Elastic Heart Quotes

A faerie heart is different from a human heart. Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again. Faerie hearts are evolutionarily less sophisticated. They are small and hard, like tiny grains of sand. Our hearts are too small to love more than one person in a lifetime.

Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives — he didn’t belong to the library, so he’d never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake: Mr. H. Potter The Cupboard under the Stairs 4 Privet Drive Little Whinging Surrey

But our hearts are more elastic than we think, and the work of forgiveness and transformation and growth can do things you can't even imagine from where you're standing now.

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself - not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of pain fill thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing in the forest.

Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again.

The woman I would have to let go of if I wanted to keep my career was the same woman I didn’t want to live without.

The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart.

You make me desperate for you, Nicole,” he growled, cradling the back of my head and crashing my lips to his. “You’re fucking mine.

For anybody who thinks love only exists in fairy tales— Love is limitless. Believe.

I enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind; and if I was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall soon cease to be -- a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself.

I’ll do whatever it takes if it makes you cave to this,” he said, lowering his voice. “You’re not afraid of the consequences anymore?” I asked. “I am.” He paused, his eyes searching mine. “I think you might be worth it, though.

Yet for some reason I’m around this guy for two seconds and I become a fifteen-year-old girl at a One Direction concert.

It came down to that flexibility of a person’s mind. An ability to withstand horrors and snap back, like a fresh elastic band. A flinty mind shattered. In this way, he was glad not to be an adult. A grown-up’s mind—even one belonging to a decent man like Scoutmaster Tim—lacked that elasticity. The world had been robbed of all its mysteries, and with those mysteries went the horror. Adults didn’t believe in old wives’ tales. You didn’t see adults stepping over sidewalk cracks out of the fear that they might somehow, some way, break their mothers’ backs. They didn’t wish on stars: not with the squinty-eyed fierceness of kids, anyway. You’ll never find an adult who believes that saying “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror in a dark room will summon a dark, blood-hungry entity. Adults were scared of different things: their jobs, their mortgages, whether they hung out with the “right people,” whether they would die unloved. These were pallid compared to the fears of a child—leering clowns under the bed and slimy monsters capering beyond the basement’s light and faceless sucking horrors from beyond the stars. There’s no 12-step or self-help group for dealing with those fears. Or maybe there is: you just grow up. And when you do, you surrender the nimbleness of mind required to believe in such things—but also to cope with them. And so when adults find themselves in a situation where that nimbleness is needed . . . well, they can’t summon it. So they fall to pieces: go insane, panic, suffer heart attacks and aneurysms brought on by fright. Why? They simply don’t believe it could be happening. That’s what’s different about kids: they believe everything can happen, and fully expect it to.

Nic?” he asked, his voice low and near my ear. My stomach did a flip-flop. “Yeah?” I whispered. “You’re going to have to learn to breathe when you’re near me. We’ll be doing this a lot.” My head whipped toward him, and he reared back slightly to put a little distance between our faces. “You’re unbelievable,” I said. “So I’ve been told.

Here’s to the misfits and foolish ones who think differently. They’re not fond of simplicity. They live unconventionally existing at a different level of intensity. They add elasticity and flexibility to what’s inflexibly rigid, bringing warmth to the frigid systems of existence. You can hate them acidicly, discredit their credibility or even oppose them ritualistically. Look down on them cynically, say they became great accidentally, rain on them torrentially or see brilliance academically. You can look and see density or see a lovely symphony. About the only thing you can’t do is disqualify their eligibility. Because they change history. Everything in existence moves them restlessly on to destiny backed by infinity. Their spirit is immensity, they overcome resiliently and follow their hearts existentially. Though they may be misunderstood until the next century, we see their opponents’ adrenaline as only minimally convincing, simply for a time because in them there’s a tendency for the divine to visit earth coincidentally. And while others may see misfits and foolishness we see wisdom and genius because the ones crazy enough to think they can live and love limitlessly are the ones who actually do.

My attention caught on something. I dropped my gaze to his grip on me, to the elastic band on his wrist. “What is . . .?” I trailed off when I realized what it was. And only because I’d worn the same wide-banded black hair ties since I could remember. My heart picked up as the memory came back, of him slipping that hair tie into his pocket while I was naked in his bed three years before. The surprise hit me so hard I went on the offensive. “That’s mine,” I accused, like it was something important he’d stolen from me. I reached for it as if to take it back, but he stopped me by grabbing that wrist, too. “It’s mine now.

I swear we'd lose our hearts if they weren't with elastic and butterfly pin clasped safely in.

Are you mine and no one else’s?” He smiled, caressing my face with his thumb as he brought his lips down to mine. “Always yours. I was never anybody else’s.

Give a little time to me or burn this out, We’ll play hide and seek to turn this around, All I want is the taste that your lips allow . . .” ~Ed Sheeran

But if that were the case, why did I feel like he was ripping out my heart?

