Ferris Wheel Quotes

You loved ferris wheels more than roller coasters because life shouldn’t be lived at full speed, but in anticipation and appreciation.

Life isn't fair. A fair's a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the ferris wheel.

A Dauntless Ferris wheel wouldn’t have cars. You would just hang on tight with your hands, and good luck to you.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

Wait a second," Four says. I turn toward him, wondering which version of Four I'll see now-the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile doesn't spread to his eyes, which look less tense and worried. "You belong here, you know that?" he says. "You belong with us. It'll be over soon, so just hold on, okay?" He scratches behind his ear and looks away, like he's embarrassed by what he said. I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care. I reach out and take his hand. His fingers slide between mine. I can't breathe. I stare up at him, and he stares down at me. For a long moment, we stay that way. Then I pull my hand away and run after Uriah and Lynn and Marlene. Maybe now he thinks I'm stupid, or strange. Maybe it was worth it.

A breeze blows through the alley, pushing me to one side, and I think of scaling the Ferris wheel with Tobias. He kept me steady then. There is no one left to keep me steady now.

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

I've been in love with you since you helped me bury that spider in my garden, and you sang with me like we were singing “Amazing Grace” instead of “The Itsy, Bitsy Spider.” I've loved you since you quoted Hamlet like you understood him, since you said you loved ferris wheels more than roller coasters because life shouldn't be lived at full speed, but in anticipation and appreciation. I read and re-read your letters to Rita because I felt like you'd opened up a little window into your soul, and the light was pouring out with every word. They weren't even for me, but it didn't matter. I loved every word, every thought, and I loved you . . . so much.

When you're on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who's doing it ever talks about anything else. I have no interest in dating.

No connection, you would agree. But things can come together in strange ways. The wood was at the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them, nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late.

I once knew a man who stole a Ferris Wheel...

A Boat O beautiful was the werewolf in his evil forest. We took him to the carnival and he started crying when he saw the Ferris wheel. Electric green and red tears flowed down his furry cheeks. He looked like a boat out on the dark water.

They can't hurt me. Sure, they can crush you and kill you. They can lay you out on 42nd and Broadway and put hoses on you and flush you in the sewers and put you on the subway and carry you out to Coney island and bury you on the Ferris wheel. But I refuse to sit here and worry about dying.

In the distance, they begin shutting down the rides and turning off lights. There’s something beautiful and eerie about a darkened, unmoving Ferris wheel.

Lovers do things together! They rent videos, they ride Ferris wheels, they go out for pizza, they play Scrabble. They . . . they talk!' 'Talk?' He lifted his head and frowned, his eyes puzzled. 'We talk all the time, Raine. I've never had such talkative sex.' 'That's just it!' She wiggled, flailed, but couldn't budge him. 'Two minutes alone with you, and I'm flat on my back. Every single time!' A slow, knowing grin spread over his face. 'Is this your way of telling me you want to be on top?

The first lights of the evening were springing into pale existence. The Ferris wheel, pricked out now in lights, revolved leisurely through the dusk; a few empty cars of the roller coaster rattled overhead.

Taren Ferry folk had a reputation for slyness and trickery. If you shook hands with a Taren Ferry man, people said, you counted your fingers afterwards.

I KNEW IT WAS OVER when tonight you couldn't make the phone ring when you used to make the sun rise when trees used to throw themselves in front of you to be paper for love letters that was how i knew i had to do it swaddle the kids we never had against january's cold slice bundle them in winter clothes they never needed so i could drop them off at my mom's even though she lives on the other side of the country and at this late west coast hour is assuredly east coast sleeping peacefully her house was lit like a candle the way homes should be warm and golden and home and the kids ran in and jumped at the bichon frise named lucky that she never had they hugged the dog it wriggled and the kids were happy yours and mine the ones we never had and my mom was grand maternal, which is to say, with style that only comes when you've seen enough to know grace like when to pretend it's christmas or a birthday so she lit her voice with tiny lights and pretended she didn't see me crying as i drove away to the hotel connected to the bar where i ordered the cheapest whisky they had just because it shares your first name because they don't make a whisky called baby and i only thought what i got was what i ordered i toasted the hangover inevitable as sun that used to rise in your name i toasted the carnivals we never went to and the things you never won for me the ferris wheels we never kissed on and all the dreams between us that sat there like balloons on a carney's board waiting to explode with passion but slowly deflated hung slave under the pin- prick of a tack hung heads down like lovers when it doesn't work, like me at last call after too many cheap too many sweet too much whisky makes me sick, like the smell of cheap, like the smell of the dead like the cheap, dead flowers you never sent that i never threw out of the window of a car i never really owned

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn.

