Echo Marvel Quotes

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice: Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore.

Algebra applies to the clouds, the radiance of the star benefits the rose--no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand? Who can understand the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abyss of being and the avalanches of creation? A mite has value; the small is great, the great is small. All is balanced in necessity; frightening vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things, in this inexhaustible whole, from sun to grub, there is no scorn, each needs the other. Light does not carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths without knowing what it does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the sleeping plants. Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's beak breaking the egg, and it guides the birth of the earthworm, and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has a greater view? Choose. A bit of mold is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an anthill of stars. The same promiscuity, and still more wonderful, between the things of the intellect and material things. Elements and principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied one by another, to the point that the material world, and the moral world are brought into the same light. Phenomena are perpetually folded back on themselves. In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, rolling everything up in the invisible mystery of the emanations, using everything, losing no dream from any single sleep, sowing a microscopic animal here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and gyrating, making a force of light, and an element of thought, disseminated and indivisible dissolving all, that geometric point, the self; reducing everything to the soul-atom; making everything blossom into God; entangling from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, linking the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating--who knows, if only by the identity of the law--the evolutions of the comet in the firmament to the circling of the protozoa in the drop of water. A machine made of mind. Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last is the zodiac.

You don't notice the dead leaving when they really choose to leave you. You're not meant to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper undulating down. I would compare it to a woman in the back of a lecture hall or theater whom no one notices until she slips out.Then only those near the door themselves, like Grandma Lynn, notice; to the rest it is like an unexplained breeze in a closed room. Grandma Lynn died several years later, but I have yet to see her here. I imagine her tying it on in her heaven, drinking mint juleps with Tennessee Williams and Dean Martin. She'll be here in her own sweet time, I'm sure. If I'm to be honest with you, I still sneak away to watch my family sometimes. I can't help it, and sometimes they still think of me. They can't help it.... It was a suprise to everyone when Lindsey found out she was pregnant...My father dreamed that one day he might teach another child to love ships in bottles. He knew there would be both sadness and joy in it; that it would always hold an echo of me. I would like to tell you that it is beautiful here, that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe. But this heaven is not about safety just as, in its graciousness, it isn't about gritty reality. We have fun. We do things that leave humans stumped and grateful, like Buckley's garden coming up one year, all of its crazy jumble of plants blooming all at once. I did that for my mother who, having stayed, found herself facing the yard again. Marvel was what she did at all the flowers and herbs and budding weeds. Marveling was what she mostly did after she came back- at the twists life took. And my parents gave my leftover possessions to the Goodwill, along with Grandma Lynn's things. They kept sharing when they felt me. Being together, thinking and talking about the dead, became a perfectly normal part of their life. And I listened to my brother, Buckley, as he beat the drums. Ray became Dr. Singh... And he had more and more moments that he chose not to disbelieve. Even if surrounding him were the serious surgeons and scientists who ruled over a world of black and white, he maintained this possibility: that the ushering strangers that sometimes appeared to the dying were not the results of strokes, that he had called Ruth by my name, and that he had, indeed, made love to me. If he ever doubted, he called Ruth. Ruth, who graduated from a closet to a closet-sized studio on the Lower East Side. Ruth, who was still trying to find a way to write down whom she saw and what she had experienced. Ruth, who wanted everyone to believe what she knew: that the dead truly talk to us, that in the air between the living, spirits bob and weave and laugh with us. They are the oxygen we breathe. Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish. This wide wide Heaven is about flathead nails and the soft down of new leaves, wide roller coaster rides and escaped marbles that fall then hang then take you somewhere you could never have imagined in your small-heaven dreams.

But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.

To His Coy Mistress Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Not for the first time I felt myself confronted by the dizzying possibility that an entire episode in the story of mankind might have been forgotten. Indeed it seemed to me then, as I overlooked the mathematical city of the gods from the summit of the Pyramid of the Moon, that our species could have been afflicted with some terrible amnesia and that the dark period so blithely and dismissively referred to as `prehistory' might turn out to conceal unimagined truths about our own past. What is prehistory, after all, if not a time forgotten--a time for which we have no records? What is prehistory if not an epoch of impenetrable obscurity through which our ancestors passed but about which we have no conscious remembrance? It was out of this epoch of obscurity, configured in mathematical code along astronomical and geodetic lines, that Teotihuacan with all its riddles was sent down to us. And out of that same epoch came the great Olmec sculptures, the inexplicably precise and accurate calendar the Mayans inherited from their predecessors, the inscrutable geoglyphs of Nazca, the mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco ... and so many other marvels of which we do not know the provenance. It is almost as though we have awakened into the daylight of history from a long and troubled sleep, and yet continue to be disturbed by the faint but haunting echoes of our dreams

Whatever has happened, there is always that magic winter haunting and hurting me with its marvelous echoes. The shortest days of the year, when nothing had begun and nothing had ended, all the roads of life were alive, and time beat round me like a heart.

