Exploring Beautiful Places Quotes

I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take. Forgive me, O Gracious One; for I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can can see through all of life's illusions. I am ready to see what really exists on other side, what exists behind the blinds, and taste all the ugly fruit instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.

Dare to explore the beautiful places of the world.

And suddenly first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes; and this is like a fragment of their song, if it can be like their song without their music. [...]As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up - probably somebody lighting a wood-fire-and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again. He got up trembling.

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not solely the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone. The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual, even redemptive, but not religious. The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told. The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another. The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote. But it's a precious mote and, for the moment, it's the only home we have. The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae, but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them. The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and a mate. The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave, an indication that perhaps flag-waving and space exploration do not mix. The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.

Eating Out Alone" The loneliness inside me is a place, Harvard where no one might always be someone. When we're alone people we run from change to the mysterious and beautiful— I am eating alone at a small white table, visible, ignored…the moment that tries the soul, an explorer going blind in polar whiteness. Yet everyone who is seated is a lay, or Paul Claudel, at the next table declaiming: "L'Academie Groton, eh, c'est une ecole des cochons." He soars from murdered English to killing French, no word unheard, no sentence understood… a vocabulary to mortify Racine… the minotaur steaming in a maze of eloquence.

On building homes for fallen angels: When I was small - I sought a home, a place to go and rest my bones. Then founded something, of my own, I lived among the restless stones. If seeking leads you back to evil, what good is that, I asked a weevil. He said a home is what you make, it can't be real, if it is fake... And if you wait instead of seek, will you find love, or something bleak? I know (myself) for I have found, a beauty, hidden – in a sound. Waiting is boring. And so is exploring. A smile is sometimes all it takes. And then your whole world simply breaks.

Highly creative people have a gift for connecting supposedly unrelated elements and ideas. They cross borders without regard for customs posts or No Trespassing signs. They throw suspension bridges across great distances. These elegant and unexpected combinations flow together beautifully in the twilight zone, where metaphor and resemblance rules in place of logic and classification.

The thing is, you're beautiful. Yes, you… In your wild, mundane glory. Your daily life hides from you the possibilities of why you’re here And who you are. But never forget that every breath you take is actual alchemy. With your eyes you record visions of this place. With your fingertips you read the bumps in life, Sending messages back from whence you came. You’re a soul traveler, An explorer. You make this place home for now; Trying on the costumes, Playing out your roles. Every so often, take off your masks. Drop your robes. See yourself reflected in the very mirror of your life. And remember… When you leave this stage, The only thing you will wonder is, “Did I love brilliantly?

I believe there is something be said for exploring beautiful places. It's good for the spirit.

When you get home, tell them how large the world is, and how green. And tell them that the beauty of the world makes demands on you. They will need reminding. If you believe the world is small and tawdry, it is easier to be so yourself. But the world is so tall and so beautiful a place.

Kentucky, the Bluegrass State, world renowned home of the best horse-races and fine bourbons, is also a place filled with intriguing mysteries that have defied explanation since the first settlers stepped onto its fertile soil and began exploring its beautifully forested mountains and valleys.

In here was the image of God. It isn't the devil in humanity that makes man a lonely creature, it's his God-likeness. It's the fullness of the Good that can't get out or can't find its proper "other place" that makes for loneliness.Anna's misery was for others. They just could not see the beauty of that broken iron stump, the colors, the crystalline shapes; they could not see the possibilities there. Anna wanted them to join with her in this exciting new world , but they could not imagine themselves to be so small that this jagged fracture could become a world of iron mountains, of iron plains with crystal trees.It was a new world to explore, a world of the imagination, a world where few people would or could follow her. In this broken-off stump was a whole new realm of possibilities to be explored and to be enjoyed. Mister God most certainly enjoyed it, but then Mister God didn't at all mind making himself small. People thought that Mister God was very big, and that's where they made a big mistake. Obviously Mister God could be any size he wanted to be. "If he couldn't be little, how could he know what it's like to be a lady -bird?" Indeed, how could he? So, like Alice in Wonderland, Anna ate of the cake of imagination and altered her size to fit the occasion.After all, Mister God did not have only one point of view but an infinity of viewing points, and the whole purpose of living was to be like Mister God. So far as Anna was concerned, being good, being generous, being kind, praying, and all that kind of stuff had very little to do with Mister God. They were, in the jargon of today, merely "spinoffs." This sort of thing was just "playing it safe," and Anna was going to have none of it. No! Religion was all about being like Mister God and it was here that things could get a little tough. The instructions weren't to be good and kind and loving, etc., and it therefore followed that you would be more like Mi ster God. No! The whole point of being alive was to be like Mister God and then you couldn't help but be good and kind and loving, could you?

Touching the copper of the ankh reminded me of another necklace, a necklace long since lost under the dust of time. That necklace had been simpler: only a string of beads etched with tiny ankhs. But my husband had brought it to me the morning of our wedding, sneaking up to our house just after dawn in a gesture uncharacteristically bold for him. I had chastised him for the indiscretion. "What are you doing? You're going to see me this afternoon... and then every day after that!" "I had to give you these before the wedding." He held up the string of beads. "They were my mother's. I want you to have them, to wear them today.” He leaned forward, placing the beads around my neck. As his fingers brushed my skin, I felt something warm and tingly run through my body. At the tender age of fifteen, I hadn't exactly understood such sensations, though I was eager to explore them. My wiser self today recognized them as the early stirrings of lust, and . . . well, there had been something else there too. Something else that I still didn't quite comprehend. An electric connection, a feeling that we were bound into something bigger than ourselves. That our being together was inevitable. "There," he'd said, once the beads were secure and my hair brushed back into place. "Perfect.” He said nothing else after that. He didn't need to. His eyes told me all I needed to know, and I shivered. Until Kyriakos, no man had ever given me a second glance. I was Marthanes' too-tall daughter after all, the one with the sharp tongue who didn't think before speaking. (Shape-shifting would eventually take care of one of those problems but not the other.) But Kyriakos had always listened to me and watched me like I was someone more, someone tempting and desirable, like the beautiful priestesses of Aphrodite who still carried on their rituals away from the Christian priests. I wanted him to touch me then, not realizing just how much until I caught his hand suddenly and unexpectedly. Taking it, I placed it around my waist and pulled him to me. His eyes widened in surprise, but he didn't pull back. We were almost the same height, making it easy for his mouth to seek mine out in a crushing kiss. I leaned against the warm stone wall behind me so that I was pressed between it and him. I could feel every part of his body against mine, but we still weren't close enough. Not nearly enough. Our kissing grew more ardent, as though our lips alone might close whatever aching distance lay between us. I moved his hand again, this time to push up my skirt along the side of one leg. His hand stroked the smooth flesh there and, without further urging, slid over to my inner thigh. I arched my lower body toward his, nearly writhing against him now, needing him to touch me everywhere. "Letha? Where are you at?” My sister's voice carried over the wind; she wasn't nearby but was close enough to be here soon. Kyriakos and I broke apart, both gasping, pulses racing. He was looking at me like he'd never seen me before. Heat burned in his gaze. "Have you ever been with anyone before?" he asked wonderingly. I shook my head. "How did you ... I never imagined you doing that...” "I learn fast.” He grinned and pressed my hand to his lips. "Tonight," he breathed. "Tonight we ...” "Tonight," I agreed. He backed away then, eyes still smoldering. "I love you. You are my life.” "I love you too." I smiled and watched him go.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist – a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth’s force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth’s rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers … all these things support, transport and nourish us.

Some of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, and some of the greatest folks I’ve ever met, were in places that were never on my radar before I left home.

Go forward and explore many great lands.

Glacier National Park in Montana is steadfastly considered to be one of the most beautiful places in the country.

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.

Life is wonderful and strange...and it’s also absolutely mundane and tiresome. It’s hilarious and it’s deadening. It’s a big, screwed-up morass of beauty and change and fear and all our lives we oscillate between awe and tedium. I think stories are the place to explore that inherent weirdness; that movement from the fantastic to the prosaic that is life.... What interests me—and interests me totally—is how we as living human beings can balance the brief, warm, intensely complicated fingersnap of our lives against the colossal, indifferent, and desolate scales of the universe. Earth is four-and-a-half billion years old. Rocks in your backyard are moving if you could only stand still enough to watch. You get hernias because, eons ago, you used to be a fish. So how in the world are we supposed to measure our lives—which involve things like opening birthday cards, stepping on our kids’ LEGOs, and buying toilet paper at Safeway—against the absolutely incomprehensible vastness of the universe? How? We stare into the fire. We turn to friends, bartenders, lovers, priests, drug-dealers, painters, writers. Isn’t that why we seek each other out, why people go to churches and temples, why we read books? So that we can find out if life occasionally sets other people trembling, too?

Once You Have Lived with the Mountains’ it is not easy to live elsewhere. I longed to return to the hills and live in a place with windows facing beautiful views. That is what I explore in ‘Best of All Windows’. For a room without a view is hardly a living place—merely a place of transit.

Even a man as wilderness-averse as Aldous Huxley came to understand that “a man misses something by not establishing a participative and living relationship with the non-human world of animals and plants, landscapes and stars and seasons. By failing to be, vicariously, the not-self, he fails to be completely himself.” This is the most succinct definition of the wilderness I have found: the not-self. There, in the one place we have not remolded in our image, a very deep and ancient form of wisdom can be found. “At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman,” wrote Albert Camus.

Through these stories, I want to explore two ideas. The first is that much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty. And second, that we consistently get these kinds of conflict wrong. We misread them. We misinterpret them. Giants are now what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness. And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. We need a better guide to facing giants-and there is no better place to start that journey than with the epic confrontation between David and Goliath three thousand years ago in the Valley of Elah.

Why do women find it honorable to dismiss ourselves? Why do we decide that denying our longing is the responsible thing to do? Why do we believe that what will thrill and fulfill us will hurt our people? Why do we mistrust ourselves so completely? Here’s why: Because our culture was built upon and benefits from the control of women. The way power justifies controlling a group is by conditioning the masses to believe that the group cannot be trusted. So the campaign to convince us to mistrust women begins early and comes from everywhere. When we are little girls, our families, teachers, and peers insist that our loud voices, bold opinions, and strong feelings are “too much” and unladylike, so we learn to not trust our personalities. Childhood stories promise us that girls who dare to leave the path or explore get attacked by big bad wolves and pricked by deadly spindles, so we learn to not trust our curiosity. The beauty industry convinces us that our thighs, frizz, skin, fingernails, lips, eyelashes, leg hair, and wrinkles are repulsive and must be covered and manipulated, so we learn to not trust the bodies we live in. Diet culture promises us that controlling our appetite is the key to our worthiness, so we learn to not trust our own hunger. Politicians insist that our judgment about our bodies and futures cannot be trusted, so our own reproductive systems must be controlled by lawmakers we don’t know in places we’ve never been. The legal system proves to us again and again that even our own memories and experiences will not be trusted. If twenty women come forward and say, “He did it,” and he says, “No, I didn’t,” they will believe him while discounting and maligning us every damn time. And religion, sweet Jesus. The lesson of Adam and Eve—the first formative story I was told about God and a woman—was this: When a woman wants more, she defies God, betrays her partner, curses her family, and destroys the world. We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless.

