Diving Board Quotes

Falling in love is like getting hit by a truck and yet not being mortally wounded. just sick to your stomach, high one minute, low the next. Starving hungry but unable to eat. hot, cold, forever horny, full of hope and enthusiasm, with momentary depressions that wipe you out. It is also not being able to remove the smile from your face, loving life with a mad passionate intensity, and feeling ten years younger. Love does not appear with any warning signs. You fall into it as if pushed from a high diving board. No time to think about what's happening. It's inevitable. An event you can't control. A crazy, heart-stopping, roller-coaster ride that just has to take its course.

This felt like the way you get nervous right before something exciting happens-the moment when you're balanced on the top of the roller coaster, the hush before the surprise party, the second after the diving board but before the water, when you can close your eyes and imagine, for just a second, that you're flying. The feeling that good things were coming, almost here, any moment now.

What do you miss about being alive?" The sound of my mom singing, a little off-key. The way my dad went to all my swim meets and I could hear his whistle when my head was underwater, even if he did yell at me afterward for not trying harder. I miss going to the library. I miss the smell of clothes fresh out of the dryer. I miss diving off the highest board and nailing the landing. I miss waffles" - p. 272.

Your daddy is standing in a swimming pool out a little bit from the edge. You are, let’s say, three years old and standing on the edge of the pool. Daddy holds out his arms to you and says, “Jump, I’ll catch you. I promise.” Now, how do you make your daddy look good at that moment? Answer: trust him and jump. Have faith in him and jump. That makes him look strong and wise and loving. But if you won’t jump, if you shake your head and run away from the edge, you make your daddy look bad. It looks like you are saying, “he can’t catch me” or “he won’t catch me” or “it’s not a good idea to do what he tells me to do.” And all three of those make your dad look bad. But you don’t want to make God look bad. So you trust him. Then you make him look good–which he really is. And that is what we mean when we say, “Faith glorifies God” or “Faith gives God glory.” It makes him look as good as he really is. So trusting God is really important. And the harder it seems for him to fulfill his promise, the better he looks when you trust him. Suppose that you are at the deep end of a pool by the diving board. You are four years old and can’t swim, and your daddy is at the other end of the pool. Suddenly a big, mean dog crawls under the fence and shows his teeth and growls at you and starts coming toward you to bite you. You crawl up on the diving board and walk toward the end to get away from him. The dog puts his front paws up on the diving board. Just then, your daddy sees what’s happening and calls out, “Johnny, jump in the water. I’ll get you.” Now, you have never jumped from one meter high and you can’t swim and your daddy is not underneath you and this water is way over your head. How do you make your daddy look good in that moment? You jump. And almost as soon as you hit the water, you feel his hands under your arms and he treads water holding you safely while someone chases the dog away. Then he takes you to the side of the pool. We give glory to God when we trust him to do what he has promised to do–especially when all human possibilities are exhausted. Faith glorifies God. That is why God planned for faith to be the way we are justified.

As suburban children we floated at night in swimming pools the temperature of blood; pools the color of Earth as seen from outer space. We would float and be naked—pretending to be embryos, pretending to be fetuses—all of us silent save for the hum of the pool filter. Our minds would be blank and our eyes closed as we floated in warm waters, the distinction between our bodies and our brains reduced to nothing—bathed in chlorine and lit by pure blue lights installed underneath diving boards. Sometimes we would join hands and form a ring like astronauts in space; sometimes when we felt more isolated in our fetal stupor we would bump into each other in the deep end, like twins with whom we didn’t even know we shared a womb.

like a man who has jumped off a diving board, but then, through force of will, lowers himself inch by inch into the pool.

Life is full of diving boards and other precipices, but, as we’ve seen throughout this discussion of emotional agility, making the leap is not about ignoring, fixing, fighting, or controlling fear—or anything else you might be experiencing. Rather, it’s about accepting and noticing all your emotions and thoughts, viewing even the most powerful of them with compassion and curiosity, and then choosing courage over comfort in order to do whatever you’ve determined is most important to you. Courage, once again, is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear walking—or

Who wants to make my helicopter take off?” Professor Washer called loudly as he balanced at the end of the diving board thrusting his hips so that his dick swung round and round in circles.

Sometimes my kitchen sink doubles as a duck pond. Problem is, I can't exactly move my diving board, so I have to relocate Greg Louganis Hour to another slot, like one on the toaster.

Love does not appear with any warning signs. You fall into it as if pushed from a high diving board. No time to think about what’s happening. It’s inevitable. An event you can’t control. A crazy, heart-stopping, roller-coaster ride that just has to take its course.

Waterhouse's new roommate is out of town just now, but by glancing over his personal effects, Waterhouse estimates that he is paddling a black kayak from Australia to Yokosuka Naval Base, where he will slip on board a battleship and silently kill its entire crew with his bare hands before doing an Olympic-qualifying dive into the bay, punching out a few sharks, climbing back into his kayak and paddling back to Australia for a beer.

Many manage to improve on the first drafts of the lives they are given. But for that they need the courage to jump off a diving board fifty meters high, blindfolded, not knowing if it is water or asphalt that awaits them below.

He took his eyes off the road and looked over at me, and I didn’t blush or look away. I just looked right back at him. There was tension between us again, but it wasn’t the simmering, angry kind that had been there the day before. This felt like the way you get nervous right before something exciting happens—the moment when you’re balanced on the top of the roller coaster, the hush before the surprise party, the second after the diving board but before the water, when you can close your eyes and imagine, for just a second, that you’re flying. The feeling that good things were coming, almost here, any moment now.

