Fall Has Arrived Quotes

The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations - all of them rearranging themselves so this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they've lived past lives, because there is no way the years I've spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I'm feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In you heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are now just arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know …nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

Taking his time, as though he has all of it in the world, in the universe, from the days when tales meant more than they do now, but perhaps less than they will someday, he draws a breath that releases the tangled knot of words in his heart, and they fall from his lips effortlessly. "The circus arrives without warning.

To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with a choice. They may either slacken and fall back, accepting the relief of a rational view and the approval of others, or they may push on, and, by falling, arise. When and if by their unforgivable stubbornness they finally burst through to worlds upon worlds of motionless light, they are no longer called afflicted or insane. They are called saints.

Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

She did not tell herself she wasn’t afraid. Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. We meet fear, he'd said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preéstablishcd harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give hint no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive. You can close your eyes and there will be a light snow falling in New York, and seconds later you are sunning upon a rock in Zacapa, and seconds later still you are surfing through the Bronx on the strength of your own desire. There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped. Try to describe the taste of a peach. Try to describe it. Feel the rush of sweetness: we make love.

I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: 'English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache...The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.' And we're such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn't real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless,inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I'd ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.

There comes a day each September when you wake up and know the summer is over and fall has arrived. The slant of the sun looks different and something is in the air--a coolness, a hint of frosty mornings to follow. I woke early on the morning of September 24 and reached for a warmer petticoat.

A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it – no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love. And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone, they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality; in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it. Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you even think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That’s why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced; they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned. Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness. Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That’s why, in India, the ultimate we call moksha. Moksha means freedom. Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped, freedom has to be saved; freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy, that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman – utter freedom, absolute freedom. So anything that becomes destructive to freedom, one starts hating it. Don’t you hate the man you love? Don’t you hate the woman you love? You hate; it is a necessary evil, you have to tolerate it. Because you cannot be alone you have to manage to be with somebody, and you have to adjust to the other’s demands. You have to tolerate, you have to bear them. Love, to be really love, has to be being-love, gift-love. Being-love means a state of love. When you have arrived home, when you have known who you are, then a love arises in your being. Then the fragrance spreads and you can give it to others. How can you give something which you don’t have? To give it, the first basic requirement is to have it.

There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you- a train, say, or the future- has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a somber sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne.

Fall has arrived and has already begun to put everything into a deep sleep; flies and other insects have suffered their first setback, and up in the trees and down on the ground you can hear the sounds of struggling life, puttering , ceaselessly rustling, laboring not to perish.

After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foilage. "There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive. Fear of falling asleep at night. Fear of not falling asleep. Fear of the past rising up. Fear of the present taking flight. Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night. Fear of electrical storms. Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek! Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite. Fear of anxiety! Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend. Fear of running out of money. Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this. Fear of psychological profiles. Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else. Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes. Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty. Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine. Fear of confusion. Fear this day will end on an unhappy note. Fear of waking up to find you gone. Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough. Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love. Fear of death. Fear of living too long. Fear of death. I've said that.

I wish I'd been accepted sooner and better. When I was younger, not being accepted made me enraged, but now, I am not inclined to dismantle my history. If you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes--and we become attached to the heroic strain in our personal history. We choose our own lives. It is not simply that we decide on the behaviors that construct our experience; when given our druthers, we elect to be ourselves. Most of us would like to be more successful or more beautiful or wealthier, and most people endure episodes of low self-esteem or even self-hatred. We despair a hundred times a day. But we retain the startling evolutionary imperative for the fact of ourselves, and with that splinter of grandiosity we redeem our flaws. These parents have, by and large, chosen to love their children, and many of them have chosen to value their own lives, even though they carry what much of the world considers an intolerable burden. Children with horizontal identities alter your self painfully; they also illuminate it. They are receptacles for rage and joy-even for salvation. When we love them, we achieve above all else the rapture of privileging what exists over what we have merely imagined. A follower of the Dalai Lama who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for decades was asked if he had ever been afraid in jail, and he said his fear was that he would lose compassion for his captors. Parents often think that they've captured something small and vulnerable, but the parents I've profiled here have been captured, locked up with their children's madness or genius or deformity, and the quest is never to lose compassion. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect. Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible. For some parents of children with horizontal identities, acceptance reaches its apogee when parents conclude that while they supposed that they were pinioned by a great and catastrophic loss of hope, they were in fact falling in love with someone they didn't yet know enough to want. As such parents look back, they see how every stage of loving their child has enriched them in ways they never would have conceived, ways that ar incalculably precious. Rumi said that light enters you at the bandaged place. This book's conundrum is that most of the families described here have ended up grateful for experiences they would have done anything to avoid.

Look behind you now. Do you feel in your heart a slight hastening of its beat, and a powerful sense that something momentous is about to happen? ... Perhaps, then, this is the hour that Mary Hightower takes to the sky with thousands Afterlights heading toward Memphis. ... Perhaps this is the moment that Nick, the Chocolate Ogre, arrives in the same city in search for Allie, only to find that he has no idea where to look. ... Perhaps this is the very instant that a monster called the McGill arrives there as well, aching to ease his pain by sharing his misery - not only with his new minions, but with anyone he can. ... And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the covergence of the wrong, of the right, and the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep.... For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of doubt, which is which.

The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

She did not tell herself she wasn’t afraid. Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. We meet fear, he’d said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

If Henry Adams, whom you knew slightly, could make a theory of history by applying the second law of thermodynamics to human affairs, I ought to be entitled to base one on the angle of repose, and may yet. There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you -- a train, say, or the future -- has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don't find your life uninteresting, as Rodman does. I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing. Having no future of my own, why shouldn't I look forward to yours.

She imagined them checking the ropes at her wrists, rubbing life into her hands. She did not tell herself she wasn't afraid. Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. We meet fear, he'd said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives. The only method of doing this is to assume a perfect resignation to the Divine will, to consider that whatever does happen, must happen; and that, by our uneasiness, we cannot prevent the blow before it does fall, but we may add to its force after it has fallen. These considerations, and others such as these, may enable us in some measure to surmount the difficulties thrown in our way; to bear up with a tolerable degree of patience under the burden of life; and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till we arrive at our journey's end.

The glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched; all is over. The wheels hold you fast, the glance has ensnared you. It has caught you, no matter where or how, by some portion of your thought which is fluttering loose, by some distraction which had attacked you. You are lost. The whole of you passes into it. A chain of mysterious forces takes possession of you. You struggle in vain; no more human succor is possible. You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from agony to agony, from torture to torture, you, your mind, your fortune, your future, your soul; and, according to whether you are in the power of a wicked creature, or of a noble heart, you will not escape from this terrifying machine otherwise than disfigured with shame, or transfigured by passion.

Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. We meet fear, he’d said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.

Anger and fatigue well up all over the country. Fall has arrives, with its biting winds, its long rainy evenings. The gloom matches our overall mood. It mirrors the minds of the adults. And we children absorb everything, we drink everything in without anyone noticing, until the moment we get squeezed. We're baby sponges, you can't just wring us out, you have to be careful what you soak us in. Even washed, rinsed, dried a hundred times over, traces still remain in us.

Although nature has proven season in and season out that if the thing that is planted bears at all, it will yield more of itself, there are those who seem certain that if they plant tomato seeds, at harvesttime they can reap onions. Too many times for comfort I have expected to reap good when I know I have sown evil. My lame excuse is that I have not always known that actions can only reproduce themselves, or rather, I have not always allowed myself to be aware of that knowledge. Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies. Of course, there is no absolute assurance that those things I plant will always fall upon arable land and will take root and grow, nor can I know if another cultivator did not leave contrary seeds before I arrived. I do know, however, that if I leave little to chance, if I am careful about the kinds of seeds I plant, about their potency and nature, I can, within reason, trust my expectations.

The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations – all of them rearranging themselves so this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

America is at a crossroads. A country that once stood as the global symbol of democracy has been teetering on the brink of authoritarianism. How did this happen? Is the fall of democracy in the United States inevitable? And if not, how can we reclaim our democratic principles? This crisis in American democracy crept up on many of us. For generations of Americans, grainy news footage from World War II showing row upon row of Nazi soldiers goose-stepping in military parades tricked us into thinking that the Adolf Hitlers of the world arrive at the head of giant armies. So long as we didn’t see tanks in our streets, we imagined that democracy was secure. But in fact, Hitler’s rise to absolute power began with his consolidation of political influence to win 36.8 percent of the vote in 1932, which he parlayed into a deal to become German chancellor. The absolute dictatorship came afterward.

To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with a choice. They may either slacken and fall back, accepting the relief of a rational view and the approval of others, or they may push on, and, by falling, arise. When and if by their unforgivable stubborness they finally burst through to worlds upon worlds of motionless light, they are no longer called afflicted or insane. They are called saints." Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

Afterwards Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have been different, sure, and it's not too bad, but look - things happen like that, and you did what you could." You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow. There's that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots. Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating, that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust. Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn.