Reading was a defense, a shield his timidity could use to arm itself, a guide to seeking relationships. But writing was infinitely more than that. Writing was an interior palace with secret sites, gorgeous places, a complex of unlimited spaces. He explored them, laughing, running barefoot, and stopping to touch the beautiful treasures stored there.

She felt him relax and his voice softened. “Is that what this is all about? You feel like you can’t talk to me anymore? We haven’t changed; we’re still the same people.” She slipped her hands beneath the front of his shirt, slowly running her fingertips over his chest and back down to his waist. He turned in her arms and smiled, but his grin was filled with mocking suspicion. “Are you trying to distract me, Violet Ambrose?” “I guess you’re smarter than you look,” she teased as he pushed her backward so that they both fell on her bed. “And you are not as funny as you think you are.” His mouth hovered over hers, his arms tightening, crushing her against him. Violet giggled and tried to squirm free, but Jay wouldn’t let her. He kissed her throat, his lips teasing her until it wasn’t his grip that made it hard for Violet to breathe. “Oh, and Violet,” he whispered against her ear, his breath tickling her cheek, “I’m still your best friend. Don’t ever forget it.” His words were fervent and touching. Violet tried to think of a response that made sense, something appropriate, but all she could manage was: “Please. Don’t stop.” She didn’t mind begging if it meant getting her way. Apparently that was enough to satisfy Jay, and he kissed her possessively. Thoroughly. Deeply. He eased her back until she was lying against the pillows, and she waited for him to stop, to tell her that they’d gone far enough for tonight. But she didn’t want him to. She wanted him to keep going. She wanted him to touch her, to kiss her, to explore her. Her body ached for it. She reached for him, clinging so tightly that her fingers hurt. Everything inside of her hurt. Jay settled over her, covering her with his body, reacting to her. Violet wrapped her legs around him, pulling his hip closer, telling him with her every movement that she wanted him, that she wanted this. Now. “Are you sure?” Jay asked into the warm breath between them, barely lifting his mouth from hers. She nodded, but when she tried to speak, her voice trembled. She hoped he didn’t read it wrong. “Of course I am.” She was nervous and terrified and thrilled all at the same time. He smiled against her mouth, still kissing her, and she melted into him, unable to stop her heart from thundering. He reached around for his wallet. “I have a condom.” His voice was rough. Violet smiled. She’d been waiting for this moment for far too long not to be prepared, but she was happy to hear that he’d been considering it seriously also. “Me too,” she told him, reaching into her nightstand drawer and pulling out a handful of them. “I knew you’d give in.” He groaned, his lips moving to her neck as he tugged at his shirt and pulled it over his head. Violet thought he was beautiful. He was right for her; he always had been. And as he slowly slid her shirt up, his fingertips stroking her bare skin and making goose bumps prickle in the wake of his touch, she wondered why it had taken them so long to get to this place.

Examining this thing called beauty that is both powerful and useless will prepare us for later discussions of pleasure and art. For many people, beauty is an essential ingredient of art. What is the relationship of beauty and pleasure? What is the relationship of beauty and art? Before we get to those questions, let’s see what we can discover by exploring beauty in people, places, and proofs.

Before, one needed God as the agent of recovery, the divine dispenser of grace. Now this need is developing into a love for God as God’s self. This is a beautiful happening, but it brings with it a new relinquishment that can feel deeply threatening. Along with the sweetness of emerging love comes a certain shakiness about recovery. Recovery is no longer the single most important thing in life. Something else has taken its place, and the fear of relapse grows.

Don't devote yourself to anyone. Eventually, everyone walks out of your life If you are so filled with love, there are many out there who are waiting for just one kind gesture, one kind word Extend your hand and help the right ones. Again, don't get involved! Attachment only leads to emotional exhaustion. This world is a simple place. Get busy exploring its simplicity. Get busy exploring its beauty. People are complicated. Life is too short to get involved in their complications.

We feel of the great world that it is simply there, something for the lucky ones among us to explore, and then only at the edges. It never occurs to us that we might make some contribution to it ourselves. And that is why we miss everything. When we land at a place like London airport we are concerned only not to appear foolish. It is more beautiful and more complex than anything we could have dreamed of, but we are concerned only to let people see that we can manage and are not overawed.

There’s something about the hunt for the place, the exploration, that’s always been the most important to me; the photography is almost second. There’s something about finding the secret places nobody knows, the magic in the everyday. I’m not interested in shooting in a studio or any sort of location that is “unspecific.” I’m far more interested in discovering locations that seem otherworldly, but aren’t; they’re here, and real, and the beauty of reality is far more interesting to me than any fantasy.

Cupping her face, I reclaim her lips and gently guide her body next to mine on the bed. Rachel’s tank rides up and my fingers explore the satin skin of her belly. There are so many places I long to go, so many places I crave to take her. “I want to go further,” she whispers. When I skim the waistband of her pants, her breathing hitches. Further. Damn, my entire body responds. I don’t miss the way her hand fidgets with the hem of her shirt. Scared I’ll spook her, I don’t push her too far, but I’m all for reading body language. I place my hand over hers and her smile appears. “You sure?” I ask. I kiss each and every centimeter of her exposed skin as I move up her tank. I linger over the material of her bra and Rachel fists the sheet with both hands. She’s so damn hot I’m about to forget slow and go for fast. But I ignore those urges and guide the material up and over her head. I don’t know what the hell I did to have such a beautiful creature in my bed, but she’s here and I’m going to spend tonight worshipping this gift in front of me.

Ode to My Socks Maru Mori brought me a pair of socks knitted with her own shepherd's hands, two socks soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if into jewel cases woven with threads of dusk and sheep's wool. Audacious socks, my feet became two woolen fish, two long sharks of lapis blue shot with a golden thread, two mammoth blackbirds, two cannons, thus honored were my feet by these celestial socks. They were so beautiful that for the first time my feet seemed unacceptable to me, two tired old fire fighters not worthy of the woven fire of those luminous socks. Nonetheless, I resisted the strong temptation to save them the way schoolboys bottle fireflies, the way scholars hoard sacred documents. I resisted the wild impulse to place them in a cage of gold and daily feed them birdseed and rosy melon flesh. Like explorers who in the forest surrender a rare and tender deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stuck out my feet and pulled on the handsome socks, and then my shoes. So this is the moral of my ode: twice beautiful is beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a case of two woolen socks in wintertime.

Unknown places for tourist in India / Indian visa India has lots of unknown places which nobody has heard of before. you must explore these beautiful places. 1.Ponmudi Hills, Kerala 2. Nighoj, Maharashtra 3. Bhimbetka Rock Shelters, Madhya Pradesh 4. Sandakphu, West Bengal 5. Majuli, Assam 6. Mechuka, Arunachal Pradesh 7. Kanatal, Uttarakhand 8. Gandikota, Andhra Pradesh 9. Jawai, Rajasthan 10. Patan, Gujarat 11. Dhanushkodi, Tamil Nadu 12. Shoja, Himachal Pradesh 13. Dzongu, North Sikkim 14. Bakkhali, West Bengal 15. Tarkarli, Maharashtra 16. Gavi, Kerala 17. Orchha, Madhya Pradesh.

The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not solely the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone. The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious. The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we’re told. The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another. The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote. But it’s a precious mote and, for the moment, it’s the only home we have. The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae, but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them. The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and a mate. The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave—an indication that perhaps flag-waving and space exploration do not mix. The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.

The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts. Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt- older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath. But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.

hospice. If she is going to take it, she must move today. The doctors still don’t understand what is wrong with her, only that her self and her strength are ebbing away, and there seems no stopping it. Wilson’s afternoon will be spent getting his wife, with whom he’s traveled the world, ready for her final journey. He is making plans himself to move from their large, beautiful home, with its huge kitchen with tiles around the stove and many bedrooms for visiting guests and grandchildren and Debbie’s home office. Preparing to move to a smaller place, Wilson is giving away treasures—he has given Christa and Marion and me coral and shells and books, and donated large specimens to the aquarium. And yet, in the face of looming tragedy, Wilson has chosen to be with us this morning, celebrating the birthdays of these two young,

The cosmic perspective flows from fundamental knowledge. But it’s more than about what you know. It’s also about having the wisdom and insight to apply that knowledge to assessing our place in the universe. And its attributes are clear: The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not solely the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone. The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious. The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we’re told. The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another. The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote. But it’s a precious mote and, for the moment, it’s the only home we have. The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae, but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them. The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and a mate. The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave—an indication that perhaps flag-waving and space exploration do not mix. The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.

I had better come clean now and say that I do not believe that art (all art) and beauty are ever separate, nor do I believe that either art or beauty are optional in a sane society." "That puts me on the side of what Harold Bloom calls 'the ecstasy of the privileged moment. Art, all art, as insight, as transformation, as joy. Unlike Harold Bloom, I really believe that human beings can be taught to love what they do not love already and that the privileged moment exists for all of us, if we let it. Letting art is the paradox of active surrender. I have to work for art if I want art to work on me." (...) We know that the universe is infinite, expanding and strangely complete, that it lacks nothing we need, but in spite of that knowledge, the tragic paradigm of human life is lack, loss, finality, a primitive doomsaying that has not been repealed by technology or medical science. The arts stand in the way of this doomsaying. Art objects. The nouns become an active force not a collector's item. Art objects. "The cave wall paintings at Lascaux, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the huge truth of a Picasso, the quieter truth of Vanessa Bell, are part of the art that objects to the lie against life, against the spirit, that is pointless and mean. The message colored through time is not lack, but abundance. Not silence but many voices. Art, all art, is the communication cord that cannot be snapped by indifference or disaster. Against the daily death it does not die." "Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and my staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out. Even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed. If, in the comfortable West, we have chosen to treat such energies with scepticism and contempt, then so much the worse for us. "Art is not a little bit of evolution that late-twentieth-century city dwellers can safely do without. Strictly, art does not belong to our evolutionary pattern at all. It has no biological necessity. Time taken up with it was time lost to hunting, gathering, mating, exploring, building, surviving, thriving. Odd then, that when routine physical threats to ourselves and our kind are no longer a reality, we say we have no time for art. "If we say that art, all art is no longer relevant to our lives, then we might at least risk the question 'What has happened to our lives?

