“
People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“
Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story, the genealogy, the rights of man, the rule of law. The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.
”
”
Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me)
“
Instead of disappearing, she makes me feel reappeared. Reimagined. Her touch shapes me, draws out the boldness that had been hiding in my core.
”
”
Natasha Ngan (Girls of Paper and Fire (Girls of Paper and Fire, #1))
“
Nothing seemed really real. Sleeping, waking, it all collided into one gray, monotonous plane ride through the clouds. I didn't talk to myself in my head. There wasn't much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was my dream.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
And why is Heather wearing pink? Come on, people."
Heather rolled her eyes and disappeared back inside the tent, reappearing a minute later with a dark gray T-shirt on.
"Better?" She cocked her head at tristan.
"Yes. You've just extended your life by at least an hour.
”
”
Chelsea Fine (Avow (The Archers of Avalon, #3))
“
Kill extremists,
extremism will REAPPEAR.
Kill extremist ideology,
extremism will DISAPPEAR.
”
”
Mouloud Benzadi
“
Disappear for a while! Let the people miss you! And this is what the sun does with the sunset! When you reappear, you are much loved!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
Xavier leaned forward. "Sarcasm aside, you don't need a guy like that, Elena. Maybe you think you do - only female werewolf and all that - but hell, I've seen what you can do - tied to a chair, up against a male werewolf. You can do that, you don't need some fucking psychopath like Clayton Danvers-"
He stopped, noticing my gaze.
"He's standing right behind me, isn't he?" Xavier muttered.
"Uh-huh."
Xaview tilted his head back, saw Clay, and disappeared. He reappeared on the opposite bench, pressed up against me. I looked over at him, eyebrow raised. He swore under his breath and teleported to the far end of the other bench. Then he stood and turned to Clay.
"You must be-"
"The fucking psychopath," Clay said.
"Er, right, but I meant that in the most respectful way. Believe me, I have the utmost regard for, uh..."
"Raging lunatics," I said.
Xavier shot me a glare.
"Oh sit down," I said. "He didn't bring his chain saw.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong
“
The Art Magicke has rules. It means I have to teach you all my tricks. All the substitutions, the replications, the illusions. How to read minds and palms and leaves. How to disappear and reappear.
"How to saw people in half?"
"That too."
"Nice.
”
”
Catherine Fisher (Sapphique (Incarceron, #2))
“
eat, baby.
eat.
chew.
please.
I know it hurts. I know it doesn’t feel good.
please.
I know your hunger is different than mine.
I know it doesn’t taste the same as mine.
imagine you could grow up all over again
and pinpoint the millisecond that you started
counting calories like casualties of war,
mourning each one like it had a family.
would you?
sometimes I wonder that.
sometimes I wonder if you would go back
and watch yourself reappear and disappear right in front of your own eyes.
and I love you so much.
I am going to hold your little hand through the night.
just please eat. just a little.
you wrote a poem once,
about a city of walking skeletons.
the teacher called home because you
told her you wished it could be like that
here.
let me tell you something about bones, baby.
they are not warm or soft.
the wind whistles through them like they are
holes in a tree.
and they break, too. they break right in half.
they bruise and splinter like wood.
are you hungry?
I know. I know how much you hate that question.
I will find another way to ask it, someday.
please.
the voices.
I know they are all yelling at you to stretch yourself thinner.
l hear them counting, always counting.
I wish I had been there when the world made you
snap yourself in half.
I would have told you that your body is not a war-zone,
that, sometimes,
it is okay to leave your plate empty.
”
”
Caitlyn Siehl
“
Okay, I think it's time for another distraction" Eight says, disappearing again. He reappears by the outer circle of stones, plants his hands on an upright slab, and pushes hard. All I can do is watch in horror, frozen to the spot. The huge stone wobbles and slowly tips backwards, then the horizontal slab on top falls too, and that's when Eight starts yelling, "Help! Help! The stones are falling over! Stonehenge is falling down!" I will kill him. I clench my fists at my side, which is when I realize I still have a small rock in my hand. I lean down and carefully, pointlessly, return it to its spot.
”
”
Pittacus Lore (The Rise of Nine (Lorien Legacies, #3))
“
Good people didn’t orchestrate their own disappearance, put their families through hell.
”
”
Holly Jackson (The Reappearance of Rachel Price)
“
She would have needed a reason, Bel, to go through all that effort. People don’t just decide to disappear. She’d need a motive. A reason.
”
”
Holly Jackson (The Reappearance of Rachel Price)
“
The name Rachel Price is almost synonymous with mystery. Because her disappearance was like a puzzle, and it’s human nature to want to solve a puzzle, don’t you think?
”
”
Holly Jackson (The Reappearance of Rachel Price)
“
This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
With enough tears, that knife that you feel stabbed through your chest, and aching in your heart, will disappear one day. And then, your personal sun will reappear. Trust me! :)
”
”
José N. Harris (MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love)
“
Look what I found, Eight!”
Eight disappears from the grass and reappears up in the air next to the Chest. He wraps his arms around it and hugs it. Slime and all. Then he teleports back to the edge of the lake, the Chest still in his hands. “I can’t believe it,” Eight finally says. “All this time, it was right here.” He looks stunned.
“It was inside a Mog ship at the bottom of the lake,” I say, walking out of the water.
Eight disappears again and teleports directly in front of me, our noses practically touching. Before I can register how nice his warm breath feels on my face, he picks me up and kisses me hard on the mouth as he twirls me around. My body stiffens and I suddenly have no idea what to do with my hands. I don’t know what to do at all, so I just let it happen. He tastes salty and sweet at the same time. The whole world disappears and I feel as if I’m floating in darkness. (Rise of the Nine)
”
”
Pittacus Lore
“
Has the dark shadow really disappeared?
Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear?
Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
“
Be the person who moves hearts - be the person who heals wounds - be the person who makes darkness disappear - be the person who makes colors reappear.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Lives to Serve Before I Sleep)
“
I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I’d disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
I believe instinct took over because the shotgun fired in the opposite direction, and he disappeared.
Good effort.
"I don't think sarcasm is helping your situation right now!" I called out at no one as I racked my second round. The sound was comforting.
He reappeared maybe ten feet away in front of me. I heard laughing in my head.
You're strange.
That's the last straw, buddy.
"Yeah, well, you're dead."
And I shot that angel right in the face.
”
”
Adrienne Kress (Outcast)
“
She disappeared. Since then I had never thought anymore of her. Nevertheless, she must have continued to live deep down in my heart, and today, on this empty coast, she reappeared, pale and plaintive, from the depths of my being.
”
”
Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)
“
He appears beside me and hands me the gun. Guess I’m getting used to the disappearing and reappearing act of his. I only had a slight urge to pee my pants.
