Flowering Judas Quotes

You waste life when you waste good food.

[From Flowering Judas] She is, her comrades tell her, full of romantic error, for what she defines as cynicism in them is merely 'a developed sense of reality'.

I still dream in pictures and color, always the world of my childhood. I see the purple Judas trees at Easter lighting up the roadsides and terraces of the town. Ochre cliffs made of cinnamon powder. Autumn clouds rolling along the ground of the hills, and the patchwork of wet oak leaves on the grass. The shape of a rose petal. And my parents' faces, which will never grow any older. "But it is strange how scent brings it all back too. I only have to smell certain aromas, and I am back in a certain place with a certain feeling." The comforting past smelled of heliotrope and cherry and sweet almond biscuits: close-up smells, flowers you had to put your nose to as the sight faded from your eyes. The scents of that childhood past had already begun to slip away: Maman's apron with blotches of game stew; linen pressed with faded lavender; the sheep in the barn. The present, or what had so very recently been the present, was orange blossom infused with hope.

Some kisses pronounced themselvesthe judgment of conviction love,Some kisses are given with an eyeSome kisses are given with the memory.There are silent kisses, kisses noblesThere enigmatic kisses, sincereSome kisses are given only soulsThere forbidden kisses, true.Some kisses calcined and hurt,Some kisses captivate sensesThere mysterious kisses that have leftthousand wandering and lost dreams.There problematic kisses enclosinga key that no one has decipheredSome kisses engender tragedyfew have defoliated roses brooch.There perfumed kisses, warm kissesthrobbing in intimate longings,Some kisses on the lips leave tracesas a field of sun between two ice.Some kisses seem liliesby sublime, naive and pure,There treacherous and cowardly kisses,There cursed and perjured kisses.Judas kisses Jesus and leaves printin the face of God, felony,while Magdalena with kissesfortifies pious agony.From then kisses throbslove, betrayal and pain,in human weddings they seemthe breeze playing with flowers.There are kisses that produce ravingsloving hot and mad passion,you know them well are my kissesinvented by me, for your mouth.Flame kisses printed on trailThey take the grooves of a forbidden love,kisses storm, wild kissesour lips only been tested.Do you remember the first ...? Indefinable;Your face covered with blushes luridand in the throes of terrible emotion,Your eyes were filled with tears.Do you remember that one evening in excess crazyI saw you jealous imagining grievances,He flunked you in my arms ... a kiss vibrated,and then ... did you see? Blood on my lips.I taught you to kiss: cold kissesThey are impassive rock heart,I taught you how to kiss with my kissesinvented by me, for your mouth

Thalia is such a pretty name. Is it Greek?” The girl looked at her in surprise. “Very good, Lieutenant. My mother is from Athens. Thalia was the Muse of Comedy. She also worked part-time as one of the Graces—Thalia the Flowering. It’s a nice history. I’d like to think that I inspired some creativity at some point in my life. I’d like to teach art, so perhaps it was prophetic of my mother.” They had moved through the nave of the church now, and Thalia pointed to a door.

If the gospel lacks correspondence to reality, why is it that the majority of believers never comes to terms with this? As I expressed in my opening chapter, I am convinced it is not due to a lack of intelligence. Nor is it due to a lack of goodness or noble intentions on the part of most believers. Rather, from the perspective of one who has escaped the finely tuned clutches of the Christian machinery designed to keep me in the fold, I see it primarily as a lack of courage, at least for those who have encountered good reasons for doubting. I, like most believers, experienced serious doubts as a young Christian, but I lacked the courage to pit my reservations against the authority of the church and against its fallible, humanly authored scriptures, finding it safer to submit to the supremely well-crafted, guilt-inducing tactics of apologists who assured me that all the fault lay with me and not with the divinely inspired Bible. I capitulated and managed to hold my doubts at bay for over a decade longer while serving God on the mission field. Many if not most of you have faced similar questions and misgivings about the Bible and the Christian faith, even if not to the same extent. You might be like me during my initial short-lived crises of faith: I could not bring myself to face with courage the possibility that life might not have any cosmic Meaning; that there might be no higher power to guide, protect, and provide for me; that justice might not prevail in the long run; that I might no longer be able to hold sinners accountable with the words, "Thus says the Lord"; that life ends at the grave; or that I might have followed and lead others to follow a grand mistake. I lacked the courage to face my church, family, and friends whom I feared would look upon me as a reprobate. I lacked the courage to think for myself—to accept that the virtues of humility and meekness must not be used as an excuse for failing to challenge entrenched ideas that lack sufficient evidence. In short, I preferred to squelch the seed of doubt and label it as sin rather than as healthy, critical thinking, lest it flower and make life unbearable. That I viewed my incipient doubt and disbelief as sin was no accident: the church has a powerful vested interest in keeping believers in the fold, and it will not let them go without a fight. My courage-squelching guilt or angst was the result of a concerted effort developed over the centuries to make me feel like a depraved worm, a proud and willful rebel, a traitor, a God-hater, and an enemy of all that is good. I was programmed to consider that I would be better off if I were to commit adultery or murder than if I were to abandon the one who created me and redeemed me. Without Christ I would be worse than a good-for-nothing, and, like the traitor Judas, it would have been better for me had I never been born. No wonder most believers never muster the courage to break free from this cage!