The question haunted me, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet on my way to be a grandmother. My mind on other things, intending only to glance out, the exquisite smallness and delicacy of the river took me completely by surprise. In the hazy light of early morning, the canyon lay shrouded, the river flecked with glints of silver, reduced to a thin line of memory, blurred by a sudden realization that clouded my vision. The astonishing sense of connection with that river and canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a breath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn.

Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs ] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men, — a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches transmit their registers: as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter. In exactly the same way the other churches likewise exhibit (their several worthies), whom, as having been appointed to their episcopal places by apostles, they regard as transmitters of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics contrive something of the same kind.” ​— ​(The Prescription Against Heretics, Chapter 32)

All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam’s waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam’s curse. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.

Ode to My Socks Maru Mori brought me a pair of socks knitted with her own shepherd's hands, two socks soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if into jewel cases woven with threads of dusk and sheep's wool. Audacious socks, my feet became two woolen fish, two long sharks of lapis blue shot with a golden thread, two mammoth blackbirds, two cannons, thus honored were my feet by these celestial socks. They were so beautiful that for the first time my feet seemed unacceptable to me, two tired old fire fighters not worthy of the woven fire of those luminous socks. Nonetheless, I resisted the strong temptation to save them the way schoolboys bottle fireflies, the way scholars hoard sacred documents. I resisted the wild impulse to place them in a cage of gold and daily feed them birdseed and rosy melon flesh. Like explorers who in the forest surrender a rare and tender deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stuck out my feet and pulled on the handsome socks, and then my shoes. So this is the moral of my ode: twice beautiful is beauty and what is good doubly good when it is a case of two woolen socks in wintertime.

Ode to My Socks Maru Mori brought me a pair of socks knitted with her own shepherd's hands, two socks soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if into jewel cases woven with threads of dusk and sheep's wool. Audacious socks, my feet became two woolen fish, two long sharks of lapis blue shot with a golden thread, two mammoth blackbirds, two cannons, thus honored were my feet by these celestial socks. They were so beautiful that for the first time my feet seemed unacceptable to me, two tired old fire fighters not worthy of the woven fire of those luminous socks. Nonetheless, I resisted the strong temptation to save them the way schoolboys bottle fireflies, the way scholars hoard sacred documents. I resisted the wild impulse to place them in a cage of gold and daily feed them birdseed and rosy melon flesh. Like explorers who in the forest surrender a rare and tender deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stuck out my feet and pulled on the handsome socks, and then my shoes. So this is the moral of my ode: twice beautiful is beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a case of two woolen socks in wintertime.

The visitor had a brown, weatherbeaten face, like a friendly pirate, and piercing eyes twinkling with humour. Over tea, the talk turned at once to distant places, Arabia and Kanchenjunga; atlases were dragged from their shelves and laid open on the floor, and it was as if the world had suddenly opened wide its doors. Later, Daphne explained that Clara Vyvyan had indeed travelled all over the world, mostly alone, with her few worldly possessions in a pack on her back. She had explored the Greek islands, had met with bandits in Montenegro, had crossed Canada to camp out with trappers in Alaska ... but she always came home again to Trelowarren, a beautiful eighteenth-century Gothic-style house close to the River Helford, where her roots lay. These were embedded as deeply in the garden as in the house, for Clara was a passionate gardener, and was often rewarded by the discovery of some particularly rare plant in one of the unlikely places to which her pioneering spirit led her. She wrote excellent books about her travels, which won her a small but faithful public, and which were published by Peter Owen; but, like so many good things, are probably now out of print.

POEM – MY AMAZING TRAVELS [My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures] My very first trip I still cannot believe Was planned and executed with such great ease. My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man, He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan. I got my first long vacation while working as a banker One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner. She visited my father and discussed the matter Arrangements were made without any flutter. We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany, In each of those places, there was somebody, To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places, It was a dream come true at our young ages. We even visited Holland, which was across the Border. To drive across from Germany was quite in order. Memories of great times continue to linger, I thank God for an understanding father. That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more, I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe. Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo, Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando. I was accompanied by my husband on many trips. Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit. Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah, Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla. We sailed aboard the Creole Queen On the Mississippi in New Orleans We traversed the Rockies in Colorado And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico. We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome, The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum. To explore the countryside in Florence, And to sail on a Gondola in Venice. My fridge is decorated with magnets Souvenirs of all my visits London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona. And the Leaning Tower of Pisa How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome? Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born. CN Tower in Toronto so very high I thought the elevator would take me to the sky. Then there was El Poble and Toledo Noted for Spanish Gold We travelled on the Euro star. The scenery was beautiful to behold! I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia, Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina, Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines, Places I love to lime. Of course, I would like to make special mention, Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean. Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas Two ships which grace the Seas. Last but not least and best of all We visited Paris in the fall. Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin Amazing places, which made my head, spin. Copyright@BrendaMohammed

So look out a window. Take a walk. Talk with your friend. Use your God-given skills to paint or draw or build a shed or write a book. But imagine it—all of it—in its original condition. The happy dog with the wagging tail, not the snarling beast, beaten and starved. The flowers unwilted, the grass undying, the blue sky without pollution. People smiling and joyful, not angry, depressed, and empty. If you’re not in a particularly beautiful place, close your eyes and envision the most beautiful place you’ve ever been—complete with palm trees, raging rivers, jagged mountains, waterfalls, or snow drifts. Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. He pulls you up and embraces you. At last, you’re with the person you were made for, in the place you were made to be. Everywhere you go there will be new people and places to enjoy, new things to discover. What’s that you smell? A feast. A party’s ahead. And you’re invited. There’s exploration and work to be done—and you can’t wait to get started.

She had a big, beautiful man at her mercy, and she wasn't going to relinquish control. Oh, she was under no illusions that she had him physically overpowered. He could have flipped their places at any instant. She hadn't taken the reins. He'd given her the reins. And that made it all the better. She decided how to begin, when to stop. Whether to tease them both with grazing friction or grind her hips. She set the pace. It was hers to grant or deny him mercy when he pleaded in a whisper. "Faster." With every motion- slow or quick, form or gentle- her pleasure spiraled higher. Her breathing grew uneven, and she flushed with heat. She fell forward to kiss him, searching his mouth. Exploring. As their tongues tangled, his whiskers scraped her lips and chin. Her nipples puckered to knots, exquisitely sensitive. With every movement, they kissed the hard planes of his chest. Bliss rushed at her from all sides, propelling her toward that distant promise of satisfaction. Her rhythm lost all elegance. Her hips jerked and bounced as her urgency grew. "Yes." His voice was strained. "Hold nothing back. I want to feel you come against me. I want to hear the sounds you make." His words of encouragement had the opposite effect. For the first time, she felt a moment's trepidation. She'd never climaxed with another person. It had taken her years to feel comfortable with herself, let alone a man. When the pleasure broke, she would be bared to him. More naked than naked.

Letter to the tech giants: When fame and abundance kiss somebody’s feet before that person is wise enough, he or she is very likely to lose track of what’s necessity and what’s luxury. And modern society is filled with examples of such intelligent stupidity – stupidity that is carried out by apparently smart humans. Because being smart is not the same as being wise. The world has enough smartness, but not enough wisdom to bring that smartness into proper productive practice – and I mean productive practice not sophisticated practice – there is a difference. A person smart enough to visualize a Falcon rocket engine can easily pinpoint the locations of various organizations that spread terrorism, yet the person chooses to explore the space further instead of prioritizing the technological advantages to first fix real issues of the human society that inflict harm to the humans every walk of the way. The world is a miserable place not because we have lack of resources, but because those who have an abundance of resources do not have the slightest idea of true human need. The resources needed for colonizing Mars if put to proper practice can fix the world’s global warming issues – it can fix the world’s climate change issues – it can fix the world’s terrorism issues, yet people are more interested in the pompous idea of living in Mars for whatever reason, instead of paying attention to improving human condition on earth. I am not against technological advancement, for I am a scientist, but my soul aches when I see smart people are dumb enough to chase after illusory glory of doing something different and innovative instead of focusing the powers of their soul on cleaning up the misery business on earth. You can, yet you don’t. Why? Smartness without wisdom is stupidity. You are smart – yes indeed – but I am sorry – you are stupid at the same time. How can you dream of having a cheese burger on Mars when your own kind on Earth is suffering! How can you think of taking rich kids into the orbit just so they can admire the beauty of earth from the heavens, when that very earth is infested with the primordial evils of human character! Awaken the human within you my friend, and pay attention. Awaken the human within and let it consume all the miseries from the world that you live in. Say a member of your family falls ill, would you ignore his or her misery completely just because you want to make life more comfortable for others than it already is, or would you first try everything in your capacity in order to heal your loved one! Be wise my friend, for it is not enough to be smart. You are smart – there is no doubt about that – so utilize that smartness for humanity and heal your own kind. Heal your kind with your capacity my friend. It is wailing for healers – not some delusional faith healers, but real tangible healers. Would you not do anything! Would you not give your soul to fix the broken soul of this world! Arise my friend, Awake my friend and work for humanity, not to make it sophisticated, but to make it peaceful first. Remember, humanity first, then everything else. Peace first, sophistication later. Harmony first, luxury later.

Drowning in guilt and fear and desire, she tried to push his caressing hand away from her throat. His fingers delved into her hair with a grip just short of painful. His mouth was close to hers. He was surrounding her, all the strength and force and maleness of him, and she closed her eyes as her senses went quiet and dark in helpless waiting. "I'll make you tell me," she heard him mutter. And then she was kissing her. Somehow, Beatrix thought hazily, Christopher seemed to be under the impression she would find his kisses so objectionable that she would confess anything to make him desist. She couldn't think how he had come by such a notion. In fact, she couldn't really think at all. His mouth moved over hers in supple, intimate angles, until he found some perfect alignment that made her weak all over. She reached around his neck to keep from dropping bonelessly to the floor. Gathering her closer into the hard support of his body, he explored her slowly, the tip of his tongue stroking, tasting. Her body listed more heavily against his as her limbs became weighted with pleasure. She sensed the moment when his anger was eclipsed by passion, desire changing to white-hot need. Her fingers sank into his beautiful hair, the shorn locks heavy and vibrant, his scalp hot against her palms. With each inhalation, she drew in more of his fragrance, the trace of sandalwood on warm male skin. His mouth slid from hers and dragged roughly along her throat, crossing sensitive places that made her writhe. Blindly turning her face, she rubbed her lips against his ear. He drew in a sharp breath and jerked his head back. His hand came to her jaw, clamping firmly. "Tell me what you know," he said, his breath searing her lips. "Or I'll do worse than this. I'll take you here and now. Is that what you want?" As a matter of fact ...