”
”
Jennifer Harlow (Mind Over Monsters (F.R.E.A.K.S. Squad Investigation, #1))
“
Sometimes when I can't sleep and I'm trying to think good thoughts, I imagine the magical place between worlds, the place in the flash where Elian's ship disappears before to reappears again. In that split second maybe time slows down, and he can see all the invisible places. And maybe, sometimes, he sees them.
”
”
Robin Roe (A List of Cages)
“
For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world – legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier: mountain altars where offerings glow between wintry pillars; centaurs with torches cantering beside a frozen sea – scattered, unco-ordinated shapes from a fabulous past, infinitely removed from life; and yet bringing with them memories of things real and imagined. These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outwards like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seeminly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
”
”
Anthony Powell (A Question of Upbringing (A Dance to the Music of Time, #1))
“
We'd like to imagine we can make evil disappear in one, decisive victory. But evil won't cooperate, it reappears endlessly. You attain Goodness by transforming it every time it returns. That's what Goodness is: the ceaseless commitment to transform evil.
”
”
Barry Michels (Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression, and Unleash Your Soul's Potential)
“
Nevertheless the dauntless spirit of science burns bright and clear in everyone who sees that to disappear as a particular thing is to reappear instantly as the No-thing that is the imperishable Home of all that perishes, and that to die now is to die never.
”
”
Douglas E. Harding (Look For Yourself)
“
Blame the relief that comes when someone who’s disappeared from your life reappears and conjures up the same magic and re-creates a longed-for connection.
”
”
Marjan Kamali (The Lion Women of Tehran)
“
No, no, no... you've got it all wrong... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen ---it's not gasps and blood and falling about---that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all ---now you see him, now you don't, that the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back---an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.
”
”
Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
“
There was a pause then, texting dots appeared and disappeared and reappeared and disappeared again. My heart pounded. I wondered how many heart attacks each year are caused by those little hell dots.
”
”
Lynn Weingarten (Bad Girls with Perfect Faces)
“
Why the number three? Probably because there are three stages to be completed: the death, the pregnancy, and childbirth. Just as the moon, which must have three days to reappear. Historically and symbolically, it is always three for something to come back: the disappearance, the construction, the birth. This is the cycle, the circle, the formula to calculate the perimeter (the life), is, let us remember, the diameter multiplied by 3.14 (Pi)
”
”
Marie D. F. Cachet
“
Don't be afraid."
And then we were gone.
Weightless.
The ground at my feet suddenly disappeared along with everything else.
A scream lodged in my throat, coming out broken and pathetic.
And then we were sitting on a wide ledge. High above Jackson Square. Christ, he'd blinked me to - I gazed above me.
Not just a ledge. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
"It helps if you breathe."
"I think I might kill you," I said in a near whisper.
Sebastian's shoulder bumped mine as he tried to hide a smile. "Well, you've got time, because we'll be up here for an hour or so before I have enough power again to get us down. I didn't think you'd be afraid of heights."
I glared at him. "I'm not afraid of heights. I am, apparently, afraid of disappearing from solid ground and then reappearing on a ledge.
”
”
Kelly Keaton (A Beautiful Evil (Gods & Monsters, #2))
“
The Everlasting Staircase"
Jeffrey McDaniel
When the call came, saying twenty-four hours to live,
my first thought was: can't she postpone her exit
from this planet for a week? I've got places to do,
people to be. Then grief hit between the ribs,
said disappear or reappear more fully. so I boarded
a red eyeball and shot across America,
hoping the nurses had enough quarters to keep
the jukebox of Grandma's heart playing. She grew up
poor in Appalachia. And while world war II
functioned like Prozac for the Great Depression,
she believed poverty was a double feature,
that the comfort of her adult years was merely
an intermission, that hunger would hobble back,
hurl its prosthetic leg through her window,
so she clipped, clipped, clipped -- became the Jacques
Cousteau of the bargain bin, her wetsuit
stuffed with coupons. And now --pupils fixed, chin
dangling like the boots of a hanged man --
I press my ear to her lampshade-thin chest
and listen to that little soldier march toward whatever
plateau, or simply exhaust his arsenal of beats.
I hate when people ask if she even knew I was there.
The point is I knew, holding the one-sided
conversation of her hand. Once I believed the heart
was like a bar of soap -- the more you use it,
the smaller it gets; care too much and it'll snap off
in your grasp. But when Grandma's last breath
waltzed from that room, my heart opened
wide like a parachute, and I realized she didn't die.
She simply found a silence she could call her own.
”
”
Jeffrey McDaniel
“
Disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia and after incalculable eons of peregrination return an estranged avenger, wreaker of justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the silver king.
”
”
James Joyce (Ulysses)
“
What’s so funny?” “You freak out when I disappear and reappear, but you expect me to stop time.” She laughed, too. “But why can’t you? You’re a god.” “Like I said, we have more responsibilities than freedoms. I doubt even Zeus could pull that one off.” From high above, a streak of light flew from the sky and struck a boulder not twenty feet from where they lay, sending sparks and smoke and a loud crack in all directions in the echoing valley. The boulder was split in half and was as black as coal. “Holy crap!” Therese cried, falling against Than. “What was that?” “Oops. My apologies,” he muttered, but it didn’t sound like he was talking to her. “I made someone angry.” “That scared me to death. Does that happen often?” “No. Never to me. But this is an exceptional time in my life.
”
”
Eva Pohler (The Gatekeeper's Sons (Gatekeeper's Saga, #1))
“
What in Bursin’s holy name is that?” he snarled.
If it were possible to die of embarrassment, Martise was sure she wouldn’t survive the next few minutes. “I was singing.”
His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “Singing. Is that what you call it? It sounded like someone was torturing a cat.”
“I thought I might work faster if I sang.” She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with a gloved hand and regretted the action. The swipe of citrus oil she’d left on her skin burned. Cael continued to howl, and a door shut with a bang.
"That will be Gurn coming to rescue us from whatever demon he thinks is attacking." The branch supporting Silhara creaked as he adjusted his stance and leaned closer to her. “Tell me something, Martise.” A leaf slapped him in the eye, and he ripped it off its twig with an irritated snap. “How is it that a woman, blessed with a voice that could make a man come, sings badly enough to frighten the dead?”
She was saved from having to answer the outlandish question by the quick thud of running footsteps. Silhara disappeared briefly from view when he bent to greet their visitor. Unfortunately, his answers to Gurn’s unspoken questions were loud and clear. “That was Martise you heard. She was…singing.
“Trust me, I’m not jesting. You can unload your bow.” His next indignant response made her smile. “No, I wasn’t beating her! She’s the one tormenting me with that hideous wailing!”
