Feeling Lonesome Quotes

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God. Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor! Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. I will go to heaven now. I can hardly wait... To find out for certain what my wampeter was... And who was in my karass... And all the good things our karass did for you. Amen.

He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.

Except I think it feels more like an empty stomach than a broken heart. An aching hollowness that food can't cure. You know. You've felt it yourself, I bet. You hurt all the time, you're restless, you can't think straight, you sort of wish you were dead but what you really want is for everything to be the same as it was when you were still with her.. or him

At times he felt that he had almost rather not be in love with her, for it brought him no peace. What was the use of it, if it was only going to be painful?

Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn't remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation. "I hate a man that talks rude," he said. "I won't tolerate it.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — "Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify by their own lonesome familiarities to this feeling. Ecstasy, even , I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.

If I exist, then surely there must be someone else out there like me.

There are many systems of interaction between brain, body and social world that can get caught in positive feedback loops. Depressed people, for example, can start feeling useless and burdensome, as well as grief-stricken and pained. This makes them withdraw from contact with friends and family. Then the withdrawal makes them more lonesome and isolated, and more likely to feel useless and burdensome. Then they withdraw more. In this manner, depression spirals and amplifies

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about.

Let’s end by pointing out all the positive ways you can scare yourself and feel alive. You can tell someone you love them first. You can try to speak only the truth for a whole week. You can jump out of an airplane or spend Christmas Day all by your lonesome. You can help people who need help and fight real bad guys. You can dance fast or take an improv class or do one of those Ironman things. Adventure and danger can be good for your heart and soul.

one night, they went down to the Village for dinner at an italian restaurant. most of the band had picked up young girls and had them hanging on their arms. janis was feeling lonesome and said, "goddamn, you guys have all these groupies and i don't have anybody." turning to mark, the youngest person in the crowd, she ordered, "go out on the street there and find the first pretty boy you see and bring him to me." aw, i dunno," mark said. go ahead," janis said. after a while, mark returned with a handsome, long-haired youth with a british accent. he was wearing a floor-length embroidered afghan wool coat. looking him over, janis nodded approvingly and said, "he's cute, mark!" turning to the young man, she said, "well! hi, honey! sit down! my name's janis joplin. have you ever heard of me?" yeah," he said, "i've heard of you." oh," she said, "what's your name?" eric clapton.

New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed.

When allowed to return to the class, your feelings of humility and lonesomeness will render you a much finer student and person.

Sixty three sunsets I saw revolve on that perpendicular hill – mad raging sunsets pouring in sea foams of cloud through unimaginable crags like the crags you grayly drew in pencil as a child, with every rose-tint of hope beyond, making you feel just like them, brilliant and bleak beyond words. –

So, have you been enjoying yourself these days, Kazami?' I'm having lots of fun.' It was true. That made the sense of regret even keener, that this time in my life would soon be a thing of the past. I felt as if I could understand a little of what my mother had been through, and the feelings she may have had at different times. I wasn't a child anymore, and this made me feel awfully lonesome, and utterly alone.

Let's end by pointing out all the positive ways you can scare yourself and feel alive. You can tell someone you love them first. You can try to speak only the truth for a whole week. You can jump out of an airplane or spend Christmas day all by your lonesome. You can help people who need help and fight real bad guys. You can dance fast or take an improv class or do one of those Ironman things. Adventure and danger can be good for your heart and soul.

The world feels high lonesome and heartbroken to me right now. We’ve sorted ourselves into factions based on our politics and ideology. We’ve turned away from one another and toward blame and rage. We’re lonely and untethered. And scared. So damn scared.

That open country is so huge you can feel lost and abandoned in it or you can work to feel a part of it, like ya belong to it and it belongs to you. Like a part of you is rock and stone and stream and all the open sky. Ya get past lonesome then...them creatures is all my family and i'm family to them as well.

Depressed people, for example, can start feeling useless and burdensome, as well as grief-stricken and pained. This makes them withdraw from contact with friends and family. Then the withdrawal makes them more lonesome and isolated, and more likely to feel useless and burdensome. Then they withdraw more. In this manner, depression spirals and amplifies.

Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had missed, in some ways.

If you feel you are right all the time, you will feel lonesome after some time.

Call listened with amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.

The guys in the saloons shoving free ones across the bar and saying happy new year and many more of them kid you been a good customer have one on the house happy new year and the hell with the prohibitionists some day the bastards are going to give us trouble. The girls from the hash houses and the girls from the hotels and the guys swarming out of dirty little apartment bedrooms and music and dancing and smoke and somebody with the ukulele and have another and the feeling of being lonesome that everybody has inside him and people bouncing against you and off you and have another one and a girl passing out at the bar and a fight and happy new year.

You just wait patiently like you always do in America among those apparently endless policemen and their endless laws against (no laws for) -- but the moment you cross the little wire gate and you're in Mexico, you feel like you just sneaked out of school when you told the teacher you were sick and she told you you could go home, 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome." John Steinback

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the little backyard was filled with the little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

There seem to be no way he could stop anything that was happening, although it all felt wrong.

