Eye Infection Quotes

Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.

According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul. But this is the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not alive enough. I wiped his chin and grabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived. 'I'm sorry. I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans.' 'Me too,' he said. 'But it isn't,' I said. 'I know,' he said. 'There are no bad guys.' 'Yeah.' 'Even cancer isn't a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive.

One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.

My office door slams open, leaving a dent in the drywall. Here we go. “You are driving me crazy!” Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing’s fast, and she’s got murder in her eyes. Beautiful. I raise my brows hopefully. “Crazy? Like you want to rip my shirt open again?” “No. Crazy like the itch of a yeast infection that just won’t go away.” I flinch. Can’t help it. I mean—Christ.

Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms.

She's not just under my skin, she's in my organs, wrapped up in my cells, infecting me.

Will you be at the harvest, Among the gatherers of new fruits? Then you must begin today to remake Your mental and spiritual world, And join the warriors and celebrants Of freedom, realizers of great dreams. You can’t remake the world Without remaking yourself. Each new era begins within. It is an inward event, With unsuspected possibilities For inner liberation. We could use it to turn on Our inward lights. We could use it to use even the dark And negative things positively. We could use the new era To clean our eyes, To see the world differently, To see ourselves more clearly. Only free people can make a free world. Infect the world with your light. Help fulfill the golden prophecies. Press forward the human genius. Our future is greater than our past.

The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)

Raffe watches me as if reading my thoughts. Then he looks at the locusts. His lip curls as he assesses them, his eyes scanning from their thick legs to their insectile torsos to their iridescent wings. He looks at the curled stingers last. He shakes his head. ‘Those wings are so flimsy I wouldn’t trust them to carry you. And those overgrown nails – you’d catch an infection if they scratched you. You can ride one when they improve on the design.’ He steps forward and, in one smooth motion, lifts me into his firm embrace. ‘Until then, you’re stuck with me being your air taxi.’ He takes flight before I can argue

Hatred is a bitter, damaging emotion. It winds itself through the blood, infecting its host and driving it forward without any reason. Its view is jaundiced and it skews even the clearest of eye sights. Sacrifice is noble and tender. It’s the action of a host who values others above himself. Sacrifice is bought through love and decency. It is truly heroic. Vengeance is an act of violence. It allows those who have been wronged to take back some of what was lost to them. Unlike sacrifice, it gives back to the one who practices it. Love is deceitful and sublime. In its truest form, it brings out the best in all beings. At its worst, it’s a tool used to manipulate and ruin anyone who is stupid enough to hold it. Don’t be stupid. Sacrifice is for the weak. Hatred corrupts. Love destroys. Vengeance is the gift of the strong. Move forward, not with hatred, not with love. Move forward with purpose. Take back what was stolen. Make those who laughed at your pain pay. Not with hatred, but with calm, cold rationale. Hatred is your enemy. Vengeance is your friend. Hold it close and let it loose. May the gods have mercy on those who have wronged me because I will have no mercy for them. (Xypher)

What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania. “She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—” “Where did she get it from?” “Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.” Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut. Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.” Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound. He was barely breathing. “The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure, told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage, to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?

He closes his eyes, removing the scent from his mind, just as an evolved Grade A should do—not let little thoughts infect his inner quiet.

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds. Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

If nostalgia had a smell, it’d smell like her. He closes his eyes, removing the scent from his mind, just as an evolved Grade A should do—not let little thoughts infect his inner quiet.

His contagious conviction that our love was unique and desperate infected me with an anxious sickness; soon we would learn to treat one another with the circumspect tenderness of comrades who are amputees, for we were surrounded by the most moving images of evanesecence, fireworks, morning glories, the old, children. But the most moving of these images were the intagible relfections of ourselves we saw in one another's eyes, reflections of nothing but appearances, in a city dedicated to seeming, and, try as we might to possess the essence of each other's otherness, we would inevitably fail.

I closed my eyes, almost certain I was approching stage one of a zombie infection

We dare not talk of the darkness for fear it will infect us. We dare not talk of the fire, for fear it will destroy us. And so we live in the half-light, Like our mothers before us. Come to the fire, Feel it warm your skin. Come to the fire, Feel it burn in your belly, Shine out through your eyes. Come dance in the fire, Let it fuel your prayers.

He frowns. How unusual for a monk to frown or to think needlessly! Yuan shields his mind. His eyes closed in deep meditation. A ninety-nine-year-old monk who mastered time and desires shouldn’t let little thoughts infect his inner quiet.

Things aren't like this," he kept repeating. "It shouldn't be this way." As if he had access to some other plane of existence, some parallel, "right" universe, and had sensed that our time had somehow been put out of joint. Such was his vehemence that I found myself believing him, believing, for example, in the possibility of that other life in which Vina had never left and we were making our lives together, all three of us, ascending together to the stars. Then he shook his head, and the spell broke. He opened his eyes, grinning ruefully. As if he knew his thoughts had infected mine. As if he knew his power. "Better get on with it," he said. "Make do with what there is.

Don't get me wrong - I was not a Nazi, and in my eyes Hitler seemed like some absurd character in an operetta. But, it would have been almost impossible not to be infected by the optimism about the future, which was rife among ordinary people in Hamburg. - Henrik Vanger

I used to think love was two people sucking on the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger, but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape, traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth. I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone solo in the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakers from a phone line, and you promised to always smell the rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminal pelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaled all over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongue ripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts. I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirror over his knee, till you helped me carry the barbell of my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouetted in the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believe in fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep’s clothing and felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipper of my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cord around my ankle and yanked me across the continent. And now there are three thousand miles between the u and s in esophagus. And being without you is like standing at a cement-filled wall with a roll of Yugoslavian nickels and making a wish. Some days I miss you so much I’d jump off the roof of your office building just to catch a glimpse of you on the way down. I wish we could trade left eyeballs, so we could always see what the other sees. But you’re here, I’m there, and we have only words, a nightly phone call - one chance to mix feelings into syllables and pour into the receiver, hope they don’t disassemble in that calculus of wire. And lately - with this whole war thing - the language machine supporting it - I feel betrayed by the alphabet, like they’re injecting strychnine into my vowels, infecting my consonants, naming attack helicopters after shattered Indian tribes: Apache, Blackhawk; and West Bank colonizers are settlers, so Sharon is Davey Crockett, and Arafat: Geronimo, and it’s the Wild West all over again. And I imagine Picasso looking in a mirror, decorating his face in war paint, washing his brushes in venom. And I think of Jenin in all that rubble, and I feel like a Cyclops with two eyes, like an anorexic with three mouths, like a scuba diver in quicksand, like a shark with plastic vampire teeth, like I’m the executioner’s fingernail trying to reason with the hand. And I don’t know how to speak love when the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste, and the only sexual fantasy I have is busting into the Pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowing open the minds of generals. And I comfort myself with the thought that we’ll name our first child Jenin, and her middle name will be Terezin, and we’ll teach her how to glow in the dark, and how to swallow firecrackers, and to never neglect the first straw; because no one ever talks about the first straw, it’s always the last straw that gets all the attention, but by then it’s way too late.

[E]very man hath liberty to write, but few ability. Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers, that either write for vain-glory, need, to get money, or as Parasites to flatter and collogue with some great men, they put out trifles, rubbish and trash. Among so many thousand Authors you shall scarce find one by reading of whom you shall be any whit better, but rather much worse; by which he is rather infected than any way perfected… What a catalogue of new books this year, all his age (I say) have our Frankfurt Marts, our domestic Marts, brought out. Twice a year we stretch out wits out and set them to sale; after great toil we attain nothing…What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast Chaos and confusion of Books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning. For my part I am one of the number—one of the many—I do not deny it...

