“
When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
“
Now, let's never talk about you being related to her again. Because I'm technically still engaged to her, and that's really weird."
Cinder couldn't help laughing, even exhaustedly, even just to cover up the screaming inside, as he bound her up in his arms again. Her headache began to fade, replaced with the strength of his heartbeat and the way she felt almost delicate when she was pressed up against him like this.
Almost fragile.
Almost safe.
Almost like a princess.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself - that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you didn't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air of a tire.
”
”
Stephen King (It)
“
Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart's strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name.
”
”
Anne Michaels (Fugitive Pieces)
“
My dream of having four children was replaced by utter gratitude that I was able to get pregnant three times, and give birth to two beautiful girls, who exhaust me spiritually, financially, and emotionally.
”
”
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
“
quit beating yourself up for having a skill deficit when what you really have is a support deficit. Self-care was never meant to be a replacement for community care.9 Striving to “be better” will exhaust the little energy you have, and it’s probably time better spent letting yourself cry and sleep and finding small pockets of joy to keep you going.
”
”
K.C. Davis (How to Keep House While Drowning)
“
There is not one single invention of (Nature's), however subtle or impressive it may be thought to be, that the human spirit cannot create; no forest of Fontainebleu or moonlit scene that cannot be produced with a floodlit stage set; no waterfall that hydraulics cannot imitate so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from the original; no rock that papier-mâché cannot copy; no flower that specious taffetas and delicately painted papers cannot rival! There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artiface.
”
”
Joris-Karl Huysmans (Against Nature)
“
Thousands of those men and boys died here, and I have recently learned that their inhuman treatment was the intended policy of Himmler. He called his plan Death by Exhaustion, and he implemented it. Work them hard, don't waste valuable foodstuffs on them, and let them die. They could, and would, always be replaced by new slave workers from Europe's Occupied countries.
”
”
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
“
The relations one has with a woman one loves (and that can apply also to love for a youth) can remain platonic for other reasons than the chastity of the woman or the unsensual nature of the love she inspires. The reason may be that the lover is too impatient and by the very excess of his love is unable to await the moment when he will obtain his desires by sufficient pretence of indifference. Continually, he returns to the charge, he never ceases writing to her whom he loves, he is always trying to see her, she refuses herself, he becomes desperate. From that time she knows, if she grants him her company, her friendship, that these benefits will seem so considerable to one who believed he was going to be deprived of them, that she need grant nothing more and that she can take advantage of the moment when he can no longer bear being unable to see her and when, at all costs, he must put an end to the struggle by accepting a truce which will impose upon him a platonic relationship as its preliminary condition. Moreover, during all the time that preceded this truce, the lover, in a constant state of anxiety, ceaselessly hoping for a letter, a glance, has long ceased thinking of the physical desire which at first tormented him but which has been exhausted by waiting and has been replaced by another order of longings more painful still if left unsatisfied. The pleasure formerly anticipated from caresses will later be accorded but transmuted into friendly words and promises of intercourse which brings delicious moments after the strain of uncertainty or after a look impregnated with such coldness that it seemed to remove the loved one beyond hope of his ever seeing her again. Women divine all this and know they can afford the luxury of never yielding to those who, from the first, have betrayed their inextinguishable desire. A woman is enchanted if, without giving anything, she can receive more than she generally gets when she does give herself.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7])
“
The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself -- that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you don't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons with the Burma-Shave slogans on the sides. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You could go on wearing blue-jeans, you could keep going to Springsteen and Seger concerts, you could dye your hair, but that was a grownup's face in the mirror just the same. It all happened while you were asleep, maybe, like a visit from a Tooth Fairy.
”
”
Stephen King (It)
“
When depression sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark … ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness … afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won’t. We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe. When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.
”
”
Jenny Lawson
“
The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself - that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use.
”
”
Stephen King (It)
“
Mallarmé described this agony as a battle that took place on God's "boney wing". "I struggled with that creature of ancient and evil plumage-- God-- whom I fortunately defeated and threw to earth", he told Cazalis with exhausted satisfaction. Eventually Mallarmé began replacing "le ciel" with 'l'Azur" in his poems, in an effort to rinse references to the sky of religious connotations. "Fortunately," he wrote Cazalis, "I am quite dead now.
”
”
Maggie Nelson (Bluets)
“
He had not stopped looking into her eyes, and she showed no signs of faltering. He gave a deep sigh and recited:
"O sweet treasures, discovered to my sorrow." She did not understand.
"It is a verse by the grandfather of my great-great-grandmother," he explained. "He wrote three eclogues, two elegies, five songs, and forty sonnets. Most of them for a Portuguese lady of very ordinary charms who was never his, first because he was married, and then because she married another man and died before he did."
"Was he a priest too?"
"A soldier," he said.
Something stirred in the heart of Sierva María, for she wanted to hear the verse again. He repeated it, and this time he continued, in an intense, well-articulated voice, until he had recited the last of the forty sonnets by the cavalier of amours and arms Don Garcilaso de la Vega, killed in his prime by a stone hurled in battle.When he had finished, Cayetano took Sierva María's hand and placed it over his heart. She felt the internal clamor of his suffering.
"I am always in this state," he said.
And without giving his panic an opportunity, he unburdened himself of the dark truth that did not permit him to live. He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. He continued to speak without looking at her, with the same fluidity and passion as when he recited poetry, until it seemed to him that Sierva María was sleeping. But she was awake, her eyes, like those of a startled deer, fixed on him. She almost did not dare to ask:
"And now?"
"And now nothing," he said. "It is enough for me that you know."
He could not go on. Weeping in silence, he slipped his arm beneath her head to serve as a pillow, and she curled up at his side. And so they remained, not sleeping, not talking, until the roosters began to crow and he had to hurry to arrive in time for five-o'clock Mass. Before he left, Sierva María gave him the beautiful necklace of Oddúa: eighteen inches of mother-of-pearl and coral beads.
Panic had been replaced by the yearning in his heart. Delaura knew no peace, he carried out his tasks in a haphazard way, he floated until the joyous hour when he escaped the hospital to see Sierva María. He would reach the cell gasping for breath, soaked by the perpetual rains, and she would wait for him with so much longing that only his smile allowed her to breathe again. One night she took the initiative with the verses she had learned after hearing them so often. 'When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me," she recited. And asked with a certain slyness: "What's the rest of it?"
"I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end," he said.
She repeated the lines with the same tenderness, and so they continued until the end of the book, omitting verses, corrupting and twisting the sonnets to suit themselves, toying with them with the skill of masters. They fell asleep exhausted. At five the warder brought in breakfast, to the uproarious crowing of the roosters, and they awoke in alarm. Life stopped for them.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (Of Love and Other Demons)
“
Lefebvre summarises this march of clock-time through society and nature (1991: 95–6). He argues that the lived time experienced in and through nature has gradually disappeared. Time is no longer something that is visible and inscribed within space. It has been replaced by measuring instruments, clocks, which are separate from natural and social space. Time becomes a resource, differentiated off from social space. It is consumed, deployed and exhausted. There is the expulsion of lived (and kairological) time as ‘clock-time’ dominates. Lefebvre describes this changing nature of time in terms of metaphor. In pre-modern societies lived time is encrypted into space as in a tree-trunk, and like a tree-trunk shows the mark of those years that it has taken to grow. While in modern societies time is absorbed into the city such that lived time is invisible or reduced to its methods of measurement. Lived time ‘has been murdered by
society’ (Lefebvre 1991: 96).
”
”
John Urry
“
One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” 32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300 page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow… oppressed. Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves—in other words, they just become better tyrants.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments)
“
The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself—that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn’t go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that’s the scary part. How you don’t stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown’s trick balloons with the Burma-Shave slogans on the sides. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You could go on wearing bluejeans, you could keep going to Springsteen and Seger concerts, you could dye your hair, but that was a grownup’s face in the mirror just the same. It all happened while you were asleep, maybe, like a visit from the Tooth Fairy.
”
”
Stephen King (It)
“
That the United Kingdom will collapse is a foregone conclusion. Sooner or later, all states do collapse, and ramshackle, asymmetric dynastic amalgamations are more vulnerable than cohesive nation-states. Only the ‘how’ and the ‘when’ are mysteries of the future. An exhaustive study of the many pillars on which British power and prestige were built – ranging from the monarchy, the Royal Navy and the Empire to the Protestant Ascendancy, the Industrial Revolution, Parliament and Sterling – indicated that all without exception were in decline; some were already defunct, others seriously diminished or debilitated; it suggests that the last act may come sooner rather than later.110 Nothing implies that the end will necessarily be violent; some political organisms dissolve quietly. All it means is that present structures will one day disappear, and be replaced by something else.