Ripened Fruit Do you remember how you came into existence? You may not remember because you arrived a little drunk. Let me give you a hint: Let go off your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen! It is difficult to speak to your unripeness. You may still be in your springtime, unaware that autumn exists. This world is a tree to which we cling---- we, the half-ripe fruit upon it. The immature fruit clings tightly to the branch because, not yet ripe, it's unfit for the palace. When fruits become ripe, sweet, and juicy, then, biting their lips, they loosen their hold. When the mouth has been sweetened by felicity, the kingdom of the world loses it's appeal. To be tightly attached to the world is immaturity. As long as you're an embryo, all you think about is sipping blood. There's more to be said, but let the Holy Spirit tell it. You may even tell it to your own ear. Neither I, nor some other "I," needs to tell you, you who are also I. Just as when you fall asleep, you leave the presence of yourself to enter another presence of yourself. You hear something from yourself and imagine that someone else has secretly spoken to you in a dream. But you are not a single "you," my friend----you are the wide sky and the deep sea. Your awesome "You," which is nine hundredfold, is where a hundred of your you's will drown.

Daedalus had told me a story once about the lords of Crete who used to hire him to enlarge their houses. He would arrive with his tools, begin taking down the walls, pulling up the floors. But whenever he found some problem underneath that must first be fixed, they frowned. That was not in the agreement! Of course not, he said, it has been hidden in the foundation, but look, there it is, plain as day. See the cracked beam? See the beetles eating the floor? See how the stone is sinking into the swamp? That only made the lords angrier. It was fine until you dug it up! We will not pay! Close it up, plaster over. It has stood this long, it will stand longer. So he would seal that fault up, and the next season the house would fall down. Then they would come to him, demanding back their money. “I told them,” he said to me. “I told them and told them. When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.” The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

What is it about the moment you fall in love? haw can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in deja vu, why people believe they've lived past lives, because there is no way the years I've spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I'm feeling. The moment when you fall in love feel like it has centuries behind it, generations -- all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

But what stupendous good fortune! What an answer to prayer. A guest house, and a charming hostess. My Rolls Royce, alas, has run into a snowdrift. blinding snow everywhere. I do not know where I am. Perhaps, I think to myself, I shall freeze to death. And then I take a little bag, I stagger through the snow, I see before me big iron gates. A habitation! I am saved. Twice I fall into the snow as I come up your drive, but at last I arrive and immediately - despair turns to joy. You can let me have a room - yes?

They fall silently the steps of her arrival - crossing snow so pale  even the morning sky would fall  into nights amber (if it knew of her ways & worth);  for she has entered the palace of gold  - her hair braided with hope tainted with autumn leaves that seem like a hanged man's rope - for her name is war and  her crown is crafted out of grief.

A naturalist should look at the world with warm affection, if not ardent love. The life the scalpel has ended ought to be honored by a caring, devoted appreciation for that creature’s unrepeatable individuality, and for the fact that, at the same time, strange as this may seem, this life stands for the entire natural kingdom. Examined with attention, the dissected hare illuminates the parts and properties of all other animals and, by extension, their environment. The hare, like a blade of grass or a piece of coal, is not simply a small fraction of the whole but contains the whole within itself. This makes us all one. If anything, because we are all made of the same stuff. Our flesh is the debris of dead stars, and this is also true of the apple and its tree, of each hair on the spider’s legs, and of the rock rusting on planet Mars. Each minuscule being has spokes radiating out to all of creation. Some of the raindrops falling on the potato plants in your farm back in Sweden were once in a tiger’s bladder. From one living thing, the properties of any other may be predicted. Looking at any particle with sufficient care, and following the chain that links all things together, we can arrive at the universe—the correspondences are there, if the eye is skillful enough to detect them. The guts of the anatomized hare faithfully render the picture of the entire world. And because that hare is everything, it is also us. Having understood and experienced this marvelous congruity, man can no longer examine his surroundings merely as a surface scattered with alien objects and creatures related to him only by their usefulness. The carpenter who can only devise tabletops while walking through the forest, the poet who can only remember his own private sorrows while looking at the falling snow, the naturalist who can only attach a label to every leaf and a pin to every insect—all of them are debasing nature by turning it into a storehouse, a symbol, or a fact. Knowing nature, Lorimer would often say, means learning how to be. And to achieve this, we must listen to the constant sermon of things. Our highest task is to make out the words to better partake in the ecstasy of existence.

As he was cast over the edge, he was able to turn and look upward. Falling, he saw a dark figure in the sky that grew even as his eyes passed over it. Of course, he thought, he has finally looked upon the sunrise and been freed … Wings folded, his great, horned countenance impassive, Morningstar dropped like a black meteor. As he drew near, he extended his arms full length and opened his massive hands. Jack wondered whether he would arrive in time.

The deeper you fall in love, pain follows like a ghost, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Could take an entire lifetime, or just a couple of short months. Pain has no concept of time, and when it arrives, you’re never ready for it.

Sometimes ego is suppressed on the ascent. Sometimes an idea is so powerful or timing is so perfect (or one is born into wealth or power) that it can temporarily support or even compensate for a massive ego. As success arrives, like it does for a team that has just won a championship, ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken the will that made us win in the first place. We know that empires always fall, so we must think about why—and why they seem to always collapse from within.

It’s like I have this demon inside of me, and I want it gone, but the idea of removing it via pill is . . . I don’t know . . . weird. But a lot of days I get over that, because I do really hate the demon.” “You often try to understand your experience through metaphor, Aza: It’s like a demon inside of you; you’ll call your consciousness a bus, or a prison cell, or a spiral, or a whirlpool, or a loop, or a—I think you once called it a scribbled circle, which I found interesting.” “Yeah,” I said. “One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.” She turned to her computer, shook her mouse to wake it up, and then clicked an image on her desktop. “I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. . . . The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.

The Russells arrive at the same conclusion: "There is certainly no evidence from mamamalian behaviour that social aggression is more prevalent or intense among carnivores than among herbivores. And as for humans: "There is certainly no evidence that social violence has been more prevalent or intense in carnivorous hunting than in vegetarian agricultural societies. Hunting people have sometimes been extremely war-like; but no human group has produced more peaceful communities than some of the Eskimos, who have been carnivorous hunters, presumably, since the Old Stone Age.' The Samurai, on the other hand, were strict vegetarians; and so were the Hindu mobs in India which massacred their Moslem brethren whenever given a chance. It was not the eating of reindeer-steaks which caused the Fall.

The sound of anything coming at you—a train, say, or the future —has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don’t find your life uninteresting, as Rodman does. I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing. Having no future of my own, why shouldn’t I look forward to yours?

The Pilgrims had come to America not to conquer a continent but to re-create their modest communities in Scrooby and in Leiden. When they arrived at Plymouth in December 1620 and found it emptied of people, it seemed as if God had given them exactly what they were looking for. But as they quickly discovered during that first terrifying fall and winter, New England was far from uninhabited. There were still plenty of Native people, and to ignore or anger them was to risk annihilation. The Pilgrims’ religious beliefs played a dominant role in the decades ahead, but it was their deepening relationship with the Indians that turned them into Americans. By forcing the English to improvise, the Indians prevented Plymouth Colony from ossifying into a monolithic cult of religious extremism. For their part, the Indians were profoundly influenced by the English and quickly created a new and dynamic culture full of Native and Western influences. For a nation that has come to recognize that one of its greatest strengths is its diversity, the first fifty years of Plymouth Colony stand as a model of what America might have been from the very beginning.

Contemplation leads us toward the divine in an irreversible movement. The man who contemplates and encounters his Creator will never be the same again: he may fall a hundred times, sin a hundred times, deny God a hundred times, but a part of his soul has already arrived in heaven definitively.

The world never slows down so that we can better grasp the story, so that we can form study groups and drill each other on the recent past until we have total retention. We have exactly one second to carve a memory of that second, to sort and file and prioritize in some attempt at preservation. But then the next second has arrived, the next breeze to distract us, the next plane slicing through the sky, the next funny skip from the next funny toddler, the next squirrel fracas, and the next falling leaf. Our imaginations are busy enough capturing now that it is easy to lose just then.

She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now. The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace. Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat. She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm. She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.

Color must suffice. It has brought us to this night, this discussion, and it will take us into the future. All I truly know is that we rise and fall as one, one colored family living next door to one white family. We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together.

We know that Antony pined for Cleopatra months later, though she wound up with all the credit for the affair. As one of her sworn enemies asserted, she did not fall in love with Antony but “brought him to fall in love with her.” In the ancient world too women schemed while men strategized; there was a great gulf, elemental and eternal, between the adventurer and the adventuress. There was one too between virility and promiscuity: Caesar left Cleopatra in Alexandria to sleep with the wife of the king of Mauretania. Antony arrived in Tarsus fresh from an affair with the queen of Cappadocia. The consort of two men of voracious sexual appetite and innumerable sexual conquests, Cleopatra would go down in history as the snare, the delusion, the seductress. Citing her sexual prowess was evidently less discomfiting than acknowledging her intellectual gifts. In the same way it is easier to ascribe her power to magic than to love. We have evidence of neither, but the first can at least be explained; with magic one forfeits rather than loses the game. So Cleopatra has Antony under her thumb, poised to obey her every wish, “not only because of his intimacy with her,” as Josephus has it, “but also because of being under the influence of drugs.” To claim as much is to acknowledge her power, also to insult her intelligence.