When you're and only child in a family with an only parent, you look at other, bigger families with envy. Mary Alice had a family with a station wagon, a split-level house, and a pool. But then I looked up and saw Mary Alice's toes, as she stood at the edged of the diving board. Her second toe lay on top of her big toe on each foot. I had never seen such a thing. I wondered if Mary Alice's toes would ever prevent her from doing the things she wanted to do in life. "Look, y'all!" she said, forming her perfect body into a perfect swan's dive. I decided then that any time I got frustrated with my overall situation in life, mad or jealous of knee socks or a pink canopy bed in a pink room, I'd take a deep breath and think about Mary Alice's toes. At least I didn't have Mary Alice's toes.

The balcony extended over the void like a diving board over a pool.

The whole time I hadn't slept with anyone at university had made it harder and harder to finally do it. Like spending too long on a very high diving board, until finally you have to exit ignominiously, the same way you climbed up.

For revolutionaries, theory that is not a guide to action is a worthless intellectual exercise. Our analysis has to be as taut as a diving board that enables us to springboard into the fray, to be able to recognize allies and enemies, and put an end to economic inequality and social injustice altogether.

As time passed and Harry flew and flew and flew, he forgot all about the fog, the city below him, and just about everything. Nothing in the world seemed to matter but wings, and sky, and motion. The free and endless kind of motion that people are always looking for in a hundred different ways. Flying was the way a swing swoops up; and the glide down a slide. It was the shoot of a sled downhill without the long climb back up. It was the very best throat-tightening thrills of skis, skates, surfboards and trampolines. Diving boards, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, .roller coasters, skate boards and soap-box coasters. It was all of them, one after the other, all at once and a thousand times over.

Fine dives have been made from flimsier spring-boards

Fine dives have been made from flimsier spring-boards

No. Wait. When will I see you again?" she asked. "How will I find you?" "Well, you don't have to stand on the end of a diving board." Ivy smiled. "The end of a tree limb will do," he said. "Or the roof of any building three stories or higher." "What?" "Just kidding," he said, laughing. "Just call--anytime, anywhere, silently--and I'll hear you. If I don't come, it's because I'm in the middle of something that I can't stop, or I'm in the darkness. I can't control the darkness." He sighed. "I can feel it coming on--I can feel it right now--and I can fight it off for a while. But in the end I fall unconscious. It's how I rest. I guess one day the darkness will be final." "No!" "Yes, love," he said softly. A moment later he was gone.

Waterhouse’s new roommate is out of town just now, but by glancing over his personal effects, Waterhouse estimates that he is paddling a black kayak from Australia to Yokosuka Naval Base, where he will slip on board a battleship and silently kill its entire crew with his bare hands before doing an Olympic-qualifying dive into the bay, punching out a few sharks, climbing back into his kayak and paddling back to Australia for a beer.

My God,” she says. “I feel like I’ve gone through a car wash.” I laugh, or force myself to, because it’s not something I’d normally laugh at. “What about you?” she says to Scottie. “How did you make out?” “I’m a boy,” Scottie says. “Look at me.” Sand has gotten into the bottom of her suit, creating a huge bulge. She scratches at the bulge. “I’m going to go to work now,” she says. I think she’s impersonating me and that Mrs. Speer is getting an unrealistic, humiliating glimpse. “Scottie,” I say. “Take that out.” “It must be fun to have girls,” Mrs. Speer says. She looks at the ocean, and I see that she’s looking at Alex sunbathing on the floating raft. Sid leans over Alex and puts his mouth to hers. She raises a hand to his head, and for a moment I forget it’s my daughter out there and think of how long it has been since I’ve been kissed or kissed like that. “Or maybe you have your hands full,” Mrs. Speer says. “No, no,” I say. “It’s great,” and it is, I suppose, though I feel like I’ve just acquired them and don’t know yet. “They’ve been together for ages.” I gesture to Alex and Sid. I don’t understand if they’re a couple or if this is how all kids in high school act these days. Mrs. Speer looks at me curiously, as if she’s about to say something, but she doesn’t. “And boys.” I gesture to her little dorks. “They must keep you busy.” “They’re a handful. But they’re at such a fun age. It’s such a joy.” She gazes out at her boys. Her expression does little to convince me that they’re such a joy. I wonder how many times parents have these dull conversations with one another and how much they must hide. They’re so goddamn hyper, I’d do anything to inject them with a horse tranquilizer. They keep insisting that I watch what they can do, but I truly don’t give a fuck. How hard is it to jump off a diving board? My girls are messed up, I want to say. One talks dirty to her own reflection. Did you do that when you were growing up? “Your girls seem great, too,” she says. “How old are they?” “Ten and eighteen. And yours?” “Ten and twelve.” “Oh,” I say. “Great.” “Your younger one sure is funny,” she says. “I mean, not funny. I meant entertaining.” “Oh, yeah. That’s Scottie. She’s a riot.

It was like getting on the highest diving-board in a swimming-bath; it looked nothing from below, but when you got up there and stared down at the water your heart sank; and the only thing that forced you to dive was the shame of coming down meekly by the steps you had climbed up.

But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.

The Chelsea has changed. It’s not like it was.” It had been gentrified, they said, domesticated, tamed like the whole neighborhood, which, since the mid-90s, had turned distinctly upscale. The greasy diners were gone, replaced by uniform Starbucks. The boarded-up storefronts were now upscale spas. The neighborhood dives were now exclusive nightclubs replete with guest lists and doormen who turned the “wrong” people away. Everyone was saying the hotel, the neighborhood, all of Manhattan, had sold out.

