Early Morning Journey Quotes

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . . History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . . There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The weather was as ready as the school and campus. The sky was cloudless and the temperature was expected to top out at 76 degrees. Early morning mowers had sugared the air with the fragrance of freshly mowed grass.

I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. “Emotional” is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.

During a party, Luis Buñuel, seduced by Carrington’s beauty and emboldened by the notion that she had transcended all bourgeois morality, proposed (with his characteristic bluntness) that she become his mistress. Without even waiting for her answer, he gave her the key to the secret studio that he used as a love nest and told her to meet him at three o’clock the next afternoon. Early the next morning, Leonora went to visit the place alone. She found it tasteless: It looked exactly like a motel room. Taking advantage of the fact that she was in her menstrual period, she covered her hands with blood and used them to make bloody handprints all over the walls in order to provide a bit of decoration for that anonymous, impersonal room. Buñuel never spoke to her again.

Woke up this morning, rather early, with a sense of a mind that had penetrated into unknown depths. It was as though the mind itself was going into itself, deeply and widely and the journey seemed to have been without movement. And there was this experience of immensity in abundance and a richness that was incorruptible. It's strange that though every experience, state, is utterly different, it is still the same movement; though it seems to change, it is still the changeless.

...waking at very early dawn amid all that sweat and stink, he had found himself comparing this ghastly journey with his own life, which had first moved over smiling level ground, then clambered up rocky mountains, slid over threatening passes, to emerge eventually into a landscape of interminable undulations, all of the same color, all bare as despair. These early morning fantasies were the very worst that could happen to a man of middle age; and although the Prince knew that they would vanish with the day's activities, he suffered acutely all the same, as he was used enough to them by now to realize that deep inside him they left a sediment of grief which, accumulating day by day, would in the end be the real cause of his death.

Morning Meditation I used to rise early in meditation, As the ancient saints and mystics, Looking for peace, bliss, and ecstasy. Now I awake as the sun rises. I lie beside her, Her head and the tops of her shoulders Revealed from the top of the covers Where we lay. Her face shines, As the sun rolls through the bedroom Curtains and leave her with a mandorla As if she were the subject of iconography. I lay in silence as I meditate on the artistry Of freckles that are perfectly dotted On her face and shoulders. I venerate the delicate curvature Of her lips and nose. Her eyes closed, Veiled by a composition of lashes That shroud the green mystery underneath. As her hair lays dark and graceful Across the pillows in front of me, I lay in adoration, and know there are none like her. Moses was not even shown God's face, Yet she has done me one better.

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before. I was not separated from people, grief and pity joined us. We forget—I kept saying—that we are all children of the King. For where we come from there is no division into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be. We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part of the gift we received for our long journey. Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago— a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel staving its hull against a reef—they dwell in us, waiting for a fulfillment. I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard, as are all men and women living at the same time, whether they are aware of it or not.

It was early morning and already hot. There was a strong odor of earth and grass drying in the sun. We climbed among tall shrubs, on indistinct paths that led toward the tracks. When we reached an electrical pylon we took off our smocks and put them in the schoolbags, which we hid in the bushes. Then we raced through the scrubland, which we knew well, and flew excitedly down the slope that led to the tunnel. The entrance on the right was very dark: we had never been inside that obscurity. We held each other by the hand and entered. It was a long passage, and the luminous circle of the exit seemed far away. Once we got accustomed to the shadowy light, we saw lines of silvery water that slid along the walls, large puddles. Apprehensively, dazed by the echo of our steps, we kept going. Then Lila let out a shout and laughed at the violent explosion of sound. Immediately I shouted and laughed in turn. From that moment all we did was shout, together and separately: laughter and cries, cries and laughter, for the pleasure of hearing them amplified. The tension diminished, the journey began.

There is a clear connection between intentionality and success, between early risers and high achievers, between waking up with a plan and changing the world. If you want to begin your journey to high achievement, waking up early should be the first task on your list tomorrow morning.

This was to be my first experience with it, and like any first experience, the feeling stays with you forever. What this was exactly I can’t say, but it drove into my soul and made a home there. Everyone was watching me; everyone was listening to me. The words coming out of my mouth — the words I’d conceived and given birth to — were making time null and void; they were bringing together a roomful of people into a journey of common sights, sounds, and thoughts; they were leaving me and traveling into the minds and memories of people who had never been at Saxon’s Lake that chill, early morning in March. I could tell when I looked at them that those people were following me. And the greatest thing — the very greatest thing — is that they wanted to go where I led them.

The great plain swayed beneath them as they went steadily westward. The rich buffalo grass, upon which their animals fattened even during the arduous journey, changed its color throughout the day; in the morning, in the pinkish rays of the early sun, it was nearly gray; later, in the yellow light of the midmorning sun, it was a brilliant green; at noon it took on a bluish cast; in the afternoon, in the intensity of the sun, at a distance, the blades lost their individual character and through the green showed a distinct cast of yellow, so that when a light breeze whipped across, a living color seemed to run through the grass, to disappear and reappear from moment to moment. In the evening after the sun had gone down, the grass took on a purplish hue as if it absorbed all the light from the sky and would not give it back.