Miss me?" he whispered, giving me the once-over, eyes lingering on my chest. My heart skipped a beat. My glyph pulsed painfully. "Like a urinary tract infection," I said, through gritted teeth.

Is it hard to be with all those men? All day? Every day?” Annwyl drank some of Morfyd’s wine. She knew no threat of infection remained, but the wine still tasted unbelievably delicious. “Not at all.” “Really?” “Absolutely. Just let one of the men touch you inappropriately and you take his arm off right at the shoulder joint. Then, as he’s bleeding to death, you slam his face into a few things, and you’ll find the other men leave you alone.” Morfyd stared at Annwyl with wide eyes. “What?” Morfyd cleared her throat. “Nothing.

You are driving me crazy!” Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing’s fast, and she’s got murder in her eyes. Beautiful. I raise my brows hopefully. “Crazy? Like you want to rip my shirt open again?” “No. Crazy like the itch of a yeast infection that just won’t go away.

I feel myself. But it's only the eye with a lash in it, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn't seem to exist. So it's clear, isn't it? Self-consciousness is just a disease.

One by one, the silence by the bed drew their attention. Even the king was quiet. Exhausted, relieved, he lay boneless and silent. The skin was dragged thin across his cheekbones. His sweaty hair stuck to his face, and his eyes were closed. His hand, clutching the fabric of his tunic, had relaxed and slipped down to his side, revealing what the careful bunching of the cloth had concealed. The tunic had been split by a knife stroke from one side to the other. As the edges of the fabric separated, those by the bed realized how much blood had been soaking, unseen, into the waist of the king’s trousers. The wound wasn’t a simple nick in the king’s side. It began near the navel and slid all the way across his belly. If the wall of the gut had been opened, the king would be dead of infection within days. He should have said something, why hadn’t he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they’d ignored it. If he’d been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, and Eddisian soldiers on the move. He’d meant to deceive them, and he’d succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain.

During the shoot in November 2003, I was vaguely aware of the stylist’s sulky demeanor and eye-rolling vibe, but I blocked her out. Some fashion people are snotty drama queens; this is not news. Whatever was going on with her, I was determined to be positive and not get infected by her energy. Later, Fiorella told me that the entire time I was in makeup, the stylist had been clomping up and down the hall, sputtering into her cell phone, “I can’t believe I have to style a FAT GIRL!” Believe it, bitch.

To feel one’s self, to be conscious of one’s personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth. A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is nonexistent, as it were. Is it not clear, then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness? Apparently

It's a fucking pharmaceutical conspiracy, Eve. We've wiped out just about every known plague, disease, and infection. Oh, we come up with a new one every now and again, to give the researchers something to do. But none of these bright-eyed medical types, none of the medi-computers can figure out how to cure the common fucking cold. You know why?" Even couldn't stop the smile. She waited patiently until Mavis finished another bout of explosive sneezing. "Why?" "Because the pharmaceutical companies need to sell drugs. You know what a damn sinus tab costs? You can get anticancer injections cheaper. I swear it.

Oh! my dearest love, why are our pleasures so short and so interrupted? How long is this to last? Know you, my best Mary, that I feel myself, in your absence, almost degraded to the level of the vulgar and impure. I feel their vacant, stiff eyeballs fixed upon me, until I seem to have been infected with their loathsome meaning--to inhale a sickness that subdues me to languor. Oh! those redeeming eyes of Mary, that they might beam upon me before I sleep! Praise my forbearance--oh! beloved one--that I do not rashly fly to you, and at least secure a moment's bliss. Wherefore should I delay; do you not long to meet me? All that is exalted and buoyant in my nature urges me towards you, reproaches me with the cold delay, laughs at all fear and spurns to dream of prudence. Why am I not with you?

Everything is melting in nature. We think we see objects, but our eyes are slow and partial. Nature is blooming and withering in long puffy respirations, rising and falling in oceanic wave-motion. A mind that opened itself fully to nature without sentimental preconception would be glutted by nature’s coarse materialism, its relentless superfluity. An apple tree laden with fruit: how peaceful, how picturesque. But remove the rosy filter of humanism from our gaze and look again. See nature spuming and frothing, its mad spermatic bubbles endlessly spilling out and smashing in that inhuman round of waste, rot, and carnage. From the jammed glassy cells of sea roe to the feathery spores poured into the air from bursting green pods, nature is a festering hornet’s nest of aggression and overkill. This is the chthonian black magic with which we are infected as sexual beings; this is the daemonic identity that Christianity so inadequately defines as original sin and thinks it can cleanse us of. Procreative woman is the most troublesome obstacle to Christianity’s claim to catholicity, testified by its wishful doctrines of Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth. The procreativeness of chthonian nature is an obstacle to all of western metaphysics and to each man in his quest for identity against his mother. Nature is the seething excess of being.

Oh no.' Straight raised his eyes to me, and a slight smile touched the corners of his lips. 'A philosophy of life is more terrible than syphilis and people - you have to give them credit - take every precaution not to become infected. Especially by a philosophy of life.

Roan looked down at the pathetic little fur ball with a pink ribbon clipped to the top of its head and growled at it. It came from deep in his throat, and while it was unintentional, it wasn’t precisely a human noise. He could feel it in his throat, vibrating his vocal chords, and the dog’s ears rotated briefly in as much alarm as a dog could express, and then it whimpered and cringed, pissing on the sidewalk in submission. The woman took a couple steps backward, eyes wide and horrified, and dragged her dog past them as she hurried off, the Pom more than happy to leave. Paris looked at him, an eyebrow raised and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile. “I love it when you get defensive.” “I’m the king of the jungle.I’m not taking any shit from a living dust mop.

It’s a fucking pharmaceutical conspiracy, Eve. We’ve wiped out just about every known plague, disease, and infection. Oh, we come up with a new one every now and again, to give the researchers something to do. But none of these bright-eyed medical types, none of the medi-computers can figure out how to cure the common fucking cold.

When I was six I decided that my only chance of having a life half as exciting as Grandpa Portman’s was to become an explorer. He encouraged me by spending afternoons at my side hunched over maps of the world, plotting imaginary expeditions with trails of red pushpins and telling me about the fantastic places I would discover one day. At home I made my ambitions known by parading around with a cardboard tube held to my eye, shouting, “Land ho!” and “Prepare a landing party!” until my parents shooed me outside. I think they worried that my grandfather would infect me with some incurable dreaminess from which I’d never recover—that these fantasies were somehow inoculating me against more practical ambitions—so one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I’d been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.

Our findings highlight the critical need for health monitoring and identification of new, potentially zoonotic pathogens in wildlife populations, as a forecast measure for EIDs.” That sounds reasonable: Let’s keep an eye on wild creatures. As we besiege them, as we corner them, as we exterminate them and eat them, we’re getting their diseases.

I will persist until I succeed. I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny. I will persist until I succeed. The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I will persist until I succeed. Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be liken to the rain drop which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed. I will never consider defeat and I will remove from my vocabulary such words and phrases as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, out of the question, improbable, failure, unworkable, hopeless, and retreat; for they are words of fools. I will avoid despair but if this disease of the mind should infect me then I will work on in despair. I will toil and I will endure. I will ignore the obstacles at my feet and keep mine eyes on the goals above my head, for I know that where dry desert ends, green grass grows. I will persist until I succeed. The Greatest Salesman in the World Og Mandino

They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn't common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I've ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I'm not one of them. For these moral humans, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on an infinite timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself centuries from now, maybe at my three-hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my seventeenth. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother's eyes? The swiftness of Uncle Antonio's steps as he dances? The way my father stands on edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I've known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine Little Cam deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows. Forever.

There may be in the cup A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart, And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge Is not infected: but if one present The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.

