Eruption Love Quotes

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

A virgin," Flaminius smiled deviously. "I'll take her." Instantly, surprised chatter erupted. Mother Guardian held up her hand for silence. "You cannot be serious, Sire." "Oh, but I am," he replied with a smirk.

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

Very slowly, using only two fingers, Annabeth drew her dagger. Instead of dropping it, she tossed it as far as she could into the water. Octavian made a squeaking sound. “What was that for? I didn’t say toss it! That could’ve been evidence. Or spoils of war!” Annabeth tried for a dumb-blonde smile, like: Oh, silly me. Nobody who knew her would have been fooled. But Octavian seemed to buy it. He huffed in exasperation. “You other two…” He pointed his blade at Hazel and Piper. “Put your weapons on the dock. No funny bus—” All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth’s dagger. “You dropped this,” he said, totally poker-faced. Annabeth threw her arms around him. “I love you!” “Guys,” Hazel interrupted. She had a little smile on her face. “We need to hurry.

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.

And silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight.

Yes. He. Was. Just. Here. Spreading his goodwill and love all around Max’s entryway. It’s a wonder there aren’t cherubs flying around sprinkling rose petals and rainbows erupting through the windows, an aftermath of his delightful visit.

Something large and happy has unfolded in my chest, erupting in a smile that won’t quit. I can’t remember ever feeling so light-hearted. Or is my heart full? Or bursting? Not aching, that’s for sure.

When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!

But then, I’ve always believed love is the most volatile substance in the universe. It erupts, it incinerates, and then it simply flames out. . . .

in the last thousand years: empires have risen and fallen and I have loved you, plagues have leaped from rat to daughter and I have loved you humanity has conquered sea and sky and I have loved you kings have been slain and forests razed and witches burned and and gold struck and maps redrawn and fortunes traded and volcanoes erupted and moons landed and cathedrals sculpted and rivers dirtied and masterpieces painted and battlefields bloodied and I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.

Dormant true love, there for everybody, just waiting to be found, erupting when the thread of existence collides with chance and the eyes of two lovers meet. Boom. From what I’ve seen of it, true love is hard. Real romance has death in it. It has midnight shakes and flecks of shit across a bedsheet. True love like this dies if it has to wait for fate. True love like this asks lovers to cast aside what is meant to be and work with what is.

The baby closed its mouth, staring at him with hope and small hiccups. “Jesus,” he said. He lay down on the bed, pulling the pillow under his head, and drew the whole bundle of coat, shawl and infant up against his shirt. A tiny hand closed tight on the lace. One sob erupted, and then changed midbreath to a soft sigh. Women, he thought sardonically, sinking in the bedclothes, with sleep revolving and closing in his head. He moved one finger, feeling a cheek as soft as down. What’s your name? Ask the girl. Remember that… Maddy… It was wrong. I must leave thee now. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, little girl… I’m so tired. I never deserved you, did I? Maddy… but I loved you. I always loved you.

Forget the grand gestures," whispers this book, "the true magic of love lies in the quiet moments, the shared laughter, and the butterflies that erupt even after the fiftieth movement.

Ianthe said smoothly, “Come, Bride, and be joined with your true love. Come, Bride, and let good triumph at last.” Good. I was not good. I was nothing, and my soul, my eternal soul, was damned— I tried to get my traitorous lungs to draw air so I could voice the word. No—no. But I didn’t have to say it. Thunder cracked behind me, as if two boulders had been hurled against each other. People screamed, falling back, a few vanishing outright as darkness erupted. I whirled, and through the night drifting away like smoke on a wind, I found Rhysand straightening the lapels of his black jacket. “Hello, Feyre darling,” he purred.

You don’t have to be afraid.” If possible, his touch—his lips—turned even gentler. He trailed a finger between my breasts, and fresh gooseflesh erupted in his wake. I shivered, my knees shaking. “Let me show you how much you mean to me. Let me show you how loved you are.” His lips followed after his hand, each kiss reverent. Each a vow. “I’ll never take you for granted. I’ll want you every day for the rest of my life, and I’ll love you even after.

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.

And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly between us that the words I longed to tell him would almost slip out of my mouth.

Erupting like fiery autumn leaves between silks as skin meets skin flames that lick everything and consume all there is.

I have seen many amazing things in my long and troubled life history. I have seen a series of corridors built entirely out of human skulls. I have seen a volcano erupt and send a wall of lava crawling towards a small village. I have seen a women I loved picked up by an enormous eagle and flown to its high mountain next. But I still cannot imagine what it was like to watch Aunt Josephine's house topple into Lake Lachrymose.

The way other people fantasize about surprise inheritances, firts-glance love, and endless white empyreal pastures, Mitchell dreamed of an erupting supervolcano that would bury North America under a foot of hot ash.

The word love has been so abused by publicity and advertisements that we no longer know really what it means.

The most important part of seeing Darla every night wasn’t the fooling around. It was the few minutes we talked while holding each other, the feeling of security I got with her, the feeling of being understood and loved. Before the eruption, I wouldn’t have believed that I could cuddle up every night with the girl who starred in my dreams and not be totally preoccupied with sex. But the trek across Iowa had changed something. I wanted, needed to see her so badly that it woke me up at night. But making out was incidental to my need – nice when it happened, but secondary to the simple pleasure of sleeping beside her.

I am light now, or on the side of light—: light-head, light-trophied. Light-wracked and light-gone. The sweet maize in fluorescence—: an eruption of light, or its feast, from the stalk of my lover’s throat. And I, light-eater, light-loving.

Oooohhhh, you’re one of those kids,” Whitney said, suddenly cracking up. “What in the hell is so damn funny? One of what kids?” “You had a horrible high school experience, didn’t you?” “High school is where demons go to eat little children.” “Carter!” She erupted into body-shaking laughter, rolling from left to right. “Oh my God, you are too much. This isn’t high school anymore!” “Um, hello, have you seen the movie Carrie?

Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.

What are you doing here?" I whispered, smiling in the dark. "I had to see you," he breathed into my cheek as he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me down until we were lying side by side on the bed. "I have so much to tell you, Aspen." "Shhh, don't say a word. If anyone hears, there'll be hell to pay. Just let me look at you." And so I obeyed. I stayed there, quiet and still, while Aspen stared into my eyes. When he had his fill of that, he went to nuzzling his nose into my neck and hair. And then his hands were moving up and down the curve of my waist to my hip over and over and over. I heard his breathing get heavy, and something about that drew me in. His lips, hidden in my neck, started kissing me. I drew in sharp breaths. I couldn't help it. Aspen's lips traveled up my chin and covered my mouth, effectively silencing my gasps. I wrapped myself around him, our rushed grabbing and the humidity of the night covering us both in sweat. It was a stolen moment. Aspen's lips finally slowed, though I was nowhere near ready to stop. But we had to be smart. If we went any further, and there was ever evidence of it, we'd both be thrown in jail. Another reason everyone married young: Waiting is torture. "I should go," he whispered. "But I want you to stay." My lips were by his ears. I could smell his soap again. "America Singer, one day you will fall asleep in my arms every night. And you'll wake up to my kisses every morning. And them some." I bit my lip at the thought. "But now I have to go. We're pushing our luck." I sighed and loosened my grip. He was right. "I love you, America." "I love you, Aspen." These secret moments would be enough to get me through everything coming: Mom's disappointment when I wasn't chosen, the work I'd have to do to help Aspen save, the eruption that was coming when he asked Dad for my hand, and whatever struggles we'd go through once we were married. None of it mattered. Not if I had Aspen.

I was going to take it easy on you," he says, his voice low. "Lay you down on the bed and worship you, all day and all night. Kiss and caress every inch of you. Taste you with my tongue until you can't take anymore. And then I was going to give it to you, deep and slow... make you come over and over again, until all you can do is whimper, cry my name." His free hand, the one not clutching the belt, slowly ghosts along the front of my body, his fingertips brushing against my flushed skin. He runs the hand along my breasts before settling on my chest, over my heart. "You like it that way, don't you? Like when I make you feel all of my love." I nod, tingles erupting all over. "Uh-huh." "And I was going to love you right, remind you what it feels like to be cherished, to be idolized, to be treated like the queen you are. I was going to make serious love to you, baby." "But now I think I'll just fuck you instead.

A similar semianarchy burst out in parts of Central Asia and the Balkans in the 1990s, when the communist federations that had ruled them for decades suddenly unraveled. One Bosnian Croat explained why ethnic violence erupted only after the breakup of Yugoslavia: “We lived in peace and harmony because every hundred meters we had a policeman to make sure we loved each other very much.”33

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

Sharply etched against the black velvet canopy, the lady in white watches as her husband awakens, his deep orange smile lighting up the ebony darkness.  Casting her alabaster glow across the dark firmament, she blows a kiss to her beloved solar mate as she prepares for her own descent into sleep.  “Remember,” she whispers, “remember the sweet fragrance of my words.  Soft, cherishing words spoken on the currents of timelessness as one life morphs into the next.  Words of love and remembrance.”  Smiling contentedly, her light dims into the erupting color of the daytime sky.

An orchestra of temple bells and chanting erupted suddenly like a pleasing drizzle.

When I see you smile, I feel a volcano of lovely eruptions happening within my heart!

When it comes to matters of the heart and soul, I'm not a falling kind of girl. I'm more of a slamming, crashing, erupting...

I remember picking it up, feeling the familiar well of tears erupt at the thought of losing yet another person in my life that I loved.

I was a worshipper of the foolhardy and the melodramatic, a dreamer and a moper, raging at life and loving it, a mind in a chrysalis yet erupting with sudden bursts of maturity.

I keep finding the ashes of the man I unequivocally loved, everywhere. Everytime, I go to bed, they are displaced about my covers when memories flood back in my mind. When I glance at my skin, the ashes are smeared on my skin like hand prints from a tragic crime scene. When you cross my mind, the ashes of moments of intimacy fall to my heart, my body forcefully expell them through my lungs and tear ducts. The ashes spew out in an eruption of utter chaos. The ashes block out my perception of love and self value. My sight is distorted to truth and trust. The particles of ashe prevent me from forgetting. ANONYMOUS

There's nothing sexier than imaging myself as an Oxford comma getting unambiguously banged. Throw in a semicolon in between two closely related independent clauses, and a volcanic love of punctuation eruption is guaranteed.

…he grabbed my hand again. That same warmth hit me, seeping into my skin. I bit my lip and forced myself not to relish in the tingling heat. Samuel’s eyes widened. Fangs erupted from his gums. His nostrils flared as he inhaled me.

But how to be present to another? Our hearts are so hard. We are so insensitive to the suffering of others. We must pray the Holy Spirit to change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh so that we may give life, for love is giving of life and liberty. By our confidence in another we can bring forth new aspirations and a taste for life in him. We can help the miserable person to live, to progress and to grow. And he will only begin to want to live when he has been told by our gestures, words, the tone of our voice, our look, our whole being that it is important that he live.

The priest removed his glasses and pocketed them. «I'm sure you don't need to hear it, but a sponsor should never get too…involved with his client.» Shit. Phil was careful to show no emotion, even though he was howling inside. Plan A had just gone down the tubes. So much for channeling Vanda's anger into a glorious eruption of lust. He'd have to resort to Plan B. There was no Plan B. His thoughts had never progressed past the bedroom. The priest was right. He was an animal.

What he had felt for Mo Ran before was only love, which could be kept hidden. But right now, this man felt like nothing short of a fire to him, a fire that could too easily set him ablaze like he was mere kindling, sending flames soaring up to scorch the skies. Magma that had lain dormant all this time stirred awake and stretched its limbs in the abyss deep within himself, ready to burst in a violent eruption at any time. It threatened to burn through all the reservations, dignity, and restraint on which he had always prided himself… Threatened to burn it all to ash, until there was nothing left.

Bob,” she said, “offerings burned in the mortal world appear on this altar, right?” Bob frowned uncomfortably, like he wasn’t ready for a pop quiz. “Yes?” “So what happens if I burn something on the altar here?” “Uh…” “That’s all right,” Annabeth said. “You don’t know. Nobody knows, because it’s never been done.” There was a chance, she thought, just the slimmest chance that an offering burned on this altar might appear at Camp Half-Blood. Doubtful, but if it did work… “Annabeth?” Percy said again. “You’re planning something. You’ve got that I’m-planning-something look.” “I don’t have an I’m-planning-something look.” “Yeah, you totally do. Your eyebrows knit and your lips press together and—” “Do you have a pen?” she asked him. “You’re kidding, right?” He brought out Riptide. “Yes, but can you actually write with it?” “I—I don’t know,” he admitted. “Never tried.” He uncapped the pen. As usual, it sprang into a full-sized sword. Annabeth had watched him do this hundreds of times. Normally when he fought, Percy simply discarded the cap. It always appeared in his pocket later, as needed. When he touched the cap to the point of the sword, it would turn back into a ballpoint pen. “What if you touch the cap to the other end of the sword?” Annabeth said. “Like where you’d put the cap if you were actually going to write with the pen.” “Uh…” Percy looked doubtful, but he touched the cap to the hilt of the sword. Riptide shrank back into a ballpoint pen, but now the writing point was exposed. “May I?” Annabeth plucked it from his hand. She flattened the napkin against the altar and began to write. Riptide’s ink glowed Celestial bronze. “What are you doing?” Percy asked. “Sending a message,” Annabeth said. “I just hope Rachel gets it.” “Rachel?” Percy asked. “You mean our Rachel? Oracle of Delphi Rachel?” “That’s the one.” Annabeth suppressed a smile. Whenever she brought up Rachel’s name, Percy got nervous. At one point, Rachel had been interested in dating Percy. That was ancient history. Rachel and Annabeth were good friends now. But Annabeth didn’t mind making Percy a little uneasy. You had to keep your boyfriend on his toes. Annabeth finished her note and folded the napkin. On the outside, she wrote: Connor, Give this to Rachel. Not a prank. Don’t be a moron. Love, Annabeth She took a deep breath. She was asking Rachel Dare to do something ridiculously dangerous, but it was the only way she could think of to communicate with the Romans—the only way that might avoid bloodshed. “Now I just need to burn it,” she said. “Anybody got a match?” The point of Bob’s spear shot from his broom handle. It sparked against the altar and erupted in silvery fire. “Uh, thanks.” Annabeth lit the napkin and set it on the altar. She watched it crumble to ash and wondered if she was crazy. Could the smoke really make it out of Tartarus? “We should go now,” Bob advised. “Really, really go. Before we are killed.” Annabeth stared at the wall of blackness in front of them. Somewhere in there was a lady who dispensed a Death Mist that might hide them from monsters—a plan recommended by a Titan, one of their bitterest enemies. Another dose of weirdness to explode her brain. “Right,” she said. “I’m ready.” ANNABETH LITERALLY STUMBLED over the second Titan.

Beauty is in the streets,” they say in Paris. We travelers know our favorites, Parisians know theirs. Jean Genet liked to stand with his friend Giacometti at the foot of rue Oberkampf, taking in its long uphill from the Marais to Belleville. Simone Weil loved walking the quays of Île Saint-Louis in her native river city. The scruffy streets of the ninth were François Truffaut’s muse and mother. As cities evolve and erupt, streets change; Parisians come and go. But the beauty remains.

It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative...we were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or a TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crispier, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.

All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth's dagger. "You dropped this," he said, totally poker-faced. Annabeth threw her arms around him. "I love you!

Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting Karenin’s head and ruminating on mankind’s debacles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman’s very eyes, put his arms around the horse’s neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse. And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head on her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, “the master and proprietor of nature,” marches onward.

A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE There lived a king; his comeliness was such The world could not acclaim his charm too much. The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace; It was a miracle to view his face. If he had rivals,then I know of none; The earth resounded with this paragon. When riding through his streets he did not fail To hide his features with a scarlet veil. Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head; Whoever spoke his name was left for dead, The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled With passion for this king was quickly killed. A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look! Since few could bear his sight, they were content To hear the king in sober argument, But while they listened they endure such pain As made them long to see their king again. The king commanded mirrors to be placed About the palace walls, and when he faced Their polished surfaces his image shone With mitigated splendour to the throne. If you would glimpse the beauty we revere Look in your heart-its image will appear. Make of your heart a looking-glass and see Reflected there the Friend's nobility; Your sovereign's glory will illuminate The palace where he reigns in proper state. Search for this king within your heart; His soul Reveals itself in atoms of the Whole. The multitude of forms that masquerade Throughout the world spring from the Simorgh's shade. If you catch sight of His magnificence It is His shadow that beguiles your glance; The Simorgh's shadow and Himself are one; Seek them together, twinned in unison. But you are lost in vague uncertainty... Pass beyond shadows to Reality. How can you reach the Simorgh's splendid court? First find its gateway, and the sun, long-sought, Erupts through clouds; when victory is won, Your sight knows nothing but the blinding sun.

Cassian's arm shook, and Nesta braced herself for the blow, showing him her forgiveness, her unending, unbreakable love for him- But Cassian roared. And then the knife twisted in his hand, angling not toward her, but toward his own heart. Of his own free will. Against the Crown's hold, against a gasping Briallyn, he chose to drive the knife into his own heart. Kill, she had said. But had not specified who. And as the sun broke over the horizon, as Cassian's knife plunged for his chest, Nesta erupted with the force of the Cauldron.

Not a day or an hour and sometimes not even a moment in advance did I have any idea what Patrick had in mind for me, or whether he had me in mind at all. This uncertainty lay like a sore under the surface of my skin, erupting again and again, then subsiding, but never healing.

And another thing. Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanos and then it subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love” which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth’s dagger. “You dropped this,” he said, totally poker-faced. Annabeth threw her arms around him. “I love you!” “Guys,” Hazel interrupted. She had a little smile on her face. “We need to hurry.” Down in the water, Octavian yelled, “Get me out of here! I’ll kill you!” “Tempting,” Percy called down.

There is nothing like young love. It comes at a time before the heart knows to protect itself, when everything important is raw and exposed—the perfect environment for a soul-sucking, heart-crushing burst. It burns brightest, hits hardest, and touches deepest. It’s why Facebook flames erupt two decades later between high school sweethearts. Between two naive and innocent souls, anything can happen. Soulmates or Tragedy. And sometimes, both.