her power now that she had lost the hair. So when the bride had finished drinking, and would have got upon Falada again, the maid said, "I shall ride upon Falada, and you may have my horse instead;" so she was forced to give up her horse, and soon afterwards to take off her royal clothes, and put on her maid's shabby ones. At last, as they drew near the end of the journey, this treacherous servant threatened to kill her mistress if she ever told anyone what had happened. But Falada saw it all, and marked it well. Then the waiting-maid got upon Falada, and the real bride was set upon the other horse, and they went on in this way till at last they came to the royal court. There was great joy at their coming, and the prince hurried to meet them, and lifted the maid from her horse, thinking she was the one who was to be his wife; and she was led upstairs to the royal chamber, but the true princess was told to stay in the court below. However, the old king happened to be looking out of the window, and saw her in the yard below; and as she looked very pretty, and too delicate for a waiting-maid, he went into the royal chamber to ask the bride whom it was she had brought with her, that was thus left standing in the court below. "I brought her with me for the sake of her company on the road," said she. "Pray give the girl some work to do, that she may not be idle." The old king could not for some time think of any work for her, but at last he said, "I have a lad who takes care of my geese; she may go and help him." Now the name of this lad, that the real bride was to help in watching the king's geese, was Curdken. Soon after, the false bride said to the prince, "Dear husband, pray do me one piece of kindness." "That I will," said the prince. "Then tell one of your slaughterers to cut off the head of the horse I rode upon, for it was very unruly, and plagued me sadly on the road." But the truth was, she was very much afraid lest Falada should speak, and tell all she had done to the princess. She carried her point, and the faithful Falada was killed; but when the true princess heard of it she wept, and begged the man to nail up Falada's head against a large dark gate in the city through which she had to pass every morning and evening, that there she might still see him sometimes. Then the slaughterer said he would do as she wished, so he cut off the head and nailed it fast under the dark gate. Early the next morning, as the princess and Curdken went out through the gate, she said sorrowfully— "Falada, Falada, there thou art hanging!" and the head answered— "Bride, bride, there thou are ganging! Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it, Sadly, sadly her heart would rue it." Then they went out of the city, driving the geese. And when they came to the meadow, the princess sat down upon a bank there and let down her waving locks of hair, which were all of pure gold; and when Curdken saw it glitter in the sun, he ran up, and would have pulled some of the locks out; but she cried— "Blow, breezes, blow! Let Curdken's hat go! Blow breezes, blow! Let him after it go! "O'er hills, dales, and rocks, Away be it whirl'd, Till the golden locks Are all comb'd and curl'd!" Then there came a wind, so strong that it blew off Curdken's hat, and away it flew over the hills, and he after it; till, by the time he came back, she had done combing and curling her hair, and put it up again safely. Then he was very angry and sulky, and would not speak to her at all; but they watched the geese until it grew dark in the evening, and then drove them homewards. The next morning, as they were going through the dark gate, the poor girl looked up at Falada's head, and cried— "Falada, Falada, there thou art hanging!" and it answered— "Bride, bride, there thou are ganging! Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it, Sadly, sadly her heart would rue it." Then she drove on the geese and sat down again in the meadow, and began to comb

One should wait, and gather meaning and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, at the very end, one might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For verses are not feelings, as people imagine – those one has early enough; they are experiences. In order to write a single line, one must see a great many cities, people and things, have an understanding of animals, sense how it is to be a bird in flight, and know the manner in which the little flowers open every morning. In one's mind there must be regions unknown, meetings unexpected and long-anticipated partings, to which one can cast back one's thoughts – childhood days that still retain their mystery, parents inevitably hurt when one failed to grasp the pleasure they offered (and which another would have taken pleasure in), childhood illnesses beginning so strangely with so many profound and intractable transformations, days in peacefully secluded rooms and mornings beside the sea, and the sea itself, seas, nights on journeys that swept by on high and flew past filled with stars – and still it is not enough to be able to bring all this to mind. One must have memories of many nights of love, no two alike; of the screams of women in labour; and of pale, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been with the dying, have sat in a room with the dead with the window open and noises coming in at random. And it is not yet enough to have memories. One has to be able to forget them, if there are a great many, and one must have great patience, to wait for their return. For it is not the memories in themselves that are of consequence. Only when they are become the very blood within us, our every look and gesture, nameless and no longer distinguishable from our inmost self, only then, in the rarest of hours, can the first word of a poem arise in their midst and go out from among them. 

DECEMBER 30 Joy Is Your Next Lesson Learning compassion, understanding love, and experiencing joy. That’s our purpose, our reason for being here. That’s our true mission on this planet. Learning compassion may have been difficult, because in order to feel compassion for others without judging, we had to go through difficult times ourselves. Times when despite our best efforts we couldn’t help ourselves, times when despite our searching we couldn’t find the answers. As many say, it is usually our own pain and problems that makes us compassionate. Understanding love may have taken many years, many heartbreaks, and much searching and grasping until we discovered that the key to love was our own heart. Until we discovered that love wasn’t exactly what we thought or hoped it would be. Now it’s different. And better. Don’t give up. Don’t stop now. Don’t let the residue, the pain from the early parts of your journey, stop you from going forward. We first had to learn about compassion and love in order to learn joy. The hard work is done. Now you have reached your reward. Now it is time to learn joy. DECEMBER 31 Honor the Ending “How was your trip?” a friend asked, as my trip drew to a close. I thought for a moment, then the answer came easily. “It had its ups and downs,” I said. “There were times I felt exhilarated and sure I was on track. Other days I felt lost. Confused. I’d fall into bed at night certain that this whole trip was a mistake and a waste. But I’d wake up in the morning, something would happen, and I’d see how I’d been guided all along.” The journey of a year is drawing to a close. Cherish the moments, all of them, even the ups and downs. Cherish the places you’ve visited, the people you’ve seen. Say good-bye to those whose journeys have called them someplace else. Know you can always call them back by thinking loving thoughts. Know all those you love will be there for you when you need them most. Honor the lessons you’ve learned, and the people who helped you learn them. Honor the journey your soul mapped out for you. Trust all the places you’ve been. Make a scrapbook in your heart to help you remember. Look back for a moment. Reflect in peace. Then let this year draw to a close. All parts of the journey are sacred and holy. You’ve learned that by now. Take time to honor this ending—though it’s never really the end. Go to sleep tonight. When you wake up tomorrow a new adventure will begin. Remember the words you were told when this last adventure began, the words whispered quietly to your heart: Let the journey unfold. Let it be magical. The way has been prepared. People will be expecting you. Yes, you are being led.