...and where the Ferris wheel carried its passengers high and brought them low and raised them high and brought them low again, as if it were not merely a carnival ride but also a metaphor for the basic pattern of human experience.

The Clock on the Morning Lenape Building Must Clocks be circles? Time is not a circle. Suppose the Mother of All Minutes started right here, on the sidewalk in front of the Morning Lenape Building, and the parade of minutes that followed--each of them, say, one inch long-- headed out that way, down Bridge Street. Where would Now be? This minute? Out past the moon? Jupiter? The nearest star? Who came up with minutes, anyway? Who needs them? Name one good thing a minute's ever done. They shorten fun and measure misery. Get rid of them, I say. Down with minutes! And while you're at it--take hours with you too. Don't get me started on them. Clocks--that's the problem. Every clock is a nest of minutes and hours. Clocks strap us into their shape. Instead of heading for the nearest star, all we do is corkscrew. Clocks lock us into minutes, make Ferris wheel riders of us all, lug us round and round from number to number, dice the time of our lives into tiny bits until the bits are all we know and the only question we care to ask is "What time is it?" As if minutes could tell. As if Arnold could look up at this clock on the Lenape Building and read: 15 Minutes till Found. As if Charlie's time is not forever stuck on Half Past Grace. As if a swarm of stinging minutes waits for Betty Lou to step outside. As if love does not tell all the time the Huffelmeyers need to know.

Climb the Ferris wheel?!” echoed Aru. “Do I look like Spider-Man to you?” “Well, you sometimes wear those pajamas…” said Mini. Brynne snorted. “What pajamas?” asked Aiden. Abandon conversation! screamed Aru’s brain. Abandon conversation!

When I was little, I didn't understand why ferris wheels existed. They were just sluggish and went up high. I got bored with it after only one ride. The roller coaster and the loop slider... I only paid attention to the thrilling rides. But... I kind of understand now. Ferris wheels are for slowly cutting across the sky with the person you like and maybe saying things like, "Isn't this a little scary?

Do you know what I dream about? My dream would be to die looking at the lights on the Ferris wheel. When I get old, when my body has given up, that’s what I want to see. And in that dream, you’re standing next to me.

Atop a Ferris wheel, Orson Welles told Joseph Cotten how Italy's thirty years of war and terror and bloodshed had produced the Renaissance and Michelangelo, and how Switzerland's five hundred years of democracy and peace had produced, goddamn, only the cuckoo clock.

Catching sight of the rotund Levaedet Ringmaster striding through the crowds, high above them on his disproportionately long legs, she allows herself a moment to imagine the smell of Candyfloss mingling with toffee apples and salted popcorn; the screams of laughter from the carousel and Ferris wheel...

Hope is a Ferris wheel- It takes Low and High; And when you reach the Top, It’s like you can touch The Sky! And when it takes you Down- Hope becomes A Thing That, When you’re getting Off, You take With you to Bring.

Once you’ve been through certain experiences, you may as well accept that your life from that point on will be one massive Ferris wheel of the same emotional trauma, relived and recycled, over and over.

Everything that is good in the day is even better in the night. A merry-go-round, a ferris wheel, a kiss from a girl.

It feels as though we’re going in slow motion. I think we’ll never get away. But eventually the Ferris wheel is far enough away that it could be a moving constellation.

All people in relationships ever do is talk about their relationship status. It like a Ferris wheel. When you're on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who's doing it ever talks about anything else.

From: fmarino@thewillingschool.org To: abainbr@thewillingschool.org Date: December 19, 6:54 p.m. Subject: Three Things 1. Truth: I'm terrified of an embarrassing number of things, including Ferris wheels, rusty nails, being alone, and being with someone. 2. Truth: I'm working on that. 3. Dare: Take a chance on me, Alex Bainbridge. Qu'ieu sui precieuse, leu lo sai."

Certainty a strange Ferris wheel of a statement!

I have to get off this fucking Ferris wheel.

When Daisy left, it was like the Ferris wheel stopped turning and we all got off.

But the moon was so large and clear through the uncurtained window that it made me think instead of a story my mother had told me, about driving to horse shows with her mother and father in the back seat of their old Buick when she was little. “It was a lot of travelling—ten hours sometimes through hard country. Ferris wheels, rodeo rings with sawdust, everything smelled like popcorn and horse manure. One night we were in San Antonio, and I was having a bit of a melt-down—wanting my own room, you know, my dog, my own bed—and Daddy lifted me up on the fairgrounds and told me to look at the moon. ‘When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.’ So after he died, and I had to go to Aunt Bess—I mean, even now, in the city, when I see a full moon, it’s like he’s telling me not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am.” She kissed me on the nose. “Or where you are, puppy. The center of my earth is you.

