't realize that your divining rod just pointed into a different direction." "You're killing me," he said. But it sounded like he was smiling.

Memory works in different ways for everybody. Different capacities, different directions, too. Sometimes memory helps you think, sometimes it impedes. Doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. Probably means it’s no big deal.

I know that I have shitty timing, because we’re both getting ready to move in different directions, but I’ve gotten really good at loving you from a distance.

it felt as if he and I walked the same road, but each of us was going in a different direction. “You’ve

all the gods are the same unknowable mystery, just as each face of a jewel strikes light in a different direction

And then. We lost touch. Our bond should have been impossible to fray and then disintegrate. But as time took us each in a different direction, it was astonishingly simple for our connection to dissolve.

But finally I realized that to me, Godel and Escher and Bach were only shadows cast in different directions by some central solid essence. I tried to construct the central object, and came up with this book.

the fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity

...I understand that at times, life takes us in different directions than we planned.

...for Christians typical dating can often be a swerver - an approach to relationships that wants to go in a different direction than the one God has for us.

In Jones's experience, the decision to turn one's life around in a different direction rarely arrived with fireworks and marching bands. Often, the decision came with tears and regret. Then, almost impossibly, the power of forgiveness would fill an unseen void, allowing a new day's optimism and sense of purpose to take hold and point that life in a new direction.

I knew that this couldn't last- that there were people waiting and he had things to do and this couldn't go on forever. But in that moment it was like everything fades away and there was only me and Clark and the possibility of us- whatever we might become- stretching forward in a hundred different directions, all of them unexpected, each one better than the last, the ending not yet written.

There is only continual motion. If I rest, if I think inward, I go mad. There is so much, and I am torn in different directions, pulled thin, taut against horizons too distant for me to reach. Swift, ceaseless pace. Will I never rest in sunlight again - slow, languid & golden with peace?

Ever since the day of the mistake with my Match. I've never known which life is my true one. Even with the reassurances of the Offical that day in the greenspace, I think a part of me hasn't felt at peace. It was as though I saw for the first time that life could branch into different paths, take different directions.

You, Travis Maddox, are kinda sexy when you’re not being a whore,” she said, a ridiculous, drunken grin twisting her mouth in different directions. Abby touched her palm to my cheek. “You know what, Mr. Maddox?” “What, baby?” Her expression turned serious. “In another life, I could love you.” “I might love you in this one.

Since the atoms are indestructible, the disintegration of human body after death should be actually considered as the dispersion of the separate filaments (except probably those forming the bones) in all different directions.

Panic is the last thing we can afford,” Coppelia said. “Panic will have everyone rushing off in different directions to try to ‘save the Library.’ Panic is the antithesis to good organization. Panic is messy. I am against panic on a point of principle.

And though our roots belong to the same tree, our branches have grown in different directions.

I probably would have made music but listening to Elvis Costello took my life in a completely different direction.

Life is a maze from which we never escape. Every decision takes us in a different direction and every time we turn one way we could just as easily have turned the other.

Funny how someone could be so important in your life and then ... then you go a long period of time without them even entering your thoughts. It wasn't anyone's fault. Life took people in different directions.

Steam in an open space would just simply scatter in different directions. Steam contained in an engine can move a whole train. Success comes from One-pointedness and Constancy of Aim and Effort.

Life never changes, until you take a step in a different direction - Kit McCann

We think we know where we're aiming, and perhaps we do - but morning comes, and a change in the light, and we find out we should've been trying in a different direction after all.

In friendships, people grow apart. Some grow in different directions, and others don’t grow at all.

It never failed to amaze Alex how, with the brush of a hand, the track of someone’s life might veer in a completely different direction.

Relief is a great feeling. It’s the emotional and physical reward we receive from our bodies upon alleviation of pain, pressure and struggle. A time to bask in the lack of the negative. And yet, think about it—relief is really the status quo, a negation of the suffering, a nothing in itself. It is the way things were before the pressure and struggle began. So, is it a step back? A regression? Or is it an opportunity to regroup, start over, and move in a different direction? Use your moment of relief well.