”
”
Norman Davies (Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe)
“
Sprout looked through the wide-open door,
focusing on the world outside. It had been a while
since she’d had an appetite. She had no desire to
lay another egg. Her heart emptied of feeling
every time the farmer’s wife took her eggs. The
pride she felt when she laid one was replaced by
sadness. She was exhausted after a full year of
this. She couldn’t so much as touch her own eggs,
not even with the tip of her foot. And she didn’t
know what happened to them after the farmer’s
wife carried them in her basket out of the coop.
”
”
Sun-mi Hwang (The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly)
“
A comprehensive philosophy of history should interpret the changes in man's condition as a meaningful succession of historical ways of life; in every epoch these ways of life account fro the general situation and the prevailing patterns of action and though. They do not replace each other suddenly. The old is still alive while the new unfolds itself. The mighty breakthrough of the new is bound at first to fail against the staying power and coherence of the old way of life not yet exhausted. Transition is the zone of tragedy.
”
”
Karl Jaspers (Tragedy is not enough)
“
What did I do now?” He reluctantly pulled the car the curb.
I needed to get out of this car – like now. I couldn’t breathe.
I unbuckled and flung open the door.
“Thanks for the ride. Bye.”
I slammed the door shut and began down the sidewalk. Behind me, I heard the engine turn off and his door open and shut. I quickened my stride as James jogged up to me. I slowed down knowing I couldn’t escape his long legs anyway. Plus, I didn’t want to get home all sweaty and have to explain myself.
“What happened?” James asked, matching my pace.
“Leave me alone!” I snapped back. I felt his hand grab my elbow, halting me easily.
“Stop,” he ordered.
Damn it, he’s strong!
“What are you pissed about now?” He towered over me. I was trapped in front of him, if he tugged a bit, I’d be in his embrace.
“It’s so funny huh? I’m that bad? I’m a clown, I’m so funny!” I jerked my arm, trying to break free of his grip. “Let me go!”
“No!” He squeezed tighter, pulling me closer.
“Leave me alone!” I spit the words like venom, pulling my arm with all my might.
“What’s your problem?” James demanded loudly. His hand tightened on my arm with each attempt to pull away. My energy was dwindling and I was mentally exhausted. I stopped jerking my arm back, deciding it was pointless because he was too strong; there was no way I could pull my arm back without first kneeing him in the balls.
We were alone, standing in the dark of night in a neighborhood that didn’t see much traffic.
“Fireball?” he murmured softly.
“What?” I replied quietly, defeated.
Hesitantly, he asked, “Did I say something to make you sad?”
I wasn’t going to mention the boyfriend thing; there was no way.
“Yes,” I whimpered.
That’s just great, way to sound strong there, now he’ll have no reason not to pity you!
“I’m sorry,” came his quiet reply.
Well maybe ‘I’m sorry’ just isn’t good enough. The damage is already done!
“Whatever.”
“What can I do to make it all better?”
“There’s nothing you could–” I began but was interrupted by him pulling me against his body. His arms encircled my waist, holding me tight. My arms instinctively bent upwards, hands firmly planted against his solid chest. Any resentment I had swiftly melted away as something brand new took its place: pleasure.
Jesus!
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him softly; his face was only a few inches from mine.
“What do you think you’re doing?” James asked back, looking down at my hands on his chest. I slowly slid my arms up around his neck.
I can’t believe I just did that!
“That’s better.”
Our bodies were plastered against one another; I felt a new kind of nervousness touch every single inch of my body, it prickled electrically.
“James,” I murmured softly.
“Fireball,” he whispered back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I repeated; my brain felt frozen. My heart had stopped beating a mile a minute instead issuing slow, heavy beats.
James uncurled one of his arms from my waist and trailed it along my back to the base of my neck, holding it firmly yet delicately. Blood rushed to the very spot he was holding, heat filled my eyes as I stared at him.
“What are you doing?” My bewilderment was audible in the hush.
I wasn’t sure I had the capacity to speak anymore. That function had fled along with the bitch. Her replacement was a delicate flower that yearned to be touched and taken care of. I felt his hand shift on my neck, ever so slightly, causing my head to tilt up to him. Slowly, inch by inch, his face descended on mine, stopping just a breath away from my trembling lips.
I wanted it. Badly. My lips parted a fraction, letting a thread of air escape.
“Can I?” His breath was warm on my lips.
Fuck it!
“Yeah,” I whispered back. He closed the distance until his lush lips covered mine.
My first kiss…damn!
His lips moved softly over mine. I felt his grip on my neck squeeze as his lips pressed deeper into
”
”
Sarah Tork (Young Annabelle (Y.A #1))
“
Mind Quotient (Sonnet 1209)
Throw away all stupidity of IQ and EQ,
They are but stain upon mind's honor.
To quantify intelligence is stupid,
To quantify emotion is even stupider.
When the feeble psyche seeks reassurance,
It craves comfort in all sorts of nonsense.
Most times it resorts to the supernatural,
Exhausting that it resorts to pseudoscience.
It is no mark of mental progress to replace
supernatural bubble with pseudoscience bubble.
No matter how they try to sell you security,
Know that, human potential is unquantifiable.
IQ is no measure of intelligence,
EQ is no measure of emotion either.
But craving for IQ and EQ is symptom
of a shallow and feeble character.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science)
“
The essence of being in the first beginning reveals itself, i.e., at the same time, essentially occurs inceptually, in emerging, advancing. Only if the basic traits of the inceptuality come to be recollected constantly, above all in their inceptual unity, can the first beginning be surmised. Being is the beginning. The beginning is disconcealment toward unconcealedness (АΛНΘΕІА). Disconcealment is the emerging that goes back into itself, because disconcealment possesses the concealment out of which it emerges. Emergence is φύσις. Emergence is presence (οὐσία). To presence pertain: the nearness—παρά the view—visibility ἰδέα the disburdening—against μὴ ὄν the magic—καλóν. Presence consists in constancy and is then permanence (ἀεί). Presence is then the essential occurrence in the work and as work, wherein is gathered the presentness of rest and motion: ἐνέργεια; ἐντελέχεια. Co-position: ἐνέχεια τò τέλος. Every emerged determination of being can in a certain way stand for the beginning, and all of them can be especially attributed to the beginning. And yet they do not exhaust it, because it itself, as the first beginning, must take over the advancement. Nevertheless, the beginning remains embedded in concealment, but one which itself remains concealed and thus is completely lacking in presence and so must be replaced by “truth” as ὁμοίωσις and as disfigurement of the cognizing human being.
”
”
Martin Heidegger (The Event (Studies in Continental Thought))
“
I spread my arms to encircle her till my elbows were firmly against the back of her rib cage. I wanted to fuse myself with her. I wanted to bite into her like an apple and then eat her, digest her, absorb her into my bloodstream, my hemoglobin, my ESR. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “I don’t know what to do. It’s a problem. I can’t have you.” “But I am yours,” she said simply. “I know, I know, but, I mean, I want to possess you like an apple,” I said. “An apple?” she burst out laughing. I didn’t know how to explain what I meant. I didn’t appreciate that someone who belonged to me could just laugh at what I had said. It was not permissible. It was against the rules. I rolled over forcefully so that she was on her back and I was on top. Then I bit her cheek as if I were biting an apple. It held none of the satisfaction I had imagined. I needed to bite her and swallow. I bit her round shoulders as if they were apples, then her stomach and her knees, her toes and her back, the round lobes of her bottom. I bit them harder than everything else because they were the roundest and most applelike. But she squealed, so I stopped. I noticed that my biting had caused her to start breathing heavily, so I replaced my teeth with my lips. I gathered different parts of her flesh between my lips and kissed her all over, in the opposite order in which I had bitten. In her breathless moans and her cries of pleasure I owned her more than I owned myself and was immersed in her more than I had ever been immersed in my own self. Me, I had not yet discovered. I was an unknown quantity, a constantly unraveling mystery. But India was absolutely and completely known both carnally and otherwise. I rolled off of her with the sweet exhaustion of a man who has just hunted his dinner animal.