It was only the thought that Deets was still knowing him, somehow, that kept him from feeling totally alone.

Cows...weren't like people, with feelings of lonesomeness and worrying about what might happen next. That was just people, wasn't it? Sure, you could scare a cow, but wouldn't they get over it as soon as you let them be? They didn't stand around fretting about the next scare and the next and the next.

We have talked about Suzy and about her last days, but it's as if our lives stopped then and there. If I say anything to him about feeling lonesome, he goes outside and does some little chore. I can't tell if he is secretly blaming me, or himself, or just too full of pain to talk. That was the one thing we could always do together. I wish for the old days. I wish for the struggling days and the days of Geronimo, and the days of birthing Charlie with no one but Jack to help me. How happy and in love we were then. I want to be in love again, but all I feel is darkness and shadows. Everything is changed and different

He didn’t feel sad. The one thing he knew about Texas was that he was lucky to be leaving it alive—and, in fact, he had a long way to go before he could be sure of accomplishing that much.

Virtually all his life he had been in the position of leading groups of men, yet the truth was he had never liked groups. Men he admired for their abilities in action almost always brought themselves down in his estimation if he had to sit around and listen to them talk—or watch them drink or play cards or run off after women. Listening to men talk usually made him feel more alone than if he were a mile away by himself under a tree. He had never really been able to take part in the talk. The endless talk of cards and women made him feel more set apart—and even a little vain. If that was the best they could think of, then they were lucky they had him to lead them. It seemed immodest, but it was a thought that often came to him.

He had known several men who had lost limbs in battle; the men all claimed that they still felt things in the place where the limb had been. It was natural enough, then, that with Bill suddenly gone he and Gus would continue to have some of the feelings that went with friendship, even though the friend was gone.

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify(by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Taip būna miškuose, jie visada atrodo pažįstami, kadai prarasti, išblukę lyg seniai mirusio giminaičio veidas, tartum sena svajonė, tarsi nuotrupa pamirštos dainos, plaukiančios virš vandens, o labiau už viską - tarsi auksinės praėjusios vaikystės amžinybės ar preėjusios brandos, ir visa, kas gyva, visa, kas mirę, visa širdgėla, ištikusi prieš milijoną metų, ir debesys, plaukiantys tau virš galvos, liudija savo vienišu artimumu šį jausmą.

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

When the storm is over, the new growth, tiny and light, timid-green, starts edging our on the buses and three limbs. Then Nature brings April rain. It whispers down soft and lonesome, making mists in the hollows and on the trails where you walk under the drippings from hanging branches of trees. It's a good feeling, exciting--but sad too--in April rain. Granpa said he always got that kind of mixed-up feeling. He said it was exciting because something new was being born and it was sad, because you knowed you can't hold onto it. It will pass too quick. April wind is soft and warm as a baby's crib. It breathes on the crab apple tree until white blossoms open out, smeared with pink. The smell is sweeter than honeysuckle and brings bees swarming over the blossoms. Mountain laurel with pink-white blooms and purple centers grow everywhere, from the hollows to the top of the mountain, alongside of the dogtooth violet... Then, when April gets its warmest, all of a sudden the cold hits you. It stays cold for four or five days. This is to make the blackberries bloom and is called "blackberry winter." The blackberries will not bloom without it. That's why some years there are no blackberries. When it ends, that's when the dogwoods bloom out like snowballs over the mountainside in places you never suspicioned they grew: in a pine grove or stand of oak of a sudden there's a big burst of white.

When you’re young, experiencing new relationships and first loves, nobody really knows what they’re doing. We chase the butterflies and try to capture the perfect moments. But the more you grow, the more you realize that’s not what it’s all about. Love becomes real when the ideal fades away. When that one person becomes more important than yourself. When you make the decision that no matter the cost, you’ll never stop fighting for them. When you can face each other, scarred and unashamed in this dark, lonely world, and feel like you’re finally home. Until we are ready to love with all our hearts, all our minds, and all our souls, we are nothing but lonesome people, just looking to use somebody.

The green fragrance of ruined grass got into my head and gave me that high, lonesome feeling you only get at night, when you feel like the last person on Earth.

Getting up early and feeling awake was the one skill he had never truly perfected - he got up, of course, but it never felt natural.

I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words?

The museums in children’s minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror—to protect the children from eternal grief. For my own part, though: It would have been catastrophe if I had forgotten my sister at once. I had never told her so, but she was the person I had always written for. She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved. She was the secret of my technique. Any creation which has any wholeness and harmoniousness, I suspect, was made by an artist or inventor with an audience of one in mind. Yes, and she was nice enough, or Nature was nice enough, to allow me to feel her presence for a number of years after she died—to let me go on writing for her. But then she began to fade away, perhaps because she had more important business elsewhere.