In anyone's life there can be only a few such moments - moments when a long, ringing hush fills your hearing, the world stands still as if under a magic spell, and thoughts and feelings course freely through your being, traversing the whole of eternity in the duration of a minute, so that when time resumes and you return from whatever nameless, dazzling void you briefly inhabited, you find yourself changed, changed irrevocably, and from then on, whether you want it or not, your life flows in a different direction. This was such a moment for me.

We met at a cross-roads in life, But we were going different directions. We were part of each other's lives, But only for a moment. The first person that you meet in life Won't necessarily be the one who's forever. Just look at you and me, And it's not hard to see that This is the moment before life goes on. We are still friends; We are still really good friends. Please tell me that you agree. But I'm not the one for you, And you just can't see yourself with me.

...the dreamlike, bombastic wish to stand once again at that point in my life and be able to take a completely different direction than the one that has made me who I am now... To sit once more on the warm moss and hold the cap - it's the absurd wish to go back behind myself in time and take myself - the only marked by events - along on this journey.

People don't know that they do that to people when they do the things they shouldn't. Hurtful things are roots,they spread ,branch out, creep under the surface touching other parts of the lives of those they hurt. It's never one mistake, it's never one moment, it becomes a series of moments, each moment growing roots and spurting in different directions. And over time, they become muddled like an old twisted tree, strangling itself and tying itself up in knots.

What is magic? Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted into the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions. Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on. Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That's the thing about quantum.

We’re always itching to go, to move on, to escape. We convince ourselves we could truly be happy if only we were somewhere else. Or somebody else. While it’s smart to plan for the future, we won’t find real happiness if our eyes never leave the horizon. When we’re all rushing off in different directions, we miss the worthwhile places, and worthwhile people, already around us. But we can’t wait for them to chase us down—we’ve got to seek them out. Because for two people to meet in the middle, both have to take that first step.

Negativity always leads you to a dead end; you can crawl into the darkest, dankest corner, and though it is lonely and miserable, you know where the wall is, your back firmly pressed against it, and there is something wonderfully safe about that. When you choose positivity, on the other hand, you choose limitless potential, and whatever you look at with positivity grows and spreads and unfurls in a thousand different directions.

When we talk of "exploring the mystical," we are not trying to dig into creation, because if you dig into creation, it will only get more complex. It will not bring clarity; it will only bring more complexity. That is why the yogis looked in a different direction. We looked inward. If you look inward, a different dimension opens up. Now instead of things getting more complex, you get to clarity. It is because of this that we say that those who look inward have a third eye. They see things that others cannot see. They have brought a new clarity to life.

That's what a dare does. It taunts you to take a different direction, to do something you never thought you could do, to jump, knowing that a million consequences could be on the other side of that dare, but that if you don't do it, you'll always wonder. And sometimes wondering is worse than consequences.

My father wrote beautifully,” Esmé interrupted. “I’m saving a number of his letters for posterity.” I said that sounded like a very good idea. I happened to be looking at her enormous-faced, chrono-graphic-looking wristwatch again. I asked if it had belonged to her father. She looked down at her wrist solemnly. “Yes, it did,” she said. “He gave it to me just before Charles and I were evacuated.” Self-consciously, she took her hand off the table, saying, “Purely as a momento, of course.” She guided the conversation in a different direction. “I’d be extremely flattered if you’d write a story exclusively for me sometime. I’m an avid reader.” I told her I certainly would, if I could. I said that I wasn’t terribly prolific. “It doesn’t have to be terribly prolific! Just so that isn’t childish and silly.” She reflected. “I prefer stories about squalor.” “About what?” I said, leaning forward. “Squalor. I’m extremely interested in squalor.