When I stopped viewing girls as potential girlfriends and started treating them as sisters in Christ, I discovered the richness of true friendship. When I stopped worrying about who I was going to marry and began to trust God’s timing, I uncovered the incredible potential of serving God as a single. . . . I believe the time has come for Christians, male and female, to own up to the mess we’ve left behind in our selfish pursuit of short-term romance. Dating may seem an innocent game, but as I see it, we are sinning against each other. What excuse will we have when God asks us to account for our actions and attitudes in relationships? If God sees a sparrow fall (Matthew 10:29), do you think He could possibly overlook the broken hearts and scarred emotions we cause in relationships based on selfishness? Everyone around us may be playing the dating game. But at the end of our lives, we won’t answer to everyone. We’ll answer to God. . . . Long before Seventeen magazine ever gave teenagers tips on dating, people did things very differently. At the turn of the twentieth century, a guy and girl became romantically involved only if they planned to marry. If a young man spent time at a girl’s home, family and friends assumed that he intended to propose to her. But shifting attitudes in culture and the arrival of the automobile brought radical changes. The new “rules” allowed people to indulge in all the thrills of romantic love without having any intention of marriage. Author Beth Bailey documents these changes in a book whose title, From Front Porch to Backseat, says everything about the difference in society’s attitude when dating became the norm. Love and romance became things people could enjoy solely for their recreational value. Though much has changed since the 1920s, the tendency of dating relationships to move toward intimacy without commitment remains very much the same. . . . Many of the attitudes and practices of today’s dating relationships conflict with the lifestyle of smart love God wants us to live.

True enlightenment arrives the moment you understand the difference between your wants and your needs. When you awaken to this understanding, you will realize that Life has always been providing for you, caring for you, giving you all that you need. This is how you stop wanting anything, anymore and start living with what you have, with what is. This is how you learn to be happy despite your circumstances.

Winter has the city in its grip and at three forty-five the streetlights crackle back on, throwing a tenuous light onto everything. Lean days, little hanging to them apart from long shadows and stubborn leaves, days that become hard to measure once November arrives. Yet this has always been my favourite time of year, when a certain solitude floats through the air and from one moment to the next everything falls silent, apart from the graffiti.

One part of my life was given over to the service of destruction; it belonged to hate, to enmity, to killing. But life remained in me. And that in itself is enough, of itself almost a purpose and a way. I will work in myself and be ready; I will bestir my hands and my thoughts. I will not take myself very seriously, nor push on when sometimes I should like to be still. There are many things to be built and almost everything to repair; it is enough that I work to dig out again what was buried during the years of shells and machine guns. Not every one need be a pioneer; there is employment for feebler hands, lesser powers. It is there I mean to look for my place. Then the dead will be silenced and the past not pursue me any more; it will assist me instead. How simple it is—but how long it has taken to arrive there! And I might still be wandering in the wilderness, have fallen victim to the wire snares and the detonators, had Ludwig’s death not gone up before us like a rocket, lighting to us the way. We despaired when we saw how that great stream of feeling common to us all—that will to a new life shorn of follies, a life recaptured on the confines of death—did not sweep away before it all survived half-truth and self-interest, so to make a new course for itself, but instead of that merely trickled away in the marshes of forgetfulness, was lost among the bogs of fine phrases, and dribbled away along the ditches of social activities, of cares and occupations. But to-day I know that all life is perhaps only a getting ready, a ferment in the individual, in many cells, in many channels, each for himself; and if the cells and channels of a tree but take up and carry farther the onward urging sap, there will emerge at the last rustling and sunlit branches—crowns of leaves and freedom. I will begin. It will not be that consummation of which we dreamed in our youth and that we expected after the years out there. It will be a road like other roads, with stones and good stretches, with places torn up, with villages and fields—a road of toil. And I shall be alone. Perhaps sometimes I shall find some one to go with me a stage of the journey—but for all of it, probably no one. And I may often have to hump my pack still, when my shoulders are already weary; often hesitate at the crossways and boundaries; often have to leave something behind me, often stumble and fall. But I will get up again and not just lie there; I will go on and not look back. —Perhaps I shall never be really happy again; perhaps the war has destroyed that, and no doubt I shall always be a little inattentive and nowhere quite at home—but I shall probably never be wholly unhappy either—for something will always be there to sustain me, be it merely my own hands, or a tree, or the breathing earth. The

She could be in a warehouse, someone’s home. She might not even be in Kerch anymore. It didn’t matter. She was Inej Ghafa, and she would not quiver like a rabbit in snare. Wherever I am, I just have to get out. She’d managed to nudge her blindfold down by scraping her face against the wall. The room was pitch-black, and all she could hear in the silence was her own rapid breathing as panic seized her again. She’d leashed it by controlling her breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, letting her mind turn to prayer as her Saints gathered around her. She imagined them checking the ropes at her wrists, rubbing life into her hands. She did not tell herself she wasn’t afraid. Long ago, after a bad fall, her father had explained that only fools were fearless. We meet fear, he’d said. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen. Inej intended to make something happen.

The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations – all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself have crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be. We

Adulthood brings with it the pernicious illusion of control, and perhaps even depends on it. I mean that mirage of dominion over our own life that allows us to feel like adults, for we associate maturity with autonomy, the sovereign right to determine what is going to happen to us next. Disillusion comes sooner or later, but it always comes, it doesn’t miss an appointment, it never has. When it arrives we receive it without too much surprise, for no one who lives long enough can be surprised to find their biography has been molded by distant events, by other people’s wills, with little or no participation from our own decisions. Those long processes that end up running into our life—sometimes to give it the shove it needed, sometimes to blow to smithereens our most splendid plans—tend to be hidden like subterranean currents, like tiny shifts of tectonic plates, and when the earthquake finally comes we invoke the words we’ve learned to calm ourselves, accident, fluke, and sometimes fate.

For once the mind is stirred into motion, it is a slave to that which is driving it. With some things, the beginnings are in our power, but after that they carry us on by their own force, not allowing a return. Bodies allowed to fall from a height have no control of themselves: they cannot resist or delay their downward course, for the irrevocable fall has cut off all deliberation, all repentance; they cannot help but arrive where they are going, though they could have avoided going there at all.

And what about these, Socrates? Things that might seem absurd, like hair and mud and dirt, or anything else totally undignified and worthless? Are [d] you doubtful whether or not you should say that a form is separate for each of these, too, which in turn is other than anything we touch with our hands?” “Not at all,” Socrates answered. “On the contrary, these things are in fact just what we see. Surely it’s too outlandish to think there is a form for them. Not that the thought that the same thing might hold in all cases hasn’t troubled me from time to time. Then, when I get bogged down in that, I hurry away, afraid that I may fall into some pit of nonsense and come to harm; but when I arrive back in the vicinity of the things we agreed a moment ago have forms, I linger there and occupy myself with them.” [e] “That’s because you are still young, Socrates,” said Parmenides, “and philosophy has not yet gripped you as, in my opinion, it will in the future, once you begin to consider none of the cases beneath your notice. Now, though, you still care about what people think, because of your youth.

You might say, “I know I am an immortal spirit,” or “I am tired of this mad world, and peace is all I want”—until the phone rings. Bad news: The stock market has collapsed; the deal may fall through; the car has been stolen; your mother-in-law has arrived; the trip is cancelled, the contract has been broken; your partner has left you; they demand more money; they say it’s your fault. Suddenly there is a surge of anger, of anxiety. A harshness comes into your voice; “I can’t take any more of this.” You accuse and blame, attack, defend, or justify yourself, and it’s all happening on autopilot. Something is obviously much more important to you now than the inner peace that a moment ago you said was all you wanted, and you’re not an immortal spirit anymore either. The deal, the money, the contract, the loss or threat of loss are more important. To whom? To the immortal spirit that you said you are? No, to me. The small me that seeks security or fulfillment in things that are transient and gets anxious or angry because it fails to find it. Well, at least now you know who you really think you are.

I wanted to write an adventure story, not, it's true, I really did. I shall have failed, that's all. Adventures bore me. I have no idea how to talk about countries, how to make people wish they had been there. I am not a good travelling salesman. Countries? Where are they , whatever became of them. When I was twelve I dreamed of Hongkong. That tedious, commonplace little provincial town! Shops sprouting from every nook and cranny! The Chinese junks pictured on the lids of chocolate boxes used to fascinate me. Junks: sort of chopped-off barges, where the housewives do all their cooking and washing on deck. They even have television. As for the Niagara Falls: water, nothing but water! A dam is more interesting; at least one can occasionally see a big crack at its base, and hope for some excitement. When one travels, one sees nothing but hotels. Squalid rooms, with iron bedsteads, and a picture of some kind hanging on the wall from a rusty nail, a coloured print of London Bridge or the Eiffel Tower. One also sees trains, lots of trains, and airports that look like restaurants, and restaurants that look like morgues. All the ports in the world are hemmed in by oil slicks and shabby customs buildings. In the streets of the towns, people keep to the sidewalks, cars stop at red lights. If only one occasionally arrived in a country where women are the colour of steel and men wear owls on their heads. But no, they are sensible, they all have black ties, partings to one side, brassières and stiletto heels. In all the restaurants, when one has finished eating one calls over the individual who has been prowling among the tables, and pays him with a promissory note. There are cigarettes everywhere! There are airplanes and automobiles everywhere.

