Dress Alteration Quotes

Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever. Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.

In the center stood a marble alter, where a kid in a toga was doing some sort of ritual in front of a massive golden statue of the big dude himself:Jupiter the sky god, dressed in a silk XXXL purple toga, holding a lightning bolt. "It doesn't look like that," Percy muttered. "What?" Hazel asked. "The master bolt," Percy said. "What are you talking about?" "I-" Percy frowned. For a second, he'd thought he remembered something. Now it was gone. "Nothing, I guess.

Fireflies out on a warm summer's night, seeing the urgent, flashing, yellow-white phosphorescence below them, go crazy with desire; moths cast to the winds an enchantment potion that draws the opposite sex, wings beating hurriedly, from kilometers away; peacocks display a devastating corona of blue and green and the peahens are all aflutter; competing pollen grains extrude tiny tubes that race each other down the female flower's orifice to the waiting egg below; luminescent squid present rhapsodic light shows, altering the pattern, brightness and color radiated from their heads, tentacles, and eyeballs; a tapeworm diligently lays a hundred thousand fertilized eggs in a single day; a great whale rumbles through the ocean depths uttering plaintive cries that are understood hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, where another lonely behemoth is attentively listening; bacteria sidle up to one another and merge; cicadas chorus in a collective serenade of love; honeybee couples soar on matrimonial flights from which only one partner returns; male fish spray their spunk over a slimy clutch of eggs laid by God-knows-who; dogs, out cruising, sniff each other's nether parts, seeking erotic stimuli; flowers exude sultry perfumes and decorate their petals with garish ultraviolet advertisements for passing insects, birds, and bats; and men and women sing, dance, dress, adorn, paint, posture, self-mutilate, demand, coerce, dissemble, plead, succumb, and risk their lives. To say that love makes the world go around is to go too far. The Earth spins because it did so as it was formed and there has been nothing to stop it since. But the nearly maniacal devotion to sex and love by most of the plants, animals, and microbes with which we are familiar is a pervasive and striking aspect of life on Earth. It cries out for explanation. What is all this in aid of? What is the torrent of passion and obsession about? Why will organisms go without sleep, without food, gladly put themselves in mortal danger for sex? ... For more than half the history of life on Earth organisms seem to have done perfectly well without it. What good is sex?... Through 4 billion years of natural selection, instructions have been honed and fine-tuned...sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, manuals written out in the alphabet of life in competition with other similar manuals published by other firms. The organisms become the means through which the instructions flow and copy themselves, by which new instructions are tried out, on which selection operates. 'The hen,' said Samuel Butler, 'is the egg's way of making another egg.' It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. ... The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon--often within hours of spawning--they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic. They've served their purpose. Nature is unsentimental. Death is built in.

We are the product of our past. We start each day where we left off the day before. Changing the way we dress, where we work and live, or even changing a name does not alter our basic constitution. Transformation of the self requires a radical alteration in the way that we perceive the world and derive meaning.

That was very bad of you, Elena, Raphael said once they were in the air. You know the coming sun shower will pass in but a moment. I also know Tasha McHotpants is regretting she didn’t scoop you up when you were young and single. Altering her mental tone, she said, Oh, Raphael, what luck I caught you. And me dressed up like a warrior with a sword and everything. She snorted. Luck my ass.

This is Luke’s favorite thing to say about me, to remind me. I’m a survivor. It’s the finality of the word that bothers me, its assuming implication. Survivors should move on. Should wear white wedding dresses and carry peonies down the aisle and overcome, rather than dwell in a past that can’t be altered. The word dismisses something I cannot, will not, dismiss.

Besides," Gwen added, fluffing the dress folds, "this thing took forever, so you're wearing it." "Wait you made this?" Isobel asked, distracted. "Altered it," she admitted. She shrugged. "Half off at the Nearly New Shop. By the way, you owe me twenty-five dollars.

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.

She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely.

Also, I'm too plump. All my dresses are tight." "You look the same as always." "My dress had to be altered last night. It wouldn't button up the back." Twisting stealthily in the chair, Tom peeked around the edge. His breath caught as he stared at her in wonder. For the first time in his life, Tom Severin was smitten. Smitten and slain. She was beautiful the way fire and sunlight were beautiful, warm and glowing and golden. The sight of here dealt him a famished, hollow feeling. She was everything he'd missed in his disadvantaged youth, every lost hope and opportunity.

There was death at the beginning as there would be death again at its end. Though whether it was some fleeting shadow of this that passed across the girl’s dreams and woke her on that least likely of mornings she would never know. All she knew, when she opened her eyes, was that the world was somehow altered. The red glow of her alarm showed it was yet a half hour till the time she had set it to wake her and she lay quite still, not lifting her head, trying to configure the change. It was dark but not as dark as it should be. Across the bedroom, she could clearly make out the dull glint of her riding trophies on cluttered shelves and above them the looming faces of rock stars she had once thought she should care about. She listened. The silence that filled the house was different too, expectant, like the pause between the intake of breath and the uttering of words. Soon there would be the muted roar of the furnace coming alive in the basement and the old farmhouse floorboards would start their ritual creaking complaint. She slipped out from the bedclothes and went to the window. There was snow. The first fall of winter. And from the laterals of the fence up by the pond she could tell there must be almost a foot of it. With no deflecting wind, it was perfect and driftless, heaped in comical proportion on the branches of the six small cherry trees her father had planted last year. A single star shone in a wedge of deep blue above the woods. The girl looked down and saw a lace of frost had formed on the lower part of the window and she placed a finger on it, melting a small hole. She shivered, not from the cold, but from the thrill that this transformed world was for the moment entirely hers. And she turned and hurried to get dressed.

The year was 1987, but it might as well have been the Summer of Love: I was twenty, had hair down to my shoulders, and was dressed like an Indian rickshaw driver. For those charged with enforcing our nation’s drug laws, it would have been only prudent to subject my luggage to special scrutiny. Happily, I had nothing to hide. “Where are you coming from?” the officer asked, glancing skeptically at my backpack. “India, Nepal, Thailand…” I said. “Did you take any drugs while you were over there?” As it happens, I had. The temptation to lie was obvious—why speak to a customs officer about my recent drug use? But there was no real reason not to tell the truth, apart from the risk that it would lead to an even more thorough search of my luggage (and perhaps of my person) than had already commenced. “Yes,” I said. The officer stopped searching my bag and looked up. “Which drugs did you take? “I smoked pot a few times… And I tried opium in India.” “Opium?” “Yes.” “Opium or heroin? “It was opium.” “You don’t hear much about opium these days.” “I know. It was the first time I’d ever tried it.” “Are you carrying any drugs with you now?” “No.” The officer eyed me warily for a moment and then returned to searching my bag. Given the nature of our conversation, I reconciled myself to being there for a very long time. I was, therefore, as patient as a tree. Which was a good thing, because the officer was now examining my belongings as though any one item—a toothbrush, a book, a flashlight, a bit of nylon cord—might reveal the deepest secrets of the universe. “What is opium like?” he asked after a time. And I told him. In fact, over the next ten minutes, I told this lawman almost everything I knew about the use of mind-altering substances. Eventually he completed his search and closed my luggage. One thing was perfectly obvious at the end of our encounter: We both felt very good about it.

