Firing On All Cylinders Quotes

At the sight of Gansey's Aglionby sweater, Adam's father had charged out, firing on all cylinders. For weeks after that, Ronan had called Gansey "the S.R.F.," where the S stood for Soft, the R stood for Rich, and the F for something else.

All drunks, particularly those who grew up in alcoholic homes, have that same sense of angst and trepidation, one that has no explainable origins. The fear is not necessarily self-centered, either. It’s like watching someone point a revolver at his temple while he cocks and dry-fires the mechanism, over and over again, until the cylinder rotates a loaded chamber into firing position.

Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground., to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

Even mild dehydration can cause headaches and fatigue, affect your concentration, impair short-term memory and impede mental function. If you want to be at your most productive, it’s important for your brain to be firing on all cylinders. Therefore, you should make sure you are sufficiently hydrated before starting work.

And, of course, between the ups and downs, the good times and bad, there are ongoing challenges to keep everyone firing on all cylinders at all times. Not to get too clever, but “consistent effort is a consistent challenge.” There

in the pre-modern world, when people wrote about the past they were more concerned with what an event had meant. A myth was an event which, in some sense, had happened once, but which also happened all the time. Because of our strictly chronological view of history, we have no word for such an occurrence, but mythology is an art form that points beyond history to what is timeless in human existence, helping us to get beyond the chaotic flux of random events, and glimpse the core of reality. An experience of transcendence has always been part of the human experience. We seek out moments of ecstasy, when we feel deeply touched within and lifted momentarily beyond ourselves. At such times, it seems that we are living more intensely than usual, firing on all cylinders, and inhabiting the whole of our humanity. Religion has been one of the most traditional ways of attaining ecstasy, but if people no longer find it in temples, synagogues, churches or mosques, they look for it elsewhere: in art, music, poetry, rock, dance, drugs, sex or sport. Like poetry and music, mythology should awaken us to rapture, even in the face of death and the despair we may feel at the prospect of annihilation. If a myth ceases to do that, it has died and outlived its usefulness.

We are often running on fumes, spiritually, but we must know where the fuel station is and, even more important, that it exists. After trying all kinds of other things, Christians have learned that the worship of God with the whole heart in the assurance of his love through the work of Jesus Christ is the thing their souls were meant to “run on.” That is what gets all the heart’s cylinders to fire. If this is not understood, then we will not have the resources to be good spouses. If we look to our spouses to fill up our tanks in a way that only God can do, we are demanding an impossibility.

I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, ‘in the zone’ seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time. The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems. In a word: PERSIST. PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision ….

Writers have come to master nearly every trade. They are inventors and entrepreneurs of character, plot, and dialogue. They are the eager scientists that can’t wait to try out their new experiment. They are the maestros of the symphony that plays in their head, conducting what happens, where, and at what precise moment. They are engineers and architects that design the structure of their piece so it stands the test of time and continues to fire on all cylinders. They play mechanics and doctors in their revisions, hoping they prescribe the correct diagnosis to fix the piece’s 'boo boos'. They are salesmen who pitch not an idea or a product, but themselves, to editors, publishers, and more importantly, their readers. They are teachers who through their craft, preach to pupils about what works and what doesn’t work and why. Writers can make you feel, can make you think, can make you wonder, but they can also grab your hand and guide you through their maze. Similar to what Emerson stated in 'The Poet,' writers possess a unique view on life, and with their revolving eye, they attempt to encompass all. I am a writer.