I am talking about something more than just the gauzy circle of life. Sure, you're older now and one day you're going to die, but before that, you have to *die*. Your child has arrived and the battle has been joined. It is the battle to the death of your ego. The demise of your selfishness and impatience. The end of your idle distractions and carelessness. The decline and fall of Numero Uno. Or so you must pray, because in this contest, you must lose or lose quickly. Pray that you will never bear the shattered consequences of winning when your child's safety, trust, and happiness are the casualties.

In some ways, the only thing we have in common is the color of our skin. Our ancestors came from all over the African continent. It's quite large... They had different ways of subsistence, different customs, spoke a hundred different languages. And that great mixture was brought to America in the holds of slave ships. To the north, the south. Their sons and daughters picked tobacco, cultivated cotton, worked on the largest estates and smallest farms. We are craftsmen and midwives and preachers and peddlers. Black hands built the White House, the seat of our nation's government. The word we. We are not one people, but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race - which is not one race but many, with a million desires and hopes and wishes for ourselves and our children? For we are Africans in America. Something new in the history of the world, without models for what we will become. Color must suffice. It has brought us to this night, this discussion, and it will take us into the future. All I truly know is that we rise and fall as one, one colored family living next door to one white family. We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together.

Pain doesn't strike at once, as one might think. It's organic. From the moment you fall in love with someone, your pain begins. You just don't feel it yet, but it's there. The silence beneath your laugher. The shadows behind an embrace. Tranquility before the storm. The deeper you fall in love, the pain follows like a ghost, waiting for the perfect time to strike. Could take an entire lifetime, or just a couple short months. Pain has no concept of time, and when it arrives, you're never ready for it. But it's always been there, hiding behind a mask of denial, deceiving you into thinking there's such a thing as eternal happiness.

I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they’ve lived past lives, because there is no way the years I’ve spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I’m feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

We wonder whether we are praying for the right things, but Christ is the wisest of all men, so he knows exactly what to ask the Father for on our behalf. We fear that our prayers won't be heard, but the Father delights to honor His Son, so Christ's petitions will always be welcomed. We grow tired, distracted, and cold in our prayers, but Christ in His Resurrection life is constantly interceding for us. We fall into sin, but Christ is already pleading our case, applying the blood of Calvary for our forgiveness. Christ indeed has far more compassion for us, pity for us, and love for us than we do for ourselves. He is, thank God, more committed to our safe arrival home than we are.

Philosophy always arrives too late to do any such teaching. As the thought of the world, philosophy appears only in the period after actuality has been achieved and has completed its formative process. The lesson of the concept, which necessarily is also taught by history, is that only in the ripeness of actuality does the ideal appear over against the real, and that only then does this ideal comprehend this same real world in its substance and build it up for itself into the configuration of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then a configuration of life has grown old, and cannot be rejuvenated by this gray in gray, but only understood; the Owl of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall.

This is a fate which befalls us at a certain age, which may be relatively young, where we may be less attracted by a person than by someone’s rejection, where we ultimately know nothing more of the person we have chosen, whose face has grown dim and whose soul has evaporated, than our all too recent but none the less inexplicable choice itself: the fact is that the only thing that could put an end to our suffering would be if we could hear the words, “Could I come to see you?” My separation from Albertine the day when Françoise had said to me, “Mademoiselle Albertine has left” was like an allegory for so many other separations. For often in order to discover that we are in love, even perhaps in order to fall in love, the day of separation needs to arrive.

something Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. . . . The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with.

[Chang Yu relates the following anecdote of Kao Tsu, the first Han Emperor: “Wishing to crush the Hsiung-nu, he sent out spies to report on their condition. But the Hsiung-nu, forewarned, carefully concealed all their able-bodied men and well-fed horses, and only allowed infirm soldiers and emaciated cattle to be seen. The result was that spies one and all recommended the Emperor to deliver his attack. Lou Ching alone opposed them, saying: “When two countries go to war, they are naturally inclined to make an ostentatious display of their strength. Yet our spies have seen nothing but old age and infirmity. This is surely some ruse on the part of the enemy, and it would be unwise for us to attack.” The Emperor, however, disregarding this advice, fell into the trap and found himself surrounded at Po-teng.”] 19.  Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act. [Ts’ao Kung’s note is “Make a display of weakness and want.” Tu Mu says: “If our force happens to be superior to the enemy’s, weakness may be simulated in order to lure him on; but if inferior, he must be led to believe that we are strong, in order that he may keep off. In fact, all the enemy’s movements should be determined by the signs that we choose to give him.” Note the following anecdote of Sun Pin, a descendent of Sun Wu: In 341 B.C., the Ch’i State being at war with Wei, sent T’ien Chi and Sun Pin against the general P’ang Chuan, who happened to be a deadly personal enemy of the later. Sun Pin said: “The Ch’i State has a reputation for cowardice, and therefore our adversary despises us. Let us turn this circumstance to account.” Accordingly, when the army had crossed the border into Wei territory, he gave orders to show 100,000 fires on the first night, 50,000 on the next, and the night after only 20,000. P’ang Chuan pursued them hotly, saying to himself: “I knew these men of Ch’i were cowards: their numbers have already fallen away by more than half.” In his retreat, Sun Pin came to a narrow defile, with he calculated that his pursuers would reach after dark. Here he had a tree stripped of its bark, and inscribed upon it the words: “Under this tree shall P’ang Chuan die.” Then, as night began to fall, he placed a strong body of archers in ambush near by, with orders to shoot directly they saw a light. Later on, P’ang Chuan arrived at the spot, and noticing the tree, struck a light in order to read what was written on it. His body was immediately riddled by a volley of arrows, and his whole army thrown into confusion. [The above is Tu Mu’s version of the story; the SHIH CHI, less dramatically but probably with more historical truth, makes P’ang Chuan cut his own throat with an exclamation of despair, after the rout of his army.] ] He sacrifices something, that the enemy may snatch at it. 20.  By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march; then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him. [With an emendation suggested by Li Ching, this then reads, “He lies in wait with the main body of his troops.”] 21.  The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals.

Come on, Bob, kill it!” “I’m trying, Tom. It won’t stop moving.” I looked at Wolf and whispered, “What do you think they are trying to kill?” Wolf shrugged. “Let’s go check it out.” We snuck forward until we could get a visual on what was happening. We saw that there were two large slimes and one baby slime. Judging by the way the large slimes were protecting the baby, I assumed it was their child rather than a random baby slime. The two players were slashing at the large slimes who were trying to defend themselves but failing. Eventually the players chopped the two large slimes into medium slimes, then into small slimes until they had finally killed all the pieces. That left the baby slime all alone. Bob and Tom looked at each other. “I think we should kill it,” said Tom. “Otherwise, it’s going to grow into an adult slime and try to get its revenge on us.” Where have I heard this story before? Bob laughed. “Slimes are stupid. It won’t be able to get revenge because it will be dead.” The players began to move forward to the baby slime. And that’s when something snapped in me. I was reminded of the night my parents sacrificed their lives for me. I couldn’t let this baby slime be killed. I jumped up and rushed to the players. Wolf shout-whispered, “No! Don’t do it!” I didn’t care. I ran up to the two players and without giving them a chance to surrender, mercilessly assassinated them. The baby slime looked at me with fear in its eyes and backed away, fearful that I would kill it too. But I didn’t. I put my sword back into my inventory and reached down and gently picked up the slime. “Can you talk?” I asked. The slime made cooing and booping noises, but apparently was too young to be able to speak yet. “I wish I could talk to you, Child. I would tell you that everything is going to be alright. I’ll be your new guardian.” Wolf arrived by my side a moment later. “It’s not part of the Way to kill players unless the killing falls under a specific rule or arises from self-defense.” I shot a look at Wolf. “I was defending the life of another. Is that not the same as self-defense?” “I guess, but it’s … hurrr … it’s a slime.” “Are you saying a slime has less right to be alive than us?” “I’m not saying that, but now that you mention it….” “Shut up. I’m taking charge of this child.” Wolf shook his head. “You realize that according to the Way, if you take the life of an orphan into your hands you have to protect it and see that it makes it to adulthood, just as I have with you.

But the soul which arrives at this stage of realization consciously has a different experience. The difference is like that of one person having been pulled, with his back turned to the source, and another person having journeyed towards the goal, enjoying at every step each experience it has met with, and rejoicing at every moment of this journey in approaching nearer to the goal. What does this soul, conscious of its progress towards the goal, realize? It realizes with every veil it has thrown off a greater power, and increased inspiration, until it arrives at a stage, after having passed through the sphere of the jinns and the heaven of the angels, when it realizes that error which it had known, and yet not known fully; the error it made in identifying itself with its reflection, with its shadow falling on these different planes.