Perhaps after all, for all our talk of change, redemption or personal growth, for all our dependence on therapists, religious faith or mood-altering drugs both legal and non, we're doomed simply to go on repeating the same patterns over and over in our lives, dressing them up in different clothes like children at play so we can pretend we don't recognize them when we look into mirrors.

One day an invitation arrived at their house.  The prince was celebrating his exploitation of the dispossessed and marginalized peasantry by throwing a fancy dress ball.  Cinderella’s sisters-of-step were very excited to be invited to the palace.  They began to plan the expensive clothes they would use to alter and enslave their natural body images to emulate an unrealistic standard of feminine beauty.  (It

grabbed my dagger and prayed for Adeline’s forgiveness as I altered the dress she had lent me, and Vilah’s forgiveness too as I pried free a long piece of chain from her chain-mail belt. I would attend the party just as he had asked, but I would attend as the person I was—not the one he wanted me to be.

Because they’re wrong. People who judge me are wrong. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, or how I dress, or how I choose to express myself. I’m not hurting anyone, but they’re hurting me. If I change to fit in with their misguided opinions then I’m just reinforcing them. On top of that, their lives wouldn’t alter. They don’t know me. They have an issue with gay people in general, not me personally. So, if I changed who I was to fit in with what they deem an acceptable society, it wouldn’t affect them, but it would affect me. I’d be living a lie. I’d be miserable, and they wouldn’t even know about it. They’d find another gay person to disapprove of. So why do that? Why change for people who don’t even know who I am?” This

Till now, I could not have supposed it possible to be mistaken as to a girl's being out or not. A girl not out, has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks very demure, and never says a word. You may smile, but it is so, I assure you; and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far, it is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest. The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite - to confidence! That is the faulty part of the present system.

And then there was Joss. I met him in a dimly lit office, where he regaled me with tales of adventure, swashbuckling, shootings, spaceships, and narrow escapes. Um, where do I sign? He gave me a new identity, a costume, a gun, and a long brown duster for a cape. I remember that meeting so well; it was like a superhero "origin" issue. I remember Joss looking at Polaroid photos of my first costume fitting, holding up the one with the duster and gun saying, "Action figure, anyone?" Never in my wildest. Like some sort of super-team benefactor, Joss made superheroes out of all of us, complete with a super-hideout spaceship. During filming, we'd all retreat to our dressing room trailers and emerge like Supermen with our alter egos. The boots, the suspenders, gun holstered low on my hip... with a flick and a spin of that wicked awesome coat over my shoulders, I became someone else.

After everything that's happened, her fear of requesting a prescription or of asking Trevor about his mother baffles her. Shouldn't life-altering events make you less afraid of the little stuff? But it's the little stuff that paralyzes her: talking, eating, dressing, sleeping. Everyone in school is afraid of the apocalypse; she is afraid of living through it.

Perhaps it is a shame that I have vowed to keep my past locked up within me. At Hvammur, during the trial, they plucked at my words like birds. Dreadful birds, dressed in red with breasts of silver buttons, and cocked heads and sharp mouths, looking for guilt like berries on a bush. They did not let me say what happened in my own way, but took my memories of Illugastadir, of Natan, and wrought them into something sinister; they wrested my statement of that night and made me seem malevolent. Everything I said was taken from me and altered until the story wasn’t my own

I have found that to tell the truth is the hardest thing on earth. Harder than fighting in a war, harder than taking part in a revolution. “If you try it, you will find that at times sweat will break upon you. You will find that even if you succeed in discounting the attitudes of others to you and your life, you must wrestle with yourself most of all. Fight with yourself. Because there will surge up in you a strong desire to alter facts, to dress up your feelings. “You’ll find that there are many things you don’t want to admit about yourself and others. “As your record shapes itself, an awed wonder haunts you. And yet there is no more exciting an adventure than trying to be honest in this way. The clean, strong feeling that sweeps you when you’ve done it makes you know that.

During their brief encounter in the music room, Cassandra had been too flustered to notice much about him. He'd been so very odd, jumping out like that and offering to marry a complete stranger. Also, she'd been absolutely mortified for him to have overheard her tearful disclosure two West, especially the part about having her dress altered. But now it was impossible not to notice how very good-looking he was, tall and elegantly lean, with dark hair, a clear, fair complexion, and thick brows sett at a diabolical slant. If she were to judge his features individually- the long nose, the wide mouth, the narrow eyes, the sharply angled cheeks and jaw- she wouldn't have expected him to be this attractive. But somehow when it was all put together, his looks were striking and interesting in a way she'd remember far longer than conventional handsomeness.

Have you anything that is ready to wear today? I'd like nothing better than to be rid of that thing she has on now. You can use her measurements to fashion a few more." "I have one or two I could quickly alter to her size. In fact there is one right there." She pointed to a pale yellow day dress draped over a dressmaker's model. Dunford was just about to say that it would do when he saw Henry's face. She was staring at the dress like a starving woman.

It was easy to find things she would like. Our taste was the same, it had been from the first. It would be impossible to live with someone otherwise. I've always thought it was the most important single thing, though people may not realize it. Perhaps it's transmitted to them in the way someone dresses or, for that matter, undresses, but taste is a thing no one is born with, it's learned, and at a certain point it can't be altered. We sometimes talked about that, what could and couldn't be altered. People were always saying something had completely changed them, some experience or book or man, but if you knew how they had been before, nothing much really had changed. When you found someone who was tremendously appealing but not quite perfect, you might believe you could change them after marriage, not everything, just a few things, but in truth the most you could expect was to change perhaps one thing and even that would eventually go back to what it had been.