I thought you were the docile one," he murmured. "Yes, my lord," she said meekly. "Compared to my sister, my lord." "And you're the smart one as well? Even though you were going to put horse dung on an infect wound?" "Yes, my lord." She straightened her shoulders. "And the plain one." His eyes were like a sly weapon, all soft, lingering caresses while he stood just out of reach. "I think you're a fraud, Lady Alys. You've yet to convince me of any of those three things.

Why do you want me to stay?” she asked unhappily. He looked at her without a definite answer in his mind. Then he said, “Even if you are infected, I can’t let you go out there. You don’t know what they’d do to you.” Her eyes closed. “I don’t care,” she said. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN “I don’t understand it,” he told her over supper.

I could also see just by looking around me how we tend to over-romanticize history. Life in those other centuries had not been all knights-and-ladies stuff. There was nothing romantic about cottages where eight or ten people slept in one room with no privacy; where there were no bathrooms, not even outside privies—even if the cottage did happen to have picturesque thatch on the roof. There was nothing glamorous in any century about no running water in which to bathe or about fleas on human beings; or about the blackgum twigs with which some of the women right now, in 1912, dipped snuff and then rubbed their teeth and gums. So many of the people had terrible-looking teeth or no teeth at all. And the eye trouble that was so prevalent. I had learned that it was trachoma and that it was a dangerous infection which, if unchecked, resulted in blindness.

Roan rubbed his eyes, restraining the urge to ask if "light domination" meant he liked having his dates order for him in restaurants.

I read used books because fingerprint-smudged and dog-eared pages are heavier on the eye. Because every book can belong to many lives. Books should be kept in public places and step out with passersby who'll onto them for a spell. Books should die like people, consumed by aches and pains, infected, drowning off a bridge together with the suicides, poked into a potbellied stove, torn apart by children to make paper boats. They should die of anything, in other words, except boredom, as private property condemned to a life sentence on a shelf.

Every working mother has the things she dreads, things that keep her up in the night – pink eye, an ear infection, the parent-teacher conference, the school play – all forcing her to remind the people she works with that she is not, in fact, wholly devoted to business enterprises, but has another secret life. For me, the night terror is the 5 a.m. phone call from the nanny.

Men all alone, completely alone with horrible monstrosities, will run through the streets, pass heavily in front of me, their eyes staring, fleeing their ills yet carrying with them, open-mouthed, with their insect-tongue flapping its wings. Then I'll burst out laughing even though my body may be covered with filthy, infected scabs which blossom into flowers of flesh, violets, buttercups.

Apathy? I see something taking place in the Church all over the world today that grieves God’s heart: a widespread apathy toward sin. God’s people are no longer outraged about the filth and evil bombarding their lives and homes. On the contrary, millions of believers sit by passively and let their minds become saturated with sensual movies, videos, television, the Internet, magazines and other media. It is unbelievable how these Christians willingly allow their lusts to be fed as their imaginations are filled with deep roots of evil. If you think I am focusing too much on the secret sins of Christians, then I say you are out of touch with what is happening in the world today. You must know nothing of how widespread the infection of sin is among God’s people. I cite to you, for example, the scores of Christians who flock to movie theaters each week and hear the name of Christ used as a curse word. I have never understood how anyone who fears almighty God and wishes to walk righteously before Him can sit by idly as the Lord’s name is being damned. That is simply beyond my comprehension. Yet multitudes of believers are doing just that. Little by little, they are drifting deeper into pits of secret, hidden sin. Slowly but surely, their sense of conviction is being drained out of them. They do not realize it, but their minds are being corrupted by what they are allowing their eyes to feast on.

Whenever I close my eyes, I see her. Scarlet. I see her smiling. I see her crying. I hear her laughter flowing through me, sending chills down my spine. The sound of her moaning creeps through my bloodstream, the face she makes in the throes of passion the pulse that spurs it on. Whatever this is I’m feeling, I want it to stop. I want it to go away. I want to stop fucking seeing her every time I blink. I want to stop fucking thinking about her every time I pause to take a deep breath. She’s like an infection that’s settling into my chest. I would rip out my own organs if I thought it might purge her from my system.

I want to know who she is particularly close to among the staff here.” Who is besotted with her. Hell, they probably all were. Except Donald, who rarely broke his stoic façade. And Andreas. “And what questions she asks.” Donald inclined his head, hair slipping a fraction more. “It will be done.” He watched Andreas for a moment. “And she and her family will be safe here,” he said, gaze steady, eyes just an extra bit bright. Andreas nodded sharply back, dismissed him quickly, all while trying to hold back the curses layering his tongue at the words that were both said and unsaid. Donald was infected too. Goddamn biscuits.

The Fall of Rome (for Cyril Connolly) The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend. Cerebrotonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay. Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.

He stopped, though, after we gave him crabs.” “You infected your father with a disease?” “Not those kinds of crabs.” He rolled his eyes. “We filled his expensive BMW with real ones. Turns out they’re rough on leather.

the puffed and infected ego underlay all, positive that all eyes were upon him or her, positive that he or she was starring in a great drama; the outcome was a thing for which untold millions waited with held breath. Such

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.

and St. Bernard, the monastery’s patron, bearing both a crosier and a sword, his role as an apologist for the failed second crusade unforgotten even among his fans. (I confess I had rather hoped to see a portrayal of the Lactation of St. Bernard, the oft-depicted scene from a legend in which the saint kneeled before a nursing Madonna and was hit with a squirt of milk from her breasts, curing him of an eye infection. The image always makes me smile.) It

President Clark rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. "This is really something," he said. " Just days until I address Congress and the nation. What am I supposed to say? 'Ladies and gentlemen, the state of the union is...infected.',

Kept in institutions until they die as a punishment for having lived so long, for having outlived their sex-appropriate work, old white women find themselves drugged (6.1 prescriptions for an average patient, more than half the patients given drugs like Thorazine and Mellaril); sick from neglect with bedsores, urinary, eye, and ear infections; left lying in their own filth, tied into so-called geriatric chairs or tied into bed; sometimes not fed, not given heat, not given any nursing care; sometimes left in burning baths (from which there have been drownings); sometimes beaten and left with broken bones. Even in old age, a woman had better have a man to protect her. She has earned no place in society on her own.

You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If tomorrow they tell you you are to make no more water-pipes and saucepans but are to make steel helmets and machine-guns, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Woman at the counter and woman in the office. If tomorrow they tell you you are to fill shells and assemble telescopic sights for snipers' rifles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Research worker in the laboratory. If tomorrow they tell you you are to invent a new death for the old life, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Priest in the pulpit. If tomorrow they tell you you are to bless murder and declare war holy, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Pilot in your aeroplane. If tomorrow they tell you you are to carry bombs over the cities, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Man of the village and man of the town. If tomorrow they come and give you your call-up papers, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, mother in Vancouver and in London, you on the Hwangho and on the Mississippi, you in Naples and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo - mothers in all parts of the earth, mothers of the world, if tomorrow they tell you you are to bear new soldiers for new battles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! For if you do not say NO - if YOU do not say no - mothers, then: then! In the bustling hazy harbour towns the big ships will fall silent as corpses against the dead deserted quay walls, their once shimmering bodies overgrown with seaweed and barnacles, smelling of graveyards and rotten fish. The trams will lie like senseless glass-eyed cages beside the twisted steel skeleton of wires and track. The sunny juicy vine will rot on decaying hillsides, rice will dry in the withered earth, potatoes will freeze in the unploughed land and cows will stick their death-still legs into the air like overturned chairs. In the fields beside rusted ploughs the corn will be flattened like a beaten army. Then the last human creature, with mangled entrails and infected lungs, will wander around, unanswered and lonely, under the poisonous glowing sun, among the immense mass graves and devastated cities. The last human creature, withered, mad, cursing, accusing - and the terrible accusation: WHY? will die unheard on the plains, drift through the ruins, seep into the rubble of churches, fall into pools of blood, unheard, unanswered, the last animal scream of the last human animal - All this will happen tomorrow, tomorrow, perhaps, perhaps even tonight, perhaps tonight, if - if - You do not say NO.