But as musically evocative as Fitzgerald’s diction is, it’s his luxurious syntax that choreographs the scene. Like the liquid movement of the partygoers, his sentences “swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath.” Fitzgerald’s long, languid rhythms rise and fall seamlessly, then “with triumph glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.” His language is as opulent as the women’s costumes and as free-flowing as the champagne, continuing breathlessly to the end of the passage. As readers, we may eventually forget Fitzgerald’s colorful and musical descriptions, but we probably won’t forget the atmosphere of his fictional dream. Long after the last guest has departed and we’ve closed the covers on the novel, something— a fragrance, a snatch of song, a feeling—will remain in the summer air. ATTITUDE

I am bought, she thinks. I am paid for. I am bought. When she first arrived at the Environment Ministry as Akkarat's mole, it was a surprise to discover that the little privileges of the Environment Ministry were always enough. The weekly take from street stalls to burn something other than expensive approved-source methane. The pleasure of a night patrol spent sleeping well. It was an easy existence. Even under Jaidee, it was easy. And now by ill-luck she must work, and the work is important, and she has had two masters for so long that she cannot remember which one should be ascendant. Someone else should have replaced you, Jaidee. Someone worthy. The Kingdom falls because we are not strong. We are not virtuous, we do not follow the eightfold path and now the sicknesses come again. And she is the one who must stand against them, like Phra Seub—but without the strength or moral compass.

And growth has no end. One part of my life was given over to the service of destruction; it belonged to hate, to enmity, to killing. But life remained in me. And that in itself is enough, of itself almost a purpose and a way. I will work in myself and be ready; I will bestir my hands and my thoughts. I will not take myself very seriously, nor push on when sometimes I should like to be still. There are many things to be built and almost everything to repair; it is enough that I work to dig out again what was buried during the years of shells and machine guns. Not every one need be a pioneer; there is employment for feebler hands, lesser powers. It is there I mean to look for my place. Then the dead will be silenced and the past not pursue me any more; it will assist me instead. How simple it is—but how long it has taken to arrive there! And I might still be wandering in the wilderness, have fallen victim to the wire snares and the detonators, had Ludwig’s death not gone up before us like a rocket, lighting to us the way. We despaired when we saw how that great stream of feeling common to us all—that will to a new life shorn of follies, a life recaptured on the confines of death—did not sweep away before it all survived half-truth and self-interest, so to make a new course for itself, but instead of that merely trickled away in the marshes of forgetfulness, was lost among the bogs of fine phrases, and dribbled away along the ditches of social activities, of cares and occupations. But to-day I know that all life is perhaps only a getting ready, a ferment in the individual, in many cells, in many channels, each for himself; and if the cells and channels of a tree but take up and carry farther the onward urging sap, there will emerge at the last rustling and sunlit branches—crowns of leaves and freedom. I will begin. It will not be that consummation of which we dreamed in our youth and that we expected after the years out there. It will be a road like other roads, with stones and good stretches, with places torn up, with villages and fields—a road of toil. And I shall be alone. Perhaps sometimes I shall find some one to go with me a stage of the journey—but for all of it, probably no one. And I may often have to hump my pack still, when my shoulders are already weary; often hesitate at the crossways and boundaries; often have to leave something behind me, often stumble and fall. But I will get up again and not just lie there; I will go on and not look back. —Perhaps I shall never be really happy again; perhaps the war has destroyed that, and no doubt I shall always be a little inattentive and nowhere quite at home—but I shall probably never be wholly unhappy either—for something will always be there to sustain me, be it merely my own hands, or a tree, or the breathing earth. The

So which theory did Lagos believe in? The relativist or the universalist?" "He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning." "But it seems to me there is a key difference," Hiro says. "The universalists think that we are determined by the prepatterned structure of our brains -- the pathways in the cortex. The relativists don't believe that we have any limits." "Lagos modified the strict Chomskyan theory by supposing that learning a language is like blowing code into PROMs -- an analogy that I cannot interpret." "The analogy is clear. PROMs are Programmable Read-Only Memory chips," Hiro says. "When they come from the factory, they have no content. Once and only once, you can place information into those chips and then freeze it -- the information, the software, becomes frozen into the chip -- it transmutes into hardware. After you have blown the code into the PROMs, you can read it out, but you can't write to them anymore. So Lagos was trying to say that the newborn human brain has no structure -- as the relativists would have it -- and that as the child learns a language, the developing brain structures itself accordingly, the language gets 'blown into the hardware and becomes a permanent part of the brain's deep structure -- as the universalists would have it." "Yes. This was his interpretation." "Okay. So when he talked about Enki being a real person with magical powers, what he meant was that Enki somehow understood the connection between language and the brain, knew how to manipulate it. The same way that a hacker, knowing the secrets of a computer system, can write code to control it -- digital namshubs?" "Lagos said that Enki had the ability to ascend into the universe of language and see it before his eyes. Much as humans go into the Metaverse. That gave him power to create nam-shubs. And nam-shubs had the power to alter the functioning of the brain and of the body." "Why isn't anyone doing this kind of thing nowadays? Why aren't there any namshubs in English?" "Not all languages are the same, as Steiner points out. Some languages are better at metaphor than others. Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Chinese lend themselves to word play and have achieved a lasting grip on reality: Palestine had Qiryat Sefer, the 'City of the Letter,' and Syria had Byblos, the 'Town of the Book.' By contrast other civilizations seem 'speechless' or at least, as may have been the case in Egypt, not entirely cognizant of the creative and transformational powers of language. Lagos believed that Sumerian was an extraordinarily powerful language -- at least it was in Sumer five thousand years ago." "A language that lent itself to Enki's neurolinguistic hacking." "Early linguists, as well as the Kabbalists, believed in a fictional language called the tongue of Eden, the language of Adam. It enabled all men to understand each other, to communicate without misunderstanding. It was the language of the Logos, the moment when God created the world by speaking a word. In the tongue of Eden, naming a thing was the same as creating it. To quote Steiner again, 'Our speech interposes itself between apprehension and truth like a dusty pane or warped mirror. The tongue of Eden was like a flawless glass; a light of total understanding streamed through it. Thus Babel was a second Fall.' And Isaac the Blind, an early Kabbalist, said that, to quote Gershom Scholem's translation, 'The speech of men is connected with divine speech and all language whether heavenly or human derives from one source: the Divine Name.' The practical Kabbalists, the sorcerers, bore the title Ba'al Shem, meaning 'master of the divine name.'" "The machine language of the world," Hiro says.

It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor? This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with. The rugged face of society, checkered with the extremes of affluence and want, proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it, and calls on justice for redress. The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible for them to get out of that state themselves. It ought also to be observed that this mass increases in all countries that are called civilized. More persons fall annually into it than get out of it. -Agrarian Justice

Every Hmong has a different version of what is commonly called “The Promise”: a written or oral contract, made by CIA personnel in Laos, that if they fought for the Americans, the Americans would aid them if the Pathet Lao won the war. After risking their lives to rescue downed American pilots, seeing their villages flattened by incidental American bombs, and being forced to flee their country because they had supported the “American War,” the Hmong expected a hero’s welcome here. According to many of them, the first betrayal came when the American airlifts rescued only the officers from Long Tieng, leaving nearly everyone else behind. The second betrayal came in the Thai camps, when the Hmong who wanted to come to the United States were not all automatically admitted. The third betrayal came when they arrived here and found they were ineligible for veterans’ benefits. The fourth betrayal came when Americans condemned them for what the Hmong call “eating welfare.” The fifth betrayal came when the Americans announced that the welfare would stop.

Brandi and I struggled with our marriage, but it was obvious we were falling apart as a couple. That was probably clear to me even from as far away as Iraq, but I did try to make it better. One day I suggested marriage counseling. Initially Brandi agreed. I took advantage of the fact that the military has a program called Military OneSource. It’s basically one-stop shopping for all the help you could need from moving, to retirement, to marriage counseling, as it turns out. So I called one day and asked to be set up with a marriage counselor. The morning of our appointment Brandi decided she didn’t want to go. She didn’t give much detail other than to say, “I’m not going.” Annoyed, I said, “Well shit. I’m going.” I arrived and sat down in a chair across the counselor. He looked at the empty chair next to me and started flipping through the paperwork on his clipboard. Finally he looked up and asked, “I have down that you’re here for marriage counseling?” “Yes, sir, I am,” I answered matter-of-factly. Again he looked at the empty seat next to me and then back at me. And then, in a really deadpan tone, he said, “Huh. Seems like things are going well.