We're all carnies, though some people are in denial. They want to be above it all, above the mayhem of laughter and people and lights and animals and the dark sadness that lurks in the coners and beneath the rides and in the trailers after hours. So they ride teh Ferris wheel, and at the top, they think they've left it all behind They've ascended to a place where they can take things seriously. Where they can be taken seriously.

I know a man who once stole a Ferris-wheel

When you're already dead, why should you be afraid?

Do you think we were always destined to know each other?' I say. In my head I'm cresting the Ferris wheel with Jack beside me, our heads tipped back to look at the stars. Perhaps it's the wine, but my stomach flips slowly as he laughs quietly against my ear. 'I don't know if I believe in all that destiny stuff, Lu, but I'll always be glad you're in my life.' He looks down into my eyes and his mouth is so close I can feel his breath on my lips. I ache. 'Me too,' I whisper. 'Even though being with you is hard on my heart sometimes.

I’ve loved you since that night out on the pier when we looked up at the stars, then I fell in love with you again the next day when you peeked at the sunset from the top of the Ferris wheel, then I fell in love with you again when I saw you in that blue dress, then I fell in love with you again on my kitchen counter, then I fell in love with you again at the cake tasting, then I fell in love with you again at Lauren’s wedding, then I fell in love with you again in that hospital room when you stared at your daughter lying unconscious in that bed…

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after. One

Perhaps it was darkness that needed a source here, and not light.

Once you've ridden the roller coaster, the Ferris wheel's kinda restricting.

Life is like a Ferris wheel, going ‘round and ‘round in one direction. Some of us are lucky enough to remember each trip around.” From: Yesterday - A Novel of Reincarnation

Maybe after I saved everyone we could all take a ride on the fucking Ferris wheel…Fuck was now added to my vocabulary. It was an outstanding word that could basically mean just about anything. It could be used as a noun, verb and adverb. It rolled off the tongue with ease and even if you spoke a foreign language it was difficult not to understand fuck off or off you fuck or fuck you.

Bereavement is sometimes like wading across a succession of snowfields with no landmark in sight. You are a lone small figure in a vast barren landscape. Other times it’s like a Ferris wheel ride. Like being strapped into a swinging spinning bucket. The dizzying dislocation from familiar grounded reality.

Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.

I want so badly to help you realize, Elizabeth Anne, how difficult and puzzling and full of wonder it all is: some day I will tell you how I learned to watch the shifting light of autumn days or smelled the earth through snow in March; how one winter morning God vanished from my life and how one summer evening I sat in a Ferris wheel, looking down on a man that hurt me badly; I will tell you how I once travelled to Rome and saw all the soldiers in that city of dead poets; I will tell you how I met your father outside a movie house in Toronto, and how you came to be. Perhaps that is where I will begin. On a winter afternoon when we turn the lights on early, or perhaps a summer day of leaves and sky, I will begin by conjugating the elemental verb. I am. You are. It is.

When you’re on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who’s doing it ever talks about anything else.

If the world were flat like a magic carpet, our sorrow would have a beginning and an end. If the world were square, we would lie low in a corner when the war plays "hide and seek." If the world were round, our dreams would take turns on the ferris wheel, and we would be equal.

Last winter, she’d walked this path with Min, heading for the Christmas Fair--there’d been a ferris wheel and skating, mulled wine, minced pies. At an air-rifle booth, Min had missed the target five times in a row. “Cover”, he’d said. “Don’t want everyone knowing I’m a trained sharpshooter.

When you’re on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who’s doing it ever talks about anything else. I have no interest in dating.

A valise without straps. A hole without a key. She had a German mouth, French ears, Russian ass. Cunt international. When the flag waved it was red all the way back to the throat. You entered on the Boulevard Jules-Ferry and came out at the Porte de la Villette. You dropped your sweetbreads into the tumbrils – red tumbrils with two wheels, naturally. At the confluence of the Ourcq and Marne, where the water sluices through the dikes and lies like glass under the bridges.

There was something special about a carnival at night. Bright lights pierced the darkness; the tinkling music of the merry-go-round provided the perfect background for the shrill calls of the carnival workers; the giggles of the people aiming fake rifles at fake ducks were full of contagious fun; the distant shrieks coming from the roller coaster and the top of the Ferris wheel filled the air; and a warm breeze carried the tantalizing aromas of cotton candy and hot buttered popcorn.