Your young heart is a wild, elastic thing. Now, I fear that age and time and experience stretches it too hard, too far, and it will never snap back.

If his heart was elastic, it had snapped in two.

Well I've got a thick skin and an elastic heart

I want you,” he said. I gasped as his fingers dug into my flesh. “I want you and I can’t have you if I keep working for you.” “Says who?” I asked, surprised my voice was loud enough for him to hear me. “I’ve worked so fucking hard and this case is going to blow it all to shit,” he said, inching his face closer to mine. I stopped breathing. “All because I need this more than I’ve needed anything else in my fucking life.

My heart is elastic. I realize it for the first time. For so long I thought there was a limit to how much love I could hold and who I could give it to. But life is so much more dynamic than that. Love doesn’t disappear when you give it away, and new love doesn’t make old love any less legitimate.

Words got me into trouble. They are the deadliest weapons of all, so that now the gun seems almost innocent by comparison. I fired the shot to stop the words; they were so busy eating everything up. You have no idea how I hate words, how i see them winding out of people's mouths like sticky strands of a web, infinitely elastic, linking the speaker to the listener forever, and finally weaving an impermeable cocoon around the mind and then the poor, fast-beating heart itself.

THE CAT Come, superb cat, to my amorous heart; Hold back the talons of your paws, Let me gaze into your beautiful eyes Of metal and agate. When my fingers leisurely caress you, Your head and your elastic back, And when my hand tingles with the pleasure Of feeling your electric body, In spirit I see my woman. Her gaze Like your own, amiable beast, Profound and cold, cuts and cleaves like a dart, And, from her head down to her feet, A subtle air, a dangerous perfume Floats about her dusky body.

that strange elasticity of the human heart in finding new relationships, new people to share one’s life with, new potentials.

34 C, baby,” he said loudly. I felt my face turn a shade of red as a woman walked by us. She shot me an amused look.

He was not a big deal. He looked short. I was sure his hair made Oliver jealous, though, so I snapped a picture of him and sent it,

Jon. Snow. Is. A. Huge. Deal.

Forgiving, caring, always willing to give people a second chance until you fucked up again, in which case she’d put you on her shit list.

Excuse him, he doesn’t Target much,” I said with a smile. The woman laughed and walked away.

Breathe. Suck in your stomach. Smile. No. Don’t smile.

I rarely did that, but I figured because of the time it had to be UPS

Talon gasped. “I am thirty-two, thank you very much, and Harry is hot.

Thank God we’re not in Victoria’s Secret,” I muttered, looking over again.

I understand, and I’m sorry to break it to you, but I’m not looking to hook up with you. Been there, done that, bought the shirt.

Let’s go, Marcus, I have a lot of pent-up tension I need to get rid of,” I said. I looked over my shoulder to where Victor was standing.

I swear to God, Gabriel, if you don’t stop, I will lose it. I will go to the bathroom and pull a Britney in the middle of your acceptance speech.

Work and wine, maintaining sanity for unhappily married women everywhere.

Do you do this much for all of your clients?” I asked… “I think you know I don’t,” he whispered, still holding my face. “And I think you know this has passed the client boundary by now.

Faith is never connected to safe. There is no faith without tension. For a rubber band to function to it's elasticity, it has to experience a tension. Saints of God who has no tension has no function.

In her memoir of living among the Bushmen, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, my friend Liz lovingly invokes an image first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “You are standing beside your mother, holding her hand. She is holding her mother’s hand, who is holding her mother’s hand. . . . ” Eventually the line stretches three hundred miles long and goes back five million years, and the clasping hand of the ancestor looks like that of a chimpanzee. I loved picturing one of Octavia’s arms stretching out to meet one of her mother’s arms, and one of her mother’s mother’s arms, and her mother’s mother’s mother’s. . . . Suckered, elastic arms, reaching back through time: an octopus chorus line stretching not just hundreds, but many thousands of miles long. Back past the Cenozoic, the time when our ancestors descended from the trees; back past the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs ruled the land; back past the Permian and the rise of the ancestors of the mammals; back, past the Carboniferous’s coal-forming swamp forests; back past the Devonian, when amphibians emerged from the water; back past the Silurian, when plants first took root on land—all the way to the Ordovician, to a time before the advent of wings or knees or lungs, before the fishes had bony jaws, before blood pumped from a multichambered heart. More than 500 million years ago, the tides would have been stronger, the days shorter, the year longer, and the air too high in carbon dioxide for mammals or birds to breathe. All the earth’s continents huddled in the Southern Hemisphere. And yet still, the arm of Octavia’s ancestor, sensitive, suckered, and supple, would have been recognizable as one of an octopus.