For the bus ride, which Delaney estimated would be ninety minutes, she had prepared a mix of happy journeying music, which she activated as they pulled out of the campus gate. The first song was by Otis Redding, and the first message came via her phone. Woman-hater, it said, with a link to an unsigned and evidence-less post hinting that he had been unkind to an ex-girlfriend who he’d met shortly before the bay and the dock and the sitting. Thanks for the early-morning pick-me-up! the writer said, meaning that Delaney had ruined the day and tacitly endorsed Redding’s newly alleged misogyny. Delaney skipped to the next song, Lana Del Rey’s “High by the Beach,” and then quickly figured it was too big a risk so skipped ahead. The third song, the Muppets’ “Movin’ Right Along,” was unknown to most on the bus, and survived its three-minute length, during which a handful of passengers furiously tried to find a reason the song was complicit in evil committed or implied. Delaney skipped the next song, by Neil Diamond, thinking any Jewish singer dubious in light of the Israeli sandwich debacle, skipped songs six and seven (from Thriller), briefly considered the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” but then remembered Phil Spector, and so finally settled on a young Ghanian rapper she’d recently discovered. His first song was hunted down quickly in a hail of rhetorical buckshot—as a teen, the rapper had zinged a borderline joke about his female trigonometry teacher—so Delaney turned off the shared music, leaving everyone, for the next eighty-one minutes, to their earbuds and the safety of their individualized solitude.

In the shock of the moment, I gave some thought to renting a convertible and driving the twenty-seven hundred miles back alone. But then I realized I was neither single nor crazy. The acting director decided that, given the FBI’s continuing responsibility for my safety, the best course was to take me back on the plane I came on, with a security detail and a flight crew who had to return to Washington anyway. We got in the vehicle to head for the airport. News helicopters tracked our journey from the L.A. FBI office to the airport. As we rolled slowly in L.A. traffic, I looked to my right. In the car next to us, a man was driving while watching an aerial news feed of us on his mobile device. He turned, smiled at me through his open window, and gave me a thumbs-up. I’m not sure how he was holding the wheel. As we always did, we pulled onto the airport tarmac with a police escort and stopped at the stairs of the FBI plane. My usual practice was to go thank the officers who had escorted us, but I was so numb and distracted that I almost forgot to do it. My special assistant, Josh Campbell, as he often did, saw what I couldn’t. He nudged me and told me to go thank the cops. I did, shaking each hand, and then bounded up the airplane stairs. I couldn’t look at the pilots or my security team for fear that I might get emotional. They were quiet. The helicopters then broadcast our plane’s taxi and takeoff. Those images were all over the news. President Trump, who apparently watches quite a bit of TV at the White House, saw those images of me thanking the cops and flying away. They infuriated him. Early the next morning, he called McCabe and told him he wanted an investigation into how I had been allowed to use the FBI plane to return from California. McCabe replied that he could look into how I had been allowed to fly back to Washington, but that he didn’t need to. He had authorized it, McCabe told the president. The plane had to come back, the security detail had to come back, and the FBI was obligated to return me safely. The president exploded. He ordered that I was not to be allowed back on FBI property again, ever. My former staff boxed up my belongings as if I had died and delivered them to my home. The order kept me from seeing and offering some measure of closure to the people of the FBI, with whom I had become very close. Trump had done a lot of yelling during the campaign about McCabe and his former candidate wife. He had been fixated on it ever since. Still in a fury at McCabe, Trump then asked him, “Your wife lost her election in Virginia, didn’t she?” “Yes, she did,” Andy replied. The president of the United States then said to the acting director of the FBI, “Ask her how it feels to be a loser” and hung up the phone.

Around his celestial home Indra had flung a vast net—a web stretching out infinitely in all directions. Each vertex, or node, of this net was held together by a glittering jewel. There were infinite nodes, and so there were infinite jewels. What does it mean? Just this: Each gem in the net represents a human soul. And though each of these jewels is unique (has its own fingerprint!) it also reflects in its polished surface the image of all the other jewels. American philosopher and psychologist Alan Watts imagined this web as a multidimensional spiderweb. He said, “Imagine this web in the early morning, covered with dewdrops. And every dewdrop contains the reflection of all the other dewdrops. And, in each reflected dewdrop, the reflections of all the other dewdrops in that reflection. And so on ad infinitum.” Each jewel in Indra’s net represents both itself as a particular jewel, and, at the same time, the entire web. So, any change in one gem would be reflected in the whole. Indeed, the individual gem is the whole. In the words of Indologist Sir Charles Eliot, “Every object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact IS everything else.” It is, therefore, the sacred duty of every individual human soul to be utterly and completely itself—to be that jewel at that time and in that place, and to be that jewel utterly. It is in this way—merely by being itself—that one jewel holds together its own particular corner of Space and Time. The action of each individual soul holds together the entire net. Small and large at the same time.

American philosopher and psychologist Alan Watts imagined this web as a multidimensional spiderweb. He said, “Imagine this web in the early morning, covered with dewdrops. And every dewdrop contains the reflection of all the other dewdrops. And, in each reflected dewdrop, the reflections of all the other dewdrops in that reflection. And so on ad infinitum.

You miss the early morning today? Wait for tomorrow and don’t miss this time! Foggy mornings, sunny mornings, chilly mornings, rainy mornings! All mornings represent the beginnings and all beginnings represent hope! Don’t miss the hope! Don’t miss the beginnings of the journeys!

Sitting in Atlantic St. grill downing early morning cup of prison-like coffee stale rolls of cinnamon while up above freeways headed for suburban slums Gold Coast dwellers/ruling class sass Goodwill truckdrivers for talkin’ simple talk. No comment on the front page news. Through painful hurt sought desperately the obit page in rage to see if was really true, ‘bout you. Winter come-togethers fill my every thought Billie sings the blues communication complete, Cable (spool) table replete w/french bread apples cheese rhineskeller wine imported elegant tabacco, discussion of ideas politculture peoples lit & art, marxist aesthetics, how best to serve. Now, savoring on Neruda’s notes i think of you & Jimmie/son savoring favorite chocolate M & M’s. Them’s the thoughts i had of you today. No lavish praise no mournful elegy, just one last Vashon Island ferry ride to pray and cast an orchid into Puget Sound to see you safely on your journey to the other side.

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased—a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit.