I don't think any of the things that happened are coincidence. I think life is a series of stepping stones that branch out in all different directions. We have no idea what path we're supposed to follow, so we tend to walk a straight line and follow the biggest stones, because that's the easiest thing to do. Coincidences are the smaller stones that lead you on a path that veers off. If you're brave enough, you follow those stones, and you wind up exactly where you're supposed to be.

Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human —” “THEN — I — DON’T — WANT — TO — BE — HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate silver instruments from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room. It shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, “Really!” “I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE —” He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions. “You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.

When the opportunity came, it appeared in a different form, and from a different direction than Barnes had expected. That is one of the tricks of opportunity. It has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door, and often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize opportunity.

Stars are like people,.. just because they appear to emerge from the same point doesn't mean that they do. This is an illusion of perspective created by distance. Not all families manage to hold it together,..Everyone moves in different directions. That we all emerge from the same point is a misconception; to travel in different directions is the very nature of every being and every existing thing.

Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses, radiating out in different directions that divide and subdivide into branches and branchlets, until they disappear from view, the sense of every word is like a star hurling spring tides out into space, cosmic winds, magnetic perturbations, afflictions.

Maya’s story could easily have ended the same way as Ruth’s story. The things that took everything in a completely different direction were so small. A mom who fought, a dad who loved, a brother who was there, a best friend who took on the whole damn world. An old witch who owned a pub, who went into a meeting at the hockey club and spoke in Maya’s defense. And, last of all, a witness who had seen everything and eventually dared to say so out loud. That was all. No more than that.

I knew now: love and destiny were two wild horses that could not be curbed. They galloped in different directions and ran down different paths where streams of desire and hope would not converge. To follow one was to betray the other. To make one happy was to break the other's heart. Yet I supposed that was part of life, a lesson we had to learn. To grow up was also to give up, and to build the future was to dissolve the past. The only thing we could do was hope for the best, to believe that the horse we chose would find us a safe destination.

I stay in bed for as long as possible, but eventually my bladder wins. When I come back from the bathroom, he's looking out my window. He turns around and laughs. "Your hair. It's sticking up in all different directions." St. Clair pronounces it die-rections and illustrates his point by poking his fingers up around his head like antlers. "You're one to speak." "Ah,but it looks purposeful on me. Took me ages to realize the best way to get that mussed look was to ignore it completely." "So you're saying it looks like crap on me?" I glance in the mirror,and I'm alarmed to discover I do resemble a horned beast. "No.I like it.

To be a scientist is to learn to live all one's life with questions that will never be answered, with the knowledge that one was too early or too late, with the anguish of not having been able to guess at the solution that, once presented, seems so obvious that one can only curse oneself for not seeing what one ought to have, if only one had looked in a slightly different direction.

FORKED BRANCHES We grew up on the same street, You and me. We went to the same schools, Rode the same bus, Had the same friends, And even shared spaghetti With each other's families. And though our roots belong to The same tree, Our branches have grown In different directions. Our tree, Now resembles a thousand Other trees In a sea of a trillion Other trees With parallel destinies And similar dreams. You cannot envy the branch That grows bigger From the same seed, And you cannot Blame it on the sun's direction. But you still compare us, As if we're still those two Kids at the park Slurping down slushies and Eating ice cream. Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)

The difference between design and research seems to be a question of new versus good. Design doesn't have to be new, but it has to be good. Research doesn't have to be good, but it has to be new. I think these two paths converge at the top: the best design surpasses its predecessors by using new ideas, and the best research solves problems that are not only new, but worth solving. So ultimately design and research are aiming for the same destination, just approaching it from different directions.