The photograph is in my hand. It is the photograph of a man and a woman. They are at an amusement park, in 1959. In twelve seconds time, I drop the photograph to the sand at my feet, walking away. It’s already lying there, twelve seconds into the future. Ten seconds now. The photograph is in my hand. I found it in a derelict bar at the gila flats test base, twenty-seven hours ago. It’s still there, twenty-seven hours into the past, in its frame, in the darkened bar. I’m still there, looking at it. The photograph is in my hand. The woman takes a piece of popcorn between thumb and forefinger. The ferris wheel pauses. Seven seconds now. It’s October, 1985. I’m on Mars. It’s July, 1959. I’m in New Jersey, at the Palisades Amusement Park. Four seconds, three. I’m tired of looking at the photograph now. I open my fingers. It falls to the sand at my feet. I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away. And their light takes so long to reach us… All we ever see of stars are their old photohraphs.

That night he dreamt of Heaven: Heaven was a dark amusement park, small and joyless, just an iron Ferris wheel turning in eternity and a glum arcade to amuse the faithful.

Riders on the Ferris Wheel got the clearest, most horrific view of what happened next.

rush of wind blew through my hair as we rode to the top of the Ferris wheel and then stopped, hovering

The Blue Danube Waltz.” She looked up, and saw the Ferris wheel leisurely

A patient on the way to surgery travels at twice the speed of a patient on the way to the morgue. Gurneys that ferry the living through hospital corridors move forward in an aura of purpose and push, flanked by caregivers with long strides and set faces, steadying IVs, pumping ambu bags, barreling into double doors. A gurney with a cadaver commands no urgency. It is wheeled by a single person, calmly and with little notice, like a shopping cart(167).

Slowly the sky turned from the color of cornflower to that of hyacinth, and the Ferris wheel at Coney Island appeared like a ring of diamonds against the twilight. New York-that city made of canyons between tall buildings, and ornate houses filled with glittering things that might trap a girl forever-was nothing more than a few dots on an infinite landscape. The atmosphere was crystalline and afforded her a perfect view. Only from this place was she able to see how limited the city was, after everything, and how wide open the world could all of a sudden become.

Dust when it was dry. Mud when it was rainy. Swearing, steaming, sweating, scheming, bribing, bellowing, cheating, the carny went its way. It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns- lights and noise and the chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild man who fondles those reptiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving the trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice cream spoons to show where it had been.

Do you remember what you told me,” I say, “about your brain?” His hand pauses. “You said it felt like a Ferris wheel,” I say. “Like all your thoughts were constantly circling, and you’d reach out for one, but it was hard to stay on it for too long because they kept spinning.” The lines of his face soften. His fingers curl, the backs of his nails pressing into my skin. “Except with you. You’re like gravity.” I couldn’t have pulled myself away from him then if he’d burst into flames. “Everything keeps spinning,” he says in a low, hoarse voice. “But my mind’s always got one hand on you.

THE FAIR HAD A POWERFUL and lasting impact on the nation’s psyche, in ways both large and small. Walt Disney’s father, Elias, helped build the White City; Walt’s Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant. Certainly the fair made a powerful impression on the Disney family. It proved such a financial boon that when the family’s third son was born that year, Elias in gratitude wanted to name him Columbus. His wife, Flora, intervened; the baby became Roy. Walt came next, on December 5, 1901. The writer L. Frank Baum and his artist-partner William Wallace Denslow visited the fair; its grandeur informed their creation of Oz. The Japanese temple on the Wooded Island charmed Frank Lloyd Wright, and may have influenced the evolution of his “Prairie” residential designs. The fair prompted President Harrison to designate October 12 a national holiday, Columbus Day, which today serves to anchor a few thousand parades and a three-day weekend. Every carnival since 1893 has included a Midway and a Ferris Wheel, and every grocery store contains products born at the exposition. Shredded Wheat did survive. Every house has scores of incandescent bulbs powered by alternating current, both of which first proved themselves worthy of large-scale use at the fair; and nearly every town of any size has its little bit of ancient Rome, some beloved and be-columned bank, library or post office. Covered with graffiti, perhaps, or even an ill-conceived coat of paint, but underneath it all the glow of the White City persists. Even the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can trace its heritage to the fair.

