Fly Me To The Moon Quotes

Because when I said I wanted to touch the moon you took my hand, held me close, and taught me how to fly.

I almost miss the sound of your voice but know that the rain outside my window will suffice for tonight. I’m not drunk yet, but we haven’t spoken in months now and I wanted to tell you that someone threw a bouquet of roses in the trash bin on the corner of my street, and I wanted to cry because, because — well, you know exactly why. And, I guess I’m calling because only you understand how that would break my heart. I’m running out of things to say. My gas is running on empty. I’ve stopped stealing pages out of poetry books, but last week I pocketed a thesaurus and looked for synonyms for you but could only find rain and more rain and a thunderstorm that sounded like glass, like crystal, like an orchestra. I wanted to tell you that I’m not afraid of being moved anymore; Not afraid of this heart packing up its things and flying transcontinental with only a wool coat and a pocket with a folded-up address inside. I’ve saved up enough money to disappear. I know you never thought the day would come. Do you remember when we said goodbye and promised that it was only for then? It’s been years since I last saw you, years since we last have spoken. Sometimes, it gets quiet enough that I can hear the cicadas rubbing their thighs against each other’s. I’ve forgotten almost everything about you already, except that your skin was soft, like the belly of a peach, and how you would laugh, making fun of me for the way I pronounced almonds like I was falling in love with language.

He turned to leave, then hesitated. "One more thing." He walked up to me. "I've also been thinking about your declaration of undying love or whatever." "I didn't - it wasn't -" He clamped his hands on the sides of my gooey face and kissed me. I had to wonder: was it possible to dissolve into chocolate on a molecular level and melt into a puddle on the carpet? Because that's how I felt. I'm pretty sure Valhalla had to resurrect me several times during the course of that kiss. Otherwise, I don't know how I was still in one piece when Alex finally pulled away. He studied me critically, his brown and amber eyes taking me in. He had a chocolate moustache and goatee now, and chocolate down the front of his sweater vest. I'll be honest. A small part of my brain thought, Alex is male right now. I have just been kissed by a dude. How do I feel about that? The rest of my brain answered: I have just been kissed by Alex Fierro. I am absolutely great with that. In fact, I might have done something typically embarrassing and stupid, like making the aforementioned declaration of undying love, but Alex spared me. "Eh." He shrugged. "I'll keep thinking about it. I'll get back to you. In the meantime, definitely take that shower." He left, whistling a tune that might have been a Frank Sinatra song from the elevator, "Fly Me to the Moon".

He looked at me and I shivered. I never get enough of him. Never will. He lives. I breathe. I want. Him. Always. Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever. Later we would go to bed, and when he rose over me, dark and vast and eternal, I'd know joy. Who Knew? Much later we might fly a couple of Hunters to the moon.

And yet ... But what if ... I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect.

If you asked me to fly to the moon and bring it back to you, I'd find a way

I think I'll go over and introduce myself to that little red-haired girl. I think I'll introduce myself, and then ask her to come over and sit next to me. I think I'll ask her to sit next to me here, and then I think I'll tell her how much I've always admired her... I think I'll flap my arms, and fly to the moon.

God spreads the heavens above us like great wings And gives a little round of deeds and days, And then come the wrecked angels and set snares, And bait them with light hopes and heavy dreams, Until the heart is puffed with pride and goes Half shuddering and half joyous from God's peace; And it was some wrecked angel, blind with tears, Who flattered Edane's heart with merry words. Come, faeries, take me out of this dull house! Let me have all the freedom I have lost; Work when I will and idle when I will! Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame. I would take the world And break it into pieces in my hands To see you smile watching it crumble away. Once a fly dancing in a beam of the sun, Or the light wind blowing out of the dawn, Could fill your heart with dreams none other knew, But now the indissoluble sacrament Has mixed your heart that was most proud and cold With my warm heart for ever; the sun and moon Must fade and heaven be rolled up like a scroll But your white spirit still walk by my spirit. When winter sleep is abroad my hair grows thin, My feet unsteady. When the leaves awaken My mother carries me in her golden arms; I'll soon put on my womanhood and marry The spirits of wood and water, but who can tell When I was born for the first time? The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away; While the faeries dance in a place apart, Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring, Tossing their milk-white arms in the air; For they hear the wind laugh and murmur and sing Of a land where even the old are fair, And even the wise are merry of tongue; But I heard a reed of Coolaney say-- When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung, The lonely of heart is withered away.

I want to breathe, I hate this night I want to wake up, I hate this dream I’m trapped inside of myself and I’m dead Don’t wanna be lonely Just wanna be yours Why is it so dark where you’re not here It’s dangerous how wrecked I am Save me because I can’t get a grip on myself Listen to my heartbeat It calls you whenever it wants to Because within this pitch black darkness You are shining so brightly Give me your hand save me save me I need your love before I fall, fall Give me your hand save me save me I need your love before I fall, fall Give me your hand save me save me Give me your hand save me save me Save me, save me Today the moon shines brighter on the blank spot in my memories It swallowed me, this lunatic, please save me tonight (Please save me tonight, please save me tonight) Within this childish madness you will save me tonight I knew that your salvation Is a part of my life and the only helping hand that will embrase my pain The best of me, you’re the only thing I have Please raise your voice so that I can laugh again Play on Listen to my heartbeat, it calls you whenever it wants to Because within this pitch black darkness, you are shining so brightly Give me your hand save me save me I need your love before I fall, fall Give me your hand save me save me I need your love before I fall, fall Give me your hand save me save me Give me your hand save me save me Thank you for letting me be me For helping me fly For giving me wings For straightening me out For waking me from being suffocated For waking me from a dream which was all I was living in When I think of you the sun comes out So I gave my sadness to the dog (Thank you. For being ‘us’) Give me your hand save me save me I need your love before I fall, fall Give me your hand save me save me I need your love before I fall, fall

Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows The West Wind goes walking, and about the walls it goes. What news from the West, oh wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight? Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight? ‘I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey; I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more. The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.’ Oh, Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar. But you came not from the empty lands where no men are. From the mouth of the sea the South Wind flies, From the sand hills and the stones; The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans What news from the South, oh sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve? Where now is Boromir the Fair? He tarries and I grieve. ‘Ask me not where he doth dwell--so many bones there lie On the white shores and on the black shores under the stormy sky; So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing sea. Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!’ Oh Boromir! Beyond the gate the Seaward road runs South, But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey seas mouth. From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, And past the roaring falls And loud and cold about the Tower its loud horn calls. What news from the North, oh mighty wind, do you bring to me today? What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away. ‘Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought. His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest; And Rauros, Golden Rauros Falls, bore him upon its breast.’ Oh Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze To Rauros, Golden Rauros Falls until the end of days.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds; While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave a lustre of midday to objects below, When what to my wondering eyes did appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer, With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blixen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the housetop the coursers they flew With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too— And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack. His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight— “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Kaan may never know he’s everything to me. That I’d fall just to watch him fly.