I started my long journey back to Bischoffsheim, by walking from the farm, high on the side of a hill, down to the subterranean railroad station in Überlingen. After the last crest I could see the lake with the magnificent high Alps on the far side. Again, I knew that I was looking at neutral Switzerland but it was a world away from war-torn Germany. It took me well over an hour walking down the steep hill to the village. With me I had two big empty suitcases that I pushed ahead of me as I boarded the train that finally came out of the tunnel. At first the train for Strasbourg was nearly empty, but the farther north we traveled the more people got on. I remember how crowded the Strasbourg Hauptbahnhoff was when the train finally pulled into the station. Not wanting to disturb my sister-in-law Elizabeth again, I stayed at a hotel that night. I didn’t know if I was still wanted by the Nazis but I couldn’t afford to take a chance. This way I could catch the early morning connecting train to Rosheim, which was the closest town to Bischoffsheim.

this single memory, coupled with the others of Mother masturbating on me early in the mornings, or in front of me when I was small, was ample.

Prayer continues to be very difficult. Still, every morning when I walk in the garden of La Ferme saying the rosary and spending an hour in the oratory simply being in God’s presence, I know that I am not wasting my time. Though I am terribly distracted, I know that God’s spirit is at work in me. Though I have no deeply religious insights or feelings, I am aware of the peace beyond thoughts and emotions. Though my early-morning prayer seems quite unsuccessful, I always look forward to it and guard it as a special time.

We didn't come [to this life] only for the sunny days, the lollipops and roses! We also came for the silky dark nights, and the moonlight and the stars. We came for the soft veils of fog in the early mornings, and the rain painting circles in the pond... the hailstorms and the thunderclaps.

For the early church, the Daily Office— praying at fixed times throughout the day—was always the first “work of God” to be done. Nothing was to interfere with that priority. But this practice of fixed-hour prayer is one that actually long predates the early church. Three thousand years ago, King David practiced set times of prayer seven times a day (Psalm 119:164). The prophet Daniel prayed three times a day (Daniel 6:10). Devout Jews in Jesus’ time prayed at morning, afternoon, and evening. Such set times of prayer were one of the Israelites’ great spiritual and cultural treasures, a practical way to keep their lives centered on loving God at all times. Even after the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples continued to pray at certain hours of the day (Acts 3:1; 10:2–23).

Voyagers, I’ve always wanted to write about you. And now, at 4:41 a.m. on an autumn morning, Words have found their way into my mind. I picture myself like you— Distant from life, Alone, Yet moving towards an unknown destination! Like you, in the early stages of my journey, I could see, I could gather knowledge and transmit it, I was useful and efficient. But sometimes, to keep connected to the world, To be able to stay on course and conserve my energy, I had to shut parts of myself down, To survive, To go blind, to be deaf, to be isolated, and just occasionally signal my existence to the world. The same thing I do, that you do, that so many others do. The boundless reaches of space Have become somewhat more comprehensible through you, Yet the depths of the human soul remain unfathomable, And its pain incurable. We live in an age surrounded by a torrent of information, Yet somehow, we remain lonely and lost. Language has advanced, There are words for nearly everything, Everyone can describe their own state of mind, yet we’re still at war with one another. Earth has turned into a vast ship, Perhaps like Noah’s Ark, With maximum diversity and multiplicity, Yet everyone on this ship plays their own tune, rallies their own cause! Someone steps forward, claiming each individual’s thoughts and personal benefit are like rare pearls to be cherished, While another insists that collective welfare takes precedence, That the needs of the masses outweigh individual desires. Some launch movements to claim their rights, While others start movements to flaunt the rights they’ve acquired. No one knows what they truly want; We’re all still lost. I don’t know how Earth looks from afar— Perhaps like a blueberry-flavored lollipop, A lollipop with a stick, But Earth’s stick is an invisible one made of sorrow. I find something common among all the passengers on this ship, All the inhabitants of this blueberry lollipop: sorrow. A fetus in its mother’s womb is also like a lollipop, But connected by an umbilical cord. As a fetus, Growing in the mother’s womb, Suffering, malnutrition, and physical ailments can be painful for us. If the mother’s state is stable, We may enjoy brief periods of security and calm, but after that, We must endure the pain of separation, Learn how to breathe, And besides the sorrow of leaving security behind, We face new emotions like fear and anger. Later in life, We each take our own path. No matter how much they try to show humans as social creatures, It’s always the individual who walks their own way, who has the freedom to choose, Even if one finds the meaning of their path in joining a group or a collective, it’s their individual choice that put them on that path. Today, people have countless options to join others who are like them, And these options themselves bring confusion, And when you join a group out of confusion, You treat the other groups with hostility. Science, philosophy, religion, politics…each of them has thousands of branches, and each branch Wants to disprove the other, cleanse itself of its shameful past. Freedom of speech has become an excuse for verbal assaults and psychological wounds, Non-violence has become a breeding ground for new and emerging dictators, For heartless sects and brutal factions. Knowledge and science alone cannot save us, Just as religion couldn’t. I don’t want to write about chaos, Life isn’t that disorganized, In some corner of the world, A lover is staring up at his beloved’s window, A child is laughing joyfully. But writing about sorrow, Speaking of chaos and Asking questions can reveal where we stand. Now, we know so much about space, And about the Sun, too. The James Webb telescope has mapped out the cosmos for us, and countless projects are underway for the future, crafted with flawless precision and extraordinary coherence, but the rift between humans remains deep.

When you’re from a small country like the Netherlands, you easily learn to speak other languages,” she’d said considerately. To this day, I do resort to English unless I’m really sure of the Greek words I’m using. I remember one early morning waiting on the Flying Dolphin to Athens, I’d closed my eyes briefly and opened them to see a Greek lady waiting to sit in the seat next to me. I quickly moved my handbag out of her seat and told her “Signome, eimai horismeni.” The lady looked at me with a very strange expression, sat in the seat and didn’t look my way or speak again. Well no wonder she doesn’t bother with me after I said that—what a dumb thing to say: “Excuse me, I’m tired.” Yet again I was embarrassed again at my lack of ability to communicate easily. “What exactly did you say?” Mia asked when I related the incident at our next Ladies’ Night. As soon as I repeated the words, everyone burst out laughing. “Pamela, kourasmini is the word for ‘tired’. What you told the woman was, “Excuse me, I’m divorced!