Rooster here has missed Ned a few times himself, horse and all,' said the captain. 'I reckon his is on his way now to missing him again.' Rooster was holding a bottle with a little whiskey in it. He said, 'You keep on thinking that.' He drained off the whiskey in about three swallows and tapped the cork back in and tossed the bottle up in the air. He pulled his revolver and fired at it twice and missed. The bottle fell and rolled and Rooster shot at it two or three more times and broke it on the ground. He got out his sack of cartridges and reloaded his pistol. He said, 'The Chinaman is running them cheap shells in on me again.' LaBoeuf said, 'I thought maybe the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your eye.' Rooster swung the cylinder back in his revolver and said, 'Eyes, is it? I'll show you eyes!' He jerked the sack of corn dodgers free from his saddle baggage. He got one of the dodgers out and flung it in the air and fired at it and missed. Then he flung another one up and he hit it. The corn dodger exploded. He was pleased with himself and he got a fresh bottle of whiskey from his baggage and treated himself to a drink. LaBoeuf pulled one of his revolvers and got two dodgers out of the sack and tossed them both up. He fired very rapidly but he only hit one. Captain Finch tried it with two and missed both of them. Then he tried with one and made a successful shot. Rooster shot at two and hit one. They drank whiskey and used up about sixty corn dodgers like that. None of them ever hit two at one throw with a revolver but Captain Finch finally did it with his Winchester repeating rifle, with somebody else throwing. It was entertaining for a while but there was nothing educational about it. I grew more and more impatient with them. I said, 'Come on, I have had my bait of this. I am ready to go. Shooting cornbread out here on this prairie is not taking us anywhere.' By then Rooster was using his rifle and the captain was throwing for him. 'Chunk high and not so far out this time,' said he.

You heard me. Let someone else send you to your blaze of glory. You're a speck, man. You're nothing. You're not worth the bullet or the mark on my soul for taking you out." You trying to piss me off again, Patrick?" He removed Campbell Rawson from his shoulder and held him aloft. I tilted my wrist so the cylinder fell into my palm, shrugged. "You're a joke, Gerry. I'm just calling it like I see it." That so?" Absolutely." I met his hard eyes with my own. "And you'll be replaced, just like everything else, in maybe a week, tops. Some other dumb, sick shit will come along and kill some people and he'll be all over the papers, and all over Hard Copy and you'll be yesterday's news. Your fifteen minutes are up, Gerry. And they've passed without impact." They'll remember this," Gerry said. "Believe me." Gerry clamped back on the trigger. When he met my finger, he looked at me and then clamped down so hard that my finger broke. I depressed the trigger on the one-shot and nothing happened. Gerry shrieked louder, and the razor came out of my flesh, then swung back immediately, and I clenched my eyes shut and depressed the trigger frantically three times. And Gerry's hand exploded. And so did mine. The razor hit the ice by my knee as I dropped the one shot and fire roared up the electrical tape and gasoline on Gerry's arm and caught the wisps of Danielle's hair. Gerry threw his head back and opened his mouth wide and bellowed in ecstasy. I grabbed the razor, could barely feel it because the nerves in my hand seemed to have stopped working. I slashed into the electric tape at the end of the shotgun barrel, and Danielle dropped away toward the ice and rolled her head into the frozen sand. My broken finger came back out of the shotgun and Gerry swung the barrels toward my head. The twin shotgun bores arced through the darkness like eyes without mercy or soul, and I raised my head to meet them, and Gerry's wail filled my ears as the fire licked at his neck. Good-bye, I thought. Everyone. It's been nice. Oscar's first two shots entered the back of Gerry's head and exited through the center of his forehead and a third punched into his back. The shotgun jerked upward in Gerry's flaming arm and then the shots came from the front, several at once, and Gerry spun like a marionette and pitched toward the ground. The shotgun boomed twice and punched holes through the ice in front of him as he fell. He landed on his knees and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was dead or not. His rusty hair was afire and his head lolled to the left as one eye disappeared in flames but the other shimmered at me through waves of heat, and an amused derision shone in the pupil. Patrick, the eye said through the gathering smoke, you still know nothing. Oscar rose up on the other side of Gerry's corpse, Campbell Rawson clutched tight to his massive chest as it rose and fell with great heaving breaths. The sight of it-something so soft and gentle in the arms of something so thick and mountaineous-made me laugh. Oscar came out of the darkness toward me, stepped around Gerry's burning body, and I felt the waves of heat rise toward me as the circle of gasoline around Gerry caught fire. Burn, I thought. Burn. God help me, but burn. Just after Oscar stepped over the outer edge of the circle, it erupted in yellow flame, and I found myself laughing harder as he looked at it, not remotely impressed. I felt cool lips smack against my ear, and by the time I looked her way, Danielle was already past me, rushing to take her child from Oscar. His huge shadow loomed over me as he approached, and I looked up at him and he held the look for a long moment. How you doing, Patrick?" he said and smiled broadly. And, behind him, Gerry burned on the ice. And everything was so goddamned funny for some reason, even though I knew it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. I did. But I was still laughing when they put me in the ambulance.