When your insides are like skinned knees and curdled milk, you gotta learn how to feel better all by your lonesome, without pills or games or anything like that, or else those bad feelings will just keep coming back.

Dish said no more, and Augustus decided not to tease him. Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity- they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour. Young Dish, skilled cowhand that he was, might not live to see the whores of Ogallala, and the tender feelings he harbored for Lorena might be the sweetest he would ever have.

I find it wholesome to be alone in the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. i never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men then when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues;" but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny - the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs an flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering - spirits that's been dead ever so many years - and you always think they're talking about you.

...you needs uh man.” Janie laughed at all these well-wishers because she knew that they knew plenty of women alone; that she was not the first one they had ever seen. But most of the others were poor. Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them...

there are some clothes in the world that, the moment you put them on, make you feel so miserable you just want to smash the mirror in front of you as your reflection looks on in surprise. The kind of clothes that make you think, You’ve got to be kidding, and wonder if perhaps you’ve always looked like a clown, whether your entire life up until that point has been an embarrassing mistake.

Songs do not change the world,’ declares Jasper. ‘People do. People pass laws, riot, hear God and act accordingly. People invent, kill, make babies, start wars.’ Jasper lights a Marlboro. ‘Which begs a question. “Who or what influences the minds of the people who change the world?” My answer is “Ideas and feelings.” Which begs a question. “Where do ideas and feelings originate?” My answer is, “Others. One’s heart and mind. The press. The arts. Stories. Last, but not least, songs.” Songs. Songs, like dandelion seeds, billowing across space and time. Who knows where they’ll land? Or what they’ll bring?’ Jasper leans into the mic and, without a wisp of self-consciousness, sings a miscellany of single lines from nine or ten songs. Dean recognises, ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)’, ‘Strange Fruit’ and ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’. Others, Dean can’t identify, but the hardboiled press pack look on. Nobody laughs, nobody scoffs. Cameras click. ‘Where will these song-seeds land? It’s the Parable of the Sower. Often, usually, they land on barren soil and don’t take root. But sometimes, they land in a mind that is ready. Is fertile. What happens then? Feelings and ideas happen. Joy, solace, sympathy. Assurance. Cathartic sorrow. The idea that life could be, should be, better than this. An invitation to slip into somebody else’s skin for a little while. If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.

He was fairly drunk, and feeling melancholy about all the sinking he had done in the world. Throughout the rough years the Greek alphabet had leaked out of his mind a letter at a time—in fact, the candle of knowledge he had set out with had burned down to a sorry stub.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome.

Lonesome tears I can't cry them anymore I can't think of what they're for Oh they ruin me every time But I'll try to leave behind some days These tears just can't erase I don't need them anymore How could this love Ever turning Never turn its eye on me How could this love Ever changing Never change the way I feel Lazy sun your eyes catch the light With the promises that might Come true for awhile Oh I'll ride farther than I should Harder than I could Just to meet you there How could this love Ever turning Never turn its eye on me How could this love Ever changing Never change the way I feel

Later in the evening Misabel went for a solitary stroll by the sea. She saw the moon rise and start his lonesome journey through the night. "He's exactly like me," Misabel thought sadly. "So plump and lonely." At this thought she felt so forsaken and mild that she had to cry a little. "What are you crying for?" asked Whomper nearby. "I don't know, but it feels nice," replied Misabel. "But people cry because they feel sorry, don't they?" objected Whomper. "Well, yes--the moon," Misabel replied vaguely and blew her nose. "The moon and the night and all the sadness there is..." "Oh, yes," said Whomper.

I feel the same way. It doesn't make sense, and I can't understand it, but maybe emotions aren't supposed to make sense," I finally said. One the other line, Mickey blew out a deep breath. "Tomorrow, then." "Tomorrow," I agreed. Just when I thought he'd hung up, I heard his voice again. "Victoria? Take care of yourself, until I'm with you to do it.

With both the Indian and the women he was always left with the feeling that, without meaning to, he had made some kind of mistake.

Somewhere along the Rio Concho, he had stopped feeling that he lived in a world where ledgers mattered.

It seemed to him there was never much time with women. Before you could look at one twice, you were into an argument, and they were telling you what was going to happen.

Po Campo had given him a hailstone dipped in molasses and he sat licking it and feeling alternately happy and sad while the men got dressed and prepared to be cowboys again.

The peculiarities of my early education are one way in which being from the West has set me apart. A man in Alabama asked me how I felt the West was different from the East and the South, and I replied that in the West "lonesome" is a word with strongly positive connotations. I must have phrased my answer better at the time, because both he and I were struck by the apt ness of the remark, and people in Alabama are far too sensitive to language to be pleased with a phrase such as "strongly positive connotations." For the moment it will have to serve, however. I remember when I was a child at Coolin or Sagle or Talache, walking into the woods by myself and feeling the solitude around me build like electricity and pass through my body with a jolt that made my hair prickle. I remember kneeling by a creek that spilled and pooled among rocks and fallen trees with the unspeakably tender growth of small trees already sprouting from their backs, and thinking, there is only one thing wrong here, which is my own presence, and that is the slightest imaginable intrusion - feeling that my solitude, my loneliness, made me almost acceptable in so sacred a place.