Over the two centuries before Jesus, the celebration had taken on quite a bit of Greek Socratic (Hellenistic) influence, which suited Jewish social tradition quite nicely, so what had begun as the recitation of a story had morphed into almost a question and response ritual. On the morning of Preparation Day for the celebration, the head of the household took a lamb to The Temple for slaughter. Then, he would bring the meat home so that it, together with the other prescribed ritual foodstuffs, could be properly prepared. Eventually, when it was time for the meal, those gathered would be called to table for a joyous repast. But the feast included an important ritual. Someone at table would query those gathered, following an informal script that revolved around four questions that not only told the great Story of Exodus, but also applied it to the participants’ present lives. So we might imagine: “This is the story of our slavery, and today we are enslaved…” “We wandered for forty years in the arid desert, and today we find that we are wandering, unable to make a decision…” “But at last we arrived in the Promised Land, and we’re planning … this year, God-willing.” Followed by, “Since then we have been committed to making ourselves and our people thrive in God’s promise of this Land—and look around this table and see the kernel of the community that needs our love, every day.” From this deep annual ritual and the understandings flowing from it, we can well imagine how this core metaphor became a spiritual springboard for every Hebrew’s journey with God—a journey of freedom and liberation, one with four sequential paths that continually repeated in the lives of every individual, and in the life of the community. So there is the key—and it is a far-reaching link, indeed. The explanation for early Christians’ natural comfort with being Followers of The Way was specifically and profoundly rooted in their Jewish traditions and almost certainly, the principal of fourness, in ancient rituals from prehistory. The sequence was well-known to them, and the road well-marked. Yet, as Christians did in so many other ways, they expanded the journey from that of their predecessors, pushing beyond the liberation of a single tribe and outer freedom from an oppressive Pharaoh. Christians took the framework of freedom and crafted an identifiable, cyclical inner journey of transformation available to everyone, incorporating the living reality of Jesus the Christ. And soon, The Way came to be understood by early Christians as the ongoing gradual process of transformation into the image of the eternal Christ in whom they believed they were already made.

That combination, perhaps, deterred me from telling Netanyahu the most difficult truth of all. Simply: that he had much in common with Obama. Both men were left-handed, both believed in the power of oratory and that they were the smartest men in the room. Both were loners, adverse to hasty decision making and susceptible to a strong woman’s advice. And both saw themselves in transformative historical roles. Their similarities, perhaps as much as their differences, heightened the chances for friction between the president and Netanyahu, I could have told him. But I did not. Rather, as the prime minister descended the stairs to the tarmac that early May 20 morning, I merely said, “Welcome to Washington, sir,” and extended my hand. This he gripped and pulled me toward him. With his eyes still flaring, he recalled the cable I sent him months back predicting the president’s speech. “You called it right,” he whispered.

We spent twenty days and endured three thousand miles of jolting, pounding, off-road bush driving. But we had a hard-won sense of accomplishment when we pulled up on the stunning cliff-side view of the Great Australian Bight, a huge open bay carved out of the southern coastline. We had made it. Below us, three hundred feet down a sheer rock face, was the Southern Ocean. A pod of southern right whales passed by, their calves following along with them. Steve and I and the crew watched the family dramas of the whales play out below us. A calf felt naughty and went darting away from his mother’s side. Come back, the mother called, come back, come back, you naughty little whale. When she was under the water, we couldn’t hear anything, but as she surfaced we could actually hear the whale song from our perch three hundred feet in the air. Mama scolded the calf, and we saw the young whale come dutifully shooting back over to follow his mother for a while. Sometimes the calf would approach his mama for a drink of milk and nurse for a few minutes. Then he would escape once more, and the whole scenario played itself out all over again. We watched the whales for hours. That night around the campfire, we discussed whaling, how sad and cruel and horrible it was. “If we killed cows the way we killed whales, people wouldn’t stand for it,” Steve said. “Imagine if you drove a truck with a torpedo gun off the back. When you saw a cow you fired at it, and then you either electrocuted it over the course of half an hour or the head of the torpedo blew up inside of it, rendering it unable to walk or move until it finally bled to death.” “We’ve got to get that message out,” I said to Steve. But his idea was to bring the beauty and joy of the whales to people, so that they would naturally fall in love with them and not want to hurt them. He didn’t want to dwell on images that would make people sad and upset. Steve remained thoughtful and silent as the fire died. The ocean sounded against the cliffs below. The games of the whale families played over and over in our minds. In spite of our extensive searching, we never saw a live dingo down the whole line of our journey. It was time to try a different approach. The next morning the helicopter pilot arrived early. Going up with him, Steve actually finally spotted some dingoes from the air. The beautiful, ginger-colored dogs played along the fence, jumping over it or skirting under it with effortless ease.

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. My memory of Diana is not her at an official function, dazzling with her looks and clothes and the warmth of her manner, or even of her offering comfort among the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed. What I remember best is a young woman taking a walk in a beautiful place, unrecognized, carefree, and happy. Diana increasingly craved privacy, a chance “to be normal,” to have the opportunity to do what, in her words, “ordinary people” do every day of their lives--go shopping, see friends, go on holiday, and so on--away from the formality and rituals of royal life. As someone responsible for her security, yet understanding her frustration, I was sympathetic. So when in the spring of the year in which she would finally be separated from her husband, Prince Charles, she yet again raised the suggestion of being able to take a walk by herself, I agreed that such a simple idea could be realized. Much of my childhood had been spent on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, a county in southern England approximately 120 miles from London; I remembered the wonderful sandy beaches of Studland Bay, on the approach to Poole Harbour. The idea of walking alone on miles of almost deserted sandy beach was something Diana had not even dared dream about. At this time she was receiving full twenty-four-hour protection, and it was at my discretion how many officers should be assigned to her protection. “How will you manage it, Ken? What about the backup?” she asked. I explained that this venture would require us to trust each other, and she looked at me for a moment and nodded her agreement. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her.