Why the Leaves Change Colour The first girl who was ever born with amber skin was Mother Nature’s own child. Her birth was from a seed Mother Nature planted in the darkest, purest, most fertile soil, and soon there was a flower, and the flower opened up to show the most beautiful little girl imaginable. One day when the little girl was playing, the Sky, who was her brother, jealous of how lovely she was and how happy and distracted their mother had been since she was born, stole her and placed her upon a star so far away from the earth, Mother Nature could not get to her. In her grief, Mother Nature took every leaf that existed on Earth and turned them amber. The baby girl raised herself on this star—after all, she was her mother’s child, fortitude became her. She became majestic, and independent, and knew how to cope with anything alone because she had always only known alone. When the girl was finally old enough to explore the universe by itself, she travelled across the stars, finding beauty in thousands of planets, but none where she really felt at home. Until, that is, she came upon a beautiful blue planet with amber leaves. Walking through golden leaves, she remembered who she was, and who her mother was, for this is the magic of the bond children have with their mothers. They will remember them even if they are millions of miles away; why do you think good mothers can say things like ‘I love you all the way around the universe’ and you just know they mean it and know not to question it? When Mother Nature felt in her bones that her child had returned, she took her into her arms and turned all the leaves to green again. But because the leaves of amber gold were how her girl found her again, it happens every single year in commemoration. We call it a season. We named it after Mother Nature’s only daughter. We called it Autumn.

She refused to feel guilty for not talking to Portia about the Earl of Harte. She couldn't discuss what she didn't understand, and she had no idea what to think of the man with the forbidding gaze. Avenell Slade. Lily snuggled deeper beneath her blankets. She loved the way his name felt moving through her mind. It was sharp and smooth at the same time. Dark and light. Lily knew she was no great beauty. She did not have Portia's dramatic dark hair or flashing eyes. Nor did she have Emma's commanding presence. She did her best to be content with her place among her exceptional sisters. But now, after experiencing Lord Harte's painful slight, she found herself wishing she stood out more, that she was somehow more attractive, more striking. She should forget him. Put him completely from her mind. He had made it infinitely clear he did not welcome her interest. Yet, she wanted to know him. It was that simple and that impossible. A hollowness spread from Lily's center. It was a sensation she had experienced more than once since she had begun her foray into the marriage market. It was the fear that what she sought might never be found- that the kind of deep passion she yearned for existed only in sordid novels. As thoughts of Lord Harte continued to agitate her mind and created a growing restlessness in her body, Lily imagined an often-read scene from one of her favorite stories. It was frighteningly easy to cast the enigmatic Lord Harte in the role of dark seducer, but she struggled to envision herself as the intrepid heroine. Lily did not possess a bold bone in her body. By nature, she had always been rather shy and had never been able to cultivate the kind of self-confidence her sisters possessed. Though she may crave the passionate experiences she read about, she did not possess the courage to explore such things beyond the privacy of her mind.

Owen couldn’t believe his luck. Candice Mayfair was the beautiful white wolf he’d seen that day so long ago. Not that she looked like a wolf right now. He only knew she was the wolf, unequivocally, because he recognized her scent. After the initial shock of seeing an unfamiliar and intriguing Arctic she-wolf, he’d gone after her. The whole pack had gone on a run that night, but they knew to stay far away from any campsite. He and the other guys had swum across the river to explore a bit. Cameron and his mate had stayed on the other side with the kids. He’d even swum back across the river to find her and discovered her scent had led right to one of the tents. Since she had moved into the tent, he knew she had to be one of their shifter kind. He’d even hung around the next day, waiting to catch a glimpse of her, but there were several women, and he had no idea which one had been her. Two blonds, a couple of brunettes, and a red-haired woman—none of whom looked like the picture he had of Clara Hart, though. Being a white wolf in summer had made it difficult to blend in, so he’d had to keep well out of sight. Candice Mayfair was definitely the author of the books on the website, though she didn’t look like the photo her uncle had of her, if she was Clara Hart. She had the same compelling eyes, different color, but they got his attention, grabbed hold, and wouldn’t let go. He carried her to her couch and set her down, staying close, his hand still on her arm until she seemed to regain her equilibrium. “The wolf pup was yours,” she accused, jerking her arm away from him. “Wolf pup?” “Yeah, wolf pup. Don’t pretend you don’t know about your own wolf pup.” Then all the pieces began to fall into place. Campers. Campfire. Food. Corey, the wolf pup she had to be referring to, hadn’t just found the food like they’d thought. Candice must not have been a wolf until that night. “You fed him? Corey? His mom wondered why he smelled of beef jerky that night. We thought he’d found some at the campsite. Don’t tell me…he bit you.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

If you’d convinced Nancy to marry you, you might not have had to go off to be a Bow Street runner. You could have had an easier life, a better life in high society than you could have had with me if you’d married me. Without being able to access my fortune, I could only have dragged you down.” “You don’t really believe that I wanted to marry her for her money,” he gritted out. “It’s either that or assume that you fell madly in love with her in the few weeks we were apart.” They were nearly to the inn now, so she added a plaintive note to her voice. “Or perhaps it was her you wanted all along. You knew my uncle would never accept a second son as a husband for his rich heiress of a daughter, so you courted me to get close to her. Nancy was always so beautiful, so--” “Enough!” Without warning, he dragged her into one of the many alleyways that crisscrossed York. This one was deeply shadowed, the houses leaning into each other overhead, and as he pulled her around to face him, the brilliance of his eyes shone starkly in the dim light. “I never cared one whit about Nancy.” She tamped down her triumph--he hadn’t admitted the whole truth yet. “It certainly didn’t look that way to me. It looked like you had already forgotten me, forgotten what we meant to each--” “The hell I had.” He shoved his face close to hers. “I never forgot you for one day, one hour, one moment. It was you--always you. Everything I did was for you, damn it. No one else.” The passionate profession threw her off course. Dom had never been the sort to say such sweet things. But the fervent look in his eyes roused memories of how he used to look at her. And his hands gripping her arms, his body angling in closer, were so painfully familiar... “I don’t…believe you,” she lied, her blood running wild through her veins. His gleaming gaze impaled her. “Then believe this.” And suddenly his mouth was on hers. This was not what she’d set out to get from him. But oh, the joy of it. The heat of it. His mouth covered hers, seeking, coaxing. Without breaking the kiss, he pushed her back against the wall, and she grabbed for his shoulders, his surprisingly broad and muscular shoulders. As he sent her plummeting into unfamiliar territory, she held on for dear life. Time rewound to when they were in her uncle’s garden, sneaking a moment alone. But this time there was no hesitation, no fear of being caught. Glorying in that, she slid her hands about his neck to bring him closer. He groaned, and his kiss turned intimate. He used lips and tongue, delving inside her mouth in a tender exploration that stunned her. Enchanted her. Confused her. Something both sweet and alien pooled in her belly, a kind of yearning she’d never felt with Edwin. With any man but Dom. As if he sensed it, he pulled back to look at her, his eyes searching hers, full of surprise. “My God, Jane,” he said hoarsely, turning her name into a prayer. Or a curse? She had no time to figure out which before he clasped her head to hold her for another darkly ravishing kiss. Only this one was greedier, needier. His mouth consumed hers with all the boldness of Viking raiders of yore. His tongue drove repeatedly inside in a rhythm that made her feel all trembly and hot, and his thumbs caressed her throat, rousing the pulse there. Thank heaven there was a wall to hold her up, or she was quite sure she would dissolve into a puddle at his feet. Because after all these years apart, he was riding roughshod over her life again. And she was letting him. How could she not? His scent of leather and bergamot engulfed her, made her dizzy with the pleasure of it. He roused urges she’d never known she had, sparked fires in places she’d thought were frozen. Then his hands swept down her possessively as if to memorize her body…or mark it as belonging to him. Belonging to him.

I think you should be punished for tormenting me for so long.” --- “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Art is full of agony and beauty. The pen itself a sword of pleasure and pain, isn’t it, my poet?” --- “I’ve been waiting for you.” His voice sizzled with hunger. How could I respond? I’ve been thinking about you non-stop like a sex-crazed harlot since I left? “I’m here.” --- “Remind me who you are,” he said in a gentler tone, almost a please. “How we know each other.” “Okay,” she began. “I’m Savannah Evans, a grad student and teaching assistant who teaches English at a college in Cambridge. I applied to the colony to work on my poetry and arrived six weeks ago. “We’ve spoken many times. You’ve praised my work, which I find a great honor as I’m a fan of your art.” --- “A cross between two species. Doomed with the thirst of the undead for human blood, yet tormented by the gargoyle drive to protect them.” --- She ceased to breathe. When he leaned forward and his lips fluttered against hers, her footing became unsteady and she stumbled. He placed a hand on her lower back to steady her and pulled her close. Her breasts met his hard torso and she became aware at how frantically her heart beat. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lost herself in the kiss as their lips met. They explored each other with a sort of fascination, mouth and tongues claiming each other in their hunger. Delicately at first, as if not sure this was real or just a fantasy, and then strong and unyielding. Demanding this moment to never end. --- “I bought new lingerie today I wanted to show you, but I didn’t get a chance with all that happened.” “You’ll have to return tomorrow night then…. Maybe we’ll order an entire catalog.” His smile and the glint of mischievousness in his eyes reflected lascivious thoughts. “You can model all the outfits you’d like for me.” ---

There can be no better place to begin your exploration of the world than by stepping our your own back door.

I didn't yet perceive the way everything that happens is connected-didn't realize that opening a door that led to outside exploration would inevitably open a door to the unexplored places inside myself.

Writing as if she were receiving information from another troubled and perplexed source or voice that was speaking to her, Jerry described the beauty of the Brazilian rain forest, but followed this with the concern that “it was dying a very slow death . . . Why was this most beautiful place being destroyed?” she continued. “You started to investigate further and you discovered that it was not the place that was dying. It was the inhabitants of the place that were killing it. You then were very concerned about this and continued exploring the rest of the earth and its inhabitants. The very same thing happened everywhere you went. You then decided something must be done. But what? How? . . . Does humankind have that much hatred for his future that he would destroy it?” she wondered.

There is a special place, at the end of nowhere, but on the way to everywhere, a place of explorers, pirates, smugglers, soldiers, prisoners and scientists. This is a place where some men lost hope, and many died in despair. Though pain and suffering contributes to its fascinating history, it is also a place of beauty, vivid colors, peace, solitude and happiness.

The name “California” came from a sixteenth-century romance novel that was popular in Spain. In the novel, California was a land where Amazonian warriors lived—all women, no men, with beautiful, strong bodies. When the Spanish explorers arrived in the real California, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they didn’t think the place looked like much: no particularly valuable natural resources—none, at least, that they were interested in. Only trees and mountains, mist and fog—nothing to write home about. They stuck around anyway.

Again, T. S. Eliot expresses so beautifully my own personal discovery and conviction: “We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.