Do you love him?” I jumped out of my skin. She was standing right beside me. “Who?” Her eyes widened. “Seth?” I peered over my shoulder at his retreating back. “Um, we’ve been going together for a long time. A year.” “That’s not what I asked.” I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t risk her seeing through me, reading me. “Do you hear bells?” she asked. I had to smile at that. “Bells?” “You know, bells. Music, fireworks.” She wiggled her eyebrows. I let out a short laugh. It sounded strangled, same way I felt. “Only in my dreams.” “Oh, yeah?” She arched an eyebrow. Why did I say that? God. Cece said softly, “Maybe you should listen to your dreams.” My stomach suffered a major eruption. She pushed off the locker she’d been balancing against with the sole of her shoe and said, “Think about it.” Like I haven’t been. “Do you think about it?” I asked at her back. She stopped and turned around. “I don’t have to. I know.” (Chapter13)

Until the moment I met you, I always seem to be caught between dreading the responsibility of someone else’s love and being resentful that I didn’t feel properly loved myself. Often both seemed to exist at the same time. With you it’s different. I can’t hear enough about your love for me. Yet still, in some way I’m holding back. it’s as though I can’t fully let go without causing an eruption of need, hunger, and desire of such overwhelming proportions that it would wipe me out entirely.

Memories are better than life. Nothing I'm part of is good until later. I love what time does. I make decisions on the basis of sensing what will produce the best memory. They're my finest works: all that multidimensional and liquid maze of experience minus the fear and uncertainty, or with the fear and uncertainty changed to something else. Because they're already finished. I made them up and they comprise me. It's as if experience is only the dark, chaotic factory where these little infinity jewels are pressed into being. Everyone is the poet of their memories. Usually it's better to get things over with so you have the memory. But like the best poems, they're also never really finished because they gain new meaning as time reveals them in different lights. Maybe every memory is inside you from the beginning; they erupt and branch and merge in fantastic patterns, but if you really tried you could trace any one of them back to the same original. Maybe the best ones are all the same: of being born. Or dying, or whatever it is.

When I see you smile, I feel a volcano of magical eruptions happening within my heart!

I erupted into sobs. -œMaxon, please. I'™m sorry; it'™s not what it looked like. I s-swear. I love you! -Of all the lies you've told me, that's the one I resent the most.

Like a volcano, anger erupts and spares no one around, not even neighbors.

She hadn’t known until now how love could erupt into existence like the big bang theory and change everything in you and everything in the world.

Love is, perhaps, the sensation of expertise that erupts out of nowhere, and as time goes on accumulates enough soil at its feet to be standing on something.

I tried to hold fire once...see from a distance it mesmerized me captivated me for hours at a time The more it danced with the wind, I felt my body sway to its rhythm I tried to hold fire once It's glow drew me in closer And although I know full well the damage that fire can do... Staring directly at it, I know it's beauty too It's warmth was now on my face and I couldn't imagine being in any other place I reached out with my bare hands & it danced even more And suddenly I felt it's heat deep within my core Rising like a volcano ready to erupt But somehow balanced & purposeful I tried to hold fire once until I realized that fire held me Passionately and I was it's guiding force. If you look close enough, you'll see it dancing in my eyes, feel it in my touch, even hear it in my voice...but don't ever forget that fire consumes and cannot be contained so I must master my energetic output to control the flames.

When Iceland’s volcano exploded and spewed ash all over Europe, blocking out the skies in 2010, I knew what the earth felt like, because that eruption is what love feels like to a human body.

When fear becomes the norm, it stalks your life relentlessly, lurking and casting shadows over your daily routine. Fear changes you. Fear changes us. My parents worried about me, but they never had to deal with an every-present fear that violence could erupt at any moment and consume their child in an instant, affecting him or her in ways that no hug or loving assurance could heal.

You see what I am driving at. The mentally handicapped do not have a consciousness of power. Because of this perhaps their capacity for love is more immediate, lively and developed than that of other men. They cannot be men of ambition and action in society and so develop a capacity for friendship rather than for efficiency. They are indeed weak and easily influenced, because they confidently give themselves to others; they are simple certainly, but often with a very attractive simplicity. Their first reaction is often one of welcome and not of rejection or criticism. Full of trust, they commit themselves deeply. Who amongst us has not been moved when met by the warm welcome of our boys and girls, by their smiles, their confidence and their outstretched arms. Free from the bonds of conventional society, and of ambition, they are free, not with the ambitious freedom of reason, but with an interior freedom, that of friendship. Who has not been struck by the rightness of their judgments upon the goodness or evil of men, by their profound intuition on certain human truths, by the truth and simplicity of their nature which seeks not so much to appear to be, as to be. Living in a society where simplicity has been submerged by criticism and sometimes by hypocrisy, is it not comforting to find people who can be aware, who can marvel? Their open natures are made for communion and love.

I never got my Pompeii,” I said, low and even. “And you know I deserved every bit of it. But I’m not going to erupt all over you like I’m owed. Because I’ve already won. She’s not fucking you tonight.

I thrived on his fire He lived for my madness My dirty kisses We were undying fervor Dancing volcanoes erupting in lust Love and all things in between Together, we moved mountains Together, we were invincible

I’d watched the election of Barack Obama with them, in Harlem: the celebration had spilled out onto the streets and erupted into dancing, outdoor champagne-drinking, euphoria. This [the 1/21/17 Women's March on Washington, DC] was different. It was like laughter at a funeral—what else can you do but hold on to who you are and who you love? What can you do but try to stay sane and fight like hell for what life is all about?

In that moment, Lisette loved that man. Loud complaints erupted, accomplished by the usual slurs slung at the immortal black sheep. Bastien shrugged them off as his gaze met hers. Thank you, she told him telepatheically. His lips tilted up the tiniest bit. Unfortunately, Seth and David both picked up on the thought and turned back to her with matching frowns, gazes sharpening. Merde. "Why haven't you been around lately?" Seth queried.

There is nothing like young love. It comes at a time before the heart knows to protect itself, when everything important is raw and exposed—the perfect environment for a soul-sucking, heart-crushing burst. It burns brightest, hits hardest, and touches deepest. It’s why Facebook flames erupt two decades later between high school sweethearts. Between two naive and innocent souls, anything can happen. Soulmates or Tragedy. And sometimes, both.

Fear of the Dark I’ve always been prone to worry and anxiety, but after I became a mother, negotiating joy, gratitude, and scarcity felt like a full-time job. For years, my fear of something terrible happening to my children actually prevented me from fully embracing joy and gratitude. Every time I came too close to softening into sheer joyfulness about my children and how much I love them, I’d picture something terrible happening; I’d picture losing everything in a flash. At first I thought I was crazy. Was I the only person in the world who did this? As my therapist and I started working on it, I realized that “my too good to be true” was totally related to fear, scarcity, and vulnerability. Knowing that those are pretty universal emotions, I gathered up the courage to talk about my experiences with a group of five hundred parents who had come to one of my parenting lectures. I gave an example of standing over my daughter watching her sleep, feeling totally engulfed in gratitude, then being ripped out of that joy and gratitude by images of something bad happening to her. You could have heard a pin drop. I thought, Oh, God. I’m crazy and now they’re all sitting there like, “She’s a nut. How do we get out of here?” Then all of the sudden I heard the sound of a woman toward the back starting to cry. Not sniffle cry, but sob cry. That sound was followed by someone from the front shouting out, “Oh my God! Why do we do that? What does it mean?” The auditorium erupted in some kind of crazy parent revival. As I had suspected, I was not alone.

Food for her was as much about colour, smell and presentation as taste: the experience of eating should start in the eye and the nose and then erupt in the imagination. Chewing and tasting were the climax to a sensual experience. On

He loved you," I protested. She stared at me and I thought she was about to erupt into a blistering anger, but instead she smiled wanly. "He worshipped me, Derfel," she said tiredly, "and that is not the same thing as being loved.

Question (The Great Problematic): Will the ultimate liberation of the erotic from its dialectical relationship with Christianity result in (a) The freeing of the erotic spirit so that man- and womankind will make love and not war? or (b) The trivialization of the erotic by its demotion to yet another technique and need-satisfaction of the organism, toward the end that the demoniac spirit of the autonomous self, disappointed in all other sectors of life and in ordinary intercourse with others, is now disappointed even in the erotic, its last and best hope, and so erupts in violence--and in that very violence which is commensurate with the orgastic violence in the best days of the old erotic age--i.e., war?

She wanted to remind him, whether his family was there or not. She wanted. And wanted. And endured in her wanting: the damp seat, the dry chicken, more champagne, the headache the champagne brought, the midges, the chat, his failure, no refusal, to look, look at me, I caused a thunderstorm with my passion and I sit here shaking under my skin and you don't notice because you're trying so hard not to notice, but all the people at the table there are really only you and me and you know it, the air is charged with it, it's a heat, a hot wind, and Marina and Seely are a sham next to it, Annabel ceases to exist, is simply obliterated in the gale of it, this isn't a fantasy, not my imagination, I can tell by the way you lift your fork, by the set of your jaw, by that sixth cigarette you are smoking me, or would if you could; but how long can we sustain it, how long till eruption, till the storm returns again and they can all see what it is, what it really is?

He was here. But in this world, how long could we possibly have together? "Jack, I love you. I can't ever lose you again." Adrenaline and fear morphed into heat. Desire. I turned my head to nuzzle one of his palms, kissing the callused skin. He sucked in a breath, and his big body tensed against mine. Combustion ignited. When I faced him, his attention dropped to my lips, so I wetted them. His eyes met mine, his smoldering expression asking, Do you want this? Mine answered: Try to deny me. He bent down; I'd already gone to my toes. When our lips met, logic evaporated like a water drop on a sizzling skillet. I tasted cold and salt on his lips. Almost lost him. I deepened the kiss, tugging on his neck as he yanked off his heavy coat. The tension that have been building between us erupted. I drank in his raw passion, unable to get enough. Between kisses, he tore off his soaked shirt as I snatched at his belt. His strong chest heaved breaths. Tumbling to the pallet. More kissing. Tongues twirling. My God, he's a sinful kisser.

Sometimes I find myself in the eye of my own hurricane.… He was trouble in my life interrupting my world crashing into my dreams but I was a fucking storm the lightening to his thunder so, what more could a little chaos add but a beautiful catastrophic eruption.

The father was dry-eyed but the mother kept erupting, like loudly, unprovoked, in a keening foreign wail that was almost like song; it sounded strangely ceremonial and impersonal, like a lament for an idea. Walter went alone to the morgue, without any idea. His love was resting beneath a sheet on a gurney of an awkward height, too high to be knelt by. Her hair was as ever, silky and black and thick, as ever, but there was something wrong with her jaw, some outrageously cruel and unforgivable injury, and her forehead, when he kissed it, was colder than any just universe could have allowed such a young person's forehead to be. The coldness entered him through his lips and didn't leave. What was over was over. His delight in the world had died, and there was no point in anything.

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.” – Louis de Bernieres

If you are Harsh Overcritical, Pessimistic, Exacting, Lowering, Eruptive, Sarcastic, Scornful, then the souls you touch will feel HOPELESS. If you are Happy, Optimistic, Positive, Encouraging, Friendly, Uplifting, Loving, then the souls you touch will feel HOPEFUL.

For once, I allow myself to feel it all. The beautiful, terrible sensation that love is. It explodes like a supernova inside of me, a prism of light erupting in my vision before all things fade to black. If she is death, I am happy to take her hand and walk into the afterlife.

While desire focuses on the other, always in a somewhat fetishist manner, on a particular object, like breasts, buttocks and cock...love focuses on the very being of the other, on the other as it has erupted, fully armed with its being, into my life thus disrupted and re-fashioned

No one moved. No one spoke. They seemed be riveted by whatever it was they saw in his eyes. “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” A few gasps erupted. His voice rang out, bold, clear. “It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.” It was safe to say everyone was awake now. He’d startled most of his parishioners and aroused the rest of them. “Evie Duggan …” And all the heads official swiveled to follow the beam of the reverend’s gaze. Then swiveled back to him. Then back to Eve. Whose heart was in her eyes. “ … You are the seal upon my heart. You are the fire and flame that warms me, heals me, burns me. You are the river that cools me and carries me. I love you. And love may be as strong as death, but you … I know now you are my life.” A pin would have echoed like a dropped kettle in the church then. Eve was absolutely riveted. Frozen, her eyes burning into his. “And though I wish I could have protected you and kept you safe from some of the storms of your life, I find cannot regret any part of your past. For it has made you who you are. Loyal, passionate, brave, kind, remarkable. You need repent nothing.” The last word fell like a gavel. Not a single person moved or breathed. “There are those who think good is a pastime, to engage in like embroidery or target shooting. There are those who think beauty is a thing of surface, and forget that it’s really of the soul. But good is something you are, not something you do. And by that definition, I stand before you today and declare that Evie Duggan is one of the best people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

When you call my name,” Souad yells, and the children erupt in laughter, even Manar. And her heart, her heart, rising with the sound. These are her loves. The hope returns. That treacherous hope, which rises and falls, she can taste it on her lips like salt. She will fix it. She will fix it all.

I’ve been able to make totally insane associations. I can transform a simple toothache into maxillary cancer. An itchy elbow becomes an urticarial eruption, and a simple sneeze, pneumonia. That’s why I have already thought about joining a help group, like HA – Hypochondriacs Anonymous" Amanda Loeb

At that moment, I felt happy. Meeting Rebecca was like learning to dance, discovering jazz. It was like falling in love for the first time. I had always been waiting for my future to erupt around me in an avalanche of glory, and now I felt it was really happening. Rebecca was all it took. Per aspera ad astra.

Here is the difference between Oscar Wilde and me. For all the tortures he suffered, for all the ugliness of being punished for loving men, nobody read his lines and asked him: What does your husband think of that? Jail, exile -- these were his lot. But never, What does your husband think? Women may have the vote, but they are not free as long as that reaction erupts. Even those without husbands are judged as if they had offended them merely by writing the truth. So immovable is the wall around a woman's freedom that she can't do a things without being asked to think of its effect upon some man who is presumed to be more important than she.

Oh, didn't you hear?" he asked, dropping his voice. "You're under arreset because you've been a bad, bad girl." She felt heat rise to her cheeks. And then she just about erupted on the spot when he started unbuttoning his shirt. "You'll have to put in a little more work to see me undressed, love," he said with a low laugh.

When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day... No ... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!

As I readied these luxuriant ablutions, my dearest Katherine said, 'Webster, my darling, the pints of love essence you erupt at the peak of oral passion taste more intoxicating than even the richest European chocolate.' My beloved belched demurely into her fist, swallowed and said, 'All women should taste your delicious emissions.

My exuberance breaks things, breaks me. It marches me up to people and elicits from me declarations of love, if only to give me the satisfaction of disappointment, to know that I am in love. I am forever building up this edifice of love and happiness, which would get to be as big as the world, or bigger, if it weren't for the storms, eruptions, convulsions, that tear it all down again. When any of it comes down, it all comes down. Although these catastrophic failures deeply wound me, still I am grateful for the opportunity to rebuild, and to renew my trust with the world. I do everything on the scale of the world, as the only thing commensurate to my happiness.

When she walked by the two officers, they didn't recognize her. "Have you seen the luscious bonbon with the golden braids?" She grinned up at them with such impish mischief that they almost forgot their quest for the singer. "She is with her lover," Hannah said. "But she can always handle one or two more." She winked at them. "Go there, through that door." She made her escape while the uniformed hobbledehoys gawked and gaped and finally burst into the dressing room where Franz, the three-hundred-pound juggling strongman, was adjusting his loincloth. "I ought not do it," Hannah said aloud to herself as chaos erupted behind her. "I just can't seem to help myself. it is a shame, really.

The crowd erupts with a sudden, sickening wave of excitement when the king's voice booms over the arena. 'An Ordinary versus every Elite The ultimate test.' My head is shaking. I shut my eyes, squeezing out the cruel world beyond. This is a nightmare. This is pretend. Footsteps behind me grow louder atop the shifting sand. I press a hand to my pounding heart, feeling the rapid rise and fall of my chest. This is pretend. This is— "Paedyn." I can feel the exact moment my heart shatters. It's when I turn, my eyes crashing into ones well memorized. When mist meets the deepest sea. When a Shadow faces its Flame. When inevitability meets its end. When I stare into the face of what it is I love most.

Obsidian rests around your neck as if you are carrying the history of every night sky in one stone Smile young girl Your eyes are moonless, grimmer than the rock revolved around your throat Your voice is weak when you speak of the things you love You do not love things properly Your jaw was battered against the ceramic when your father screamed of your selfishness and slapped you with all the anger your grandfather bred in him You conduct yourself in spite of his judgement In spite of being just like him But while you chase after reckless habits and restless bodies you are mirroring his tantrums Drain the anger from your blood, young girl Do not make this tempered interpretation a trio Your Obsidian is the cooling heat of lava and only pure when it maintains its darkness But there is more power in your will than in the frozen anger of the stone Your body does not have to erupt when you feel the heat of an outrage bubbling at the rim Keep your composure, you are not a volcano You do not have to hang around someone’s neck like a chunk of lava wishing to explode

Don’t worry, Aoife, love,” Mam offered then. “Dad didn’t have to pay Joey too much to go out with you.” More eruptions of laughter unfolded. “Ah, don’t you take any notice of them, pet,” Dad crooned through fits of laughter. “It only cost me a fiver.” “I hate you all,” I announced dramatically, and then waved a finger in Joey’s amused face. “Especially you, turncoat.

A small red face ringed in soft black curls looked up at him for one moment, registered that he wasn't the milk-providing parent, and erupted back into a howl. There was no telling Lucia that she was a pebble on the shores of eternity. She was a living, breathing, adorable source of chaos, and he loved her so much that it felt as if his heart were beating outside his body.