”
”
Abha Dawesar (Babyji: Stonewall Book Award Winner)
“
No great nation is ever conquered until it has destroyed itself. Deforestation and the abuse of the soil, the depletion of precious metals, the migration of trade routes, the disturbance of economic life by political disorder, the corruption of democracy and the degeneration of dynasties, the decay of morals and patriotism, the decline or deterioration of the population, the replacement of citizen armies by mercenary troops, the human and physical wastage of fratricidal war, the guillotining of ability by murderous revolutions and counterrevolutions—all these had exhausted the resources of Hellas at the very time when the little state on the Tiber, ruled by a ruthless and farseeing aristocracy, was training hardy legions of landowners, conquering its neighbors and competitors, capturing the food and minerals of the western Mediterranean, and advancing year by year upon the Greek settlements in Italy.
”
”
Will Durant (Eve's Diary, Complete)
“
The usual short story cannot have a complex plot, but it often has a simple one resembling a chain with two or three links. The short short, however, doesn't as a rule have even that much - you don't speak of a chain when there's only one link. ...
Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short.
Everything depends on intensity, one sweeping blow of perception. In the short short the writer gets no second chance. Either he strikes through at once or he's lost. And because it depends so heavily on this one sweeping blow, the short short often approaches the condition of a fable. When you read the two pieces by Tolstoy in this book, or I.L. Peretz's 'If Not Higher,' or Franz Kafka's 'The Hunter Gracchus,' you feel these writers are intent upon 'making a point' - but obliquely, not through mere statement. What they project is not the sort of impression of life we expect in most fiction, but something else: an impression of an idea of life. Or: a flicker in darkness, a slight cut of being. The shorter the piece of writing, the more abstract it may seem to us. In reading Paz's brilliant short short we feel we have brushed dangerously against the sheer arbitrariness of existence; in reading Peretz's, that we have been brought up against a moral reflection on the nature of goodness, though a reflection hard merely to state.
Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning through extension, it accepts the enigmas of confinement. It strives for a rapid unity of impression, an experience rendered in its wink of immediacy. And so too with the short short. ...
Writers who do short shorts need to be especially bold. They stake everything on a stroke of inventiveness. Sometimes they have to be prepared to speak out directly, not so much in order to state a theme as to provide a jarring or complicating commentary. The voice of the writer brushes, so to say, against his flash of invention. And then, almost before it begins, the fiction is brought to a stark conclusion - abrupt, bleeding, exhausting. This conclusion need not complete the action; it has only to break it off decisively.
Here are a few examples of the writer speaking out directly. Paz: 'The universe is a vast system of signs.' Kafka in 'First Sorrow': The trapeze artist's 'social life was somewhat limited.' Paula Fox: 'We are starving here in our village. At last, we are at the center.' Babel's cossack cries out, 'You guys in specs have about as much pity for chaps like us as a cat for a mouse.' Such sentences serve as devices of economy, oblique cues. Cryptic and enigmatic, they sometimes replace action, dialogue and commentary, for none of which, as it happens, the short short has much room.
There's often a brilliant overfocussing.
("Introduction")
”
”
Irving Howe (Short Shorts)
“
As I critically reviewed the activities of the Jewish people throughout long periods of history I became anxious and asked myself whether for some inscrutable reasons beyond the comprehension of poor mortals such as ourselves, Destiny may not have irrevocably decreed that the final victory must go to this small nation? May it not be that this people which has lived only for the earth has been promised the earth as a recompense? is our right to struggle for our own self-preservation based on reality, or is it a merely subjective thing?
Fate answered the question for me inasmuch as it led me to make a detached and exhaustive inquiry into the Marxist teaching and the activities of the Jewish people in connection with it.
The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength with the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies personal worth, contests the significance of folk and race, and thereby withdraws from mankind premise for its existence and culture.
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
“
Truce,” she managed to say. “I can’t bear any more.”
“But you will.” Reaching up to her, he drew her down and kissed her.
“Please. Finish it.”
“Not yet.” He trailed his hands down her back. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “So sensitive. I could make love to you forever.”
“Christopher--”
“Let me bring you to pleasure one more time.”
“No, I’m exhausted.” She took his lower lip between her teeth in a gentle nip. “Finish it now,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“I’ll make you.”
“How?”
Beatrix considered him, the arrogantly handsome features, the glitter of challenge in his eyes. Lowering herself over him, her body gently rocked by his ceaseless thrusts, she put her mouth near his ear.
“I love you,” she whispered, catching his rhythm, riding it. “I love you.”
Nothing more was needed. His breath stopped on a groan, and he drove into her and held, his powerful body trembling with the force of his release. Sliding his arms around her, he poured the years of anguished longing into her. And she continued to murmur to him, promising love, safety, new dreams to replace the broken ones.
Promising forever.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
“
So what really happened, and what became of them? The basement entry, while dangerous, wasn’t quite as dramatic as modern myth would have you believe. The pressure suppression pool drainage valves couldn’t be reached because most watertight basement corridors and surrounding rooms were full of water. The solution required a team of highly trained firemen wearing respirators and rubber suits to charge their fire engines and the Chemical Troops’ protective armoured vehicles into a loading bay beneath the reactor. There, they placed four special, ultra-long hoses into the water before retreating to the safety of Bryukhanov’s bunker beneath the administration building. After three hours of almost zero water movement, the dejected firemen came to the crushing realisation that one of the armoured vehicles must have driven over and severed their hoses. A fresh team brought twenty new hoses and re-entered the reactor building. They emerged an hour later, feeling exhausted and nauseous but triumphant; the replacement hoses were in place, the remaining radioactive water could finally be drained.201
”
”
Andrew Leatherbarrow (Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster)
“
She began peeling off her pants. Whatever Arthur's concerns, she was safe and in one piece. One very sexy, beautiful piece. Heat flared through the bond and she sucked in a breath.
"Planning on taking a shower?" I approached slowly, my face revealing every intimate thought on my mind.
"I---yes." Her exhaustion was lifting, replaced with a knowing smile. "Is that a problem?"
"Not at all." I closed the distance between us, removing my shirt. "In fact, I might just need a shower myself."
"Do you want to go first?" she teased. "I'm in no hurry."
"No, no, I won't delay your shower." I wrapped my arms around her, unfastening her bra. "Why don't we take one together?"
A playful smile crossed her lips. "I don't know, that seems terribly inefficient."
"Nonsense." I helped her remove her bra and then slipped the panties down her legs. "I will show you just how efficient I can be."
She moved a hand to my chest, catching her lower lip with her teeth. "Well, you can't shower in your suit."
She leaned up to kiss me, her fingers working on my buttons as I laughed against her mouth. "Eager?"
"Shut up."
I scooped her off her feet as her laughter carried through to the bathroom, where I planned to assist her in a very slow and inefficient shower.
”
”
Sabrina Blackburry (Dirty Lying Faeries (The Enchanted Fates, #1))
“
[...]Telecomputer Man is assigned to an apparatus, just as the apparatus is assigned to him, by virtue of an involution of each into the other, a refraction of each by the other. The machine does what the human wants it to do, but by the same token the human puts into execution only what the machine has been programmed to do. The operator is working with virtuality: only apparently is the aim to obtain information or to communicate; the real purpose is to explore all the possibilities of a program, rather as a gambler seeks to exhaust the permutations in a game of chance. Consider the way the camera is used now.
Its possibilities are no longer those of a subject who ' 'reflects' the world according to his personal vision; rather, they are the possibilities of the lens, as exploited by the object. The camera is thus a machine that vitiates all will, erases all intentionality and leaves nothing but the pure reflex needed to take pictures. Looking itself disappears without trace, replaced by a lens now in collusion with the object - and hence with an inversion of vision. The magic lies precisely in the subject's retroversion to a camera obscura - the reduction of his vision to the impersonal vision of a mechanical device. In a mirror, it is the subject who gives free rein to the realm of the imaginary. In the camera lens, and on-screen in general, it is the object, potentially, that unburdens itself - to the benefit of all media and telecommunications techniques.
This is why images of anything are now a possibility. This is why everything is translatable into computer terms, commutable into digital form, just as each individual is commutable into his own particular genetic code. (The whole object, in fact, is to exhaust all the virtualities of such analogues of the genetic code: this is one of artificial intelligence's most fundamental aspects.) What this means on a more concrete level is that there is no longer any such thing as an act or event which is not refracted into a technical image or onto a screen, any such thing as an action which does not in some sense want to be photographed, filmed or tape-recorded, does not desire to be stored in memory so as to become reproducible for all eternity. No such thing as an action which does not aspire to self-transcendence into a virtual eternity - not, now, the durable eternity that follows death, but rather the ephemeral eternity of ever-ramifying artificial memory.