Perhaps she is right, that there is no reason to suffering, no fair dealing when it comes to meting out bliss and pain. There are just choices, and the echoes of those choices.

I relinquished myself to existence pure and simple, thinking absolutely nothing—as if my mind were merely an echo chamber for the music, as if it contained only ether or at most a vaguely pleasant odor as of roses preserved between the pages of a book, their significance long forgotten. The tongue of the road gobbled me up and I allowed myself to sink like a tasty mouthful all the way to the bottom of a marvelous, rejuvenating vacuity. Later, it would occur to me it’s the emptiness we mistakenly call Innocence.

You must let him love you as you are, not as you intend to be. Let him love you as you are, without a single plea for reform. It is all about grace, Tim. All of life is grace. We deserve nothing; we are given everything. Until now you have only experienced the drippings of grace. You have longed for the real thing, like the longing for the scent of a flower you have never been able to find, or the echo of a tune you have not yet heard, or news from a country you have never visited. Well, now you have found it. Grace is the thing you have been searching for, and it is all around you.

There were no houses, no palace, no constructions of any sort; it was rather an immense sea, though the waters were invisible and the shore had disappeared. In this city, seated far from all things, sad last dream lost among the shadows, while the day faded and sobbing rose gently in the perspective of a strange horizon, Anne, like something which could not be represented, no longer a human being but simply a being, marvelously a being, among the mayflies and the falling suns, with the agonizing atoms, doomed species, wounded illnesses, ascended the course of waters where obscure origins floundered. She alas had no means of knowing where she arrived, but when the prolonged echoes of this enormous night were melting together into a dreary and vague unconsciousness, searching and wailing a wail which was like the tragic destruction of something nonliving, empty entities awoke and, like monsters constantly exchanging their absence of shape for other absences of shape and taming silence by terrible reminiscences of silence, they went out in a mysterious agony.

And what of Nature itself, you say--that callous and cruel engine, red in tooth and fang? Well, it is not so much of an engine as you think. As for "red in tooth and fang," whenever I hear the phrase or its intellectual echoes I know that some passer-by has been getting life from books. It is true that there are grim arrangements. Beware of judging them by whatever human values are in style. As well expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life--all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. Live in Nature, and you will soon see that for all its non-human rhythm, it is no cave of pain.

I can't live in the past, but the echoes of the past live on deep inside of the core of my being. I am learning to turn and face past experiences so that I may see them, touch them, feel them, bless them and finally own them. I am calling back the parts of myself that I abandoned when the pain was too strong and when life got 'too much'. I am accepting with Grace that my life is an exquisitely unique journey of mishap, magic and marvelous misadventure.

Genes,” he said, frowning. “Is there a Bengali word?” I asked. He searched his inner lexicon. There was no word—but perhaps he could find a substitute. “Abhed,” he offered. I had never heard him use the term. It means “indivisible” or “impenetrable,” but it is also used loosely to denote “identity.” I marveled at the choice; it was an echo chamber of a word. Mendel or Bateson might have relished its many resonances: indivisible; impenetrable; inseparable; identity. I asked my father what he thought about Moni, Rajesh, and Jagu. “Abheder dosh,” he said. A flaw in identity; a genetic illness; a blemish that cannot be separated from the self—the same phrase served all meanings. He had made peace with its indivisibility.