The crowd started going crazy. Like even crazier than when Romeo got up from the hit. I was clinging to the railing, wondering if I would like prison, when Ivy sighed. "I swear. You have all the luck." Confused, I glanced around. Romeo was jogging toward us, helmet in his hands. Quickly, I glanced at the big screen and it was showing a wide shot of me clinging onto the rails and him running toward us. When he arrived, he slapped the guard on his back and said something in his ear. The guard looked at me and grinned and then walked away. Romeo stepped up to where I was. At the height I was at one the railing, for once I was taller than him. "You're killing me, Smalls," he said. "I had to interrupt a championship game to keep you from going to the slammer." "I was worried. You didn't get up." "And so you were just going to march out on the field and what?" God, he looked so… so incredible right then. His uniform stretched out over his wide shoulders and narrow waist. The pads strapped to his body made him look even stronger. He had grass stains on his knees, sweat in his hair, and ornery laughter in his sparkling blue eyes. I swear I'd never seen anyone equal parts of to-die-for good looks and boy-next-door troublemaker. "I was going to come out there and kiss it and make it better." He threw back his head and laughed, and the stadium erupted once more. I was aware that every moment between us was being broadcast like some reality TV show, but for once, I didn't care how many people were staring. This was our moment. And I was so damn happy he wasn't hurt. "So you're okay, then?" I asked. "Takes a lot more than a shady illegal attack to keep me down." Behind him, the players were getting back to the game, rushing out onto the field, and the coach was yelling out orders. "I'll just go back to my seat, then," I said. He rushed forward and grabbed me off the railing. The crown cheered when he slid me down his body and pressed his lips to mine. It wasn't a chaste kiss. It was the kind of kiss that made me blush when I watched it on TV. But I kissed him back anyway. I got lost in him. When he pulled back, I said, "By the way, You're totally kicking ass out there." He chuckled and put me back on the railing and kept one hand on my butt as I climbed back over. Back in the stands, I gripped the cold metal and gave him a small wave. He'd been walking backward toward his team, but then he changed direction and sprinted toward me. In one graceful leap, he was up on the wall and leaning over the railing. "Love you," he half-growled and pressed a swift kiss to my lips. "Next touchdown's for you.

Out there, danger wasn't something that erupted purposelessly in parking lots or at traffic intersections; it was peril, pure and moral and invigorating. Unifying. Out there, love bridged the space between planets, and betrayal risked the destruction of universes. Life was lived along a spectrum so vibrant it felt ultraviolet. How could the world outside the window seem anything but gray in comparison?

Deep in our hearts there is a call to live in communion with others, a call to love, to create, to risk. But there is also that radical feeling of our poverty when faced with human misery. I am afraid to give myself. I have constructed a world of security around me...so many so-called interests which keep me from communing with others...I want to, but cannot. So many things seem to prevent me from loving and I feel them in my inmost being...so many defences and fears. I risk losing hope. I risk entering into a world of sadness and I begin to doubt myself. I have doubts about others. I doubt the value of my presence. I doubt everything. This is our human condition. We want so much but we feel incapable. We believe in love but where is it? There are so many obstacles to break through within ourselves in order to become free and to become present to others; to their misery and to their person. Our hope is to become freer each day in order to accept others, to be fully present to them. That is our hope. It is only in that way we will be able to give life. Come, Holy Spirit, give us hearts of peace and warmth which can serve as a refuge for those who suffer. Come, help us to be present one to another.

Now: I am an affectionate man but I have much trouble showing it. When I was younger I used to worry so much about being alone - of being unlovable or incapable of love. As the years went on, my worries changed. I worried that I had become incapable of having a relationship, of offering intimacy. I felt as though the world lived inside a warm house at night and I was outside, and I couldn't be seen - because I was out there in the night. But now I am inside that house and it feels just the same. Being alone here now, all of my old fears are erupting - the fears I thought I had buried forever by getting married: fear of loneliness; fear that being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love; fear that I would never experience real love; fear that someone would fall in love with me, get extremely close, learn everything about me and then pull the plug; fear that love is only important up until a certain point after which everything is negotiable. For so many years I lived a life of solitude and I thought life was fine. But I knew that unless I explored intimacy and shared intimacy with someone else then life would never progress beyond a certain point. I remember thinking that unless I knew what was going on inside of someone else's head other than my own I was going to explode.

Flowing from this union, source of a plenitude of joy, the love of the couple reveals itself through the daily acceptance of the limits and faults of each other and in mutual openness. It is this acceptance in and through gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, confidence and the desire to see shining in the other the warm light of the Spirit of God that becomes the great sign of the merciful love of God for man and His incessant forgiveness.

We are so busy, so occupied with many little things, that we are blind to the one great thing. Only in the pauses between things, in the brief contemplative spaces of just being, can we catch a glimpse of love itself. Even then, we often feel so unfree that we think we are unworthy of love. But the glimpses keep coming. In the momentary emptiness when an addictive need is not yet satisfied, in encountering a situation in which we do not know what to do, in finding ourselves giving or receiving a touch of tenderness for no reason at all, in the spontaneous eruption of laughter, another small space opens. The invitation is given again. Time and time again we ignore the invitations and fill the spaces immediately, dulling our consciousness with drivenness. But love continues, hoping to catch us in a willing moment. Thousands of little spaces come each day. They exist between each choice we make and the next, after each thought is completed and before the next begins, between each breath and the next, in every hunger or wanting, whenever something wakes us up to presence. Now and then, through some mysterious interweaving of divine grace and human willingness, we see what is in the space and do not run away. We become aware of our hearts’ response and are given the most wonderful experience of freedom . . .

Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts in her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away. It was not a story to pass on.

Keegan shuddered as he remembered the dragon. The sight of the enormous creature had stabbed fear into his heart. The beast had been so large and powerful. Giant, roaring bonfires erupted from its nostrils and mouth. It had fangs that were as large as swords, talons that were sharp as knives, and a tail that could have destroyed a stone wall. It had been a gallant and beautiful creature. So beautiful and powerful that it had also filled Keegan with an awe that made him love the beast and regret its demise.

You were burning in the middle of the worst solar storm our records can remember. (...) Everyone else fled. All your companions and crew left you alone to wrestle with the storm. “You did not blame them. In a moment of crystal insight, you realized that they were cowards beyond mere cowardice: their dependence on their immortality circuits had made it so that they could not even imagine risking their lives. They were all alike in this respect. They did not know they were not brave; they could not even think of dying as possible; how could they think of facing it, unflinching? “You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished. “And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away than the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost. “If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. (...) “You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield (...) Chaos was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well. “The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra. “When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve. “ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said. ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer. “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’ “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.

What the hell is all this I read in the papers?" "Narrow it down for me," Alan suggested. "I suppose it might have been a misprint," Daniel considered, frowning at the tip of his cigar before he tapped it in the ashtray he kept secreted in the bottom drawer of his desk. "I think I know my own flesh and blood well enough." "Narrow it just a bit further," Alan requested, though he'd already gotten the drift.It was simply too good to end it too soon. "When I read that my own son-my heir, as things are-is spending time fraternizing with a Campbell, I know it's a simple matter of misspelling. What's the girl's name?" Along with a surge of affection, Alan felt a tug of pure and simple mischief. "Which girl is that?" "Dammit,boy! The girl you're seeing who looks like a pixie.Fetching young thing from the picture I saw.Good bones; holds herself well." "Shelby," Alan said, then waited a beat. "Shelby Campbell." Dead silence.Leaning back in his chair, Alan wondered how long it would be before his father remembered to take a breath. It was a pity, he mused, a real pity that he couldn't see the old pirate's face. "Campbell!" The word erupted. "A thieving, murdering Campbell!" "Yes,she's fond of MacGregor's as well." "No son of mine gives the time of day to one of the clan Campbell!" Daniel bellowed. "I'll take a strap to you, Alan Duncan MacGregor!" The threat was as empty now as it had been when Alan had been eight, but delivered in the same full-pitched roar. "I'll wear the hide off you." "You'll have the chance to try this weekend when you meet Shelby." "A Campbell in my house! Hah!" "A Campbell in your house," Alan repeated mildly. "And a Campbell in your family before the end of the year if I have my way." "You-" Emotions warred in him. A Campbell versus his firmest aspiration: to see each of his children married and settled, and himself laden with grandchildren. "You're thinking of marriage to a Campbell?" "I've already asked her.She won't have me...yet," he added. "Won't have you!" Paternal pride dominated all else. "What kind of a nitwit is she? Typical Campbell," he muttered. "Mindless pagans." Daniel suspected they'd had some sorcerers sprinkled among them. "Probably bewitched the boy," he mumbled, scowling into space. "Always had good sense before this.Aye, you bring your Campbell to me," he ordered roundly. "I'll get to the bottom of it." Alan smothered a laugh, forgetting the poor mood that had plagued him only minutes earlier. "I'll ask her." "Ask? Hah! You bring the girl, that daughter of a Campbell, here." Picturing Shelby, Alan decided he wouldn't iss the meeting for two-thirds the popular vote. "I'll see you Friday, Dad.Give Mom my love." "Friday," Daniel muttered, puffing avidly on his cigar. "Aye,aye, Friday." As he hung up Alan could all but see his father rubbing his huge hands togther in anticipation. It should be an interesting weekened.

O Lord, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all.… —Psalm 104:24 (NAS) In her intriguing book What’s Your God Language? Dr. Myra Perrine explains how, in our relationship with Jesus, we know Him through our various “spiritual temperaments,” such as intellectual, activist, caregiver, traditionalist, and contemplative. I am drawn to naturalist, described as “loving God through experiencing Him outdoors.” Yesterday, on my bicycle, I passed a tom turkey and his hen in a sprouting cornfield. Suddenly, he fanned his feathers in a beautiful courting display. I thought how Jesus had given me His own show of love in surprising me with that wondrous sight. I walked by this same field one wintry day before dawn and heard an unexpected huff. I had startled a deer. It was glorious to hear that small, secret sound, almost as if we held a shared pleasure in the untouched morning. Visiting my daughter once when she lived well north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, I can still see the dark silhouettes of the caribou and hear the midnight crunch of their hooves in the snow. I’d watched brilliant green northern lights flash across the sky and was reminded of the emerald rainbow around Christ’s heavenly throne (Revelation 4:3). On another Alaskan visit, a full moon setting appeared to slide into the volcanic slope of Mount Iliamna, crowning the snow-covered peak with a halo of pink in the emerging light. I erupted in praise to the triune God for the grandeur of creation. Traipsing down a dirt road in Minnesota, a bloom of tiny goldfinches lifted off yellow flowers growing there, looking like the petals had taken flight. I stopped, mesmerized, filled with the joy of Jesus. Jesus, today on Earth Day, I rejoice in the language of You. —Carol Knapp Digging Deeper: Pss 24:1, 145:5; Hb 2:14

She had seen the almost-human Orona, who was orphaned and alone in the world, a woman whom Cain had plucked off the streets and fallen in love with. What she didn’t see was the undead creature Cain barely knew, the foolish human girl who fell in love with the caretaker of the seas. She hadn’t seen me stand up against a hurricane or keep a cave from crushing two lovers to death. She hadn’t seen me throw myself over the ones who would have turned to ashes when the volcano erupted, or made water appear from the sands to the dying in the desert. She did not know I was both savior and destroyer to so many souls.

Paul was horrified; yet again, the issue that had erupted so painfully in Antioch threatened his entire mission. He had always maintained that it was unnecessary for gentiles who committed themselves to the Messiah to observe the Torah, since they had received the Spirit without its help. The Torah was valuable to Jews, but it could only be a distraction to the Galatians; forcing them to adopt a wholly Jewish way of life would be as absurd as demanding that Jews take on the ancient Galatian traditions and start feasting like Aryan warriors, singing their drinking choruses, and venerating their warrior heroes.

I'm asking you if you'll spend the rest of your life with me.” I stared down at my still-warm hand. Hadi's touch had been more remarkable than the question I'd spent night after night imagining. Those words did not slow time or cause music to erupt from the walls. They did not make fireworks burst from the sky or conjure up a crowd hooting congratulatory cheer. I didn't want to accept that such life-changing words could feel so ordinary, that this moment I'd been waiting for my entire life could already be over with such little ceremony. “Yes,” I said and then added, “But this doesn't count, okay? You still have to ask me for real.

Jacob smiled from ear to ear when he shook the man’s hand on stage. The man then handed him a trophy. "Tell the audience about your book." My little brother confidently walked up to a microphone his height and beamed to the crowd. "I wrote about the person I love the most, my older brother, Noah. We don’t live together so I wrote what I imagine he does when we’re not together." "And what is that?" prodded the stout man. "He’s a superhero who saves people in danger, because he saved me and my brother from dying in a fire a couple of years ago. Noah is better than Batman." The crowd chuckled. "I love you, too, lil’ bro." I couldn’t help it. To see him standing there, still worshipping me like he did when he was five … it was too much. Jacob’s smile reached a whole new level of excitement. "Noah!" He pointed right to me. "That’s Noah. That’s my brother, Noah!" Ignoring his foster parents, Jacob flew off the stage and ran down the middle aisle. Joe lowered his head and Carrie rubbed her eyes. Jacob raced into my arms and the crowd erupted into applause. "I’ve missed you, Noah." Jacob’s voice broke, bringing tears to my eyes. I couldn’t cry. Not in front of Jacob and not in front of Mrs. Collins. I needed to be a man and stay strong. "I’ve missed you, too, bro. I’m so proud of you."

And you,' she hissed at me. 'You,' Her teeth gleamed- turning sharp. 'I'm going to kill you.' Someone cried out, but I couldn't move, couldn't even try to get out of the way as something far more violent than lightning struck me, and I crashed to the floor. 'I'm going to make you pay for your insolence,' Amarantha snarled, and a scream ravaged my throat as pain like nothing I had know erupted through me. My very bones were shattering as my body rose and then slammed onto the hard floor, and I was crushed beneath another wave of torturous agony. 'Admit you don't really love him, and I'll spare you,' Amarantha breathed, and through my fractured vision, I saw her prowl toward me. 'Admit what a cowardly, lying, inconstant bit of human garbage you are.' I wouldn't- I wouldn't say that even if she splattered me across the ground. But I was being ripped apart from the inside out, and I thrashed, unable to out-scream the pain. 'Feyre!' someone roared. No, not someone- Rhysand. But Amarantha still neared. 'You think you're worthy of him? A High Lord? You think you deserve anything at all, human?' My back arched, and my ribs cracked, one by one. Rhysand yelled my name again- yelled it as though he cared. I blacked out, but she brought me back, ensuring that I felt everything, ensuring that I screamed every time a bone broke.

The first day we met, she kept on looking at me with her tender and sensitive eyes. And from that day, whenever she and I met, I have felt strange sensations erupt inside my heart. She would come from wherever she would be to welcome me at my apartment. She gets into tumultuous joy when she sees me in the garden area, where I sit in the afternoon to sunbath in the Sun. And in the evenings when I make coffee for myself, she stays nearby to give me company. Leela truly loves me. Sometimes during my evening online classes, she suddenly starts barking loudly. And I tell my students "She is Leela. The doggie who stays near my apartment. Kindly wait for 1 or 2 mins and she will be quite.

In Lost Boys therapist James Garbarino testifies that when it comes to boys, “neglect is more common than abuse: more kids are emotionally abandoned than are directly attacked, physically or emotionally.” Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal mis-behavior, “Boys will be boys.” Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred, and oppression of women and men globally.

The décor makes Miriam want to dry heave – it's all down-home country fun with a curious fixation on roosters. Katey hangs her keys on a wooden rooster whose feet are little hooks. She takes a cookie out of a ceramic jar shaped like a rooster. Embroidered rooster pillows. A rooster rug by the door. Miriam tries to bite back the words but they're like butterflies that duck the swooping net. "You sure do love cock," she says. Katey blanches, shocked. Blood draining from her face. "Sorry," Miriam says. "Couldn't help myself. It's like a sickness." But then the teacher quivers and shakes and erupts like Vesuvius, her sudden and uncontrolled laughter swiftly drowning out worry. "I guess I do love…" she says, tears streaming from her eyes. "Cock!

And another thing. Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love” which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

Your attempts to bring transgressions to command attention are salutory. But as for your religious duties, remember these suspected transgressions, if real, are but the eruptions of sin. Not sin itself. Never forget that, lest you be inclined to lose your pity for human weakness. Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men and with God. The sense that I am alone, that none can hear me, none can understand, that no one answers my cries, it is a sickness over which, to borrow from Bernanos, “the vast tide of divine love, that sea of living, roaring flame which gave birth to all things, passes vainly.” Your job, it seems, would be to find a crack through which some sort of communication can be made, one soul to another.

Yet whether or not they’re loved, every current and former newborn (that’s you and me) shares one profoundly important trait. Despite the myriad circumstances into which we’re born, we come into the world with an innate sense of wholeness. We don’t begin our lives by asking: Am I enough? Am I worthy? Am I deserving or lovable? Not one baby in the earliest moments of awareness asks, “Do I matter?” Their world is a place of wonder. But with their very first breaths, these tiny human beings begin trying to make sense of their surroundings. Who will nurture and care for them? What will bring comfort? And for so many little ones, life begins to take its toll, with violent eruptions by the caregiver or simply the lack of a soothing voice or a gentle touch. In our first encounters, our human experiences diverge.

I met Ana doing free weights,” Roger said. “This hard-body señorita was putting me to shame on squats, and I asked her how she got such a tight ass —” “And then she decked you.” “Nah, she loved it! She’s real proud of that butt — she should be. She took me to one of her classes, and I got hooked. She’s a Zumba instructor.” Grant absorbed that information for a moment. “You do...Zumba?” “It’s great! Much more fun than PT. You just get going...” He did a little two-step maneuver on the city street, dancing to an unknown Latin beat. “Cha cha cha. Heeuh? Ana does this a little better than me...” Grant tried to hold it in. He really did. But his body quivered, his shoulders shook, and soon a whooping laugh erupted — which lasted quite a few seconds. Roger abruptly stopped his dance. “You judge, Madsen. Not cool.

You’re so much stronger than I am,” said Altan. Then he let her go. She shook her head frantically. “No, I’m not, it’s you, I need you—”“Someone’s got to destroy that research facility, Rin.”He stepped away from her. Arms stretched forward, he walked towardthe fleet.“No,” Rin begged. “No!”Altan took off at a run.A hail of arrows erupted from the Federation force.At the same moment Altan lit up like a torch.He called the Phoenix and the Phoenix came; enveloping him, embracinghim, loving him, bringing him back into the fold.Altan was a silhouette in the light, a shadow of a man. She thought shesaw him look back toward her. She thought she saw him smile.She thought she heard a bird’s cackle.Rin saw in the flames the image of Mai’rinnen Tearza. She was weeping.The fire doesn’t give, the fire takes, and takes, and takes

You’re mine, Taryn, and you’re not going anywhere. I need you here with me, and I need your brand on me. Do it, Taryn! Give it to me!” Whining in defeat, Taryn lifted her head and sank her teeth into the juncture of his neck and shoulder. It took everything Trey had not to come there and then. “Fuck, yeah. More!” She raked her claws down his back, just like she and her wolf had wanted to from the beginning. “Again, Taryn!” This time she bit down on his shoulder but she didn’t release him, and he loved the possessiveness of that act. Pounding into her even harder, he demanded, “Come for me, Taryn.” He clamped his teeth over his claiming mark and she screamed around the flesh of his shoulder as her climax tore into her. That together with her muscles closing around his cock had him erupting inside her once again. And that was when it happened.