We’ve clearly placed form over function when it comes to choosing dogs for the home. Maybe this is because we are such a visual species ourselves, but I think it’s a shame, and some breeds are being ruined because of this tendency to stress how they look over what they can do. Bulldogs, more commonly known as English bulldogs, are a prime example of this overemphasis on physical appearance, particularly within so-called purebred dogs. Among the laundry list of physical ailments that English bulldogs suffer from—eye and ear problems, skin infections, respiratory ailments, immune system and neurological disorders, and problems with moving, eating/digesting, copulating, and bearing puppies—many are attributable to breeding practices to produce dogs with what are considered desirable physical traits.

What is this thing of intangible substance that wreaks consequential havoc on our lives? What is this sensitive thread that runs through heart and mind, and when given the slightest tremor grasps hold of all sanity, dragging the afflicted down to insufferable depths or flinging him weightless to euphoric heights? What is this magic we would deem imagination, fantasy, or pretend if not for the evidence of power manifest by human consequences? Effortlessly controlling us, it affects the infected in an instant. It takes but one word, one thought, one act to become immersed. To stop it is hopeless. To stifle it, demanding. To think to master it is both improbable and pretentious. What is this invisible hand that blinds our eyes and reigns hearts with a string? It is nature's drug and poison we call emotion.

To feel one’s self, to be conscious of one’s personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth. A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is non-existent as it were. Is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?

Writers possess magic. It's in their words. They compose phrases as powerful as incantations, creating illusions in the minds of readers. These spells make eyes envision things that aren't real; they make hearts feel things that aren't actual. A writer's work is to pen enchantments meant to entrance and hypnotize the mind, causing neglect of all other duties and responsibilities in order for the reader to remain a puppet controlled by the writer's wand. And if some foul friend does manage to break the spell, he is despised for it. His heroics are too late in coming. The words―the fairy tales―have seeped beyond the body and into the soul, taking possession. Our poor reader is infected, compromised, never to be cured. The notion of magic found in simple words such as, 'Once upon a time...' has always fascinated me. It is no wonder I am compelled to write.

Physicians need to be trained to see symptoms of the larger structural problems that will bedevil a child’s health and well-being more than a simple cold ever could. But these problems are harder for even a well-trained physician to identify. A child doesn’t come to my exam room for “food insecurity.” Their moms don’t call the clinic for an appointment because “we can’t make ends meet” or “there aren’t any safe places to play outside.” They make appointments because of nosebleeds and ear infections, like other moms, or for well-baby checkups. And when we see them, if we don’t ask about the situation at home or learn to notice the clues on our own, we’ll never find out what these larger problems are. When we know about the child’s environment, we can treat these kids in the best, most holistic way, which will leave them with much more than just a prescription for amoxicillin.

felt myself. To feel one’s self, to be conscious of one’s personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth. A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is non-existent as it were. Is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?

... he feels the darkness of the grave pressing around the fire and infecting his vision so that there seems to be no separation between the living and the dead, a child born with a mud wasp's nest for a heart and its eyes already pocketed with dust, ready to be clapped into a box and dropped down a hole.

The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away, and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. To put it in a nutshell, leaving the novelist to smooth out the crumpled silk and all its implications, he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature. Many people of his time, still more of his rank, escaped the infection and were thus free to run or ride or make love at their own sweet will. But some were early infected by a germ said to be bred of the pollen of the asphodel and to be blown out of Greece and Italy, which was of so deadly a nature that it would shake the hand as it was raised to strike, and cloud the eye as it sought its prey, and make the tongue stammer as it declared its love. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality, so that Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift--plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion--had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared; his eighty riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count the carpets, sofas, trappings, china, plate, cruets, chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma. So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man.

You know what love is because you've studied it, not because you've felt it. You never will. You know what love is? It's this insidious thing that infects your eyes and ears, spreads to every inch of skin, the follicles of hair on the skin, the lips, the tongue, a hundred million microscopic organisms crawling on you. They commandeer the hollow of your thorax and your guts, your arms, your legs, your head, and other extremities. You cease to be yourself. You are now a vessel of impressions and thoughts of the person you love, of wishes for her, of dreams of her. You're jealous of the air she breathes because she takes it inside her all day and needs it to live; it becomes her, as you want to. You cast your thoughts of her and you an hour, a day, a week, a year, a hundred years into the future. No thought has the power to push itself as far into the future as the thought of love—not even thoughts of fame, or wealth, or death.

Our teachers need a snow day. They look unusually pale. The men aren't shaving carefully and the women never remove their boots. They suffer some sort of teacherflu. Their noses drip, their eyes are rimmed with red. They come to school long enough to infect the staff room then go home sick when the sub shows up.

When you feel the need to escape your problems, to escape from this world, don't make the mistake of resorting to suicide Don't do it! You will hear the empty advice of many scholars in the matter of life and death, who will tell you, "just do it" there is nothing after this, you will only extinguish the light that surrounds you and become part of nothingness itself, so when you hear these words remember this brief review of suicide: When you leave this body after committing one of the worst acts of cowardice that a human being can carry out, you turn off the light, the sound and the sense of reality, you become nothing waiting for the programmers of this game to pick you up from the darkness, subtly erase your memories and enable your return and I emphasize the word subtle because sometimes the intelligence behind this maneuver or automated mechanism is wrong and send human beings wrongly reset to such an extent, that when they fall to earth and are born again, they begin to experience memories of previous lives, in many cases they perceive themselves of the opposite sex, and science attributes this unexplainable phenomenon to genetic and hormonal factors, but you and I know better! And we quickly identified this trigger as a glitch in the Matrix. Then we said! That a higher intelligence or more advanced civilization throws you back into this game for the purpose of experimenting, growing and developing as an advanced consciousness and due to your toxic and destructive behavior you come back again but in another body and another life, but you are still you, then you will carry with you that mark of suicide and cowardice, until you learn not to leave this experience without having learned the lesson of life, without having experienced and surprised by death naturally or by design of destiny. About this first experience you will find very little material associated with this event on the internet, it seems that the public is more reserved, because they perceive themselves and call themselves "awakened" And that is because the system has total control over the algorithm of fame and fortune even over life and death. Now, according to religion and childish fears, which are part of the system's business to keep you asleep, eyes glued to the cellular device all day, it says the following: If you commit this act of sin, you turn off light, sound and sense of reality, and from that moment you begin to experience pain, fear and suffering on alarming scales, and that means they will come for you, a couple of demons and take you to the center of the earth where the weeping and gnashing of teeth is forever, and in that hell tormented by demons you will spend eternity. About this last experience we will find hundreds of millions of people who claim to have escaped from there! And let me tell you that all were captivated by the same deity, one of dubious origin, that feeds on prayers and energetic events, because it is not of our nature, because it knows very well that we are beings of energy, then this deity or empire of darkness receives from the system its food and the system receives from them power, to rule, to administer, to control, to control, to kill, to exclude, to inhibit, to classify, to imprison, to silence, to infect, to contaminate, to depersonalize. So now that you know the two sides of the same coin, which one will your intelligence lean towards! You decide... Heads or tails? From the book Avatars, the system's masterpiece.

you travel to lush looted countries. parts of earth laying on their sides. barely breathing. hot with rust, infection, and tourist anemia. you and your camera arrive. start tearing at bodies with your lust. it’s harmless. appreciating culture. sharing. honoring clothing. the way certain skin exists oh you've sold those photographs the ones you were so excited about. the ones you 'caught' with children being children. the one with the woman you thought so 'beautiful'. you and your camera eat as much as one stomach and three sd cards can hold. get on a plane and leave with the belief that your eyes are ckean. honest. artistic. - photography | the gaze

We seek beauty, but our understanding of its nature is limited. We find it primarily in easy-to-appreciate human forms. As we grow older and learn more, we journey closer to the truth of beauty. We begin to perceive it more powerfully in minds than in bodies. We stay on our quest, ascending, going higher and higher in our conception of beauty. As we do, our capacity to recognize beauty grows larger. We can take in more. Our eyes adjust to the bright light of the true nature of beauty until, at last, we may be able to behold it - perfect beauty, which is "pure, clean, unmixed, and not infected with human flesh, colors, or morality." Glimpsing to at last, we become part of a bigger sum, something vast and immortal.