With Jesus, God's rescue operation has been put into effect once for all. A great door has swung open in the cosmos which can never again be shut. It is the door to the prison where we have been kept chained up. We are offered freedom: freedom to experience God's rescue for ourselves, to go through the open door and explore the new world to which we now have access. In particular, we are all invited - summoned, actually - to discover, through following Jesus, that this new world is indeed a place of justice, spirituality, relationships and beauty, and that we are not only to enjoy it as such but to work at bringing it to birth on earth as in heaven.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of the Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2015 Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Vermilion, 2014 Clare Cooper Marcus, House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home, Hays, 2007 Tisha Morris, Mind, Body, Home: Transform Your Life One Room at a Time, Llewellyn, 2014 Mandy Paradise, Witches, Pagans, and Cultural Appropriation: Considerations & Applications for a Magical Practice, Anchor and Star, 2017 Kristin Petrovich, Elemental Energy: Crystal and Gemstone Rituals for a Beautiful Life, HarperElixir, 2016 Robert Simmons, The Pocket Book of Stones: Who They Are and What They Teach, North Atlantic Books, 2015 Jan Spiller and Karen McCoy, Spiritual Astrology: A Path to Divine Awakening, Touchstone, 2010 Esther M. Sternberg, MD, Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being, Harvard University Press, 2010

This fixation of desire upon beauty in fantasy leads to a kind of living death or, as Lacan calls it, a “zone of encroachment of death upon life” (p. 331/285). This is perhaps “the place of desire insofar as it is a desire for nothing

3 Reasons Why You Should Visit Galapagos Islands Are you have been planning to spend their vacation in most of the beautiful place in the world. Then the Galapagos Islands is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The famous archipelago in the Pacific Ocean is a demand and desired destination for travelers all around the world. The Galapagos isn’t probably the easiest and cheapest accessible place in the world but still attracts huge numbers of visitors, although there is a limit on how many people can arrive in the Galapagos. These are not budget-friendly travel destination Islands, but there are some ways how to arrange your week in paradise from cruising the living onboard and archipelago to making the day trip from one of the islands. You have most already heard or read all superlatives Galapagos Island can offer many visitors. But if you hesitate if the time and money will be worth it, we’ve put a list of three reasons why we should visit the Galapagos Islands. After reading these reasons, we believe that there won’t be any hesitation. The Galapagos Legend should be on every traveler. Pristine beaches You come to Galapagos Island to see fantastic wildlife but firstly mention the beaches. The stretches of fine white sand are on every island, and although you won’t have that much time to relax and lay down here just because of that there is so much to do, so we are looking at you sea lions only walking on those beaches from one to another end is a great unforgettable experience. Never expect deck chairs, bars, or umbrellas beaches on the Galapagos have nothing familiar with those touristy and crowded places form travel catalogs. Wildlife When we think and talk about the Galapagos Islands, we have a suspicion that the wildlife would be something marvelous and unique. What we never know was that these superlatives would get a new dimension on the Galapagos. All the wildlife animal species from iguanas, birds, tortoises, sea lions crabs to fish are incredible, and nothing can make you on their natural behavior that is dissimilar from the animal's behavior we know from our countries. The Galapagos animals never feel fear human at all, so you can get close to them and take images of a lifetime. Island hikes There are many designed ways on islands of Galapagos that will help you to walk through a unique landscape and will also help you to understand the evaluation process better, evaluation of not only the islands but also of the flora and fauna which live here in unbelievable symbiosis. The hikes are short, so visitors are allowed to walk on the island on their own so that you want a certified guide to show you around. Hikes were one of the best activities we did on the Galapagos as it combined the exploration of almost barren volcanic islands and watching wildlife. Galapagos Legend help you plan the trip you have dreamed about. You can choose onshore activities that cater to your interests, from a wildlife safari to a side trip to the fabulous annual Carnival in Rio, Brazil. As you stay on shore before and after your trip, you have the option of staying at a delightful boutique-style hotel or in a 5-star hotel setting.

For innovative questioning to gain traction, there has to be a willingness throughout the company to build on ideas, to keep the tone of questioning generally positive (à la appreciative inquiry), and to use language that is open and inclusive (How might we?). Responding to exploratory questions with highly practical ones (How much will it cost? Who’s going to do all this new work? What happens if the idea fails?) can have an important place in the discussion, but not necessarily at the early stages. Part of building a culture of inquiry is teaching people to defer judgment while exploring new ideas and big questions. This is necessary because many of46 us are conditioned to react to questions by trying to answer them too quickly or by countering them “devil’s advocate” style.

Now, take all of your computer's memory and arrange it as one long line of zeros and ones: 0,1,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,0,1....Take this very long number and put a zero and a decimal point in front of it. We've just translated one huge number into a rational number between 0 and 1. By placing this single point at exactly the right spot on the number line, we can store an unlimited amount of information. Ah, if only it were so simple. In the real world, we simply don't have the precision required to put this method of storing memory into practice. We never will, either, but it's an interesting mental exercise to see that it can be done in theory in an idealized world. The point of this whole mental exercise is that in many ways an irrational number has as much "information" as an infinite number of natural numbers.

Halong Bay Halong Bay is the most beautiful place in Vietnam and a true natural wonder which hasn't yet been spoiled by mass tourism and hordes of tourists. It's best explored on a boat trip around the area which will take up at least a full day if you want to see the best of it. You can explore caves, swim in tiny creaks and enjoy the sun setting over these stunning limestone islets.

The air was pure and still, and early sunshine sparkled on the heavy dew. In the valley sat cotton candy mist, and the distant hills stood softly, their edges blurred and colors muted by the moist air. Swallows and house martins swooped and dipped, hungry for their breakfasts, catching the first rise of insects of the day. The honeysuckle and roses had not yet warmed to release their scent, so the strongest smell was of wet grass and bracken. Laura smiled, breathing deeply, and walked lightly through the gate into the meadows. She hadn't the courage to head off onto the mountain on her own just yet but could not wait to explore the woods at the end of the fields. By the time she reached the first towering oaks, her feet were washed clean by the dew. She felt wonderfully refreshed and awake. As she wandered among the trees she had the sense of a place where time had stood still. Where man had left only a light footprint. Here were trees older than memory. Trees that had sheltered farmers and walkers for generations. Trees that had been meeting points for lovers and horse dealers. Trees that had provided fuel and food for families and for creatures of the forest with equal grace. As she walked deeper into the woods she noticed the quality of sound around her change. Gone were the open vistas and echoes of the meadows and their mountain backdrop. Here even the tiniest noises were close up, bouncing back off the trunks and branches, kept in by the dense foliage. The colors altered subtly, too. With the trees in full leaf the sunlight was filtered through bright green, giving a curious tinge to the woodland below. White wood anemones were not white at all, but the palest shade of Naples yellow. The silver lichens which grew in abundance bore a hint of olive. Even the miniature violets reflected a suggestion of viridian.

UNCONVENTIONAL DESTINATION WEDDING LOCALES Destination Wedding Jan 6 This wedding season, fall in love with endearing unconventional destination wedding locales Theme Weavers Designs Since all the travel restrictions have been lifted, destination weddings are back in vogue. However, the pandemic has led to a major paradigm shift. In this case, Indian couples are looking into hidden gems to take on as their wedding destination, instead of opting for an international location. With the rich cultural heritage and a myriad of local traditions, it has been observed by industry insiders that couples feel closer to their past and history after getting married in a regional wedding destination. At the same time, it is a very cumbersome task to find the perfect wedding destination - it has to be perfectly balanced in terms of the services it offers as well as having breathtaking views. This wedding season, choose something offbeat, by opting for an unexplored destination, that is both visually appealing and has a romantic vibe to them. Start off your wedding journey with an auspicious location. Rishikesh, on the banks of the holy river Ganges is one of the most sacred places a couple can tie the knot. This tiny town’s interesting traditions, picturesque locales, and ancient customs make this one of the most underrated places to get married in india. Perfect for a riverside wedding in extravagant outdoor tents, this wedding season, it is high time Rishikesh gets the hype it deserves. “The Glasshouse on the Ganges,” is one of the most stunning places to get married. While becoming informed travellers, this place is interred with a vast and vibrant cultural history. It offers an extremely unique experience as it revitalises ruined architectural wonders for the couple to tour or get married in, making it a heartwarming and wonderful experience for all those who are involved. Steep your wedding party in the lap of nature, in Naukuchiatal, Nainital, Uttarakhand. This place is commonly referred to as “treasure of natural beauty,” where it offers mesmerising natural spectacles for a couple to get married in a gorgeous outdoor ceremony. Away from the hustle and bustle of the urban jungles that have slowly been taking over the Indian subcontinent, this location provides a much needed breath of fresh air. This location also provides much needed reprieve from the fast paced lifestyle that we live, making a wedding a truly relaxing affair. As this is a quaint hill station, surrounded with lush greens, there are numerous ideas to create a natural and sustainable wedding. The most distinguishing feature of this location is the nine-cornered lake, situated 1,220 m above sea level. There is something classic and timeless about the Kerala backwaters. This location is enriching and chock full of unique cultural traditions. With spectacular and awe-inspiring views of the backwaters, Kumarakom in Kerala easily qualifies as one of the top wedding destinations in india. Just like Naukuchiatal, this space is a study in serenity, where it is far away from the noisy streets and bazaars. Perfect for a cozy and intimate wedding, the Kerala backwaters are a gorgeous choice for couples who are opting for a socially distant wedding, along with having a lot of indigenous flora and fauna. Punctuated with the salty sea and the sultry air, the backwaters in Kerala are an underrated gem that presents couples with a unique wedding location that is perfect for a historical and regal wedding. The beaches of Goa and the forts of Rajasthan are a classic for a reason, but at the same time, they can get boring. Couples have been exploring more underrated wedding locations in order to experience the diverse local cultures of India that can also host their weddings

Here’s why: Because our culture was built upon and benefits from the control of women. The way power justifies controlling a group is by conditioning the masses to believe that the group cannot be trusted. So the campaign to convince us to mistrust women begins early and comes from everywhere. When we are little girls, our families, teachers, and peers insist that our loud voices, bold opinions, and strong feelings are “too much” and unladylike, so we learn to not trust our personalities. Childhood stories promise us that girls who dare to leave the path or explore get attacked by big bad wolves and pricked by deadly spindles, so we learn to not trust our curiosity. The beauty industry convinces us that our thighs, frizz, skin, fingernails, lips, eyelashes, leg hair, and wrinkles are repulsive and must be covered and manipulated, so we learn to not trust the bodies we live in. Diet culture promises us that controlling our appetite is the key to our worthiness, so we learn to not trust our own hunger. Politicians insist that our judgment about our bodies and futures cannot be trusted, so our own reproductive systems must be controlled by lawmakers we don’t know in places we’ve never been. The legal system proves to us again and again that even our own memories and experiences will not be trusted. If twenty women come forward and say, “He did it,” and he says, “No, I didn’t,” they will believe him while discounting and maligning us every damn time.