The Samaritans and the Jews were enemies, two tribes caught in an ancient argument about birthright and ethnicity who lived in segregated neighborhoods. By Jesus’s time they were forbidden to have contact with each other, and violent squabbles sometimes erupted. The lawyer, who was a Jew, surely knew of both the informal customs and formal laws separating the two groups. Samaritans and Jews were not good neighbors. Yet Jesus turns the ancient Jewish command to love your neighbor into a story about these hostile groups. The man in the ditch, who is Jewish, is bypassed by those close to him by tribal ties (most likely the priest and the Levite were afraid the thieves were still about in the area and that they might be the next victim) and is eventually rescued by a Samaritan. Thus Jesus enlarges the sphere of neighborhood to include those we deem objectionable.

Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had re-moved himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse. And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, the master and proprietor of nature, marches onward.

I am convinced that in the present time, in spite of the difficulties man has to meet another in a state of oblation, communion and gift of self, there are latent hidden forces in him which can be awakened in order to enable him to discover and live this reality of love and fidelity. In order to really penetrate into this mystery of the union of the couple, it is essential that each one acquire an interior maturity, a maturity that is perhaps rare. I would add that in order to be truly united and to remain truly faithful to one another, the couple must listen and be open to the Spirit of God who has reserved for Himself the science of the heart. The heart of man is satisfied only by the Infinite and to discover this Infinite in union he must open himself to the Spirit of God, a spirit of giving, of receiving. The union between the two spouses can thus deepen to such an extent that they enter in a mystical manner into the very life of God Himself.

Despite the chaos that was tearing her head apart, Tevi understood what scene Yenneg was attempting to play out, with herself as a conscripted actor. She needed to force out an explanation or denial, but no words could get past her lips. Jemeryl's presence was paralysing her, an effect far more irresistible than anything Yenneg had achieved. Tevi watched Jemeryl take another few steps forwards and then crouch down so that their eyes were no more than a foot apart. Tevi thought she would die from the shock. Yet somehow, she forced her mouth to shape the words, "Wine. Love potion." Her voice was not loud enough even to count as a whisper. Certainly nobody else in the room would have heard, yet Tevi could not control her breathing to manage anything else. At first Jemeryl showed no sign of comprehension, but then suddenly, the bewilderment on her face transformed into fury. She leapt up, her arms moving in a blurred aggressive swirl. The gesture ended with an action like hurling a ball. Blue fire erupted from Jemeryl's hands and shot towards Yenneg. The other sorcerer had obviously recognised the gesture and made an effort to protect himself. A shimmering shield sprung up before Yenneg, but it was not strong enough, and the shockwave knocked him off his feet. His shoulders slammed into the wall behind him and he crumpled to the floor. Jemeryl had been telling the truth when she claimed to vastly excel the acolytes in magical ability, not that Tevi had ever entertained doubts. Jemeryl's hands moved again, and this time Yenneg was sprawled on the floor and in no state to mount a defence. A second bolt of blue fire burst in his direction. Lightning in the form of a whip snapped across the room, intercepting Jemeryl's attack before it struck. The diverted fireball hit the wall of the summerhouse two feet from Yenneg's head and smashed through it, as if it were a stone going through wet paper.

There was a loud din, a drunken gaiety. Young people, adults, children were dancing. But I could feel the reality behind the appearance of festivity. The distorted faces of the bride’s relatives signaled a quarrelsome discontent. Especially the women. They had spent their last cent for the gift, for what they were wearing, had gone into debt, and now they were treated like poor relations, with bad wine, intolerable delays in service? Why didn’t Lila intervene, why didn’t she protest to Stefano? I knew them. They would restrain their rage for love of Lila but at the end of the reception, when she went to change, when she came back, dressed in her beautiful traveling clothes, when she handed out the wedding favors, when she had left, with her husband, then a huge fight would erupt, and it would be the start of hatreds lasting months, years, and offenses and insults that would involve husbands, sons, all with an obligation to prove to mothers and sisters and grandmothers that they knew how to be men.

The communists didn’t release their grip until the late 1980s. Effective organisation kept them in power for eight long decades, and they eventually fell due to defective organisation. On 21 December 1989 Nicolae Ceaus¸escu, the communist dictator of Romania, organised a mass demonstration of support in the centre of Bucharest. Over the previous months the Soviet Union had withdrawn its support from the eastern European communist regimes, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and revolutions had swept Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Ceaus¸escu, who had ruled Romania since 1965, believed he could withstand the tsunami, even though riots against his rule had erupted in the Romanian city of Timis¸oara on 17 December. As one of his counter-measures, Ceaus¸escu arranged a massive rally in Bucharest to prove to Romanians and the rest of the world that the majority of the populace still loved him – or at least feared him. The creaking party apparatus mobilised 80,000 people to fill the city’s central square, and citizens throughout Romania were instructed to stop all their activities and tune in on their radios and televisions. To the cheering of the seemingly enthusiastic crowd, Ceauşescu mounted the balcony overlooking the square, as he had done scores of times in previous decades. Flanked by his wife, Elena, leading party officials and a bevy of bodyguards, Ceaus¸escu began delivering one of his trademark dreary speeches. For eight minutes he praised the glories of Romanian socialism, looking very pleased with himself as the crowd clapped mechanically. And then something went wrong. You can see it for yourself on YouTube. Just search for ‘Ceauşescu’s last speech’, and watch history in action.20 The YouTube clip shows Ceaus¸escu starting another long sentence, saying, ‘I want to thank the initiators and organisers of this great event in Bucharest, considering it as a—’, and then he falls silent, his eyes open wide, and he freezes in disbelief. He never finished the sentence. You can see in that split second how an entire world collapses. Somebody in the audience booed. People

We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can’t recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn’t immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I’ve literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.

She threw Lillian a laughing glance. “I’m sure he has found it refreshing to encounter a woman who actually dares to disagree with him.” “I’m not certain that ‘refreshing’ would be his first choice of words,” Lillian replied wryly. “However, when I don’t like something that he’s done, I do not hesitate to tell him so.” “Good,” Lady Olivia returned. “That is precisely what my brother needs. There are few women— or men, for that matter— who ever contradict him. He is a strong man who requires an equally strong wife to balance his nature.” Lillian found herself needlessly smoothing the skirts of her pale green gown as she remarked carefully, “If Lord Westcliff and I did marry… he would face many objections from relatives and friends, wouldn’t he? Especially from the countess.” “His friends would never dare,” Lady Olivia replied at once. “As for my mother…” She hesitated and then said frankly, “She has already made it clear that she does not approve of you. I doubt she ever will. However, that leaves you in very large company, as she disapproves of nearly everyone. Does it worry you that she opposes the match?” “It tempts me beyond reason,” Lillian said, causing Lady Olivia to erupt with laughter. “Oh, I do like you,” she gasped. “You must marry Marcus, as I would love above all else to have you as a sister-in-law.” Sobering, she stared at Lillian with a warm smile. “And I have a selfish reason for hoping that you will accept him. Although Mr. Shaw and I have no immediate plans to move to New York, I know that day will not be long in coming. When that happens, I should be relieved to know that Marcus is married and has someone to care for him, with both his sisters living so far away.” She stood from the bench, straightening her skirts. “The reason I’ve told you all of this is because I wanted you to understand why it is so difficult for Marcus to abandon himself to love. Difficult, but not impossible. My sister and I have finally managed to break free of the past, with the help of our husbands. But Marcus’s chains are the heaviest of all. I know that he is not the easiest man to love. However, if you could bring yourself to meet him halfway… perhaps even a bit more than halfway… I believe you would never have cause to regret it.

He turned a startled glance on her and found himself locked in her gaze. It was astonishing. He could not move his eyes away from her. A profound fear coursed through and he felt his hands begin to twitch. ‘You live where the fear of being and the love of being are combined, all in one person,’ she said. He could not blink. ‘You are a mystic,’ she said, ‘gentle to yourself only because you are in the middle of that universe looking outward, looking in ways that others cannot. You fear to share this, yet you want to share it more than anything else.’ ‘What have you seen?’ he whispered. ‘I have no inner eye, no inner voices,’ she said. ‘But I have seen my Lord Leto, whose soul I love, and I know the only thing that you truly understand.’ He broke from her gaze, fearful of what she might say. The trembling of his hands could be felt all through his front segment. ‘Love, that is what you understand,’ she said. ‘Love, and that is all of it.’ His hands stopped trembling. A tear rolled down each of his cheeks. When the tears touched his cowl, wisps of blue smoke erupted. He sensed the burning and was thankful for the pain. ‘You have faith in life,’ Hwi said. ‘I know that the courage of love can reside only in this faith.

I can’t help thinking,” she confided when he finished answering her questions about women in India who covered their faces and hair in public, “that it is grossly unfair that I was born a female and so must never know such adventures, or see but a few of those places. Even if I were to journey there, I’d only be allowed to go where everything was as civilized as-as London!” “There does seem to be a case of extreme disparity between the privileges accorded the sexes,” Ian agreed. “Still, we each have our duty to perform,” she informed him with sham solemnity. “And there’s said to be great satisfaction in that.” “How do you view your-er-duty?” he countered, responding to her teasing tone with a lazy white smile. “That’s easy. It is a female’s duty to be a wife who is an asset to her husband in every way. It is a male’s duty to do whatever he wishes, whenever he wishes, so long as he is prepared to defend his country should the occasion demand it in his lifetime-which it very likely won’t. Men,” she informed him, “gain honor by sacrificing themselves on the field of battle while we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of matrimony.” He laughed aloud then, and Elizabeth smiled back at him, enjoying herself hugely. “Which, when one considers it, only proves that our sacrifice is by far the greater and more noble.” “How is that?” he asked, still chuckling. “It’s perfectly obvious-battles last mere days or weeks, months at the very most. While matrimony lasts a lifetime! Which brings to mind something else I’ve often wondered about,” she continued gaily, giving full rein to her innermost thoughts. “And that is?” he prompted, grinning, watching her as if he never wanted to stop. “Why do you suppose, after all that, they call us the weaker sex?” Their laughing gazes held, and then Elizabeth realized how outrageous he must be finding some of her remarks. “I don’t usually go off on such tangents,” she said ruefully. “You must think I’m dreadfully ill-bred.” “I think,” he softly said, “that you are magnificent.” The husky sincerity in his deep voice snatched her breath away. She opened her mouth, thinking frantically for some light reply that could restore the easy camaraderie of a minute before, but instead of speaking she could only draw a long, shaky breath. “And,” he continued quietly, “I think you know it.” This was not, not the sort of foolish, flirtatious repartee she was accustomed to from her London beaux, and it terrified her as much as the sensual look in those golden eyes. Pressing imperceptibly back against the arm of the sofa, she told herself she was only overacting to what was nothing more than empty flattery. “I think,” she managed with a light laugh that stuck in her throat, “that you must find whatever female you’re with ‘magnificent.’” “Why would you say a thing like that?” Elizabeth shrugged. “Last night at supper, for one thing.” When he frowned at her as if she were speaking in a foreign language, she prodded, “You remember Lady Charise Dumont, our hostess, the same lovely brunette on whose every word you were hanging at supper last night?” His frown became a grin. “Jealous?” Elizabeth lifted her elegant little chin and shook her head. “No more than you were of Lord Howard.” She felt a small bit of satisfaction as his amusement vanished. “The fellow who couldn’t seem to talk to you without touching your arm?” he inquired in a silky-soft voice. “That Lord Howard? As a matter of fact, my love, I spent most of my meal trying to decide whether I wanted to shove his nose under his right ear or his left.” Startled, musical laughter erupted from her before she could stop it. “You did nothing of the sort,” she chuckled. “Besides, if you wouldn’t duel with Lord Everly when he called you a cheat, you certainly wouldn’t harm poor Lord Howard merely for touching my arm.” “Wouldn’t I?” he asked softly. “Those are two very different issues.

There was only one Mama, and the world has lost her, but it keeps turning. But for me, I live in that void where her love and her voice and her kindness used to be. And in so many ways, even moving forward, I’m standing still. I am suddenly aware of everyone’s compassion, this collective kindness for which I was unprepared. It penetrates the wall I use to insulate my grief and hide the lingering pain. I hate that these tears keep assaulting me when I least expect them. That sadness ambushes me. That the desolation Mama’s absence creates inside of me is inescapable, even here at Thanksgiving dinner in front of Rhyson’s family before we’ve even served dessert. And I hate this awkward quiet while they all try to figure out if it’s okay to move on or if they wait for me to get it together. Only this time I can’t. I’m trapped in this moment while I reach for my composure in vain. Breathing in and deeply usually helps, but I’m too far gone. My heart is too raw today. A sob erupts into the silence. I’m horrified that my body is betraying me this way. That my emotions are this undisciplined, wet spill over my cheeks. I squeeze the linen napkin in my lap until I’m sure I’ll draw blood from it, but the tears won’t stop. The pain doesn’t stop. I leak it. I lose it. I cannot stop it. I cover my face with

What use is knowing anything if no one is around to watch you know it? Plants reinvent sugar daily and hardly anyone applauds. Once as a boy I sat in a corner covering my ears, singing Quranic verse after Quranic verse. Each syllable was perfect, but only the lonely rumble in my head gave praise. This is why we put mirrors in birdcages, why we turn on lamps to double our shadows. I love my body more than other bodies. When I sleep next to a man, he becomes an extension of my own brilliance. Or rather, he becomes an echo of my own anticlimax. I was delivered from dying like a gift card sent in lieu of a pound of flesh. My escape was mundane, voidable. Now I feed faith to faith, suffer human noise, complain about this or that heartache. The spirit lives in between the parts of a name. It is vulnerable only to silence and forgetting. I am vulnerable to hammers, fire, and any number of poisons. The dream, then: to erupt into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting into its tantrum of blades. There has always been a swarm of hungry ghosts orbiting my body—even now, I can feel them plotting in their luminous diamonds of fog, each eying a rib or a thighbone. They are arranging their plans like worms preparing to rise through the soil. They are ready to die with their kind, dry and stiff above the wet earth.

Yes. I am beginning to understand something of you,’ she said. ‘I can sense some of your fears. And I think I already know where it is that you live.’ He turned a startled glance on her and found himself locked in her gaze. It was astonishing. He could not move his eyes away from her. A profound fear coursed through and he felt his hands begin to twitch. ‘You live where the fear of being and the love of being are combined, all in one person,’ she said. He could not blink. ‘You are a mystic,’ she said, ‘gentle to yourself only because you are in the middle of that universe looking outward, looking in ways that others cannot. You fear to share this, yet you want to share it more than anything else.’ ‘What have you seen?’ he whispered. ‘I have no inner eye, no inner voices,’ she said. ‘But I have seen my Lord Leto, whose soul I love, and I know the only thing that you truly understand.’ He broke from her gaze, fearful of what she might say. The trembling of his hands could be felt all through his front segment. ‘Love, that is what you understand,’ she said. ‘Love, and that is all of it.’ His hands stopped trembling. A tear rolled down each of his cheeks. When the tears touched his cowl, wisps of blue smoke erupted. He sensed the burning and was thankful for the pain. ‘You have faith in life,’ Hwi said. ‘I know that the courage of love can reside only in this faith.

Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people’s lives, the mythical moment in which one knows someone is destined to us; the feverish waiting for a phone call or an email, the thrill that runs our spine at the mere thought of him or her. To be in love is to become an adept of Plato, to see through a person an Idea, perfect and complete.2 Endless novels, poems, or movies teach us the art of becoming Plato’s disciples, loving the perfection manifested by the beloved. Yet, a culture that has so much to say about love is far more silent on the no-less-mysterious moment when we avoid falling in love, where we fall out of love, when the one who kept us awake at night now leaves us indifferent, when we hurry away from those who excited us a few months or even a few hours ago. This silence is all the more puzzling as the number of relationships that dissolve soon after their beginning or at some point down along their emotional line is staggering.Perhaps our culture does not know how to represent or think about this because we live in and through stories and dramas, and “unloving” is not a plot with a clear structure. More often than not it does not start with an inaugural moment, a revelation. On the contrary, some relationships fade or evaporate before or soon after they properly started, while others end with slow and incomprehensible death.

The path of what was to come was awful. It was the enormous dying, a sea of blood. From it the new sun arose, awful and a reversal of that which we call day. We have seized the darkness and its sun will shine above us, bloody and burning like a great downfall. When I comprehended my darkness, a truly magnificent night came over me and my dream plunged me into the depths of the millennia, and from it my phoenix ascended. But what happened to my day? Torches were kindled, bloody anger and disputes erupted. As darkness seized the world, the terrible war arose and the darkness destroyed the light of the world, since it was incomprehensible to the darkness and good for nothing anymore. And so we had to taste Hell. I saw which vices the virtues of this time changed into, how your mildness became hard, your goodness became brutality; your love became hate, and your understanding became madness. Why did you want to comprehend the darkness! But you had to or else it would have seized you. Happy the man who anticipates this grasp. Did you ever think of the evil in you? Oh, you spoke of it, you mentioned it, and you confessed it smilingly; as a generally human vice, or a recurring misunderstanding. But did you know 1 what evil is, and that it stands precisely right behind your virtues, that it is also your virtues themselves, as their inevitable substance?7! You locked Satan in the abyss for a millennium, and when the millennium had passed, you laughed at him, since he had become a children's fairy tale.72 But if the dreadful great one raises his head, the world winces. The most extreme coldness draws near. With horror you see that you are defenseless, and that the army of your vices falls powerless to its knees. With the power of daimons, you seize the evil, and your virtues cross over to him. You are completely alone in this struggle, since your Gods have become deaf You do not know which devils are greater, your vices, or your virtues. But ofone thing you are certain, that virtues and vices are brothers. 73We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live and to die, to begin and to end.74 You are not forced to live eternally; but you can also die, since there is a will in you for both. Life and death must strike a balance in your existence.75 Today's men need a large slice of death, since too much incorrectness lives in them, and too much correctness died in them. What stays in balance is correct, what disturbs balance is incorrect. But if balance has been attained, then that which preserves it is incorrect and that which disturbs it is correct. Balance is at once life and death. For the completion of life a balance with death is fitting. If I accept death, then my tree greens, since dying increases life. If I plunge into the death encompassing the world, then my buds break open. How much our life needs death!