My rich Diana. Fly me to the moon with you. Dance among the stars. Treacle. Romantic hogwash. Derivative. Unworthy. My rich Diana. I hate you, hate you, hate you. Hate you, hate. "Do it," he said.

A mother's body remembers her babies--the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It's the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can't dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. . . . That's how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are--rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your own best food forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down.

I am listening to Istanbul with my eyes closed The drunkenness of old times In the wooden seaside villa with its deserted boat house The roaring Southwestern wind is trapped, My thoughts are trapped. I am listening to Istanbul with my eyes closed A bird is flying around your skirt I know if your forehead is hot or cold Or your lips are wet or dry; Or is a white moon is rising above the hazelnut tree My heart's fluttering tells me I am listening to Istanbul with my eyes closed

On Drinking Alone by Moonlight Here are flowers and here is wine, But where’s a friend with me to join Hand in hand and heart to heart In one full cup before we part? Rather than to drink alone, I’ll make bold to ask the moon To condescend to lend her face The hour and the scene to grace. Lo, she answers, and she brings My shadow on her silver wings; That makes three, and we shall be. I ween, a merry company The modest moon declines the cup, But shadow promptly takes it up, And when I dance my shadow fleet Keeps measure with my flying feet. But though the moon declines to tipple She dances in yon shining ripple, And when I sing, my festive song, The echoes of the moon prolong. Say, when shall we next meet together? Surely not in cloudy weather, For you my boon companions dear Come only when the sky is clear.

New eyes awaken. I send Love's name into the world with wings And songs grow up around me like a jungle. Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes Your Spirit played in Eden. Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise Shine on the face of the abyss And I am drunk with the great wilderness Of the sixth day in Genesis. But sound is never half so fair As when that music turns to air And the universe dies of excellence. Sun, moon and stars Fall from their heavenly towers. Joys walk no longer down the blue world's shore. Though fires loiter, lights still fly on the air of the gulf, All fear another wind, another thunder: Then one more voice Snuffs all their flares in one gust. And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars And no more buds and no more Eden And no more animals and no more sea: While God sings by himself in acres of night And walls fall down, that guarded Paradise.

It is so strange to me that we have learned to fly in the air like birds, learned to swim in the ocean like fish, shoot a rocket to the moon, but we have not yet learned how to live together in harmony with one another.

EDMUND *Then with alcoholic talkativeness You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! *He grins wryly. It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death! TYRONE *Stares at him -- impressed. Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. *Then protesting uneasily. But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND *Sardonically The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.

PLANETARIUM Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750–1848) astronomer, sister of William; and others. A woman in the shape of a monster a monster in the shape of a woman the skies are full of them a woman ‘in the snow among the Clocks and instruments or measuring the ground with poles’ in her 98 years to discover 8 comets she whom the moon ruled like us levitating into the night sky riding the polished lenses Galaxies of women, there doing penance for impetuousness ribs chilled in those spaces of the mind An eye, ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’ from the mad webs of Uranusborg encountering the NOVA every impulse of light exploding from the core as life flies out of us Tycho whispering at last ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’ What we see, we see and seeing is changing the light that shrivels a mountain and leaves a man alive Heartbeat of the pulsar heart sweating through my body The radio impulse pouring in from Taurus I am bombarded yet I stand I have been standing all my life in the direct path of a battery of signals the most accurately transmitted most untranslatable language in the universe I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo- luted that a light wave could take 15 years to travel through me And has taken I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images for the relief of the body and the reconstruction of the mind.

Two small figures were beating against the rock; the girl had fainted and lay on the the boy's arm. With a last effort Peter pulled her up the rock and then lay down beside her. Even as he also fainted he saw that the water was raising, He knew that they would soon be drowned, but he could do no more. As they lay side by side a mermaid caught Wendy by the feet, and began pulling her softly into the water. Peter feeling her slip from him, woke with a start, and was just in time to draw her back. But he had to tell her the truth. "We are on the rock, Wendy," he said, "but it is growing smaller. Soon the water will be over it." She did not understand even now. "We must go," she said, almost brightly. "Yes," he answered faintly. "Shall we swim or fly, Peter?" He had to tell her. "Do you think you could swim or fly as far as the island, Wendy, without my help?" She had to admit she was too tired. He moaned. "What is it?" she asked, anxious about him at once. "I can't help you, Wendy. Hook wounded me. I can neither fly nor swim." "Do you mean we shall both be downed?" "Look how the water is raising." They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the sight. They thought they would soon be no more. As they sat thus something brushed against Peter as light as a kiss, and stayed there, as if to say timidly, "Can I be of any us?" It was the tail of a kite, which Michael had made some days before. It had torn itself out of his hand and floated away. "Michael's kite," Peter said without interest, but the next moment he had seized the tail, and was pulling the kite towards him. "It lifted Michael off the ground," he cried; "why should it not carry you?" "Both of us!" "It can't left two; Michael and Curly tried." "Let us draw lots," Wendy said bravely. "And you a lady; never." Already he had tied the tail round her. She clung to him; she refused to go without him; but with a "Good-bye, Wendy." he pushed her from the rock; and in a few minutes she was borne out of his sight. Peter was alone on the lagoon. The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.

Tell Penny how groovy it was of her to set up this little get-together, oh, and hey—can I be frank for a minute?” “Of course,” said Agents Flatweed and Borderline. Snapping his fingers, Doc sang himself out the door with four bars of “Fly Me to the Moon,

Outside, there may be reindeer that fly across the moon. Outside, there may be questions with the wrong answers and lies that are better to tell. Outside, it may be cold. But I am here. I am here, and he is here, and everything I need to know is that I will hold him and he will hold me until I am warm again, until I know I belong.