I have to ask you something.” Stumbling over words, I described my encounter with Edward. “I have to meet him at the railroad trestle next week. I’m supposed to do something when I get there, but he didn’t say what…” My voice trailed away. The expression on Andrew’s face told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Drat,” he muttered. “That low-down skunk. I was hoping he’d forgotten.” Andrew hesitated. Without looking at me, he picked up a piece of chalk and started drawing a little train on the floor. Concentrating on his sketch, he said, “Before I got sick, Edward dared me to jump off the trestle.” My heart beat faster. “Is that what I’m supposed to do? Jump off?” “Now, now, don’t get all het up, Drew. It’s not as bad as you think.” Carefully, Andrew added a curlicue of smoke to his drawing. “You walk out on the trestle and jump in the river. Then you swim to shore. It’s a simple as one two three.” He tapped the chalk three times for emphasis. My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. Lying down between the rails or dynamiting the train might be better than this. “How high is the trestle?” Instead of answering my question, Andrew said, “It’s a test of manhood. Lots of boys have done it.” I wasn’t interested in testing my manhood or hearing about other boys. I just wanted to know what was going to happen to me. Me--a boy who was scared to jump off a diving board into eight feet of crystal-clear chlorinated water.

They were still quite near the ship; she saw its green side towering high above them, and people looking at her from the deck. Then, as one might have expected, Eustace clutched at her in a panic and down they both went. When they came up again she saw a white figure diving off the ship’s side. Edmund was close beside her now, treading water, and had caught the arms of the howling Eustace. Then someone else, whose face was vaguely familiar, slipped an arm under her from the other side. There was a lot of shouting going on from the ship, heads crowding together above the bulwarks, ropes being thrown. Edmund and the stranger were fastening ropes round her. After that followed what seemed a very long delay during which her face got blue and her teeth began chattering. In reality the delay was not very long; they were waiting till the moment when she could be got on board the ship without being dashed against its side. Even with all their best endeavors she had a bruised knee when she finally stood, dripping and shivering, on the deck. After her Edmund was heaved up, and then the miserable Eustace. Last of all came the stranger--a golden-headed boy some years older than herself. “Ca--Ca--Caspian!” gasped Lucy as soon as she had breath enough. For Caspian it was; Caspian, the boy king of Narnia whom they had helped to set on the throne during their last visit. Immediately Edmund recognized him too. All three shook hands and clapped one another on the back with great delight.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-​night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-​five, forty-​five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-​five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board. Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea. The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-​slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-​inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.” Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-​burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

She was so plain. Would it kill you to wear skirts more, he had said to her. Would it really hurt you? He was thinking of how he would like to see her when she was alone with him. He knew she could dress when she had to, but this was what he was saying. He was saying something about their private life. He was saying something about his needs as a man. He imagines America’s anger at this. It would be the women, mainly. Their eager faces had watched: Amelia boarding the plane for her first transatlantic flight; Amelia waving to the crowd in the ticker tape parade; Amelia leaving luncheons and concert halls. Some had been housewives and some, girls with dreams of loops and spins and dives, of hugging the curvature of the earth through a thin sheet of aluminum. -- After Amelia

There I was, poised on the edge of the high diving board of life, and the pool kept moving around.

In 1925, an advertisement began appearing in newspapers and magazines across America. It depicted a slim woman with short hair standing on a diving board, clad in a one-piece bathing suit, looking pleased with her herself. But next to her, in shadow, stood her future self: dowdy and obese. “This Is You Five Years From Now!” read the caption. “When Tempted to Over-indulge, Reach for a Lucky Instead.” The ad, for Lucky Strike cigarettes, was made by American Tobacco, which was the first cigarette manufacturer to realize that obesity could be used as a marketing cudgel. Until then, smoking had been an overwhelmingly male pastime. But in looking to expand sales, the cigarette manufacturers began pitching tobacco to women as an appetite suppressant.

While I was doing my fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry, my family and I lived in Hawaii. When my son was seven years old, I took him to a marine life educational and entertainment park for the day. We went to the killer whale show, the dolphin show, and finally the penguin show. The penguin’s name was Fat Freddie. He did amazing things: He jumped off a twenty-foot diving board; he bowled with his nose; he counted with his flippers; he even jumped through a hoop of fire. I had my arm around my son, enjoying the show, when the trainer asked Freddie to get something. Freddie went and got it, and he brought it right back. I thought, “Whoa, I ask this kid to get something for me, and he wants to have a discussion with me for twenty minutes, and then he doesn’t want to do it!” I knew my son was smarter than this penguin. I went up to the trainer afterward and asked, “How did you get Freddie to do all these really neat things?” The trainer looked at my son, and then she looked at me and said, “Unlike parents, whenever Freddie does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him! I give him a hug, and I give him a fish.” The light went on in my head. Whenever my son did what I wanted him to do, I paid little attention to him, because I was a busy guy, like my own father. However, when he didn’t do what I wanted him to do, I gave him a lot of attention because I didn’t want to raise a bad kid! I was inadvertently teaching him to be a little monster in order to get my attention. Since that day, I have tried hard to notice my son’s good acts and fair attempts (although I don’t toss him a fish, since he doesn’t care for them) and to downplay his mistakes. We’re both better people for it. I collect penguins as a way to remind myself to notice the good things about the people in my life a lot more than the bad things. This has been so helpful for me as well as for many of my patients. It is often necessary to have something that reminds us of this prescription. It’s not natural for most of us to notice what we like about our life or what we like about others, especially if we unconsciously use turmoil to stimulate our prefrontal cortex. Focusing on the negative aspects of others or of your own life makes you more vulnerable to depression and can damage your relationships.