Listen,” Older Self might say. “The things that right now seem permanently out of reach, you’ll reach them eventually. You’ll have a career, a house, a partner in life. You will have much better shoes. You will reach a point where your funds will generally be sufficient—maybe not always plentiful, but sufficient.” But here’s what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to—the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go—will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you’d never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never meant to be anything more than passing thoughts you had while playing your stereo at night.

Would it bother you if somebody asked me out on a date?” His laughter stopped instantly. “Why? Who asked you out? That asshole realtor?” That made me laugh. “No. You know there are more men in the world, right?” “Who asked you out?

And yet he hailed the morning on which he had resolved to quit London, with a light heart, and sprang from his bed with an elasticity of spirit which is happily the lot of young persons, or the world would never be stocked with old ones.

Tanaka’s lab has pioneered new research on swimming’s effects on two of the biggest hallmarks of aging: high blood pressure and arthritis. “Over the last four or five years, a funky thing happened—we realized that the effects of swimming actually surpassed the magnitude of the effects of walking or cycling,” he tells me. “None of us knew that before.” Average reduction in blood pressure after land-based exercise training is five to seven points. Swimming, he found, reduces blood pressure by an average of nine points—in the blood-pressure world, that’s significant. It also decreases arterial stiffness, a condition in which the walls of your arteries become less elastic and add strain to the heart muscle.

Arsonist's Lullabye by Hozier – Chapter three Elastic Heart by Sia – Chapter Nine Paralyzed by NF – Chapter Seventeen Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush – Chapter Twenty You Broke Me First by Tate McRae – Chapter Twenty-three Let Me Down by Jorja Smith and Stormzy – Chapter Twenty-four I Can’t Make You Love Me by Teddie Swims – Chapter Thirty Dancing with a Stranger by Sam Smith – Chapter Thirty-one Demons by Jacob Lee – Chapter Thirty-Three Halo by Beyonce – Chapter Thirty-six Play with

It's very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want. I'd no idea hearts could take in so many. Mine is so elastic, it never seems full now, and I used to be quite contented with my family. I don't understand it.

Whether we can somehow listen in on tree talk is a subject that was recently addressed in the specialized literature. Korean scientists have been tracking older women as they walk through forests and urban areas. The result? When the women were walking in the forest, their blood pressure, their lung capacity, and the elasticity of their arteries improved, whereas an excursion into town showed none of these changes. It's possible that phytoncides have a beneficial effect on our immune systems as well as the trees' health, because they kill germs. Personally, however, I think the swirling cocktail of tree talk is the reason we enjoy being out in the forest so much. At least when we are out in undisturbed forests. Walkers who visit one of the ancient deciduous preserves in the forest I manage always report that their heart feels lighter and they feel right at home. If they walk instead through coniferous forests, which in Central Europe are mostly planted and are, therefore, more fragile, artificial places, they don't experience such feelings. Possibly it's because in ancient beech forests, fewer "alarm calls" go out, and therefore, most messages exchanged between trees are contented ones, and these messages reach our brains as well, via our noses. I am convinced that we intuitively register the forest's health.

All at once he found his mind drawing a parallel between that destiny and his own existence; all at once questions of life arose before his vision, like owls in an ancient ruin flushed from sleep by a stray ray of sunlight. Somehow he felt pained and grieved at his arrested development, at the check which had taken place in his moral growth, at the weight which appeared to be pressing upon his every faculty. Also gnawing at his heart there was a sense of envy that others should be living a life so full and free, while all the time the narrow, pitiful little pathway of his own existence was being blocked by a great boulder. And in his hesitating soul there arose a torturing consciousness that many sides of his nature had never yet been stirred, that others had never even been touched, and that not one of them had attained complete formation. Yet with this there went an aching suspicion that, buried in his being, as in a tomb, there still remained a moribund element of sweetness and light, and that it was an element which, though hidden in his personality, as a nugget lies lurking in the bowels of the earth, might once have become minted into sterling coin. But the treasure was now overlaid with rubbish--was now thickly littered over with dust. 'Twas as though some one had stolen from him, and besmirched, the store of gifts with which life and the world had dowered him; so that always he would be prevented from entering life's field and sailing across it with the aid of intellect and of will. Yes, at the very start a secret enemy had laid a heavy hand upon him and diverted him from the road of human destiny. And now he seemed to be powerless to leave the swamps and wilds in favour of that road. All around him was a forest, and ever the recesses of his soul were growing dimmer and darker, and the path more and more tangled, while the consciousness of his condition kept awaking within him less and less frequently--to arouse only for a fleeting moment his slumbering faculties. Brain and volition alike had become paralysed, and, to all appearances, irrevocably--the events of his life had become whittled down to microscopical proportions. Yet even with them he was powerless to cope--he was powerless to pass from one of them to another. Consequently they bandied him to and fro like the waves of the ocean. Never was he able to oppose to any event elasticity of will; never was he able to conceive, as the result of any event, a reasoned-out impulse. Yet to confess this, even to himself, always cost him a bitter pang: his fruitless regrets for lost opportunities, coupled with burning reproaches of conscience, always pricked him like needles, and led him to strive to put away such reproaches and to discover a scapegoat.