Martise hid her smile when he reappeared before her. His scowl was ferocious. “Don’t sing.” He pointed a finger at her for emphasis. “You’ve scared my dog, my birds and my servant with your yowling.” He paused. “You’ve even managed to scare me.
”
”
Grace Draven (Master of Crows (Master of Crows, #1))
“
How do I know that a table still exists if I go out of the room and can’t see it? What does it mean to say that things we can’t see, such as electrons or quarks—the particles that are said to make up the proton and neutron—exist? One could have a model in which the table disappears when I leave the room and reappears in the same position when I come back, but that would be awkward, and what if something happened when I was out, like the ceiling falling in? How, under the table-disappears-when-I-leave-the-room model, could I account for the fact that the next time I enter, the table reappears broken, under the debris of the ceiling? The model in which the table stays put is much simpler and agrees with observation. That is all one can ask.
”
”
Stephen Hawking (The Grand Design)
“
Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.
"He's gone."
The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house.
”
”
Sherman Alexie (Reservation Blues)
“
According to the new theory, an electron moving between orbits would disappear from one and reappear instantaneously in another without visiting the space between
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
Memories, like ancient history, can easily disappear when their pertinence to today is ignored, and then they eventually reappear and become current events.
”
”
Hubert Selby Jr. (The Demon)
“
The baby bean with its strong heartbeat disappears and reappears on the screen, like a picture coming in and out of focus. But the third time it happens, there’s something else on the screen too, next to our baby bean. In fact, it looks like nothing more than a second baby bean, suspended upside down in Livia’s belly, thinking little, silent baby bean thoughts.
”
”
Laurelin Paige (Hot Cop)
“
Sleeping, waking, it all collided into one gray, monotonous plane ride through the clouds. I didn’t talk to myself in my head. There wasn’t much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I’d disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
At each flash of lightning not only the Milky Way but the bright stars also disappeared, but as soon as the lightning died out they reappeared in the same places, as if thrown by some unerring hand.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
“
See,' said (Liberty Hyde) Bailey, 'how the leaves of this small plant stand forth extended to bathe themselves in the light. ... THese leaves will die. They will rot. They will disappear into the universal mold. The energy that is in them will be released to reappear, the ions to act again, perhaps in the corn on the plain, perhaps in the body of a bird. The atoms and the ions remain or resurrect; the forms change and flux. We see the forms and mourn the change. We think all is lost; yet nothing is lost. The harmony of life is never ending.' The economy of nature provides that nothing be lost.
”
”
Russell Lord (Care of the Earth)
“
Nothing seemed really real. Sleeping, waking, it all collided into one gray, monotonous plane ride through the clouds. I didn’t talk to myself in my head. There wasn’t much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I’d disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
The great plain swayed beneath them as they went steadily westward. The rich buffalo grass, upon which their animals fattened even during the arduous journey, changed its color throughout the day; in the morning, in the pinkish rays of the early sun, it was nearly gray; later, in the yellow light of the midmorning sun, it was a brilliant green; at noon it took on a bluish cast; in the afternoon, in the intensity of the sun, at a distance, the blades lost their individual character and through the green showed a distinct cast of yellow, so that when a light breeze whipped across, a living color seemed to run through the grass, to disappear and reappear from moment to moment. In the evening after the sun had gone down, the grass took on a purplish hue as if it absorbed all the light from the sky and would not give it back.
”
”
John Williams (Butcher's Crossing)
“
Love me, I'll never disappear
Erase me, I may never reappear
Test me, your cries I'll never hear
You say you can't have me, truth is you gave up hope
Our time together, was it wasted? nope
Understand? I'm feeling off the scope
Had to give a second chance
Understood now why I shouldn't
Rebuilding my soul, can't promise for sure
Trying to not care, but it don't work
Maybe you could've believed in us
Except, well, you didn't
”
”
Zane Morton-Carr
“
This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I’d disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
When I was single, I was convinced my friends who took the plunge and had their first baby were victims of an alien abduction, because they would disappear from the planet and reappear a year later as unrecognizable strangers.
”
”
Jim Gaffigan (Dad Is Fat)
“
My cousin and I were beginning to understand why our grandmother cried so often, and how there were so few options for coping with the reappearances and disappearances that we would both continue to make in each other's lives.
”
”
Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart)
“
I call the discourse of power any discourse which engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient. Some expect of us as intellectuals that we take action on every occasion against Power, but our true battle is elsewhere, it is against powers in the plural, and this is no easy combat. For if it is plural in social space, power is, symmetrically, perpetual in historical time. Exhausted, defeated here, it reappears there; it never disappears. Make a revolution to destroy it, power will immediately revive and flourish again in the new state of affairs. The reason for this endurance and this ubiquity is that power is the parasite of a trans-social organism, linked to the whole of man's history and not only to his political, historical history. This object in which power is inscribed, for all of human eternity, is language, or to be more precise, its necessary expression: the language we speak and write.
”
”
Roland Barthes (A Barthes Reader)
“
Autumn leaves fall from the tree, disappear with the wind, but then reappear on the tree and disappear again. Memories are like that, first they fall off the tree of the mind and disappear, and then they reappear and disappear again!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
The young man went to India, where he was drowned. As there is no mystery in this matter, it may as well be stated here that young Heaton ultimately returned to England, as drowned men have ever been in the habit of doing, when their return will mightily inconvenience innocent persons who have taken their places. It is a disputed question whether the sudden disappearance of a man, or his reappearance after a lapse of years, is the more annoying.
("The Vengeance Of The Dead")
”
”
Robert Barr (Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others)
“
The blizzard seemed to be dying down, and it was now possible to enjoy the sight of the buildings and embankments and bridges smothered in the diamond-dusted whiteness. There's always something soothing in the snow, thought Gabriel, a promise of happiness and absolution, of a new start on a clean sheet. Snow redesigned the streets with hints of another architecture, even more magnificent, more fanciful than it already was, all spires and pinnacles on pale palaces of pearl and opal. All that New Venice should have been reappeared through its partial disappearance. It was as if the city were dreaming about itself and crystallizing both that dream and the ethereal unreality of it. He wallowed in the impression, badly needing it right now, knowing it would not last as he hobbled nearer to his destination.
”
”
Jean-Christophe Valtat (Aurorarama (The Mysteries of New Venice, #1))
“
See, even though Jesse's a ghost, and can walk through walls and disappear and reappear at will, he's still...well, there. To me, anyway. That's what makes me-and Father Dom-different from everybody else. We not only can see and talk to ghosts, but we can feel them too-just as if they were anybody else. Anybody alive, I mean. Because to me and Father Dom, ghosts are just like anyone else, with blood and guts and sweat and bad breath and whatever. The only real difference is that they kind of have this glow around them-an aura, I think it's called.