Adam,' I say, 'had good times and he had bad times.' I pause here and glance at Nana, see that she is crying silently, the way I cried at the duck pond in the park. I was going to say something more about the bad times- how Adam's bad times were different from most people's, and that I'll never really understand them. But now that I see Nana's tears, see her start to reach for Papa's hand, then pull back and fold her hands in her lap again- now that I see Nana, I change my mind. I think we should remember that Adam was one of those people who could lift the corners of our universe,' I say. I clear my throat. 'Thank you.' As I slide into our pew I realize I feel older. I think of Janet and Nancy and find that nonw I can brush them away. And I understand that Adam and I are not as alike as I had thought. I remembered the tortured look on Adam's face the night of the Ferris wheel and the look of happiness, happiness, and realize that Adam's decision to take his life was not made easily. It took a certain kind of courage. Just not the kind of courage I chose. I settle between Mom and Dad, and they take my hands and smmile at me. No tears. I squeeze their hands. ~pgs 177-178; Hattie on life

Hey ya’ll, you’ll never believe what I just heard! Apparently some girl totally flipped out on the Ferris wheel.” I paled. “Oh God, it was you wasn’t it?” he looked at me and busted out laughing. “It figures.

Sometimes life is like this Ferris wheel. Even when everything seems wrong, the sky is black, it's starting to rain, and some lady throws up on you, the wheel will keep right on turning to spite you." (the Old Man)

These days every morning begins like a joke you think you have heard before, but there is no one telling it whom you can stop. One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar, then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon, then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar. Each one takes up an entire day. The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West is pulling on the world; on the drive to work cars are swinging comically from lane to lane. The houses and lawns belong in cartoons. The hours collapse into one another's arms. The stories arc over noon and descend like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening. You wish you could stop listening and get serious. Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line which never arrives till very late at night, just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp, just before you begin laughing in the dark.

Like a lot of gym teachers, Coach Babcock loved to torture his students. He felt he had failed as a teacher if his students didn't cry out for mercy. He often bragged that he held the school district's record for causing the most hysterical breakdowns in one afternoon. He used such classic forms of torture as weight training, wrestling, long-distance running, rope climing, wind spirits, chin-ups, and the occasional game of wet dodgeball (the wet ball was superloud when it hit a kid, and it left a huge red welt). But his favorite device of torment was so horrible, so truly evil, that it would drive most children to the brink of madness. It was the square dance. For six weeks of the school year, his students suffered through the Star Promenade, the Slip the Clutch, and the Ferris Wheel. As Babcock saw it, square dancing was the most embarrassing and uncomfortable form of dancing ever created, and a perfect way to prepare his students for the crushing heartbreak of life. Square dancing was a metaphor for like- you got swung around and just when you thought you were free, you got dragged back into the dance. He really thought he was doing the kids a favor.

We're going to have to play pretend," Sam says. He has no idea how good I am at playing pretend. But I guess that's a different kind of pretend, a pretend that can't be obvious. Here we revel in the pretend, laugh at it, become children within it. We walk rings around the carousel horses, trying to find our perfect steeds. We dangle at the bottom of the Ferris wheel and pretend that it is taking us up, up, up. I allow myself to relax. I allow myself to enjoy it. I even get lost in it.

When she straightened and her bare back landed flush against his heaving chest, she could only compare it to the breathless moment on a Ferris wheel when you hit the top the first time and the world spreads out in front of you, huge and wondrous.

The Ferris wheel came to a stop two seats down from the top. "I've been thinking about you a lot this past week," she said, and it came out a lot more moony than she intended. He lowered his gaze from the sky and met her eyes. His smile was mischievous. "Oh?

That had been five years ago. He thought about the Ferris wheel. Going up so high you could see straight across town and halfway across the lake. His stomach turned at the thought of going up so high. Seems the older he got, the more he liked his feet on the ground.

Wonder The first thing you sent me were fireworks. Sparks of light and color over a bridge to nowhere. I was already in love when we met that summer; I belonged to someone else. To make room for you, I had to ask the world for permission, but every answer was a dead end. But who am I to blame them for telling me what I already knew? So I danced around you like a storm, white light against the cool black sky, like strobe lights flickering on and off. I said we could be something, you and me. I said so much and meant it, but never proved it to you, did I? We both know what my word was worth, you and me both. You took my hand under a Ferris wheel, spitting light, spinning lies. You dazzled me, you know. You were incandescent. I don’t think we could have been anything, not really. But isn’t it something to wonder?