Commala-come-come There’s a young man with a gun. Young man lost his honey When she took it on the run. Commala-come-one! She took it on the run! Left her baby lonely But he baby ain’t done. Commala-come-coo The wind’ll blow ya through. Ya gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya Cause there’s nothin else to do. Commala-come-two! Nothin else to do! Gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya Cause there’s nothin else to do. Commala-come-key Can you tell me what ya see? Is it ghosts or just the mirror That makes ya wanna flee? Commala-come-three! I beg ya, tell me! Is it ghosts or just your darker self That makes ya wanna flee? Commala-come-ko Whatcha doin at my do’? If ya doan tell me now, my friend I’ll lay ya on de flo’. Commala-come-fo’! I can lay ya low! The things I’ve do to such as you You never wanna know. Commala-gin-jive Ain’t it grand to be alive? To look out on Discordia When the Demon Moon arrives. Commala-come-five! Even when the shadows rise! To see the world and walk the world Makes ya glad to be alive. Commala-mox-nix! You’re in a nasty fix! To take a hand in traitor’s glove Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks! Commala-come-six! Nothing there but thorns and sticks! When your find your hand in traitor’s glove You’re in a nasty fix. Commala-loaf-leaven! They go to hell or up to heaven! The the guns are shot and the fires hot, You got to poke em in the oven. Commala-come-seven! Salt and yow’ for leaven! Heat em up and knock em down And poke em in the oven. Commala-ka-kate You’re in the hands of fate. No matter if it’s real or not, The hour groweth late. Commala-come-eight! The hour groweth late! No matter what shade ya cast You’re in the hands of fate. Commala-me-mine You have to walk the line. When you finally get the thing you need It makes you feel so fine. Commala-come-nine! It makes ya feel fine! But if you’d have the thing you need You have to walk the line. Commala-come-ken It’s the other one again. You may know her name and face But that don’t make her your friend. Commala-come-ten! She is not your friend! If you let her get too close She’ll cut you up again! Commala-come-call We hail the one who made us all, Who made the men and made the maids, Who made the great and small. Commala-come-call! He made us great and small! And yet how great the hand of fate That rules us one and all. Commala-come-ki, There’s a time to live and one to die. With your back against the final wall Ya gotta let the bullets fly. Commala-come-ki! Let the bullets fly! Don’t ‘ee mourn for me, my lads When it comes my day to die. Commala-come-kass! The child has come at last! Sing your song, O sing it well, The child has come to pass. Commala-come-kass, The worst has come to pass. The Tower trembles on its ground; The child has come at last. Commala-come-come, The battle’s now begun! And all the foes of men and rose Rise with the setting sun.

You can't show me the Earth from space and fly right past the moon, entice me into this magical machine and invite me to come with you, and then ask me to stay behind!

Answer me, Green." I can do more than answer him when he calls me that. I can fly to the moon and carve my anme in the stars like he once brought me a star - that I might still be hiding.

Goodnight moon I don't see you, but I feel you What should I say or do? You're always there when I am dreamin' You make me smile You make me cry I feel the earth just spinning Goodnight, moon I'll wait for you in every evening To fill my heart with hope When everything is hopeless To make me your companion And fly between my dreams Don't be upset, I'm yours in every night Just sometimes fell asleep to quick And I'm to tired, so much tired To tell you my Goodnight

When this world is no more, The moon is all we'll see. I'll ask you to fly away with me. Until the stars all fall down, They empty from the sky But I don't mind. If you're with me, then everything's alright.

They think they can kill a continent—people, trees, buffalo—and then fly off to the moon and just forget about it. But you and me we're going to remember the people, the trees and the fucking buffalo. Goddammit.

Loneliness" To think of you surcharged with Loneliness. To hear your voice Over the record say, “Loneliness.” The word, the voice, So full of it, and I, with You away, so lost in it - Lost in loneliness and pain. Black and unendurable, Thinking of you with every Corpuscle of my flesh, in Every instant of night And day. O, my love, the times We have forgotten love, and Sat lonely beside each other. We have eaten together, Lonely behind our plates, we Have hidden behind children, We have slept together in A lonely bed. Now my heart Turns towards you, awake at last, Penitent, lost in the last Loneliness. Speak to me. Talk To me. Break the black silence. Speak of a tree full of leaves, Of a flying bird, the new Moon in the sunset, a poem, A book, a person – all the Casual healing speech Of your resonant, quiet voice. The word freedom. The word peace.

Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; she whinnies to me from the rocking tree-tops and the roaring wind; I will catch her and ride her through the awful air. Woods and weeds are alike tugging at the roots in the rising tempest, as if all wished to fly with us over the moon, like that wild, amorous cow whose child was the Moon-Calf. We will rise to that mad infinite where there is neither up nor down, the high topsy-turveydom of the heavens. I will ride on the Nightmare; but she shall not ride on me.

Open Letter to Neil Armstrong" Dear Neil Armstrong, I write this to you as she sleeps down the hall. I need answers I think only you might have. When you were a boy, and space was simple science fiction, when flying was merely a daydream between periods of History and Physics, when gifts of moon dust to the one you loved could only be wrapped in your imagination.. Before the world knew your name; before it was a destination in the sky.. What was the moon like from your back yard? Your arm, strong warm and wrapped under her hair both of you gazing up from your back porch summers before your distant journey. But upon landing on the moon, as the earth rose over the sea of tranquility, did you look for her? What was it like to see our planet, and know that everything, all you could be, all you could ever love and long for.. was just floating before you. Did you write her name in the dirt when the cameras weren't looking? Surrounding both your initials with a heart for alien life to study millions of years from now? What was it like to love something so distant? What words did you use to bring the moon back to her? And what did you promise in the moons ear, about that girl back home? Can you, teach me, how to fall from the sky? I ask you this, not because I doubt your feat, I just want to know what it's like to go somewhere no man had ever been, just to find that she wasn't there. To realize your moon walk could never compare to the steps that led to her. I now know that the flight home means more. Every July I think of you. I imagine the summer of 1969, how lonely she must have felt while you were gone.. You never went back to the moon. And I believe that's because it dosen't take rockets to get you where you belong. I see that in this woman down the hall, sometimes she seems so much further. But I'm ready for whatever steps I must take to get to her.I have seem SO MANY skies.. but the moon, well, it always looks the same. So I gotta say, Neil, that rock you landed on, has got NOTHING on the rock she's landed on. You walked around, took samples and left.. She's built a fire cleaned up the place and I hope she decides to stay.. because on this rock.. we can breath. Mr. Armstrong, I don't have much, many times have I been upside down with trauma, but with these empty hands, comes a heart that is often more full than the moon. She's becoming my world, pulling me into orbit, and I now know that I may never find life outside of hers. I want to give her EVERYTHING I don't have yet.. So YES, for her, I would go to the moon and back.... But not without her. We'd claim the moon for each other, with flags made from sheets down the hall. And I'd risk it ALL to kiss her under the light of the earth, the brightness of home... but I can do all of that and more right here, where she is..And when we gaze up, her arms around ME, I will NOT promise her gifts of moon dust, or flights of fancy. Instead I will gladly give her all the earth she wants, in return for all the earth she is. The sound of her heart beat and laughter, and all the time it takes to return to fall from the sky,down the hall, and right into love. God, I'd do it every day, if I could just land next to her. One small step for man, but she's one giant leap for my kind.