”
”
Meg Cabot (Ninth Key (The Mediator, #2))
“
I didn't talk to myself in my head. There wasn't much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
When you listen to the beautiful sounds of stereo music, remember that you are listening to the rhythms of trillions of electrons obeying this and other bizarre laws of quantum mechanics.
But if quantum mechanics were incorrect, then all of electronics including television sets, computers, radios, stereo, and so on, would cease to function. (In fact, if quantum theory were incorrect, the atoms in our bodies would collapse, and we would instantly disintegrate. According to Maxwell's equations, the electrons spinning in an atom should lose their energy within a microsecond and plunge into the nucleus. This sudden collapse is prevented by quantum theory. Thus the fact that we exist is living proof of the correctness of quantum mechanics.)
This also means that there is a finite, calculable probability that "impossible" events will occur. For example, I can calculate the probability that I will unexpectedly disappear and tunnel through the earth and reappear in Hawaii. (The time we would have to wait for such an event to occur, it should be pointed out, is longer than the lifetime of the universe. So we cannot use quantum mechanics to tunnel to vacation spots around the world.)
”
”
Michio Kaku (Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension)
“
A red dragonfly hovers above a backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explains why the insect can apparently teleport from one place to another, disappearing from one point and reappearing a couple of meters away, without seeming to pass through the space in between. There sure is a lot of bright stuff in the jungle. Randy figures that, in the natural world, anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
“
By degrees the sun disappeared behind the western horizon; but as though to prove the truth of the fanciful ideas in heathen mythology, its indiscreet rays reappeared on the summit of every wave, as if the god of fire had just sunk upon the bosom of Amphitrite, who in vain endeavored to hide her lover beneath her azure mantle.
”
”
Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
“
his fake sideburns had been torn from his cheek and was now perched on his ear like a small rodent, but he was too angry to notice. “What have you done?” he screamed at us. “What have you done?” “Well, it’s obvious,” I said. “We’ve blown up a rebel minivan.” In the farmhouse, the SPYDER agents disappeared from the upstairs windows and never reappeared again.
”
”
Stuart Gibbs (Spy Camp (Spy School #2))
“
These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
”
”
Anthony Powell (A Question of Upbringing (A Dance to the Music of Time, #1))
“
The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen—it’s not gasps and blood and falling about—that isn’t what makes it death. It’s just a man failing to reappear, that’s all—now you see him, now you don’t, that’s the only thing that’s real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back—an exist, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.
”
”
Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
“
The niggers did not post sentries over their dead. Niggers did not pound on the door of the sheriff, they did not haunt the offices of the newspapermen. No sheriff paid them any mind, no journalist listened to their stories. The bodies of their loved ones disappeared into sacks and reappeared in the cool cellars of medical schools to relinquish their secrets. Every one of them a miracle, in Stevens’s view, providing instruction into the intricacies of God’s design.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
“
No, no, no... you've got it all wrong... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen — it's not gasps and blood and falling about — that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all — now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back — an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.
”
”
Tom Stoppard (ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD)
“
There was movement in the mists. The valley below them was full of creatures of myth, impossible creatures from the stories Nikias had told Merikh as a child. Pale dogs the size of ponies, hairless and covered in spines, snarled at the shambling corpses of mortohas. Red-eyed leopards disappeared into the mists and reappeared on the opposite side of the valley whenever they wished. Within the center, regarded warily by the rest of the creatures, were creatures of unnatural beauty. Rakshasas. Undead blood drinkers that could hide in humanoid form.
”
”
L.J. Stanton (The Dying Sun (The Gods Chronicle Book 1))
“
Suppose that, instead of limiting ‘Earth’ to the solid globe that we 20th century materialists define it as, the archaic ‘Earth’ was everything that lay on the plane of the ecliptic (the orbital plane of the earth around the sun, which we on Earth perceive as the path of the Sun in the sky). This extension of Earth out into the skv would make an Earth that was truly flat. Like the physical Earth the continents of this ‘Greater Earth’ would still be surrounded by water, but the water would be a mighty ocean which stretched out into space to lap at the feet of the stars. Above this ‘Earth’ would be ‘heaven,’ and below it would be the ‘underworld.’ Those stars which disappear from view (‘die’) later reappear (are ‘reborn,’ or released from Hades). * As soon as we accept these suppositions into our world-view, our frame of reference and our perspectives broaden infinitely. Suddenly the space we live in takes on the limitlessness of the space in which the sky-gods live, and our previous assumptions of what might be “real” get stood on their pointy little heads. Now when we think of the Great Flood, a myth which has appeared in ancient cultures all over the earth, it
”
”
Robert E. Svoboda (The Greatness of Saturn: A Therapeutic Myth)
“
War cannot eliminate differing ideas and viewpoints, and partisans of the defeated side do not disappear. Though subjugated, they become a sizable political constituency in the postwar period. A dictator may be able to repress them, and in democracies a numerical majority may outvote them, but neither can change their thoughts. Since civil wars are, by nature, deep and fundamental conflicts, the competition between the views that led to war is likely to resurface. The defeated side may be chastened or subdued, but its values and ways of seeing the world reappear, in some form, in politics [107].
”
”
Paul D. Escott (Uncommonly Savage: Civil War and Remembrance in Spain and the United States)
“
The problem with stealing the magician's assistant from a carnival was that you were always waiting for her to disappear. He expected her to vanish. She had in fact, multiple times, before Simon was born, and just after, too.
...Daniel wanted to be worried for, wanted to be missed without doing any of the leaving that missing demanded. When Paulina left, he counted breaths, and thought constantly of the disappearing box. The reappearing was the most important part of the trick. Eventually he stopped living in fear that she wouldn't come back. The more pressing concern was that she was cutting herself in two.
”
”
Erika Swyler (The Mermaid Girl: A Story)
“
These classical projections, and something from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
”
”
Anthony Powell (A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement (A Dance to the Music of Time, #1-3))
“
Raven, lying on the sandy ground, covered in creepy-crawlies. Spiders, cockroaches, termites, ants, crickets—they smother her, nibble on her, devouring her from hair to toenails in seconds, leaving just a skeleton behind. Apple, standing at the podium on Legacy Day. Poof, she disappears. And reappears in a goblin cave. The goblin troop moves in, brandishing salad bowls and chopping knives. Daring Charming, no story to call home, thins and melts into a wisp of a ghost, swimming endlessly through walls. The crowded Charmitorium at Ever After High, Headmaster Grimm on the stage. “And remember, students, no matter what you do, don’t follow the example of the worst, most despised, most selfish character in all of Ever After history—Raven Queen!” “Boo!” the students yell. “Boo!” says the Daring ghost. Apple’s head in a goblin bowl opens her eyes and looks straight at Raven. “Boo!