o să ne plimbăm prin orășelul copiilor, prin wreckland, mîncînd macadamia nüsse purtînd pe umeri nimbul greu al trecutului nostru, un nimb pe care şi sfinţii ar vrea să-l apuce de pe spate şi să şi-l dea jos, punîndu-l pe masă ca pe o felie de pepene; ferris wheels, montagne russe îngropate în nisip şi polen, cerul de care sîntem agăţaţi cu curele de piele şi care trebuie să ne mai atenueze căderea, muzica înfăşurată în ceară, culorile duse în pămînt ca electricitatea aerul punîndu-ţi un deget pe încheietură şi numărînd cu privirea în altă parte

It was another blind date; this time her uncle had set her up. The plan: Meet outside of her fancy Midtown Manhattan office building. How would she recognize him? "I'll be the guy with the hole in his boot," he told her. And there he was, covered in dust from his construction job, with a big hole in his fraying boot. What was supposed to be one drink turned into two . . . then a ride on the Ferris wheel in Toys R Us . . . then dinner. He wrote her this note exactly two months after their first date, delivering it rolled up and tied with a string, along with two red roses. They were married in July 2006. (return

This is my favorite part," Misha finally whispered, when the Ferris Wheel reached the highest point and stopped there for a few seconds. "Reaching the peak, it gives you perspective, doesn't it? Backwards is the past, and the future lies ahead. And the only choice we have is to head that way. How disturbing is that?

They were the cars at the fair that were whirling around her; no, they were the planets, while the sun stood, burning and spinning and guttering in the centre; here they came again, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; but they were not planets, for it was not the merry-go-round at all, but the Ferris wheel, they were constellations, in the hub of which, like a great cold eye, burned Polaris, and round and round it here they went: Cassiopeia, Cepheus, the Lynx, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and the Dragon; yet they were not constellations, but, somehow, myriads of beautiful butterflies, she was sailing into Acapulco harbour through a hurricane of beautiful butterflies, zigzagging overhead and endlessly vanishing astern over the sea, the sea, rough and pure, the long dawn rollers advancing, rising, and crashing down to glide in colourless ellipses over the sand, sinking, sinking, someone was calling her name far away and she remembered, they were in a dark wood, she heard the wind and the rain rushing through the forest and saw the tremours of lightning shuddering through the heavens and the horse—great God, the horse—and would this scene repeat itself endlessly and forever?—the horse, rearing, poised over her, petrified in midair, a statue, somebody was sitting on the statue, it was Yvonne Griffaton, no, it was the statue of Huerta, the drunkard, the murderer, it was the Consul, or it was a mechanical horse on the merry-go-round, the carrousel, but the carrousel had stopped and she was in a ravine down which a million horses were thundering towards her, and she must escape, through the friendly forest to their house, their little home by the sea.

This message, it’s sweeter than any romance novel. It’s real. Neil loves me. Earlier today, I couldn’t picture him kissing anyone. Is it because I can only picture this happening with me, that Rowan plus Neil is this inevitability everyone has known except us? Kirby and Mara, Chantal Okafor in student council, Logan Perez who let us into the safe zone, my parents… Do I love Neil McNair? Even if I’m not entirely certain, the reality is that I really think I could. I have to get off this fucking Ferris wheel. Life is funny, though: the most romantic moment of my life, and I’m at the top of a Ferris wheel with a yearbook instead of the boy who wrote in it that he’s in love with me.

what next?” He pointed. “Roller coaster? Tilt-a-whirl? Are you hungry?” Nova smiled, the knot in her chest quickly unwinding. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t we supposed to be looking for somebody?” “You’re absolutely right.” Adrian tapped a finger against his lips. “And I think we should look for her”—he pointed—“on the Ferris wheel.

As time passed and Harry flew and flew and flew, he forgot all about the fog, the city below him, and just about everything. Nothing in the world seemed to matter but wings, and sky, and motion. The free and endless kind of motion that people are always looking for in a hundred different ways. Flying was the way a swing swoops up; and the glide down a slide. It was the shoot of a sled downhill without the long climb back up. It was the very best throat-tightening thrills of skis, skates, surfboards and trampolines. Diving boards, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, .roller coasters, skate boards and soap-box coasters. It was all of them, one after the other, all at once and a thousand times over.

Ferris, himself fed up with construction delays and Burnham’s pestering, had told Gronau to turn the wheel or tear it off the tower.