They found no mischief in me. I remained normal, however deeply they probed. And also straight as an arrow. To be sure, normality seldom coincides with straightness. Normalcy is the human constitution; straightness is logical reasoning. With its help, I could answer satisfactorily. In contrast, the human element is at once so general and so intricately encoded that they fail to perceive it, like the air that they breathe. Thus they were unable to penetrate my fundamental structure, which is anarchic. That sounds complicated, but it is simple, for everyone is anarchic; this is precisely what is normal about us. Of course, the anarch is hemmed in from the first day by father and mother, by state and society. Those are prunings, tappings of the primordial strength, and nobody escapes them. One has to resign oneself. But the anarchic remains, at the very bottom, as a mystery, usually unknown even to its bearer. It can erupt from him as lava, can destroy him, liberate him. Distinctions must be made here: love is anarchic, marriage is not. The warrior is anarchic, the soldier is not. Manslaughter is anarchic, murder is not. Christ is anarchic, Saint Paul is not. Since, of course, the anarchic is normal, it is also present in Saint Paul, and sometimes it erupts mightily from him. Those are not antitheses but degrees. The history of the world is moved by anarchy. In sum: the free human being is anarchic, the anarchist is not.

They found no mischief in me. I remained normal, however deeply they probed. And also straight as an arrow. To be sure, normality seldom coincides with straightness. Normalcy is the human constitution; straightness is logical reasoning. With its help, I could answer satisfactorily. In contrast, the human element is at once so general and so intricately encoded that they fail to perceive it, like the air that they breathe. Thus they were unable to penetrate my fundamental structure, which is anarchic. That sounds complicated, but it is simple, for everyone is anarchic; this is precisely what is normal about us. Of course, the anarch is hemmed in from the first day by father and mother, by state and society. Those are prunings, tappings of the primordial strength, and nobody escapes them. One has to resign oneself. But the anarchic remains, at the very bottom, as a mystery, usually unknown even to its bearer. It can erupt from him as lava, can destroy him, liberate him. Distinctions must be made here: love is anarchic, marriage is not. The warrior is anarchic, the soldier is not. Manslaughter is anarchic, murder is not. Christ is anarchic, Saint Paul is not. Since, of course, the anarchic is normal, it is also present in Saint Paul, and sometimes it erupts mightily from him. Those are not antitheses but degrees. The history of the world is moved by anarchy. In sum: the free human being is anarchic, the anarchist is not.

Stopping just short of her mouth, he rasped, “Are you still engaged to Blakeborough?” Her gorgeous eyes narrowed. “My engagement didn’t stop you last night.” “It would now.” A coy smile broke over her lips, and she tightened her grip on his neck. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I am not.” With a growl of triumph, he kissed her once more. She was here. She was his. Nothing else mattered. Still kissing her, he jerked both sets of curtains closed. Then he tugged her onto his lap and began to tear at the fastenings of her pelisse-dress. He wanted to touch her, taste her…be inside her. He could think of naught else. “I take it that you mean to seduce me,” she murmured between kisses. “Yes.” Seduce her and marry her. And then seduce her again, as often as he could. “Well then, carry on.” So he did. He unfastened her clothes just enough to bare her breasts, then seized one in his mouth. God, she was perfect. His perfect jewel. She buried her hands in his hair to pull her into him, sighing and moaning as if she would die if he didn’t make love to her. Which was exactly how he felt. Working his hand up beneath her skirts and into the slit in her drawers, he found her so wet and hot that he nearly came right there. He slipped a finger inside her silky sweetness, and she gasped, then began to tug at his trouser buttons. “You’re all I want, Jane.” As he stroked her, he used his other hand to brush hers away so he could unfasten his own trouser buttons. “The only woman I ever cared about.” “You’re the only man Iever cared about.” She undulated against his fingers, begging for him with her body. “Why do you think…I waited for you so long?” “Not long enough, apparently,” he muttered, “or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself engaged to Blakeborough.” He tugged at her nipple with his teeth, then relished her cry of pleasure. “I only…did it because I was…tired of waiting.” She arched against his mouth. “Because you clearly weren’t…coming back for me.” “I was sure you hated me.” At last he got his trousers open. “You acted like you hated me still.” “I did.” Her breath was unsteady. “But only because…you tore us apart.” He shifted her to sit astride him. “And now?” Flashing him a provocative smile he would never have dreamed she had in her repertoire, she unbuttoned his drawers. “Do I look like I hate you?” His cock, so hard he thought it might erupt right there and embarrass him, sprang free. “You look like…like…” He paused to take in her lovely face with its flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, and lush lips. Then he swept his gaze down to her breasts with their brazen tips, displayed so enticingly above the boned corset and her undone shift. He then dropped his eyes to the smooth thighs emerging from beneath her bunched-up skirts. Shoving the fabric higher, he exposed her dewy thatch of curls, and a shudder of anticipation shook him. “You look like an angel.” She uttered a breathy laugh. “A wanton, more like.” Taking his cock in her hand, she stroked it so wonderfully that he groaned. “Would an angel do this?

We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing is, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else.

When the head of his cock sweeps past her sweet spot yet again, something explosive erupts out of nowhere. "Oh, fuuuuck," she whimpers. Her walls flutter around him as her whole body ignites into flames. The pleasure is all-consuming, knocking her thoughts from her mind. Alexander huffs, stunned. "Did you--- Just from me---" Eden covers her face with her hands, embarrassed. "I'm sorry. You just feel so good, I---" He chuckles, pushing her hands aside to pepper her face with kisses. "Don't be sorry, it's alright. Can I keep going?" "Yes. Yes, please. I want to make you come. Give it to me rough." "If you want it rough, you'd better hold on to me, sweetheart." She does so, circling his neck with her arms. He rolls his hips against her, pace picking up in rhythm. The slap of their skin combined with the sound of their filthy groans is music to her ears. He snaps his hips into her relentlessly, searching for more of that sweet friction. The bed creaks in protest beneath them, but they show no signs of slowing down. "Fucking God, your pussy feels so good." "Fuck, I--- Right there, oh God right there." "So nice and tight for me. Spread your legs wider--- that's it." Eden can feel herself growing tighter, hotter, brighter. She can hardly breathe, and her heart is racing a mile a minute. "I think--- Fuck, I think I'm going to come again. I'm gonna---" Alexander claims her mouth, tongue sweeping over hers as he pins both her wrists above her head against the pillow. He fucks her harder, claiming her, pushing her closer and closer toward climax. When it happens, she moans into his mouth, quaking beneath his weight. He finds release, too, his muscles tensing as he spills over.

Mindy runs to the DVD player and delicately places the disk in the holder and presses play. “Will you sit in this chair, please, Princess Mindy?” I ask, bowing deeply at the waist. Mindy giggles as she replies, ”I guess so.” After Mindy sits down, I take a wide-tooth comb and start gently combing out her tangles. Mindy starts vibrating with excitement as she blurts, “Mr. Jeff, you’re gonna fix my hair fancy, ain’t you?” “We’ll see if a certain Princess can hold still long enough for me to finish,” I tease. Immediately, Mindy becomes as still as a stone statue. After a couple of minutes, I have to say, “Mindy, sweetheart, it’s okay to breathe. I just can’t have you bouncing, because I’m afraid it will cause me to pull your hair.” Mindy slumps down in her chair just slightly. “Okay Mr. Jeff, I was ascared you was gonna stop,” she whispers, her chin quivering. I adopt a very fake, very over-the-top French accent and say, “Oh no, Monsieur Jeff must complete Princess Mindy’s look to make the Kingdom happy. Mindy erupts with the first belly laugh I’ve heard all day as she responds, “Okay, I’ll try to be still, but it’s hard ‘cause I have the wiggles real bad.” I pat her on the shoulder and chuckle as I say, “Just try your best, sweetheart. That’s all anyone can ask.” Kiera comes screeching around the corner in a blur, plunks her purse on the table, and says breathlessly, “Geez-O-Pete, I can’t believe I’m late for the makeover. I love makeovers.” Kiera digs through her purse and produces two bottles of nail polish and nail kit. “It’s time for your mani/pedi ma’am. Would you prefer Pink Pearl or Frosted Creamsicle? Mindy raises her hand like a schoolchild and Kiera calls on her like a pupil, “I want Frosted Cream toes please,” Mindy answers. “Your wish is my command, my dear,” Kiera responds with a grin. For the next few minutes, Mindy gets the spa treatment of her life as I carefully French braid her hair into pigtails. As a special treat, I purchased some ribbons from the gift shop and I’m weaving them into her hair. I tuck a yellow rose behind her ear. I don my French accent as I declare, “Monsieur Jeffery pronounces Princess Mindy finished and fit to rule the kingdom.” Kiera hands Mindy a new tube of grape ChapStick from her purse, “Hold on, a true princess never reigns with chapped lips,” she says. Mindy giggles as she responds, “You’re silly, Miss Kiera. Nobody in my kingdom is going to care if my lips are shiny.” Kiera’s laugh sounds like wind chimes as she covers her face with her hands as she confesses, “Okay, you busted me. I just like to use it because it tastes yummy.” “Okay, I want some, please,” Mindy decides. Kiera is putting the last minute touches on her as Mindy is scrambling to stand on Kiera’s thighs so she can get a better look in the mirror. When I reach out to steady her, she grabs my hand in a death grip. I glance down at her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is opening and closing like a fish. I shoot Kiera a worried glance, but she merely shrugs. “Holy Sh — !” Mindy stops short when she sees Kiera’s expression. “Mr. Jeff is an angel for reals because he turned me into one. Look at my hair Miss Kiera, there are magic ribbons in it! I’m perfect. I can be anything I want to be.” Spontaneously, we all join together in a group hug. I kiss the top of her head as I agree, “Yes, Mindy, you are amazing and the sky is the limit for you.

For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script. It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls. It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else. I would have done anything to feel real again.

We do eventually get dressed and look for food, although we only make it to the dining room in time for lunch. Egeria accepts her ousting as Alpha Sinta without a hint of anger or regret. Clearly, it’s what she was expecting all along. Piers is away on a recruitment trip, but the rest of the family is here and overjoyed by our wedding announcement. Jocasta decrees that we have to go shopping, now, and Kaia bounces in her seat, beyond excited about any outing that will actually get her on the other side of the castle gate. Shopping requires money, so I dig around in Griffin’s pocket under the table, letting my fingers wander enough for him to nearly choke on his stew. I find four gold coins and hold on to them. “You never pay me.” He looks aghast. “I can’t pay you anymore.” “We’re about to get married. No one’s going to confuse me with a prostitute.” Kaia spits out a grape. It bounces across the table and then lands in her mother’s lap. Kaia slaps her hand over her mouth, her blue-gray eyes huge, and Nerissa gives her a quelling look. The look finishes on me, and I might have felt a little quelled myself if Carver hadn’t suddenly made a noise like a donkey, finally belting out the laugh he’d been holding back. Anatole bangs his hand down on the table and bursts out laughing. He sounds like a donkey, too. It’s contagious, and the whole table erupts, snorting and braying until most of us are wiping tears from our eyes. I shake my head, grinning. I haven’t laughed like this in…well, ever. Nerissa eventually gets up, comes over to me, and then kisses my cheek, something that would usually make me squirm. Today, it somehow feels normal. “I always wanted to have four daughters.” She squeezes my shoulder. “Now I do.” I keep smiling like a loon even though my throat suddenly feels thick, and heat stings the backs of my eyes. I have a family that loves me. I would protect them with my life. Well, maybe not Piers, but I have a feeling he would return the sentiment

a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o'clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day. MARINA, a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table knitting a stocking. ASTROFF is walking up and down near her. MARINA. [Pouring some tea into a glass] Take a little tea, my son. ASTROFF. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly] Somehow, I don't seem to want any. MARINA. Then will you have a little vodka instead? ASTROFF. No, I don't drink vodka every day, and besides, it is too hot now. [A pause] Tell me, nurse, how long have we known each other? MARINA. [Thoughtfully] Let me see, how long is it? Lord—help me to remember. You first came here, into our parts—let me think—when was it? Sonia's mother was still alive—it was two winters before she died; that was eleven years ago—[thoughtfully] perhaps more. ASTROFF. Have I changed much since then? MARINA. Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you are an old man and not handsome any more. You drink, too. ASTROFF. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I am overworked. Nurse, I am on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest; at night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to visit some one who is sick; I have toiled without repose or a day's freedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then, existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I have grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse, but not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is not addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I ask nothing, I need nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her head] I had a nurse just like you when I was a child. MARINA. Don't you want a bite of something to eat? ASTROFF. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at Malitskoi. It was eruptive typhoid. The peasants were all lying side by side in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor among the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved among those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got home there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the railroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in my arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should have been deadened awoke

Boy Lost Picture a sunset in a small port town by the sea. Two teenaged boys sitting on the docks watching the ships as they fly across the water. One reaches out and takes the other’s hand. In this brush of skin for skin, a thousand unspoken promises erupt between them, and both are determined to keep them. This is what youth is. The sheer belief that you will be able to keep every promise you made to someone else. That you will be able to love someone into a forever when you do not even understand what forever means. An evening spent in the headiness of love, they go back to their respective homes. One boy helps his mother with cooking and cleaning and looking after his little sister. His father is a good man, a sailor who brings home with him meagre wages, but a heart full of love and a quicksilver tongue that tells stories of faraway lands to enthral them all. But this boy, despite his blessings, is not happy. He may have been blessed with a loving family, but that faraway look is made of unrest and wanderlust, something about him says fae, changeling, wearing the skin of a boy who was always destined to fly, to leave.   The other boy returns home to a father who drinks and a mother who works so hard that she is never there. He is the unwanted creature in this home, a beating waiting for him at every corner. His father’s temper is a beast so powerful that a boy made of paper bones barely held together cannot fight him. He hides in his room. He lives for a boy at sunset, hope made into a human being. Now picture this. This boy of paper bones alone at the docks the next sunset. And this boy alone on the docks again on a rainy day. And this boy alone on the docks every day after, waiting for someone who promised him forevers he never intended to keep. This boy becoming a man, a heart wounded so young in youth that it never quite healed right. Imagine him becoming a sailor, searching land after land for a boy he once loved, thinking he was hurt, or stolen, just needing to know what happened to him. Now see him finally finding out that the boy he loved in his boyhood ran away to a magical land where he never grew up. That without a second glance, he just forgot every promise of forever. Imagine his rage, that ancient pain turning to a terrible anger and escaping from the forgotten attic of his mangled heart. Think of what happens when immense love turns into immense hate. An anger so intense it cannot be controlled. What he would give up to avenge the boy he once was, paper-boned, standing on the docks, broken without a single person to love him, simply all alone. A hand is a small price to pay for a magical ship that will take him to Neverland, a place that lives on a star. Becoming a villain called Captain Hook is a small exchange to show Peter Pan that you cannot throw away love and think you will get away unscarred.

Need to Be Honest about My Issues Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (PSALM 139:23 – 24) Thought for the Day: Avoiding reality never changes reality. Mostly I’m a good person with good motives, but not always. Not when I just want life to be a little more about me or about making sure I look good. That’s when my motives get corrupted. The Bible is pretty blunt in naming the real issue here: evil desires. Yikes. I don’t like that term at all. And it seems a bit severe to call my unglued issues evil desires, doesn’t it? But in the depths of my heart I know the truth. Avoiding reality never changes reality. Sigh. I think I should say that again: Avoiding reality never changes reality. And change is what I really want. So upon the table I now place my honesty: I have evil desires. I do. Maybe not the kind that will land me on a 48 Hours Mystery episode, but the kind that pull me away from the woman I want to be. One with a calm spirit and divine nature. I want it to be evident that I know Jesus, love Jesus, and spend time with Jesus each day. So why do other things bubble to the surface when my life gets stressful and my relationships get strained? Things like … Selfishness: I want things my way. Pride: I see things only from my vantage point. Impatience: I rush things without proper consideration. Anger: I let simmering frustrations erupt. Bitterness: I swallow eruptions and let them fester. It’s easier to avoid these realities than to deal with them. I’d much rather tidy my closet than tidy my heart. I’d much rather run to the mall and get a new shirt than run to God and get a new attitude. I’d much rather dig into a brownie than dig into my heart. I’d much rather point the finger at other people’s issues than take a peek at my own. Plus, it’s just a whole lot easier to tidy my closet, run to the store, eat a brownie, and look at other people’s issues. A whole lot easier. I rationalize that I don’t have time to get all psychological and examine my selfishness, pride, impatience, anger, and bitterness. And honestly, I’m tired of knowing I have issues but having no clue how to practically rein them in on a given day. I need something simple. A quick reality check I can remember in the midst of the everyday messies. And I think the following prayer is just the thing: God, even when I choose to ignore what my heart is saying to me, You know my heart. I bring to You this [and here I name whatever feeling or thoughts I have been reluctant to acknowledge]. Forgive me. Soften my heart. Make it pure. Might that quick prayer help you as well? If so, stop what you are doing —just for five minutes — and pray these or similar words. When I’ve prayed for the Lord to interrupt my feelings and soften my heart, it’s amazing how this changes me. Dear Lord, help me to remember to actually bring my emotions and reactions to You. I want my heart reaction to be godly. Thank You for grace and for always forgiving me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Despite its reputation for individualism and unbridled capitalism, the United States has a history rich in cooperation and communalism. From the colonial era to the present—and among the indigenous population for millennia—local communities have engaged in self-help, democracy, and cooperation. Indeed, the “individualistic” tradition might more accurately be called the “self-help” tradition, where “self” is defined not only in terms of the individual but in terms of the community (be it family, township, religious community, etc.). Americans are traditionally hostile to overarching authorities separate from the community with which they identify, a hostility expressed in the age-old resentment towards both government and big business. The stereotype, based on fact, is that Americans would rather solve problems on their own than rely on political and economic power-structures to do so. The following brief survey of the history substantiates this claim. While my focus is on worker cooperatives, I will not ignore the many and varied experiments in other forms of cooperation and communalism. Certain themes and lessons can be gleaned from the history. The most obvious is that a profound tension has existed, constantly erupting into conflict, between the democratic, anti-authoritarian impulses of ordinary Americans and the tendency of economic and political power-structures to grow extensively and intensively, to concentrate themselves in ever-larger and more centralized units that reach as far down into society as possible. Power inherently tries to control as much as it can: it has an intrinsic tendency toward totalitarianism, ideally letting nothing, even the most trivial social interactions, escape its oversight. Bentham’s Panopticon is the perfect emblem of the logic of power. Other social forces, notably people’s strivings for freedom and democracy, typically keep this totalitarian tendency in check. In fact, the history of cooperation and communalism is a case-study in the profound truth that people are instinctively averse to the modes of cutthroat competition, crass greed, authoritarianism, hierarchy, and dehumanization that characterize modern capitalism. Far from capitalism’s being a straightforward expression of human nature, as apologists proclaim, it is more like the very antithesis of human nature, which is evidently drawn to such things as free self-expression, spontaneous “play,”131 cooperation and friendly competition, compassion, love. The work of Marxist historians like E. P. Thompson shows how people have had to be disciplined, their desires repressed, in order for the capitalist system to seem even remotely natural: centuries of indoctrination, state violence, incarceration of “undesirables,” the bureaucratization of everyday life, have been necessary to partially accustom people to the mechanical rhythms of industrial capitalism and the commodification of the human personality.132 And of course resistance continues constantly, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. “Wage-slavery,” as workers in the nineteenth century called it, is a monstrous assault on human dignity, which is why even today, after so much indoctrination, people still hate being subordinated to a “boss” and rebel against it whenever they can.