”
”
Shannon Hale (The Storybook of Legends (Ever After High, #1))
“
It hovers, creeps in, comes close, withdraws, turns on tiptoe and, if I reach out my hand, disappears: a Word. I can only make out its proud crest: Cri. Cricket, Cripple, Crime, Crimea, Critic, Crisis, Criterion? A canoe sails from my forehead carrying a man armed with a spear. The light, fragile boat nimbly cuts the black waves, the swells of black blood in my temples. It moves further inward. The hunter-fisherman studies the shaded, cloudy mass of a horizon full of threats; he sinks his keen eyes into the rancorous foam, he perks his head and listens, he sniffs. At times a bright flash crosses the darkness, a green and scaly flutter. It is Cri, who leaps for a second into the air, breathes, and submerges again in the depths. The hunter blows the horn he carries strapped to his chest, but its mournful bellow is lost in the desert of water. There is no one on the great salt lake. And the rocky beach is far off, far from the faint lights from the huts of his companions. From time to time Cri reappears, shows his fatal fin, and sinks again. The oarsman, fascinated, follows him inward, each time further inward.
”
”
Octavio Paz (Selected Poems)
“
At once, Raj set about finding some dry clothes for Ben and the Queen. However, all he had were his unsold costumes from Halloween. “This is your size, Your Majesty,” said Raj, handing her a lobster costume. “One has never dressed as a lobster before. What fun!” she said, taking the costume behind the card carousel to change. Next, Raj picked up one of his princess outfits. Before he could say a thing, Ben snapped, “NO!” “What do you mean, no?” asked Raj. “No means no! I am never, ever, ever dressing up as a princess!” “But you would look so pretty!” Raj implored. “NO!” “Well, the lobster outfits are too big for you.” The Queen reappeared with hers on. “Red is so your colour!” remarked Raj. “Oh, why thank you, Mr Raj. Now come on, Ben. You can’t stay in those wet things – you will catch your death of cold!” “But—” “No buts, Benjamin! Put it on! That’s an order from your Queen!” Ben harumphed and disappeared behind the card carousel. Moments later, he reappeared awkwardly. He was dressed as a princess with the grumpiest look on his face. “You know I said how pretty you would look as a princess?” began Raj. “Yep.” “I was wrong.” Then,
”
”
David Walliams (Gangsta Granny Strikes Again!)
“
Mathilde watched as down the street came a little girl in a red snowsuit with purple racing stripes. Mittens, a cap too big for her head. Disoriented, the girl turned around and around and around. She began to climb the snow mountain that blocked her from the street. But she was so weak. Halfway up, she’d slip back down. She’d try again, digging her feet deeper into the drift. Mathilde held her breath each time, let it out when the girl fell. She thought of a cockroach in a wineglass, trying to climb up the smooth sides. When Mathilde looked across the street at a long brick apartment complex taking up the whole block, ornate in its 1920s style, she saw, in scattered windows, three women watching the little girl’s struggles. Mathilde watched the women as they watched the girl. One was laughing over her bare shoulder at someone in the room, flushed with sex. One was elderly, drinking her tea. The third, sallow and pinched, had crossed her skinny arms and was pursing her lips. At last, the girl, exhausted, slid down and rested, her face against the snow. Mathilde was sure she was crying. When Mathilde looked up again, the woman with crossed arms was staring angrily through all the glass and cold and snow directly at her. Mathilde startled, sure she’d been invisible. The woman disappeared. She reappeared on the sidewalk in inside clothes, tweedy and thin. She chucked her body into the snowdrift in front of the apartment building, crossed the street, grabbed the girl by the mittens and swung her over the mountain. Carried her across the street and did it again. Both mother and daughter were powdered with white when they went inside. Long after they were gone, Mathilde thought of the woman. What she was imagining when she saw her little girl fall and fall and fall. She wondered at the kind of anger that would crumple your heart up so hard that you could watch a child struggle and fail and weep for so long, without moving to help. Mothers, Mathilde had always known, were people who abandoned you to struggle alone. It occurred to her then that life was conical in shape, the past broadening beyond the sharp point of the lived moment. The more life you had, the more the base expanded, so that the wounds and treasons that were nearly imperceptible when they happened stretched like tiny dots on a balloon slowly blown up. A speck on the slender child grows into a gross deformity in the adult, inescapable, ragged at the edges. A
”
”
Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies)
“
It was in her abode, in the janitorial quarters assigned her on the ground floor rear, that seemingly inoffensive Mrs. Shapiro set up a clandestine alcohol dispensary—not a speakeasy, but a bootleg joint, where the Irish and other shikkers of the vicinity could come and have their pint bottles filled up, at a price. And several times on weekends, when Ira was there, for he got along best with Jake, felt closest to him, because Jake was artistic, some beefy Irishman would come in, hand over his empty pint bottle for refilling, and after greenbacks were passed, and the transaction completed, receive as a goodwill offering a pony of spirits on the house. And once again those wry (rye? Out vile pun!), wry memories of lost opportunities: Jake’s drab kitchen where the two sat talking about art, about Jake’s favorite painters, interrupted by a knock on the door, opened by Mr. Shapiro, and the customer entered. With the fewest possible words, perhaps no more than salutations, purpose understood, negotiations carried out like a mime show, or a ballet: ecstatic pas de deux with Mr. McNally and Mr. Shapiro—until suspended by Mr. Shapiro’s disappearance with an empty bottle, leaving Mr. McNally to solo in anticipation of a “Druidy drunk,” terminated by Mr. Shapiro’s reappearance with a full pint of booze. Another pas de deux of payment? Got it whole hog—Mr. Shapiro was arrested for bootlegging several times, paid several fines, but somehow, by bribery and cunning, managed to survive in the enterprise, until he had amassed enough wealth to buy a fine place in Bensonhurst by the time “Prohibition” was repealed. A Yiddisher kupf, no doubt.
”
”
Henry Roth (Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels)
“
A little later, strolling about the town, I, stopped into a shop near the museum, where they sold souvenirs and post-cards. I looked over the cards leisurely; the ones I liked best were soiled and wrinkled. The man, who spoke French fluently, offered to make the cards presentable. He asked me to wait a few minutes while he ran over to the house and cleaned and ironed them. He said he would make them look like new. I was so dumbfounded that before I could say anything he had disappeared, leaving me in charge of the shop. After a few minutes his wife came in. I thought she looked strange for a Greek woman. After a few words had passed I realized that she was French and she, when she learned that I hailed from Paris, was overjoyed to speak with me. We got along beautifully until she began talking about Greece. She hated Crete, she said. It was too dry, too dusty, too hot, too bare. She missed the beautiful trees of Normandy, the gardens with the high walls, the orchards, and so on. Didn't I agree with her? I said NO, flatly. "Monsieur!" she said, rising up in her pride and dignity, as if I had slapped her in the face.