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her. She set off at once, a tall figure clad in a pair of blue denim jeans, a dark-blue suede jacket, and a soft scarf wrapped loosely around her face to protect her from the chilling, easterly spring wind. I stood and watched as she slowly dwindled in the distance, her head held high, alone apart from busy oyster catchers that followed her along the water’s edge. It was a strange sensation watching her walking away by herself, with no bodyguards following at a discreet distance. What were my responsibilities here? I kept thinking. Yet I knew this area well, and not once did I feel uneasy. I had made this decision--not one of my colleagues knew. Senior officers at Scotland Yard would most certainly have boycotted the idea had I been foolish enough to give them advance notice of what the Princess and I were up to.

Pentagon.Across the Potomac River, the United States Congress was back in session. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, people began to line up for a White House tour. In Sarasota, Florida, President George W. Bush went for an early morning run. For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey.Among the travelers were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari, who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine. 1.1 INSIDE THE FOUR FLIGHTS Boarding the Flights Boston:American 11 and United 175. Atta and Omari boarded a 6:00 A.M. flight from Portland to Boston’s Logan International Airport.1 When he checked in for his flight to Boston,Atta was selected by a computerized prescreening system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), created to identify passengers who should be subject to special security measures. Under security rules in place at the time, the only consequence of Atta’s selection by CAPPS was that his checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had boarded the aircraft. This did not hinder Atta’s plans.2 Atta and Omari arrived in Boston at 6:45. Seven minutes later,Atta apparently took a call from Marwan al Shehhi, a longtime colleague who was at another terminal at Logan Airport.They spoke for three minutes.3 It would be their final conversation. 1 2 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT Between 6:45 and 7:40,Atta and Omari, along with Satam al Suqami,Wail al Shehri, and Waleed al Shehri, checked in and boarded American Airlines Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles.The flight was scheduled to depart at 7:45.4 In another Logan terminal, Shehhi, joined by Fayez Banihammad, Mohand al Shehri, Ahmed al Ghamdi, and Hamza al Ghamdi, checked in for United Airlines Flight 175,also bound for Los Angeles.A couple of Shehhi’s colleagues were obviously unused to travel;according to the United ticket agent,they had trouble understanding the standard security questions, and she had to go over them slowly until they gave the routine, reassuring answers.5 Their flight was scheduled to depart at 8:00. The security checkpoints through which passengers, including Atta and his colleagues, gained access to the American 11 gate were operated by Globe Security under a contract with American Airlines. In a different terminal, the single checkpoint through which passengers for United 175 passed was controlled by United Airlines, which had contracted with Huntleigh USA to perform the screening.6 In passing through these checkpoints,each of the hijackers would have been screened by a walk-through metal detector calibrated to detect items with at least the metal content of a .22-caliber handgun.Anyone who might have set off that detector would have been screened with a hand wand—a procedure requiring the screener to identify

The ride to Mineral Point, usually so enjoyable, had turned into a trip through Hell itself. Jake had done well, finding every soft, thick blanket he could find and making a decent bed in the wagon, but the journey was still tortuous for Kate. Every time the wheel hit a bump in the road, bouncing the passengers like dice in a cup, she cried out. While Mary and Becky tended to her in the back, constantly replacing the cold compress on her forehead and shielding her from the early morning sun, Sam drove the horses as hard as he dared. On the rare moments when he did throw a quick glance back at the women, Kate was obscured by the red parasol that Mary held over her. It was probably for the best. He already had a hard enough time trying to concentrate on the road, what with the memory of his girl convulsing on the dirt floor of his cabin.

Even after the civil war ended, my country was still a very lawless place. Walking in the dark to early morning prayer meetings and Friday night gatherings added to the danger for me. The nighttime streets were still empty of people and cars. No one left their homes after sunset because of the risk of being attacked. But I was in love with Jesus, and sometimes that love made me do things I wouldn’t otherwise have done. It made me brave. I was sixteen years old and had been studying tae kwon do for a couple of years. I had passed the tests to achieve first my yellow and then my green belts. Johnny’s schools had multiplied all over our country. Even though all the classes operated as mini-churches, hundreds of Muslims came to learn self-defense. Many stayed to meet and receive Jesus as Savior and Lord, despite the fact they would be persecuted by their families and suffer beatings. Others would receive death threats.

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased—a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit. The

I left because I’m an attorney. The five-year career plan I talk about was my journey to become junior partner. The day I left was because of that. If I would have stayed in Aspen, I wouldn’t be in the running for partner anymore and all the sacrifices I’ve made these past years would have been for nothing. Those sacrifices include you too. I couldn’t go all in with you because I work over seventy hours a week. But Monday, that should all be over. I will know if I made partner or not. I hope you understand what I am saying. But more importantly, I hope you forgive me for leaving. I love you. Please call me. My number is 404-398-0253. My name is Kree Wilson btw.

Along with its unforgettable description of the eerie space this woman inhabits, the poem also locates her very precisely in time, offering two almost unique words which transport the reader into the exact moment of her sorrow. First is uhtcearu, a compound which means ‘sorrow before dawn’ or ‘grief at early morning’. In Old English uht is the name for the last part of the night, the empty chilly hours just before the dawn, an especially painful time for grief and loneliness (as well as other kinds of threat: the dragon in Beowulf is called an uhtfloga, a creature who flies before dawn). The word suggests the sting of waking to the memory of sorrow, or the anxiety of lying awake in the early morning, worrying over what the day will bring.

Harvest ends with the coming of what the poet calls the ‘Michaelmas moon’, which must be the full moon (and perhaps the month) closest to Michaelmas at the end of September. This moon brings with it wynter wage, meaning the first ‘pledge of winter’. We might think of that as the first chill in the air in an October dusk, or the first time it seems to be getting dark too early, or the first breath of mist in the morning – anything which says that summer is gone and the dark half of the year is coming.