my heart. So I fancied that your boy might fill the empty place if he tried now." "No, Mother, it is better as it is, and I'm glad Amy has learned to love him. But you are right in one thing. I am lonely, and perhaps if Teddy had tried again, I might have said 'Yes', not because I love him any more, but because I care more to be loved than when he went away." "I'm glad of that, Jo, for it shows that you are getting on. There are plenty to love you, so try to be satisfied with Father and Mother, sisters and brothers, friends and babies, till the best lover of all comes to give you your reward." "Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don't mind whispering to Marmee that I'd like to try all kinds. It's very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want. I'd no idea hearts could take in so many. Mine is so elastic, it never seems full now, and I used to be quite contented with my family. I don't understand it." "I do," and Mrs. March smiled her wise smile, as Jo turned back the leaves to read what Amy said of Laurie. "It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me. He isn't sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don't seem to be the same girl I

Then he watches the minute flicker of the pulse in her neck and imagines the vein, deep below the skin, dilating then shrinking, dilating then shrinking with the hot, thick blood sent shooting from the heart. The elastic, muscular stretch of it, every three-quarters of a second. He looks at the delta of veins at her wrist, the thin violet patterns on her eyelids, the trace of blue that runs through her cheek, the web of vessels at the curve of her instep. He wonders for the first time if they used just one person’s blood to revive her or whether it was the blood of lots of different people. And whether she is still her, if the very blood that pumps around her body doesn’t belong to her. At what point do you become someone else?

But here's what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to - the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go - will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you'd never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never meant to be anything more than passing thoughts you had while playing your stereo at night.

You hoped! Alas, to blight your hopes! I should love you, for you are charming and talented at many useless accomplishments. But many ladies have charm and accomplishments and are just as useless as you are. No, I don’t love you. But I do like you tremendously—for the elasticity of your conscience, for the selfishness which you seldom trouble to hide, and for the shrewd practicality in you which, I fear, you get from some not too remote Irish-peasant ancestor.” Peasant! Why, he was insulting her! She began to splutter wordlessly. “Don’t interrupt,” he begged, squeezing her hand. “I like you because I have those same qualities in me and like begets liking. I realize you still cherish the memory of the godlike and wooden-headed Mr. Wilkes, who’s probably been in his grave these six months. But there must be room in your heart for me too. Scarlett, do stop wriggling! I am making you a declaration. I have wanted you since the first time I laid eyes on you, in the hall at Twelve Oaks, when you were bewitching poor Charlie Hamilton. I want you more than I have ever wanted any woman—and I’ve waited longer for you than I’ve ever waited for any woman.

Westerman believes, as I do, that while the client has some knowledge of his symptoms, he may not understand the real causes of them, and it is foolish to try to cure the symptoms only. Thus while the systems engineers must listen to the client, they should also try to extract from the client a deeper understanding of the phenomena. Therefore, part of the job of a systems engineer is to define, in a deeper sense, what the problem is and to pass from the symptoms to the causes. Just as there is no definite system within which the solution is to be found, and the boundaries of the problem are elastic and tend to expand with each round of solution, so too there is often no final solution, yet each cycle of input and solution is worth the effort. A solution which does not prepare for the next round with some increased insight is hardly a solution at all. I suppose the heart of systems engineering is the acceptance that there is neither a definite fixed problem nor a final solution, rather evolution is the natural state of affairs. This is, of course, not what you learn in school, where you are given definite problems which have definite solutions.

Oh doors of your body There are nine and I have opened them all Oh doors of your body There are nine and for me they have all closed again At the first door Clear Reason has died It was do you remember? the first day in Nice Your left eye like a snake slides Even my heart And let the door of your left gaze open again At the second door All my strength has died It was do you remember? in a hostel in Cagnes Your right eye was beating like my heart Your eyelids throbbed like flowers beat in the breeze And let the door of your right gaze open again At the third door Hear the aorta beat And all my arteries swollen from your only love And let the door of your left ear be reopened At the fourth gate They escort me every spring And listening listening to the beautiful forest Upload this song of love and nests So sad for the soldiers who are at war And let the door of your right ear reopen At the fifth gate It is my life that I bring you It was do you remember? on the train returning from Grasse And in the shade, very close, very short Your mouth told me Words of damnation so wicked and so tender What do I ask of my wounded soul How could I hear them without dying Oh words so sweet so strong that when I think about it I seem to touch them And let the door of your mouth open again At the sixth gate Your gestation of putrefaction oh War is aborting Behold all the springs with their flowers Here are the cathedrals with their incense Here are your armpits with their divine smell And your perfumed letters that I smell During hours And let the door on the left side of your nose be reopened At the seventh gate Oh perfumes of the past that the current of air carries away The saline effluvia gave your lips the taste of the sea Marine smell smell of love under our windows the sea was dying And the smell of the orange trees enveloped you with love While in my arms you cuddled Still and quiet And let the door on the right side of your nose be reopened At the eighth gate Two chubby angels care for the trembling roses they bear The exquisite sky of your elastic waist And here I am armed with a whip made of moonbeams Hyacinth-crowned loves arrive in droves. And let the door of your soul open again With the ninth gate Love itself must come out Life of my life I join you for eternity And for the perfect love without anger We will come to pure and wicked passion According to what we want To know everything to see everything to hear I gave up in the deep secret of your love Oh shady gate oh living coral gate Between two columns of perfection And let the door open again that your hands know how to open so well