The [ military ] lawyers I saw there had about as much in common with the man who had defended me at fifteen as automated machine rifle fire has with farting. They were cold, professionally polished and well on their way up a career ladder which would ensure that despite the uniforms they wore, they would never have to come within a thousand kilometres of a genuine firefight. The only problem they had, as they cruised sharkishly back and forth across the cool marble floor of the court, was in drawing the fine differences between war (mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own), justifiable loss (mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains) and criminal negligence (mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit). I sat in that courtroom for three weeks listening to them dress it like a variety of salads, and with every passing hour the distinctions, which at one point I'd been pretty clear on, grew increasingly vague. I suppose that proves how good they were.

Whatever comes…cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it

Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.

When, soon, they join in their happy wedding-bonds— and wedded let them be—in pacts of peace at last, never command the Latins, here on native soil, to exchange their age-old name, to become Trojans, called the kin of Teucer, alter their language, change their style of dress. Let Latium endure.

The truth is, yes, you were... altered for many years. But I think the worst thing you could do is pretend like it never happened. It did. Sometimes, terrible, awful things happen to people, things you can't predict or wish for differently that happen just the same. But you can't let them consume you. You can't wish it away. All you can do is pray you've learned from it, that it's made you stronger, and that you will move on. I bought this dress because it's beautiful, but also because it's you. I felt like if you wore it, embraced who you are and what you've been and done... it will help you move on.

This is his favorite thing to say about me, to remind me. I'm a survivor. It's the finality of the word that bothers me, its assuming implication. Survivors should move on. Should wear white wedding dresses and carry peonies down the aisle and overcome, rather than dwell on a past that can't be altered. The word dismisses something I cannot, will not, dismiss.

When the Church Mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testament are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.

She patted her hair, which she wore swept up and held in place with spangled pins. The dress was a dramatic strapless red sheath she and her friend Ariel had found in a church thrift shop. Ariel swore that, after alterations, the dress would look as though it had been tailor-made for Rosa. The bright cherry-red was delicious, the open-toed ruby and rhinestone sandals made her look taller and she felt wonderful.

THE MEETING" "Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn, That August nightfall, as I crossed the down Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence Skirting a penning’s edge, an old man waited Motionless in the mist, with downcast head And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name And why he lingered at so lonely a place. “I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock. No fences barred our progress and we’d travel Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought I’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-top To find a missing straggler or set snares By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March I’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs. “I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts, Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead, Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song Of lark and pewit melodied my toil. I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn To groom and dress my team: by daylight’s end My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint. “And then I was a carter. With my skill I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time, My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses Back to the master’s barn with shouts and curses Before the scurrying storm. Through sunlit days On this same slope where you now stand, my friend, I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields. “My cob-built home has crumbled. Hereabouts Few folk remember me: and though you stare Till time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me striding The broad, bare down with flock or toiling team. Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers: Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble, On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur, In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.” My comrade turned aside. From the damp sward Drifted a scent of melilot and thyme; From far across the down a barn owl shouted, Circling the silence of that summer evening: But in an instant, as I stepped towards him Striving to view his face, his contour altered. Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stood Nothing of flesh, only a post of wood.

Why could she not lean on the balcony of a Swiss chalet or confine her sadness in a Scottish cottage, with a husband dressed in a long-skirted coat of black velvet, and sporting soft boots, a pointed hat and ruffled sleeves! Well may it have been her wish to confide all these things to someone. But how to express an indiscernible disquiet, which alters its shape like the clouds, which whirls like the wind? So she could not find the words, the opportunity, the boldness.

About her clothes one couldn't fault her, Like him, she dressed as taste decreed. But then they led her to the alter And never asked if she agreed. The clever husband chose correctly To take his grieving bride directly To his estate, where first she cried (With God knows whom on every side), Then tossed about and seemed demented; And almost even left her spouse; But then she took to keeping house And settled down and grew contented. Thus heaven's gift to us is this: That habit takes the place of bliss.

When the church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament, are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up. Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should not.

Nuts and seeds contain 150 to 200 calories per ounce. Eating a small amount—one ounce or less—each day, however, adds valuable nutrients and healthy unprocessed fats. Nuts and seeds are ideal in salad dressings, particularly when blended with fruits and spices or vegetable juice (tomato, celery, carrot). Always eat nuts and seeds raw because the roasting process alters their beneficial fats. Commercially packaged nuts and seeds are often cooked in hydrogenated oils, adding trans fats and sodium to your diet, so these are absolutely off the list. If

I had achieved my dream, but what had it brought? Wealth? I glanced at my dress, worn too many days now without washing, and at the patched cloak bunched under my arm. Renown? I’d been a celebrity in my student days, but since then I might as well have died. Happiness? My eyes pricked with tears. The day I received my degree I thought my life would be completely altered. I had entered the forbidden land of my father. Nothing would ever be the same. But in truth nothing happened. I remained plain old Agnes White, no richer or more famous or happier than before.

But more than this - not even, after your victims have been killed, will you eat them just as they are from the slaughter-house. You boil, roast, and altogether metamorphose them by fire and condiments. You entirely alter and disguise the murdered animal by use of ten thousand sweet herbs and spices, that your natural taste may be deceived and be prepared to take the unnatural food. A proper and witty rebuke was that of the Spartan who bought a fish and gave it to his cook to dress. When the latter asked for butter, and olive oil, and vinegar, he replied, 'Why, if I had all these things I should not have bought the fish!

Cleo was like those little bluebirds of happiness in Cinderella, flitting around until Natalie had been transformed into a princess. A fraudulent one, to be sure, but a princess nonetheless. The silk dress from her mother's closet had been transformed into a couture masterpiece by the sartorial skills of Cleo's talented aunt. The sheath now fit like an extremely flattering glove. Its color, and the bright handwork accents, echoed the colors of the precious vase---jade green, turquoise, marigold, and fuchsia with veins of cobalt blue. She paired it with the gold-heeled sandals, the vintage watch, and a gold snake belt borrowed from Cleo.

I, however, had not been too late. It has been my great good fortune to see India when that once fabulously beautiful land was as lovely, and to a great extent as peaceful and unspoiled, as Eden before the Fall. To live for two years in Peking in an old Chinese house, once the property of a Manch Prince, at a time when the citizens of that country still wore their national costumes instead of dressing up - or down! - in dull Russian-style "uniforms. To have visited Japan before war, the Bomb and the American occupation altered it beyond recognition, when the sight of a Japanese woman in European dress was unusual enough to make you turn and stare...

Whatever comes,” she said, “cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off.