Under a Torremolinos Sky (Psalm 116)8 For Jim The first thing I notice is not the bed, oddly angled as all hospital beds are nor the pillowcase, covered in love notes. Not the table filled with pill bottles nor the sterile tools of a dozen indignities. I’ll notice these things later, on my way out perhaps. But first, my wide-angle lens pulls narrow, as eyes meet eyes and I am seen. How is it, before a word is spoken, you make me know I am known and welcome? What can I give back to God for the blessings he’s poured out on me? I’ll lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to God! You smile behind the plastic that keeps you alive, and as I rest my hand on your chest we conspire together to break the rules. The rhythm of your labored breathing will decide our seconds, our minutes, our hours. Tears to laughter and back again always in that order and rightly so. We bask under a Torremolinos sky and hear the tongues of angels sing of sins forgiven long before the world was made. I’ll pray in the name of God; I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do, and I’ll do it together with his people. Talk turns to motorcycles and mortuaries, to scotch and sons who wear their father’s charm like a crown, daughters who quicken the pulse with just a glance. Time flies and neither of us has time to waste. I’ll make a great looking corpse, you say because we of all people must speak of these things, because we of all people refuse to pretend. This doesn’t bring tears—not yet. Instead a giggle, a shared secret that life is and is not in the body. Soul, you’ve been rescued from death; Eye, you’ve been rescued from tears; And you, Foot, were kept from stumbling. Your chest still rises and falls but you grow weary, my hand tells me so. It’s too soon to ever say goodbye. When it’s my turn, brother, I will find you where the streets shimmer and tears herald only joy where we wear our true names and our true faces. Promise me, there, the dance we never had. When they arrive at the gates of death, God welcomes those who love him. Oh, God, here I am, your servant, your faithful servant: set me free for your service! I’m ready to offer the thanksgiving sacrifice and pray in the name of God. I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do, and I’ll do it in company with his people, In the place of worship, in God’s house, in Jerusalem, God’s city.

There cannot be any hard and fast rules. But there can be suggestions and useful analogies. The most useful, to my mind, is that of the difference between the English and French judicial systems. In England (and America), the task of the court in criminal cases, which it devolves upon a jury, is to arrive at a verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ on the evidence presented by prosecuting and defending counsel in turns. Trials are conflicts and verdicts are decisions; the two sides ‘win’ or ‘lose’. In France, and other countries which observe Roman Law, the task of the court in a criminal case is to arrive at the truth, as far as it can be perceived by human eyes, and the business of establishing the outlines of the truth falls not on a jury, which is strictly asked to enter a judgement, but upon a juge d’instruction. This officer of the court, unknown to English law, is accorded very wide powers of interrogation–of the suspect, his family, his associates–and of investigation–of the circumstances and scene of the crime–at which the suspect is often required to participate in a reconstruction. Only when the juge is satisfied that a crime has indeed occurred and that the suspect is responsible will he allow the case to go forward for prosecution. The character of these two different legal approaches is usually defined as ‘accusatorial’ (English) and ‘inquisitorial’ (French) respectively.

The teachings tell us that obstacles occur at the outer level and at the inner level. In this context, the outer level is the sense that something or somebody has harmed us, interfering with the harmony and peace we thought was ours. Some rascal has ruined it all. This particular sense of obstacle occurs in relationships and in many other situations; we feel disappointed, harmed, confused, and attacked in a variety of ways. People have felt this way from the beginning of time. As for the inner level of obstacle, perhaps nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, and manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

The onset of catastrophe is not signaled by the sense of falling through the dark to an accidental death: everything, including a catastrophe, has a moment-by-moment structure - a structure that is beyond measurement or comprehension, one that is maddeningly complex or must be conceived in quite another manner, in which the degree of complexity can be articulated only in terms of images that seem impossible to conjure - visible only if time has slowed down to the point that we see the world as indifferent owing to the available circumstances and having doomed preconditions that arrive at a perfect universal conclusion, if only because they are composed of individual intentions - because the moment is the result of unconscious choices, because a key doesn't automatically fit into the ignition, because we do not start into third gear and move down to second but we start in second and move into third, rolling down the hill then turning onto a highway above the village, because the distance before us is like looking down a tunnel, because the greenery on the boughs still smells of morning dew, because of the death of a dog and someone's badly executed maneuver when turning left, that is to say because of one choice or another, of more choices and still more choices ad infinitum, those maddening had-we-but-known choices impossible to conceptualize because the situation we find ourselves in is complicated, determined by something that is in the nature of neither God nor the devil, something whose ways are impenetrable to us and are doomed to remain so because chance is simply a matter of choosing, but the result of that which might have happened anyway.

Um, I think I left my handkerchief on the table,” Jane said. “I’ll just run down and fetch it. There’s no need to wait for me--you go on to bed.” Lisette stopped to stare at her in bewilderment. “Your handkerchief will be perfectly fine where it is. A footman will find it and give it to you in the morning.” “No, I dare not leave it or I’ll forget about it in the confusion of our departure.” She was already turning to descend the stairs. “And it’s my favorite.” Jane didn’t stop to see if Lisette believed that nonsense. She just hastened down, trying to figure out how to get Dom alone. Fortunately, just as she approached the dining room, she heard the duke say from inside, “Sorry to be a wet blanket, old chap, but I shall turn in, too. Lisette and I don’t usually rise as early as we did this morning.” “So I’ve noticed.” Then Dom added hastily, “Not that it matters, mind you. Everyone has his own habits.” “Yes, that’s true.” The duke’s puzzled tone showed he was unaware of what his wife had said yesterday about his “habits.” “Don’t forget that we must leave as early tomorrow as possible.” “Of course.” “I’m hoping Tristan will have arrived by then, but if not, we’ll press on without him.” “Certainly,” Max said, rather stiffly now. He probably wasn’t used to being ordered about by anyone, even his brother-in-law. “Well, good night, then.” Hearing footsteps approaching, Jane darted quickly into an alcove and waited with heart pounding as the duke emerged from the dining room. He strode, with a surprisingly quick step for a man who claimed to be tired, in the direction his wife had gone. Only after he’d disappeared up the stairs did Jane relax. This was her chance.

Once people believed her careful documentation, there was an easy answer—since babies are cute and inhibit aggression, something pathological must be happening. Maybe the Abu langur population density was too high and everyone was starving, or male aggression was overflowing, or infanticidal males were zombies. Something certifiably abnormal. Hrdy eliminated these explanations and showed a telling pattern to the infanticide. Female langurs live in groups with a single resident breeding male. Elsewhere are all-male groups that intermittently drive out the resident male; after infighting, one male then drives out the rest. Here’s his new domain, consisting of females with the babies of the previous male. And crucially, the average tenure of a breeding male (about twenty-seven months) is shorter than the average interbirth interval. No females are ovulating, because they’re nursing infants; thus this new stud will be booted out himself before any females wean their kids and resume ovulating. All for nothing, none of his genes passed on. What, logically, should he do? Kill the infants. This decreases the reproductive success of the previous male and, thanks to the females ceasing to nurse, they start ovulating. That’s the male perspective. What about the females? They’re also into maximizing copies of genes passed on. They fight the new male, protecting their infants. Females have also evolved the strategy of going into “pseudoestrus”—falsely appearing to be in heat. They mate with the male. And since males know squat about female langur biology, they fall for it—“Hey, I mated with her this morning and now she’s got an infant; I am one major stud.” They’ll often cease their infanticidal attacks. Despite initial skepticism, competitive infanticide has been documented in similar circumstances in 119 species, including lions, hippos, and chimps. A variant occurs in hamsters; because males are nomadic, any infant a male encounters is unlikely to be his, and thus he attempts to kill it (remember that rule about never putting a pet male hamster in a cage with babies?). Another version occurs among wild horses and gelada baboons; a new male harasses pregnant females into miscarrying. Or suppose you’re a pregnant mouse and a new, infanticidal male has arrived. Once you give birth, your infants will be killed, wasting all the energy of pregnancy. Logical response? Cut your losses with the “Bruce effect,” where pregnant females miscarry if they smell a new male. Thus competitive infanticide occurs in numerous species (including among female chimps, who sometimes kill infants of unrelated females). None of this makes sense outside of gene-based individual selection. Individual selection is shown with heartbreaking clarity by mountain gorillas, my favorite primate. They’re highly endangered, hanging on in pockets of high-altitude rain forest on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are only about a thousand gorillas left, because of habitat degradation, disease caught from nearby humans, poaching, and spasms of warfare rolling across those borders. And also because mountain gorillas practice competitive infanticide. Logical for an individual intent on maximizing the copies of his genes in the next generation, but simultaneously pushing these wondrous animals toward extinction. This isn’t behaving for the good of the species.

Where is Bryce?” hissed the Prince of the Chasm. “She went to find you.” Hunt’s voice broke. Beside him, Ruhn groaned, stirring. “She went to fucking find you, Aidas.” The Princes of Hel looked at each other, some wordless conversation passing between them. Hunt pushed, “You two told her to find you. Fed us all that bullshit about armies and wanting to help and getting her ready—” “Is it possible,” Aidas said to his brother, ignoring Hunt entirely, “after everything …?” “Don’t fall into romanticism,” Apollion cautioned. “The star might have guided her,” Aidas countered. “Please,” Hunt cut in, not caring if he was begging. “Tell me where she is.” Baxian grunted, rising to consciousness. Aidas said quietly, “I have a suspicion, but I can’t tell you, Athalar, lest Rigelus wring it from you. Though he has likely already arrived at the same conclusion.” “Fuck you,” Hunt spat. But Apollion said to his brother, “We must leave.” “Then what was the point of all this watching me from the shadows?” Hunt demanded. “To ensure that we can continue to rely on you when the time comes.” “To do what?” Hunt ground out. “What you were born to do—to accomplish the task for which your father brought you into existence,” Apollion said before fading into nothing, leaving Aidas standing alone before the prisoners. Shock reared up in Hunt, dampened by the weight of an old, unbidden hurt. “I have no father.” Aidas’s expression was sad as he stepped out of the shadows. “You spent too long asking the wrong questions.” “What the fuck does that mean?” Aidas shook his head. “The black crown once again circling your brow is not a new torment from the Asteri. It has existed for millennia.” “Tell me the fucking truth for once—” “Stay alive, Athalar.” The Prince of the Chasm followed his brother, vanishing into darkness and embers.