It was amazing,really,how two people could live and work in basically the same place,and one could completely avoid the other.It just took setting your mind to it. Brian set his mind to it for several days.There was plenty of work to keep him occupied and more than enough reason for him to spend time away from the farm and on the tracks.But he found avoidance scared his pride. It was too close a kin to cowardice. Added to that,he'd told Keeley he wanted to help her at the school and had done nothing abuot it.He asn't a man to break his word, no matter what it cost him.And, he reminded himself as he walked to Keeley's stables, he was also a man of some self-control. He had no intention of seducing or taking the advantage of innocence. He'd made up his mind on it. Then he stepped into the stables and saw her.He wouldn't have said his mouth watered, but it was a very close thing. She was wearing one of those fancy rigs again-jodhpurs the color of dark chocolate and a cream sort of blouse that looked somehow fluid.her hair was down, all tumbled and wild as if she'd just pulled the pins from it. And indeed,as he watched she flipped it back and looped it through a wide elastic band. He decided the best place in the universe for his hands to be were in his pockets. "Lessons over?" She glanced back, her hands still up in her hair.Ah,she thought.She'd wondered how long it would take him to wander her way again. "Why? Did you want one?

There is a natural talent or mother wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition in life, or however imperfect may have been their education: add to this, they are never vulgar; nature has endowed them with an inherent dignity of spirit. There are none who understand the art of doing nothing and living upon nothing than the poor classes of Spain. Climate does one half and temperament the rest. Give a Spaniard the shade in summer and the sun in winter; a little bread, garlic, oil and garbances, an old brown cloak and a guitar and let the world roll on as it pleases. Talk of poverty! with him it has no disgrace. It sits upon him with a grandiose style, like his ragged cloak. He is a hidalgo, even when in rags. Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and such a place?The temperature of a summer midnight in Andalusia is perfectly ethereal. We seem lifted up into a purer atmosphere; we feel a serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame, which render mere existence happiness. But when moonlight is added to all this, the effect is like enchantment. Enjoying that mixture of reverie and sensation which steal away existence in a southern climate. The sage Ebben Bonabben shook his dry head at the words. Here is an end to philosophy, thought he. The prince has discovered he has a heart. Love is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.