If we are at war, we’re not fighting for a bewitched alchemical manuscript, or for my safety, or for our right to marry and have children. This is about the future of all of us.” I saw that future for just a moment, its bright potential spooling away in a thousand different directions. “If our children don’t take the next evolutionary steps, it will be someone else’s children. And whiskey isn’t going to make it possible for me to close my eyes and forget that. No one else will go through this kind of hell because they love someone they’re not supposed to love. I won’t allow it.

the doorframes were about six feet, seven inches high. To navigate, I would discreetly bob my head down as if nodding to an unseen companion as I walked. I had no idea how finely calibrated my ducking was until I got new soles and heels on a pair of dress shoes during the George W. Bush administration. Apparently, this refurbished footwear made me about a half-inch taller than usual. Rushing so as not to be late to a Situation Room meeting with the president, I did the usual bob and smacked my head so hard that I rocked backward, stunned. A Secret Service agent asked me if I was okay. I said yes, and continued walking, stars in my eyes. As I sat at the table with the president and his national security team, I began to feel liquid on my scalp and realized I was bleeding. So I did the obvious thing: I kept tilting my head in different directions to keep the running blood inside my hairline. Heaven only knows what President Bush thought was wrong with me, but he never saw my blood.

The steeper the climb, the more incentive to reach the top. Even in the midst of the darkness, there is always a shard of light if we will but search for it hard enough and believe in it strongly enough. A name portrays the nature of its wearer. The meaning of a name, however, portrays the trueness of its wearer in depths that very few ever come to comprehend. May God bless you and keep you and give you peace in all that you do, and may we rest assured of this: that though we travel far apart and in many different directions and for long periods of time, we will meet again, if not in this lifetime, then in eternity, and there we will never have to say ‘good-bye’ again. Courage is not found in lacking fear, courage is found in not allowing your fear to rule you. Courage is really just facing fear. Do not put too much stock in the stars my boy, they are fickle and distant and do not affect the lives of men by very great a margin.

Loving someone is easy. It's your car and all you have to do is start the engine, give her a little gas and point the thing wherever you want to go. But being loved is like being taken for a ride in someone else's car. Even if you think they'll be a good driver, you always have the innate fear they might do something wrong: in an instant you'll both be flying through the windshield toward imminent disaster. Being loved can be the most frightening thing of all. Because love means good-bye to control; and what happens if halfway or three-quarters of the way through the trip you decide you want to go back, or in a different direction, and you're only the codriver?

I've come to believe that at different times our lives we are drawn to certain people for various reasons, mainly because that version of ourselves is connected to that version of them at that particular time. If you stick at it, work at it, you can grow in different directions together. Sometimes you get pulled apart, but I believe there is the right person, the one, for all the different versions of yourself. Gabriel and I lived in the now. Gerry and I aimed for forever. We got a fraction of forever. And an enjoyable now and a fraction of forever is always better than doing nothing.

Self-parenting exercises taught me to slowly rebuild healthy self-talk. But it must be said: Even though I know reparenting had helped dozens of my friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has told me it’s exhausting. Reparenting takes time, and concentration, and calmness. It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction. And even though that effort comes with joyous rewards, sometimes it also comes with sadness. Because expressing the kindness to yourself that you deserve often reminds you of the kindness you didn’t get.

I'll go see what it was," said Cinder, slipping into the hallway and darting down the stairs. Jacin was siting at the bottom, hunched over something and working intently. "That was Thorne," he said, without glancing up at her. "What did he do? Knock down a wall?" Cinder stepped past Jacin, but hesitated when she saw the vase of white flowers on the floor at his feet. He was meticulously pulling the flowers out of the water, one by one, and wiring their stems together. His brow was knotted in concentration. "Are you making a bouquet?" she asked incredulously. "Shut up." He held the cluster in one hand and turned it a few different directions, before plucking out a white hydrangea and adding it to the mix.