The compulsion of the virtual is the compulsion to exist in potentia on all screens, to be embedded in all programs, and it acquires a magical force: the Siren call of the black box.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
“
In both cultures, wealth is no longer a means to get by. It becomes directly tied to personal worth. A young suburbanite with every advantage—the prep school education, the exhaustive coaching for college admissions tests, the overseas semester in Paris or Shanghai—still flatters himself that it is his skill, hard work, and prodigious problem-solving abilities that have lifted him into a world of privilege. Money vindicates all doubts. They’re eager to convince us all that Darwinism is at work, when it looks very much to the outside like a combination of gaming a system and dumb luck.
In both of these industries, the real world, with all of its messiness, sits apart. The inclination is to replace people with data trails, turning them into more effective shoppers, voters, or workers to optimize some objective. This is easy to do, and to justify, when success comes back as an anonymous score and when the people affected remain every bit as abstract as the numbers dancing across the screen. More and more, I worried about the separation between technical models and real people, and about the moral repercussions of that separation. In fact, I saw the same pattern emerging that I’d witnessed in finance: a false sense of security was leading to widespread use of imperfect models, self-serving definitions of success, and growing feedback loops. Those who objected were regarded as nostalgic Luddites.
”
”
Cathy O'Neil (Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy)
“
Richie had felt a mad, exhilarating kind of energy growing in the room […] He thought he recognized the feeling from childhood, when he had felt it every day and had come to take it merely as a matter of course. He supposed that, if he had ever thought about that deep-running aquifer of energy as a kid, he would have simply dismissed it as a fact of life, something that would always be there, like the color of his eyes or his disgusting hammertoes. Well, that hadn’t turned out to be true. The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself- that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke-high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use.
It was no big deal; it didn’t go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that’s the scary part. How you don’t stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown’s trick balloons with the Burma-Shave slogans on the side. The kind in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grown-up looking back at you. You could go on wearing blue jeans, you could keep going to Springsteen and Seger concerts, you gould dye your hair, but that was a grown-ups face in the mirror just the same.
”
”
Stephen King (It)
“
Irony in postwar art and culture started out the same way youthful rebellion did. It was difficult and painful, and productive—a grim diagnosis of a long-denied disease. The assumptions behind early postmodern irony, on the other hand, were still frankly idealistic: it was assumed that etiology and diagnosis pointed toward cure, that a revelation of imprisonment led to freedom. So then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today’s avant-garde tries to write about? One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” 32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300 page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow… oppressed. Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves—in other words, they just become better tyrants. And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.” Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments)
“
The median age in Gaza is very young. Earlier you spoke of asking your father for stories about your grandfather, and how important that was for you. But there are fewer and fewer people who have memories of life outside of Gaza. I’m wondering if you can say something about this. Unfortunately, it’s not only about memories of our grandparents, but it’s also their memories that are being lost, those are what we need to hear and memorize and then transmit to our children and grandchildren. But I’m also so saddened to think about my generation, our memories, being required or expected to tell our own stories of what happened to us in Gaza. I mean, for example, in 2021, 2014, 2009, or 2008. All the massacres and attacks on Gaza. Maybe our grandchildren will not ask us about Jaffa and Acre and Haifa. No, they will ask us about the 2014 war. What happened to you? What did you eat, which of your friends was wounded, did you leave your home, where did you go? This is a prolonged state of exile and estrangement and expulsion and ethnic cleansing. Our grandparents were driven from their homes and their cities, and any trace of them has been erased and replaced by something else, which is now called Israel. But we, their descendants, were also robbed of our right to dream and think about those places—no, instead, we are forced to live in the nightmares of our own current life. And they are creating more misery for us, wounding us again and again, so that we forget those earlier wounds in the face of the fresher wounds. The more the Israelis attack us, the more they are trying to erase the older memories. So it also becomes a matter of exhaustion.
”
”
Mosab Abu Toha (Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza)
“
You need more than just "positive thinking" to harness control of your body and your life. It is important for our health and well-being to shift our mind's energy toward positive, life generating thoughts and eliminate ever-present, energy-draining and debilitating negative thoughts. But, and I mean that in the biggest sense of "BUT", the mere thinking of positive thoughts will not necessarily have any impact on our lives at all! In fact, sometimes people who "flunk" positive thinking become more debilitated because now they think their situation is hopeless - they believe they have exhausted all mind and body remedies.
What those positive-thinking dropouts haven't understood is that the seemingly "separate" subdivisions of the mind, the conscious and the subconscious, are interdependent. The conscious or spirit - is the creative mind. It can see into the future, review the past, or disconnect from the present moment as it solves problems in our head. In its creative capacity, the conscious mind holds our wishes, desires, and aspirations for our lives. It is the mind that conjures up our "positive thoughts".
In contrast, the subconscious mind is primarily a repository of stimulus-response tapes derived from instincts and learned experiences. The subconscious mind is fundamentally habitual; it will play the same behavioral responses to life's signals over and over again, much to our chagrin. How many times have you found yourself going ballistic over something trivial like an open toothpaste tube? You have been trained since childhood to carefully replace the cap. When you find the tube with its cap left off, your "buttons are pushed" and you automatically fly into rage. You've just experienced the simple stimulus-response of a behavior program stored in the subconscious mind.
”
”
Bruce H. Lipton
“
I picked her up and carried her down the hall to the bathroom, just a pitiful skeleton with skin stretched over the top and a great red scar across her chest. She sank onto the plastic seat we had got from the hospital and closed her eyes as I washed her, leaning her poor bald head back exhaustedly against the back of the shower cubicle. "I'll just change the sheets," I said, "I won't be a minute - would you rather sit under the water, or shall I turn it off and wrap you up in a towel ?"
"Under the water," she whispered.
I had to strip the bed entirely, and two of the pillows were saturated. I replaced them with pillows from my bed, and while I was at it my duvet as well. Then I propped the poor woman up against the bathroom sink to dry and dress her, picked her up and carried her back to bed. Never have I been so grateful to be, after all, a strapping wench rather than a delicate wisp of a girl.
As I pulled the covers up under her chin she opened her eyes, looked at me sternly and said with nearly her old decision, "This is not the way I wish to be remembered, Josephine."
"I know," I whispered, the tears spilling unchecked down my cheeks. Nurses are supposed to be bright and matter-of-fact about these things: my bracing professional manner left a lot to be desired. "I'll get you some dinner."
"No," she said. "Just my pills, love."
Back in the kitchen I stood for a moment in a trance of indecision, wondering where the hell to start. It didn't really matter - when you're overcome with lethargy you just have to do something. And then the next thing, and then the next, and eventually, although you'd have sworn you were far too tired and depressed to accomplish anything, you're finished. I turned on the tap about the big concrete sink by the back door and began to scrub sheets and blankets.
”
”
Danielle Hawkins (Dinner at Rose's)
“
For most people moving is a tiring experience. When on the verge of moving out to a new home or into a new office, it's only natural to focus on your new place and forget about the one you’re leaving. Actually, the last thing you would even think about is embarking on a heavy duty move out clean. However, you can be certain that agents, landlords and all the potential renters or buyers of your old home will most definitely notice if it's being cleaned, therefore getting the place cleaned up is something that you need to consider.
The process of cleaning will basically depend to things; how dirty your property and the size of the home. If you leave the property in good condition, you'll have a higher the chance of getting back your bond deposit or if you're selling, attracting a potential buyer. Below are the steps you need to consider before moving out.
You should start with cleaning. Remove all screws and nails from the walls and the ceilings, fill up all holes and dust all ledges. Large holes should be patched and the entire wall checked the major marks. Remove all the cobwebs from the walls and ceilings, taking care to wash or vacuum the vents. They can get quite dusty. Clean all doors and door knobs, wipe down all the switches, electrical outlets, vacuum/wipe down the drapes, clean the blinds and remove all the light covers from light fixtures and clean them thoroughly as they may contain dead insects. Also, replace all the burnt out light bulbs and empty all cupboards when you clean them. Clean all windows, window sills and tracks. Vacuum all carpets or get them professionally cleaned which quite often is stipulated in the rental agreement.
After you've finished the general cleaning, you can now embark on the more specific areas. When cleaning the bathroom, wash off the soap scum and remove mould (if any) from the bathroom tiles. This can be done by pre-spraying the tile grout with bleach and letting it sit for at least half an hour. Clean all the inside drawers and vanity units thoroughly. Clean the toilet/sink, vanity unit and replace anything that you've damaged. Wash all shower curtains and shower doors plus all other enclosures. Polish the mirrors and make sure the exhaust fan is free of dust. You can generally vacuum these quite easily. Finally, clean the bathroom floors by vacuuming and mopping.