A startlingly clear memory jolted through Ronan, as fresh as the moment he'd lived it. It was the day Ronan had first come to Harvard to surprise Adam, back when he still thought he was moving to Cambridge. He'd been so full of anticipation for how the reveal would go and then, in the end, they'd walked right past each other. At the time, Ronan had thought it was because Adam looked so different after his time away. He was dressed differently. He held himself differently. He'd even lost his accent. And he'd assumed it had felt the same to Adam; Ronan had gotten older, lonelier, sharper. But now they were in this strange sea, and neither of them looked anything like the Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch the other had known. Adam was a collection of thoughts barely masquerading as a human form. Ronan Lynch was raw dark energy, alien and enormous. And yet when Adam's consciousness touched his, Ronan recognized him. It was Adam's footsteps on the stairs. His surprised whoop as he catapulted into the pond they'd dug. The irritation in his voice; the impatience of his kiss; his ruthless, dry sense of humor; his biting pride; his ferocious loyalty. It was all caught up in this essential form that had nothing to do with how his physical body looked. The difference between this reunion and the one at Harvard was that there in Cambridge they had been false. They'd both been wearing masks upon masks, hiding the truth of themselves from everyone, including themselves. Here, there was no way to hide. They were only their thoughts. Only the truth. "Ronan, Ronan, it is you. I did it. I found you. With just a sweetmetal, I found you." Ronan didn't know if Adam had thought it or said it, but it didn't matter. The joy was unmistakable. "Tamquam," said Ronan, and Adam said, "Alter idem." Cicero had written the phrase about Atticus, his dearest friend. Qui est tamquam alter idem. Like a second self. Ronan and Adam could not hug, because they had no real arms, but it didn't matter. Their energy darted and mingled and circled, the brilliant bright of the sweetmetals and the absolute dark of the Lace. They didn't speak, but they didn't have to. Audible words were redundant when their thoughts were tangled together as one. Without any of the clumsiness of language, they shared their euphoria and their lurking fears. They rehashed what they had done to each other and apologized. They showed everything they had done and that had been done to them in the time since they'd last seen each other--the good and the bad, the horrid and the wonderful. Everything had felt so murky for so long, but when they were like this, all that was left was clarity. Again and again they spiraled around and through one another, not Ronan-and-Adam but rather one entity that held both of them. They were happy and sad, angry and forgiven, they were wanted, they were wanted, they were wanted.

The inorganic world out of which life has emerged and into which, in season, it falls back, possesses the latent capacity for endless ramification and diversity. A few chance elements which appear thoroughly stable in their reactions dress up as for a masked ball and go strolling, hunted and hunter together. Their forms alter through the ages. They are shape-shifters, role-changers. Like flying lizard or ancestral men, they run their course and vanish, never to return. The chemicals of which their bodies were composed lie all about us but by no known magic can we return a lost species to life. Life, in fact, is the product of singular and unreturning contingencies of which the inorganic world disclaims knowledge. Only its elements, swept up in the mysterious living vortex, evoke new forms, new habits, and new thoughts.

over the long fabric. You are the virgin daughter of a Jewish father, so you have draped your veil over your head and crossed it over your shoulders for the duration of the day. You have never known another kind of dress, so you are completely accustomed to the weight and the constant adjusting of a six-foot-long, four-foot-wide veil. Beneath the veil, thick, dark hair frames a deep complexion and near-ebony eyes. Without warning, a messenger from God appears and announces that you have been chosen among women to bear the Son of God. You can hardly believe, yet you dare not doubt. As suddenly as the angel appeared, he vanishes. You are flooded with emotions. What do you imagine you would be thinking and feeling right now? What in the world does a young woman do after receiving such life-altering news? Often God allows the space between the lines of His Word to capture our imaginations and prompt us to wonder. Not

Helen wriggled in protest as his hand stole to the back of her skirts. She was wearing a ready-made traveling dress, which fit nicely after a few minor alterations made by one of Mrs. Allenby’s assistants. It was a simple design of light blue silk and cashmere, with a smart little waist-jacket. There was no bustle, and the skirts had been drawn back snugly to reveal the shape of her body. The skirts descended in a pretty fall of folds and pleats, with a large decorative bow placed high on her posterior. To her vexation, Rhys wouldn’t leave the bow alone. He was positively mesmerized by it. Every time she turned her back to him, she could feel him playing with it. “Rhys, don’t!” “I can’t help it. It calls to me.” “You’ve seen bows on dresses before.” “But not there. And not on you.” Reluctantly Rhys let go of her and pulled out his pocket watch. “The train should have departed by now. We’re five minutes late.” “What are you in a rush for?” she asked. “Bed,” came his succinct reply. Helen smiled. She stood on her toes and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “We have a lifetime of nights together.” “Aye, and we’ve already missed too many of them.” Helen turned and bent to pick up her small valise, which had been set on the floor. At the same time, she heard the sound of fabric ripping. Before Helen had straightened and twisted to look at the back of her skirts, she already knew what had happened. The bow hung limply, at least half of its stitches torn. Meeting her indignant glance, Rhys looked as sheepish as a schoolboy caught with a stolen apple. “I didn’t know you were going to bend over.” “What am I going to say to the lady’s maid when she sees this?” He considered that for a moment. “Alas?” he suggested. Helen’s lips quivered with unwilling amusement.

The pink?" she suggested, holding the shimmering rose-colored satin in front of Sara's half-clad figure. Sara held her breath in awe. She had never worn such a sumptuous creation. Silk roses adorned the sleeves and hem of the gown. The short-waisted bodice was finished with a stomacher of silver filigree and a row of satin bows. Lily shook her head thoughtfully. "Charming, but too innocent." Sara suppressed a disappointed sigh. She couldn't imagine anything more beautiful than the pink satin. Busily Monique discarded the gown and sorted through the others. "The peach. No man will be able to keep his eyes from her in that. Here, let us try it, chérie." Raising her arms, Sara let the dressmaker and her assistant Cora pull the gauzy peach-hued gown over her head. "I think it will have to be altered a great deal," Sara commented, her voice muffled beneath the delicate layers of fabric. The gowns had been fitted for Lily's lithe, compact lines. Sara was more amply endowed, with a generous bosom and curving hips, and a tiny, scoped-in waist... a figure style that had been fashionable thirty years ago. The current high-waisted Grecian mode was not particularly flattering to her. Monique settled the gown around Sara's feet and then began to yank the back of it together. "Oui, Lady Raiford has the form that fashion loves." Energetically, she hooked the tight bodice together. "But you, chérie, have the kind that men love. Draw in your breath, s'il vous plaît." Sara winced as her breasts were pushed upward until they nearly overflowed from the low-cut bodice. The hem of the unusually full skirt was bordered with three rows of graduated tulip-leaves. Sara could hardly believe the woman in the mirror was herself. The peach gown, with its transparent layers of silk and shockingly low neckline, had been designed to attract a man's attention. It was too loose at the waist, but her breasts rose from the shallow bodice in creamy splendor pushed together to form an enticing cleavage.