Anything . . . supernatural?” I asked. “No. Yes.” Jackaby rubbed his eyes. “Everything. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling . . .” “What?” I said. “Ha!” He shook his head and spun in place, marveling at the dark, dusty cobwebs hanging over us. “It’s been scrubbed clean, every inch.” I looked around. “This might be why you and Jenny rarely see eye to eye about housekeeping,” I said. “Not scrubbed clean of dust or droppings,” he said. “There are plenty of those, of course.” I decided not to look too closely for confirmation about the droppings. “Scrubbed clean of magical residue. I can’t pick out any unique otherworldly auras in this space.” “Couldn’t that just mean that this place doesn’t have any?” “Hardly. When you were young, did you ever spill red wine on your parents’ carpet?” I blinked. “Er—yes? I knocked a bottle of merlot off of the table once.” “And what did your mother do to clean it up?” “Nothing. My mother never did the cleaning. She always had a maid handle that sort of thing.” “Precisely—white vinegar! Nothing better for a stain. Except that the carpet is never quite like it used to be, is it? Even if you can’t see the red anymore, there’s always something about that spot. It’s a little too clean for the rest of the rug, and it keeps that lingering vinegar smell, right? Now a healthy suspension of sodium bicarbonate might help with that, but there’s always something left behind.” “You know a lot about cleaning carpets for someone whose floor looks like a topical map of the East Indies.” “I know the Viennese waltz, too, but I don’t waste my time doing it every day. Focus, Rook. 

That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me. Then Jimmy began to sing too, and gradually voices echoed along the shafts until there was the sound of eighty voices, a hundred voices and the sound of waves, and the earth holding itself tight in those tunnels, and those who were above ground swore they could hear that hymn coming from below grass, and the sheer beauty near enough stopped those engine houses. And those voices rose until the twelve miles of working tunnel were ablaze with song, as if that alone was support enough to keep back the weakening stope. And there were men who cried in that space touched by something divine. And as the last voice fell silent, so rose a crescendo of falling waves above just like cymbals. And in that darkness, came the light. And for a moment all fear abated in the hushed stillness of answered grace.

I missed my workout this morning, so I vault up the stairs to my flat. Breakfast has taken longer than intended, and I'm expecting Oliver at any minute. Part of me also hopes that Alessia will still be there. As I approach my front door, I hear music coming from the flat. Music? What's going on? I slide my key into the lock and cautiously open the door. It's Bach, one of his preludes in G Major. Perhaps Alessia is playing music through my computer. But how can she? She doesn't know the password. Does she? Maybe she's playing her phone through the sound system, though from the look of her tatty anorak she doesn't strike me as someone who has a smartphone. I've never seen her with one. The music rings through my flat, lighting up its darkest corners. Who knew that my daily likes classical? This is a tiny piece of the Alessia Demachi puzzle. Quickly I close the door, but as I stand in the hallway, it becomes apparent that the music is not coming from the sound system. It's from my piano. Bach. Fluid and light, played with a deftness and understanding I've only heard from concert-standard performers. Alessia? I've never managed to make my piano sing like this. Taking off my shoes, I creep down the hallway and peer around the door into the drawing room. She is seated at the piano in her housecoat and scarf, swaying a little, completely lost in the music, her eyes closed in concentration as her hands move with graceful dexterity across the keys. The music flows through her, echoing off the walls and ceiling in a flawless performance worthy of any concert pianist. I watch her in awe as she plays, her head bowed. She is brilliant. In every way. And I'm completely spellbound. She finishes the prelude, and I step back into the hall, flattening myself against the wall in case she looks up, not daring to breath. However, without missing a beat she goes straight into the fugue. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, marveling at her artistry and the feeling that she puts into each phrase. I'm carried away by the music, and as I listen, I realize that she wasn't reading the music. She's playing from memory. Good God. She's a fucking virtuoso. And I remember her intense focus when she examined my score while she was dusting the piano. Clearly she was reading the music. Shit. She plays at this standard and she was reading my composition? The fugue ends, and seamlessly she launches into another piece. Again Bach, Prelude in C-sharp Major, I think.

Algebra applies to the clouds; the radiance of the star benefits the rose; no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand? Who can understand the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abyss of being and the avalanches of creation? A mite has value; the small is great, the great is small; all is balanced in necessity: frightening vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things; in this inexhaustible whole, from sun to grub, there is no scorn; each needs the other. Light does not carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths without knowing what it does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the sleeping plants. Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's beak breaking the egg, and it guides the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view? Choose. A bit of mold is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an anthill of stars.