Childhood stories promise us that girls who dare to leave the path or explore get attacked by big bad wolves and pricked by deadly spindles, so we learn to not trust our curiosity. The beauty industry convinces us that our thighs, frizz, skin, fingernails, lips, eyelashes, leg hair, and wrinkles are repulsive and must be covered and manipulated, so we learn to not trust the bodies we live in. Diet culture promises us that controlling our appetite is the key to our worthiness, so we learn to not trust our own hunger. Politicians insist that our judgment about our bodies and futures cannot be trusted, so our own reproductive systems must be controlled by lawmakers we don’t know in places we’ve never been. The legal system proves to us again and again that even our own memories and experiences will not be trusted. If twenty women come forward and say, “He did it,” and he says, “No, I didn’t,” they will believe him while discounting and maligning us every damn time. And religion, sweet Jesus. The lesson of Adam and Eve—the first formative story I was told about God and a woman—was this: When a woman wants more, she defies God, betrays her partner, curses her family, and destroys the world.

The wet floor was difficult to navigate and the musty smell of rot, tinged with ammonia, was sharp in my nose. It was evident that the building’s current occupants were engaged in questionable activities, so while I wanted to explore and capture the dark beauty of this forgotten place, I did not care to stumble upon anyone living or deceased.

It’s not about how we look … let’s explore that … yes, outer beauty fades … it’s not where we should invest all our time and energy … that should be our character and our calling. But aren’t confidence, peace, joy, love, and self-control part of our character, and aren’t those affected when we are unhealthy or overweight? How could they not be? Aren’t our relationships affected when those areas of our lives are not in a good place? When we don’t have the energy to do what we feel God has created us to do, or be the mom or wife we want to be? Is that really the life God desires for us? Is it even the life we desire for ourselves?

Indian Railways is the fourth largest rail network in the world These are the top 5 most luxurious trains which have the best beautiful views from the window of your seat and serve the best hospitality. These trains pass through beautiful places. Surely your experience will be at the next level. Maharajas' Express : It runs between October and April, covering around 12 destinations most of which lie in Rajasthan. Palace on Wheels: The train starts its journey from New Delhi and covers Jaipur, Sawai Madhopur, Chittorgarh, Udaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Bharatpur, and Agra, before returning to Delhi. If you plan on experiencing this royal journey, make sure you have Rs. 3,63,300 to spend! The Golden Chariot : you can take a ride along the Southern State of Karnataka and explore while living like a VIP on wheels. You start from Bengaluru and then go on to visit famous tourist attractions like Hampi, Goa and Mysore to name a few. The Golden Chariot also boasts of a spa, a gym and restaurants too. The Deccan Odyssey: The Deccan Odyssey can give you tours across destinations in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat. It starts from Mumbai, covers 10 popular tourist locations including Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Goa, Aurangabad, Ajanta-Ellora Nasik, Pune, returning to Mumbai. Maha Parinirvan Express / Buddha Circuit Train: The Buddha Express travels through parts of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, where Buddism originated over 2,500 years ago. This isn’t as opulent as the other luxury Indian trains and instead drops passengers off at hotels at famous tourist destinations such as Bodhgaya, Rajgir and Nalanda.

I’m looking out on the road the sky is bright the wind is cold. The wind my element it blows so hard, the sheer force of the world is felt in this air. I feel the life being ****** out and then in to my body at the same time such a beautiful sensation. This is the sensation right before you begin the Great Work when you feel the energy of the universe. The energy just whirling around in circles the path of lapis ruber or another path. But my journey if not for lapis philosophorum my journey is for blank, my mind is not for anything. The journey I travel is not for life it is not for death this journey is not for a **** thing in existence. My journey is for something much more what it is only one on the road will understand. So when I feel the wind blowing I ask myself is it time for me to move? Is it time to start? I am going to the center of the sun what will I do now that I’ve taken the first step has it all begun? It is not possible to turn back not in this particular journey. In this journey once you take a step, the platform you were walking on before is completely destroyed. It is swallowed up in the sea of what, the platform is consumed in the place of never-ending nothingness. Really it is not a place, it is swallowed in the void, so you can’t turn around even if you will it. Now I as I walk this path I sit here and I see the star, on it are five points. The five points of the star are all looking at me I just wonder if the look is inverted or upright. If it is observing me inverted what will I do? If it is watching me uprightly what can I do? These questions are both the same but which way is the star observing me. I couldn’t give a **** either way, but at certain points it seems I would give a ****, now why is that? See I’m on a spiraling path of this something, and it’s becoming clear, it’s not that I’m stepping forward. In this journey I am not stepping forward I am not stepping backwards I am doing much more. But I am stepping. That’s the beauty of this journey where time ceases to exist. It’s because at the end of this journey I might have explored the universe in its entirety. I may have went to the edge of this universe of motion and jumped off the edge. I would have slipped through the corners barely escaping the hound dogs of the barrier. And after facing the eternal beasts, I would have ended up back inside of the universe. It’s funny because after this timeless journey, I may have gained so much and time will have certainly passed. est ruber in terra, populous non est faciem in principia pater sol regnat in terra humanos est regnant. deus sol non est in oceanaia luna non est in caelum nocte quam quam non lux. non lux quam quam sol non est regnat. hominis the rise of the moon is so great that the light of the sun can be overtake. But the light of the moon come from the light of the sun there is nothing else that can actually and truly be done. What to be done is what to be given to all who want to go forward in the way of life. The path of love and the path of light leads to the same sources it is up to one of us to decide which one will be our tool. Back to what I was talking about the sand was awesome. The alpha and the omega a rise of the sun and the fall of the moon also rise of the moon and the fall of the sun.

places to stay in alwar Discover the hidden gem of Alwar, Rajasthan at Village Dadhikar. places to stay in alwar Immerse yourself in the tranquil beauty of this picturesque village and find the perfect place to stay. From traditional havelis to cozy guesthouses, explore our curated selection of accommodations for an unforgettable experience in Alwar.

In his book The Art of Yoga, B. K. S. Iyengar calls Yoga a “disciplinary art which develops the faculties of the body, mind and intellect” and whose “purpose is to refine man.”4 Initially he practiced Yoga for health reasons, but gradually he developed the yogic postures into an art form bringing “charm and delicacy, poise and peace, harmony and delight in presentations.”5 Undoubtedly he relates in this artistic way to the rest of Yoga as well. At the same time, Iyengar—whose method of āsana practice is the most exacting of all—makes it clear that the yogic techniques, if practiced correctly, have predictable results. Iyengar sees the relationship between art and science as follows: “Art in its initial stages is science; science in its highest form is art.”6 That is to say, at first the artist must master technique (the scientific part of art), just as the scientist who wants to master science must see beauty in truth. The delight and awe of mathematicians when looking at a particularly concise formula is a well-known manifestation of artistic sensibility. Long ago, Pythagoras knew of the meeting place of science (in the form of mathematics) and art (in the form of music). Even before him, the Indians had discovered the same connection, as expressed in their Shulba-Sūtras. Yoga practitioners look upon their own body-mind as an artistic instrument that can be explored fairly precisely by carefully observing the timehonored rules of the yogic heritage. This effort yields what the Western esoteric traditions call the “music of the spheres”—the mystical sound om reverberating throughout the cosmos followed by the wondrous realization of absolute oneness (ekatva) beyond all qualities.

Orion threw a grin back at me as headed to the bar, ducking behind it. “What would madam like?” he asked in a formal tone which was a damn good impression of the Acruxes' butler. I giggled hurrying over to take a stool in front of the bar and placing my clutch down, relishing the cool breeze against my burning neck. “Hmm...a Manhattan?” I teased and he cocked his head. “I'm afraid we're fresh out of bullshit, how about a white wine spritzer with a tiny umbrella in it?” I laughed, nodding eagerly as he made up my drink then poured himself a measure of bourbon. He held it out for me and I leaned across the bar to take it. As I took hold of the glass, he didn't let go and I gazed up at him under my lashes questioning why. “Have I told you have exceptionally beautiful you look tonight, Darcy?” Darcy. He'd said my name. For the first time ever. And why did it sound like so much more than a name when he spoke it? It was like he'd fired an arrow and it had punctured a flesh wound in me at the exact same moment. Hell. I needed to get over this guy. Why was I so caught up on him? Unavailable, that's what it was. We always want what we can't have and Professor Orion was off limits. Simple as that. And those muscles. And the beard. And the dark eyes. And the dimple. But that was it. “That's the first I've heard of it, Professor,” I whispered, unable to make my voice rise any louder. “Don't do that,” he grunted, releasing the drink. I eyed him curiously as he walked around the bar with his bourbon in hand. He took the stool beside mine, his arm butting up against me. “Do what?” I asked, swivelling around to face the pool and taking a sip of my spritzer. It fizzed on my tongue and sent a deep kick of heat through my chest. “You know what.” “You're very presumptuous, Orion. You think I'm far more aware of your chaotic way of thinking than I really am.” I sipped my drink again, spying on him from the corner of my eye. He took a swig of his own drink and the familiar waft of bourbon drifted over me, tingling my senses. It was becoming a trigger, like the moment I walked into his office and he uncorked a bottle, it made me want to taste it on his mouth. And then that led to me wondering whether his fangs would brush my tongue when we kissed, and that always led to me mentally undressing him, then me conjuring an image of what those muscles looked like beneath that shirt... “I have something for you,” he said and I turned, blinking out of my dark fantasy. “You do?” He nodded, reaching into his inside pocket and taking out my coil of blue hair. My heart combusted and a choked noise escaped me. I reached for it and he slid it onto my wrist. He kept my hand in his, his eyes downcast as they remained on the band of hair. “I want you to know, I believe you would have gotten this back yourself when you were ready. But I took a lot of pleasure in retrieving it for you all the same.” I stared at him in complete shock, unsure what to say, my tongue tied in knots. “But Fae don't fight battles for other Fae,” I blurted, completely astonished that his actions that day had been to take this back from Seth. For me. And nothing else. He finished his drink and planted the glass on the bar, rising to his feet. He didn't reply to what I'd said and I barely even remembered what it was as he started pulling his clothes off. “Err, what are you doing?” I half laughed as he shed his jacket and kicked off his shoes, pulling off his socks. Oh my god. “I hate parties, but I like swimming.” He started undoing the buttons of his shirt and thought his back was to me, I was still captivated as he dropped it to the floor like a silken sheet. My eyes scraped down his skin to where his muscles etched an upside down v into his lower back, disappearing beneath his waistband. His shoulders were tanned and heavenly broad, making me long to explore all of those muscles with my hands.(Darcy)