In the kitchen, clean all the cabinets and liners and wash the cupboards inside out. Clean the counter-tops and shine the facet and sink. If the fridge is staying give it a good clean. You can do this by removing all shelves and wash them individually. Thoroughly degrease the oven inside and out. It's best to use and oven cleaner from your supermarket, just take care to use gloves and a mask as they can be quite toxic. Clean the kitchen floor well by giving it a good vacuum and mop . Sometimes the kitchen floor may need to be degreased.
Dust the bedrooms and living room, vacuum throughout then mop. If you have a garage give it a good sweep. Also cut the grass, pull out all weeds and remove all items that may be lying or hanging around.
Remember to put your garbage bins out for collection even if collection is a week away as in our experience the bins will be full to the brim from all the rubbish during the moving process. If this all looks too hard then you can always hire a bond cleaner to tackle the job for you or if you're on a tight budget you can download an end of lease cleaning checklist or have one sent to you from your local agent. Just make sure you give yourself at least a day or to take on the job. Its best not to rush through the job, just make sure everything is cleaned thoroughly, so it passes the inspection in order for you to get your bond back in full.
”
”
Tanya Smith
“
Archaic societies have lasted so long because they know nothing of the desire to innovate, to grovel before ever-new simulacra. If you change images with each generation, you cannot anticipate historical longevity. Classical Greece and modern Europe typify civilisations stricken by a precocious death, following a greed for metamorphosis and an excessive consumption of gods, and of the surrogates for gods. Ancient China and Egypt wallowed for millennia in a magnificent sclerosis. As did African societies, before contact with the West. They too are threatened, because they have adopted another rhythm. Having lost the monopoly on stagnation, they grow increasingly frantic and will inevitably topple like their models, like those feverish civilisations incapable of lasting more than a dozen centuries. In the future, the peoples who accede to hegemony will enjoy it even less: history in slow motion has inexorably been replaced by history out of breath. Who can help regretting the pharaohs and their Chinese colleagues?
Institutions, societies, civilisations differ in duration and significance, yet all are subject to one and the same law, which decrees that the invincible impulse, the factor of their rise, must sag and settle after a certain time, this decadence corresponding to a slackening of that energiser which is . . . delirium. Compared with periods of expansion, of dementia really, those of decline seem sane and are so, are too much so—which makes them almost as deadly as the others.
A nation that has fulfilled itself, that has expended its talents and exploited the last resources of its genius, expiates such success by producing nothing thereafter. It has done its duty, it aspires to vegetate, but to its cost it will not have the latitude to do so. When the Romans—or what remained of them—sought repose, the Barbarians got under way, en masse. We read in a history of the invasions that the German tribes serving in the Empire’s army and administration assumed Latin names until the middle of the fifth century. After which, Germanic names became a requirement. Exhausted, in retreat on every front, the masters were no longer feared, no longer respected. What was the use of bearing their names? “A fatal somnolence reigned everywhere,” observed Salvian, bittersweet censor of the ancient deliquescence in its final stages.
”
”
Emil M. Cioran
“
THE DIET-GO-ROUND LOW-CALORIE DIETS Diets began by limiting the number of calories consumed in a day. But restricting calories depleted energy, so people craved high-calorie fat and sugar as energizing emergency fuel. LOW-FAT DIETS High-calorie fats were targeted. Restricting fat left people hungry, however, and they again craved more fats and sugars. FAKE FAT Synthetic low-cal fats were invented. People could now replace butter with margarine, but without calories it didn’t deliver the energy and satisfaction people needed. They still craved real fat and sugar. THE DIET GO-ROUND GRAPEFRUIT DIETS Banking on the antioxidant and fat-emulsifying properties of grapefruit, dieters could eat real fat again, as long as they ate a grapefruit first. But even grapefruits were no match for the high-fat American diet. SUGAR BLUES The more America restricted fat in any way to lose weight, the more the body rebounded by storing fat, and craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. Sugar was now to blame! SUGAR FREE High-calorie sugars were replaced with no-calorie synthetic sweeteners. The mind was happy but the body was starving as diet drinks replaced meals. People eventually binged on excess calories from other sources, such as protein. HIGH-PROTEIN DIETS The new diet let people eat all the protein they wanted without noticing the restriction of carbs and sugar. Energy came from fat stores and dieters lost weight. But without carbs, they soon experienced low energy and craved and binged on carbs. HIGH-CARB DIETS Carb-craving America was ripe for high-carb diets. You could now lose weight and eat up to 80 percent carbs—but they had to be slow-burning, complex carbs. Fast-paced America was addicted to fast energy, however, and high-carb diets soon became high-sugar diets. LOW CHOLESTEROL The combination of sugar, fat, and stress raised cholesterol to dangerous levels. The solution: Reemphasize complex carbs and reduce all animal fats. Once again, dieters felt restricted and began craving and bingeing on fats and sugars. EXERCISE Diets weren’t working, so exercise became the cholesterol cure-all. It worked for a time, but people didn’t like to “work out.” Within 25 years, no more than 20 percent of Americans would do it regularly. VEGETARIANISM With heart disease and cancers on the rise, red meat was targeted. Vegetarianism came into fashion but was rarely followed correctly. People lived on pasta and bread, and blood sugars and energy levels went out of control. GRAZING High-carb diets were causing energy and blood sugar problems. If you ate every 2 hours, energy was propped up and fast-paced America could keep speeding. Fatigue became chronic fatigue, however, with depression and anxiety to follow. FOOD COMBINING By eating fats, proteins, and carbs separately, digestion improved and a host of digestive, energy, and weight problems were helped temporarily. But the rules for what you could eat together led to more frequent small meals. People eventually slipped back to their old ways and old problems. THE ZONE Aimed at fixing blood sugar levels, this diet balanced intake of proteins, fats, and carbs. It worked, but again restricted certain kinds of carbs, so it didn’t last, and America was again craving emergency fuel. COFFEE TO THE RESCUE Exhausted and with a million things to do, America turned to legal stimulants like coffee for energy. But borrowed energy must be paid back, and many are still living in debt. FULL CIRCLE Frustrated, America is turning to new crash diets and a wave of high-protein diets. It is time to break this man-made cycle with the simplicity of nature’s own 3-Season Diet. If you let nature feed you, you will not starve or crave anything.
”
”
John Douillard (The 3-Season Diet: Eat the Way Nature Intended: Lose Weight, Beat Food Cravings, and Get Fit)
“
Like
By Frank Bidart
Woe is blunted not erased
by like. Your hands were too full, then
empty. At the grave’s
lip, secretly you imagine then
refuse to imagine
a spectre
so like what you watched die, the unique
soul you loved endures a second death.
The dead hate like, bitter
when the living with too-small
grief replace them. You dread
loving again, exhausted by the hungers
ineradicable in his presence. You resist
strangers until a stranger makes the old hungers
brutally wake. We live by symbolic
substitution. At the grave’s lip, what is
but is not is what
returns you to what is not.
”
”
Frank Bidart
“
I recognized myself again. The pale, spiritless ghost had been replaced by a slightly tired and moderately puffy version of my former normal self. I was no beauty queen, not by a long shot…but I was me again. The shower had been, if not an exorcism, a baptism. I’d been reborn. I shuddered, imagining what Marlboro Man had thought every time he’d seen me shuffle around in my dingy white terry cloth slippers, my hair on top of my head in a neon green scrunchie. I brushed my teeth, shook my hair, and walked out of the bathroom…just as Marlboro Man was waking up.
“Wow,” he said, pausing midstretch. “You look good, Mama.”
I smiled.
That night, Tim came over. Betsy made wings and brownies, and the five of us--Marlboro Man, Tim, Betsy, the baby, and I--sat and talked, laughed, and watched a John Wayne movie.
I was exhausted and depleted. And it was one of the best nights of my life.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
They’re asking what they should replace the sacrifices with," Victor translated. "Tell them they must moonwalk until they collapse of exhaustion every full moon, then to eat their own fecal matter." "Seriously?" "No, but that would have been funny," the Moon Beast replied. "Tell them to pray to the Moon Man for insight, then to hold a quiet, private orgy under the moonlight every full moon; narcotics are encouraged, but not necessary. Order them to stop summoning me, as I have other cults to guide.
”
”
Maxime J. Durand (Vainqueur the Dragon (Vainqueur the Dragon, #1))
“
What’s my truth? What do I want and need? What makes me like myself? Who do I think I am? These are then replaced by Who do you think I am? How do you think I’m doing? What do you need me to need? and Who do I need to be so that you will like me?