"I don't miss anything," I said, pressing the point home. "I think this is marvellous. I don't like your gardens with their high walls, I don't like your pretty little orchards and your well-cultivated-fields. I like this …" and I pointed outdobrs to the dusty road on which a sorely-laden donkey was plodding along dejectedly. "But it's not civilized," she said, in a sharp, shrill voice which reminded me of the miserly tobacconiste in the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire.
"Je m'en fous da la civilisation européenne!" I blurted out.
"Monsieur!" she said again, her feathers ruffled and her nose turning blue with malice.
Fortunately her husband reappeared at this point with the post-cards which he had given a dry-cleaning.
”
”
Henry Miller (The Colossus of Maroussi)
“
Continetti concludes:
"An intellectual, financial, technological, and social infrastructure to undermine global capitalism has been developing for more than two decades, and we are in the middle of its latest manifestation… The occupiers’ tent cities are self-governing, communal, egalitarian, and networked. They reject everyday politics. They foster bohemianism and confrontation with the civil authorities. They are the Phalanx and New Harmony, updated for postmodern times and plopped in the middle of our cities.
There may not be that many activists in the camps. They may appear silly, even grotesque. They may resist "agendas" and "policies." They may not agree on what they want or when they want it. And they may disappear as winter arrives and the liberals whose parks they are occupying lose patience with them. But the utopians and anarchists will reappear… The occupation will persist as long as individuals believe that inequalities of property are unjust and that the brotherhood of man can be established on earth."
You can see why anarchists might find this sort of thing refreshingly honest. The author makes no secret of his desire to see us all in prison, but at least he’s willing to make an honest assessment of what the stakes are.
Still, there is one screamingly dishonest theme that runs throughout the Weekly Standard piece: the intentional conflation of "democracy" with "everyday politics," that is, lobbying, fund-raising, working for electoral campaigns, and otherwise participating in the current American political system. The premise is that the author stands in favor of democracy, and that occupiers, in rejecting the existing system, are against it. In fact, the conservative tradition that produced and sustains journals like The Weekly Stand is profoundly antidemocratic. Its heroes, from Plato to Edmund Burke, are, almost uniformly, men who opposed democracy on principle, and its readers are still fond of statements like "America is not a democracy, it’s a republic." What’s more, the sort of arguments Continetti breaks out here--that anarchist-inspire movements are unstable, confused, threaten established orders of property, and must necessarily lead to violence--are precisely the arguments that have, for centuries. been leveled by conservatives against democracy itself.
In reality, OWS is anarchist-inspired, but for precisely that reason it stands squarely in the very tradition of American popular democracy that conservatives like Continetti have always staunchly opposed. Anarchism does not mean the negation of democracy--or at least, any of the aspects of democracy that most American have historically liked. Rather, anarchism is a matter of taking those core democratic principles to their logical conclusions. The reason it’s difficult to see this is because the word "democracy" has had such an endlessly contested history: so much so that most American pundits and politicians, for instance, now use the term to refer to a form of government established with the explicit purpose of ensuring what John Adams once called "the horrors of democracy" would never come about. (p. 153-154)
”
”
David Graeber (The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement)
“
Despite the shock this fact may deal to modern Western religious sensibilities, it is
commonplace within the history of religions that immortality is not a prime characteristic of
divinity: gods die. Nor is the concomitant of omnipresence a widespread requisite; gods
disappear. The putative category of dying and rising deities thus takes its place within the
larger category of dying gods and the even larger category of disappearing deities. Some of
these divine figures simply disappear; some disappear only to return in the near or distant
future; some disappear and reappear with monotonous frequency
”
”
Mark S. Smith
“
Any such work that you take up,
which in the very process of execution,
leads to the transcending of self
is the most sublime of all.
Self disappears, humility reappears.
”
”
Rabb Jyot (The Freedom of Being Human)
“
Fragments of all kinds of data find their way into orbit. We’re pulled in one direction, then suddenly our instincts send us flying in another. Material collides and fuses, disappears and reappears. This chaos is essential to the creative process. A
”
”
Sean Patrick (Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century)
“
At sunrise, between the cock’s first and second crows, Koech high steps to the distant rumble of a train. His breath ivory in a landscape clipped by a guinea fowl’s clapped wings, his bigass afro tipping grandly in the wind.
He shambles into a clearing and descends towards a clear stream, perch swimming in clusters through a shallow bed. Then he disappears into a swivel of sugarcane before reappearing with dew-clad ankles among grazing grounds once populated by the sausage tree.
”
”
D. Nandi Odhiambo (Kipligat's Chance)
“
If we are to make the ordinary man aware of the spiritual uity out of which asll the separate activities of our civilization have arisen, it is necessary in the first place to look at Western civilization as a whole and to treat it wit the same objective appreciation and respect which the humanists of the past devoted to the civilization of antiquity.
This does not seem much to ask; yet there have always been a number of reasons which stood in the way of its fulfillment.
In the first place, there has been the influence of modern nationalism, which has led every European people to insist on what distinguished it from the rest, instead of what united it with them. It is not necessary to seek for examples in the extremism of German racial nationalists and their crazy theories, proving that everything good in the world comes from men with Germanic blood. Leaving all these extravagances out of account, we still have the basic fact that modern education in general teaches men the history of their country and the literature of their own tongue, as though these were complete wholes and not part of a greater unity.
In the second place, there has been the separation between religion and culture, which arose partly from the bitterness of the internal divisions of Christendom and partly from a fear lest the transcendent divine values of Christianity should be endangered by any identification or association of them with the relative human values of culture. Both these factors have been at work, long before our civilization was actually secularized. They had their origins in the Reformation period, and it was Martin Luther in particular who stated the theological dualism of faith and works in such a drastic form as to leave no room for any positive conception of a Christian culture, such as had hitherto been taken for granted.
And in the third place, the vast expansion of Western civilization in modern times has led to a loss of any standard of comparison or any recognition of its limits in time and space. Western civilization has ceased to be one civilization amongst others: it became civilization in the absolute sense.
It is the disappearance or decline of this naive absolutism and the reappearance of a sense of the relative and limited character of Western civilization as a particular historic culture, which are the characteristic features of the present epoch.
”
”
Christopher Henry Dawson (Understanding Europe (Works of Christopher Dawson))
“
Good-bye, my friend,” she whispered.