Döhler was in such a hurry to dive that U-606’s conning tower was not properly sealed, and as she went down water poured into the boat. She sank like a stone, until Döhler managed to hold her at 230 metres, very near to maximum depth. In desperation, for the boat’s crew thought their last moment had come, every cubic metre of compressed air remaining on board was pumped into the main ballast tanks. The reaction was predicable, U-606 shooting to the surface like a rocket. Campbell was closest when the U-boat broke the surface with a rush. Captain Lewis immediately opened fire with all guns able to bear and charged in at full speed to ram. The collision rolled the U-boat over on her side, but she came upright again, her crew spilling out of the conning tower onto the casing.

For what is life, but a plunge from the high diving board into the fantastical and the unknown?

Hercules came through the roof like a cannonball, his lion-skin trench coat wrapped around him. When I say cannonball, I mean both the metal ball and the type people do off a diving board. It was especially impressive when you realize we were in a five story building. Hermes

Shortly before Christmas that year, Patrick, now seven, came along with me to work at our church’s annual Christmas bazaar. As he wandered around, he spotted a small handcrafted necklace and earring set. He thought of Diana’s recent letter and remembered our visit in Washington. As a result, he bought the little jewelry set with his saved-up allowance. We sent it to Diana for Christmas, accompanied by notes from Patrick and me. Later the following January, 1987, Diana wrote to “Dearest Patrick,” telling him she was “enormously touched to be thought of in this wonderful way.” Then she drew a smiley face. “I will wear the necklace and earrings with great pride and they will be a constant reminder of my dear friend in America. This comes with a big thank you and a huge hug, and as always, lots of love from Diana.” Could one imagine a more precious letter? I just felt chills of emotion when I rediscovered it after her death. Diana wrote to me at the same time. Now that the holidays were over, Diana had to return to her official duties--“It’s just like going back to school!” Prince William loved his new school. Diana felt he was ready for “stimulation from a new area and boys his own age…” She described taking William to school the first day “in front of 200 press men and quite frankly I could easily have dived into a box of Kleenex as he look incredibly grown-up--too sweet!” Diana noticed that Patrick and Caroline looked very much alike in our 1987 Christmas photograph. “But my goodness how they grow or maybe it’s the years taking off and leaving us mothers behind!” Diana was a young twenty-six when she wrote that observation. I wonder if she knew then that less than four years later, Prince William would be off to boarding school, truly leaving his mother behind. Again she extended a welcoming invitation. If we could manage a trip to London, “I’d love to introduce you to my two men!” By then, she meant her two sons. She also repeated that our letters “mean a great deal to me…

The president and Colson were in the middle of their conversation about Henry Kissinger when assistant Steve Bull entered the Oval Office to report that Coach Allen of the Redskins had finally arrived. Bull also informed the president of the news, just filtering in, that baseball star Roberto Clemente was on a plane that had crashed after taking off from the San Juan International Airport late the night before. “Was he killed?” Nixon asked. “They don’t have confirmation yet,” Bull replied.1 Clemente, the popular outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, had boarded a rickety four-engine DC-7 plane that was overloaded with relief supplies for the victims of a massive earthquake in Nicaragua. The earthquake was believed to have resulted in the deaths of more than seven thousand people. Most of the deaths had occurred in the capital city of Managua, which had taken the brunt of the 6.2 magnitude shock at midday on Saturday, December 23.2 The city was leveled. The lumbering plane that Clemente was on nose-dived into heavy seas shortly after takeoff from San Juan. Clemente was thirty-eight years old and had been a perennial All-Star, four-time winner of the National League batting championship, defensive genius, and MVP in 1966. He led the Pirates to two world championships, one in 1960 and the other a decade later in 1971. “Mr. Clemente was the leader of Puerto Rican efforts to aid the Nicaraguan victims and was aboard the plane because he suspected that relief supplies were falling into the hands of profiteers,” the New York Times reported after his death was presumed.3 Clemente was scheduled to meet Anastasio Somoza, the military dictator of Nicaragua, at the airport, one of the very grafters he was attempting to circumvent with his personal mission. Clemente’s body was never recovered. It was a bad omen for the start of 1973.

Mirroring his earlier motions, Daisy searches around the room to verify they are alone and whispers with a hint of destruction, “I’m going to crush the male species into oblivion, one sale at a time. Then fill a pool with their tears and swan dive off the fucking high board.

Ryan circled the pool, around the diving board, and moved down to the shallow end. That was enough bug-catching for one day.

After spotting a plume of smoke on the horizon, 'like a dragonfly flitting over a stream', Prien dived...

Bodega Bay was the same harbor where Alfred Hitchcock had filmed his 1963 horror classic, The Birds, the movie that made the world think twice about backyard feeders. Hitchcock knew the worst shocks came from the mundane, and few creatures were as widespread, and as taken for granted, as birds. So the great director had western gulls dive-bombing children at an outdoor birthday party, raspberry-dipped house finches pouring into a living room through the fireplace, and American crows slashing at Tippi Hed-ren while she cowered in a bedroom. Suffice to say, The Birds was not a popular movie with birders on board this tour boat. After lifetimes of weekends in the field, they knew birds didn’t attack humans. The only way Hitchcock had got ravens to chase actors was to sprinkle their hair with seed. Crows lurked on the gutters of the old schoolhouse because he affixed magnets to their feet. Children fleeing swarms of blackbirds in the movie were actually running on a studio treadmill with birds tied to their necks. It all seemed silly to Levantin. The only menacing thing birds ever did to him was poop on his patio.

If you were told, at point of gun, that within one year you would have to complete a difficult task, such as running a mile in four minutes and thirty seconds, or performing a perfect jackknife dive from the high board, and failure to do so would result in your execution, you would set out on a regimented schedule in which you would practice each and every day until your time came to deliver. You would be training your mind as well as your body because your mind tells your body what to do. You would practice, practice, practice, never yielding to the temptation to quit or slack off. And you would deliver, and consequently save your life.