Still dark. The Alpine hush is miles deep. The skylight over Holly’s bed is covered with snow, but now that the blizzard’s stopped I’m guessing the stars are out. I’d like to buy her a telescope. Could I send her one? From where? My body’s aching and floaty but my mind’s flicking through the last night and day, like a record collector flicking through a file of LPs. On the clock radio, a ghostly presenter named Antoine Tanguay is working through Nocturne Hour from three till four A.M. Like all the best DJs, Antoine Tanguay says almost nothing. I kiss Holly’s hair, but to my surprise she’s awake: “When did the wind die down?” “An hour ago. Like someone unplugged it.” “You’ve been awake a whole hour?” “My arm’s dead, but I didn’t want to disturb you.” “Idiot.” She lifts her body to tell me to slide out. I loop a long strand of her hair around my thumb and rub it on my lip. “I spoke out of turn last night. About your brother. Sorry.” “You’re forgiven.” She twangs my boxer shorts’ elastic. “Obviously. Maybe I needed to hear it.” I kiss her wound-up hair bundle, then uncoil it. “You wouldn’t have any ciggies left, perchance?” In the velvet dark, I see her smile: A blade of happiness slips between my ribs. “What?” “Use a word like ‘perchance’ in Gravesend, you’d get crucified on the Ebbsfleet roundabout for being a suspected Conservative voter. No cigarettes left, I’m ’fraid. I went out to buy some yesterday, but found a semiattractive stalker, who’d cleverly made himself homeless forty minutes before a whiteout, so I had to come back without any.” I trace her cheekbones. “Semiattractive? Cheeky moo.” She yawns an octave. “Hope we can dig a way out tomorrow.” “I hope we can’t. I like being snowed in with you.” “Yeah well, some of us have these job things. Günter’s expecting a full house. Flirty-flirty tourists want to party-party-party.” I bury my head in the crook of her bare shoulder. “No.” Her hand explores my shoulder blade. “No what?” “No, you can’t go to Le Croc tomorrow. Sorry. First, because now I’m your man, I forbid it.” Her sss-sss is a sort of laugh. “Second?” “Second, if you went, I’d have to gun down every male between twelve and ninety who dared speak to you, plus any lesbians too. That’s seventy-five percent of Le Croc’s clientele. Tomorrow’s headlines would all be BLOODBATH IN THE ALPS AND LAMB THE SLAUGHTERER, and the a vegetarian-pacifist type, I know you wouldn’t want any role in a massacre so you’d better shack up”—I kiss her nose, forehead, and temple—“with me all day.” She presses her ear to my ribs. “Have you heard your heart? It’s like Keith Moon in there. Seriously. Have I got off with a mutant?” The blanket’s slipped off her shoulder: I pull it back. We say nothing for a while. Antoine whispers in his radio studio, wherever it is, and plays John Cage’s In a Landscape. It unscrolls, meanderingly. “If time had a pause button,” I tell Holly Sykes, “I’d press it. Right”—I press a spot between her eyebrows and up a bit—“there. Now.” “But if you did that, the whole universe’d be frozen, even you, so you couldn’t press play to start time again. We’d be stuck forever.” I kiss her on the mouth and blood’s rushing everywhere. She murmurs, “You only value something if you know it’ll end.

«(…) Denunciami allora». «Potrei farlo». Scoppiai a ridere. «Oh. Questa è bella. Con quali motivazioni?» «Per aver distrutto il mio fottuto ego. Per temporanea infermità mentale, per aver colpito a tradimento il mio… il mio…». «Il tuo cuore?»

Fear pierces her heart. She hates it when Wesley gets mad. Not that he's ever hurt her. He'd never do that. He doesn't even shout at her, not really. It's more the resigned disappointment followed by the silent treatment that he stretches out like an elastic band, getting tauter and tauter until she can bear it no more

Magnesium maintains the elasticity of the artery wall, dilates blood vessels, prevents calcium deposits, and is necessary for the maintenance of healthy muscles, including the heart muscle itself.

If you know you live in an abundant universe, you trust that you have enough time to do what you need to do. When we are in the consciousness of peace, time becomes elastic; it will expand or contract to accommodate our purpose.

Arrhythmias are additional common causes of problems and death, and the heart can also be damaged by infections, birth defects, drugs, and faulty wiring. But atherosclerosis is by far the leading culprit, and chronically high blood pressure, hypertension, is a close second. Hypertension is a silent condition that relentlessly strains the heart, arteries, and various organs. At least 100,000 times a day, the heart forces about five liters of blood through thousands of miles of arteries that resist each squeeze, generating pressure. When we exercise, blood pressure rises temporarily, causing the heart’s muscular chambers to adapt, mostly by becoming stronger, larger, and more elastic so it can pump more blood with each stroke.30 Just as important, arteries also adapt to exercise to keep blood pressure low, primarily by expanding, multiplying, and staying elastic.31 However, when blood pressure is chronically high, the heart defends itself by developing thicker muscular walls. These thicker walls stiffen and fill with scar tissue, and eventually the heart weakens. A vicious cycle then ensues. As the heart’s ability to pump blood declines, it becomes harder to exercise and thus control high blood pressure. Blood pressure may rise as the heart progressively weakens until the failing heart cannot support or sustain a normal blood pressure. Death usually ensues. Coronary artery disease is ancient and has even been diagnosed in mummies.32 But research on nonindustrial populations provides powerful evidence that coronary artery disease and hypertension are largely evolutionary mismatches. Although many medical textbooks teach doctors that it’s normal for blood pressure to rise with age, we have known since the 1970s this is not true among hunter-gatherer populations like the San and the Hadza.33 The average blood pressure in a seventy-year-old San hunter-gatherer is 120/67, no different from a twenty-year-old. Lifelong low blood pressure also characterizes many subsistence farming populations. My colleagues Rob Shave and Aaron Baggish and I measured more than a hundred Tarahumara farmers of every age and found no difference in blood pressure between teenagers and octogenarians.34 By the same token, blood pressure can also stay normal into old age among industrialized people who eat sensibly and stay active.35

The body of its victim travels slowly down the snake’s throat. The snake’s lack of front limbs and pectoral girdle means that there is no bony ring encircling its shoulders through which its prey has to pass. The skin of the snake’s tubular body is also elastic and stretches as the muscles of its body wall steadily force the meal down towards the stomach where the process of digestion will at last begin. If the meal has been a big one, this may take some time. If its victim had spines or even horns then sudden movement could cause a puncture of the snake’s body wall. So the snake will now do its best to keep out of harm’s way and avoid too much activity. Particularly large meals stimulate changes in the snake’s internal organs that are necessary to deal with the task of digestion and storage. Its heart swells by 40%. Within two days, its liver has doubled in size. Absorbing the whole meal may take a week or more. When at last the task is completed, the snake’s bodily systems shut down once again, leaving only the equivalent of a pilot hght activated.