To daughter Scotty Oct. 20, 1936 p. 313 Don't be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter - as indissolubly as if they were conceived together. Let me preach again for a moment: I mean that what you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style, so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that it is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought. It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.

For a while she cried silently until she tired herself out and the overwhelming feeling of sleepiness overcame her. The room around her was fairly silent, although she wasn’t the only one crying herself to sleep. It was quite common at places like this to hear cries in the dark. There were so many saddened and lonesome souls around her. It was usually at night when they were reminded of just how sad and lonely they actually were.

These fellaheen feeling about life, that timeless gayety of people not involved in great cultural and civilization issues you can find it almost anywhere else, in Morocco, in Latin America entire in Dakar, In Kurd land.

but mash whiskey took some of the dry away and made Augustus feel nicely misty inside—foggy and cool as a morning in the Tennessee hills. He seldom got downright drunk, but he did enjoy feeling misty along about sundown,

I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained

They was a guy paroled,” he said. “’Bout a month he’s back for breakin’ parole. A guy ast him why he bust his parole. ‘Well, hell,’ he says. ‘They got no conveniences at my old man’s place. Got no ’lectric lights, got no shower baths. There ain’t no books, an’ the food’s lousy.’ Says he come back where they got a few conveniences an’ he eats regular. He says it makes him feel lonesome out there in the open havin’ to think what to do next. So he stole a car an’ come back.

Why can’t I find you? I know you’re out there. Why am I forced to live a life of despair? I want to find you and hold your hand. My heart beats for you it’s all I can stand. I know I will find you and hope someday soon. Until then I will think of you and stare at the moon. I know my heart beats for you and you alone. Until then it’s heavy and feels like stone. I want to hold you in my arms and whisper a soft word. The feeling of your touch would make my soul be stirred. For this is a dream and it will never be. If only you knew I’m out here and could see. For I am lonesome for you and want this so much. To feel your skin on mine as we touch. I long for the day we meet and you’re part of my life. For until you do this solitude cuts me like a knife. John A Miller

That’s your mistake. You think you’re stuffed with rose leaves? Turn around and look at it, it may do you good!... Now listen here to the anatomy lecture! This upper story’s the brain, which is hungry for something called truth and doesn’t get much but keeps on feeling hungry! This middle’s the belly which is hungry for food. This part down here is the sex which is hungry for love because it is sometimes lonesome. I’ve fed all three, as much of all three as I could, or as much as I wanted.—You’ve fed none—nothing. Well—maybe your belly a little—watery subsistence—but love or truth, nothing but—nothing but hand-me-down notions!—attitudes—poses! Now you can go.

Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn't represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe. She felt like slapping some of them for sitting around grinning at her like a pack of cheesy cats, trying to make out they looked like love.

A Night Piece The sky is overcast With a continuous cloud of texture close, Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon, Which through that veil is indistinctly seen, A dull, contracted circle, yielding light So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls, Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower. At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam Startles the pensive traveller while he treads His lonesome path, with unobserving eye Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split Asunder,--and above his head he sees The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens. There, in a black-blue vault she sails along, Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away, Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree, But they are silent;--still they roll along Immeasurably distant; and the vault, Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds, Still deepens its unfathomable depth. At length the Vision closes; and the mind, Not undisturbed by the delight it feels, Which slowly settles into peaceful calm, Is left to muse upon the solemn scene

Even his own mother had passed during childbirth, so to a young man who couldn’t possibly know any better, the gift of a lonesome life was always to be valued over the death of living otherwise. That sentiment was etched so deeply in his heart that it took Eamon years of painful adjustment to understand that nobody really cared enough about him to wish him any sort of hereditary mortal harm, and though that gave him some solace from his childhood anxieties, it also made him feel somehow more insignificant. There were times when he wished he was the center of some grand conspiracy, if only to feel like the focus of something other than a handful of utility bills at the end of the month. Times when he wished that somebody would pay enough attention to hate him. Anything really.

Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such—This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar…

I never felt at Home—Below—- And in the Handsome Skies I shall not feel at Home—I know— I don't like Paradise— Because it's Sunday—all the time— And Recess—never comes— And Eden'll be so lonesome Bright Wednesday Afternoons— If God could make a visit— Or ever took a Nap— So not to see us—but they say Himself—a Telescope Perennial beholds us— Myself would run away From Him—and Holy Ghost—and All— But there's the "Judgement Day"!