He hadn’t been aware of staring, but when her questioning gaze locked with his, Grey felt as though he’d been smacked upside the head by the open palm of idiocy. “Is something troubling you, Grey?” He loved the sound of his name on her tongue, and hated that he loved it. She made him weak and stupid. One sweet glance from her and he was ready to drop to his knees. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even infatuation. It was pure unmitigated lust. He could admit that. Hell, he embraced it. Lust could be managed. Lust could be mastered. And lust would eventually fade once she was out of his care and out of his life. That was the cold, hard, blessed truth of it. “I was wondering if you were eagerly anticipating Lady Shrewsbury’s ball tomorrow evening?” How easily the lie rolled off his tongue as he lifted a bite of poached salmon to his mouth. She smiled softly, obviously looking forward to it very much. “I am. Thank you.” Camilla shared her daughter’s pleasure judging from her coy grin. “Rose has renewed her acquaintance with the honorable Kellan Maxwell. He requested that she save the first waltz of the evening for him.” The fish caught in Grey’s throat. He took a drink of wine to force it down. “The same Kellan Maxwell who courted you during your first season?” Rose’s smile faded a little. No doubt she heard the censure in his tone, his disapproval. “The same,” she replied with an edge of defensiveness. The same idiot who abandoned his pursuit of Rose when Charles lost everything and scandal erupted. The little prick who hadn’t loved her enough to continue his courtship regardless of her situation. “Mm,” was what he said out loud. Rose scowled at him. “We had no understanding. We were not engaged, and Mr. Maxwell behaved as any other young man with responsibilities would have.” “You defend him.” It was difficult to keep his disappointment from showing. He never thought her to be the kind of woman who would forgive disloyalty when she was so very loyal herself. She tilted her head. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m no debutante, Grey. If I’m to find a husband this season I shouldn’t show prejudice.” Common sense coming out of anyone else. Coming out of her it was shite. “You deserve better.” She smiled a Mona Lisa smile. “We do not always get what we deserve, or even what we desire.” She knew. Christ in a frock coat, she knew. Her smile faded. “If we did, Papa would be here with us, and Mama and I wouldn’t be your responsibility.” She didn’t know. Damn, what a relief. “The two of you are not a responsibility. You are a joy.” For some reason that only made her look sadder, but Camilla smiled through happy tears. She thanked him profusely, but Grey had a hard time hearing what she was saying-he was too intent on Rose, who had turned her attention to her plate and was pushing food around with little interest. He could bear this no longer. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, or why she seemed so strange with him. And he couldn’t stand that he cared. “Ladies, I’m afraid I must beg your pardon and take leave of you.” Rose glanced up. “So soon?” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Yes. But I will see you at breakfast in the morning.” She turned back to her dinner. Grey bid farewell to Camilla and then strode from the room as quickly as he could. If he survived the Season it would be a miracle.

Chatting to the gossip of flames waking from the slumber of our flesh-drunk night together— it’s only when I step out to pee do I notice— how far, burgundy-dark, the moon has risen…. On four paws the shepherd- dogs bound, lightly though the trees they hardly touch on earth— we saw it from far sunk here in an always-ache…. Dyeing paling twilight woods— a pair of wasps, spiraling, writhe…. Wetted lips of hers and mine, just-parted, move over each other with tongues just-coming but refuse— like mists of evening they've no place to settle…. Just-here though she's singing she’s in some song from long ago— poised on the brink of twilight longing three thousand miles rush through my heart…. Under undulating curtains— I hover above her the tips of me brushing the tips of her— breathing back and forth a column of air we share our breath slowly asphyxiating…. From burning wood campfire sparks dart off extinguishing in the wet blue dark… how you blow your long wind across my embers, through my soul, she pleads me, take away the pain— I dip a branch in blue water and plunge it into coals…. *** In pre-dawn dark, against a leaping inferno of flames black monolith of wood in the cast iron compartment softens, and—gradually— fractures to cells, warping upward, until from the top a shard splinters: pearls of flame string a fiber and leap in little tongues while the log, glowing, engulfed, is consumed by the inferno contained…. A shadow daunts me, haunts and taunts me now reaching far, now recoiling, now growing bold…. I once sang eruptions and the wind— then appeared you it took my whole life singing only the songs of you and still I sing for you what other refuge can stay me from this torment? So— my doppelganger has arrived no one said it would happen this way but the way his hands fold like mine, the style of his humor, broadness of his smile— even the way he walks…. Licking and lapping these lashings of grasses are in tongues at my feet smoldering's the fury within me— I have seen my fields of daylight warp to noxious-air infernos but still to the clean blue of the flame I take rest in her breast…. His songs I mouth, and in my head is his voice— I cannot hear my own…. in my mind I see myself— thin, stupid— my arms too weak, my own chest too frail— and besides I prefer him more…. Along spiral lines, seed-heads decay— swept away they whirl and writhe in the hot blue fire of evening…. Stuck in a mural of sticky flesh— the family… I am locked-in-arms with brothers and sisters, drooping at the thighs with nieces and nephews, grafted to parents at the scalp, and pasted with toddlers all over… hived, sapped, black I sit, subject to the flavors and aromas of your abuse…. Then— be wrapped in his presence… crescendo to his warmth the cascade of your laughter search in his wrinkles for the boy inside him… I’m just biding here, bragless, trying to admit these rival-streams that flow in one latticework of blood…. Halves of flesh and bosomy hips, lips like dark ripe fruits they're chasing— I chased them… full-feathered was their hair like floss in the sunshine fine-fingered was their style like laces cut to curves: and then there was you, returning one, just there like the midnight moon in my sky at noontime….

Our patients predict the culture by living out consciously what the masses of people are able to keep unconscious for the time being. The neurotic is cast by destiny into a Cassandra role. In vain does Cassandra, sitting on the steps of the palace at Mycenae when Agamemnon brings her back from Troy, cry, “Oh for the nightingale’s pure song and a fate like hers!” She knows, in her ill-starred life, that “the pain flooding the song of sorrow is [hers] alone,” and that she must predict the doom she sees will occur there. The Mycenaeans speak of her as mad, but they also believe she does speak the truth, and that she has a special power to anticipate events. Today, the person with psychological problems bears the burdens of the conflicts of the times in his blood, and is fated to predict in his actions and struggles the issues which will later erupt on all sides in the society. The first and clearest demonstration of this thesis is seen in the sexual problems which Freud found in his Victorian patients in the two decades before World War I. These sexual topics‒even down to the words‒were entirely denied and repressed by the accepted society at the time. But the problems burst violently forth into endemic form two decades later after World War II. In the 1920's, everybody was preoccupied with sex and its functions. Not by the furthest stretch of the imagination can anyone argue that Freud "caused" this emergence. He rather reflected and interpreted, through the data revealed by his patients, the underlying conflicts of the society, which the “normal” members could and did succeed in repressing for the time being. Neurotic problems are the language of the unconscious emerging into social awareness. A second, more minor example is seen in the great amount of hostility which was found in patients in the 1930's. This was written about by Horney, among others, and it emerged more broadly and openly as a conscious phenomenon in our society a decade later. A third major example may be seen in the problem of anxiety. In the late 1930's and early 1940's, some therapists, including myself, were impressed by the fact that in many of our patients anxiety was appearing not merely as a symptom of repression or pathology, but as a generalized character state. My research on anxiety, and that of Hobart Mowrer and others, began in the early 1940's. In those days very little concern had been shown in this country for anxiety other than as a symptom of pathology. I recall arguing in the late 1940's, in my doctoral orals, for the concept of normal anxiety, and my professors heard me with respectful silence but with considerable frowning. Predictive as the artists are, the poet W. H. Auden published his Age of Anxiety in 1947, and just after that Bernstein wrote his symphony on that theme. Camus was then writing (1947) about this “century of fear,” and Kafka already had created powerful vignettes of the coming age of anxiety in his novels, most of them as yet untranslated. The formulations of the scientific establishment, as is normal, lagged behind what our patients were trying to tell us. Thus, at the annual convention of the American Psychopathological Association in 1949 on the theme “Anxiety,” the concept of normal anxiety, presented in a paper by me, was still denied by most of the psychiatrists and psychologists present. But in the 1950's a radical change became evident; everyone was talking about anxiety and there were conferences on the problem on every hand. Now the concept of "normal" anxiety gradually became accepted in the psychiatric literature. Everybody, normal as well as neurotic, seemed aware that he was living in the “age of anxiety.” What had been presented by the artists and had appeared in our patients in the late 30's and 40's was now endemic in the land.

You’re all I want, Jane.” As he stroked her, he used his other hand to brush hers away so he could unfasten his own trouser buttons. “The only woman I ever cared about.” “You’re the only man Iever cared about.” She undulated against his fingers, begging for him with her body. “Why do you think…I waited for you so long?” “Not long enough, apparently,” he muttered, “or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself engaged to Blakeborough.” He tugged at her nipple with his teeth, then relished her cry of pleasure. “I only…did it because I was…tired of waiting.” She arched against his mouth. “Because you clearly weren’t…coming back for me.” “I was sure you hated me.” At last he got his trousers open. “You acted like you hated me still.” “I did.” Her breath was unsteady. “But only because…you tore us apart.” He shifted her to sit astride him. “And now?” Flashing him a provocative smile he would never have dreamed she had in her repertoire, she unbuttoned his drawers. “Do I look like I hate you?” His cock, so hard he thought it might erupt right there and embarrass him, sprang free. “You look like…like…” He paused to take in her lovely face with its flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, and lush lips. Then he swept his gaze down to her breasts with their brazen tips, displayed so enticingly above the boned corset and her undone shift. He then dropped his eyes to the smooth thighs emerging from beneath her bunched-up skirts. Shoving the fabric higher, he exposed her dewy thatch of curls, and a shudder of anticipation shook him. “You look like an angel.” She uttered a breathy laugh. “A wanton, more like.” Taking his cock in her hand, she stroked it so wonderfully that he groaned. “Would an angel do this?” His cock was a rod of iron. “Jane…” He covered her hand to stay it, but she ignored his attempt. “I love it when you can’t control yourself,” she whispered. “I love having you at my mercy. You have no idea…how much I enjoy seeing Dom the Almighty brought low.” He barely registered her words. What she was doing felt so good. So bloody damned good. If she stroked him much more… “I want to be inside you.” He gripped her wrist. “Please, Jane…” Her sensuous smile faltered. “You’ve never said ‘please’ to me before. Not in your whole life.” “Really?” Had he only ever issued orders? If so, no wonder she’d refused him last night. Perhaps it was time to show her she didn’t have to seduce him to gain control. That he could give up his control freely…to her, at least. “Then let me say it now. Please, Jane, make love to me. If you don’t mind.” She stared at him. “I…I don’t know what you mean.” He nodded to his cock, which looked downright ecstatic over the idea. “Get up on your knees and fit me inside you.” Realizing he’d just issued yet another order, he added, “Please. If you want.” Jane got that sultry look on her face again. Like the little seductress she was rapidly showing herself to be, she rose up and then came down on him. By degrees. Very slow degrees. He had trouble breathing. “Am I hurting you?” Her smile broadened as she shimmied down another inch. “Not really.” Stifling a curse, he clutched her arms. “You just…enjoy torturing me.” “Absolutely,” she said and moved his hands to cover her breasts. He was more than happy to oblige her unspoken request, happy to thumb her nipples and watch as her lovely mouth fell open and a moan of pure pleasure escaped her. His cock swelled, and he thrust up involuntarily. “Please…” he said hoarsely. “Please, Jane…” With a choked laugh, she sheathed herself on him. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh, that feels amazing.” “It would feel more amazing if you…would move,” he rasped, though the mere sensation of being buried inside her was making him insane. When she arched an eyebrow, he added, “Please.” “I could get to like this,” she said teasingly. “The begging.

Alis coughed from the shadows of the house, and I remembered to start walking, to look toward the dais- At Tamlin. The breath knocked from me, and it was an effort to keep going down the stairs, to keep going my knees from buckling. He was resplendent in a tunic of green and gold, a crown of burnished laurel leaves gleaming on his head. He'd loosened the grip on his glamour, letting that immortal light and beauty shine through- for me. My vision narrowed on him, on my High Lord, his wide eyes glistening as I stepped onto the soft grass, white rose petals scattered down it- And Red ones. Like drops of blood amongst the white, red petals had been sprayed across the path ahead. I forced my gaze up, to Tamlin, his shoulders back, head high. So unaware of the true extent of how broken and dark I was inside. How unfit I was to be clothed in white when my hands were so filthy. Everyone else was thinking it. They had to be. Every step was too fast, propelling me toward the dais and Tamlin. And toward Ianthe, clothed in dark blue robes tonight, beaming beneath the hood and silver crown. As if I were good- as if I hadn't murdered two of their kind. I was a murderer and a liar. A cluster of red petals loomed ahead- just like the Fae youth's blood had pooled at my feet. Ten steps from the dais, at the edge of that splatter of red, I slowed. Then stopped. Everyone was watching, exactly as they had when I'd nearly died, spectators to my torment. Tamlin extended a broad hand, brows narrowing slightly. My heart beat so fast, too fast. I was going to vomit. Right over those rose petals, right over the grass and ribbons trailing into the ailse from the chairs flanking it. And between my skin and bones, something thrummed and pounded, rising and pushing, lashing through my blood- So many eyes, too many eyes, pressed on me, witness to every crime I'd committed, every humiliation- I don't know why I'd even bothered to wear gloves, why I'd let Ianthe convince me. The fading sun was too hot, the garden too hedged in. As inescapable as the vow I was about to make, binding me to him forever, shackling him to my broken and weary soul. The thing inside me was roiling now, my body shaking with the building force of it as it hunted for a way out- Forever- I would never get better, never get free of myself, of the dungeon where I'd spent three months- 'Feyre,' Tamlin said, his hand steady, as he continued to reach for mine. The sun sank past the lip of the western garden wall; shadows pooled, chilling the air. If I turned away, they'd start talking, but I couldn't make the last few steps, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't- I was going to fall apart, right there, right then- and they'd see precisely how ruined I was. Help me, help me, help me, I begged someone, anyone. Begged Lucien, standing in the front row, his metal eye fixed on me. Begged Ianthe, face serene and patient and lovely within that hood. Save me- please, save me. Get me out. End this. Tamlin took a step toward me- concern shading those eyes. I retreated a step. No. Tamlin's mouth tightened. The crowd murmured. Silk streamers laden with globes of gold faelight twinkled into life above and around us. Ianthe said smoothly. 'Come, Bride and be joined with your true love. Come, Bride, and let good triumph at last.' Good. I was not good. I was nothing, and my soul, my eternal soul was damned- I tried to get my traitorous lungs to draw air so I could voice a word. No- no. But I didn't have to say it. Thunder crackled behind me, as if two boulders have been hurled against each other. People screamed, falling back, a few vanishing outright as darkness erupted. I whirled, and through the night drifting away like smoke on a wind, I found Rhysand straightening the lapels of his black jacket. 'Hello, Feyre darkling,' he purred.

{Excerpt from a message from one of the Cherokee chiefs - Onitositaii, commonly known as Old Tassle} ... 'If, therefore, a bare march, or reconnoitering a country is sufficient reason to ground a claim to it, we shall insist upon transposing the demand, and your relinquishing your settlements on the western waters and removing one hundred miles back towards the east, whither some of our warriors advanced against you in the course of last year's campaign. Let us examine the facts of your present eruption into our country, and we shall discover your pretentions on that ground. What did you do? You marched into our territories with a superior force; our vigilance gave us no timely notice of your manouvres [sic]; your numbers far exceeded us, and we fled to the stronghold of our extensive woods, there to secure our women and children. Thus, you marched into our towns; they were left to your mercy; you killed a few scattered and defenseless individuals, spread fire and desolation wherever you pleased, and returned again to your own habitations. If you meant this, indeed, as a conquest you omitted the most essential point; you should have fortified the junction of the Holstein and Tennessee rivers, and have thereby conquered all the waters above you. But, as all are fair advantages during the existence of a state of war, it is now too late for us to suffer for your mishap of generalship! Again, were we to inquire by what law or authority you set up a claim, I answer, none! Your laws extend not into our country, nor ever did. You talk of the law of nature and the law of nations, and they are both against you. Indeed, much has been advanced on the want of what you term civilization among the Indians; and many proposals have been made to us to adopt your laws, your religion, your manners, and your customs. But, we confess that we do not yet see the propriety, or practicability of such a reformation, and should be better pleased with beholding the good effect of these doctrines in your own practices than with hearing you talk about them, or reading your papers to us upon such subjects. You say: Why do not the Indians till the ground and live as we do? May we not, with equal propriety, ask, Why the white people do not hunt and live as we do? You profess to think it no injustice to warn us not to kill our deer and other game for the mere love of waste; but it is very criminal in our young men if they chance to kill a cow or a hog for their sustenance when they happen to be in your lands. We wish, however, to be at peace with you, and to do as we would be done by. We do not quarrel with you for killing an occasional buffalo, bear or deer on our lands when you need one to eat; but you go much farther; your people hunt to gain a livelihood by it; they kill all our game; our young men resent the injury, and it is followed by bloodshed and war. This is not a mere affected injury; it is a grievance which we equitably complain of and it demands a permanent redress. The Great God of Nature has placed us in different situations. It is true that he has endowed you with many superior advantages; but he has not created us to be your slaves. We are a separate people! He has given each their lands, under distinct considerations and circumstances: he has stocked yours with cows, ours with buffaloe; yours with hogs, ours with bear; yours with sheep, ours with deer. He has indeed given you an advantage in this, that your cattle are tame and domestic while ours are wild and demand not only a larger space for range, but art to hunt and kill them; they are, nevertheless, as much our property as other animals are yours, and ought not to be taken away without consent, or for something equivalent.' Those were the words of the Indians. But they were no binding on these whites, who were living beyond words, claims ...