Thinking it Ranulf, she tugged the garment down and beamed the incomer a smile. The smile changed to one of shock at seeing her sisters-both up and already dressed. Seeing her initial jubilant welcome, Edythe snorted and rubbed her arms vigorously in an attempt to get warmer. Lily, on the other hand, laughed. "Sorry. You obviously hoped we were someone else," she mumbled, not meaning it at all. Tyr poked his head in and, looking at Edythe, said, "We are to be leaving soon.Be ready." Edythe issued him a scowl and rubbed her very red nose. "I heard you the first five times," she moaned. "The man does not believe in sleep and cannot seem to get it through his head that some do," she added, speaking to Bronwyn but keeping her gaze on him. Tyr arched a single brow and stepped inside. "I sleep,just not all day." Edythe sniffed.She wasn't feeling her best, but she was not about to let Tyr chide her without consequences. "You may have been the one standing beside me at the alter, but that doesn't give you permission to act like my husband." "I know your husband well, and Garik's going to feel the same way," Tyr responded, crossing his arms. Edythe lifted her chin and several locks of her red hair fell around her shoulders. "Not after I'm done with him. He'll be glad to have a wife. And the fact that I like to sleep in bed, he's going to consider a bonus." Then with a manufactured flair, she stepped around him and plopped down on the fur blankets with enough force that her hastily made braid came totally undone. Few outside of family had ever seen Edythe's auburn tresses completely free, but those who did were blessed with a sight that denied description. Tyr just stared at her for several seconds. Every muscle in his body had gone tight and he looked as if he were struggling just to breathe. A second later,he pivoted and abruptly exited the tent, stomping off with no effort to hide his displeasure. Edythe, who refused to look at him, could no longer pretend to be ignorant of Tyr's mood. "The man is a menace," she mumbled as she once again rubbed her nose.

Whatever comes,” she said, “cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were, even when they cut her head off.” This was not a new thought, but quite an old one, by this time. It had consoled her through many a bitter day, and she had gone about the house with an expression in her face which Miss Minchin could not understand and which was a source of great annoyance to her, as it seemed as if the child were mentally living a life which held her above the rest of the world. It was as if she scarcely heard the rude and acid things said to her; or, if she heard them, did not care for them at all. Sometimes, when she was in the midst of some harsh, domineering speech, Miss Minchin would find the still, unchildish eyes fixed upon her with something like a proud smile in them. At such times she did not know that Sara was saying to herself: “You don’t know that you are saying these things to a princess, and that if I chose I could wave my hand and order you to execution. I only spare you because I am a princess, and you are a poor, stupid, unkind, vulgar old thing, and don’t know any better.” This used to interest and amuse her more than anything else; and queer and fanciful as it was, she found comfort in it and it was a good thing for her. While the thought held possession of her, she could not be made rude and malicious by the rudeness and malice of those about her. “A princess must be polite,” she said to herself. And so when the servants, taking their tone from their mistress, were insolent and ordered her about, she would hold her head erect and reply to them with a quaint civility which often made them stare at her. “She’s got more airs and graces than if she come from Buckingham Palace, that young one,” said the cook, chuckling a little sometimes. “I lose my temper with her often enough, but I will say she never forgets her manners. ‘If you please, cook’; ‘Will you be so kind, cook?’ ‘I beg your pardon, cook’; ‘May I trouble you, cook?’ She drops ’em about the kitchen as if they was nothing.

My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life. A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner. The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .

Judges give judgment according to their own advantage, doing manifest wrong to poor innocents to please others. Notaries alter sentences, and for money lose their deeds. Some make false monies; others counterfeit false weights. Some abuse their parents, yea corrupt their own sisters; others make long libels and pasquils, defaming men of good life, and extol such as are lewd and vicious. Some rob one, some another:{252} magistrates make laws against thieves, and are the veriest thieves themselves. Some kill themselves, others despair, not obtaining their desires. Some dance, sing, laugh, feast and banquet, whilst others sigh, languish, mourn and lament, having neither meat, drink, nor clothes.{253} Some prank up their bodies, and have their minds full of execrable vices. Some trot about{254} to bear false witness, and say anything for money; and though judges know of it, yet for a bribe they wink at it, and suffer false contracts to prevail against equity. Women are all day a dressing, to pleasure other men abroad, and go like sluts at home, not caring to please their own husbands whom they should. Seeing men are so fickle, so sottish, so intemperate, why should not I laugh at those to whom{255} folly seems wisdom, will not be cured, and perceive it not?

Real esotericism was not just dressing up in handsome robes and manipulating symbols for the sake of so doing. It was knowing how to apply the meaning of such symbols to Life itself, for the purpose of altering or directing its energy in accordance with intention. For example, a Magical Sword was not the physical symbol one handles in Temple practice, but its qualities as applied to the human being. Flexibility, sharpness, keenness, brightness, pointedness of action, and everything else to be thought of in connection with a well-balanced blade.

I grant the possibility. However, the tones you imitate are in a human the result of an excess of adrenaline. In you, they are the result of a deliberate decision, made in the hopes of altering my emotional state in your favor.” “Fair enough.” The wallscreen comes alive again, and she appears as a young girl in pigtails and a blue and white dress. “What would alter your emotional state, then? A change of appearance? An expression of remorse? I’m sorry. I’m very, very, sorry. I didn’t really know what I was doing until the cyborg. It was horrible. If I had known it was like that, I never would have gone along with them.

When I sat with clients and opened my mind to them, a taste usually came through. It might be sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. After a moment, it would blossom into a full flavor. The sweet ripeness of apricot, the sourness of a Key lime, the earthy saltiness of Mexican chocolate, the aromatic bitterness of nutmeg. In a flash, a feeling would follow the flavor. Joy. Skepticism. Lust for life. Quiet acceptance. And from that feeling would come a memory, a scene called back to present day. A moment whose real meaning and importance I might never fully know. And I didn't really need to know everything. I used my gift to see my clients' stories so I could design desserts- in this case, a wedding cake- to fit each customer like a couture gown, not an off-the-rack dress in desperate need of alterations. If I got the cake and filling and frosting flavors right, they would resonate with my clients, reaching them in those down-deep places where they would begin to feel that everything really would be all right.