The next afternoon we got a studio car to take us up to the pool at the inn. We were like kids—Duke was 41, Pete 36, and I was 27. We splashed one another, pushed one another under water, and shoved one another off the diving board. We had a hell of a time, laughing and talking about all the crises during the shooting. In those days, everybody smoked. You were either odd or in training, if you didn’t. But Duke! He lit one Camel off another all day long. We used to raise hell with him about it. “You’re not patting me down already? It’s only ten-thirty in the morning, and you’re already out?” He’d start toward, you patting the pockets on his vest or pants with a big grin on his face, trying to make you think he’d forgotten his. “Hell-ooo, Ol’ Dobe,” he’d say. Then he’d start searching you like a detective looking for dope in one of today’s TV shows. When I’d give him one, he’d say, “Jesus, how can you smoke these (meaning the brand) goddamn things? I’ll give you a pack tomorrow.” He never did so, but I found a remedy for that problem. One day I was passing his dressing room—the kind that is on coasters and is on the sound stage. The door was open, and I looked in. He wasn’t there, but his cigarettes were! Right there on his dressing room table were five cartons of Camels. He’d posed for an ad for them. I just took a carton to my own dressing room, and then, when he wanted a cigarette, I gave him one of his own! He finally said, “Ya’ finally learned to smoke the best cigarette!” The reason I bring all this up is because I thought I was some sort of champ at staying underwater a long time. I figured that because of the way Duke smoked and the fact that his only exercise was playing cards, I could easily beat him swimming underwater. So, as we were splashing around, I said to Duke, “I’ll bet I can swim underwater in this pool longer than you can.” “What? Hah—hah—hah. You have ta’ be kiddin,’ friend! You are on!" I really did think I could beat him; after all, I was younger, and I exercised a lot more than he did. I played golf and tennis, and rode horseback. It was a very big pool. My turn first. I swam up and back twice and then another half. I ran out of air and surfaced. “Not too bad, for a skinny guy,” he commented and jumped in. He then went almost twice as far! I couldn’t believe it! He didn’t razz me or brag—he just knew what he could do. It never occurred to me that his lung capacity was over twice mine and that he’d been diving for abalone off Catalina Island for years.

My brain is in pain with none of the gain what’s happening in my mind I can’t quantify or justify my lifestyle eatin’ me alive like Bug on a chicken thigh, my sex drive in a nose dive off the high board, don’t need the awards I’m prerecorded, exploited, I need to be Sigmund Freuded Bobby

Just because the pool's got a diving board, doesn't mean it's got a deep end.

The steeper angle of a true dive bombing run (about 70 degrees) was far less vulnerable to flak and far more accurate. Japanese carriers had thin unarmored flight decks, and on board the ships there were hundreds of aircraft, many of them being refuelled and re-armed. All the factors were now aligned for a devastating attack. Yorktown’s

One of the optional subjects that we could study at Eton was motor mechanics, roughly translated as “find an old banger, pimp it up, remove the exhaust, and rag it around the fields until it dies.” Perfect. I found an exhausted-looking, old brown Ford Cortina station wagon that I bought for thirty pounds, and, with some friends, we geared it up big-time. As we were only sixteen we weren’t allowed to take it on the road, but I reckoned with my seventeenth birthday looming that it would be perfect as my first, road-legal car. The only problem was that I needed to have it pass inspection, and to do that I had to get it to a garage. This involved having an adult drive with me. I persuaded Mr. Quibell that there was no better way that he could possibly spend a Saturday afternoon than drive me to a repair garage (in his beloved Slough). I had managed to take a lucky diving catch for the house cricket team the day before, so was in Mr. Quibell’s good books--and he relented. As soon as we got to the outskirts of Slough, though, the engine started to smoke--big-time. Soon, Mr. Quibell had to have the windshield wipers on full power, acting as a fan just to clear the smoke that was pouring out of the hood. By the time we made it to the garage the engine was red-hot and it came as no surprise that my car failed its inspection--on more counts than any car the garage had seen for a long time, they told me. It was back to the drawing board, but it was a great example of what a good father figure Mr. Quibell was to all those in his charge--especially to those boys who really tried, in whatever field it was. And I have always been, above all, a trier. I haven’t always succeeded, and I haven’t always had the most talent, but I have always given of myself with great enthusiasm--and that counts for a lot. In fact my dad had always told me that if I could be the most enthusiastic person I knew then I would do well. I never forgot that. And he was right. I mean, who doesn’t like to work with enthusiastic folk?

...and Satan said, This is not possession, if it were, you would do what I tell you and not refuse my counsel, for I am no creature of mere light, I am of fire born, fire of fire, the blood in the veins of the world is lit up by my flame, I am life's primal force, you are the child at the end of the diving board afraid to jump into the pool...

Standing at the end of a diving board looking at the water never made the water warmer, but it will make taking the plunge unnecessarily hard.

indoor heated pool, there is a beach on the lakefront with lifeguards and diving boards in the summertime. Note: Green Lake has frequent algae blooms when the weather turns warm, which means the lake will be closed to swimmers, so check for informational signs before you go for a dip. See p

And while the temperamentally active child will always be an energetic individual, how that looks can change over time. With guidance from you, your spirited child can learn to channel his energy in positive ways. Instead of jumping on Grandma’s couch, he may be jumping on a diving board. The slow-to-accept-change child may always find shifting from one activity to another a bit disconcerting, but with your assistance and support he can learn to cope with change. With a little forewarning and preparation, initially on your part and ultimately on his, he can learn to: arise in the morning, arrive at the dinner table promptly, and get into and out of the car without a major meltdown. By adapting your parenting techniques to fit his temperament and his style, and teaching him the skills he needs, you help him to live cooperatively with others and to be all that he can be. To deny him his energy, his need for preparation before shifts, or any of his other temperamental traits is telling him “don’t be”—don’t be who you are.