Gabe loved watching her laugh, she always put her whole body into it—he used to tickle her when they were kids just to hear it. He especially enjoyed the cute snorts that went with the convulsive giggling. As he watched her erupt, he realized that he hadn’t heard her laugh like this in too long and that it had been wholly his fault.

Words touch him in ways, this air, this water, this earth haven't been able to. They touch him in ways only something like love or heartache can do. Something miniscule in the air erupts into something too large for his vision to comprehend. On the surface of his skin, goosebumps sprout, while he watches them rising in wonder. Unable to bear the lightness with which that music carries dense spirits of something as intangible as time, he glides away from the rock and flees from the song.

Ten best quotes of the book, “Miracles Through My Eyes” "Miracles Through My Eyes " by Dinesh Sahay Author- Mentor {This book was published on 23rd October in 2019) 1. “God is always there to fulfil each demand, prayer or wish provided you have intent; unshaken trust in Him, determination and action on the ground, and when this entire manifest in one’s life, then it becomes a miracle of life. Nothing moves without His grace. It comes when you are on the right path without selfish motives but will never happen when done for selfish and destructive motives”. 2. “All diseases are self-creation and they come due to some cause and it transforms into a disease by virtue of wrong thinking, wrong actions which are against nature, the universe and God. When you disobey the rules set by God. All misfortunes, accidents, deceases, and even death are the creation of negative, bad thoughts, spoken words and actions of man himself, at some stage of his life. All good events in life are also the creation of man through his good and positive thoughts at various stages of his life”. 3. “The biggest investments lie not in the savings and creation of wealth with selfish motives. Though you may find success this prosperity shall not be long lasting and at a later stage, the money and wealth may be lost slowly in many unfortunate ways”. 4. “If you want to have a successful life with ease and at the same time want abundance and wealth then my friend, you must care for others. You must start your all efforts to help by means of tithing, charity, service to mankind in any form, and help poor, helpless, needy and underprivileged.” 5. “The largest investment for a person (which is time tested by many rich personalities) shall be to give 10% of your monthly income for the charitable cause each month if you are a salaried class, and if you are a businessman or a company, then you must contribute 10% annually for charitable cause”. 6. “Nature is giving signals to the mankind that they are moving near to destruction of this earth as it’s a cause and effect of man-made destruction of earth and with all sins, hate, untruthfulness and violence it carried throughout the centuries and acted against the principals of the universe and nature. Those connected to the divine may escape from the clutches of death and destruction of the earth. We have witnessed many major catastrophes in the form of Tsunami’s, earthquakes, Tornado’s, Global warming and volcanic eruptions and the world is moving towards it further major happenings in times to come”. 7. “Let us pray for peace and harmony for all humanity and make this world a better place to live by our actions of love, compassion, truthfulness, non-violence, end of terrorism and peace on earth with no wars with any country. Let there will be single governance in the world, the governance of one religion, the religion of love, peace, prosperity and healthy living to all”. 8.” Forgive all the people who often unreasonable, self-centred or accuse you of selfish and forget the all that is said about you. It is your own inner reflection which you see in the outer world. 9. “Thought has a tremendous vibratory force which moves with limitless speed and, makes all creations in man’s life. Each thought vibrates to the frequency with which it was created by a person, whether that was good or bad, travels accordingly through the conscious and subconscious mind in space and the universe. It vibrates with time and energy to produces manifestation in the spiritual and materialistic world of man or woman or matter (thing), in form of events, happenings and creativity”.

The world is impermanent--the eruption of Mount St. Helens showed how quickly and drastically things can change. Yet we still can be good stewards of the things we love.

In the very beginning of her life, the girl-child has direct access to the spirit of life. It is as near to her as the breath that fills her. And it connects her to everything. She is not alone. Her spirit is one with the spirit of her beloved grandmother, her favorite rock, tree, and star. She develops her own methods for contacting the spirit in all things. She climbs a tree and sits in its branches, listening. She loves the woods and listens there too. She has a special friend—a rock. She gives it a name and eats her lunch with it whenever she can. She keeps the window open next to her bed even on the coldest of nights. She loves the fresh air on her face. She pulls the covers tight around her chin and listens to the mysterious night sky. She believes that her grandmother is present even though everyone else says she is dead. Each night, she drapes the curtain over her shoulders for privacy, looks out the window near her bed, listens for Grandma and then says silent prayers to her. Her imagination is free for a time. She does not need priest or teacher to describe god to her. Spirit erupts spontaneously in colorful and unique expressions. God is Grandma, the twinkling evening star, the gentle breeze that washes across her face, the peaceful quiet darkness after everyone has fallen asleep, and all the colors of the rainbow. And because she is a girl, her experience and expression of spirit is uniquely feminine. The spirit of the universe pulsates through her. She is full of herself.

When Alec died I scraped a place lower than I’d ever gone before. Lower than seemed possible while still being alive. But somehow, in the sickening, emptying howl of his death, I held on to the lessons of my mistakes. I looked back to a cold beach, an even colder ocean. I remembered bloody waves. I remembered the freshening scent of pine trees, the dark height of a mountain, how a gun felt as it erupted in my fingers. Then I looked again at the boy, and approached him the way one should approach a broken child—with concern, a net of safety, and something like love.

The beliefs in individual competition and reason we have been discussing are the ones which in actuality have guided modern western development, and are not necessarily the ideal values. To be sure, the values accepted as ideal by most people have been those of the Hebrew-Christian tradition allied with ethical humanism, consisting of such precepts as love thy neighbor, serve the community, and so on. On the whole, these ideal values have been taught in schools and churches hand in hand with the emphasis on competition and individual reason. (We can see the watered-down influence of the values of “service” and “love” coming out in roundabout fashion in the “service clubs” and the great emphasis on being “well liked.”) Indeed, the two sets of values—the one running back many centuries to the sources of our ethical and religious traditions in ancient Palestine and Greece and the other born in the Renaissance—were to a considerable extent wedded. For example, Protestantism, which was the religious side of the cultural revolution beginning in the Renaissance, expressed the new individualism by emphasizing each person’s right and ability to find religious truth for himself. The marriage had a good deal to be said for it, and for several centuries the squabbles between the marriage partners were ironed out fairly well. For the ideal of the brotherhood of man was to a considerable extent furthered by economic competition—the tremendous scientific gains, the new factories and the more rapid moving of the wheels of industry increased man’s material weal and physical health immensely, and for the first time in history our factories and our science can now produce so much that it is possible to wipe starvation and material want from the face of the earth. One could well have argued that science and competitive industry were bringing mankind ever closer to its ethical ideals of universal brotherhood. But in the last few decades it has become clear that this marriage is full of conflict, and is headed for drastic overhauling or for divorce. For now the great emphasis on one person getting ahead of the other, whether it be getting higher grades in school, or more stars after one’s name in Sunday school, or gaining proof of salvation by being economically successful, greatly blocks the possibilities of loving one’s neighbor. And, as we shall see later, it even blocks the love between brother and sister and husband and wife in the same family. Furthermore, since our world is now made literally “one world” by scientific and industrial advances, our inherited emphasis on individual competitiveness is as obsolete as though each man were to deliver his own letters by his own pony express. The final eruption which showed the underlying contradictions in our society was fascist totalitarianism, in which the humanist and Hebrew-Christian values, particularly the value of the person, were flouted in a mammoth upsurgence of barbarism.

This is grown-up mac and cheese that you could easily serve to company. Of course, it’s wonderful that butternut squash is packed with beta-carotene, but it’s also a pretty amazing substitute for lots of cream and cheese when making mac and cheese. I personally love a little bit of Gorgonzola Dolce (a mild, slightly sweet Italian blue cheese) here, but a sharp cheddar or smoked Gouda would also be great. 5 ounces frozen diced butternut squash ¼ cup low-sodium vegetable stock Pinch salt Pinch nutmeg Pinch cayenne pepper Pinch freshly ground black pepper 8 ounces prepared, packaged gnocchi 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 garlic clove, minced 2 fresh sage leaves 1 ounce Gorgonzola Dolce or other mild blue cheese 1 tablespoon heavy cream (optional) 1.In a saucepan, bring the butternut squash and vegetable stock to a boil. Cover, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until the squash is very tender. 2.Transfer the squash and vegetable stock to a blender. Add the salt, nutmeg, cayenne, and black pepper, and blend on low speed until it’s completely smooth. (Make sure your blender is no more than half full or the hot liquid may erupt through the lid.) 3.Taste and add additional salt if needed. Set the squash aside. 4.Using the same saucepan, cook the

Meoraq reached out and caught at her leg before she could flee. He rubbed his brow-ridges, cursing himself and all the words be could not make, because there was no way to tell her that it wasn't sex, it wasn't either that fierce eruptive will of Sheul or the shameful temptation of Gann, but this... this nameless thing that was neither fire nor clay but as constant as the wind, sometimes a storm and sometimes only a breeze, was always with him. No, it wasn't sex, but it had to be something that made him look for reasons to sit with her, to speak with her, even to fight with her if that was all there was, because even the most tedious and foul chore of curing a damned animal hide could become something to look forward to if he was with her. And it wasn't sex, but he wished it was; it wasn't sex, but if it had been, even that could be good, could even be glorious, just because it was with her.

9 We were antonyms The chemical imbalance An erupted Yellowstone Creek volcano We were lost in translation Our bodies equally in contemplation This has to be it The myriad form of intoxication. The Metaphor of Metamorphosis 10 A glacial naked body "A poetic equivalent of representation Governed in your mind as an option of versatility I was only one of your many drafts How naïve of me to think that this, this was love at first sight.

Around the throne, the worship of God the Father is not a “should” or an “ought,” but something that erupts out of a joy and ecstasy that NDErs say they just can’t contain. They never want to stop—that’s how wonderful it is to be with God.

Meg quickened her pace when she saw a meadow peek out over the next hilltop. As she got closer, the sun seemed to pull away from the clouds and the grass under her feet turned a bright green. She heard definite sounds of a party in the distance and quickened her pace. The air started to smell sweeter. Were those apricots she smelled? Or figs? And there were trees again! She hadn't realized how much she missed them till she saw them growing there along the path. They had perfect little green leaves and flowers budding on branches. And at the side of the road was a woman kneeling over a garden tending to a bed of hydrangeas blooming in rich fuchsias, blues, and whites. "Those are gorgeous!" Meg said in surprise. They were the most colorful things she'd seen in the Underworld and the vibrancy warmed her heart for a moment. "I can't believe anything like that grows down here!" The woman looked up at her and smiled, her eyes dark yet warm. "Thanks. I wasn't sure if it was possible myself, but with deep rooting and some good soil, it seems anything is." "You planted these?" Meg said in awe. The woman looked pleased as she glanced at the colorful beds of blooms in the nearby meadows. "You could say that. I love the drama of it all- the seeds being sown, the elements working for and against them, the flower erupting against all odds, then the death of the bloom. So much more exciting than my old life.

A spirit of practicality had come to her aid. It was only human. When the earthquake stops, when the flood recedes, when the volcanic dust settles or the guns fall silent, the survivors pick their way through the rubble and debris and wreckage. A chair leg here, a first communion certificate or a bundle of love letters there. The flotsam and jetsam of the old ways―the ways that will never return.

None of my training can prepare me for this, to find her lifeless, and lost to me, forever. My jaw so tight it aches, I haul the lid up and look down. An empty pod glares back at me. I stand and turn full circle, unseeing, as panic wrestles my mind to the ground. I don't know if she's alive, or dead, or on the brink of dying of hunger. This is worse than trying to find her pod. A thousand million times worse. She could be anywhere. She will think she's alone, she will believe I didn't come for her, or that I didn't survive all this. And it hits me, with all the force of a star collapsing into a black hole. I wasn't there. I. Wasn't. There. 'Blue!' I bellow into the day made into night. Anguish claws at me, tears me into shreds. To be so close to where she was and to have lost her. It's unbearable. 'Blue!' I shout with all the force of my once-military voice, fuelled by fear, dread, and the ache of my love, burned to hell. In the distance, a startled rush erupts from the marsh, what sounds like hundreds of leathery wings against the air. Then, nothing. I look up, wracked with hopelessness. Through the sparse tufts of the treetops, the stars continue their relentless slide across the heavens, even though it's the middle of the day. How the fuck will I ever find her in this endless, overgrown wilderness? I won't. It's impossible. She will die and this place will bury her in its vines. I know I will never find her again. I close my eyes and in the constellation of my mind, my pole star dies.

when the past and the future tug upon the present moment with delicate, unrelenting arms when ambition overreaches talent when dull-dark sunshine penetrates closed eyelids when the heart disregards the mind when the imaginary friend appears before the child when a sudden clap of thunder echoes across the meadow of intuition when the glint of an erupting star spreads over eons like a faint, frozen scream when blue-purple twilight settles upon the garden when the jaguar’s cuspids wrench open the elephant’s cranium when dew droplets gather upon the anthers of a cherry blossom when the Earth turns so slowly upon its axis only electrons can feel its drag when a summer’s night sitting by the water’s edge can stretch into forever… - We Pass Away, Alice Evermore

Notes as unfinished business, unattended potential, the writing that is closest to life. Which is terrible. Fragments of potential, they attend to the fantasy that effort is not wasted. Like sowing seeds, but without that loving deliberation. A blind, unconscious hope that a fragment of a thought caught in a note might germinate in a natural way, without tending; that it might wiggle down to find a sip of water, catch a slice of sun through the specks of soil and erupt into the light.

Annabeth drew her dagger. Instead of dropping it, she tossed it as far as she could into the water. Octavian made a squeaking sound. ‘What was that for? I didn’t say toss it! That could’ve been evidence. Or spoils of war!’ Annabeth tried for a dumb-blonde smile, like: Oh, silly me. Nobody who knew her would have been fooled. But Octavian seemed to buy it. He huffed in exasperation. ‘You other two …’ He pointed his blade at Hazel and Piper. ‘Put your weapons on the dock. No funny bus–’ All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armour. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth’s dagger. ‘You dropped this,’ he said, totally poker-faced. Annabeth threw her arms around him. ‘I love you!’ ‘Guys,’ Hazel interrupted. She had a little smile on her face. ‘We need to hurry.’ Down in the water, Octavian yelled, ‘Get me out of here! I’ll kill you!’ ‘Tempting,’ Percy called down. ‘What?’ Octavian shouted. He was holding on to one of his guards, who was having trouble keeping them both afloat. ‘Nothing!’ Percy shouted back. ‘Let’s go, guys.’ Hazel frowned. ‘We can’t let them drown, can we?’ ‘They won’t,’ Percy promised. ‘I’ve got the water circulating around their feet. As soon as we’re out of range, I’ll spit them ashore.’ Piper grinned. ‘Nice.

The first day we met, she kept on looking at me with her tender and sensitive eyes. And from that day, when she and I met, I have felt strange sensations erupt inside my heart. She would come from wherever she would be to welcome me at my apartment. She gets into tumultuous joy when she sees me in the garden area, where I sit in the afternoon to sunbath in the Sun. And in the evenings when I make coffee for myself, she stays nearby to give me company. Leela truly loves me. (She is a beautiful doggie who stays near my apartment).

He turned a startled glance on her and found himself locked in her gaze. It was astonishing. He could not move his eyes away from her. A profound fear coursed through and he felt his hands begin to twitch. ‘You live where the fear of being and the love of being are combined, all in one person,’ she said. He could not blink. ‘You are a mystic,’ she said, ‘gentle to yourself only because you are in the middle of that universe looking outward, looking in ways that others cannot. You fear to share this, yet you want to share it more than anything else.’ ‘What have you seen?’ he whispered. ‘I have no inner eye, no inner voices,’ she said. ‘But I have seen my Lord Leto, whose soul I love, and I know the only thing that you truly understand.’ He broke from her gaze, fearful of what she might say. The trembling of his hands could be felt all through his front segment. ‘Love, that is what you understand,’ she said. ‘Love, and that is all of it.’ His hands stopped trembling. A tear rolled down each of his cheeks. When the tears touched his cowl, wisps of blue smoke erupted. He sensed the burning and was thankful for the pain. ‘You have faith in life,’ Hwi said. ‘I know that the courage of love can reside only in this faith.

John loved being with his son, but in short bursts. His moods could be unpredictable and at times he was intolerant and impatient with Julian. On one occasion I remember him shouting at the dinner-table because Julian was eating messily. I was livid and stormed, ‘If you were here more often you’d realise that this is how little boys of three eat. Now leave him alone.’ I rushed upstairs in tears: the shock on Julian’s face when John had erupted at him had really upset me.