He had trouble with his eyes and his lungs, and with insomnia and asthma; suffered from gout and rheumatoid arthritis; experienced dropsy, emphysema and at least one fainting fit; and in his seventies developed a malignant tumour on his left testicle. To combat these problems, he consumed a vast quantity of medicines: opium, oil of terebinth, valerian, ipecacuanha, dried orange peel in hot red port, salts of hartshorn, musk, dried squills, and Spanish fly. He was frequently bled, for complaints as disparate as flatulence and an eye infection. Yet Johnson’s most enduring malady was mental. Throughout his life he suffered from a profound melancholy which periodically surged towards madness. It was this, much more than any other ailment, that blighted his middle years. No

baseball. The intestines may fill up completely with blood. The lining of the gut dies and sloughs off into the bowels and is defecated along with large amounts of blood. In men, the testicles bloat up and turn black-and-blue, the semen goes hot with Ebola, and the nipples may bleed. In women, the labia turn blue, livid, and protrusive, and there may be massive vaginal bleeding. The virus is a catastrophe for a pregnant woman: the child is aborted spontaneously and is usually infected with Ebola virus, born with red eyes and a bloody nose. Ebola destroys the brain more thoroughly than does Marburg, and Ebola victims often go into epileptic convulsions during the final stage. The convulsions are generalized grand mal seizures—the whole body twitches and shakes, the arms and legs thrash around, and the eyes, sometimes bloody, roll up into the head. The tremors and convulsions of the patient may smear or splatter blood around. Possibly this epileptic splashing of blood is one of Ebola’s strategies for success—it makes the victim go into a flurry of seizures as he dies, spreading blood all over the place, thus giving the virus a chance to jump to a new host—a kind of transmission through smearing. Ebola (and Marburg) multiplies so rapidly and powerfully that the body’s infected cells become crystal-like blocks of packed virus particles. These crystals are broods of virus getting ready to hatch from the cell. They are known as bricks. The bricks, or crystals, first appear near the center of the cell and then migrate toward the surface. As a crystal

So it was the hand that started it all... His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders, and then the jump-over from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything.

So it was the hand that started it all. He felt one hand and then the other work his coat free and let it slump to the floor. He held his pants out into an abyss and let them fall into darkness. His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders and then the jumpover from shoulder blade to shoulder blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger as if they must look at something anything and everything.

She says you're different, you know," he continues, turning back around to continue slicing his tomatoes. "I've been trying to see it… to see what she sees… but you don't seem any different to me." I want to tell him it's because he's not looking hard enough, but that's a lie and I know it. The problem is, he's looking harder than Karissa is. She thinks I'm different because she wants me to be. And I'm trying to be. But I'm still me. I can't be anybody but me. At some point, every part of me became every part of that. The life isn't just something I lived… it was how I survived. It infused itself into every one of my cells, infecting every mitochondrion. It's in my blood and my bones, and unless you drain me dry and rip me to pieces, you'll never rid me of all of it. It's like expecting a man to survive without a beating heart in his chest. Expecting him to breathe without lungs. Expecting him to fight when he has no reason to live. It's like expecting a man to still be a man after taking away everything that makes him who he is. I can be good to her. I might even be good for her. But that doesn't mean I'm good.

The virus that had lay dormant for two years had been reawakened by simply seeing her smile. He thought he would be impervious to it by now, but every time her eyes changed colour, every time she giggled, it just caused the infection to spread. He had no idea why he continued to torment himself this way; burning for a woman he knew he could not have. He happily spent an hour or two with her each day and then braced himself for the self-inflicted torture that inevitably ensued at night. That torture had become his way of life, but he found that a worse fate would be not seeing at all.

night.” “Sometimes, yes,” Meggie had said. “But it only works for children.” Which made Mo tweak her nose. Mo. Meggie had never called her father anything else. That night—when so much began and so many things changed forever—Meggie had one of her favorite books under her pillow, and since the rain wouldn’t let her sleep she sat up, rubbed the drowsiness from her eyes, and took it out. Its pages rustled promisingly when she opened it. Meggie thought this first whisper sounded a little different from one book to another, depending on whether or not she already knew the story it was going to tell her. But she needed light. She had a box of matches hidden in the drawer of her bedside table. Mo had forbidden her to light candles at night. He didn’t like fire. “Fire devours books,” he always said, but she was twelve years old, she surely could be trusted to keep an eye on a couple of candle flames. Meggie loved to read by candlelight. She had five candlesticks on the windowsill, and she was just holding the lighted match to one of the black wicks when she heard footsteps outside. She blew out the match in alarm—oh, how well she remembered it, even many years later—and knelt to look out of the window, which was wet with rain. Then she saw him. The rain cast a kind of pallor on the darkness, and the stranger was little more than a shadow. Only his face gleamed white as he looked up at Meggie. His hair clung to his wet forehead. The rain was falling on him, but he ignored it. He stood there motionless, arms crossed over his chest as if that might at least warm him a little. And he kept on staring at the house. I must go and wake Mo, thought Meggie. But she stayed put, her heart thudding, and went on gazing out into the night as if the stranger’s stillness had infected her. Suddenly, he turned his head, and Meggie felt as if he were looking straight into her eyes. She shot off the bed so fast the open book fell to the floor, and she ran barefoot out into the dark corridor. This was the end of May, but it was chilly in the old house. There was still a light on in Mo’s room. He often stayed up reading late into the night. Meggie had inherited her love of books from her father. When she took refuge from a bad dream with him, nothing could lull her to sleep better than Mo’s calm breathing beside her and the sound of the pages turning. Nothing chased nightmares away faster than

Miss Mackintosh waved her arms wildly. "Oh, please stop, and let me guess," she cried. "I shall go crazy with joy if I'm right. It was an old Peerage, and so she found that Lady Deal was Helena Herman--" "Whom she had seen ten years ago at a music hall as a male impersonator," cried Diva. "And didn't want to know her," interrupted Miss Mackintosh. "Yes, that's it, but that is not all. I hope you won't mind, but it's too rich. She saw you this morning coming out of your house in your bath-chair, and was quite sure that you were that Lady Deal." The three ladies rocked with laughter. Sometimes one recovered, and sometimes two, but they were re-infected by the third, and so they went on, solo and chorus, and duet and chorus, till exhaustion set in. "But there's still a mystery," said Diva at length, wiping her eyes. "Why did the Peerage say that Lady Deal was Helena Herman?" "Oh, that's the last Lady Deal," said Miss Mackintosh. "Helena Herman's Lord Deal died without children and Florence's Lord Deal, my Lady Deal, succeeded. Cousins." "If that isn't a lesson for Elizabeth Mapp," said Diva. "Better go to the expense of a new Peerage than make such a muddle. But what a long call we've made. We must go.