Last night I danced. My body rose from its slump for the first time since the beginning of sorrows—my fingers beckoning to the stars at arm's length, back arching as tingles bubbled up my spine, hips caught in a silent tempo while on tiptoe I twirled in endless euphoric circles. It didn't matter that you loved me or that you didn't. For I was wanted by the gods last night, their seraphs and muses descending on moonbeams into my midst, caressing my face and gliding their spirited arms about my waist, lifting my toes from the soil that I might feel what it is to fly without heaviness of heart. I danced with them under the glow of a loyal moon. For one brief, visceral dance I joyed as Heaven joys—in endless bliss. And the universe cherished me.

Love, is it morning risen or night deceased That makes the mirth of this triumphant east? Is it bliss given or bitterness put by That makes most glad men's hearts at love's high feast? Grief smiles, joy weeps, that day should live and die. "Is it with soul's thirst or with body's drouth That summer yearns out sunward to the south, With all the flowers that when thy birth drew nigh Were molten in one rose to make thy mouth? O love, what care though day should live and die? "Is the sun glad of all love on earth, The spirit and sense and work of things and worth? Is the moon sad because the month must fly And bring her death that can but bring back birth? For all these things as day must live and die. "Love, is it day that makes thee thy delight Or thou that seest day made out of thy light? Love, as the sun and sea are thou and I, Sea without sun dark, sun without sea bright; The sun is one though day should live and die. "O which is elder, night or light, who knows? And life or love, which first of these twain grows? For life is born of love to wail and cry, And love is born of life to heal his woes, And light of night, that day should live and die. "O sun of heaven above the wordly sea, O very love, what light is this of thee! My sea of soul is deep as thou art high, But all thy light is shed through all of me, As love's through love, while day shall live and die.

We went back into the Mens Apartments where there were others raving of Ships that may fly and silvered Creatures upon the Moon: Their Stories seem to have neither Head nor Tayl to them, Sir Chris. told me, but there is a Grammar in them if I could but Puzzle it out. This is a mad Age, I replied, and there are many fitter for Bedlam than these here confin'd to a Chain or a dark Room. A sad Reflection, Nick. And what little Purpose have we to glory in our Reason, I continu'd, when the Brain may so suddenly be disorder'd?

The bats stop flying above and the moon stands still. He commands the air and the sky and my body.

A Night Thought Lo! where the Moon along the sky Sails with her happy destiny; Oft is she hid from mortal eye Or dimly seen, But when the clouds asunder fly How bright her mien! Far different we, a froward race, Thousands though rich in Fortune's grace With cherished sullenness of pace Their way pursue, Ingrates who wear a smileless face The whole year through. If kindred humours e'er would make My spirit droop for drooping's sake, From Fancy following in thy wake, Bright ship of heaven! A counter impulse let me take And be forgiven

Winter? Everything all right?” “I can’t go there,” Winter said. “Why not?” Qibli asked, startled. “It’s cursed.” Winter waved a talon at the sharp-edged shapes of the mountains. “No IceWing has ever returned from those mountains alive. They’re a legend as old as Darkstalker in our tribe.” “With a poetically ominous-sounding name, I bet,” said Qibli. “Peaks of Doom? Mountain Range of Certain Death?” Winter frowned at him. “We call them Darkstalker’s Teeth,” he said with immense dignity. “Seriously?” Qibli cried. “SERIOUSLY? A mountain range called Darkstalker’s Teeth, and you never thought maybe the old Night Kingdom was on the other side?” “It’s not like I think about it very often!” Winter objected. “And no, honestly, we all assumed he went around cursing random parts of Pyrrhia as traps for IceWings to fall into.” “What are we waiting for?” Anemone demanded, flying back to them. “Winter thinks the mountains are going to eat him,” Qibli answered. “I DO NOT,” Winter protested. “But I do think they’re going to kill me, yes.” “Um, a whole horde of dragons just flew over them a few days ago.” Anemone flicked her tail at the evening sky, dimming to purple. “And they’re all fine.” “Because they’re not IceWings,” Winter pointed out. “The mountains only eat IceWings,” Qibli explained with a straight face. “STOP THAT,” Winter hissed at him. “It’s a REAL CURSE.” “If it’s real, then it’s not a curse, it’s a spell,” Qibli said practically. “And if it’s a spell, then Darkstalker cast it, in which case the earring will protect you.” Winter touched his ear doubtfully. One piece of jewelry against centuries of nightmare stories … Qibli could practically see Winter’s courage trying to stamp out his childhood fears. “You’ll make it through,” he said. “Remember, Moon is on the other side.” He knew that would work, because it was working for him. Winter gave him a puzzled look, as though he would never understand Qibli. “Yes,” he said. “All right. Let’s fly.” “Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally,” Anemone grouched, wheeling about in the sky. As

Since Sol 6 all I’ve wanted to do was get the hell out of here. Now the prospect of leaving the Hab behind scares the shit out of me. I need some encouragement. I need to ask myself, “What would an Apollo astronaut do?” He’d drink three whiskey sours, drive his Corvette to the launchpad, then fly to the moon in a command module smaller than my Rover. Man those guys were cool.

The philosopher had postulated that a thought was somehow a collapse of the quantum mechanical wave function to a specific state. He further postulated that unlike someone putting their finger in running water to reduce the temperature possibilities to one value, in the presence of enough space-time curvature, probabilities are reduced to an actual state without need of an observer.

Are you ready to wander with me to take my hand to stumble, to dance to rocket to the moon? Are you ready to embrace the unknown and fly into ecstasy? Ready to get completely lost in love with me?

The Mayor spoke proudly. 'Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brae man will have made them a little braver.' He smiled apologetically. 'You see, it is an easy thing to do, since the end for me is the same.' Lanser said, "If you say yes, we can tell them you said no. We can tell them you begged for your life.' And Winter broke in angrily, 'They would know. You do not keep secrets. One of your men got out of hand one night and he said the flies had conquered the flypaper, and now the whole nation knows his words. They have made a song of it. The flies have conquered the flypaper. You do not keep secrets, Colonel.

It’s cold and clammy in the alley like White Scar Cave in the Yorkshire Dales. Dad took me when I was ten. I find a dead cat lying on the ground at the first corner. It’s gray like dust on the moon. I know it’s dead because it’s as still as a dropped bag, and because big flies are drinking from its eyes. How did it die? There’s no bullet wound or fang marks, though its head’s at a slumped angle so maybe it was strangled by a cat-strangler. It goes straight into the Top Five of the Most Beautiful Things I’ve Ever Seen. Maybe there’s a tribe in Papua New Guinea who think the droning of flies is music. Maybe I’d fit in with them. “Come along, Nathan.” Mum’s tugging my sleeve.