I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived. But it was vital to my survival to have a one bedroom of my own i saw the aprtment almost as a sanatorium a hospice clinci for my own recovery I painted the walls in the warmest colors i could find and bought myself flowers every week as if i were visiting myself in the hospital is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty why are you studying Italian so that just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again and is actually successful this time? ciao comes from if you must know it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval venetians as an intimate salutation Sono il Suo Schiavo meaning i am your slave. om Naamah Shivaya meaning I honor the divinity that resides whin me. I wanted to experience both , I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence the dual glories of a human life I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos the singular balance of the good and he beautiful I'd been missing both during these last hard years because both pleasure and devotion require a stress free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety , As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion. four feet on the ground a head full of foliage looking at the world through the heart. it was more than I wanted to toughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. same guatemalan musicians are always playing id rather be a sparrow than a snail on their bamboo windpipes oh how i want italian to open itself up to me i havent felt so starved for comprehension since then dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontanana dolce sitl nuovo Dante wrote his divine comedy in terza rima triple rhyme a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating here times every five lines. lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle we are the masters of bel far niente larte darrangiarsi The reply in italy to you deserve a break today would probably be yeah no duh that's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon to go over to your house and sleep with your wife, I walked home to my apartment and soft-boiled a pair of fresh brown eggs for my lunch i peeled the eggs and arranged them on a plate beside the seven stalks of the asparagus (which were so slim and snappy they didn't need to be cooked at all,)I put some olives on the plate too and the four knobs of goat cheese I'd picked up yesterday from the fromagerie down the street tend two slices of pink oily salmon for dessert a lovely peach which the woman at the market had given to me for free and which was still warm form the roman sunlight for the longest time I couldn't even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing finally when i had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal i went and sat in apatch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bit of it with my fingers while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian happiness inhabited my every molecule. I am inspired by the regal self assurance of this town so grounded and rounded so amused and monumental knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history i would like to be like rome when i am an old lady. I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in

The wilderness was a paradisical place of exquisite natural beauty. It was an unpredictable place inhabited by fierce and belligerent tribes. It was an abode of ugly, frightening demons. It was a place of involuntary and unhappy exile from the world of power and pleasure. It was an ideal place for the release from the burden of worldly existence. In exploring the forest as a site of political conflict, killing, and violence, we have to understand all the other things that it was and was not. In doing so, we are taken to the heart of ancient Indian political processes, to fundamental ideas about political and cultural identity, and to the definition of the self and the other.

For some reason, I found the fact that our two men were naked, while Jester and I were, in a way, clothed, particularly exciting. Jester was adorned in paint, and I had my feathered pinioned wings and my owl mask. I was a totem, my man was transparent and naked; he was my servant and my slave, and he was that pure thing – a naked male animal, and, tonight, he was mine. “To-wit, to-whoo,” I invited my servant with my owl call. He kissed me; the kiss was fierce and unending, or so it seemed, an eternal kiss, a kiss that would carry us into infinity, his arms around me, grasping me, clasping me under my pinioned arms; his lips explored mine; our lips merged in one; my eyes were closed; it was pure sensation: the pouring rain, my dripping feathers, my pinioned arms pressed together, my shoulders pulled back tight, my breasts tensed and straining forward; his chest, hard and smooth and muscular against my breasts; his hands on me; his lips meeting my lips; his tongue mingling with my tongue. I breathed him in. Inwardly, I sighed, “Oh, Master!” But it came out as a quizzical “To-wit, to-whoo?” He whispered, “Oh, Goddess, oh, beautiful Owl.” He held me so tight it was as if he wanted to consume me, merge my body in his, to absorb me totally. Finally, he stepped back, unhooked the owl mask-and-hood from the collar, and lifted it off, and placed it carefully on an iron bench, which was the only furniture in the gazebo. My face, now, was naked. And then, standing in the rain, we made love, me with my arms still pinioned behind me, totally at his mercy, thrilling at my helplessness, and entrusting myself totally to his love ...

Miranda laughed. She missed her friend. She missed New York, the sheer wattage of the place, its mighty abundance, its chaos, its kinetic energy a comfort somehow. How long ago was it, those idyllic years, set free in the city to explore as she liked, to discover some cheap noodle shop or boho boutique or obscure sculpture garden tucked away somewhere in Queens?

People who don’t read it, and even some of those who write it, like to assume or pretend that the ideas used in science fiction all rise from intimate familiarity with celestial mechanics and quantum theory, and are comprehensible only to readers who work for NASA and know how to program their VCR. This fantasy, while making the writers feel superior, gives the non-readers an excuse. I just don’t understand it, they whimper, taking refuge in the deep, comfortable, anaerobic caves of technophobia. It is of no use to tell them that very few science fiction writers understand “it” either. We, too, generally find we have twenty minutes of I Love Lucy and half a wrestling match on our videocassettes when we meant to record Masterpiece Theater. Most of the scientific ideas in science fiction are totally accessible and indeed familiar to anybody who got through sixth grade, and in any case you aren’t going to be tested on them at the end of the book. The stuff isn’t disguised engineering lectures, after all. It isn’t that invention of a mathematical Satan, “story problems.” It’s stories. It’s fiction that plays with certain subjects for their inherent interest, beauty, relevance to the human condition. Even in its ungainly and inaccurate name, the “science” modifies, is in the service of, the “fiction.” For example, the main “idea” in my book The Left Hand of Darkness isn’t scientific and has nothing to do with technology. It’s a bit of physiological imagination—a body change. For the people of the invented world Gethen, individual gender doesn’t exist. They’re sexually neuter most of the time, coming into heat once a month, sometimes as a male, sometimes as a female. A Getheian can both sire and bear children. Now, whether this invention strikes one as peculiar, or perverse, or fascinating, it certainly doesn’t require a great scientific intellect to grasp it, or to follow its implications as they’re played out in the novel. Another element in the same book is the climate of the planet, which is deep in an ice age. A simple idea: It’s cold; it’s very cold; it’s always cold. Ramifications, complexities, and resonance come with the detail of imagining. The Left Hand of Darkness differs from a realistic novel only in asking the reader to accept, pro tem, certain limited and specific changes in narrative reality. Instead of being on Earth during an interglacial period among two-sexed people, (as in, say, Pride and Prejudice, or any realistic novel you like), we’re on Gethen during a period of glaciation among androgynes. It’s useful to remember that both worlds are imaginary. Science-fictional changes of parameter, though they may be both playful and decorative, are essential to the book’s nature and structure; whether they are pursued and explored chiefly for their own interest, or serve predominantly as metaphor or symbol, they’re worked out and embodied novelistically in terms of the society and the characters’ psychology, in description, action, emotion, implication, and imagery. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat “thicker,” to use Clifford Geertz’s term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat “thicker,” to use Clifford Geertz’s term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. All fiction offers us a world we can’t otherwise reach, whether because it’s in the past, or in far or imaginary places, or describes experiences we haven’t had, or leads us into minds different from our own. To some people this change of worlds, this unfamiliarity, is an insurmountable barrier; to others, an adventure and a pleasure.

The parenting questions reveal this outlook in an indirect way. Taken literally, people’s responses to these questions tell us whether they believe children should have lots of room to follow their own path (be independent, be curious) or should instead follow directions and stay on the straight and narrow (be obedient, respect their elders). Which of these paths is best ought to depend on how dangerous people think the world is: whether they think the world is a big, beautiful place to explore, or whether it is a dangerous place that requires them to batten down the hatches.

I am sitting here, you are sitting there. Say even that you are sitting across the kitchen table from me right now. Our eyes meet; a consciousness snaps back and forth. What we know, at least for starters, is: here we- so incontrovertibly- are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the meantime, in between time, we can see. The scales are fallen from our eyes, the cataracts are cut away, and we can work at making sense of the color-patches we see in an effort to discover where we so incontrovertibly are. I am as passionately interested in where I am as is a lone sailor sans sextant in a ketch on an open ocean. I have at the moment a situation which allows me to devote considerable hunks of time to seeing what I can see, and trying to piece it together. I’ve learned the name of some color-patches, but not the meanings. I’ve read books; I’ve gathered statistics feverishly: the average temperature of our planet is 57 degrees F…The average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly. The earth is mostly granite, which is mostly oxygen…In these Appalachians we have found a coal bed with 120 seams, meaning 120 forests that just happened to fall into water…I would like to see it all, to understand it, but I must start somewhere, so I try to deal with the giant water bug in Tinker Creek and the flight of three hundred redwings from an Osage orange and let those who dare worry about the birthrate and population explosion among solar systems. So I think about the valley. And it occurs to me more and more that everything I have seen is wholly gratuitous. The giant water bug’s predations, the frog’s croak, the tree with the lights in it are not in any real sense necessary per se to the world or its creator. Nor am I. The creation in the first place, being itself, is the only necessity for which I would die, and I shall. The point about that being, as I know it here and see it, is that as I think about it, it accumulates in my mind as an extravagance of minutiae. The sheer fringe and network of detail assumes primary importance. That there are so many details seems to be the most important and visible fact about creation. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, then look at the trees; when you’ve looked at enough trees, you’ve seen a forest, you’ve got it. If the world is gratuitous, then the fringe of a goldfish’s fin is a million times more so. The first question- the one crucial one- of the creation of the universe and the existence of something as a sign and an affront to nothing is a blank one… The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter; they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy then is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.