A monkey can run amazingly fast, it can jump long distances, and it uses its tail as a gripper or a hook. It also has a mind. Nancy thought, An angry monkey is like a flying pit bull terrier with five prehensile limbs—these critters can do a job on you. A monkey directs its attacks toward the face and head. It will grab you by the head, using all four limbs, and then it will wrap its tail around your neck to get a good grip, and it will make slashing attacks all over your face with its teeth, aiming especially for the eyes. This is not a good situation if the monkey happens to be infected with Ebola virus.

Honoria nodded and was about to say something utterly forgettable when she saw that his hand had been bandaged. “I hope your injury is not severe,” she said politely. “Oh, this?” he held up his hand. His fingers were free to waggle, but the rest of it looked rather like a mitt. “It’s nothing. An altercation with a letter opener.” “Well, please do be careful of infection,” Honoria said, somewhat more forcefully than was de rigueur. “If it grows red, or swollen, or even worse, yellow, then you must see a doctor at once.” “Green?” he quipped. “I beg your pardon?” “You listed so many colors about which I must be wary.” For a moment Honoria could only stare. Wound infection was not a laughing matter. “Lady Honoria?” he murmured. She decided to proceed as if he’d said nothing. “Most importantly, you must watch for reddish streaks spreading from the wound. Those are the worst.” He blinked, but if he was startled by the turn of the conversation, he did not show it. Instead he looked down at his hand with a curious eye and said, “How red?” “I beg your pardon?” “How red do the streaks have to be before I must worry?” “How do you know so much about medicine?” Lady Danbury cut in. “Do you know, I’m not sure how red,” Honoria told Mr. Bridgerton. “I would think anything stripey ought to be a cause for alarm.

So it was the hand that started it all. He felt one hand and then the other work his coat free and let it slump to the floor. He held his pants out into an abyss and let them fall into darkness. His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders , and then the jump-over from shoulder blade to shoulder blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. and his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything. His wife said, "What are you doing?" He balanced in space with the book in his sweating cold fingers.

Do not make passion an argument for truth! - O you good-natured and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You want to win your argument against us, but also against yourself, and above all against yourself!and a subtle and tender bad conscience so often incites you against your enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become in the outwitting and deadening of this conscience! How you hate the honest, the simple, the pure, how you avoid their innocent eyes! That knowing better whose representatives they are and whose voice you hear all too loudly within you, how it casts doubt on your belief- how you seek to make it suspect as a bad habit, as a sickness of the age, as neglect and infection of your own spiritual health! You drive yourself to the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You have to falsify history so that it may bear witness for you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not cast into the shade those of your idols and ideals! Coloured pictures where what is needed is rational grounds! Ardour and power of expression! Silvery mists! Ambrosial nights! You understand how to illuminate and how to obscure, and how to obscure with light! And truly, when your passion rises to the point of frenzy, there comes a moment when you say to yourself: now I have conquered the good conscience, now I am light of heart, courageous, self-denying, magnificent, now I am honest! How you thirst for those moments when your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification and as it were innocence; when in struggle, intoxication, courage, hope, you are beside yourself and beyond all doubting; when you decree: 'he who is not beside himself as we are can in no way know what and where truth is!' How you thirst to discover people of your belief in this condition - it is that of intellectual vice - and ignite your flame at their torch! Oh your deplorable martyrdom! Oh your deplorable victory of the sanctified lie! Must you inflict so much suffering upon yourself? - Must you?

Tell you what: Ask a Baptist wife why her husband treats her like a personal slave. Ask a homosexual couple why their love for one another is treated as a sick joke in some parts of the world and as a crime punishable by death in others. Ask a starving African mother with ten starving children why she doesn't practice birth control. Ask a young Muslim girl why her parents sliced off her clitoris. Ask millions of Muslim women why they cannot attend schools or show themselves in public except through the eye slits of a full-body burqa. Ask the Pakistani woman who's gang-raped why she is sentenced to death while her rapists go free, and why it’s her own family leading the murderous chorus. Ask the American woman who’s raped why her local congressman would question the “legitimacy” of that rape and would force her to bring her rapist’s child to term. Ask the dead Christian children why their fundamentalist parents wouldn’t give them an antibiotic to stave off their infection or an insulin injection to control their diabetes. Ask the Parkinson’s or paralysis victims why their cures have been mired in religious and political red tape for decades now because an increasingly hysterical and radical segment of American society believes that a clump of cells with no identity and no consciousness has more rights than they do. Ask them all to point to the source of their misery, and then ask yourself why it doesn't bother you that they are pointing to the same goddamned book you're using in your religious services and in the celebration of your “harmless” and “quaint” traditions.

Have you been infected with the toxin of denial? Here are the top five signs to help you find out: If you think you are above certain things happening to you, you are in denial. Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. PROVERBS 16:18 If you think you have the power to plan your own future, you are in denial. We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer. PROVERBS 16:1 If you think you are the only one who can get it right, you are in denial. People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives. PROVERBS 16:2 If you think you are never wrong and it’s always someone else’s fault, you are in denial. Pride ends in humiliation, while humility brings honor. PROVERBS 29:23 If you have a rebuttal to anyone and everything, you are in denial. Too much talk leads to sin.

The cars and trucks that passed this way threw their trash out into the forest without pause, faster than the gleaners could pick them up and find new uses for them. The waste had always struck Maceo as a disgusting mystery, but now, it made sense. The indestructible plastic bottles and wrappers that rained on the ground were not merely trash, but seeds—diabolical harbingers of the alien ecology of metal and plastic and advertising that had already swallowed the coast. It was a hostile invader that no one else seemed to want to fight. The dead-eyed souvenir-hawkers at Coba sold the products the signs foretold; beside the road to the ruins of the once-sacred ceremonial city, a looming image of golden arches promised a still-greater ritual awaiting them in Valladolid—the devouring of machine-made ghost-food. Maceo could not read the words on the billboards, but he knew that they sought to infect their victims with the virus of desire.

When did my heart turn away from its willingness to die if need be in order to kill d’Albret? Perhaps once I escaped, once I was no longer in his orbit or infected with the bleak despair that enveloped me while I was in his household. Or mayhap my short time away from him has reminded me that there are things worth living for. There are good people in this world, in this duchy. Those who mean to do all they can to stop d’Albret. Living inside his walls, it was all too easy to forget that. There is the thrill of a fast horse, and the sun and wind in your face. The rare—and all the more precious for it—moments of laughter to be had. The excitement of seeing Mortain’s marque and knowing the hunt is about to begin. The look in someone’s eye when he truly see you—not just your face and hair, but the very essence of your soul. It is a raw and uncomfortable realization that Beast is partly behind this newfound will to live. Not for him, but because he reminded me of what life has to offer. He lives life so joyously—it is impossible not to want that joy for oneself.

They don't have the time to take on animals with dietary restrictions and missing legs." "Do you think I don't know that? That's precisely why they're all here with me. No one else would take them. Angus, for example." She moved toward the Highland steer. "Some foolish merchant traveled to Scotland on holiday and decided to bring his wife a pet calf from the Highlands. Never stopped to think about the fact that he would grow." "Surely people aren't that stupid." "Oh, it happens all the time. But usually they make that mistake with pups or ponies. Not cattle." She shook her head. "They dehorned him in the worst, most painful way. When he came to me, the poor dear's wounds were infected. Infested, too. He could have perished from the fly-strike alone. That man was stupid, indeed. The only thing he got right was his choice of calf. Angus is exceedingly adorable." Adorable? Gabe eyed the beast. The animal stood as tall as Gabe's shoulder, and it smelled... the way cattle smell. Shaggy red fur covered its eyes like a blindfold, and its black, spongy nose glistened.