Will you tell me a story?” Merrick asked. So Cassius did. He told a story of two men who were in love. How one courted the other, and their families shared dinners, and magic allowed them to fly. They laughed together, drew together, wrote together, and spent their days having snowball fights with children. They hung the moon together each night and helped the sun rise each morning. And they lived happily ever after, in ways Merrick and Cassius could not

Meg slashed through the last of Tarquin’s minions. That was a good thing, I thought distantly. I didn’t want her to die, too. Hazel stabbed Tarquin in the chest. The Roman king fell, howling in pain, ripping the sword hilt from Hazel’s grip. He collapsed against the information desk, clutching the blade with his skeletal hands. Hazel stepped back, waiting for the zombie king to dissolve. Instead, Tarquin struggled to his feet, purple gas flickering weakly in his eye sockets. “I have lived for millennia,” he snarled. “You could not kill me with a thousand tons of stone, Hazel Levesque. You will not kill me with a sword.” I thought Hazel might fly at him and rip his skull off with her bare hands. Her rage was so palpable I could smell it like an approaching storm. Wait…I did smell an approaching storm, along with other forest scents: pine needles, morning dew on wildflowers, the breath of hunting dogs. A large silver wolf licked my face. Lupa? A hallucination? No…a whole pack of the beasts had trotted into the store and were now sniffing the bookshelves and the piles of zombie dust. Behind them, in the doorway, stood a girl who looked about twelve, her eyes silver-yellow, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was dressed for the hunt in a shimmering gray frock and leggings, a white bow in her hand. Her face was beautiful, serene, and as cold as the winter moon. She nocked a silver arrow and met Hazel’s eyes, asking permission to finish her kill. Hazel nodded and stepped aside. The young girl aimed at Tarquin. “Foul undead thing,” she said, her voice hard and bright with power. “When a good woman puts you down, you had best stay down.” Her arrow lodged in the center of Tarquin’s forehead, splitting his frontal bone. The king stiffened. The tendrils of purple gas sputtered and dissipated. From the arrow’s point of entry, a ripple of fire the color of Christmas tinsel spread across Tarquin’s skull and down his body, disintegrating him utterly. His gold crown, the silver arrow, and Hazel’s sword all dropped to the floor. I grinned at the newcomer. “Hey, Sis.

But Arthur couldn’t understand why I would have nightmares. Surely nothing that terrible had ever happened to me, I was a normal girl with all kinds of advantages, I was beautiful and intelligent, why didn’t I make something of myself? I should try to be more of a leader, he would tell me. What he failed to understand was that there were really only two kinds of people: fat ones and thin ones. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see what Arthur saw. The outline of my former body still surrounded me, like a mist, like a phantom moon, like the image of Dumbo the Flying Elephant superimposed on my own. I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

On Sunday, a lambent crevice opened up in the street outside my house, By Tuesday birds were flying into it. "I probably won't miss you," my mother said, "I'm only interested in the end of the world," I replied. Many find it difficult to breath without the atmosphere but we knew how. We just stopped breathing. We're at the Moonlite All-Nite Dinner and they're serving up fruit from the plants growing out of the waitress. The CLOSED sign whispers, "Please, don't touch me." We watch bodies fall to the ground outside like deep-sea creatures surfacing. You turn to me and ask, "Do you ever think about suicide?" I look away from you and close my eyes, eat the raspberries to confuse the blood in my mouth. Now you're in the only car in the parking lot at midnight and you're watching me throw stones at the moon, which hangs low in the sky so he can look into your house. Your sister tried to touch him from her bedroom window once, and he flinched; now he and the oceans watch her with a quiet concern. The lilac sky is trying to rest her head on his shoulder, all trees gradually growing through her. A hummingbird whispers to you, "Be careful, under her dress is her skin," and then builds his nest in the middle of the highway, I look back at you, and you close your eyes.

Are these black cats like the hare?" "No. They're smaller; they only want me to play with them. Fly away with them to a place on the other side of the moon. There's a garden there, all silvery-gold, and the cats and hares dance and jump round and round. They can jump so much farther than they can on earth; it's like flying, and they love it so. Sometimes I've felt as if I'd like to dance and jump through the air too, they looked so happy, and I've thought maybe if I did I wouldn't be afraid any more, but when I look they're all dancing round a Figure that sits still in the middle of the garden. A big black Figure with a hood on. And It hasn't got any face. Its face is so awful that It keeps it covered. And then I get so terribly afraid. And everything stops." "And you see all that in the picture?" "I don't know." She hesitated again. "I think it's partly dreams. After I've thought they were at the windows - the cats and the big hare. They sit there and watch, you see, after I've gone to sleep. But they don't come often. I don't usually know what's there." She came closer and whispered, her blue eyes earnest and weird, "I don't think it's an animal hare. I think it's Aunt Sarai's hare, that maybe it came from hell. It isn't swearing to say that word just as the name of a place, is it? That's why people used to be so scared of witches' black cats, isn't it, because they thought they weren't earth-cats, they were from the devil? Mother says there isn't any hell or any witches. But Aunt Sarai was a witch; that's why she can come back. I think they've all been witches here; the house is mad because mother wouldn't be; that's why it wants me now." Carew said, "It was all dreams, Betty. There is no hell. There is no garden on the other side of the moon. It's a dead world, full of volcanic craters, with no air for anything to grow in or breathe. A hare frightened you and, being nervous, you've had nightmares about it - pictures that fear paints on your mind just as an artist would on canvas, with paints and brushes. "Every dream is now a movie we make for ourselves in our sleep...

My honey child, them housing projects Cannot contain her multitudes A sunbeam, hard upon her Just a fly strugglin’ through her braid loops Watch me prove to ‘em I’m more than nothin’ But a ragamuffin with homesick eyes Yes, when it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me My love, she is a drummer Than industrial steel, her backbone tougher The eloping night and the honey moon that trails Just dirt ‘neath her finger nails I’ll be down on them crossroads ‘Til daybreak winks a bright eye And if it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me She’s heard all the right things And they did not persuade her She has no use for your words What she wants is your labor ‘Cause when gringos speak of minorities They tend to keep their voices low Ah, but when that gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me

The old oak, quite transfigured, spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old veteran could have produced. ‘Yes, it is the same oak,’ thought Prince Andrei, and all at once he was seized by an unreasoning spring-time feeling of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife’s dead reproachful face, Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night itself and the moon, and … all this rushed suddenly to his mind. ‘No, life is not over at thirty-one!’ Prince Andrei suddenly decided finally and decisively. ‘It is not enough for me to know what I have in me—everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in harmony.