”
”
Nancy Colier (The Emotionally Exhausted Woman: Why You're Feeling Depleted and How to Get What You Need)
“
A period of renewed heavy bombardment began as large objects were deflected into the inner solar system by recently formed outer planets. The evidence for this is visible on any clear moonlit night. The large, dark marks that make up the features of ‘the man in the Moon’ are easily visible to the unaided eye. Our ancestors also saw these features and believed them to be seas on the surface of the Moon. In reality, they are enormous impact craters – and analysis of the rocks, brought back by the Apollo astronauts, shows that these craters formed 3.8 billion years ago. It seems obvious that similar-sized impacts must have also happened on Earth and that these would have sterilised the surface so that life only just clung on in the deep, dark places of the world. Much of the atmosphere and ocean would have been blasted off our planet in these cataclysms, to be slowly replaced, over millions of years, by exhaust from volcanoes.
”
”
David Waltham (Lucky Planet: Why Earth is Exceptional-and What That Means for Life in the Universe)
“
[Love Wasn’t as They Said]
Love wasn’t as they said…
It didn’t last forever as they claimed…
It is fleeting moments only recognized
By those with sight and insight…
And perhaps only captured
By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky…
And, like lightning perhaps, we never know
Where love goes after it strikes…
And perhaps the only love that lasts
Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away…
**
Love wasn’t synonymous with honor
As they defined honor...
It is often the awareness that falls upon us
After betraying or letting down the loved ones…
Love wasn’t holding hands forever,
It is boring afternoons spent together
With no words
And no activities…
It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction
As many claimed…
It is the companionship that remains
After the hormonal fires are put out,
When the noises of immaturity go silent,
And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop…
It is the home that remains erected
Long after getting erectile dysfunction…
It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period…
It is that strange feeling of elation
That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”,
To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality…
**
Love a widow brushing her hair,
On a bus or in a public place,
Unbothered by onlookers or passersby,
As she opens her shabby handbag
And takes out an apple to bite on
With the teeth she has left…
Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles
But is finally able to see the world
Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically,
Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion…
**
Love is shreds of joy
Interspersed with long intervals
Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment…
It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps,
It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high…
It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries…
Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis
And may move mountains despite the rheumatism…
**
Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers
Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years…
Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger
On a bus, in a train, or on a plane…
It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street
Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game,
But there’s not much they can do about it…
**
Love wasn’t as they said
It wasn’t as they said…
It is not 1+1=2…
It is sometimes three or more…
At other times, it grows at point zero or lower,
In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion…
Isn’t it time, I wonder,
to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly
attributed to love?
Or is it that love burns and dies
Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands?
[Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]
”
”
Louis Yako
“
[Love Wasn’t as They Said]
Love wasn’t as they said…
It didn’t last forever as they claimed…
It is fleeting moments only recognized
By those with sight and insight…
And perhaps only captured
By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky…
And, like lightning perhaps, we never know
Where love goes after it strikes…
And perhaps the only love that lasts
Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away…
**
Love wasn’t synonymous with honor
As they defined honor...
It is often the awareness that falls upon us
After betraying or letting down the loved ones…
Love wasn’t holding hands forever,
It is boring afternoons spent together
With no words
And no activities…
It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction
As many claimed…
It is the companionship that remains
After the hormonal fires are put out,
When the noises of immaturity go silent,
And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop…
It is the home that remains erected
Long after getting erectile dysfunction…
It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period…
It is that strange feeling of elation
That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”,
To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality…
**
Love is a widow brushing her hair,
On a bus or in a public place,
Unbothered by onlookers or passersby,
As she opens her shabby handbag
And takes out an apple to bite on
With the teeth she has left…
Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles
But is finally able to see the world
Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically,
Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion…
**
Love is shreds of joy
Interspersed with long intervals
Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment…
It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps,
It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high…
It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries…
Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis
And may move mountains despite the rheumatism…
**
Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers
Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years…
Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger
On a bus, in a train, or on a plane…
It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street
Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game,
But there’s not much they can do about it…
**
Love wasn’t as they said
It wasn’t as they said…
It is not 1+1=2…
It is sometimes three or more…
At other times, it grows at point zero or lower,
In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion…
Isn’t it time, I wonder,
to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly
attributed to love?
Or is it that love burns and dies
Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands?
[Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]
”
”
Louis Yako
“
When depression sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark … ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness … afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won’t. We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe. When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
“
Life Span of Common Appliances Consider the relative life span of appliances when making the decision whether to repair or replace them. Appliance Average Life Exhaust Fan 10 years Compactors 6 years Dishwashers 9 years Disposal 12 years Dryers, Electric 13 years Dryers, Gas 13 years Freezers 11 years Microwave 9 years Ranges, Electric 13 years Ranges, Gas 15 years Range Hoods 14 years Refrigerators 13 years Washers 10 years
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Michael Boyer (Every Landlord's Guide to Managing Property: Best Practices, From Move-In to Move-Out)
“
One of the things I did differently was to make my milkshakes with a soft product drawn from a tank, instead of hand-dipping ice cream. This changed the layout and gave us more space. One major problem in adapting the California-style building to the Midwestern climate was ventilation. I brought in architectual consultants one after the other in an attempt to solve the problem of exhausting the stale air and replacing it with fresh cool or heated air.
”
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Ray Kroc (Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's)
“
Will it get us to Las Máquinas?" asked Thor. "Well," said Catrina, "if we replace the two flat tires –" The car backfired a few times and black smoke began pouring out of the exhaust pipe. "– and fix that –" The hood of the car popped open, then tore free of its hinges and crashed to the floor. "– and that –" The engine burst into flames. "– no." "Then I guess we're stealing a car.
”
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Eirik Gumeny (Dead Presidents (Exponential Apocalypse Book 2))
“
Some languages offer the tail recursion optimization. This means that if a function returns the result of invoking itself recursively, then the invocation is replaced with a loop, which can significantly speed things up. Unfortunately, JavaScript does not currently provide tail recursion optimization. Functions that recurse very deeply can fail by exhausting the return stack:
”
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Douglas Crockford (JavaScript: The Good Parts: The Good Parts)
“
Deep in thought, Alex was startled by the clink of the garden gate opening and closing again. Avigail’s face brightened as she replaced her teacup on its saucer and stood. “Ah, there you are. You look exhausted!” In her sixties, the woman walking up the garden path was tall and olive skinned, hair white as snow. The likeness to the professor is remarkable, Alex thought as he shook her hand. She even moves like him. “Dr. Stern, I’m Alex. I knew your father. I’m so sorry.” It was all he could think to say.
”
”
Dan Eaton (The Secret Gospel)
“
to what some Christians today would have you believe, the biggest problem facing the church today is not “cheap grace” but “cheap Law”—the idea that God accepts anything less than the perfect righteousness of Jesus. My friend John Dink explains cheap Law this way: Cheap law weakens God’s demand for perfection, and in doing so, breathes life into … [our] quest for a righteousness of [our] own making.… It creates people of great zeal, but they lack knowledge concerning the question “What Would Jesus Do?” Here is the costly answer: Jesus would do it all perfectly. And that’s game over for you. The Father is not grooming you to be a replacement for his Beloved Son. He is announcing that there is blessing for those who take shelter in his Beloved Son. Cheap law tells us that we’ve fallen, but there’s good news, you can get back up again.… Therein lies the great heresy of cheap law: it is a false gospel. It cheapens—no—it nullifies grace.11
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Tullian Tchividjian (One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World)
“
Bimmer Motors is the automotive specialty shop in the Brooklyn, NY area that Mercedes owners can trust. With decades of experience, we know how to take care of your vehicle.
”
”
Bimmer Motors Group Inc
“
Creating and Enjoying Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! GENESIS 1:31 NLT Mary had been working diligently on tiling her bathroom. It was a big project for her and required a lot of planning and thought to design it just right. There was the mortarboard that had to replace the old, moldy drywall, and the plumber had to frame in the tub for her. She measured, sawed, carried heavy boards, nailed, cut, glued, and grouted. Every night after work she labored carefully and fell into bed exhausted for nearly three weeks straight. Finally it was done, and she loved it! She adorned it with new curtains and a few fresh towels. She found herself going in the bathroom just to be in that room, she was so pleased. A few days later she found her son standing in the bathroom. “I like to come in here and just look at it, Mom; it’s so nice. I can’t imagine how good you must feel!” Mary thought about it and smiled. “God made us like Him. You know, how He stood back and enjoyed His creation after He made it.” Lord God, thank You for allowing us to be creative and enjoy the work of our hands. Most of all, thank You for making us and watching over us every day because You love what You’ve made! Amen.