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna. How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur. My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena, ecstatic devourer. O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped the amber—fast honey—from their openness— Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond— to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue— come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips, I am—strummed-song and succubus. They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book— the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel. Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays, Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray. Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera. Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle: What do I see? Hips: Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone. Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread, wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel. Bone basin bone throne bone lamp. Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery— slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit, laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God, I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth for pear upon apple upon fig. More than all that are your hips. They are a city. They are Kingdom— Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire— thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth. Beloved, your hips are the war. At night your legs, love, are boulevards leading me beggared and hungry to your candy house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late and the tables have been cleared, in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake. O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve, a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon, let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming for your dark matter. Along las calles de tus muslos I wander— follow the parade of pulse like a drum line— descend into your Plaza del Toros— hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros. Your arched hips—ay, mi torera. Down the long corridor, your wet walls lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed. I am the animal born to rush your rich red muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan, a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre Manolete—press and part you like a wound— make the crowd pounding in the grandstand of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.

Read. You should read Bukowski and Ferlinghetti, read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and listen to Coltrane, Nina Simone, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Son House, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Nick Drake, Bobbie Gentry, George Jones, Jimmy Reed, Odetta, Funkadelic, and Woody Guthrie. Drive across America. Ride trains. Fly to countries beyond your comfort zone. Try different things. Join hands across the water. Different foods. New tasks. Different menus and tastes. Talk with the guy who’s working in construction on your block, who’s working on the highway you’re traveling on. Speak with your neighbors. Get to know them. Practice civil disobedience. Try new resistance. Be part of the solution, not the problem. Don’t litter the earth, it’s the only one you have, learn to love her. Care for her. Learn another language. Trust your friends with kindness. You will need them one day. You will need earth one day. Do not fear death. There are worse things than death. Do not fear the reaper. Lie in the sunshine but from time to time let the neon light your way. ZZ Top, Jefferson Airplane, Spirit. Get a haircut. Dye your hair pink or blue. Do it for you. Wear eyeliner. Your eyes are the windows to your soul. Show them off. Wear a feather in your cap. Run around like the Mad Hatter. Perhaps he had the answer. Visit the desert. Go to the zoo. Go to a county fair. Ride the Ferris wheel. Ride a horse. Pet a pig. Ride a donkey. Protest against war. Put a peace symbol on your automobile. Drive a Volkswagen. Slow down for skateboarders. They might have the answers. Eat gingerbread men. Pray to the moon and the stars. God is out there somewhere. Don’t worry. You’ll find out where soon enough. Dance. Even if you don’t know how to dance. Read The Four Agreements. Read the Bible. Read the Bhagavad Gita. Join nothing. It won’t help. No games, no church, no religion, no yellow-brick road, no way to Oz. Wear beads. Watch a caterpillar in the sun.

Do you remember what you told me,” I say, “about your brain?” His hand pauses. “You said it felt like a Ferris wheel,” I say. “Like all your thoughts were constantly circling, and you’d reach out for one, but it was hard to stay on it for too long because they kept spinning.” The lines of his face soften. His fingers curl, the backs of his nails pressing into my skin. “Except with you. You’re like gravity.” I couldn’t have pulled myself away from him then if he’d burst into flames. “Everything keeps spinning,” he says in a low, hoarse voice. “But my mind’s always got one hand on you.

My mind still, now and again, becomes a carnival of lights, laughter, and sounds and possibilities. The laughter and exuberance and ease will, filling me, spill out and over and into others. These glinting, glorious moments will last for a while, a short season, and then move on. My high moods and hopes, having ridden briefly in the top car of the Ferris wheel will, as suddenly as they came, plummet into a black and grey and tired heap. Time will pass; these moods will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.

Good-bye!" she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him. She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.

its own lunch counter, and how when filled to capacity the wheel would propel 2,160 people at a time three hundred feet into the sky over Jackson Park, a bit higher than the crown of the now six-year-old Statue of Liberty. He told Rice, “I want you at once if you can come.” He signed the letter: George Washington Gale Ferris.

him, wondering which version of Four I’ll see now—the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile doesn’t spread to his eyes, which look tense and worried. “You belong here, you know that?” he says. “You belong with us. It’ll be over soon, so just hold on, okay?” He scratches behind his ear and looks away, like he’s embarrassed by what he said. I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care. I reach out and take his hand. His fingers slide between mine. I can’t breathe.

I've always had this fantasy of being at the top of a Ferris wheel with a gorgeous guy and having him kiss me." "Really? That's your fantasy?" "One of them." She narrowed her eyes, but it didn't diminish their light. "And I fit the bill?" he said, unable to stop himself from moving his stare to her mouth. Christ, he wasn't expecting her to say any of that, but now that she had, he had the urge to fulfill all her fantasies. "You asked." She shrugged and started to turn away. He caught her jaw and tilted it up to his. "Do you want me to kiss you?" Long, dark eyelashes reached the arch of her brows. "We shouldn't" "That's not what I asked." She squirmed, her breath caught. "Yes," she whispered.