We pass through this world like two gnats in a husk of millet on a boundless ocean! I grieve that life is but a moment in time, and envy the endless current of the Great River. Would that I might clasp to me some flying sprite and forever wander with him! Would that I might embrace the lightsome moon for all eternity!

The transparent glassy moon shines abroad, and reflects the radiance above jocund streams, a cluster of stars kiss the night’s cheek, I envy! the Music faints, yet it pretends to be happy, a beam of Wisdom stills me, and bestirs, my wings are unfolded to fly, to fly! to a world, never, ever have I seen, from a World, I lost the love.

It is not Beauty I demand, A crystal brow, the moon's despair, Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair. Tell me not of your starry eyes, Your lips that seem on roses fed, Your breasts where Cupid trembling lies, Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed. ...Give me, instead of beauty's bust, A tender heart, a loyal mind, Which with temptation I could trust, Yet never linked with error find. One in whose gentle bosom I Could pour my secret heart of woes. Like the care-burdened honey-fly That hides his murmurs in the rose. My earthly comforter! whose love So indefeasible might be, That when my spirit won above Hers could not stay for sympathy.

Beyond The Sea" Somewhere beyond the sea Somewhere waiting for me My lover stands on golden sands And watches the ships that go sailing Somewhere beyond the sea She's there watching for me If I could fly like birds on high Then straight to her arms I'd go sailing It's far beyond the stars It's near beyond the moon I know beyond a doubt My heart will lead me there soon We'll meet beyond the shore We'll kiss just as before Happy we'll be beyond the sea And never again I'll go sailing I know beyond a doubt My heart will lead me there soon We'll meet (I know we'll meet) beyond the shore We'll kiss just as before Happy we'll be beyond the sea And never again I'll go sailing No more sailing So long sailing Bye, bye sailing...

I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madrone trees on the horizon. The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon. It called to mind how I noticed the exact same thing when I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the stars around it to shame. I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or if the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head. Something moved on the grounds down beneath my window — cast a long spider of shadow out across the grass as it ran out of sight behind a hedge. When it ran back to where I could get a better look, I saw it was a dog, a young, gangly mongrel slipped off from home to find out about things went on after dark. He was sniffing digger squirrel holes, not with a notion to go digging after one but just to get an idea what they were up to at this hour. He’d run his muzzle down a hole, butt up in the air and tail going, then dash off to another. The moon glistened around him on the wet grass, and when he ran he left tracks like dabs of dark paint spattered across the blue shine of the lawn. Galloping from one particularly interesting hole to the next, he became so took with what was coming off — the moon up there, the night, the breeze full of smells so wild makes a young dog drunk — that he had to lie down on his back and roll. He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales. He sniffed all the holes over again one quick one, to get the smells down good, then suddenly froze still with one paw lifted and his head tilted, listening. I listened too, but I couldn’t hear anything except the popping of the window shade. I listened for a long time. Then, from a long way off, I heard a high, laughing gabble, faint and coming closer. Canada honkers going south for the winter. I remembered all the hunting and belly-crawling I’d ever done trying to kill a honker, and that I never got one. I tried to look where the dog was looking to see if I could find the flock, but it was too dark. The honking came closer and closer till it seemed like they must be flying right through the dorm, right over my head. Then they crossed the moon — a black, weaving necklace, drawn into a V by that lead goose. For an instant that lead goose was right in the center of that circle, bigger than the others, a black cross opening and closing, then he pulled his V out of sight into the sky once more. I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.

If ever again we happened to lose our balance, just when sleepwalking through the same dream on the brink of hell’s valley, if ever the magical mare (whom I ride through the night air hollowed out into caverns and caves where wild animals live) in a crazy fit of anger over some word I might have said without the perfect sweetness that works on her like a charm, if ever the magic Mare looks over her shoulder and whinnies: “So! You don’t love me!” and bucks me off, sends me flying to the hyenas, if ever the paper ladder that I climb so easily to go pick stars for Promethea—at the very instant that I reach out my hand and it smells like fresh new moon, so good, it makes you believe in god’s genius—if ever at that very instant my ladder catches fire—because it is so fragile, all it would take is someone’s brushing against it tactlessly and all that would be left is ashes—if ever I had the dreadful luck again to find myself falling screaming down into the cruel guts of separation, and emptying all my being of hope, down to the last milligram of hope, until I am able to melt into the pure blackness of the abyss and be no more than night and a death rattle, I would really rather not be tumbling around without my pencil and paper.

I want to fly over the mountain's peek as winds Want to bring up the sand of ocean's bottom Want to sprint faster then leopard Want to fly like feather do with the breeze Want to drawn deep into the ocean like sun do Want to conceal behind the clouds like moon do Cold as outer space Warm as earth's womb To be silent as desert's are Want to roar louder then the thunders do innocent as a child i want........me back))))))

What he failed to understand was that there were really only two kinds of people: fat ones and thin ones. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see what Arthur saw. The outline of my former body still surrounded me, like a mist, like a phantom moon, like the image of Dumbo the Flying Elephant superimposed on my own. I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

It was so awful! And he kept on looking at me and I knew I must get out of bed or he'd come and touch me. I did, too, but when I got out I wasn't me-I was a little white bunny. And he started out of the room and I had to go with him for fear he'd touch me. It felt so horrid, going out with him and looking back at mother there asleep. "We went into the main part of the house, and one of the big front doors was open, and we went out through it. And then he gave a big jump, and so did I, and it took us clear up into the sky. We couldn't fly, but we kept jumping and jumping. "Sometimes we stayed in the sky a little while, jumping from cloud to cloud, and the moon would get closer and closer and bigger and bigger, and its face would change and get horrible and grin at us until it seemed like its mouth was a mile wide and open, to swallow us up. And then we'd come down again and jump from one cliff to another, and the sea would be roaring down under us, and the waves all grey and cold and moving around and boiling like they were mad or afraid. "We went all over the island and sometimes we jumped over the sea to the mainland and back again; and sometimes I tried to get away and run back to Mother - I thought she'd know me even if I was a bunny - but always, whichever way I turned, the hare was there in front of me, and his teeth were shining. "We kept it up all night, and I was so tired and cold and miserable, and so scared. I didn't know whether he would ever let me go home or whether he would take me to Aunt Sarai. Then finally I did get away and the hare chased me!" She broke off, her voice rising again to a wail. "It was so awful! I ran all over the island, into all sorts of queer little places that I never knew were there before - it seems so different after dark - and finally, when two or three times I'd been so tired that I thought I just couldn't go any farther, before he caught me, I saw the house in front of me and the front door still open and I started to run in, and then I thought - what if they'd planned it that way, and Aunt Sarai had come down from her portrait and was inside there in the dark, waiting for me?