HONEY MUSTARD VINAIGRETTE You can alter this basic recipe by adding any of the following ingredients: ½ teaspoon sweet paprika, 1 teaspoon grated lemon or orange peel, or 1 teaspoon dried herbs, such as tarragon, basil, mint, or oregano. If you prefer fresh herbs, use 1 tablespoon of the finely chopped leaves. TOTAL TIME: 5–10 MINUTES YIELD: 1½ CUPS ¼ cup vinegar of your choice 1–2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, lime juice, or orange juice 1 tablespoon honey 1–2 garlic cloves, finely minced or pushed through a garlic press 1 tablespoon prepared mustard or 1 teaspoon powdered mustard ¾ teaspoon salt, or more or less to taste Freshly ground black pepper to taste 1 cup extra virgin olive oil, preferably unfiltered Combine all ingredients except the oil and mix until well blended. You can beat with a spoon or wire whisk or blend for ten seconds in a food processor on medium-high speed. Then add the oil in a thin drizzle, whisking constantly. If you’re using a food processor, process on medium speed as you add the oil. Pour enough dressing over the salad to coat the greens, but not so much that it pools in the bottom of the salad bowl. Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Bring to room temperature before using.

Fair or unfair, however, globalization has not been kind to Confucius. The Western ideas that have seeped into East Asian society over the past two hundred years have caused many in the region to rethink the value of their Confucian heritage. Western political and social philosophies brought in very different concepts of family and gender relationships, systems of government and education, and methods of corporate governance. Democracy has taken hold, as have American notions of gender equality, personal freedoms, and the rule of law. East Asian nations are being profoundly altered by these new ideas. Democracy movements have toppled authoritarian regimes across East Asia. Women are increasingly fighting for their proper place in politics and the corporate world. For much of the past two centuries, East Asians have equated progress with westernization, striving to copy its economic, political, and social systems. Capitalism and industrialization became the tools to end poverty and gain clout on the world stage, electoral politics the ideal for choosing leaders and navigating divisions in society. The route to success no longer passed through Confucian academies, but through Harvard and Yale. Being westernized, in language, dress, and social life, has been the mark of being modern and competitive. Politicians and reformers across East Asia have sought to uproot Confucian influence, at times violently, in their quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Many East Asians no longer wished to be Confucius, as they had for centuries on end. They wished to forget him.

Here they are," she exclaims, packet of biscuits in hand. They’re his favorite: chocolate with cream filling. "Nice," he says, arching his chest towards her. "Can I have one?" "I brought them on purpose," she smiles. She opens the packet and offers him one. He shakes his head. "Open it for me," he says, kissing her neck. "Hold the two sides, turn slowly and pull them apart." She does so and hands him the half with the cream on. Andrew grabs her wrist, puts his thumb in her palm and her breathing alters. He brings her hand closer and licks a hole in the cream with just the tip of his firm tongue. He looks at her and swallows the sweet, strong fingertip. She’s startled and her hand begins to shake. Then, he slowly licks all the cream with light movements as he intertwines his fingers in hers. He imagines that he’s licking her, her skin, his precious Susy. Then, he leans forward for a kiss. "Thank you." She’s enveloped in embarrassment, her cheeks painted red. "Do you always eat biscuits like that?" she jokes. He caresses her neck with his lips, licks, kisses and nibbles it slightly. "If my girlfriend’s not wearing anything under her dress, yes." She

Refining the relationship between exaggeration and realism in humor can be related to stretching a rubber band. Imagine the unstretched band is the realism, and exaggeration stretches the band. When the rubber band is stretched to capacity, several things happen at once. Stretching alters the shape of the band; exaggeration changes the perception of reality. The rubber band can be stretched a little (understatement) or a lot (overstatement). Just as tension increases in a rubber band that it is stretched, exaggeration increases tension in the audience—up to the breaking point. When you pluck a rubber band, it makes a sound. The pitch of this sound gets higher as you stretch the rubber band further. This sound can be compared to emotion in an audience. The more you stretch the rubber band, the greater the emotion in the audience. Finding the proper balance between realism and exaggeration is the ultimate test of a comedy writer’s skill. Humor only comes when the exaggeration is logical. Simply being ludicrous or audacious is not a skill. It’s amateur. Many novice stand-up comedians struggle with exaggeration. They’ll start with some realistic premise—the way women dress, picking up men in a singles bar, outsmarting the police, or advertising slogans—but then they’ll shift into fifth gear in a wild display of ludicrous fantasy that’s not well connected to the initial premise. Their material has limited success because they make the same mistake repeatedly: They disrupt the equal balance of realism and exaggeration. Outrageous doesn’t mean creative.

Rylan!" Nadia and I turn our heads simultaneously towards the entrance to the living room as Tim Powers appears. "Yeah?" I yell across the room. That's when I notice the expression on Power' face. A mixture of awe, amazement, appreciation, and a bit of jealousy. "Your girlfriend's here," Tim informs me. He steps aside, and a goddess enters the room. It's been forever since I first had those dreams Ivy sent me with her in her disguise. But I still remember how she looks. Pale skin, long hair, bright-green eyes, and a model's figure. A perfect dream girl, who's now reality. Ivy smiles shyly as she steps into the room. Her skin is porcelain, unflawed and shiny. White-blind hair, straight and flowing, falls down her back and ends a little bit past her waist. She's not wearing her woven grass robe, but instead a dress mist likely altered from a piece of clothing from her clothes sack. It probably reached the floor at one point, with long sleeves, but the sleeves are gone and the skirt's been snipped away, leaving behind a green dress that shows off mile-long legs. But her face...all that pales in comparison to her face. Heart-shaped, with high cheekbones, an elegant nose, a well-shaped chin, and her lips—she's not covering them anymore—two shimmering, bright green pools I would be happy to drown in or go through. People believe the eyes are the window to your soul, and Ivy's soul is beautiful.

The dress was stunning. It was made to fit me—or at least altered to do so. The silk hugged from my chest to my hips before gliding out around my thighs. I twisted to the side, grinning. The back looked just as good as the front. Red was definitely my color. For a moment, I let myself drift into a dream where Aiden actually saw me in something this elegant and sexy. And what if Seth saw me in this? Even my dirtiest imagination couldn’t capture his response accurately.