There was a time," he said, "when I enjoyed a great deal of female companionship. But then you put me in a cage with those damned letters of yours." "I'm not understanding you." "All the men believed I had a devoted sweetheart. They looked up to me, believed me loyal and devoted, too. None of them wanted to see that falter. They chased the camp-followers away from my tenet. The other officers went to brothels and left me to mind the camp. Our champlain passed more time with the ladies than I did." Agitated, he pushed a hand through his hair. "I haven't lain with a woman since what feels like Old Testament times." She smiled a little. "Are you saying you were faithful to me?" He rolled his eyes. "Not on purpose. dinna dress it up as something, it's not." "Believe me, I'm trying very hard to not do that. But I have too much imagination. Now I'm picturing you huddled by a lonesome campfire while all the other officers are out carousing. You're holding one of my letters and caressing it like a lovesick..." No, no, no. Logan had to put a stop to that notion, here and now. His hands went to her waist and he pulled her close, startling a little gasp from her. Her body met his, soft and warm. "What I'm saying isna romantic. It's raw, primal, and entirely crude." He lowered his voice toa growl. "You Madeline Gracechurch, have been driving me slowly mad with lust. For years.

What made it worse, it was so quiet and lonesome out, even though it was Saturday night. I didn’t see hardly anybody on the street. Now and then you just saw a man and a girl crossing a street, with their arms around each other’s waists and all, or a bunch of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could bet wasn’t funny. New York’s terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed.

shook her, this place. It was awful. Tragic. Yet… yet it moved her. The sorrow she felt. It was profound. It was moving, somehow. The sorrow of the terrible abandoned garbage dump and the sad graves and the lonesome shacks made her feel something so far inside herself that she could not define it or place it. She was so disturbed that it gave her the strangest comfort, as though something she had suspected about life all along was being confirmed, and the sorrow she felt in her bed at night was reflected by this soil.

I glance around the set—everyone is buzzing like worker bees getting ready for the shot. Cordelia’s getting primped and powdered by a makeup girl, Vanessa is speaking with a few of the cameramen, and the convertible I’m supposed to drive is just sitting there . . . all by its lonesome. And look at that—someone left the keys in the ignition. Stealthily, I sidle up to Sarah. “Have you ever driven in a convertible?” She looks up sharply, like she didn’t see me approach. “Of course I have.” My hands slide into my pockets and I lean back on my heels. “Have you ever been in a convertible driven by a prince?” Her eyes are lighter in the sun, with a hint of gold. They crinkle as she smiles. “No.” I nod. “Perfect. We do this in three.” Now she looks nervous. “Do what?” I spot James across the way, eyes scanning the crowd—far enough away that he’ll never get over here in time. “Three . . .” “I don’t know what you mean.” “Two . . .” “Henry . . .” “One.” “I . . .” “Go, go, go!” “Go where?” she asks, loud enough to draw attention. So I wrap my arm around her waist, lift her off her feet, carry her to the car, and swing her up and into the passenger seat. Then, I jump into the driver’s side. “Shit!” James curses. But then the engine is roaring to life. I back out, knocking over a food service table, and the tires screech as I turn around and drive across the grounds . . . toward the woods. “The road is that way!” Sarah yells, the wind making her long, dark hair dance and swirl. “I know a shortcut. Buckle up.” We fly into the woods, sending a flurry of leaves in our wake. The car bounces and jostles, and I feel Sarah’s hand wrapped around my arm—holding on. It feels good. “Duck.” “What?” I push her head down and crouch at the same time, to avoid getting whipped in the face by the low-branch of a pine tree. After we’re past it, Sarah sits up, owl-eyed, and looks back at the branch and then at me. I smirk. “If you wanted me to push your head down, love, you could’ve just said so.” “You’re insane!” I hit the gas hard, swerving around a stump. “What? You’re the only one who gets to make dirty jokes?” We have a sharp turn coming up ahead. I lay my arm across Sarah’s middle. “Hold on.

Men frequently say to me, I should think you would feel lonesome down there. I am tempted to reply to such- this whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. how far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of who disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves…

I don't want to die, Buddy.' She put her head on his chest. 'I know this cancer probably won't kill me. But I think about dying all the time. I dream about it. What do you think? Do I get to see Pat on the other side, or do I just lie there in the dirt forever?' ...Buddy wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. 'I think dead is dead,' he said softly, near her ear. 'But that's not so bad. I think of it as following. Following the rest of them...My mother and father. Your sister. Your mom. But not just them. All of them. All of us. People...Maybe it's just a way to feel less lonesome about the whole thing, but I think of dying as a path we all go down separately at first, but eventually, together.

In the sunlight—in the daytime, when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering throb of human life. We feel so helpless and so little in the great stillness, when the dark trees rustle in the night-wind. There are so many ghosts about, and their silent sighs make us feel so sad. Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a million gas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.