It is for good reason that men fear the dark. Our kind are transient, hopeless things. Things destined to live and die, leaving nary an echo in the yawning corridor of eons. I've always marveled at time, and at its ability to change things—to worsen, weaken and, however seldom, to improve—despite its intangibility. The cruelty of this world is that there is nothing in it that equates to permanence, and it is the burden of our kind to be saddled with—cursed by—that knowledge. The only commodity that endlessly endures is that invisible force that turns the pages; time.

I asked Simon if he’d ever feared that all our struggles, all our suffering might be in vain. Not a priest’s question, and he shamed me by his answer, by the shining certainty of his faith. He said no, my lady, and then he told me of a cave he’d found whilst in the Holy Land. It was said to have magical powers; a man could shout and long after it had died away, it echoed back as if from the very bowels of the earth. Simon had so marveled at it that he’d never forgotten it. And that night in Hereford Castle, he said that whilst it might seem as if we were but shouting into the wind, our echoes, too, would come back in time, echoes to hearten the godly and haunt kings. He laughed then, but he believed it, my lady, and I found I believed, too.

As I did so, music began to echo through the apartment, first scales, then something melodic and beautiful. I stopped to listen, marveling at the sound, wondering how it must feel to be able to create something so gorgeous. I closed my eyes, letting it flow through me, remembering the evening when Will had taken me to my first concert and begun to force the world open for me. Live music was so much more three-dimensional than recorded-it short-circuited something deep within.

Despite the march of digital technologies, it is hard to believe that paper will completely disappear as a means of communication. For some messages we trust it above all other media. There is nothing that quite grips the stomach while simultaneously making your heart skip than a letter from your beloved arriving by post. Phone calls are fine and intimate, text messages and e-mails are instantaneous and gratifying, but to hold in your hands the very material that your beloved touched and to breathe in their sweetness from the paper is truly the stuff of love. It is a communication of more than words. There is a permanence, a physical solidity to soothe those of an insecure nature. It can be read and reread over and over again. It physically takes up space in your life. The paper itself becomes a simulacrum of the loved one’s skin, it smells of their scent, and their writing is as much an expression of their unique nature as a fingerprint. A love letter is not faked, and is not cut and pasted. What is it about paper that allows words to be expressed that might otherwise be kept secret? They are written in a private moment, and as such, paper lends itself to sensual love—the act of writing being one fundamentally of touch, of flow, of flourish, of sweet asides and little sketches, an individuality that is free from the mechanics of the keyboard. The ink becomes a kind of blood that demands honesty and expression, it pours on to the page, allowing thoughts to flow. Letters make splitting up harder too, since like photographs they echo forever on the page. For one whose heart is broken this is a cruelty, and for those who have moved on it is a stinging rebuke of infidelity or, at the very least, a thorn of inconstancy in the side of their constructed personality. Paper, though, as a carbon-based material, has a bright solution for those wanting to be released from such torture: a match.

This ”joy” which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration. Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a faroff gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite. I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairystory, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

They slipped inside between the silent stone. Shadows closed around them, like a mother's arms, to protect them. The lap of waves echoed within the cave. I know this place. It was her father's favorite. On the ceiling and the walls, painted flowers sparkled around them in a magical light show, courtesy of a spell that had been cast thousands of years ago. Marveling, Kiela turned in a slow circle as the petals of ancient roses, lilies, daisies, and flowers twinkled in every color of the rainbow, and she felt, for a brief moment, safe.

For many of us, the act of waiting is among our most lasting and evocative memories. Some travelers, like my husband when he was a boy, were lucky enough to wait for ferries, where there were always the sound of ships, the small of the sea, and the sight of wheeling gulls. He remembers plain wooden benches and the sound of voices and feet echoing from hard wooden floors and walls. The cheerful newsstand was the colorful central presence in these austere stations, before plastic and the paperback explosion. Waiting for the Dartmouth-Halifax ferry in Nova Scotia, he marveled at the size of the Buffalo Sunday Times, and bought the first issue of the New Yorkers, with Eustace Tilley on the cover. Waiting, as well was travel, can broaden the mind.