To Whom it May Inspire,” Austin wrote. “I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, ‘in the zone’ seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time. The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems. In a word: PERSIST. PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision.…

Hookers, Hondas and Hollywood all approach customers with a different mindset than the rest of the business world. Whereas most businesses talk about the importance of "customer service," agents, mechanics and people of the night talk about "servicing customers." It is an important distinction, as customer service is generally a reactive process in which professionals and businesses respond to the needs of their clients, while servicing customers involves exploration to discover what the customer needs in order to start firing all the cylinders.

THAT DAY, while we were in school, four men in a jeep came to visit Ghosh. They took him away as if he were a common criminal, his hands jacked up behind his back. They slapped him when he tried to protest. Hema learned this from W. W. Gonad, who told the men they were surely mistaken in taking away Missing’s surgeon. For his impertinence W.W. got a boot in his stomach. Hema refused to believe Ghosh was gone. She ran home, certain that she’d find him sunk into his armchair, his sockless feet up on the stool, reading a book. In anticipation of seeing him, in the certainty that he would be there, she was already furious with him. She burst through the front door of our bungalow. “Do you see how dangerous it is for us to associate with the General? What have I been telling you? You could get us all killed!” Whenever she came at him like that, all her cylinders firing, it was Ghosh’s habit to flourish an imaginary cape like a matador facing a charging bull. We found it funny, even if Hema never did. But the house was quiet. No matador. She went from room to room, the jingle of her anklets echoing in the hallways. She imagined Ghosh with his arm twisted behind his back, being punched in the face,

You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo? You are a man, a retired railroad worker who makes replicas as a hobby. You decide to make a replica of one tree, the longleaf pine your great-grandfather planted- just a replica- it doesn’t have to work. How are you going to do it? How long do you think you might live, how good is your glue? For one thing, you are going to have to dig a hole and stick your replica trunk halfway to China if you want the thing to stand up. Because you will have to work fairly big; if your replica is too small, you’ll be unable to handle the slender, three-sided needles, affix them in clusters of three in fascicles, and attach those laden fascicles to flexible twigs. The twigs themselves must be covered by “many silvery-white, fringed, long-spreading scales.” Are your pine cones’ scales “thin, flat, rounded at the apex?” When you loose the lashed copper wire trussing the limbs to the trunk, the whole tree collapses like an umbrella. You are a sculptor. You climb a great ladder; you pour grease all over a growing longleaf pine. Next, you build a hollow cylinder around the entire pine…and pour wet plaster over and inside the pine. Now open the walls, split the plaster, saw down the tree, remove it, discard, and your intricate sculpture is ready: this is the shape of part of the air. You are a chloroplast moving in water heaved one hundred feet above ground. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen in a ring around magnesium…you are evolution; you have only begun to make trees. You are god- are you tired? Finished?

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. •  •  • When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again. The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

Then he went up to the window. His heart began pounding excitedly when he turned back the yellow linen of the curtain. An enchantingly beautiful spectacle was revealed before him — although today he immediately noticed that there was something strange in the entire aspect of this extensive and excellently arranged Garden. Precisely what amazed him he was still unable to say right away, and he began to examine the Garden attentively. What was there so unpleasant in its beauty? Why was the Youth's heart trembling so painfully? Was it that everything in the enchanted Garden was too exact. All the paths were laid out geometrically, and all were of the same width, and all were covered with precisely the same amount of yellow sand; the plants were all arranged with exaggerated orderliness; the trees were trimmed in the form of spheres, cones and cylinders; the flowers were arranged according to the various shades so that their composition was pleasing to the eye, but for some reason or other this wounded the soul. But giving it careful thought, what was there unpleasant in that orderliness which merely bore witness to the careful attention which someone paid to the Garden? Of course there was no reason for this to cause the strange apprehension which oppressed the Youth. But it was in something else as yet incomprehensible to the Youth. One thing was for certain, though, that this Garden did not resemble any other garden which the Youth had happened to see in his time. Here he saw giant flowers of an almost too brilliant color — at times it seemed that many-colored fires were burning in the midst of the luxuriant greenery — brown and black stalks of creeping growths, thick like tropical serpents; leaves of a strange shape and immeasurable size, whose greeness seemed to be unnaturally brilliant. Heady and languid fragrances wafted through the window in gentle waves, breaths of vanilla, frankincense and bitter almond, sweet and bitter, ecstatic and sad, like some joyous funereal mysterium. The Youth felt the tender yet lively touches of the gentle wind. But in the Garden it seemed as if the wind had no strength and lay exhausted on the tranquil green grass and in the shadows beneath the bushes of the strange growths. And because the trees and grass of the strange Garden were breathlessly quiet and could not hear the softly blowing wind above them and did not reply to it, they seemed to be inanimate. And thus they were deceitful, evil and hostile to man. ("The Poison Garden")