I AM PUSHING a rusty wheelbarrow in a town where the air smells of blood and burnt flesh. The breeze brings the faint cries of those whose last breaths are leaving their mangled bodies. I walk past them. Their arms and legs are missing; their intestines spill out through the bullet holes in their stomachs; brain matter comes out of their noses and ears. The flies are so excited and intoxicated that they fall on the pools of blood and die. The eyes of the nearly dead are redder than the blood that comes out of them, and it seems that their bones will tear through the skin of their taut faces at any minute. I turn my face to the ground to look at my feet. My tattered crapes are soaked with blood, which seems to be running down my army shorts. I feel no physical pain, so I am not sure whether I’ve been wounded. I can feel the warmth of my AK-47’s barrel on my back; I don’t remember when I last fired it. It feels as if needles have been hammered into my brain, and it is hard to be sure whether it is day or night. The wheelbarrow in front of me contains a dead body wrapped in white bedsheets. I do not know why I am taking this particular body to the cemetery. When I arrive at the cemetery, I struggle to lift it from the wheelbarrow; it feels as if the body is resisting. I carry it in my arms, looking for a suitable place to lay it to rest. My body begins to ache and I can’t lift a foot without feeling a rush of pain from my toes to my spine. I collapse on the ground and hold the body in my arms. Blood spots begin to emerge on the white bedsheets covering it. Setting the body on the ground, I start to unwrap it, beginning at the feet. All the way up to the neck, there are bullet holes. One bullet has crushed the Adam’s apple and sent the remains of it to the back of the throat. I lift the cloth from the body’s face. I am looking at my own.   I

Undoubtedly, my dear Dick. Just note the progress of events: consider the migrations of races, and you will arrive at the same conclusion assuredly. Asia was the first nurse of the world, was she not? For about four thousand years she travailed, she grew pregnant, she produced, and then, when stones began to cover the soil where the golden harvests sung by Homer had flourished, her children abandoned her exhausted and barren bosom. You next see them precipitating themselves upon young and vigorous Europe, which has nourished them for the last two thousand years. But already her fertility is beginning to die out; her productive powers are diminishing every day. Those new diseases that annually attack the products of the soil, those defective crops, those insufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality that is rapidly wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we already see the millions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as a source of help, not inexhaustible indeed, but not yet exhausted. In its turn, that new continent will grow old; its virgin forests will fall before the axe of industry, and its soil will become weak through having too fully produced what had been demanded of it. Where two harvests bloomed every year, hardly one will be gathered from a soil completely drained of its strength. Then, Africa will be there to offer to new races the treasures that for centuries have been accumulating in her breast. Those climates now so fatal to strangers will be purified by cultivation and by drainage of the soil, and those scattered water supplies will be gathered into one common bed to form an artery of navigation. Then this country over which we are now passing, more fertile, richer, and fuller of vitality than the rest, will become some grand realm where more astonishing discoveries than steam and electricity will be brought to light.

True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied. With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . . We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race. Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our opposition to such offenses is rooted in religion, then are restraints upon murder and rape unconstitutional? We arrive at such absurdities if we attempt to erect a wall of separation between the operation of the laws and those Christian moral convictions that move most Americans. If we are to try to sustain some connection between Christian teaching and the laws of this land of ours, we must understand the character of that link. We must claim neither too much nor too little for the influence of Christian belief upon our structure of law. . . . I am suggesting that Christian faith and reason have been underestimated in an age bestridden, successively, by the vulgarized notions of the rationalists, the Darwinians, and the Freudians. Yet I am not contending that the laws ever have been the Christian word made flesh nor that they can ever be. . . . What Christianity (or any other religion) confers is not a code of positive laws, but instead some general understanding of justice, the human condition being what it is. . . . In short, judges cannot well be metaphysicians--not in the execution of their duties upon the bench, at any rate, even though the majority upon the Supreme Court of this land, and judges in inferior courts, seem often to have mistaken themselves for original moral philosophers during the past quarter century. The law that judges mete out is the product of statute, convention, and precedent. Yet behind statute, convention, and precedent may be discerned, if mistily, the forms of Christian doctrines, by which statute and convention and precedent are much influenced--or once were so influenced. And the more judges ignore Christian assumptions about human nature and justice, the more they are thrown back upon their private resources as abstract metaphysicians--and the more the laws of the land fall into confusion and inconsistency. Prophets and theologians and ministers and priests are not legislators, ordinarily; yet their pronouncements may be incorporated, if sometimes almost unrecognizably, in statute and convention and precedent. The Christian doctrine of natural law cannot be made to do duty for "the law of the land"; were this tried, positive justice would be delayed to the end of time. Nevertheless, if the Christian doctrine of natural law is cast aside utterly by magistrates, flouted and mocked, then positive law becomes patternless and arbitrary.

For our part, we thought we would be following her path from a distance in the press. Our friends called to tell us when the photo of Diana pushing Patrick in his stroller appeared in Newsweek, or when our name was mentioned in a news magazine or paper. We were generally mislabeled as the Robinsons. Everyone asked if we would be going to the wedding, and we would reply, “Us? No, of course not.” We truly never expected to hear from Diana again, so her January letter became especially precious to us. We were stunned when a letter from Diana on Buckingham Palace stationary arrived in late March. She was clearly happy, writing, “I am on a cloud.” She missed Patrick “dreadfully.” She hoped that we were all “settled down by now, including your cat too--.” Diana had never even seen our cat. We’d left him with my brother because England requires a six-month quarantine for cats and dogs. How did she ever remember we had one? Then, “I will be sending you an invitation to the wedding, naturally. . . .” The wedding . . . naturally . . . God bless her. Maybe we weren’t going to lose her after all. She even asked me to send a picture of Patrick to show to “her intended(!), since I’m always talking about him.” As for her engagement, she could never even have imagined it the year before. She closed with her typical and appealing modesty: “I do hope you don’t mind me writing to you but just had to let you know what was going on.” Mind? I was thrilled and touched and amazed by her fondness and thoughtfulness, as I have been every single time she has written to us and seen us. This was always to be the Diana we knew and loved—kind, affectionate, unpretentious. I wrote back write away and sent her the two photographs I’d taken of her holding Patrick in our living room the previous fall. After Diana received the photographs, she wrote back on March 31 to thank me and sent us their official engagement picture. She said I should throw the photograph away if it was of no use. She added, “You said some lovely things which I don’t feel I deserve . . . .” Surely, she knew from the previous year that we would be her devoted friends forever.

After the Grand Perhaps” After vespers, after the first snow has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave, after the anorexics have curled into their geometric forms, after the man with the apparition in his one bad eye has done red things behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps, after the fallout shelter in the elementary school has been packed with tins & other tangibles, after the barn boys have woken, startled by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part of them blithe & smooth & touchable, after the little vandals have tilted toward the impossible seduction to smash glass in the dark, getting away with the most lethal pieces, leaving the shards which travel most easily through flesh as message on the bathroom floor, the parking lots, the irresistible debris of the neighbor’s yard where he’s been constructing all winter long. After the pain has become an old known friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it. The power of fright, I think, is as much as magnetic heat or gravity. After what is boundless: wind chimes, fertile patches of the land, the ochre symmetry of fields in fall, the end of breath, the beginning of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves the way the night heads west, I take this road to arrive at its end where the toll taker passes the night, reading. I feel the cupped heat of his left hand as he inherits change; on the road that is not his road anymore I belong to whatever it is which will happen to me. When I left this city I gave back the metallic waking in the night, the signals of barges moving coal up a slow river north, the movement of trains, each whistle like a woodwind song of another age passing, each ambulance would split a night in two, lying in bed as a little girl, a fear of being taken with the sirens as they lit the neighborhood in neon, quick as the fire as it takes fire & our house goes up in night. After what is arbitrary: the hand grazing something too sharp or fine, the word spoken out of sleep, the buckling of the knees to cold, the melting of the parts to want, the design of the moon to cast unfriendly light, the dazed shadow of the self as it follows the self, the toll taker’s sorrow that we couldn’t have been more intimate. Which leads me back to the land, the old wolves which used to roam on it, the one light left on the small far hill where someone must be living still. After life there must be life.

Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect for its significance I have sought to preserve my individuality―worshipped the unknown God. With a premature anxiety I have tried to avoid coming in close contact with those things whose force of attraction might be too powerful for me. I have sought to appropriate much from them, studied their distinctive characteristics and meaning in human life, but at the same time guarded against coming, like the moth, too close to the flame. I have had little to win or to lose in association with the ordinary run of men, partly because what they do―so-called practical life―does not interest me much, partly because their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man alienate me even more from them. With few exceptions my companions have had no special influence upon me. A life that has not arrived at clarity about itself must necessarily exhibit an uneven side-surface; confronted by certain facts [*Facta*] and their apparent disharmony, they simply halted there, for, as I see it, they did not have sufficient interest to seek a resolution in a higher harmony or to recognize the necessity of it. Their opinion of me was always one-sided, and I have vacillated between putting too much or too little weight on what they said. I have now withdrawn from their influence and the potential variations of my life's compass resulting from it. Thus I am again standing at the point where I must begin again in another way. I shall now calmly attempt to look at myself and begin to initiate inner action; for only thus will I be able, like a child calling itself "I" in its first consciously undertaken act, be able to call myself "I" in a profounder sense. But that takes stamina, and it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher's method of having his disciples keep silent for three years; then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must first work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world. So let the die be cast―I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past―why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot's wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill." ―from_Journals_, (The Search for Personal Meaning)

Archer arrived early the next morning. Grey was still asleep on the sofa in his study when he heard tapping on the window. He opened his eyes and immediately regretted it as the sharp light of day pierced his brain. Squinting, he tried to focus on his brother, since he already knew who his visitor was. Only one person ever announced himself so annoyingly. “Open the bloody window, Grey!” Grumbling, Grey slowly rose into a full sitting position. His back and neck were stiff and his head felt as though someone had kicked it repeatedly from all sides. And his mouth! Christ, he didn’t want to even think about what might have died inside it. He staggered to the window, unlatched it and swung it open. “What the hell do you want?” Wide-eyed, Archer made a tsking noise. “Is that any way to greet your favorite brother?” “You’re not my favorite,” Grey scowled. Unaffected, Archer easily adapted. “Is that any way to greet your second-favorite brother?” Grey grinned, he couldn’t help it. Archer had always had a knack for making him smile, just as he had a knack for pissing him off as well. “I’m hung over and feel like shite. What do you want?” “You look like shite. What’s this I hear about you making an appearance at Saint’s Row last night?” “Rose tell you that?” “She did. I’m surprised you took such a risk just to see her.” Grey thought of her in that teal gown, the lights illuminating the luster of her skin. “It was worth it.” “Worth it, eh? So worth it you immediately came home and got sloshed.” “Something like that. And then Rose came home and I got even more sloshed.” Archer’s expression turned to concern as he leaned against the window frame. “What happened?” Grey shrugged. He’d already revealed more than he’d wanted. “Suffice it to say she now knows what kind of man I am.” His brother snorted. “That girl has always known exactly what kind of man you are.” The words were plain enough, but there was a cryptic edge to them that had Grey puzzled. “What the hell does that mean?” Arch shook his head. “Come to the stables with me. I want to show you something.” He looked down at himself. He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn last night and he was wrinkled beyond hope. Not to mention that he smelled like a distillery-an unwashed one at that. And his mask was up in his room. What if someone happened by and saw him… He wasn’t a coward. He just didn’t wish to be seen looking less than his best. An oath punctuated the early morning air. Grey was grabbed by the front of the shirt and yanked-hard. His only course of action was to brace one booted foot on the bottom sill to keep from falling. Of course, that action only succeeded in making it easier for Archer to haul him completely out onto the lawn. He landed hard on both feet, the impact going straight to his ready-to-implode skull. “What the hell?” Fist cocked, Grey punched his brother in the shoulder. “Jesus, man! What are you about?” Archer punched him back. It hurt, and oddly enough it seemed to wake him up-clear the fog and some of the pressure surrounding his brain. “I’m trying to help you, you bugger.” “To do what?” Grey demanded. “Die?

A woman paralyzed by her own selfishness and triviality, a woman who knew she should love her life more than she did but couldn’t seem to love her life beyond a few odd inconsequential incidents. It is, in fact, time to start dating again. But Dan has no idea what that means for a gay man well into his thirties who has neither money nor abs. - if you’re delivering a song, there are instances when the veil of the ordinary falls away and you are, fleetingly, a supernatural being, with music rampaging through you and soaring out into a crowd. You connect, you’re giving it, you’re the living sweat-slicked manifestation of music itself, the crowd feels it as piercingly as you do. Always, almost always, you “spot a girl. She doesn’t need to be pretty. She’s the love of somebody’s life (you hope she is), and for those few seconds she’s the love of yours, you’re singing to her and she’s singing back to you, by raising her arms over her head and swinging her hips, adoring you or, rather, adoring some being who is you and the song combined, able to touch her everywhere. It’s the briefest of love affairs. - Isabel is embarrassed about her sadness. She’s embarrassed about being embarrassed about her sadness, she who has love and money. She tries looking discreetly into her bag for a Kleenex, without anything that could be called frantic rummaging. She ponders the prospect that decadent unhappiness might, in its way, be worse than genuine, legitimate despair. Which is, as she knows, a decadent question to pose at all. - members of a biological aristocracy - Dan is taken by a tremor of scorn twisted up with painful affection, as if they were two names for the same emotion - but that’s my narcissism speaking ive been working on the idea that there are other people in the world - Beyond lust there’s a purity, you know? Does it ever get to be too late? If neither of you abuses the dog (should they finally get a dog?) or leaves the children in the car on a hot day. Does it ever become irreparable? If so, when? How do you, how does any“one, know when they cross over from working through this to it’s too late? Is there (she suspects there must be) an interlude during which you’re so bored or disappointed or ambushed by regret that it is, truly, too late? Or, more to the point, do we arrive at it’s too late over and over again, only to return to working through this before it’s too late arrives, yet again? Do you think we ever really survive our childhoods? Most mothers think their children are amazing and singular people. Most mothers are wrong about that. You’re beautiful in your own skin. You brought with you into the world some kind of human amazingness, and you can depend on it, always. Please try not to ever let anybody talk you out of that. She says, “You’re not in love with me.” “Trust me. I’ve had a lot of experience at not being in love with people. I’ve been not in love with pretty much everybody, all my life.” She wonders how many women think more kindly and, all right, more lustfully toward their husbands after they’ve left them. Maybe someone’s done a study. “If you’re determined to be insulted.

There has been much controversy about the numbers of those imprisoned and killed at various times in the Stalin years, but the opening of the archives has led to some convergence towards a middle (but still horrific) figure, some millions fewer than the earlier highest estimates and some millions more than the estimates of those who downplayed the scale of Stalin’s terror. Ronald Suny, the editor of a recent major volume on twentieth-century Russian history, suggests that the ‘total number of lives destroyed by the Stalinist regime in the 1930s is closer to 10–11 million than the 20–30 million estimated earlier’.68 Anne Applebaum, the author of a detailed study of political prisoners in the Soviet Union, arrives at a figure of 28.7 million forced labourers over the whole Soviet period. She includes in that number the ‘special exiles’, such as ‘kulaks’ and particular nationalities, among them the Tatars and Volga Germans, who were deported during World War Two. Applebaum notes that a figure of around 786,000 political executions between 1934 and 1953 is now quite widely accepted, although her own view is that the true figure is probably significantly higher than that number.69 The Russian non-governmental organization Memorial, dedicated to investigating the cases of repression in the Soviet period, more recently came up with the figure of 1.7 million people arrested in 1937–38 alone, of whom, they say, at least 818,000 were shot.70

His letter arrives on a Tuesday morning. Edward sees it as he bumps down the stairs in his tatty tartan slippers, the ones Tilly bought him three Christmases ago and he’s worn every day since. He walks past the mail on the mat and heads towards the kitchen. As he steps onto the cold stone floor, he pulls his dressing gown cord tighter round his waist. The gown is still too big (he lost a lot of weight three years ago) and too feminine (paisley silk in shades of purple) in his humble opinion, but Greer made it for him the summer she died so he’ll wear it until it falls off, which won’t be long now. Tilly has sewn so many patches on the threadbare gown that it’s virtually become a quilt, but Edward ignores his daughter every time she begs him to throw it out. He also ignores the two flannel dressing gowns sitting in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe – still in their plastic wrap – birthday gifts from Tilly, gentle attempts to help her father heal and move on

Arriving in the town of Princeton in the full flowering of fall, he could not help but gush: “Everything is gothic,” he wrote to Ray. “It makes one feel as though he lived back in the fourteenth century. Even the lights are so arranged. I expected much but it has passed all my expectations. It is cultured to the enth degree. Nothing I have ever seen can compare with it. No wonder it is rated as it is.

Like the old twistor theorists, the few followers Connes has acquired are committed. For a conference at Penn State University on different approaches to quantum gravity, Alain recommended a famous elder French physicist named Daniel Kastler. The gentleman broke his leg in a bicycle accident a week before the conference, but he clambered out of the hospital and got himself to the Marseille airport, arriving just in time to open the proceedings with the following proclamation: "There is one true Alain, and I am his messenger." String theorists aren't the only ones who have their true believers, but the noncommutative geometers surely have a better sense of humor.

there is a very significant correspon- dence between the domination of the West and the end of a cycle, for the West is the place where the sun sets, that is to say where it arrives at the end of its daily journey, and where, according to Chi- nese symbolism, ‘the ripe fruit falls to the foot of the tree’. As to the means whereby the West has come to establish that domination, of which the ‘modernization of a more or less considerable number of Easterners is only the latest and most vexing consequence, it has been made sufficiently clear in the author’s other works that these means are based on material strength alone, which amounts to say- ing that Western domination is itself no more than an expression of the ‘reign of quantity’.