As I demonstrated this on Bob, he fell backwards onto me, completely inert and passive, with no hint of any reflexive reaction. Startled, I pushed him gently forward to the upright position, but now he started to topple forward; I could not balance him. I had a sense of bewilderment mixed with panic. For a moment, I thought that there had suddenly been a neurological catastrophe, that he had actually lost all his postural reflexes. Could acting like this, I wondered, actually alter the nervous system? The next day I was talking with him in his dressing room before the day’s shooting began, and as we talked, I noticed that his right foot was turned in with precisely the dystonic curvature it was held in when he portrayed Leonard L. on the set. I commented on this, and Bob seemed rather startled. “I didn’t realize,” he said. “I guess it’s unconscious.” He sometimes stayed in character for hours or days; he would make comments at dinner which belonged to Leonard, not himself, as if residues of the Leonard mind and character were still adhering to him.

Women’s fashion is a culturally pervasive, behavior-altering, trend-inducing, emotion-stirring, perpetually exhausting, psychologically daring, hopefully uplifting yet potentially scarring, and occasionally foolish but undeniably influential celebration of craftsmanship, showmanship, ego, and seduction that has us more riveted and more attuned to its output and our appearances than ever before.

Says Ling, “Jell-O is almost all water and yet in Jell-O, water can ‘stand up’ as no normal pure liquid water ever can. This ability of the water in Jell-O to stand—which ice can also—indicates that the water-to-water interaction in the Jell-O water has been altered by the only other component present, gelatin.” The key to this transformation, according to Ling, is the material from which gelatin is made—collagen, a protein which pulls coats of water molecules around itself as if it were dressing in layer after layer of winter clothes.

Madame Egloff, who stood, hands held out in front of her, expressing her admiration. ‘Please make the alterations, Madame, and have the gowns sent round to Brown’s Hotel by the weekend.’ Half an hour later, when they left Madame Egloff’s salon, Sophie had been dressed and pinned into each of the garments Matty had chosen, and promises had been made to deliver the clothes to the hotel by Saturday morning at the latest. * Monday morning saw them at Paddington Station being conducted to a private compartment on the train. Sophie had never travelled in such style before, being more used to the uncomfortable rowdiness of a third-class carriage, but Matty had insisted. ‘I always travel this way,’ she said. ‘The journey is quite tiring enough without being crammed in next to crying children and shrill women.’ Having directed the porter to place their luggage in the guard’s van, Matty had settled herself into their compartment with a copy of the new Murray’s Magazine, which she had bought from a news-stand at the station. Beside her on the seat was a hamper, provided by Brown’s, with the food and drink they would need for the journey. As the train drew out of the station and started its long journey west, Sophie felt keyed up with anxious anticipation and was grateful for the comforting presence of Hannah, ensconced on the other side of the compartment. Dressed in her new plaid travelling dress, with a matching hat perched on her head, Sophie knew she was a different person from the one who had sat at her dying mother’s bedside, holding her hand. No longer a young girl on the brink of adulthood... but who? There had been too much change in her life in the past weeks that she still had to come to terms with. Who am I? she wondered. I don’t feel like me! She looked across at Hannah, so familiar, so safe, huddled in a corner, her eyes shut as she dozed, and Sophie felt a wave of affection flood through her. Dear Hannah, she thought, I’m so glad you came too. When they had left Madame Egloff, Matty had taken Sophie for afternoon tea at Brown’s. Looking round the famous tea room, with its panelled walls, its alcoved fireplace and its windows giving onto Albemarle Street, Sophie

You say you reject your gender. But that isn’t right. Your gender is whatever you make it. It is your sex you reject. It is your sex you recognize when you like your dress but not the way it fits. It is your sex you try to hide when you tuck your penis or tighten your corset. It is your sex you hope to alter with hormones. But your sex is your flesh. You are no poltergeist enmeshed in skin and bone and brain. You are skin and bone and brain. A war upon your flesh is a war upon yourself.

I am like that poet, Veeran, who still prefers the power to gift away cities in his raggedness than to make a gift of himself to cities though they dress him in gold. Lucknow is dear to me, though now an altered city. Partition has emptied my chamber of poets but I stay on in an unaltered space.

Much of medieval literature is what Lewis, in one scholarly article, refers to as “traditional poetry.” Certain poems, such as the Iliad or the poems of Thomas Malory, are not individual acts of inspiration, but rather are more the works of a storyteller who, repeating the essential plot line, weaves new characters, themes, descriptions, or details into the basic outline he inherited, a kind of literary recycling. Lewis had analyzed, in particular, the Arthurian legends, which had been repeated, retold, translated, updated, and modified. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, they tended to become accumulations of the techniques and additions of all previous editions rather than a unique and unrepeatable literary vision. Lewis felt that critics in his age would dismiss an author as “derivative” and “unoriginal” who “merely” repeats what has been said before, or who does not invent his or her own personal style. But the greatest authors of the medieval period were just this: shapers, composers, and recyclers of old materials. Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Malory borrowed and translated, but also mended, updated, and altered. They wrote traditional poetry in the sense that they felt it their chief task to dress old stories in new garb. In other words, by adopting this medieval conception of the art of composition, Lewis could liberate himself from the need to be “original.

-Psalm 118:1, 5-6, 19, 21-22 All our life is sown with tiny thorns that produce in our hearts a thousand involuntary movements of hatred, envy, fear, impatience, a thousand little fleeting disappointments, a thousand slight worries, a thousand disturbances that momentarily alter our peace of soul. For example, a word escapes that should not have been spoken. Or someone says something that offends us. A child inconveniences you. A bore stops you. You don't like the weather. Your work is not going according to plan. A piece of furniture is broken. A dress is torn. I know that these are not occasions for practicing very heroic virtue. But they would definitely be enough to acquire it if we really wished to.3 When I am able to thank the Lord for an inconvenience, I believe he chips away at my mountainous need to be in control. "Thanksgiving," says Patrick D. Miller Jr., "whether to other persons or God, is an inherent reminder that we are not autonomous or self-sufficient ... Praise to God does that in a fundamental way as it directs our love away from self and all human sufficiency."4 In my case it will take a lot more thanks and a lot more chipping away of my self-sufficiency before an adjective like "heroic" could even remotely apply to me. A Thanksgiving Sacrifice Mary Lou and I attend our parish's contemporary Mass at 6 p.m. on Sundays, and I pray often at daily Mass. The heart of the Mass is a celebration of the Eucharist, a representation of Christ's once-for-all sacrifice that rescued us from sin and united us to God. The word "eucharist" derives from a Greek root that means "thanksgiving." At Mass I enjoy the privilege of participating in Christ's eternal sacrifice, offering myself with him in thanksgiving to the Father. I am expressing my gratitude for his giving me a share in his divine life through the death and resurrection of