”
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Anonymous (Daily Wisdom for Women - 2014: 2014 Devotional Collection)
“
We would claim for our reply that it is a defense of the enduring laws of God contained in (but not exhausted by) the Ten Commandments, expounded and expanded by our Lord Jesus Christ, the new lawgiver, in his ministry and later through the inspired epistles of the New Covenant Scriptures. Our basic disagreement with Barcellos has nothing to do with whether the revelation of God’s will for his people comes in clear and concrete commandments, or whether the Ten Commandments are a vital part of that revelation applicable to a child of God today. Our difference is (1) whether Moses is the greatest lawgiver that ever lived, including the Lord Jesus Christ himself, or (2) whether Jesus replaced Moses as the new prophet and lawgiver in the very same sense that he replaced Aaron as the new high priest. These two contrary principles underlie the two positions. New Covenant Theology defends Jesus Christ as the new, greater, full, and final lawgiver who replaces Moses. We insist that the laws of Christ, given to the children of the kingdom of grace, make higher demands than those given by God to Israel at Sinai.
”
”
John G. Reisinger (In Defense of Jesus, The New Lawgiver)
“
So far as the beggar woman is concerned, there was certainly neither anything good nor anything bad in it, I was simply too distracted or too much preoccupied with one thing to act in any other way but according to vague memories. And one such memory says, for instance: 'Don't give too much to beggars, you'll regret it later.' Once as a very small boy I was given a Sechserl and felt a great urge to hand it to an old beggar woman who sat between the Grosse and the Kleine Ring. But the sum seemed to me enormous, a sum which probably never before had been given to a beggar, so I was ashamed in front of the beggar woman to do something so unheard-of, but give it to her I felt I must. I therefore changed the Sechserl into ten Kreuzers, gave one to the beggar woman, ran round the whole block of the Town Hall and the arcade near the Kleine Ring, arrived from the left as a completely new benefactor, gave the beggar woman another Kreuzer, started to run again and actually made this round ten times (or maybe not quite so many, for I believe the beggar woman lost her patience later and disappeared). In any case, toward the end I was so exhausted, morally as well, that I ran straight home and cried until my mother replaced the Sechserl.
You see, I have bad luck with beggars, but I declare myself prepared to pay out my entire present and future fortune in the smallest Viennese bank notes to a beggar woman standing by the Opera, on condition that you're present and I may feel you close to me.
”
”
Franz Kafka (Letters to Milena)
“
I once had a very talented designer on my team. She was creative and thoughtful and happened to be the most experienced person in an important product area. Everyone on her team naturally went to her for advice on big decisions. I thought to myself, Obviously she should be a manager! When the team expanded, I asked her if she would step up into the role. She said yes, and I gave myself a hearty pat on the back for setting her up to have even more impact.
About a year later, she quit.
I’ll never forget what she told me right before she gave notice. She admitted that every morning as she lay in bed, she dreaded the prospect of going to work and managing people. As she said this, I could see that it was true. Her curious and thoughtful spark had been replaced by glassy-eyed exhaustion. Her team had issues that needed sorting through, and she was so burned out that she couldn’t muster the motivation. Her everyday responsibilities were not what she was passionate about. At her core, she was a maker; she wanted long periods of uninterrupted time to go deep on a problem and create something tangible with her hands.
”
”
Julie Zhuo (The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You)
“
They’re asking what they should replace the sacrifices with," Victor translated. "Tell them they must moonwalk until they collapse of exhaustion every full moon, then to eat their own fecal matter.
”
”
Maxime J. Durand (Vainqueur the Dragon (Vainqueur the Dragon, #1))
“
She had met women of this cast of mind before—the clingers, fragile and utterly ruthless, who wore down friend after friend with their emotional demands, always ill and exhausted and badly treated, but still retaining enough energy to scream reproaches at the retreating friend as she fled, guilt-stricken, down the hall. And the next week to replace that friend—always female—with another. Phryne recognized Mrs Andrews as an emotional trap, and had no choice but to throw herself in.
”
”
Kerry Greenwood (Cocaine Blues (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries #1))
“
Even accepting that EVs and solar panels are or will one day be more energy-efficient than coal- and gas-burning technologies, the bigger question is how fast we attempt to transition. For renewables to provide a majority of our power, we would have to increase wind and solar twenty-fold. But there are not enough rare earth metals on the planet to build such an energy system and then replace it every couple of decades. Replacing a majority of our coal and gas industries with electric ones would exhaust all of our power and resources at one time, massively increasing emissions and environmental degradation in the short run. It could also increase energy inequality, by diverting power and resources to the rebuilding of the energy sector itself. Transitioning slowly, on the other hand, as things wear out, might not create such stresses, but would take many decades to bring us to zero net emissions. Both approaches result in catastrophe. The
”
”
Douglas Rushkoff (Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires)
“
But she didn't know any of this that night, as she looked into his eyes -so blue- and opened herself up to him in a way she couldn't remember doing with anyone before. The glass wall she'd built around herself was disintegrating - she could almost see it happening; the fragments winking in the light like tiny mirrors.
Really, it was just that the glass wall was being replaced with another kind of cage. One that Simon spun from charm and flattery, as binding and delicate as spider silk.
Now, she wonders if she'd known this, even then. Perhaps it had been part of the allure - the thought that, after all those exhausting years of locking herself away, here was someone who could do it for her.
”
”
Emilia Hart (Weyward)
“
Enchantment – Trap Specialization Enchantment traps are for the most part non-lethal, but when used in conjunction with other traps and dungeon creatures, they can be highly effective. Examples of Enchantment-based traps include ones that can augment physical capabilities for a limited time, to other status-inflicting ones such as blindness, exhaustion, confusion, fear, rage, dizziness, and even extreme hunger. Specialization Benefits: Enchantment-based traps require 60% less Dungeon Force to create Enchantment-based traps require 75% less Dungeon Force to replace when used
”
”
Jonathan Brooks (The Dungeon Fairy (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy #1))
“
The first necessary component of wonder is profound gratitude. But the word "gratitude" may need a little explanation. It comes from the same word as the word "freedom"; when something is "gratis", we consider it free. Gratitude is the freeing expression of a free heart toward one who freely gave.
There are actually two basic emotions within the grateful heart. One erupts on the spur of the moment; it is unstudied and unenduring. A raise from the boss, a new car, a generous gift. All those are wonderful things, but they are not really full of wonder, they can easily be forgotten and replaced by one unpleasant experience. The gratitude that I’m speaking of is not sporadic, it cannot be spent or exhausted. It is the transformation of a mind that is more grateful for the •giver• than for the gift; for the •purpose• than for the present; for •life itself• rather than for abundance. It values a relationship rather than any benefit made possible by the relationship. Even more, it is the capacity to receive, rather than the gift itself, to trust even when the moment seems devoid of immediate fulfillment. It is more than happiness; it is more than peace. In short, where there is no gratitude, there is no wonder.
”
”
Ravi Zacharias
“
During the next two weeks Trurl fed general instructions into his future electropoet, then set up all the necessary logic circuits, emotive elements, semantic centers. He was about to invite Klapaucius to attend a trial run, but thought better of it and started the machine himself. It immediately proceeded to deliver a lecture on the grinding of crystallographical surfaces as an introduction to the study of submolecular magnetic anomalies. Trurl bypassed half the logic circuits and made the emotive more electromotive; the machine sobbed, went into hysterics, then finally said, blubbering terribly, what a cruel, cruel world this was. Trurl intensified the semantic fields and attached a strength of character component; the machine informed him that from now on he would carry out its every wish and to begin with add six floors to the nine it already had, so it could better meditate upon the meaning of existence. Trurl installed a philosophical throttle instead; the machine fell silent and sulked. Only after endless pleading and cajoling was he able to get it to recite something: "I had a little froggy." That appeared to exhaust its repertoire. Trurl adjusted, modulated, expostulated, disconnected, ran checks, reconnected, reset, did everything he could think of, and the machine presented him with a poem that made him thank heaven Klapaucius wasn't there to laugh — imagine, simulating the whole Universe from scratch, not to mention Civilization in every particular, and to end up with such dreadful doggerel! Trurl put in six cliché filters, but they snapped like matches; he had to make them out of pure corundum steel. This seemed to work, so he jacked the semanticity up all the way, plugged in an alternating rhyme generator — which nearly ruined everything, since the machine resolved to become a missionary among destitute tribes on far-flung planets. But at the very last minute, just as he was ready to give up and take a hammer to it, Trurl was struck by an inspiration; tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with self-regulating egocentripetal narcissistors. The machine simpered a little, whimpered a little, laughed bitterly, complained of an awful pain on its third floor, said that in general it was fed up, through, life was beautiful but men were such beasts and how sorry they'd all be when it was dead and gone. Then it asked for pen and paper.