Of course they had heard that the buffalo were being wiped out, but with the memory of the southern herd so vivid, they had hardly credited the news. Discussing it in Lonesome Dove they had decided that the reports must be exaggerated — thinned out, maybe, but not wiped out. Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching out over the prairie was a shock. Maybe roads of bones were all that was left. The thought gave the very emptiness of the plains a different feel. With those millions of animals gone, and the Indians mostly gone in their wake, the great plains were truly empty, unpeopled and ungrazed. Soon the whites would come, of course, but what he was seeing was a moment between, not the plains as they had been, or as they would be, but a moment of true emptiness, with thousands of miles of grass resting unused, occupied only by remnants – of the buffalo, the Indians, the hunters.

Let’s not end on African baby rape (or start with it, for that matter). Let’s end by pointing out all the positive ways you can scare yourself and feel alive. You can tell someone you love them first. You can try to speak only the truth for a whole week. You can jump out of an airplane or spend Christmas Day all by your lonesome. You can help people who need help and fight real bad guys. You can dance fast or take an improv class or do one of those Ironman things. Adventure and danger can be good for your heart and soul. Violence and desperation are brutal things to search out. Why search out the horror? It’s around us in real ways every day. I’m talking to you, the people who made that movie The Human Centipede. No more Human Centipede movies please. No more movies about people’s mouths being sewn onto people’s butts. The whole idea of making and watching a movie like that makes me want to take a ten-year nap.

Poland is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, soul-split country which in many ways (I came to see through Sophie’s eyes and memory that summer, and through my own eyes in later years) resembles or conjures up images of the American South—or at least the South of other, not-so-distant times. It is not alone that forlornly lovely, nostalgic landscape which creates the frequent likeness—the quagmiry but haunting monochrome of the Narew River swampland, for example, with its look and feel of a murky savanna on the Carolina coast, or the Sunday hush on a muddy back street in a village of Galicia, where by only the smallest eyewink of the imagination one might see whisked to a lonesome crossroads hamlet in Arkansas these ramshackle, weather-bleached little houses, crookedly carpentered, set upon shrubless plots of clay where scrawny chickens fuss and peck—but in the spirit of the nation, her indwellingly ravaged and melancholy heart, tormented into its shape like that of the Old South out of adversity, penury and defeat.

Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong And lonesome comes up as down goes the day And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin' And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin' And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin' And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin' And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin' And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin' And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm And to yourself you sometimes say "I never knew it was gonna be this way Why didn't they tell me the day I was born" And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin' And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet And you need it badly but it lays on the street And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat And you think yer ears might a been hurt Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush And all the time you were holdin' three queens And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean Like in the middle of Life magazine Bouncin' around a pinball machine And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying That somebody someplace oughta be hearin' But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed And no matter how you try you just can't say it And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth And his jaws start closin with you underneath And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign And you say to yourself just what am I doin' On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin' On this curve I'm hanging On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking In this air I'm inhaling Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard Why am I walking, where am I running What am I saying, what am I knowing On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin' On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin' In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin' In the words that I'm thinkin' In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin' Who am I helping, what am I breaking What am I giving, what am I taking But you try with your whole soul best Never to think these thoughts and never to let Them kind of thoughts gain ground Or make yer heart pound ...

The marketing geniuses on the corporate side of the country music labels had decided to start using focus groups to test their products before they were developed or released. An example of this would be to ask the focus group whether they liked sad songs or happy songs. “We like happy songs!” the focus group would chirp, and the word would go back to the writers and producers to come up with “happy” songs to record. This made it especially hard on the songwriters, who rarely feel a need to write when they are happy, as then they are busy luxuriating in the pleasure of happiness. When something bad happens, they want to find a way to transcend it, so they write a song about it. When Hank Williams, one of the greatest and most successful country artists of all time, wrote a song like “Your Cheatin’ Heart” or “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” he wasn’t writing “happy” songs, yet they made the listener feel better. The listener could feel that someone else had gone through an experience similar to the listener’s own, and then went to the trouble and effort to write it down accurately and share the experience like a compassionate friend might do. In this way, hearing a song like “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” could make the listener feel better, or “happy.

Well, I hope that I don't fall in love with you Cause falling in love just makes me blue Well, the music plays and you display your heart for me to see I had a beer and now I hear you calling out for me And I hope that I don't fall in love with you Well, the room is crowded, people everywhere And I wonder, should I offer you a chair? Well, if you sit down with this old clown, I'll take that frown and break it Before the evening's gone away, I think that we can make it And I hope that I don't fall in love with you Well, the night does funny things inside a man These old tomcat feelings you don't understand Well, I turn around to look at you, you light a cigarette I wish I had the guts to bum one, but we've never met And I hope that I don't fall in love with you I can see that you are lonesome just like me And it being late, you'd like some company Well, I turn around to look at you, and you look back at me The guy you're with he's up and split, the chair next to you is free And I hope that you don't fall in love with me Now it's closing time, the music's fading out Last call for drinks, I'll have another stout Well, I turn around to look at you, you're nowhere to be found I search the place for your lost face, guess I'll have another round And I think that I just fell in love with you

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues”; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