Let’s return to the question of the ocean tides. The cause of the twice-daily rising and falling of the seas is exactly the same as the cause of the 2,000-Mile Man’s discomfort: the non-uniformity of gravity. But in this case, it’s the Moon’s gravity, not the Earth’s. The Moon’s pull on the oceans is strongest on the side of the Earth facing the Moon and weakest on the far side. You might expect the Moon to create a single oceanic bulge on the closer side, but that’s wrong. For the same reason that the tall man’s head is pulled away from his feet, the water on both sides of the Earth—near and far—bulges away from it. One way to think about this is that on the near side, the Moon pulls the water away from the Earth, but on the far side, it pulls the Earth away from the water. The result is two bulges on opposite sides of the Earth, one facing toward the Moon and the other facing away. As the Earth turns one revolution under the bulges, each point experiences two high tides. The distorting forces caused by variations in the strength and direction of gravity are called tidal forces, whether they are due to the Moon, Earth, Sun, or any other astronomical mass. Can humans of normal size feel tidal forces—for example, when jumping from a diving board? No, we cannot, but only because we are so small that the Earth’s gravitational field hardly varies across the length of our bodies. Descent

She turned a corner, dodging into another person’s yard (decorated with a blue picnic table and patio umbrella with daisies painted on it, despite the shabbiness of his neighbors), before diving through a loose board in the wood fence (its edges rotted) and into another alley, and forced to squeeze past an abandoned, green Cadillac (with rusted fenders and a missing left, rear tire) that nearly blocked her path.

We then went to the swimming pool which is beyond the reception room. This was the finest pool I had ever seen, with red-and-green submerged lights, and a diving board in polished duraluminium.

There are multiple ways to implement CBT in your daily life outside of an in-depth subconscious reprogram. Recall that the purpose of CBT is to uproot beliefs that no longer serve you in a positive way. Therefore, to implement CBT daily, look for techniques that allow you to reflect on yourself and your experiences more objectively. Here are some examples: • Journaling. Writing things down not only ensures that memories are accurately recorded for future reflection, but also helps us to evaluate emotions that we experienced in certain situations. From there, we can look for patterns experienced in different areas of life and core wounds that may need to be addressed. • Meditation. Meditation is a wonderful tool that can be an aid to objectively reflect upon ourselves. It helps clear out biases and brings us back to the present. It is incredibly powerful and significantly improves our ability to find contradictory proof throughout the day. • Open Communication. Discuss what you felt throughout the day with your friends, partners, or family. By doing this, you have a sounding board to help you assess the validity of the stories you tell yourself. For example, if you interpreted a friend’s reaction in one way, your partner may be able to give you a new way to look at the situation. Talking through challenges with someone who can be open and unbiased often helps to remove the untrue stories we are telling ourselves. There are a variety of ways to implement certain aspects of CBT in our daily lives, but it is essential to step back and do a deep dive when you feel strongly triggered about something. Generally, the more meaning assigned to a situation and the more pain caused by it, the deeper the trigger and the more important it is to address. By following these steps, fundamental change can be seen in all areas of your life.

sinew that holds him together. Our lips press and mold, mingling, taking, begging . . . Desperate. Beck’s tongue runs against my bottom lip, eliciting a moan from deep within me, lighting a fire so hot, so wild, my hands start to travel up his neck to his cheeks where I grip him, positioning his head so when I open my mouth, I can expertly dive my tongue onto his. He groans, his lap shifting against mine now, his hard-on pressing against my wet and throbbing center. I match his rocking, using my position on his lap to take advantage of his length I can feel through his board shorts. This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen, but God, am I happy it has. Maybe I really should live in the moment, maybe I should take advantage of the opportunity, maybe I should… “Woo, yeah, get it on!” Zoey screams from below us, immediately shooting me off Beck’s lap and into the rail behind me, causing me to lose my balance. With cat-like reflexes, Beck catches my arm and steadies me, his eyes aware but heady with lust, his breathing as erratic as mine. “Don’t let us disturb you,” Zoey calls out once again. “Just taking a midnight stroll.” “Yup, that’s great.” I give her a thumbs up with one hand as the other is holding on to Beck, our eyes never breaking contact. “Have a good night, you

The art of sentence making comes down to experimentation, skill, and variety. Just because you can do the three-and-a-half-somersault tuck off the high board doesn’t mean you must ditch the gorgeous swan dive. Good sentences can be short and muscular, and they can be long and graceful.

saved your life? What happened?’ ‘We were staying in Florida and had taken a small boat out to enjoy the ocean,’ said John. ‘It was a warm and sunny day, so being young and reckless I took off my shirt and dived into the water for a swim. I didn’t see the shark until it was too late. It took my leg and dragged me under the water. It happened so suddenly I didn’t understand what was going on. All I knew was the pain was unbearable. When it let go I realised what had happened, but I was losing a lot of blood and was struggling to get back to the boat. Then it turned and came back for a second bite. Memphis was in the water beside me by the time the shark arrived. He sunk his knife deep into the creature’s nose and it retreated to a safe distance for a moment. In those few seconds Memphis was able to drag me back to the boat and one of the crew helped to get me back on board. Then the shark moved in again, but Memphis was an immensely powerful man and as it struck he landed a heavy blow on the side of the creature’s head. It didn’t come back for another try.’ ‘I’m surprised you could ever get back on a boat after that,’ said Sophie. ‘If that happened to me I wouldn’t even go back on

It’s like when someone is standing on a ten-metre diving board and they’re too afraid to jump, so you have to push them.’ ‘I would never push someone standing on a ten-metre diving board, and neither would you,’ said Friday. ‘I know,’ said Melanie. ‘I’m much crueller in metaphors than I am in real life.