In many interviews he had identified himself as a man outraged by death, but that was pretty much the same old big-balls crap he'd been selling throughout his career. He was terrified of death, that was the truth, and as a result of spending his life honing his imagination, he could see it coming from at least four dozen different directions... and late at night when he couldn't sleep, he was apt to see it coming from four dozen different directions at once. Refusing to see the doctor, to have a checkup and let them peek under the hood, would not cause any of those diseases to pause in their approach or their feeding upon him--if, indeed, the feeding had already begun--but if he stayed away from the doctors and their devilish machines, he wouldn't have to know. You didn't have to deal with the monster under the bed or lurking in the corner if you never actually turned on the bedroom lights, that was the thing. And what no doctor in the world seemed to know was that, for men like Johnny Marinville, fearing was sometimes better than finding. Especially when you'd put out the welcome mat for every disease going.

I have honest feelings where I want to throw my hands up in utter frustration and yell about the unfairness of it all. To deny my feelings any voice is to rob me of being human. But to let my feelings be the only voice will rob my soul of healing perspectives with which God wants to comfort me and carry me forward. My feelings and my faith will almost certainly come into conflict with each other. My feelings see rotten situations as absolutely unnecessary hurt that stinks. My soul sees it as fertilizer for a better future. Both these perspectives are real. And they yank me in different directions with never-ending wrestling. To wrestle well means acknowledging my feelings but moving forward, letting my faith lead the way.

I hold the hands of people I never touch. I provide comfort to people I never embrace. I watch people walk into brick walls, the same ones over and over again, and I coax them to turn around and try to walk in a different direction. People rarely see me gladly. As a rule, I catch the residue of their despair. I see people who are broken, and people who only think they are broken. I see people who have had their faces rubbed in their failures. I see weak people wanting anesthesia and strong people who wonder what they have done to make such an enemy of fate. I am often the final pit stop people take before they crawl across the finish line that is marked: I give up. Some people beg me to help. Some people dare me to help. Sometimes the beggars and the dare-ers look the same. Absolutely the same. I'm supposed to know how to tell them apart. Some people who visit me need scar tissue to cover their wounds. Some people who visit me need their wounds opened further, explored for signs of infection and contamination. I make those calls, too. Some days I'm invigorated by it all. Some days I'm numbed. Always, I'm humbled by the role of helper. And, occasionally, I'm ambushed. ~ Stephen White "Critical Conditions

There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,' said Dumbledore's voice. 'On the contrary ... the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.' Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words. 'My greatest strength, is it?' said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. 'You haven't got a clue ... you don't know ...' 'What don't I know?' asked Dumbledore calmly. It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage. 'I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?' 'Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human--' 'THEN--I--DON'T --WANT--TO--BE--HUMAN!' Harry roared, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, 'Really!' 'I DON'T CARE!' Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. 'I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANY MORE--' He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that, too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions. 'You do care,' said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. 'You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.' 'I--DON'T!' Harry screamed, so loudly that he felt his throat might tear, and for a second he wanted to rush at Dumbledore and break him, too; shatter that calm old face, shake him, hurt him, make him feel some tiny part of the horror inside himself. 'Oh, yes, you do,' said Dumbledore, still more calmly. 'You have now lost your mother, your father, and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care.' 'YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL!' Harry roared. 'YOU--STANDING THERE--YOU--' But words were no longer enough, smashing things was no more help; he wanted to run, he wanted to keep running and never look back, he wanted to be somewhere he could not see the clear blue eyes staring at him, that hatefully calm old face.