One day, meandering through the bookcases, I had picked up his diaries and begun to read the account of his famous meeting with Hitler prior to Munich, at the house in Berchtesgaden high up in the Bavarian mountains. Chamberlain described how, after greeting him, Hitler took him up to the top of the chalet. There was a room, bare except for three plain wooden chairs, one for each of them and the interpreter. He recounts how Hitler alternated between reason – complaining of the Versailles Treaty and its injustice – and angry ranting, almost screaming about the Czechs, the Poles, the Jews, the enemies of Germany. Chamberlain came away convinced that he had met a madman, someone who had real capacity to do evil. This is what intrigued me. We are taught that Chamberlain was a dupe; a fool, taken in by Hitler’s charm. He wasn’t. He was entirely alive to his badness. I tried to imagine being him, thinking like him. He knows this man is wicked; but he cannot know how far it might extend. Provoked, think of the damage he will do. So, instead of provoking him, contain him. Germany will come to its senses, time will move on and, with luck, so will Herr Hitler. Seen in this way, Munich was not the product of a leader gulled, but of a leader looking for a tactic to postpone, to push back in time, in hope of circumstances changing. Above all, it was the product of a leader with a paramount and overwhelming desire to avoid the blood, mourning and misery of war. Probably after Munich, the relief was too great, and hubristically, he allowed it to be a moment that seemed strategic not tactical. But easy to do. As Chamberlain wound his way back from the airport after signing the Munich Agreement – the fateful paper brandished and (little did he realise) his place in history with it – crowds lined the street to welcome him as a hero. That night in Downing Street, in the era long before the security gates arrived and people could still go up and down as they pleased, the crowds thronged outside the window of Number 10, shouting his name, cheering him, until he was forced in the early hours of the morning to go out and speak to them in order that they disperse. Chamberlain was a good man, driven by good motives. So what was the error? The mistake was in not recognising the fundamental question. And here is the difficulty of leadership: first you have to be able to identify that fundamental question. That sounds daft – surely it is obvious; but analyse the situation for a moment and it isn’t. You might think the question was: can Hitler be contained? That’s what Chamberlain thought. And, on balance, he thought he could. And rationally, Chamberlain should have been right. Hitler had annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. He was supreme in Germany. Why not be satisfied? How crazy to step over the line and make war inevitable.

One day, meandering through the bookcases, I had picked up his diaries and begun to read the account of his famous meeting with Hitler prior to Munich, at the house in Berchtesgaden high up in the Bavarian mountains. Chamberlain described how, after greeting him, Hitler took him up to the top of the chalet. There was a room, bare except for three plain wooden chairs, one for each of them and the interpreter. He recounts how Hitler alternated between reason – complaining of the Versailles Treaty and its injustice – and angry ranting, almost screaming about the Czechs, the Poles, the Jews, the enemies of Germany. Chamberlain came away convinced that he had met a madman, someone who had real capacity to do evil. This is what intrigued me. We are taught that Chamberlain was a dupe; a fool, taken in by Hitler’s charm. He wasn’t. He was entirely alive to his badness. I tried to imagine being him, thinking like him. He knows this man is wicked; but he cannot know how far it might extend. Provoked, think of the damage he will do. So, instead of provoking him, contain him. Germany will come to its senses, time will move on and, with luck, so will Herr Hitler. Seen in this way, Munich was not the product of a leader gulled, but of a leader looking for a tactic to postpone, to push back in time, in hope of circumstances changing. Above all, it was the product of a leader with a paramount and overwhelming desire to avoid the blood, mourning and misery of war. Probably after Munich, the relief was too great, and hubristically, he allowed it to be a moment that seemed strategic not tactical. But easy to do. As Chamberlain wound his way back from the airport after signing the Munich Agreement – the fateful paper brandished and (little did he realise) his place in history with it – crowds lined the street to welcome him as a hero. That night in Downing Street, in the era long before the security gates arrived and people could still go up and down as they pleased, the crowds thronged outside the window of Number 10, shouting his name, cheering him, until he was forced in the early hours of the morning to go out and speak to them in order that they disperse. Chamberlain was a good man, driven by good motives. So what was the error? The mistake was in not recognising the fundamental question. And here is the difficulty of leadership: first you have to be able to identify that fundamental question. That sounds daft – surely it is obvious; but analyse the situation for a moment and it isn’t. You might think the question was: can Hitler be contained? That’s what Chamberlain thought. And, on balance, he thought he could. And rationally, Chamberlain should have been right. Hitler had annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. He was supreme in Germany. Why not be satisfied? How crazy to step over the line and make war inevitable. But that wasn’t the fundamental question. The fundamental question was: does fascism represent a force that is so strong and rooted that it has to be uprooted and destroyed? Put like that, the confrontation was indeed inevitable. The only consequential question was when and how. In other words, Chamberlain took a narrow and segmented view – Hitler was a leader, Germany a country, 1938 a moment in time: could he be contained? Actually, Hitler was the product

Wilson has to leave early. He got the call earlier this morning: there is a bed for his wife in a nearby hospice. If she is going to take it, she must move today. The doctors still don't understand what is wrong with her, only that her self and her strength are ebbing away, and there seems no stopping it. Wilson's afternoon will be spent getting his wife, with whom he's traveled the world, ready for her final journey.

Deke proposed a system which had been used in previous selections, and with minor modifications we agreed. It was a thirty-point system divided equally into three parts: academics, pilot performance, character and motivation. “Academics” was really a misnomer, as an examination of its components will reveal: IQ score—one point; academic degrees, honors, and other credentials—four points; results of NASA-administered aptitude tests—three points; and results of a technical interview—two points. Pilot performance broke down into: examination of flying records (total time, type of airplane, etc.)—three points; flying rating by test pilot school or other supervisors—one point; and results of technical interview—six points. Character and motivation was not subdivided, but the entire ten-point package was examined in the interview, and the victim’s personality was an important part of it. Hence, of the thirty points (the maximum a candidate could earn), eighteen could be awarded during the all-important interview. My recollection is that we spent an hour per man, using roughly forty-five minutes to quiz him and fifteen in a postmortem. We sat all day long in a stuffy room in the Rice Hotel, interviewing from early morning to early evening, for one solid week.