Had this been an isolated experience, he would have chalked it up to the nature of their mission and the monster they were chasing. Only it wasn’t isolated. Seven years earlier, Jonas had experienced a similar series of dreams while on-board the navy transport, the Maxine D. It had been these night terrors that he secretly credited for saving his life on his last dive into the Mariana Trench. Despite Frank Heller’s accusations, Jonas knew now that he hadn’t panicked when the Meg had attacked the Sea Cliff. In fact, he had reacted with lightning-quick reflexes from hours of mentally rehearsing what he would do if the submersible had been threatened by the biologic they had first detected on sonar hours earlier… a state of paranoia implanted by the dreams.

The secret is this: pick something that is important to you. One thing. Look at your belief on it, what you know to be true. Then, as if diving off a board, your feet already in the air, you commit. Sit down, grab a piece of paper, write down what you want to do or be, a vow to yourself. Go all in. The board is already behind you, gravity has taken over, you’re falling…

This is the simple secret. Pick something you truly want. Commit. Commit on paper. To yourself. Dive in, do the work. You’ll leave the board, falling and falling…until you notice gravity lessen, your rate of descent slowing until it reverses and then…and then, you’re flying.

No one thing agitated him, but everything combined to kick his intuition in the crotch, roll it in tar, and push it off a diving board.

Why You Should Not Use a Steak Knife as a Diving Board

Quickly pushing and shoving to get out of the pool, was in a full-on panic. That is when Shy moved in for the kill- she was Jenny's best friend at the time. She grabbed Lizzy’s goodies, and bikini bottom and pulled the plug out by the sting, and the blood started to show in the water all pink. Shy dunked her and swam away, that is when Lizzy swam over to the diving board ass showing to get out, she claimed out and ran the length of the Olympic sized pool dripping and shaking to get around everyone, while the rest of us nearly died laughing at the sight of her new hair and a blood-covered vertical smile that was showing. That is how Shy became popular, she did Jenny’s dirty work for her. It reminded me of the time my parents took me to Kenny Wood when I was about in the fourth grade and made me get on one of the big coasters. My legs were not able to stop shaking and my feet got a tingling feeling on the bottom side of them like they were itching to get out of a pair of hot shoes: I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to fall out, how high up we were. After my mom got the picture, they took off on the ride, I started laughing and couldn’t stop at how scared yet thrilled I was. Standing on the high dive with Jenny got me exactly in the same way. It’s like I started craving more and more of that feeling too. It feels like that twenty-six seconds when you have a girly eruption and shaking because of it so good.

I would dive off the ten meter diving board at the swimming pool and it really hurts when you hit the water from that height!

pressures and intense learning curve It takes time to get up to speed on the content of your new position, and yet business and markets cannot slow down and wait for you to catch up. Decisions still need to be taken and, consequently, the pressure can build up and will need to be managed in order to stay operating effectively. Being overwhelmed with immediate fire-fighting and task-driven priorities It would be tempting to get busy and dive into the immediate business tasks and issues. But you need to have the strength of character to step back and take time out to look at the big picture: what tasks should you continue, what should you stop, and what should you start? Need to invest energy in building new networks and forging new stakeholder relationships There is no point in having the right vision and strategy in isolation of bringing people with you. The culture may be dense and slow-moving – people may be resistant to the changes you bring. Invest early in the influencer and stakeholder network. Dealing with legacy issues from the predecessor Depending on the quality of your predecessor, your unit may or may not have a good reputation, and your team may have developed poor habits, behaviours and disciplines that will take time to address. Or you may have to endure the scenario of filling the shoes of a much-loved predecessor, and being initially resented as the new guy whose mandate is to change how things have always been done before. Challenges on inheriting or building a team and having to make tough personnel decisions Don’t expect underperformers to have been weeded out prior to your arrival. A key task in your first 100 days will be to assess the quality of your team: who stays, who goes and what fresh talent is needed on board. Unfortunately, your best talent is possibly now de-motivated and resentful – and consequently underperforming – because they applied unsuccessfully for your job. For external appointments, a lack of experience of the new company culture may lead to inadvertent gaffes and early political blunders – all of which can take time to recover From the innocuous to the significant, everything you do is being judged as indicative of your character. Checking your smart device during a meeting may deeply offend your new role stakeholders who may judge that action as an indication that you are brash, uninterested and arrogant. You will need to be on ‘hyper alert’ to consciously pick up clues on the acceptable norms and behaviours in your new culture. Getting the balance right between moving too fast and moving too slowly Newly appointed people sometimes panic and this can result in either doing too much (scattergun approach, but not tackling the core issues) or doing too little (‘I’ll just listen and learn for the first three months, and then decide what to do’). Neither extreme cuts it. Find the right balance.

God wants us to trust him enough that we, like a child standing at the end of a diving board for the first time, can jump into his arms without fear. Only children who trust a father’s ability to catch and protect them can make that leap. That’s God’s prescription for stress in our lives—to make the leap into his arms. Only then can we enjoy life as an adventure rather than fear the consequences of all our decisions and mistakes. When we feel surrounded by stressful circumstances or people, we can choose to put our trust in him and then rest confidently in the fact that he is holding us.