When one verse in life ends in ignominy, we can use the glimmering marvel of nature’s splendor and frayed edges culled from the black linen of past failures to write uncanny poems that give voice to the fissures in our hollow, reflective poetry that echoes our supple inner world of cherished dreams colliding with the serrated edges of savage realism.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations. Psalm 100:4-5 NKJV And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Colossians 3:17 HCSB I will thank you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done. I will be filled with joy because of you. I will sing praises to your name, O Most High. Psalm 9:1-2 NLT And those who have reason to be thankful should continually sing praises to the Lord. James 5:13 NLT SHADES OF GRACE Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning. Karl Barth A PRAYER FOR TODAY Heavenly Father, Your gifts are greater than I can imagine. May I live each day with thanksgiving in my heart and praise on my lips. Thank You for the gift of Your Son and for the promise of eternal life. Let me share the joyous news of Jesus Christ, and let my life be a testimony to His love and His grace. Amen

Zesty hormones surged—not to carry wedges of information or holistic images, as in Quath, but to flood the bloodstream with urgent demands. Organs far from the brain answered these chemical heralds, pumping other hormones into the thumping flow, adding alkaline voices to the babble. Ideas rose like crystalline towers from this swamp, glimmering coolly—but soon were spattered with the aromatic chemical murk, blood on glass. These elements merged and wrestled, struggling armies rushing together in flurries, fermenting, spinning away into wild skirmishes. Lurid splashes festooned the brittle ramparts of analytical thought. A churning mire lapped hungrily at the stern bulwarks of reason, eroding worn salients even as fresh ones were built. Yet somehow this interior battle did not yield mere confusion and scattered indecision. Somehow a single coherent view emerged, holding the vital, fervent factions in check. Its actions sampled of all the myriad influences, letting none dominate for long. Quath marveled at the sheer energy behind the incessant clashings, and at the same time felt a mixture of recognition laced by repulsion. This Nought’s inner landscape was far more complex than it should be. No wonder it had not attained the technological sophistication of the podia!—it labored forward in a howling storm, its every sharp perception blunted by fraying winds of passion. But by the same stroke, it had a curious way of skating on the surface of these choppy, alchemical crosscurrents. Some balance and uncanny steadiness came from that. It was much like the way they walked—falling forward, then rescuing themselves by catching the plunge with the other leg. This yielded a rocking cadence that echoed the precarious nature of the being itself. Not a single mind… and not multiple, interlocking intelligences, such as Quath.

I’m sort of nervous you’ll find out Even though I want you to I’m sort of nervous you’ll be angry Even though I know that’s not you We’ve been through this all before And you never made me feel unsure But still A hush had fallen over the crowd as soon as she began to sing and Julie marveled at how different this atmosphere was from the raucous one the boys had described to her from their visit to the club. She wondered if Caleb would be satisfied with her slow and emotional song choice but if he was dissatisfied with her he didn’t show it on his face. He merely glanced around at the rapt expressions of the lifers and smirked. Julie allowed her eyes to slide over to her friends who were both watching her with knowing looks. She knew that the sadness in her lyrics was reflected in their eyes, that they felt sorry for her and that they ached for Luke too. She forced her gaze away from them, needing to focus on getting through the song and finding it almost impossible in the face of their pity. I’m sort of hopeful you’ll find out Even though that’s not fair I’m sort of hopeful you'll guess Even though I’m so scared I don’t know what the right choice is And part of me wants you to insist But still Despite all of the circumstances that made singing this particular song in this particular venue absolutely loaded down with baggage she found herself slipping into the zone she always occupied when performing. She could feel the heady rush of doing what she was meant to do in front of people hanging on her every word. She wished Luke was there to sing with her but she had also never been so glad that he wasn’t. She gripped the mic stand and raised her voice to new heights as she began the chorus. How do I tell you this isn’t where I belong? How do I tell you this was a tragedy all along? That we never had a chance At a happy ending at all Just a few brief stolen moments Between your heart and mine How do I tell you? How do I tell you? Goodbye She could hear emotion breaking through into her voice but she didn’t care. The ghost band once again seemed to sense what she had heard in her head and the music built and built before suddenly dropping to next to nothing. A few chords on the piano were all that accompanied the final verse as she gave it her all. I’m sort of happy we happened Even though I know the memories Will hurt I’m sort of happy we met here Even if it took a curse I know that I’ve made mistakes And some of them are hard to shake But still Julie allowed herself to truly see the audience for the first time. They were still watching her with awed expressions but something about the lighting in the club seemed different. There was a soft golden glow settling over the whole room. Julie blinked and the glow was gone. She barely had time to wonder if she had imagined it before the band came back in full force for the final chorus. How do I tell you this isn’t where I belong? How do I tell you this was a tragedy all along? That we never had a chance At a happy ending at all Just a few brief stolen moments Between your heart and mine How do I tell you? How do I tell you? Goodbye The band fell away again and Julie’s voice echoed through the ballroom alone on the final lines. How do I tell you? Goodbye