Beneath the thick flowering smell was an antiseptic undernote, profumo della morte. The scent of death was pervasive and ugly, no matter what Renaissance language she translated it into. She

Away for a day and the desk bloomed like forsythia, one moment barren and empty, the next full of unruly flowers.

I dream and drift, a double self, me and that woman … A great weariness becomes a black fire that consumes me … A great, passive yearning becomes the false life embracing me … Such a dull happiness! Being eternally at a point where two paths fork! I dream and behind me someone else is dreaming with me … Perhaps I am only the dream of that nonexistent Someone … Outside, the ever-distant dawn! The forest so intensely present to those other eyes of mine! When I’m far from that landscape, I almost forget it, and only when I have it here before me do I miss it, and only when I walk through it do I weep and long for it … The trees, the flowers, the secret, tree-thick paths! We would sometimes walk together, arm in arm, beneath the cedars and the Judas trees, and neither of us even gave a thought to living. Our flesh was a vague perfume and our life the echo of a bubbling spring. We would hold hands, and our eyes would wonder what it would be like to be a sensual being and to want to make flesh the illusion of love … In our garden there were flowers of every beautiful kind — roses with curled petals, white lilies tinged with yellow, poppies that would have been hidden had their red blush not betrayed their presence, a few violets on the crowded edges of the flower beds, tiny forget-me-nots, camellias barren of scent … And, erect above the tall grasses, the wide eyes of lone sunflowers would watch us.

The urge to flee is a high-pitched whistle and I stare into a black cavity of space that stinks of urine and dead flowers. Of rotting oranges and leather and spray paint. I crawl into the space and find a corner. I stare into the shadows and I see several corpselike figures, coiled in burlap sacks around me. Sleeping drunks with the faces of dogs, of horses. I blink and they’re not there.

The problem with intensifying an image only by adjectives, as you can see from these examples, is that adjectives encourage cliché. It’s hard to think of adjective descriptors that haven’t been overused: bulging or ropy muscles; clean-cut good looks; frizzy hair. If you use an adjective to describe a physical attribute, make sure the phrase is not only accurate and sensory but fresh. In “Flowering Judas,” Katherine Anne Porter describes Braggioni’s singing voice as a “furry, mournful voice” that takes the high notes “in a prolonged painful squeal.” Often, the easiest way to avoid an adjective-based cliché is to free the phrase entirely from its adjective modifier. For example, rather than describing her eyes merely as “hazel,” Emily Dickinson remarked that they were “the color of the sherry the guests leave in the glasses.” Making

I read a quote from Absalom, Absalom! It's a reference to some of the plants that have already lost their blooms: "...and you said North Mississippi is a little harder country than Louisiana, with dogwood and violets and the early scentless flowers, but the earth and the nights still a little cold and the hard, tight sticky buds... on Judas trees and beech and maple...you find that you have been wanting that pretty hard for some time..." In his story Faulkner may have been suggesting a lustful want for the maiden Judith Sutpen, but I take it another direction. As hard as Mississippi can be, I realize now I have indeed been wanting that pretty hard for some time. If only I had known to avoid the wisteria. Instead, I said no when I should have said yes; said yes when I should have said no---and that mistake has nearly choked the life from me.

Reed is nothing like these men. Never was. Instead, he is a master of disguise. A man so broken, his form shifts completely based on the angle of the light that meets him. He's like the cleome that bloom here in Mother's garden, changing from dark pink at night to pale come morning, then to white again before the bloom falls. Or the heirloom petunias. Or the Confederate rose. Never know what we might find when we visit them. Fickle flowers, they behave as if they've forgotten who they really are, always hiding, fooling us by showing only what they want us to see. I now understand there have always been men like Reed in the world. A Judas. A wounded soul who causes tremendous harm for his own gain.