First, the picture of marriage given here is not of two needy people, unsure of their own value and purpose, finding their significance and meaning in one another’s arms. If you add two vacuums to each other, you only get a bigger and stronger vacuum, a giant sucking sound. Rather, Paul assumes that each spouse already has settled the big questions of life—why they were made by God and who they are in Christ. No one lives a life of continual joy in God, of course. It is not automatic and constant. If that were the case, Paul would not have had to start verse 18 with an imperative, exhorting them literally to “go on being filled with the Spirit!” We are often running on fumes, spiritually, but we must know where the fuel station is and, even more important, that it exists. After trying all kinds of other things, Christians have learned that the worship of God with the whole heart in the assurance of his love through the work of Jesus Christ is the thing their souls were meant to “run on.” That is what gets all the heart’s cylinders to fire. If this is not understood, then we will not have the resources to be good spouses. If we look to our spouses to fill up our tanks in a way that only God can do, we are demanding an impossibility.

You always have general well-being at your fingertips, and it has an ancient meaning. The ancient key unlocks the universe's most important, mystical, and smart healing power. The key of ancient times is: you. You are the key to your well-being as a whole. You have all the natural world's basic powers inside you, including the healing power. You have the ability to heal while also finding teachers and trained medical practitioners’ advice, guidance, and wisdom. Get support and advice as you enter your lifelong journey of health and vitality. Say what you notice about yourself to your doctors and healers. Ask questions and receive answers. Work together and, through experience and study, increase your knowledge. This book is going to support you in this quest. There are seven big chakras in you that affect you mentally, psychologically, and spiritually. The chakras are bright, glowing centers of energy that control the flow of energy from life-force. The chakras sometimes spin too slowly, sometimes too fast, and sometimes just fine. Energy flows naturally to your physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies if they move correctly. This means that you are firing on all cylinders. You can live your life with ease, joy, clear-headedness, love, intimacy, health, safety, and whatever else your heart desires by learning about the chakras and how to balance them. You will find the chakras are moving in and out of equilibrium, and you can learn and recover from them. You become more connected with wisdom, joy, and the strength of love and appreciation that connects you to everything as you balance the chakras. For good health, these good feelings go hand in hand. Chakra healing is a kind of holistic healing that links mind, body, and spirit (or what you might call power, Source, or God). Colorful, creative, magical, surprising, restorative and cleaning is the experience of chakra healing. This takes you to who you truly are. If you are overweight, underweight, constipated, excessively stressed, depressed, unable to perform tasks, exhausted, nervous, and/or bored, these and many other symptoms are not really what you are. Who you really are is bright, optimistic, clear-minded, caring, positive, happy, fun, and capable of creating the life you desire. As you get to know the chakras, you can switch from the other states to who you really are. If you're struggling with too much discomfort and neglecting the needs of your body, you'll run down and become sick. Your body is smart and will make up for deficiencies in various ways, keeping you as healthy as possible, as long as possible. However, if the vital life-force energy does not flow through you in a balanced way, you will not maintain long-term mental or physical health. You need to unblock the chakras for health, youthfulness, joy, and the life you really want to create.