1. Oral Involvement 2. Laryngeal Involvement 3. Cardiovascular Involvement 4. Skin: rashes, vitiligo, Raynaud’s 5. Constitutional symptoms: including fever, fatigue, and muscle wasting (cachexia), infections 6. Rheumatoid vasculitis and blood vessel disease 7. Lung Involvement 8. Kidney involvement 9. Eye involvement 10. Other organs: including spleen, liver, lymph system, gut KEY POINTS 1. Some symptoms and antibodies can precede diagnosis over 10 years. 2. Many studies indicate RD begins in the lungs, before joint symptoms are diagnosable. 3. RD is often called an “invisible”illness because symptoms are not obvious to casual observers. 4. Doctors must be more aware that systemic symptoms like fatigue may indicate serious problems. 5. Extra-articular disease has been proven to affect most PRD, but is still not widely recognized. 6. Acknowledging rheumatoid disease that exists beyond and before joint inflammation (arthritis) could bring a) Improved care for lower mortality b) Improved research for better treatments c) Improved diagnosis for increased remissions

Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge," he said. "This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical." Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night's sky. Encouraged, he went on, "This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not." Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur. "This limb, madam," he said, "demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties.

has tended to ignore the forces of mental healing, the psychical “will-to-health” — has failed to take into practical account the fact that, besides such medicaments as arsenic and camphor, there are other remedies to stimulate a flagging vitality; purely spiritual remedies, such as courage, self-confidence, faith, vigorous optimism. Much as our reason may revolt against the futility of the teaching of those who want to kill bacilli by “mind,” to counteract syphilitic infection by “truth,” and to nullify the disastrous effect of arteriosclerosis by “God,” we should make a great mistake were we to ignore the energy which this doctrine can furnish to one who believes in it. We should be closing our eyes to the truth were we to deny that Christian Science has achieved wonderful successes, and, by the profundity of its faith, has brought consolation to numberless persons in moments of despair. Perhaps it is but an intoxicant, is but “dope,” giving no more than a transient support to the nerves as does camphor or caffeine, and temporarily arresting the advance of disease. Still, in giving this temporary relief, it shows once more how the power of the mind can come to the help of the body.

Here we may observe and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union, so much kept and so far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel and to the course they were in before.

So many synapses,' Drisana said. 'Ten trillion synapses in the cortex alone.' Danlo made a fist and asked, 'What do the synapses look like?' 'They're modelled as points of light. Ten trillion points of light.' She didn't explain how neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapses, causing the individual neurons to fire. Danlo knew nothing of chemistry or electricity. Instead, she tried to give him some idea of how the heaume's computer stored and imprinted language. 'The computer remembers the synapse configuration of other brains, brains that hold a particular language. This memory is a simulation of that language. And then in your brain, Danlo, select synapses are excited directly and strengthened. The computer speeds up the synapses' natural evolution.' Danlo tapped the bridge of his nose; his eyes were dark and intent upon a certain sequence of thought. 'The synapses are not allowed to grow naturally, yes?' 'Certainly not. Otherwise imprinting would be impossible.' 'And the synapse configuration – this is really the learning, the essence of another's mind, yes?' 'Yes, Danlo.' 'And not just the learning – isn't this so? You imply that anything in the mind of another could be imprinted in my mind?' 'Almost anything.' 'What about dreams? Could dreams be imprinted?' 'Certainly.' 'And nightmares?' Drisana squeezed his hand and reassured him. 'No one would imprint a nightmare into another.' 'But it is possible, yes?' Drisana nodded her head. 'And the emotions ... the fears or loneliness or rage?' 'Those things, too. Some imprimaturs – certainly they're the dregs of the City – some do such things.' Danlo let his breath out slowly. 'Then how can I know what is real and what is unreal? Is it possible to imprint false memories? Things or events that never happened? Insanity? Could I remember ice as hot or see red as blue? If someone else looked at the world through shaida eyes, would I be infected with this way of seeing things?' Drisana wrung her hands together, sighed, and looked helplessly at Old Father. 'Oh ho, the boy is difficult, and his questions cut like a sarsara!' Old Father stood up and painfully limped over to Danlo. Both his eyes were open, and he spoke clearly. 'All ideas are infectious, Danlo. Most things learned early in life, we do not choose to learn. Ah, and much that comes later. So, it's so: the two wisdoms. The first wisdom: as best we can, we must choose what to put into our brains. And the second wisdom: the healthy brain creates its own ecology; the vital thoughts and ideas eventually drive out the stupid, the malignant and the parasitical.

The banishing of a leper seems harsh, unnecessary. The Ancient East hasn’t been the only culture to isolate their wounded, however. We may not build colonies or cover our mouths in their presence, but we certainly build walls and duck our eyes. And a person needn’t have leprosy to feel quarantined. One of my sadder memories involves my fourth-grade friend Jerry.1He and a half-dozen of us were an ever-present, inseparable fixture on the playground. One day I called his house to see if we could play. The phone was answered by a cursing, drunken voice telling me Jerry could not come over that day or any day. I told my friends what had happened. One of them explained that Jerry’s father was an alcoholic. I don’t know if I knew what the word meant, but I learned quickly. Jerry, the second baseman; Jerry, the kid with the red bike; Jerry, my friend on the corner was now “Jerry, the son of a drunk.” Kids can be hard, and for some reason we were hard on Jerry. He was infected. Like the leper, he suffered from a condition he didn’t create. Like the leper, he was put outside the village. The divorced know this feeling. So do the handicapped. The unemployed have felt it, as have the less educated. Some shun unmarried moms. We keep our distance from the depressed and avoid the terminally ill. We have neighborhoods for immigrants, convalescent homes for the elderly, schools for the simple, centers for the addicted, and prisons for the criminals. The rest simply try to get away from it all. Only God knows how many Jerrys are in voluntary exile—individuals living quiet, lonely lives infected by their fear of rejection and their memories of the last time they tried. They choose not to be touched at all rather than risk being hurt again.

Flowers. Lots of women say they don’t want them. But every woman is happy when they get them. Which is why I’ve arranged to have them delivered to Kate’s office, every hour on the hour. Seven dozen at a time. That’s one dozen for every day we were apart. Romantic, right? I thought so too. And although I know Kate’s favorite are white daisies, I specifically told the florist to avoid them. Instead, I’ve chosen exotics—bouquets with brightly colored petals and strange shapes. The kinds of flowers Kate has probably never seen in her life, from places she’s never been. Places I want to take her to. At first I kept the notes simple and generic. Take a look: Kate, I'm sorry. Drew Kate, Let me make it up to you. Drew Kate, I miss you. Please forgive me. Drew. But after a few hours I figured I needed to step it up a notch. Get more creative. What do you think? Kate, You're turning me into a stalker. Drew Kate, Go out with me on Saturday and I'll give you all of my clients. Every. Single. One. Drew Kate, If I throw myself in front of a bus, will you come visit me at the hospital? Drew PS - Try not to feel too guilty if I don't survive. Really. That last batch was delivered forty-five minutes ago. Now I’m just sitting at my desk, waiting. Waiting for what, you ask? You’ll see. Kate may be stubborn, but she’s not made of stone. My office door slams open, leaving a dent in the drywall. Here we go. “You are driving me crazy!” Her cheeks are flushed, her breathing’s fast, and she’s got murder in her eyes. Beautiful. I raise my brows hopefully. “Crazy? Like you want to rip my shirt open again?” “No. Crazy like the itch of a yeast infection that just won’t go away.” I flinch. Can’t help it. I mean—Christ. Kate steps toward my desk. “I am trying to work. I need to focus. And you’ve got Manny, Moe, and Jack playing every cheesy eighties song ever written outside my office door!” “Cheesy? Really? Huh. I so had you pegged for an eighties kind of girl.” Well, you live and learn.