Songs do not change the world,” declares Jasper. “People do. People pass laws, riot, hear God, and act accordingly. People invent, kill, make babies, start wars.” Jasper lights a Marlboro. “Which raises a question. ‘Who or what influences the minds of the people who change the world?’ My answer is ‘Ideas and feelings.’ Which begs a question. ‘Where do ideas and feelings originate?’ My answer is, ‘Others. One’s heart and mind. The press. The arts. Stories. Last, but not least, songs.’ Songs. Songs, like dandelion seeds, billowing across space and time. Who knows where they’ll land? Or what they’ll bring?” Jasper leans into the mic and, without a wisp of self-consciousness, sings a miscellany of single lines from nine or ten songs. Dean recognizes “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” “Strange Fruit,” and “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.” Others, Dean can’t identify, but the hardboiled press pack look on. Nobody laughs, nobody scoffs. Cameras click. “Where will these song-seeds land? It’s the Parable of the Sower. Often, usually, they land on barren soil and don’t take root. But sometimes, they land in a mind that is ready. Is fertile. What happens then? Feelings and ideas happen. Joy, solace, sympathy. Assurance. Cathartic sorrow. The idea that life could be, should be, better than this. An invitation to slip into somebody else’s skin for a little while. If a song plants an idea or a feeling in a mind, it has already changed the world.

Maybe that was the whole point of family—to make you feel less alone in a lonesome world. Sometimes, family got it wrong; sometimes, they said and did the wrong things because they were, after all, only human. Yet then there were those moments when they were right on time with their sparks of love.

You do make me feel uncomfortable and lonesome, Strider!" [Sam] said.

There were very few things to do in Toms River, New Jersey, however it was the closest thing resembling civilization near the school. When I wasn’t being restricted to the campus, for one infraction or another, that’s where I would go. Toms River was two and a half miles west of the school. Making the round trip was a five-mile walk, but it was worth it, just to get away. To get there I walked down Prospect Avenue, and then cut corners to Bayside Avenue. In the winter, the frozen snow and ice made the walk cold and miserable. There was always a wind blowing off the river, but I would trudge on relentlessly. The wet slush soaked through my shoes, ruining a shine I had worked on for hours. My feet became wet and frozen, but I pressed on regardless. Eventually I would reach Route 166, which was narrow and only had two lanes; still it was the only north-south highway along the coast at the time. I then crossed the concrete bridge that had a year engraved on it, indicating that it was built as a WPA project during the Great Depression. On the west side of the road was the Toms River Diner. It was classic in appearance and was a warm haven, where I could thaw out. Thelma, the waitress, was always friendly and one of the sexiest women I ever knew. She laughed at my silliness, knew just how much cleavage to show, and moved and turned like a fashion model. There was always “Country Music” playing, especially that of Hank Williams who was Thelma’s favorite. Hey, Good Lookin’, Your Cheatin’ Heart, and I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry were all songs he had written and that she sang along with. Thelma knew that I could not keep my eyes off of her, and she enjoyed playing the part, letting me look far down the unbuttoned section of her waitress uniform, while pouring me another cup of coffee. The way she looked over her shoulder, throwing aside her hair while asking what else I wanted, would send shivers down my back and feelings into my loins that set me on fire. Just this alone was worth the five-mile round trip. During warmer weather, the walk was more pleasant, but the constant wind off the Atlantic Ocean and the river, never let up.

So I was privileged to see the last rites of the Bokononist faith. We made an effort to find someone among the soldiers and the household staff who would admit that he knew the rites and would give them to "Papa". We got no volunteers. That was hardly surprising, with a hook and an oubliette so near. So Dr. von Koenigswald said that he would have a go at the job. He had never administered the rites before, but he had seen Julian Castle do it hundreds of times. "Are you a Bokononist?" I asked him. "I agree with one Bokononist idea. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies." "Will this bother you as a scientist," I inquired, "to go through a ritual like this?" "I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific. No scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing." And he climbed into the golden boat with "Papa". He sat in the stern. Cramped quarters obliged him to have the golden tiller under one arm. He wore sandals without socks, and he took these off. And then he rolled back the covers at the foot of the bed, exposing "Papa's" bare feet. He put the soles of his feet against "Papa's" feet, assuming the classical position for boko-maru. "Gott mate mutt," crooned Dr. von Koenigswald. "Dyot meet mat," echoed "Papa" Monzano. "God made mud," was what they'd said, each in his own dialect. I will here abandon the dialects of the litany. "God got lonesome," said Von Koenigswald. "God got lonesome." "So God said to some of the mud, 'Sit up!'" - "So God said to some of the mud, 'Sit up!'" "'See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.'" - "'See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.'" "And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around." - "And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around." "Lucky me; lucky mud." "Lucky me, lucky mud." Tears were streaming down "Papa's" cheeks. "I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done." - "I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done." "Nice going, God!" "Nice going, God!" "Papa" said it with all his heart. "Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have." - "Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have." "I feel very unimportant compared to You." - "I feel very unimportant compared to You." "The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around." - "The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around." "I got so much, and most mud got so little." - "I got so much, and most mud got so little." "Deng you vore da on-oh!" cried Von Koenigswald. "Tz-yenk voo vore lo yon-yo!" wheezed "Papa". What they had said was, "Thank you for the honor!" "Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep." - "Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep." "What memories for mud to have!" - "What memories for mud to have!" "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!" - "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!" "I loved everything I saw!" - "I loved everything I saw!" "Good night." - "Good night." "I will go to heaven now." - "I will go to heaven now." "I can hardly wait..." - "I can hardly wait..." "To find out for certain what my wampeter was..." - "To find out for certain what my wampeter was..." "And who was in my karass..." - "And who was in my karass..." "And all the good things our karass did for you." - "And all the good things our karass did for you." "Amen." - "Amen.