Ishmael’s transformation echoes what was happening to the northern portion of the United States when Melville was working on Moby-Dick. During the fall of 1850 and the winter of 1851, Boston became the epicenter of outrage over the Fugitive Slave Law, and Melville’s father-in-law, Judge Lemuel Shaw, was the reluctant focal point. Although Shaw hated slavery, he also loved his country and its laws, which it was his duty to uphold. So it was Shaw who ordered that a slave who’d made his way to Boston be turned over to his Southern captors. Riots and general bedlam erupted, with Shaw being hanged in effigy after the decision. New England gentlemen who had once viewed the South from the safety of their own mastheads had finally been drawn into slavery’s pernicious vortex. What to do? Nothing, of course. As Starbuck discovers, simply being a good guy with a positive worldview is not enough to stop a force of nature like Ahab, who feeds on the fears and hatreds in us all. “My soul is more than matched,” Starbuck laments, “she’s overmanned; and by a madman!” Just like Starbuck, America’s leaders in the 1850s looked at one another with vacant, deer-in-the-headlights stares as the United States, a great and noble country crippled by a lie, slowly but inevitably sailed toward its cataclysmic encounter with the source of its discontents.

Monsieur voundriez-vous de l’eau? (Sir would you like some water?)” the waiter asked Gabe. “Eeeewww la weee weee,” Gabe responded. “Excuse me sir, I don’t understand,” the waiter responded. Exactly my point, my nigga, I don’t understand yo ass and clearly you speak English! Speak English on this side of the table,” Gabe said, and the table erupted in laughter.

Damn, Ma, you and pop gone be eighty pushing a damn stroller in the park. People gonna think that's y'all great grandbaby and spawn gonna really be y'all baby. That's fucked up!" Gabe yelled out and the room erupted in laughter. I was bent the hell over, somebody needed to get that dude a mic.

Ok, nigga. I see you. I would tell you how fine she is, but Bear might hear that shit in her dreams and wake up ready to beat my ass. So, she aight, you could do better." We all burst out laughing, and it was good that we broke the ice because the tensions were high. We just had to work on Shawn because that nigga was a volcano waiting to erupt.

In 1956 the senior petroleum exploration geologist for the USSR said, The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths. But few people listened to those words. Raymond Learsy, in his 2005 book Over a Barrel, wrote, Nothing lasts: not fame, fortune, beauty, love, power, youth, or life itself. Scarcity rules. Accordingly, scarcity—or more accurately, the perception of scarcity—spells opportunity for manipulators. The best example of this is OPEC, which continues to extract obscene profits from a scarcity of its own creation. Learsy, though, leaves no doubt. He, and many others, the Russians included, are absolutely convinced. Oil is not scarce. We only fear that it is.

are dealing with some pretty heavy burdens of their own. I did not want to add another. You’ve shown yourself to be capable of making hard decisions, Seven. The impossible task is not for the faint of heart, and it was invoked because of your bravery. I have a strong inkling you can handle this.” “I don’t know if I can do it on my own,” Seven said. The Gran looked right into Seven’s eyes. “You don’t have to do it on your own, Seven. You are never alone—remember that. Even if the people you love and count on can’t be by your side, they are always in your heart. We will all keep a closer eye on Beefy and his magic; there are ways to keep him close to home. I know you will figure out the impossible task with Thorn and Valley. Let them help you.” The Uncle came back into the room with Valley and Thorn, talking loudly about the wonders of crystal spheres, and Seven hid the bird in her cloak. She felt terrible about being singled out. She didn’t want to be responsible for making that kind of choice. It was a lot to put on her shoulders. “Rulean, come. We must prepare healing tonics for the Witchlings to take tonight so their wounds don’t get infected.” A staircase appeared in the ground, and she floated down to some unknown room, the Town Uncle following close behind. The moment they’d left, Valley erupted. “Great, another thing to worry about,” Valley said.

Alex’s presence crackled with coiled energy, and I had the unnerving sense that beneath all that ice lay a volcano waiting to erupt—and God help whoever was around when that happened.

And yikes. When it happens, the eruption shoots across the space he’s created by pulling me back and lands on my face, covering it like the most glorious glaze on my delighted donut face.

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

jerked so hard the move almost made them lose their connection. “Fuck!” Green felt the large muscles of Ruxs’ back grow ridged and tighten like he was on his one hundredth pull-up. God he fucking loved this man. Ruxs inhaled hard, took what was given him. Green kept the same intensity in his thrust, but he slowed the fucking down, made it precious. Ruxs made a sound like he was in pain. Large hands came up and grabbed a fist full of Green’s hair. Ruxs tightened his hold on him, now it was Green’s turn to make a painful sound. When Ruxs’ ass clamped down on his cock, Green dropped his head back to the pillow. He pinched harder and Ruxs’ body went still and then hard as stone. His come burst from him. Long streams of white lava erupted over Ruxs’ rippled stomach. He heard him, felt Ruxs growl and jolt with each release. Green barked a startled cry as his orgasm dug its claws in and roared through his core, to settle in his balls, consuming them with heat. He freed Ruxs’ tortured nipples and pulled the tight ass down on his cock, pressing it firmly into his pelvis just in time for his cock to thicken and shoot deep inside that throbbing channel. Deep enough for Ruxs to feel it in his soul. And he knew he did because the affectionately whispered, “Chris” that left his lover’s lips told him their bonding was sealed.

I’ll call Ash—” Frustration, anger, and something else he couldn’t explain bubbled up inside him, erupting furiously. “I don’t want Ash, goddammit. I want you! I fucking love you!” Dex

Cutting down a wall, the wall sawyer could feel the tension in a home ease and something windy rush in circles round her feet. It was addictive, each a sweet victory of art. The tumbling motion of a falling wall was like a volcanic eruption fading into a mountain of roses. The wall sawyer felt a loving animosity toward walls. “You must pay attention to your obsessions, where life and love intersect,” she told the little queen. 

Sit down and allow me to have a look at that cut.” Helping her to sit, he grabbed his stool and scooted it in front of her before reaching for his ample supply of ready-made bandages. “So,” he said, allowing a smirk to grow across his face. “You claim you weren’t snooping, and yet you were deliberately looking through articles on my desk. Very suspect, I must say.”  She refused to meet his gaze and he strangled the chuckle that wished for escape. He had to tease her a bit more. “I’m surprised at you, Kitty. I thought you were above such things.”  Kitty tried to tug her hand away and her tone tightened. “I really wasn’t, Nathaniel, I—” “Quiet now and stay still.” Keeping a stern look in his eyes he allowed a small quirk at the corner of his mouth. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and looked away, and suddenly the desire to scoot his stool closer swelled beyond the bounds of its levy. With a quick shake of his head, he ignored it. Nearly. Nathaniel pulled her injured hand closer. Lost in the feel of her skin against his, every sense of teasing faded. He took a long inhale of the scent of cinnamon that always seemed to follow her and regained focus on her injury. Fairly deep, and though the blood oozed steadily, ‘twas nothing serious. With a flick of his wrist he opened the bandage with one hand, applied pressure, and started wrapping. Wriggling, Kitty sat straighter. “I’m... I’m so sorry, Nathaniel. I feel simply terrible about the lamp, and soiling your books and papers with all that oil. I do hope you can forgive me.” Her silken voice draped around him like a fond embrace. Must she be so charming?  “Forgive you?” He pulled back, fighting the yearnings with a strong measure of humor. “I’m not sure I can.”  He almost regretted taking his jesting so far when her chin popped up and her dainty brows pinched low. “Nathaniel, I...” She started to protest, then humphed back in her seat with the most delightful twist on her lips. Nathaniel erupted in laughter while Kitty’s pert mouth curved sideways into a smile that stroked his masculine pride. He sighed, calming his jubilant nature. “Think nothing of it, Kitty. There is very little damage done.” He

Maturation in the psychological realm involves the differentiation of the elements of consciousness — thoughts, feelings, impulses, values, opinions, preferences, interests, intentions, aspirations. Differentiation needs to happen before these elements of consciousness can be mixed to produce tempered experience and expression. It is the same in the realm of relationships: maturation requires that the child first becomes unique and separate from other individuals. The better differentiated she becomes, the more she is able to mix with others without losing her sense of self. More fundamentally, a sense of self first needs to separate from inner experience, a capacity entirely absent in the young child. The child has to be able to know that she is not identical with whatever feeling happens to be active in her at any particular moment. She can feel something without her actions being necessarily dominated by that feeling. She can be aware of other, conflicting feelings, or of thoughts, values, commitments that might run counter to the feeling of the moment. She can choose. Both Peter and Sarah lacked a relationship with themselves because this prerequisite division had not yet occurred. They were not given to reflecting on their inner experience, agreeing or disagreeing with themselves, approving or disapproving of what they saw within. Because their feelings and thoughts were not differentiated enough to withstand mixing, they were capable of only one feeling or impulse at a time. Neither of them was given to statements like “Part of me feels this way and part of me feels that way.” Neither of them had “on the other hand” kind of experiences, nor felt ambivalent about erupting in frustration or about avoiding things. Without the capacity for reflection, they were defined by the inner experience of the moment. They immediately acted out whatever emotions arose in them. They could be their inner experience but they could not see it. This inability made them impulsive, egocentric, reactive, and impatient. Because frustration did not mix with caring, they had no patience. Because anger did not mix with love, they showed no forgiveness. Because frustration did not mix with either fear or affection, they lost their tempers. In short, they lacked maturity.

She came across as charming and efficient, but problems erupted as soon as she started. Two of my best people threatened to quit, so I took her off the project.” I could barely watch as she laughed and yakked like an intimate friend of both Ian’s and Baldacchio’s. On tonight of all nights, the opening of Abraham’s exhibition. I had to wonder, was she here because of me? Everyone in the business knew he’d been my teacher and mentor. Was I completely paranoid? I would’ve loved to pursue the topic of Minka’s shortcomings and find out how in the world she’d finagled a job at the Covington in the first place, but Abraham’s friend Doris interrupted us just then, grabbing Abraham’s arm and giving it a vigorous shake. “Now, what were you yelling about, old man?” she said. I almost snorted. “Doris Bondurant,” Abraham said formally, “I’d like to introduce my former assistant and now my greatest competition, Brooklyn Wainwright. Brooklyn, this is my old friend Doris Bondurant.” “Watch who you’re calling old, buster,” she said, and elbowed Abraham in

Your Holiness, many believe that as a monk you have renounced pleasure or enjoyment.” “And sex,” the Dalai Lama added, although that was not exactly where I was going. “What?” the Archbishop said. “Sex, sex,” the Dalai Lama repeated. “Did you just say that?” the Archbishop said incredulously. “Oh, oh,” the Dalai Lama said with a laugh, noticing the Archbishop’s surprise, and then reached over to reassure him, which caused the Archbishop to erupt in a gleeful cackle. “So aside from sex,” I said, trying to bring us back, “have you renounced pleasure and enjoyment? I sat next to you at lunch, and it looked like you were really enjoying the wonderful food. What is the role for you of enjoying the pleasures of life?” “I love food. Without food, my body can’t survive. You also,” he said, turning to the Archbishop, “can’t just think God, God, God. I cannot just think about compassion, compassion, compassion. Compassion will not fill my stomach. But, you see, each meal we have to develop the ability to consume the meal without attachment.” “Huh?” the Archbishop asked, not quite following how the Dalai Lama was using the Buddhist term attachment, and perhaps also not quite following how anyone could not be attached to one’s food. “Not eating out of greed,” the Dalai Lama explained. “Eating only for the survival of the body. One must think about the deeper value of nourishing the body.

Many of the features of the Calvary Atonement are in this frightening chapter, because all that was fulfilled by Calvary is now to be consummated. The blood, the darkness, and the fierce heat of the sun—emblematic of the wrath of God—and demons incite men to their last conflict with God. Why are they here? Their presence is to warn men that if they reject Christ’s Atonement they too will endure the Cross. After probation’s close, when terrible wars with their blood-shedding erupt, and nature testifies to man’s rebellion by drought and famine, when evil angels control the thoughts of men, then will Calvary be reenacted, but this time on the rejecters of God’s love. All must sacrifice. Either we sacrifice our all for Christ our Saviour, or we sacrifice true joy, contentment, and the life to come.

The colt closed its eyes. I was still kneeling next to it and something felt wrong. “I think it stopped breathing.” Maurus knelt beside me. The colt’s chest was definitely not moving. I bent and pressed my ear to its chest. The wet hide was slick and warm. “His heart is beating,” I said, “but weak and fast.” Maurice rubbed the colt’s chest briskly, but it did not start breathing. He strongly massaged the spine along its neck and smacked its flank, but it did not respond. He grimaced with sadness. “So close, little son. So close! Why won’t you breathe?” Owiti seemed on the verge of tears. “Let me try,” I said. I had once seen my cousin breathe into a lamb’s nostrils after a rough birth to prompt its respiration. The lamb had not resuscitated. But I needed to try whatever I could to help the newborn colt. I lifted the colt’s heavy head into my lap and opened my mouth wide, wrapping my lips around its soft nostrils. Holding its mouth closed with a hand pressed above and below its jaws, I breathed into it. Its lungs inflated, and I paused. The air spilled out. I filled its lungs and let them deflate again. I kept up a rhythm breathing into the nostrils, its lungs swelling and spilling like bellows, but it would not breathe on its own. Tears sprang to my eyes. The colt was so beautiful—new life still damp with the dew from the dawn of creation. A loud cry erupted from my heart and I slugged its chest with the heel of my palm, commanding it with all my love and hope, “Ata khayav likhiot—You must live!” The colt snorted and bucked in a spasm, kicked its long legs and jerked up its head, eyes wide open. He began inhaling and exhaling. I looked at Maurus, delighted. He regarded me with open wonder, then pulled me up off my knees into a crushing hug. He lifted me over his head like a straw doll and twirled around once, then set me down and repeated his ecstatic dance with Owiti. When he had set Owiti back on the dirt floor, Maurus beamed at me. “Did I just witness a miracle? Tell me the truth. Can you command the spirit of life?” “Of course not,” I said, laughing. “I’m Martis, not Mithras! No man tells the spirit what to do.” Yet in that moment in the lamp-lit stable, I knew what the Tanakh calls Ruach ha’Kodesh, the Whole Breath. The one breath the newborn colt and I shared, the very same breath the Giver of Life shared with man, blowing into Adam’s nostrils. The mutual breath of all existence.

Max spread my legs and knelt between them. The tip of his cock pressed against my hole and a shiver ran down my spine. “Oh, fuck. I’ve been thinking about this since the last time.” I had been. The thought of his dick up my ass was firmly rooted in the back of my mind no matter my task. “You mean last night?” He snorted. I lifted my head and saw his reflection; he was smiling. “I…” Max pressed his tip inside me. Yeah, I completely forgot what I was going to say. My whole body clenched up and then relaxed as he gently coaxed his length deeper. “Fuck it all to Earth, that feels amazing.” He kept pushing forward, slowly piercing me. “Yes, yes it does.” I grunted when he went deeper, spreading, filling, overpowering. Then Max leaned over me. He practically laid on me, his front pressed along my back. His hands stretched out, falling over mine and our hands twined together. Being that I was shorter it was the perfect position to hold my hands and fuck me. He softly placed kisses along my shoulder and licked my earlobe. “Elric. I love you.” Those words made me smile as wide as I could. He loved me! Max eased his cock out and then back in. His pace was completely controlled, forcing me to experience unending pleasure as his words swirled in my head. “Max,” I muttered against the blankets. Each thrust made my dick slid against the pants under my hips. I squeezed his hands harder as he humped me. His teeth grazed the back of my neck. He was breathing heavier. His movements were a bit more rushed. My cock was swelling to the brim. Between his beautiful length stabbing me and my dick rubbing along that material, I was going to blow. I could feel the tension building. My balls were tight to my body, the pressure too much. I moaned, meeting Max thrust for thrust. He groaned in my ear. Our warm bodies squirmed against each other. “Oh, yes. Please. Yes.” It felt so good. I had to come. Please, I’m so close. Almost. Almost there. Max went deep in one long, slightly painful move. The mixture sent me right over the edge. I let out a moan too low to hear as my orgasm spilled out. Even as I rutted against the pants Max held still, holding my hands and letting me ride the wave of pleasure. I was in sensation overload as cum sprayed out of my slit. Warm and sticky, I thrusted one last time and then collapsed. Max started again, slowly working his way deeper and then pulling out. Once, twice, then three times. I counted each move as I closed my eyes and savored the feeling of his body over mine. He was like a cocoon of warmth and … cock. Yeah, that sounded accurate. “Max.” He started moving faster, his length slipping in and out of my ass. “Max.” He squeezed my hands and kissed my shoulder. “Max.” He came, his body erupting behind me as he started in a fit of groans. They echoed in the room as he emptied into me. When he slowed to a stop, we both laid there a moment.

1. The End of Summer The moon rose high in the sky. Rylie’s veins pulsed with its power. It pressed against her bones, strained against her muscles, and fought to erupt from her flesh. A wolf’s howl broke the silence of the night. It called to her, telling her to change. “No,” she whimpered, digging fingernails into her shins hard enough to draw blood. “No.” Rylie burned. The fire was going to consume her. The moon called her name, but it would be the end of her humanity if she obeyed it. She would never see her family again. She would never see her friends or graduate high school. Rylie might not die, but her life would be over. Yet if she didn’t change, the boy she loved would die at the jaws of the one who changed her. Rylie had to lose him or lose her entire life. But was love worth becoming a monster?

When we fulfill our vocation, when love-dispensing families fan out across the globe, we subdue the planet by a kind of husbandry that prospers the world and all it contains. By the far-flung migrations of families reflecting the self-giving image of God, creation erupts in a song of impassioned thanksgiving to its Maker.

Therefore Christ cannot be found in the place of human wisdom, but in the place of faith. Faith comes from the heart, and when the Holy Spirit enters the heart of man he finds salvation. When the Holy Spirit enters, love erupts from the heart by faith, and it justifies a man. The nature of love fulfills the perfect law of liberty. Therefore it is not with the mind we find Christ for salvation, but with the heart.

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

Skin to skin Salt on your skin Wave after wave An eruption of emotions.

find it interesting, given the controversies over alcohol that would eventually erupt in the history of the Christian church, that the arrival of Christianity in the world and its eventual sway over the empire did not diminish the Roman love of beer. For the early Christians, drunkenness was the sin—as their apostles had repeatedly taught—and not the consumption of alcohol. After all, their Lord had miraculously created wine at a wedding feast, the fledgling church drank wine at its sacred meals, and Christian leaders even instructed their disciples to take wine as a cure for ailments. Clearly, beer and wine used in moderation were welcomed by the early Christians and were taken as a matter of course. It was excess and drunkenness and the immorality that came from both that the Christians opposed.