”
”
Stanisław Lem (The Cyberiad)
“
When things 'make sense' in that way, you are left knowing that it isn't so much a matter of you figuring it all out and deciding to take a step, or a stand. It's a matter of Someone calling you, calling with a voice you dimly recognize, calling with a message that is simultaneously and invitation of love and a summon to obedience. The call to faith is both of these. It is the call to believe that the true God, the world's creator, has loved the whole world so much, you and me included, that he has come himself in the person of his Son and has died and risen again to exhaust the power of evil and create a new world in which everything will be put to rights and joy will replace sorrow.
”
”
N.T. Wright
“
But it was a constant battle, trying to suck all this specious junk out of their heads and replace it with the genuine beauties of real science and authentic discoveries. There was so much in the world that was true and amazing and almost unbelievable itself that Carter could never understand the fascination with the obviously spurious and unsubstantiated. In his own life he’d found the mysteries of biology and evolution, of the immensity of geologic time and the rise of humanity (did people comprehend just how easily things could have gone a different way altogether?) as satisfying to his sense of wonder, to the reach and power of his imagination, as anything the mystics and TV mediums, the astrologers and New Age prophets could cook up. And he really feared that unless this mindless flood was stopped somehow, its waters would wash over the real ground that scientific inquiry had labored to claim through centuries of exhaustive work and leave everything one vast, muddy, undifferentiated terrain.
”
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Robert Masello (Vigil)
“
When something breaks, rather than repairing it, many people buy a replacement because this is faster and cheaper. However, if you continue to live your life in this way, your relationships with others will begin to resemble how you relate to objects. This will only lead to the exhaustion of your heart.
”
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Shoukei Matsumoto (A Monk's Guide to a Clean House and Mind)
“
Hitler’s electoral success—far greater than Mussolini’s—allowed him more autonomy in bargaining with the political insiders whose help he needed to reach office. Even more than in Italy, as German governmental mechanisms jammed after 1930, responsibility for finding a way out narrowed to a half-dozen men: President Hindenburg, his son Oskar and other intimate advisors, and the last two Weimar chancellors, Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. At first they tried to keep the uncouth Austrian ex-corporal out. One must recall that in the 1930s cabinet ministers were still supposed to be gentlemen. Bringing raw fascists into government was a measure of their desperation.
The Catholic aristocrat Franz von Papen tried as chancellor (July– November 1932) to govern without politicians, through a so-called Cabinet of Barons composed of technical experts and nonpolitical eminences. His gamble at holding national elections in July let the Nazis become the largest party. Von Papen then tried to bring Hitler in as vice chancellor, a position without authority, but the Nazi leader had enough strategic acumen and gambler’s courage to accept nothing but the top office. This path forced Hitler to spend the tense fall of 1932 in an agony of suspenseful waiting, trying to quiet his restless and office-hungry militants while he played for all or nothing.
Hoping to deepen the crisis, the Nazis (like the Fascists before them) increased their violence, carefully choosing their targets. The apogee of Nazi street violence in Germany came after June 16, 1932, when Chancellor von Papen lifted the ban on SA uniforms that Brüning had imposed in April. During several sickening weeks, 103 people were killed and hundreds were wounded.
Von Papen’s expedient of new elections on November 6 diminished the Nazi vote somewhat (the communists gained again), but did nothing to extract Germany from constitutional deadlock. President Hindenburg replaced him as chancellor on December 2 with a senior army officer regarded as more technocratic than reactionary, General Kurt von Schleicher. During his brief weeks in power (December 1932–January 1933), Schleicher prepared an active job-creation program and mended relations with organized labor. Hoping to obtain Nazi neutrality in parliament, he flirted with Gregor Strasser, head of the party administration and a leader of its anticapitalist current (Hitler never forgot and never forgave Strasser’s “betrayal”).
At this point, Hitler was in serious difficulty. In the elections of November 6, his vote had dropped for the first time, costing him his most precious asset—momentum. The party treasury was nearly empty. Gregor Strasser was not the only senior Nazi who, exhausted by Hitler’s all ornothing strategy, was considering other options.
The Nazi leader was rescued by Franz von Papen. Bitter at Schleicher for taking his place, von Papen secretly arranged a deal whereby Hitler would be chancellor and he, von Papen, deputy chancellor—a position from which von Papen expected to run things. The aged Hindenburg, convinced by his son and other intimate advisors that Schleicher was planning to depose him and install a military dictatorship, and convinced by von Papen that no other conservative option remained, appointed the Hitler–von Papen government on January 30, 1933. Hitler, concluded
Alan Bullock, had been “hoist” into office by “a backstairs conspiracy.
”
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Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
“
The problems arise when they become exhausted with their role of spouse or parent, and life involves more than work. AVPs put in huge efforts toward the tasks they do. They have very little energy left. Their families begin to feel the abandonment when ambivalence replaces the structure of rules or work. They can clean up the kitchen, help with homework, but the needed or intimate parts of relationships are more minimal. The other issue is often trying to hold the line, as it were. Many of the AVP’s psychological symptoms turn into health-related issues, which can further remove them
”
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Dr. Sandra Smith-Hanen (Hiding In The Light: Understanding Avoidant Personality Disorder)
“
Lake wait.” “Go fuck yourself.” “You can’t leave. He knows you’re here, but I convinced him to stay away for the night. If you leave, he’ll drag you back home and that’s the last thing you two need right now. He told me what you did to him. I have to say… I’m impressed.” He sounded amused and proud. “I’m not looking for compliments, asshole. You sold me out.” I ran for the spare bedroom and snatched up my clothes. Screw the both of them and their men code. I heard Jesse’s knock but ignored it as I ripped off his shirt and replaced it with my own. I hated putting on worn clothing after showering, but there was no way I was staying with Keiran’s guard dog all night. It was as if he was still winning—still in control. Fuck that. Jesse did everything he could, minus physical restraint, to stop me from leaving. I flipped him off and fled the apartment. Keiran was the ass, and yet I was roaming the city in the middle of the night. At that moment, it was hard for me to believe that much had changed about us. Exhausted, I spent the night in a hotel where I should have gone in the first place. By morning, I wasn’t any more prepared to face Keiran so I shopped for toiletries and a change of clothes. I then drove five and half hours to the only ally that I had left.
”
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B.B. Reid (Fearless (Broken Love, #5))
“
What is striking about an event even as dramatic as the crisis of May 1958 is how disengaged the population seemed to be. There was more excitement a month later about the World Cup, where France reached the semi-final for the first time. One of the complaints of the more engaged proponents of Algérie Française was that, instead of offering the French a noble cause to defend in Algeria, de Gaulle was betraying his own vision of grandeur: a civilisation of heroism was being replaced by one of fridges. There was something in this. Exhausted by war, sickened by the political merry-go-round of the Fourth Republic and keen to profit from the material benefits offered by economic growth, the majority of the French were - for the moment at least - ready to enjoy their fridges, their televisions, their washing machines and their holidays, live their heroism vicariously through de Gaulle and allow him to govern as he wished.
”
”
Julian Jackson (A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle)
“
Those who have made architectural beauty their life's work know only too well how futile their efforts can prove. After an exhaustive study of the buildings of Venice, in a moment of depressive lucidity, John Ruskin acknowledged that few Venetians in fact seemed elevated by their city, perhaps the most beautiful urban tapestry in the world. Endowed with a power that is often as unreliable as it is inexpressible, architecture will always compere poorly with utilitarian demands for humanity's resources. How hard is it to make a case for the cost of tearing down and rebuilding a mean but serviceable street. How awkward to have to defend, in the face of more tangible needs, the benefits of re-aligning a crooked lamppost or replacing an ill-matched window frame. Beautiful architecture has none of the unambiguous advantages of a vaccine or a bowl of rice. In construction will hence never be raised to a dominant political priority, for even if the whole man-made world could, through relentless effort and sacrifice, be modeled to rival St Mark's square ...[ ..] , we would still often be in a bad mood.
”
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Alain de Botton (The Architecture of Happiness)