On the deck was a skeleton. Some of the bugs seemed to be fighting for the last scraps of flesh but pretty much everything but bone and some scraps of skin and hair were gone. Bugs were even crawling in and out of the eye sockets, cleaning out the brains. “Holy crap,” Woodman said, “I don’t want those getting on me!” “I just figured out what they are,” Gardner said, stepping through the hatch after a flash around with her light. Every step caused a crunch. “And they won’t bite.” “They stripped that guy to the bone!” Woodman said. “That’s what they do,” Gardner said, bending down and picking up one of the beetles. It skittered along her arm and she shook it off. “They’re carrion beetles.” “Carrion?” Woodman said. “So they eat people?” “They eat dead flesh,” Gardner said. “I’d heard Wolf say he’d ‘seeded’ the boat. I didn’t know it was with these.” “Wolf did this?” Woodman said angrily. “To our people?” “Six of us came off, Woodie,” Gardner said softly. “Ninety-four and twenty-six refugees didn’t. You’ve carried bodies. You know how heavy they are. Now . . . they’re not.” “That’s horrible,” Woodman said. “No,” Gardner said, flashing her light around. “It’s efficient, simple and brutal. It’s Wolf all over if you think about it. These things only eat dead flesh. They may get into some of the electronics but those are mostly thrashed by the infecteds, anyway. It cleans the boat out of the main issue, the dead meat on the dead people. If we ever get around to clearing this out, all we’ll have to do is bag the bones.” “We won’t know who’s who,” Woodman said. “Does it matter?” Gardner said. “There’s a big thing, it’s called an ossuary, in France. All the guys who died in a certain battle in World War One. They buried them, waited for bugs like this to do their work, then dug them back up. All of certain bones are on the left, all the others are on the right and the skulls are in the middle.” She picked up the skull of the former Coast Guard crewman and looked at it as beetles poured out. “I don’t know who you were but you were my brother,” Gardner said. “This way, I know I can give you a decent burial. And I will remember you. Now, we’ve got a mission to complete, Woodman, and people waiting on us. Live people. Let the dead bury the dead.

One question.” I managed to gather the two words as his struggling breath entangled in my hair. “This isn’t fair. There is so much I want to know.” He laced his fingers into mine as he dipped his head down to my ear. “I want to know how you like your coffee, and what your favorite song is. I want to know what annoys you, and the worst thing you’ve ever done. I want to know your greatest fear, and whether or not you talk in your sleep. If you prefer chocolate over vanilla, and if you cried watching The Notebook … if you’ve ever seen The Notebook, or like movies at all. What gives you the greatest high, and what can take all the pain away …” Ollie drew in a deep breath, and at the same time, my heart skipped in my chest. “But what I need to know is … are you willing to open yourself up to me so I can find out?” “Is that your question?” I stammered, lost in all his words. “Yes.” He exhaled. “That’s my final question.” Turning to face him, his eyes filled with hope and wonder, but his absent smile expected the inescapable truth. We both knew there wasn’t anything inside me to open up, an empty shell. So, what exactly did I have to lose? And, so, it was there, in the middle of the romance section of the maze-like library at Dolor University outside of Guildford in the United Kingdom where I decided I was willing to show him I was nothing more than a hollow soul. “I will only disappoint you.” “I doubt it.” “And I’m difficult,” I warned. “Good.” Ollie grinned. “I wasn’t expecting anything less, Mia. I’m only asking you to knock down a wall. Not even a wall—fuck, carve me out a door. I only want to know you.” He grabbed my hand, and a calmness washed over me. I didn’t have the tools to destroy a wall, let alone carve out a door. The barriers had endured ten years. Tough and sturdy and placed for a reason. Each one had a purpose, and even though I’d forgotten why they stood there in the first place, I was scared what would happen if I started carving out holes. The walls became my friends—they were safe. But I nodded, anyway, because the small glimmer of hope in his eyes spread like an infection. “And to clarify, no, I’ve never seen The Notebook, and I don’t plan on it, either.” Ollie threw his head back and a raspy laugh echoed in our maze. A laugh I had quickly grown to adore.

Astonishment: these women’s military professions—medical assistant, sniper, machine gunner, commander of an antiaircraft gun, sapper—and now they are accountants, lab technicians, museum guides, teachers…Discrepancy of the roles—here and there. Their memories are as if not about themselves, but some other girls. Now they are surprised at themselves. Before my eyes history “humanizes” itself, becomes like ordinary life. Acquires a different lighting. I’ve happened upon extraordinary storytellers. There are pages in their lives that can rival the best pages of the classics. The person sees herself so clearly from above—from heaven, and from below—from the ground. Before her is the whole path—up and down—from angel to beast. Remembering is not a passionate or dispassionate retelling of a reality that is no more, but a new birth of the past, when time goes in reverse. Above all it is creativity. As they narrate, people create, they “write” their life. Sometimes they also “write up” or “rewrite.” Here you have to be vigilant. On your guard. At the same time pain melts and destroys any falsehood. The temperature is too high! Simple people—nurses, cooks, laundresses—behave more sincerely, I became convinced of that…They, how shall I put it exactly, draw the words out of themselves and not from newspapers and books they have read—not from others. But only from their own sufferings and experiences. The feelings and language of educated people, strange as it may be, are often more subject to the working of time. Its general encrypting. They are infected by secondary knowledge. By myths. Often I have to go for a long time, by various roundabout ways, in order to hear a story of a “woman’s,” not a “man’s” war: not about how we retreated, how we advanced, at which sector of the front…It takes not one meeting, but many sessions. Like a persistent portrait painter. I sit for a long time, sometimes a whole day, in an unknown house or apartment. We drink tea, try on the recently bought blouses, discuss hairstyles and recipes. Look at photos of the grandchildren together. And then…After a certain time, you never know when or why, suddenly comes this long-awaited moment, when the person departs from the canon—plaster and reinforced concrete, like our monuments—and goes on to herself. Into herself. Begins to remember not the war but her youth. A piece of her life…I must seize that moment. Not miss it! But often, after a long day, filled with words, facts, tears, only one phrase remains in my memory (but what a phrase!): “I was so young when I left for the front, I even grew during the war.” I keep it in my notebook, although I have dozens of yards of tape in my tape recorder. Four or five cassettes… What helps me? That we are used to living together. Communally. We are communal people. With us everything is in common—both happiness and tears. We know how to suffer and how to tell about our suffering. Suffering justifies our hard and ungainly life.

329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually " afraid of letting opportunities slip." " Better do anything whatever, than nothing "-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like " to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true " sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. " One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice !

As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition to despair of life and abandon themselves, so this very thing had a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold and venturous, they were no more shy of one another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and began to converse. One would say to another, “I do not ask how you are, or say how I am; it is certain we shall all go; so ’tis no matter who is sick or who is sound;” and so they ran desperately into any place or any company. As it brought the people into publick company, so it was surprizing how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They enquired no more into who, they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people seemed to be in, but looking upon themselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and crowded together, as if their lives were of no consequence compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the zeal which they shewed in coming, and the earnestness and affection they shewed in their attention to what they heard, made it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God if they thought every day they attended at the church that it would be their last. Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away all manner of prejudice or of scruple about the person who they found in the pulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be doubted but that many of the ministers of the parish churches were cut off, among others, in so common and dreadful a calamity; and others had courage enough to stand it, but removed into the country as they found means for escape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been a few years before deprived of their livings by virtue of the Act of Parliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the churches; nor did the church ministers in that case make any difficulty of accepting their assistance; so that many of those who they called silenced ministers had their mouths opened on the occasion and preached publickly to the people. Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union so much kept and far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.