Wait a second,” Four says. I turn toward him, wondering which version of Four I’ll see now—the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile doesn’t spread to his eyes, which look tense and worried. “You belong here, you know that?” he says. “You belong with us. It’ll be over soon, so just hold on, okay?” He scratches behind his ear and looks away, like he’s embarrassed by what he said. I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care. I reach out and take his hand. His fingers slide between mine. I can’t breathe.

I wrote about a place called Alki Beach. When I had first crossed the bridge into West Seattle, I could see the city skyline over Puget Sound. I stood on a strip of purple-gray beach sand. A pier house sold hairy mussels and one-hour bike rentals. Copper and metal signs whipped against the wind. Old couples toted bouquets under wooden pergolas. Those singing and strolling on the beach eventually curved around the bend toward the northern arc and out of sight. I wanted to live here by its waters, read its signs, admire the wind as one admires an old friend. The skyscrapers across the water might be a bracelet across my wrist—the Ferris wheel, city stadium, ships in the harbor. I had never known that joy was a practice the way poetry was a practice. Somebody asked if they could

Grovelling then busking All at once And all in time Leaving a Ferris-wheel trail Across a deep mountainous climb Descended with rapture and with joy Their mindless triumphant demeanour Gossamer wings parade-parade These gormless little ants Full to the brimful Empty to the last meandering weight Pulled across the Rotting fruit filled with retiring goodness Tiny prissy princelings These masterful creatures Filled with adventuring spirit March on, march on Under the forgiving human's Watchful, waiting and wandering eye.

The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither the Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For Childhood is short—a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day— And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes. Amen

Hey, I have an idea,” Lex said. “Give me a sec.” He kept trying. “Idea as in ‘good idea,’ or idea as in ‘let’s take the Ferris wheel, everyone, I’m sure it’ll be a carefree ride of thrills and delights and whimsy’—” “Does this help?” Driggs opened his eyes and, in the space of a yoctosecond, popped right into a solid body. Lex half expected to hear a wacky boing sound effect. She grabbed his arm to keep him that way, while he kept on staring at her bare chest. “So,” he said, swallowing, “good idea, then.” “Thank you.” He pulled her close and gave her a kiss. “And thank you for sparing me your devil corset.” She held it up and waved it in his face. “It’s a standard bra, Driggs. From, like, Target.” “Satan employs many disguises.” “Like you’re from the Land of Superior Underwear. Let’s see what sort of designer boxers you’ve chosen to grace my presence with today.” She unzipped his pants and looked. “Dude. Penguins?” “Um, penguins are officially recognized as the most adorable bird on the planet,” he said, a hint of anxiety creeping into his voice. “What’s wrong with penguins?” “Nothing—” “And igloos. See their little igloos?” “Yes—” “The Santa hats are a bit much, I’ll give you that, but they were a Christmas present, okay? And if I’d known that I was going to die while wearing them and be forever doomed to their Arctic quirkiness—and of hypothermia, too, how’s that for irony—” “Driggs,” she interrupted, grabbing his chin and boring her eyes into his. “I thought we were on a tight time frame here.” “Right.” He scratched his head. “I think that perhaps, since I’m talking way too much, there is the slightest chance that I might be a tiny bit nervous.” Lex smirked. “Relax, spaz.” “Oh, no way. You do not get to use that against me.

He had long since observed that Elizabeth had superfluous IQ for her line of work, and inside all that free space in her brain she was completing a philosophy of the world wove together out of all the smells she had ever smelled. Maybe her memory was not the longest. Every day she had to go over every line of it again from top to bottom, just like the day before. She was history-minded: she wanted a piece of ever dog who had come before her to every landmark, the whole roll call, every tuft of grass at the foot of the loading platform by the old natrium plant, every pile of boards or lost truck part in the fringe of weeds along the shore at the four-car ferry, every corner stump or clump of pee-bleached iris on the shaggy line where front yards ended in pavement. The one-time ice house. The Wheeling & Lake Erie water tower. Every boundary stone still standing, however crookedly, in front of the town cemetery. Where putting her own bit into this olfactory model of the world was concerned, Elizabeth was not demure but lifted her leg like any male dog, a little decrepitly now that she was old. Come outa there, Elizabeth. He didn’t want her pissing on the gravestones.