When you are cooking with oil, use a good Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It is more expensive than vegetable oil, but the health benefits are much better and it is worth the cost. Olive oil has been associated with a reduced risk in coronary heart disease and helps to increase the elasticity of the arterial walls which reduces the chance for heart attack and stroke.

Every time I lied to my dad I felt like I was going up against the Supreme Court justices and pleading my case.

I admire you.” I shoot him an awed glance and shake my head. “How you so easily dismiss the attention.” Then I loosen the elastic band on my hair and pull it to my sides to use it as a curtain to hide my face. He watches me in confusion. I can feel people staring at us now, and uncomfortably, I grab the aviators he just pulled out and slip them on my face. He looks down at me with a half smile and eyes narrowed in speculation. “Want a fake mustache with that?” “I’m good.” I grin. I follow him to the car and we don’t bother to set the bag in the trunk. The car is super spacious anyway. He opens the door before Otis can fully make it and we ease inside. “Rachel . . .” He falls sober, plucking off the aviators. I’m smiling, but I also feel ashamed. “Sin, I’m sorry.” I drop my face. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to the attention you get.” “Don’t notice it. Don’t give it even a moment’s thought. I never do.” “Hmm.” My mouth twists wryly. “It’s not only the attention, but wondering what lies they’ll put out . . . having no control over that.” I feel my heart squeeze a little as our eyes meet, him sitting across from me, broad and muscular and drop-dead gorgeous. And I admit the closest thing I can say to I love you. “It’s hard when everyone stares at the man you want, and you want him to want nobody but you.” He simply says two words that melt me. “He does.

But here’s what Older Self will not have the heart to say: some of the music you are now listening to—the CDs you play while you stare out the window and think about the five million different ways your life might go—will be unbearable to listen to in twenty years. They will be unbearable not because they will sound dated and trite but because they will sound like the lining of your soul. They will take you straight back to the place you were in when you felt that anything could happen at any time, that your life was a huge room with a thousand doors, that your future was not only infinite but also elastic. They will be unbearable because they will remind you that at least half of the things you once planned for your future are now in the past and others got reabsorbed into your imagination before you could even think about acting on them. It will be as though you’d never thought of them in the first place, as if they were never

From Graphic scene on a Plastic phone, To an Elastic heart of blood not stone Aching heart, emotion fearless, Psyche broken now I’m tearless Takes a while to sleep it out, May I be healed from all this drout If not by time and not by luck, I hope at least I won’t get stuck With this snapshot night and day, I wish to forget this memory.

My grandmother swaddled her baby, as they did two thousand years ago, and let him swing on a tree branch so she could do backbreaking work for fifteen cents a day. Lizzie talked about working, herself, too, starting when she was eight or nine years old, long before the era of child labor laws, at the Milford Shoe Company. “My first day, they put me at a sewing machine and give me two pieces a leathuh. They told me how to stitch the pieces togethuh—paht of a man’s shoe. Each time I did that, they told me, drop it inna drawa. I thought, this is easy. Zip, zip, zip, one afta anuthuh. End of the day comes, my drawa is full. Lady next to me, olda woman—she didn’t have so many done. The boss fired her right then. They gave me her job afta that.” From that day on, my aunt worked in factories all her life. Like my mother, she was heavy set but solid, as sturdy and muscled as the men who worked beside her, first at Milford Shoe and later at William Lapworth & Sons, a manufacturer of elastic fabrics, whose British-born owner berated her whenever a needle broke on her sewing machine. Later she worked at Archer Rubber, where a chemical spray left a small scar on her cheek. Her final employer was the Stylon Tile Company, known for making pink and black bathroom tiles, which were hard to handle without cutting her hands. She always called her place of work “the shop.” She was “working down at the shop.” Before I left her house, she always gave me something to take with me, like a bag of her hand-made swiss-chard ravioli, or if it was close to Christmas, a plate of her own Italian cookies. My favorites were the ceci, little fried cookies that looked like ravioli but were stuffed with sweet chestnut and honey filling, or the ones that looked like bowties, called cenci, dusted with powdered sugar. No matter how busy she was, she never let anyone leave her house hungry or empty-handed. Once I accompanied Lizzie to the Sacred Heart Cemetery to help her with all the flower baskets she wanted to lay on the gravestones of lost family members. There’s something about Italians and cemeteries. I was never attracted to cemeteries, never finding any comfort in visiting the dead, but for most of my family, it was like attending a family reunion. Seeing Lizzie moving

Blood vessels lose their elasticity, making the heart work harder to pump blood around the body Muscles, joints and tendons lose strength and flexibility Testosterone production plummets The metabolism slows down

brain-altering drugs like Tylenol that boost endurance without any effect on the muscles or heart.23

When we feel things, we feel them deeply, all the way to our bones. We don't snap back like your brother, and our hearts aren't made of elastic. They're breakable and once broken, it's difficult to piece them back together.