You will not lose one ounce. You are absolutely stunning just as you are. Your curves are beautiful. You are soft in all the places a woman should be soft. Your body makes me think of long days and nights spent exploring every curve. You provide a haven for me, mind, body and soul,

Rena’s Journal: By Florence G R   Life is mysterious and unknowing Which makes it exciting and spontaneous Life is about being yourself Being in the moment Being strong and fearless Finding what’s really important, what you love, and living for it    Everything happens for a reason What’s now is what’s supposed to be It doesn't have to make sense It will never be perfect or broken   When you share life with the world The connections you make last forever Teach you more and more about yourself   Be adventurous and explore the now What’s ahead in life will fall into place Keep your eyes open And anything is possible

You’ve saved your money and bought a ticket to Fashion Week in Milan. All the world’s great clothing designers will be showing their startling and beautiful designs. You’ll be one of the first to see them! Or picture yourself in Rome. You’re at a performance of the opera Aïda, written by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. You’re seated amid eighteen-hundred-year-old ruins under a starry sky, listening to magnificent music. You’ve got your snowboard and warm clothing so you can glide down the slopes the world’s greatest skiers took during the 2006 Winter Olympics near Turin. Or perhaps it’s summer, and you’re going to explore the sea caves of Capri, off the coast of Naples. Later, you can take a look at the towering columns at Agrigento, among the temples the ancient Greeks built on the island of Sicily long before Italy existed. In any one of these places, you might be one of the millions of tourists who visit Italy every year. But alongside the tourists are Italians, also appreciative of the wonders of their own country.

city – from the beach to the Olympic hillside. For tourists who don’t want to grapple with public transport, there is the Barcelona Bus Turistic made up of three bus lines – blue, red and green routes that explore different parts of the city. You can get on and off at any point. Normally, I stay away from these double‐decker tourist explorers, but for a city as large as Barcelona, the system makes getting from beach to cathedrals to hillside parks very easy. There are also walking tours for those with very comfortable shoes. Barcelona offers so much to visitors that I couldn’t possibly tell you what to visit. But items not to miss are, in my opinion, the architecture of Antoni Gaudi which includes his unique cathedral, La Sagrada Familia which remains unfinished, his apartment building, La Pedrera which has no straight lines on its exterior, and his idealistic Parc Guell, a colourful complex on a high hillside. Within the city of Barcelona you could spend a day or more walking Los Ramblas, a wide pedestrian tree‐lined promenade that is a wonderful place to watch people, taste great food, wine and enjoy life. Nearby is the Placa de Catalunya, the main square with fountains, street artists and restaurants. The Gothic Quarter is walking distance with its network of squares that stretch back to Medieval and Roman times. This city offers so much – a medieval city, art museums, flamenco dancing, cable car to the top of Montjuïc, need I go on? Tours to local vineyards are available as are boat trips that will show you the local coastline. And let’s not forget that Barcelona is a city with beautiful beaches – all relaxed, lined with cafes and restaurants. The

Strands of straight, damp hair fell across her face, and he brushed them away gently and thought how beautiful she was. He could not recall when or how the change had taken place, or even that he had ever thought her plain. It was as though her features had come to take on a special meaning and unfold their beauties one by one. They had lost their individual identity as nose, or mouth, or lashes spread against a cheek. The tender sweetness of each had become intimately familiar to him. He had explored them all, experienced their texture, discovering new enchantments of human architecture in the gentle flare of a nostril, the smooth surface of brow or temple, the innocent and touching gallantry of the spot where her head and neck were joined.

He stretched his face toward her lips. "I'm going to kiss you. We've kissed before, remember? " Pitching his tone to be low and seductive, he asked, "You liked it, didn't you?" Her voice wobbled. "Very much." She was so trusting. So damnably, beautifully honest. "I put my tongue in your mouth, explored and tasted. Like this." He brushed her lips, his mind anticipating the shy blossom of her mouth beneath his. He loved the little catch of breath she gave as he slid his tongue inside, loved the flavor of brandy, loved that she couldn't resist putting her arms around his shoulders and twining her fingers in his hair. The liquor had loosened her inhibitions; she touched his tongue with hers, then when his tongue fell back, she followed, delving into his mouth, touching his teeth, ringing his lips. Her diffident exterior hid a siren of uncommon power and boldness, and he would show her everything her instincts only suspected. Gently, he sucked at her tongue, rasping the end with his own. When she fell back, out of breath, he slid her one glove down her arm. "Can you imagine me doing that to you... down there?" Ever-so-gently, he kissed the soft, pale skin at her elbow. "Can you imagine that?" "Yes," she said faintly.

Mountains cry out to be climbed. Dirt says to us, “Dig.” The ocean’s fathomless waters invite us to go on a deep-sea treasure hunt. The heavens declare not only the glory of God; they also declare that we were made to test their bounds and marvel at their beauty. This is true for every sphere of creation and of human culture: God made all of us, male and female, to explore the world he created, to know it, care for it, and have dominion over it for his glory and others’ benefit. God’s original creation was good yet latent with potential. It was pristine yet incomplete. Missing were the work, curiosity, and energy of humans, the only part of the creation bearing the image of God. Human ambition wasn’t something that crept in after the Fall. It was—is—an aspect of bearing the image of God, of filling his world with beauty and industry and delight.

He had just witnessed the transformation of a girl into a mermaid. Back into a mermaid, he corrected himself. Despite the terrible things they had endured- and probably more before it was all over- despite the years he had lost in a haze to Vanessa's spell, he felt like a delirious little kid who had seen his first firefly, or bioluminescent jellyfish, or shooting star. Everything was beautiful and anything was possible: the world was an amazing place just waiting to be explored.

T. S. Eliot expresses so beautifully my own personal discovery and conviction: “We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.

According to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the first century BC, 'There lies out in the deep off Libya [Africa] an island of considerable size, and situated as it is in the ocean it is a distant from Libya a voyage of a number of days to the west. Its land is fruitful, much of it being mountainous and not a little being a level plain of surpassing beauty. Through it flow navigable rivers ...' Diodorus goes on to tell us how Phoenician mariners, blown off course in a storm, had discovered this Atlantic island with navigable rivers quite by chance. Soon its value was recognized and its fate became the subject of dispute between Tyre and Carthage, two of the great Phoenician cities in the Mediterranean: 'The Tyrians ... purposed to dispatch a colony to it, but the Carthaginians prevented their doing so, partly out of concern lest many inhabitants of Carthage should remove there because of the excellence of the island, and partly in order to have ready in it a place in which to seek refuge against an incalculable turn of fortune, in case some total disaster should overtake Carthage. For it was their thought that since they were masters of the sea, they would thus be able to move, households and all, to an island which was unknown to their conquerors.' Since there are no navigable rivers anywhere to the west of Africa before the seafarer reaches Cuba, Haiti and the American continent, does this report by Diodorus rank as one of the earliest European notices of the New World?

Heart’s deviation Let us travel from now to then, from today to tomorrow, Let us fulfill our desires and wishes in a row, Because they lie sequenced in the order only you and I know, And you can see them all over my face while I see them appearing on your beautiful brow, Let me take you into the clouds and get wet, Let me take you there where I first saw you and then our hearts met, Because in that place everything is still wet, Although there are no clouds and the sky is clear, I wonder from where it could such a cover of wetness get, Let me take you there and together discover its secret, Let us know what no one else knows about it, Because the place is mysteriously always wet and it is beyond my wit, Or it could be it is just my false impression of it, Let me then make a confession, that since you left nothing has returned, Let me reveal to you the world that appears deceptively wet as it is actually the world that has endless burned, Because when from distance you see fields of burned desires and wishes turned to ash, they look like wet surfaces where everything is frozen in stillness and unturned, And it is from ash covered places like these life has all its ploys learned, Let me take you away from here too, somewhere far, very far, where burning is not required, Let us travel there where heart’s find whatever they have wished for and desired, Because they say utopia is somewhere where human feelings are never by desperate moments mired, And in this outlandish possibility let us seek each other and never feel tired, Let me love you behind the clouds and beyond the blue sky, Let us go there where everything burns: the sun, the stars, the universe, and everything that flies by, Because there, maybe when you see them burning in the fire of eternity and cry, You might realise why few places appear to be always wet long after their fires die, Let me look at your face, your eyes; and understand you a bit more, Let me see you in reality’s dress and then let me your every sentiment explore, Because when we realise what burning feels like it is then your true soul peeps from your skin’s every pore, Then let me kiss you and see if you too ever felt wet, and feel the corner of your heart where all your feelings you store, Let me let you explore me in the same ways, Let me let you experience the wetness of my soul, that has burned endlessly for nights and days, Because only then you might be able to see what you could never feel because you knew not how to deal with heart’s ways, As it is with all of us, in the beginning we let our minds dictate the darkness of our nights and the brightness of our days, Let me cover you with my desires and their fires and everything that you wish to feel, Let me show you how human lives turn and spin on the fate’s wheel, Because sometimes what appears to be a reality is actually not real, Maybe it will be the misadventure of our hearts but then if you look at the world and the universe even real sometimes seems unreal, Let me introduce you to the world where everything is real because there is no fake dimension, Let us then live in this romantic moment this romantic sensation, Because in the miscellany of my feelings, desires, and endless wishes, your feelings appear to be my heart’s only native creation, So let me, my love Irma, make you feel what true impenitence feels like when you do not obey your mind but you follow your heart’s every selfless deviation!

Heart’s deviation Let us travel from now to then, from today to tomorrow, Let us fulfill our desires and wishes in a row, Because they lie sequenced in the order only you and I know, And you can see them all over my face while I see them appearing on your beautiful brow, Let me take you into the clouds and get wet, Let me take you there where I first saw you and then our hearts met, Because in that place everything is still wet, Although there are no clouds and the sky is clear, I wonder from where it could such a cover of wetness get, Let me take you there and together discover its secret, Let us know what no one else knows about it, Because the place is mysteriously always wet and it is beyond my wit, Or it could be it is just my false impression of it, Let me then make a confession, that since you left nothing has returned, Let me reveal to you the world that appears deceptively wet as it is actually the world that has endlessly burned, Because when from the distance you see fields of burned desires and wishes turned to ash, they look like wet surfaces where everything is frozen in stillness and unturned, And it is from ash covered places like these life has all its ploys learned, Let me take you away from here too, somewhere far, very far, where burning is not required, Let us travel there where heart’s find whatever they have wished for and desired, Because they say utopia is somewhere where human feelings are never by desperate moments mired, And in this outlandish possibility let us seek each other and never feel tired, Let me love you behind the clouds and beyond the blue sky, Let us go there where everything burns: the sun, the stars, the universe, and everything that flies by, Because there, maybe when you see them burning in the fire of eternity and cry, You might realise why few places appear to be always wet long after their fires die, Let me look at your face, your eyes; and understand you a bit more, Let me see you in reality’s dress and then let me your every sentiment explore, Because when we realise what burning feels like it is then your true soul peeps from your skin’s every pore, Then let me kiss you and see if you too ever felt wet, and feel the corner of your heart where all your feelings you store, Let me let you explore me in the same ways, Let me let you experience the wetness of my soul, that has burned endlessly for nights and days, Because only then you might be able to see what you could never feel because you knew not how to deal with heart’s ways, As it is with all of us, in the beginning we let our minds dictate the darkness of our nights and the brightness of our days, Let me cover you with my desires and their fires and everything that you wish to feel, Let me show you how human lives turn and spin on the fate’s wheel, Because sometimes what appears to be the reality is actually not real, Maybe it will be the misadventure of our hearts but then if you look at the world and the universe even real sometimes seems unreal, Let me introduce you to the world where everything is real because there is no fake dimension, Let us then live in this romantic moment this romantic sensation, Because in the miscellany of my feelings, desires, and endless wishes, your feelings appear to be my heart’s only native creation, So let me, my love Irma, make you feel what true impenitence feels like when you do not obey your mind but you follow your heart’s every selfless deviation!

There is so much life on the sides, the margins, in dark alleys, in parks, and remote villages that most tourists never get to see, and thus never get to feel and capture the real spirit of the places they visit. And thus, Dear Readers, I ask: can we travel without being tourists? Indeed, can we stop being tourists altogether? Can we begin to master the art of getting lost; the art of finding hidden gems, beauty, or simple experiences after which life is never the same?