His lips touched hers, just a brush, once, twice, over the full softness of her lovely mouth, discovering what she knew of kissing. With devastating instinct, she echoed him, dragging her lips softly across his, with his, until the desire in him was coiled so tightly his limbs trembled from it. "Susannah." A ragged whisper. She sighed a warm breath out against his lips and brought her other hand up to hold his face; in her hands he could feel her tension and urgency. And he'd meant to linger over this kiss, to take it deeper with delicacy and finesse, and then to end it, but he found he could not. His desire was suddenly untenable; he was convinced only the taste of her could ease it. He touched an impatient tongue to her lips and coaxed them open. When she parted her mouth he sought her tongue, and discovered, with a low sound in the back of his throat, the hot, silken sweetness inside her mouth. Her tongue tentatively moved, tangled with his. Oh, God. "Like this?" she whispered. "God, yes," he breathed. She smiled against his mouth. "No smiling," he murmured. "Only kissing." Their mouths moved languidly over each other at first, nipping, delving deeply, retreating. And gradually it built to urgency. He rose up over her to take his kisses deeper still, to taste the contours of her mouth, teeth clashing against her teeth, and still it never seemed enough. The sensation was like soaring in place; Kit couldn't feel the ground beneath him, or the air above him; he was aware only of the sweetness of the woman joined with him, and distantly he marveled, he'd never felt quite so lost. He tucked his hip in firmly against hers, astounded at how painfully aroused he was. "Sweet," he murmured, moving his lips from hers to kiss, to nip beneath her chin, to draw his tongue down the cord of her throat. Her breathing was rushed, and with the rise and fall of her chest he could see the tight darkness of her nipples beneath the fine fabric of her dress. "Sweet," he sighed again, moving his mouth to breathe against her breast; he touched his tongue to her nipple through the fabric. She caught her breath at the sensation, arced up a little to meet him. And as she did, his fingers, five feathers, began to stroke the tender skin inside her thigh.

He felt none of that numinous awe born of emptiness and the echo of plainsong on the silent air that ancient churches could evoke. Nevertheless, he found himself closing the door more quietly than he would have done, and marvelled, as he often did, how deep-seated and lasting were the influences of his childhood, when, for a priest’s son, the year had been divided not by school terms, holidays or months, but by the church calendar: Advent, Christmas, Pentecost, the seemingly interminable Sundays after Trinity.

She gasped and swatted Chuck with the back of her hand. He deflected the move by raising his arm and laughing. “Men,” she said, unable to corral her amusement. “Women,” Chuck echoed. Ed laughed. “Nothing in the world like the spark between men and women. What a marvelous and mysterious combination. Two sides of the same coin, you know. We both want the same thing, to give and receive love, to be cared for, respected. We just come at it from a different point of view. Points of view we both need, you know.

Coin is a marvelous lock pick.

May I come in? I wish to talk to you.” “Yes, I suppose you do.” If I hadn’t known both his fathers, I would have marveled at his ability to suppress the rage and confusion he had so clearly exhibited a quarter of a hour ago. Jamie did it by instinct, John by long experience—but both of them had an iron power of will, and whether William’s was bred in the bone or acquired by example, he most assuredly had one. “Shall I send for something?” I asked. “A little brandy? It’s good for shock.” He shook his head. He wouldn’t sit—I didn’t think he could—but leaned against the wall.

He opened Alicia’s book on the desk. Golden fairy tale calligraphy. Sooty cover. His desire for her rose like broken glass in his throat, a thousand gashes in his lungs as he inhaled the ink, which warbled a sweet song of anguish, a lament of two female voices echoing through the rafters. Mr. Wicker often marveled at how human beings are both alive and dead, suffering an incomplete death over the lifetime. Death tainted the flesh to serve this odd communion of opposites. The bitter soup of the soul. The hardened crust of the body. Oh, how he could devour her, soup and crust.