We’re about to send a picture out over the network.” “But how?” “Watch and see,” Penny advised. In the center of the room stood two machines with cylinders, one for transmitting pictures to distant stations, the other for receiving them. On the sending cylinder was wrapped a glossy 8 by 10 photograph of a fire. As Penny spoke, an attendant pressed a starter switch on the sending machine. There was a high pitched rasp as the clutch threw in, and the cylinder bearing the picture began to turn at a steady measured pace. “It’s a complicated process,” Penny said glibly. “A photo electric cell scans the picture and transmits it to all the points on the network. Salt here could tell you more about it.

Serotonin boosts your mood, endorphins block pain, and dopamine, the pleasure hormone, is stimulated when you strive toward a goal. When these giddy guys are firing on all cylinders, you get a burst of joy, energy, and motivation.

The revolver was chambered for .442 rounds, which meant there was only room for five. "These are large caliber bullets for such a short gun," Merritt remarked. "It's designed to stop someone at close range," Ethan said, absently arching up to rub a spot on his chest. "Being hit by one of those bullets feels like a kick from a mule." "Why is the hammer bobbed?" "To keep it from catching on the holster or clothing, if I have to draw it fast." Keeping the muzzle of the gun pointed away from him, Merritt reassembled the revolver, slid the extractor rod into place, and locked it deftly. "Well done," Ethan commented, surprised by her assurance. "You're familiar with guns, then." "Yes, my father taught me. May I shoot it?" "What are you going to aim for?" By this time, the others had come out from the parlor to watch. "Uncle Sebastian," Merritt asked, "are those pottery rabbits on the stone wall valuable?" Kingston smiled slightly and shook his head. "Have at it." "Wait," Ethan said calmly. "That's a twenty-yard distance. You'll need a longer-range weapon." With meticulous care, he took the revolver from her and replaced it in his coat. "Try this one." Merritt's brows lifted slightly as he pulled a gun from a cross-draw holster concealed by his coat. This time, Ethan handed the revolver to her without bothering to disassemble it first. "It's loaded, save one chamber," he cautioned. "I put the hammer down to prevent accidental discharge." "A Colt single-action," Merritt said, pleased, admiring the elegant piece, with its four-and-a-half-inch barrel and custom engraving. "Papa has one similar to this." She eased the hammer back and gently rotated the cylinder. "It has a powerful recoil," Ethan warned. "I would expect so." Merritt held the Colt in a practiced grip, the fingers of her support hand fit neatly underneath the trigger guard. "Cover your ears," she said, cocking the hammer and aligning the sights. She squeezed the trigger. An earsplitting report, a flash of light from the muzzle, and one of the rabbit sculptures on the wall shattered. In the silence that followed, Merritt heard her father say dryly, "Go on, Merritt. Put the other bunny out of its misery." She cocked the hammer, aimed and fired again. The second rabbit sculpture exploded. "Sweet Mother Mary," Ethan said in wonder. "I've never seen a woman shoot like that." "My father taught all of us how to shoot and handle firearms safely," Merritt said, giving the revolver back to him grip-first.

If your body isn’t firing on all cylinders, nothing you do will fundamentally change the way things are happening for you in your life.

I don't understand," she said. "I have no clue what you were trying to say this morning." "Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not firing on all eight cylinders right now." He self-consciously attempted to rub away the purpling sags beneath his eyes. After the white spots dissipated she had impossibly grown even more beautiful. She was magical like that; even if he only looked away for a moment, when he returned his gaze upon her, those cheeks, those eyes, those lips were somehow even more enticing. Somehow even more irresistible. Jesus, could she make him thump. "I didn't really sleep last night. After reading your comments and seeing your handwriting again after such a long time...my head shot into a kind of hyperdrive." "What do you mean?" Her eyes fluttered as she looked up at him. Not flirtatiously, but with inquisitiveness. Oh, the way she fluttered those lids. His chest expanded; he was beyond enamored of her intellect and the way she always needed to get the clearest picture possible. "I just couldn't stop thinking how great everything was between us, and how fantastic everything is going to be once we work out the personal shit we're both dealing with," he said. "I had goosebumps trilling up my arms and the back of my neck because I have already done three or four rewrites, and like eighty percent of the changes I made mirrored your suggestions." He took a deep breath. He would inhale her entirety if he could, make her a permanent part of himself- absorb her being. "It was kind of eerie." He placed a clumsy hand on her cheek and caressed her eyebrow with his thumb, wishing to god it were his bottom lip. "And so not surprising.