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

Ren followed along behind me somewhere quietly. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew he was there. I was acutely aware of his presence. I had an intangible connection with him, the man. It was almost as if he were walking next to me. Almost as if he were touching me. I must have started walking down the wrong path because he trotted ahead, pointedly moving in a different direction. I muttered, “Show-off. I’ll walk the wrong way if I want to.” But, I still followed after him. After a while, I made out the Jeep parked on the hill and saw Mr. Kadam waving at us. I walked up to his camp, and he grabbed me in a brief hug. “Miss Kelsey! You’re back. Tell me what happened.” I sighed, set down my backpack, and sat on the back bumper of the Keep. “Well, I have to tell you, these past few days have been some of the worst of my life. There were monkeys, and Kappa, and rotted kissing corpses, and snakebites, and trees covered with needles, and-“ He held up a hand. “What do you mean a few days? You just left last night.” Confused, I said, “No. We’ve been gone at least,” I counted on my fingers, “at least four or five days.” “I’m sorry, Miss Kelsey, but you and Ren left me last night. In fact, I was going to say you should get some rest and then try again tomorrow night. You were really gone almost a week?” “Well, I was asleep for two of the days. At least that’s what tiger boy over there told me.” I glared at Ren who stared back at me with an innocuous tiger expression while listening to our conversation. Ren appeared to be sweet and attentive, as harmless as a little kitten. He was about as harmless as a Kappa. I, on the other hand, was like a porcupine. I was bristling. All of my quills were standing on end so I could defend my soft belly from being devoured by the predator who had taken an interest. “Two days? My, my. Why don’t we return to the hotel and rest? We can try to get the fruit again tomorrow night.” “But, Mr. Kadam,” I said an unzipped the backpack, “we don’t have to come back. We got Durga’s first gift, the Golden Fruit.” I pulled out my quilt and unfolded it, revealing the Golden Fruit nestled within. He gently picked it up out of its cocoon. “Amazing!” he exclaimed. “It’s a mango.” With a smirk, I added, “It only makes sense. After all, mangoes are very important to Indian culture and trade.” Ren huffed at me and rolled onto his side in the grass.

But now I speculate re the ants' invisible organ of aggregate thought... if, in a city park of broad reaches, winding paths, roadways, and lakes, you can imagine seeing on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon the random and unpredictable movement of great numbers of human beings in the same way... if you watch one person, one couple, one family, a child, you can assure yourself of the integrity of the individual will and not be able to divine what the next moment will bring. But when the masses are celebrating a beautiful day in the park in a prescribed circulation of activities, the wider lens of thought reveals nothing errant, nothing inconstant or unnatural to the occasion. And if someone acts in a mutant un-park manner, alarms go off, the unpredictable element, a purse snatcher, a gun wielder, is isolated, surrounded, ejected, carried off as waste. So that while we are individually and privately dyssynchronous, moving in different ways, for different purposes, in different directions, we may at the same time comprise, however blindly, the pulsing communicating cells of an urban over-brain. The intent of this organ is to enjoy an afternoon in the park, as each of us street-grimy urbanites loves to do. In the backs of our minds when we gather for such days, do we know this? How much of our desire to use the park depends on the desires of others to do the same? How much of the idea of a park is in the genetic invitation on nice days to reflect our massive neuromorphology? There is no central control mechanism telling us when and how to use the park. That is up to us. But when we do, our behavior there is reflective, we can see more of who we are because of the open space accorded to us, and it is possible that it takes such open space to realize in simple form the ordinary identity we have as one multicellular culture of thought that is always there, even when, in the comparative blindness of our personal selfhood, we are flowing through the streets at night or riding under them, simultaneously, as synaptic impulses in the metropolitan brain. Is this a stretch? But think of the contingent human mind, how fast it snaps onto the given subject, how easily it is introduced to an idea, an image that it had not dreamt of thinking of a millisecond before... Think of how the first line of a story yokes the mind into a place, a time, in the time it takes to read it. How you can turn on the radio and suddenly be in the news, and hear it and know it as your own mind's possession in the moment's firing of a neuron. How when you hear a familiar song your mind adopts its attitudinal response to life before the end of the first bar. How the opening credits of a movie provide the parameters of your emotional life for its ensuing two hours... How all experience is instantaneous and instantaneously felt, in the nature of ordinary mind-filling revelation. The permeable mind, contingently disposed for invasion, can be totally overrun and occupied by all the characteristics of the world, by everything that is the case, and by the thoughts and propositions of all other minds considering everything that is the case... as instantly and involuntarily as the eye fills with the objects that pass into its line of vision.