I was looking at the sky and recalling. The higher you fly, the more stars there are. There are stars up there that I will never see again. They didn't matter to me when the heavens still belonged to me, but now I feel it as a loss." "You're young. You're going to find a lot of things like that in your life," the old liveship replied complacently. "No sense dwelling on them." "My life," Vivacia mused. "My life as a liveship." She turned to regard Ophelia with a sigh. "I almost envy you. You recall nothing, so you miss nothing." "I recall a lot, my dear. Just because my memories have sails instead of wings, don't discount them." She sniffed. "And my life is nothing for you to disdain, I might add. Nor your own. You could take a lesson from my Grag. Don't go mooning after the stars, when the wide sea is all around you. It's a sky of its own, you know." "And with just as many stars.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" i Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest. i You, drowning                         between my arms — stay. You, pushing your body                          into the river only to be left                          with yourself — stay. i I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing to surrender. i Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.                    Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green                    in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn                    mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you                    like a sparrow stunned with falling. i Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining. i I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once. i Say amen. Say amend. Say yes. Say yes anyway. i In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed. i In the life before this one, you could tell two people were in love because when they drove the pickup over the bridge, their wings would grow back just in time. Some days I am still inside the pickup. Some days I keep waiting. i It’s not too late. Our heads haloed             with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks.             Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio.             Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver             to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs.             This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already             here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body             beside a body must ma

The world will continue, as it has for thousands upon thousands of years. We will live without our dear Maren. We will finish growing up and we will work and play and love. The sun and moon will take turns shining, clouds will sail across the skies, and rain will wash the earth. I will touch snow and smell flowers. Perhaps someday I will have a child, and I will tell her of her mermaid auntie. Or perhaps I will become a stork and fly wherever the winds take me.

Lora, beloved. Lora of the moon and sky. You are a dragon.” Ah, sighed the fiend, swelling with delight inside me, filled with an awful, awful recognition. Ah, ah! AH! “That is enough,” I shouted over them both; rather, I tried to shout, but my voice was so strangled it came more as a gasp. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I don’t appreciate your games. I-I came here to tell you to stop pestering me, and leaving me gifts, and smiling at me-“ “You dream of flying,” Jesse said, which cut me off midsentence. “Aye.” He nodded, shadows and gold, tall and warm and much too near. “I know all about it. I know all about you. You have wings at night. You lift as smoke. And you come to me, don’t you? Always to me.” I could not reply. I could barely take a breath. This is a dream, this is all still a dream, it’s just a new part to the dream, that’s all- “It’s why you’re here now, tonight. You’re drawn to me, as fiercely as I am to you. You didn’t even have to follow my song this time. I muted it, didn’t you notice? And you came anyway.” For a long, long moment, I gave up on breathing. For a long, long moment, all I heard was my heartbeat and his, and a gull crying miles away, and the distant thunder of a German bomb exploding on innocent ground. Jesse lifted a hand and placed it on my arm. His palm felt hot against the cotton of my sleeve, his fingers felt firm, and that rush of longing and pleasure that always overtook me at his touch began to build. “Lora,” he whispered again, so quiet it was barely a sound. “Inhale.” And when I did, he bent his head to kiss me.

She gasps at the sight that greets her. The florists have gone to town. There are wild meadow flowers everywhere, in pinks and whites and blues, all lit by tiny fairy lights and soft pink lanterns. Yes. This will do. Ana is stunned. She whips around and gapes at me. "You wanted hearts and flowers." She stares at me in disbelief. "You have my heart." And I wave at the room. "And here are the flowers," she murmurs. "Christian, it's lovely." Her voice is hoarse and I know she's close to tears. Plucking up my courage, I lead her farther into the room. In the center of the arbor, I sink onto one knee. Ana catches her breath, and her hands fly to her mouth. From my inside jacket pocket, I pull out the ring and hold it up for her. "Anastasia Steele. I love you. I want to love, cherish, and protect you for the rest of my life. Be mine. Always. Share my life with me. Marry me." She is the love of my life. It will only ever be Ana. Her tears start to fall in earnest but her smile eclipses the moon, the stars, the sun, and all the flowers in the boathouse.

I REMEMBER the day the Aleut ship came to our island. At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings. At last in the rising sun it became what it really was—a red ship with two red sails. My brother and I had gone to the head of a canyon that winds down to a little harbor which is called Coral Cove. We had gone to gather roots that grow there in the spring. My brother Ramo was only a little boy half my age, which was twelve. He was small for one who had lived so many suns and moons, but quick as a cricket. Also foolish as a cricket when he was excited. For this reason and because I wanted him to help me gather roots and not go running off, I said nothing about the shell I saw or the gull with folded wings. I went on digging in the brush with my pointed stick as though nothing at all were happening on the sea. Even when I knew for sure that the gull was a ship with two red sails. But Ramo’s eyes missed little in the world. They were black like a lizard’s and very large and, like the eyes of a lizard, could sometimes look sleepy. This was the time when they saw the most. This was the way they looked now. They were half-closed, like those of a lizard lying on a rock about to flick out its tongue to catch a fly. “The sea is smooth,” Ramo said. “It is a flat stone without any scratches.” My brother liked to pretend that one thing was another. “The sea is not a stone without scratches,” I said. “It is water and no waves.” “To me it is a blue stone,” he said. “And far away on the edge of it is a small cloud which sits on the stone.” “Clouds do not sit on stones. On blue ones or black ones or any kind of stones.” “This one does.” “Not on the sea,” I said. “Dolphins sit there, and gulls, and cormorants, and otter, and whales too, but not clouds.” “It is a whale, maybe.” Ramo was standing on one foot and then the other, watching the ship coming, which he did not know was a ship because he had never seen one. I had never seen one either, but I knew how they looked because I had been told. “While you gaze at the sea,” I said, “I dig roots. And it is I who will eat them and you who will not.” Ramo began to punch at the earth with his stick, but as the ship came closer, its sails showing red through the morning mist, he kept watching it, acting all the time as if he were not. “Have you ever seen a red whale?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, though I never had. “Those I have seen are gray.” “You are very young and have not seen everything that swims in the world.” Ramo picked up a root and was about to drop it into the basket. Suddenly his mouth opened wide and then closed again. “A canoe!” he cried. “A great one, bigger than all of our canoes together. And red!” A canoe or a ship, it did not matter to Ramo. In the very next breath he tossed the root in the air and was gone, crashing through the brush, shouting as he went. I kept on gathering roots, but my hands trembled as I dug in the earth, for I was more excited than my brother. I knew that it was a ship there on the