Do you rememberin’ Assumption, Calixta?” he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now well, now her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts. They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon. Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world. The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached. When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life’s mystery. He stayed cushioned upon her, breathless, dazed, enervated, with his heart beating like a hammer upon her. With one hand she clasped his head, her lips lightly touching his forehead. The other hand stroked with a soothing rhythm his muscular shoulders. The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away. The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield.

She pointed to a sundress with bright yellow lemons on it. "That's cute. I love lemons." Ay, Dios mio! Carolina cringed. She sounded like a fool. It was like Baby's "I carried a watermelon" line in Dirty Dancing. Why was she so awkward? "You'd look stunning in that." Enrique signaled to a woman who worked there. A saleswoman walked over to them from the back of the shop. She quickly and professionally assessed Carolina's body and then picked one of the bright dresses off the rack. "This should fit you. Shall I put it in a room for you, miss?" "Sure." Carolina followed her right to the dressing room. The dark hair on her arms stood at full attention and her heart raced. Nerves and anticipation swirled through her--- this whole day seemed like a fantasy, but it was tough for her to just live in the moment. She undressed and slipped the dress over her head. The soft fabric caressed her body, accentuating her curves. She stared at her figure in the mirror. She looked... sexy. Carolina had never seen herself as sensual, but in this dress, in the soft, warm glow of the dressing room lights, she was a knockout. The saleswoman had also placed some bright red pumps in the room. Carolina loved high heels and never had a problem walking in them, because she had spent so many years dancing with the Ballet Folklórico. Carolina's eyes practically bugged out of her head when she saw their bottoms, and she stroked the red soles--- they were Louboutins, an identifying detail she knew about from Blanca's endless fashion magazines. Blanca dreamed of owning a pair one day. She would be so jealous. Luckily, they were the same size, so Carolina would let Blanca borrow them. There was only one problem with Carolina's outfit--- her underwear didn't work with the dress. Her broad, wide bra elastics showed under the thin spaghetti straps, and her panties were too dark. She leaned out of the curtain. "Ma'am." The saleslady walked back over to her. "Can I get you something else?" "Yes. A bra and some panties." Carolina told the lady her sizes, and the lady went around the corner, returning later with an adorable matching yellow lace bra and thong. A thong. Her face crinkled. "Do you have anything with, uh, fuller coverage?" "Of course, dear. But not in the yellow. Do you want to match the bra?" Carolina did want to match the bra. It was such a cute set. She exhaled, stepping out of her comfort zone and into the lingerie. She again looked at herself in the mirror. She practically couldn't recognize herself--- a gorgeous young woman on a romantic day trip with a man whom she really liked.

When you exercise repeatedly in hot conditions, your body’s protective responses get progressively better: you sweat more heavily, starting at a lower temperature; your vessels dilate even wider to deliver heat-laden blood to the skin; and the total volume of blood in your body increases, allowing your heart rate to stay lower during exercise.

As we become ever more insulin-resistant and glucose-intolerant, as our blood sugar gets higher along with our insulin levels, as our blood pressure elevates and we get ever fatter, we are more likely to be diagnosed as diabetic and manifest the diseases and conditions that associate with diabetes. These include not just heart disease, gout, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and the cluster of Western diseases that Burkitt and Trowell included in their provisional list, but all the conditions typically perceived as complications of diabetes: blood-vessel (vascular) complications that lead to strokes, dementia, and kidney disease; retinopathy (blindness) and cataracts; neuropathies (nerve disorders); plaque deposits in the arteries of the heart (leading to heart attacks) or the legs and feet (leading to amputations); accumulation of advanced glycation end products, AGEs, in the collagen of our skin that can make diabetics look prematurely old, and that in joints, arteries, and the heart and lungs can cause the loss of elasticity as we age. It’s this premature aging of the skin, arteries, and joints that has led some diabetes researchers to think of the disease as a form of accelerated aging. But increasing our risk of contracting all these other chronic conditions means we’re also likely to get these ailments at ever-younger ages and thus, effectively, age faster.

Margaret did not question; she understood this, how slippery and elastic time was in the fact of your child, how it seemed to move not in a line but in endless loops, circling back again and again, overwriting itself.