A company that is efficiently built around remote work doesn’t even have to have a set schedule. This is especially important when it comes to creative work. If you can’t get into the zone, there’s rarely much that can force you into it. When face time isn’t a requirement, the best strategy is often to take some time away and get back to work when your brain is firing on all cylinders.

He could bring it. Oh hell, he could bring it every time. There was no B game from Brent Nichols. He fired on all cylinders all the

The sun starts to sink lower over the ocean, and Zach somehow magics up a fire from driftwood and kindling. And then he brings out the marshmallows. Not a bag of mass-produced, uniform white cylinders of sugar. But two not-quite-square, hand-made, artisanal marshmallows. I look up at him. “Are you kidding me right now?” The right side of his mouth kicks up in a smirk that says I gave him exactly the reaction he was looking for. “Nope,” he says. “I asked the baker and she made these special for us. After all, I did promise you.” He grabs a forked stick and roasts them for us. When they’re perfectly golden brown and sagging off the stick, he slides it onto a graham cracker, and adds a square of chocolate. I put the entire thing in my mouth. “Ohmigod!” I murmur. “This is amazing!” “Transcendent?” he teases. “Absolutely.” I agree, licking some of the sugar off my fingers. He grabs my wrist and the next thing I know, he’s licking the sugar off my fingers. Oh God, and now I’m thinking of last night and what else he licked. As I watch, his eyes get intense; he’s thinking the same. “We can’t have sex on the beach,” I say breathlessly. “Too sandy.” “You have a one-track mind, don’t you?” he teases. “I only brought you here for the sunset.” Aaaand now I feel like an idiot. “Right,” I cough, blushing. “Well, thank you.” “But …” He adds, his mouth curving into that sexy smile that kills me. “That doesn’t mean we can’t … kiss.” His hand comes up to push a stray lock of hair behind my ear. I nod because resistance is futile. The best I can do is make light of it so he can’t see the emotion coursing through me. “I’m pretty sure it’s the law that when you drink wine and eat artisanal marshmallows on the beach, you have to kiss.” I wave vaguely toward where we left the car. “I saw it on the sign by the parking lot.” “Well, if it’s a law,” he grins. A second later, his lips find mine. He tastes like wine and sugar, and pure Zach. I sigh in pleasure. This picnic, the marshmallows—everything—just might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me. But that perfect sunset? We totally miss it. After all, there are better things to do.

Basically, the elements of the cognoscopy reveal which synapse-destroying processes might be at work in your brain, and which synapse-maintaining ones might not be firing on all cylinders, leading to the synapse loss that causes the loss of memory and cognitive abilities. This is in stark contrast to the laboratory tests now done for cognitive decline, none of which actually pinpoints its underlying cause or causes.

You will have your own examples of a work environment that seems to be firing on all cylinders. It will be a place where performance levels are consistently high, where turnover levels are low, and where a growing number of loyal customers join the fold every day.

Free Flowing Dialogue “Have you ever been engaged in a conversation which was so dynamic that you were both firing on all cylinders, in perfect harmony and at warp speed?

Practicing music actively and thoughtfully gets the brain firing on all cylinders: it involves touch, sight, hearing, motion, emotion, intellect, imagination, visualization and memory all at once – not to mention music. Practicing takes discipline, planning, commitment and concentration. And at the same time it’s enjoyable and satisfying.

Black Bottom is walking tall, chin up, fist balled, brain firing on all cylinders. Black Bottom folk got steel in their spines, steel in their jaws, and steel in their will. But it wasn’t always an attitude. Before it was razed, it was a place.

A lot of people seem to think that the point of the moral life is continence, as if we were made for a lifetime’s toil of scales, arpeggios, and etudes. In fact, the point of the moral life is virtue. We are made for concert performance. We are made to fire on all cylinders and to do so as if effortlessly. Virtue is not a matter of mere moral might; it actually changes us in our inmost being. It makes us good and fit for good deeds.