Like agreeing to learn the doggy paddle and being shoved off the high-dive board. And to keep things interesting, somebody told Bobby, Kevin’s youngest nephew, the baby could hear stuff, and he was determined to make his new cousin his BFF in utero. It was a bit disconcerting having a kid randomly tell bad jokes to her stomach. Like now. “Why did the weasel cross the road?” he yelled at her belly button. “To prove it wasn’t a chicken!

Labor and employment firm Fisher & Phillips LLP opened a Seattle office by poaching partner Davis Bae from labor and employment competitor Jackson Lewis PC. Mr. Bea, an immigration specialist, will lead the office, which also includes new partners Nick Beermann and Catharine Morisset and one other lawyer. Fisher & Phillips has 31 offices around the country. Sara Randazzo LAW Cadwalader Hires New Partner as It Looks to Represent Activist Investors By Liz Hoffman and David Benoit | 698 words One of America’s oldest corporate law firms is diving into the business of representing activist investors, betting that these agitators are going mainstream—and offer a lucrative business opportunity for advisers. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP has hired a new partner, Richard Brand, whose biggest clients include William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP, among other activist investors. Mr. Brand, 35 years old, advised Pershing Square on its campaign at Allergan Inc. last year and a board coup at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. in 2012. He has also defended companies against activists and has worked on mergers-and-acquisitions deals. His hiring, from Kirkland & Ellis LLP, is a notable step by a major law firm to commit to representing activists, and to do so while still aiming to retain corporate clients. Founded in 1792, Cadwalader for decades has catered to big companies and banks, but going forward will also seek out work from hedge funds including Pershing Square and Sachem Head Capital Management LP, a Pershing Square spinout and another client of Mr. Brand’s. To date, few major law firms or Wall Street banks have tried to represent both corporations and activist investors, who generally take positions in companies and push for changes to drive up share prices. Most big law firms instead cater exclusively to companies, worried that lining up with activists will offend or scare off executives or create conflicts that could jeopardize future assignments. Some are dabbling in both camps. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, for example, represented Trian Fund Management LP in its recent proxy fight at DuPont Co. and also is steering Time Warner Cable Inc.’s pending sale to Charter Communications Inc. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP have done work for activist firm Third Point LLC. But most firms are more monogamous. Those on one end, most vocally Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, defend management, while a small band including Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP and Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP primarily represent activists. In embracing activist work, Cadwalader thinks it can serve both groups better, said Christopher Cox, chairman of the firm’s corporate group. “Traditional M&A and activism are becoming increasingly intertwined,” Mr. Cox said in an interview. “To be able to bring that perspective to the boardroom is a huge advantage. And when a threat does emerge, who’s better to defend a company than someone who’s seen it from the other side?” Mr. Cox said Cadwalader has been thinking about branching out into activism since late last year. The firm is also working with an activist fund launched earlier this year by Cadwalader’s former head of M&A, Jim Woolery, that hopes to take a friendlier stance toward companies. Mr. Cox also said he believes activism can be lucrative, pooh-poohing another reason some big law firms eschew such assignments—namely, that they don’t pay as well as, say, a large merger deal. “There is real money in activism today,” said Robert Jackson, a former lawyer at Wachtell and the U.S. Treasury Department who now teaches at Columbia University and who also notes that advising activists can generate regulatory work. “Law firms are businesses, and taking the stance that you’ll never, ever, ever represent an activist is a financial luxury that only a few firms have.” To be sure, the handful of law firms that work for both sides say they do so

Tony went upstairs with an expressionless face, undressed, folded his clothes neatly, washed his face and hands, and got into bed. He was full of resentment against the world. People made one dive when one could really dive quite well if one had a proper diving board. If one killed a wasp people seemed to be annoyed instead of being grateful. People didn't even want one to bark like a dog, he thought, remembering earlier grievances. Girls were simply a nuisance and he was glad he had burst Dora's pig. People who said "nyang, nyang" like that deserved to have their pigs burst.

a bad dive off a high diving board had brought all that to an end.

DIVING BOARD NOTES Odie tells Albert, a friend the family knew back in Iran, that I had a cocktail party, and they met my Armenian writer friend, and she found him intelligent and smokin’ hot. Odie is perfectly fluent in English, but connotation can still trip her up. A while back, I told her that when Americans think someone is nice-looking, they say, “smokin’ hot.” Albert’s twenty-two-year-old son seated next to me whispers, “She thinks he’s smoking hot?” I whisper back, “She also thinks you and I are smoking hot. It’s her phrase.” Albert, on the other side of me, whispers, “You are smoking pot?” Patrick, across from me, listening through the din, says, “No, I don’t like smoking pot.” Armen, a little hard of hearing, says to Patrick, “You like smoking pot?!” Albert whispers to me, “Pot is not so bad. I like Scotch better.” Odie, oblivious to their side conversations, finishes her recounting with a flourish: “And he’s such a good writer!

But really the Romanisches Café is unacceptable. And they all say: ‘My God, that dive with those degenerate literary types. We should stop going there.’ And then they all go there after all. It was very educational for me, and like learning a foreign language. “And nobody has much money there, but they’re alive and part of the elite and instead of having money they play chess, which is a checkered board with black and blonde squares. They have kings too. And ladies. And it takes a long time, which is the whole point of it. Of course, the waiters don’t like it, because a cup of coffee only has a five-pfennig tip in it, which is very little for a chessy guest of seven hours. But it’s the cheapest occupation for the elite, because they’re not working and that’s why they’re keeping busy. And they are very literary, and the literary elite is incredibly busy with their coffee and chess and talking and all that intellect, so they won’t let on to themselves that they’re lazy.