As if he had heard her, Hunter reappeared alone on the rise. Bringing his stallion to a halt, he straightened and lifted his head, forming a dark silhouette, his quiver and arrows jutting up above his shoulder, his shield braced on his thigh, his long hair drifting in the wind.
Forgetting all about her family watching her, Loretta stumbled down the steps and out into the yard to be sure Hunter could see her. Then she waved. In answer, he raised his right arm high in a salute. He remained there for several seconds, and she stood rooted, memorizing how he looked. When he wheeled his horse and disappeared, she stared after him for a long while.
I will know the song your heart sings, eh? And you will know mine.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
Be the person who moves hearts - be the person who heals wounds - be the person who makes darkness disappear - be the person who makes colors reappear. Be the one who never sleeps, so that rest of humanity can.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Lives to Serve Before I Sleep)
“
The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance. Classical associations made me think, too, of days at
”
”
Anthony Powell (A Question of Upbringing (A dance to the music of time, #1))
“
How do we live in this world where friends disappear for years and years and reappear as if nothing has happened?
”
”
Michelle Huneven (Search)
“
All he did was take brief notes about the ideas that caught his attention in a text on a separate piece of paper: “I make a note with the bibliographic details. On the backside I would write ‘on page x is this, on page y is that,’ and then it goes into the bibliographic slip-box where I collect everything I read.” (Hagen, 1997)11 But before he stored them away, he would read what he noted down during the day, think about its relevance for his own lines of thought and write about it, filling his main slip-box with permanent notes. Nothing in this box would ever get thrown away. Some notes might disappear into the background and never catch his attention again, while others might become connection points to various lines of reasoning and reappear on a regular basis in various contexts.
”
”
Sönke Ahrens (How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking)
“
He would frequently do solo dives at midnight, relishing the tranquillity of his own private world. While decompressing, he rested lazily on a tree log that had fallen into the water. He was often illuminated only by the Moon, whose light beams rippled through his exhalation bubbles, which rose like rapidly expanding flying saucers, exploding when they hit the surface. The rippling light cast eerie shadows on the rock entrance below Berman, making fish, crabs, and crayfish seem to dance in a strobe light, appearing, disappearing, and reappearing in an instant.
”
”
Bernie Chowdhury (The Last Dive: A Father and Son's Fatal Descent into the Ocean's Depths)
“
Disappearing, ignoring, or cutting people off is avoidance. Not responding to a request, delaying setting the record straight, or failing to show up are ways that we avoid situations instead of dealing with them proactively. But prolonging issues by avoiding them means the same issues will reappear over and over again, following us from relationship to relationship.
”
”
Nedra Glover Tawwab (Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself)
“
Civilization was not poetry, heroism or myth; it was, instead, a sort of layer cake. City foisted upon city, life foisted upon life. The newer iterations replacing the old ones, burying them with their collective mistakes and regret.
You’re looking at it wrong. It’s not destruction- it’s rebirth.
To disappear and reappear. To be born, to die, to be reborn. Re, re, re: an implication that something exited before, in another form, and now has the opportunity to live again. You can tell me that cities and history, and life are about destruction, and maybe that’s true. But they’re also about something else. They’re about re-creation. Re, re, re
But how do we know what phase we’re in? How do we know if Rome’s rising or falling? How do we know if the flames we see are flames of civilization’s failure or the beginnings of something else.
We don’t I guess. Or maybe we do, and it’s a matter of perspective. Maybe it’s a matter of picking where you are, in the rise or in the fall, and saying that- regardless of what the historians and philosophers decide to call it- for you, this is a beginning.
What is it that Homer tells the muse at the beginning of The Odyssey? Start from where you will.
Start from where you will. Pick a point in the epic of the hero’s wanderings, and call that the opening of your story. It’s a deceptively simple instruction, she thinks, looking at the expectant faces before her. For any beginning she chooses won’t really be a beginning at all. It will carry with it the baggage and histories of the many lives that came before and when it’s gone, the lives that come after it will be built upon its back.
Ruins are not endings, they are the foundations for the lives that have yet to come.
”
”
Grant Ginder
“
, the forest was not cursed at all, nor was it magical in any way. But it was dangerous. The volcano beneath the forest—low-sloped and impossibly wide—was a tricky thing. It grumbled as it slept, while heating geysers till they burst and restlessly worrying at fissures until they grew so deep that no one could find the bottom. It boiled streams and cooked mud and sent waterfalls disappearing into deep pits, only to reappear miles away. There were vents that spewed foul odors and vents that spewed ash and vents that seemed to spew nothing at all—until a person’s lips and fingernails turned blue from bad air, and the whole world started to spin. The only truly safe passage across the forest for an ordinary person was the Road, which was situated on a naturally raised seam of rock that had smoothed over
”
”
Kelly Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon)
“
Mind without heart
The leaf had fallen,
The branch still stood there intact,
It was a gradual event and not at all sudden,
The fallen leaf, the still existing branch was an undeniable fact,
But why did the branch still hang on, waiting for something?
As the leaf from the floor looked at it while time consumed it,
Maybe the branch wanted to see the leaf on the floor dying,
And with its shadow touch it, and feel it; and whisper to it,
“There where you grew you shall grow again next season,
I will wait for you here throughout the winter,
And to do so, I need no motivation because I have my reason,
I have loved you and I do not wish to be a quitter,”
And finally there was nothing left of the leaf, the fallen and dead leaf,
There was only its trace, a faint impression on the soil,
This added to the branch’s anguish and grief,
For time had robbed her of its every moment of toil,
People passed by and trampled the leaf’s almost fossilised impression,
Until there was nothing left of the leaf neither on the branch nor on the soil,
The branch chided the fate’s paucity and time’s baseless aggression,
For they even erased the leaf’s last impression that was as thin as silver foil,
By the time winter entered its prime,
The branch stood there waiting for it to pass,
Not because it wanted to feel the joys of summer time,
But it wanted the leaf to re-appear and re-grow so that it could undo time’s act so crass,
Time passed by, spring arrived, the branch was filled with leaves,
But that leaf never grew again, the same leaf, the fallen one,
So the branch misses him and it continuously grieves,
But she shows it to no one, because no leaf compares to her dear leaf, the fallen one,
Maybe that is why it is beginning to bend,
Though it is converted in thousands of fresh leaves,
The branch has been unable to cope with the dear leaf’s premature end,
So she keeps peeping into time’s graves,
To find the grave of the leaf that she lost prematurely,
And lie there beside him, and finally fall,
Then be together with him timelessly,
And say, “For you I too had to fall afterall!”