I’m not much into evangelizing—I think people have to come to God in their own good time—but I hope that whatever Hiro believes, it offers him a sense of peace and connectedness. The world can be a lonesome place, especially when it feels like you’re only living for yourself.

He used to sit down beside her and embrace her. She was cold, returning his caresses but sparingly. Looking straight into her eyes, he used to say: “Natalya! Tell me — why are you so sad? Do you feel lonesome here with me?”“No,” she replied shortly. “What then is it? Are you longing for your people?”“No, it’s nothing.”“What are you thinking about?”“I am not thinking.”“What then?”“Oh, nothing!

There was a period when he wanted to go back, when it would have been nice to sit with Maggie a few minutes and watch her fiddle with her hair. But he chose the river, and his solitude, thinking that in time the feeling would pass, and best so: he would stop thinking about Maggie, she would stop thinking about him... But it didn't pass--all that passed were years.

No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.” His words were very enlightening to me. Later, after I thought about it a bit, I realized that it wasn’t Buddhist philosophy at all, but was more akin to some modern physics theories. The abbot also told me he wasn’t going to discuss Buddhism with me. His reason was the same as my high school teacher’s: With my sort, he’d just be wasting his time. That first night, I couldn’t sleep in the tiny room in the temple. I didn’t realize that this refuge from the world would be so uncomfortable. My blanket and sheet both became damp in the mountain fog, and the bed was so hard. In order to make myself sleep, I tried to follow the abbot’s advice and fill myself with “emptiness.” In my mind, the first “emptiness” I created was the infinity of space. There was nothing in it, not even light. But soon I knew that this empty universe could not make me feel peace. Instead, it filled me with a nameless anxiety, like a drowning man wanting to grab on to anything at hand. So I created a sphere in this infinite space for myself: not too big, though possessing mass. My mental state didn’t improve, however. The sphere floated in the middle of “emptiness”—in infinite space, anywhere could be the middle. The universe had nothing that could act on it, and it could act on nothing. It hung there, never moving, never changing, like a perfect interpretation for death. I created a second sphere whose mass was equal to the first one’s. Both had perfectly reflective surfaces. They reflected each other’s images, displaying the only existence in the universe other than itself. But the situation didn’t improve much. If the spheres had no initial movement—that is, if I didn’t push them at first—they would be quickly pulled together by their own gravitational attraction. Then the two spheres would stay together and hang there without moving, a symbol for death. If they did have initial movement and didn’t collide, then they would revolve around each other under the influence of gravity. No matter what the initial conditions, the revolutions would eventually stabilize and become unchanging: the dance of death. I then introduced a third sphere, and to my astonishment, the situation changed completely. Like I said, any geometric figure turns into numbers in the depths of my mind. The sphereless, one-sphere, and two-sphere universes all showed up as a single equation or a few equations, like a few lonesome leaves in late fall. But this third sphere gave “emptiness” life. The three spheres, given initial movements, went through complex, seemingly never-repeating movements. The descriptive equations rained down in a thunderstorm without end. Just like that, I fell asleep. The three spheres continued to dance in my dream, a patternless, never-repeating dance. Yet, in the depths of my mind, the dance did possess a rhythm; it was just that its period of repetition was infinitely long. This mesmerized me. I wanted to describe the whole period, or at least a part of it. The next day I kept on thinking about the three spheres dancing in “emptiness.” My attention had never been so completely engaged. It got to the point where one of the monks asked the abbot whether I was having mental health issues. The abbot laughed and said, “Don’t worry. He has found emptiness.” Yes, I had found emptiness. Now I could be at peace in a bustling city. Even in the midst of a noisy crowd, my heart would be completely tranquil.

If you ever feel lonesome, you should look up at the stars and remember that everyone you care about is under them, and that perhaps they are looking up at them too.

What do you do with bugs?” Joe asked, feeling that the man was the strangest he had ever met. “I study them,” the man said. Joe hardly knew what to say. What was there to study about a bug? Either it bit you or it didn’t.

He had know several men who blew their heads off, and he has pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.