Time passed fast and I was coming out from the reputed engineering college at last after the same Professor had intervened with the college authority for holding the examination in spite of political troubles, prevailing during seventies in Calcutta. The sprawling complex of the university would suddenly vanish from my view. I would be missing the chirping of the birds in early morning, view of green grass of the football field right in front of our building, badly mauled by the students and pedestrians who used to cut short their journey moving across the field, whistling of steam trains passing parallel to the backside of boundary wall of our building, stentorian voice of our Professors, ever smiling and refreshing faces of the learned Professors every day. I would definitely miss the opportunity of gossiping on a bench by the lake side with other students, not to speak of your girlfriend with whom you would try to be cozy with to keep yourself warm when the chilling breeze, which put roses in girls’ cheeks but made sinuses ache, cut across you in its journey towards the open field during winter. The charm of walking along the lonely streets proscribed for outsiders and bowing occasionally when you meet the Professors of repute, music and band for the generation of ear deafening sound - both symphony and cacophony, on Saturdays and Sundays in the auditorium, rhythmic sound of machines in the workshop, hurly-burly of laughter of my friends, talks, cries at the top of  their lunges in the canteen and sudden departures of all from the canteen on hearing the ding-dong sound of the big bell hung in the administration building indicating the end of the period would no longer be there. The street fighting of two groups of students on flimsy grounds and passionate speeches of the students during debate competition would no longer be audible. Shaking of long thin pine trees violently by the storm flowing across these especially during summer, shouting and gesticulation of students’ union members while moving around the campus for better amenities or administration, getting caught with friends all around with revolvers in hand during the violent Naxalite movement, hiding in the toilet in canteen to avoid beating by police personnel, dropping of mangoes from a mango tree which spread its wings in all directions during the five years we were in the college near our building and running together by us to pick the green/ripe mangoes as fast as possible defying inclement weather and rain etc. were simply irresistible. The list was endless. I was going to miss very much the competition among us regarding number of mangoes we could collect for our few girlfriends whom we wanted to impress! I

Christ wants us to alter our attitude toward ourselves and take sides with Him against our own self-evaluation. In the summer of 1992, I took a significant step on my inward journey. For twenty days I lived in a remote cabin in the Colorado Rockies and made a retreat, combining therapy, silence, and solitude. Early each morning, I met with a psychologist who guided me in awakening repressed memories and feelings from childhood. The remainder of each day I spent alone in the cabin without television, radio, or reading material of any kind. As the days passed, I realized that I had not been able to feel anything since I was eight years old. A traumatic experience with my mother at that time shut down my memory for the next nine years and my feelings for the next five decades. When I was eight, the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered, Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore, because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know. So I became a good boy—polite, well mannered, unobtrusive, and deferential. I studied hard, scored excellent grades, won a scholarship in high school, and was stalked every waking moment by the terror of abandonment and the sense that nobody was there for me.

... I arrived at the Coeur d’Alene Airport at about 3:30 AM to fuel and preflight an airplane. My assignment was to land on an unimproved grass strip near Priest Lake at first morning light to pick up an armed special agent. I had to time my night departure out of Coeur d’Alene to land on the strip as early as possible, but the airstrip was unlighted, so I needed just enough natural light to see the runway. The landing area in the forest was a narrow grass strip, which had been cut out in a dense stand of Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir, just to the west of the central portion of Lower Priest Lake. The sun hadn’t risen when I arrived at the airstrip, but there was just enough light to pick out the narrow runway carved into the forest below and land. It all seemed very clandestine as I bumped to a stop in the dim morning light. A shadowy figure dressed in dark-green fatigues emerged from the trees and walked quickly toward the airplane. As he got closer, I saw a holstered pistol on his belt and a gold badge on his chest. He got into the plane with the engine idling and the propeller still turning, and we took off immediately. (Page 355)

I FIRST CAME UNDER THE TIGER’S SPELL FIFTY-FOUR years ago, at the age of ten, sitting astride an elephant in Corbett National Park in the Lower Himalayas of north India. It was early in the morning and ten elephants were sweeping through high grass in an attempt to spring some tigers into a clearing on the far side. I remember looking down from my perch and seeing a tigress snarling up at the elephant and then darting away with two large cubs at her heels. I was struck by that experience and continue to remember it vividly. It was thirteen years after this encounter that I saw my next tiger in Ranthambhore. The year was 1976. That was the year my life with tigers truly began. This book is not only about my favourite tigers but also the very best of my encounters with one of the most magnificent animals to walk the face of the planet. Over the past forty years I have tried to serve them as best as I could. It was a dream for me to publish my first book nearly thirty-five years ago and to share my experiences with tigers with people across the world. This is my thirtieth publication and I have loved every minute of my time as an author. Through my books I have shared some of the best photographs showing the diversity of tigers in the wild. This time around I have used only a bunch of sketches. I have to thank Rose Corcoran for her brilliant sketches. My Ranthambhore journey would not have been possible without Fateh Singh Rathore, the wildlife warden, welcoming me into the folds of the park.

The operation was a radial keratotomy, in which tiny incisions are made in one’s corneas to alter the eyes’ focal lengths and (presumably) improve vision. However, unbeknownst to me and to virtually every ophthalmologist in the world, at high altitude a cornea thus altered will both flatten and thicken, shortening your focal length and rendering you effectively blind. That is what happened to me about fifteen hundred feet above High Camp in the early morning hours of May 10, 1996.

But, in November, the problem of Nanterre raised its head again, now more urgently. One Saturday morning, after an hour’s journey under a heavy downpour, Ricoeur found only one student waiting for him in the room where he was to give his agrégation class. He was furious, and went straight up to the office to ask to take early retirement.

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