Today the sun has risen but the branch has fallen forever,
Exactly where the leaf had fallen,
It is a love of different kind, and the branch is a special lover,
Who would never let go of what time from her had stolen,
After a year the branch too disappeared from the floor,
Now there is neither the branch nor the leaf,
Time knows it, fate planned it, but I witnessed it; and this I cannot ignore,
But knowing they are somewhere together now, even if that be the graveyard of time, is a relief,
Time and fate are never obsequious,
Because they neither love nor hate,
But they are masquerading and pretentious,
And they never know how it feels when the branch lies naked in a leafless state,
That is time’s and fate’s irony of which they may never know,
But you and I who have minds and hearts,
Yet become part of a fake and grotesque show,
Where either mind thinks without the heart or the heart from mind’s innocence departs!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
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Did she? More than anything in the whole wide world? Well then, why did she leave Bel behind in the backseat of her car just forty-eight hours later? Disappeared forever. Explain that one.
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Holly Jackson (The Reappearance of Rachel Price)
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Endings hardly mean that the story is finished’. In the case of the plague, the observation that the disease tended to disappear in a given location only to reappear the following year, with a certain seasonality, was a formative part of scientific experience. In this sense, the end of an outbreak was but a temporary one.
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Ann H. Kelly (The Anthropology of Epidemics (Routledge Studies in Health and Medical Anthropology))
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It wasn’t an elk she saw. It was a straight line. Black and thick, it came out of the mountain like giant trees felled and connected end to end. Half covered in dirt and half held aloft, disappearing and reappearing, part of the earth—but not. It was black but also brownish red, too high to climb over, at least two Leerits tall. This thing without words to hold it; this thing no story described, an impossible thing growing from the landscape. Was it alive?
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John Larison (The Ancients)
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Another example of how a metaphor can create new meaning for us came about by accident. An Iranian student, shortly after his arrival in Berkeley, took a seminar on metaphor from one of us. Among the wondrous things that he found in Berkeley was an expression that he heard over and over and understood as a beautifully sane metaphor. The expression was “the solution of my problems”—which he took to be a large volume of liquid, bubbling and smoking, containing all of your problems, either dissolved or in the form of precipitates, with catalysts constantly dissolving some problems (for the time being) and precipitating out others. He was terribly disillusioned to find that the residents of Berkeley had no such chemical metaphor in mind. And well he might be, for the chemical metaphor is both beautiful and insightful. It gives us a view of problems as things that never disappear utterly and that cannot be solved once and for all. All of your problems are always present, only they may be dissolved and in solution, or they may be in solid form. The best you can hope for is to find a catalyst that will make one problem dissolve without making another one precipitate out. And since you do not have complete control over what goes into the solution, you are constantly finding old and new problems precipitating out and present problems dissolving, partly because of your efforts and partly despite anything you do. The CHEMICAL metaphor gives us a new view of human problems. It is appropriate to the experience of finding that problems which we once thought were “solved” turn up again and again. The CHEMICAL metaphor says that problems are not the kind of things that can be made to disappear forever. To treat them as things that can be “solved” once and for all is pointless. To live by the CHEMICAL metaphor would be to accept it as a fact that no problem ever disappears forever. Rather than direct your energies toward solving your problems once and for all, you would direct your energies toward finding out what catalysts will dissolve your most pressing problems for the longest time without precipitating out worse ones. The reappearance of a problem is viewed as a natural occurrence rather than a failure on your part to find “the right way to solve it.” To live by the CHEMICAL metaphor would mean that your problems have a different kind of reality for you. A temporary solution would be an accomplishment rather than a failure. Problems would be part of the natural order of things rather than disorders to be “cured.” The way you would understand your everyday life and the way you would act in it would be different if you lived by the CHEMCAL metaphor. We see this as a clear case of the power of metaphor to create a reality rather than simply to give us a way of conceptualizing a preexisting reality.
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George Lakoff (Metaphors We Live By)
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The lion landed in the snow well below the outcrop, at least thirty feet below where he’d been lying on the tree branch. The same as jumping from the roof of a three-story building. I saw him just as he hit, disappearing in an explosion of soft snow. Before I could picture how broken he would be, he erupted from the snow in another leap that covered twenty feet, straight down the side of the hill we’d toiled up. His body began to ball up in mid-air and he crashed down into the snow again, only to reappear a moment later, stretched out and bounding. In a few seconds he was into the bottom of the draw and out of sight.
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Pete Fromm (Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter in the Bitterroot Wilderness)
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purple pebble he is balancing on the back of his hand. It disappears. ‘What’s that?’ I ask. He turns over his hand and the pebble reappears on his palm. ‘I have no idea, but it would be a killer conversation starter with the ladies, don’t you think?
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Pittacus Lore (The Rise of Nine (Lorien Legacies, #3))
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How are you doing, Harper?" Trent hadn't touched her yet, but he was standing right behind her. She could feel his warm breath on her skin. "A bit light-headed, to be honest." "Put your head down between your knees. It's either the presence of my greatness-which happens all the time, so don't feel bad-or the adrenaline. Take some slow, deep breaths. What you're doing tonight is a huge step." She did as he said. His scuffed black boots disappeared from her line of sight and reappeared a minute later. "Please don't pass out and fall off the bed-my insurance doesn't cover dental."
- Trent & Harper
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Scarlett Cole (The Strongest Steel (Second Circle Tattoos, #1))
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southern star or constellation which once temporarily gained prominence in the sky, or may stand for some recurrent phenomenon, he most likely represented different ‘things’ on different occasions. Bali was guided by Venus, the guru of the asuras who, as we saw in “The Greatness of Saturn,” possesses the Sanjivani Vidya, which can revive the dead. Indeed, Venus is always dying (disappearing from view when it goes too close to the sun) and being reborn (reappearing after a predictable period of residence in the ‘underworld’). Asuras are known to be stronger at night, which they rule, but each dawn the potential chaos that night represents is dispelled by the sun, who reappears to separate the earth from the sky and to measure the world by rising in the east, appearing overhead at noon, and setting in the west. These may be the three great strides that the dwarf Vamana uses in The Begging of the Universe incident from the “The Greatness of Saturn” to subdue Bali and return him to the celestial underworld. Or perhaps the three steps are measured at the vernal equinox, when Vamana’s left foot reaches to the North (celestial)
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Robert E. Svoboda (The Greatness of Saturn: A Therapeutic Myth)
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She was impatient, disappointed with herself, with the limitations imposed by her physical presence, by her height and weight, age and maturity, mortality and fragility. The earth spun on its axis, and gravity grounded her. She sensed that the girl could fly if she chose to, that she could disappear and reappear, and pass through objects... all while Mary Beth grew old, day after day, and some cruel god counted the rotations, the laps around the sun... A tree grew until it fell.
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Dana Cann (Ghosts of Bergen County)