And there, seated at the heart of all that sumptuousness and leaning forward in his chair behind the great desk, was a figure that looked like nothing so much as a dapper but exceedingly despondent frog. The very shape of his head seemed as if it had been altered by a powerful vertical vice, resulting in a symmetrical ovoid with a horizontal polar axis. His complexion was not so much sallow as lightly green. His mouth was unnaturally wide, with thick, tautly stretched lips the color and texture of earthworms. What ears he had were small and circular and somewhat recessed. His nose was broad and rather flat, as if it had been spread on his face unevenly by a butter knife, and had what looked more like nares than full nostrils. The sparse, slick tendrils of his hair were of some murkily nondescript hue and clung unguinously to his scalp. The dense convex lenses of his wire-rimmed spectacles made it seem as if his greenish-gray eyes were peering out at the world from the bottom of a shallow pond, through a thin layer of algae. If he had a jawline, it was not immediately evident where he kept it. His hunched, narrow, rounded shoulders, moreover, amplified the amphibian quality of his appearance. He was, however, dressed in the height of fashion: a high collar and pearl-colored cravat, a waistcoat of forest-green velvet, and a formal coat of lighter, lettuce-green damask with lapels of cream-white satin with pink borders.

Ciao, papa,” she said in as deadpan a voice as she could manage. “You look very well this evening. Quite dashing.” He couldn’t help himself; he glanced down and preened for just a moment before he remembered that this was his daughter speaking. She hadn’t said anything that wasn’t sarcastic since she turned thirteen. He felt a touch of nostalgia for the twelve-year-old Silvia, who had prepared her bedroom walls with photos of clean-cut pop stars and cute puppies, who had begged to go to work with him just so they could be together, who had blushed if a neighbor chided her for being too loud . . . But that Silvia was gone. In her place was this, this alien who said everything with a sneer and eyed him disdainfully and made him feel like the oldest, most ridiculous man on earth. “More to the point, I am dressed appropriately,” he said. He realized that he was gritting his teeth. He remembered what his dentist had said about cracked molars, and made a conscious effort to relax his jaw. “You, on the other hand—” He glanced at the tattoo and closed his eyes in pain. “The invitation said formal,” she said, innocently. Her face darkened as she remembered that she had a grievance of her own. “I wanted to buy a new dress for this party, but you said it would cost too much! You said that the babies needed new high chairs! You said that our family now had different financial priorities! And this is the only formal dress I have, remember?” “Yes, and I also remember that there used to be a bit more of it!” her father hissed. Silvia glanced down complacently. “I know,” she said. “I altered it myself. It’s an original design.” “Original.” Her father glared at her. “You’ll be lucky not to be charged with indecent exposure. And if you are”—he gave her a warning look—“don’t expect any favors just because you’re the mayor’s daughter!” Silvia ignored this comment with the disdain it deserved. First, she never told anyone she was the mayor’s daughter. Second, her father was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an authority on fashion. She curled her lip at his tuxedo (which was vintage, but not in a good way), his high-heeled shoes (which kept making him lose his balance), and that scarlet sash (which made him look like an extra in a second-rate opera company). “Fine,” she said loftily. “If the police arrest me, I will plead guilty to having a unique and inventive fashion sense.” He remembered what his wife had said about keeping his temper and forced himself to smile.

Also, I'm too plump. All my dresses are tight." "You look the same as always." "My dress had to be altered last night. It wouldn't button up the back." Twisting stealthily in the chair, Tom peeked around the edge. His breath caught as he stared at her in wonder. For the first time in his life, Tom Severin was smitten. Smitten and slain. She was beautiful the way fire and sunlight were beautiful, warm and glowing and golden. The sight of her dealt him a famished, hollow feeling. She was everything he'd missed in his disadvantaged youth, every lost hope and opportunity.

During their brief encounter in the music room, Cassandra had been too flustered to notice much about him. He'd been so very odd, jumping out like that and offering to marry a complete stranger. Also, she'd been absolutely mortified for him to have overheard her tearful disclosure to West, especially the part about having her dress altered. But now it was impossible not to notice how very good-looking he was, tall and elegantly lean, with dark hair, a clear, fair complexion, and thick brows set at a diabolical slant. If she were to judge his features individually- the long nose, the wide mouth, the narrow eyes, the sharply angled cheeks and jaw- she wouldn't have expected him to be this attractive. But somehow when it was all put together, his looks were striking and interesting in a way she'd remember far longer than conventional handsomeness.

Society may tolerate you. It may wish you well. But your desire to dress in lady’s knickers is no reason to force everyone to use entirely new pronouns. Or to alter every public bathroom. Or to bring up children with the belief that there is no difference between the sexes and that gender is a social construct. If

Another patient with DID described the visual images she had of the personalities inside her in the following way; Interviewer: What does she [the personality] look like? Patient: She wears jeans, she never wears a dress ... Interviewer: Does she look like Josie? Patient: Yes, they look identical except that their manners and their clothing and their hair.. .. Josie's hair is curly with ribbons and Julie has braids and could care less what she looks like. She's tomboy looking. Interviewer: Do they look like you? Patient: I think they look like me. Wthout the glasses. They don't wear glasses... Interviewer: Do you have an image of Diane? Patient: Blonde hair, she looks older. (SCID-D interview, unpublished transcript)

We have milk and sugar if you'd like?" Hawke offers politely, but his eyes seem to see straight through my soggy red dress as he runs his gaze over me. "You look like you might want it sweet and creamy." My jaw drops, and I squeak in surprise before a professional smile curves his lips. His lush, kissable lips. "Your tea, I mean," he clarifies, and I feel my cheeks burn. Of course he meant the tea. Thank God he cleared that up before I said something stupid like, no, I like it rough and dirty. Tie me down and spank me Father, for I have sinned.

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Prettiness. Elsa knew that was the crux of it. she was not an attractive woman. On her best day, in her best dress, a stranger might say she was handsome, but never more. She was "too" everything-too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself. Elsa had attended both of her sisters' weddings. Neither had asked her to stand with them at the alter, and Elsa understood. At nearly six feet, she was taller than the grooms; she would ruin the photographs, and image was everything to the Wolcotts. Her parents prized it above all else.

So much of falling in love is a biographical project, we turn our stories over and hope for the best. Should you inspire the full-dress treatment, you will find yourself loved but also much altered.