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? - Ode to a Nightingale

Now let me tell you something. I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers. I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten. I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends. I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes. I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things. But— All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain. All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever-surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

Damn it, Jacob, I’m freezing my butt off.” “I came as fast as I could, considering I thought it would be wise to walk the last few yards.” Isabella whirled around, her smiling face lighting up the silvery night with more ease than the fullest of moons. She leapt up into his embrace, eagerly drinking in his body heat and affection. “I can see it now. ‘Daddy, tell me about your wedding day.’ ‘Well, son,’” she mocked, deepening her voice to his timbre and reflecting his accent uncannily, “’The first words out of your mother’s mouth were I’m freezing my butt off!’” “Very romantic, don’t you think?” he teased. “So, you think it will be a boy, then? Our first child?” “Well, I’m fifty percent sure.” “Wise odds. Come, little flower, I intend to marry you before the hour is up.” With that, he scooped her off her feet and carried her high against his chest. “Unfortunately, we are going to have to do this hike the hard way.” “As Legna tells it, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” “Yeah, well, I assure you a great many grooms have fudged that a little.” He reached to tuck her chilled face into the warm crook of his neck. “Surely the guests would know. It takes longer to walk than it does to fly . . . or whatever . . . out of the woods.” “This is true, little flower. But passing time in the solitude of the woods is not necessarily a difficult task for a man and woman about to be married.” “Jacob!” she gasped, laughing. “Some traditions are not necessarily publicized,” he teased. “You people are outrageous.” “Mmm, and if I had the ability to turn to dust right now, would you tell me no if I asked to . . . pass time with you?” Isabella shivered, but it was the warmth of his whisper and intent, not the cold, that made her do so. “Have I ever said no to you?” “No, but now would be a good time to start, or we will be late to our own wedding,” he chuckled. “How about no . . . for now?” she asked silkily, pressing her lips to the column on his neck beneath his long, loose hair. His fingers flexed on her flesh, his arms drawing her tighter to himself. He tried to concentrate on where he was putting his feet. “If that is going to be your response, Bella, then I suggest you stop teasing me with that wicked little mouth of yours before I trip and land us both in the dirt.” “Okay,” she agreed, her tongue touching his pulse. “Bella . . .” “Jacob, I want to spend the entire night making love to you,” she murmured. Jacob stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Okay, why is it I always thought it was the groom who was supposed to be having lewd thoughts about the wedding night while the bride took the ceremony more seriously?” “You started it,” she reminded him, laughing softly. “I am begging you, Isabella, to allow me to leave these woods with a little of my dignity intact.” He sighed deeply, turning his head to brush his face over her hair. “It does not take much effort from you to turn me inside out and rouse my hunger for you. If there is much more of your wanton taunting, you will be flushed warm and rosy by the time we reach that altar, and our guests will not have to be Mind Demons in order to figure out why.” “I’m sorry, you’re right.” She turned her face away from his neck. Jacob resumed his ritual walk for all of thirty seconds before he stopped again. “Bella . . .” he warned dangerously. “I’m sorry! It just popped into my head!” “What am I getting myself into?” he asked aloud, sighing dramatically as he resumed his pace. “Well, in about an hour, I hope it will be me.

Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say ye fools. Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now! - Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;—cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die! - Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up.

My seams gape wide so I'm tossed aside To rot on a lonely shore, While the leaves and mould like a shroud unfold, For the last of my trails are o'er, But I float in dreams on Northland streams That never again I'll see, As I lie on the marge of the old portage With grief for company. When the sunset gilds the timbered hills That guard Timagami, And the moon beams play on far James Bay By the brink of the frozen sea, In phantom guise my spirit flies As the dream blades dip and swing Where the waters flow from the Long Ago In the spell of the beck'ning spring. Do the cow-moose call on the Montreal When the first frost bites the air, And the mists unfold from the red and gold That the autumn ridges wear? When the white falls roar as they did of yore On the Lady Evelyn, Do the square-tail leap from the black pool deep Where the pictured rocks begin? Oh! the fur fleet sings on Temiscaming As the ashen paddles bend, And the crews carouse at Rupert's House At the sullen winter's end; But my days are done where the lean wolves run, And I ripple no more the path, Where the grey geese race 'cross the red moon's face From the white winds Arctic wrath. Tho' the death-fraught way from the Saguenay To the storied Nipigon, Once knew me well, now a crumbling shell I watch as the years roll on, And in memory's haze I live the days That forever are gone from me, As I rot on the marge of the old portage With grief for company.

my universe starts and ends in my own head it is dominated by darkness and shadows but filled with rare glowing colors that are only visible to eyes that truly wish to see it is sprinkled with bright thoughts that shimmer and spark like stars my faith is made of flames burning to give life my dreams are planets my ideas circling around them as moons constantly changing and turning coming together and drifting apart to make things happen even with my worries flying around destructively like meteors and these fears of mine that grow into black holes with such disastrous abilities to suck me in and bend my very reality so my mind is a mystery even i am not sure exactly how it works but i can promise you this there is no place quite like it

The Dying Man" in memoriam W.B. Yeats 1. His words I heard a dying man Say to his gathered kin, “My soul’s hung out to dry, Like a fresh salted skin; I doubt I’ll use it again. “What’s done is yet to come; The flesh deserts the bone, But a kiss widens the rose I know, as the dying know Eternity is Now. “A man sees, as he dies, Death’s possibilities; My heart sways with the world. I am that final thing, A man learning to sing. 2. What Now? Caught in the dying light, I thought myself reborn. My hand turn into hooves. I wear the leaden weight Of what I did not do. Places great with their dead, The mire, the sodden wood, Remind me to stay alive. I am the clumsy man The instant ages on. I burned the flesh away, In love, in lively May. I turn my look upon Another shape than hers Now, as the casement blurs. In the worst night of my will, I dared to question all, And would the same again. What’s beating at the gate? Who’s come can wait. 3. The Wall A ghost comes out of the unconscious mind To grope my sill: It moans to be reborn! The figure at my back is not my friend; The hand upon my shoulder turns to horn. I found my father when I did my work, Only to lose myself in this small dark. Though it reject dry borders of the seen, What sensual eye can keep and image pure, Leaning across a sill to greet the dawn? A slow growth is a hard thing to endure. When figures our of obscure shadow rave, All sensual love’s but dancing on a grave. The wall has entered: I must love the wall, A madman staring at perpetual night, A spirit raging at the visible. I breathe alone until my dark is bright. Dawn’s where the white is. Who would know the dawn When there’s a dazzling dark behind the sun. 4. The Exulting Once I delighted in a single tree; The loose air sent me running like a child– I love the world; I want more than the world, Or after image of the inner eye. Flesh cries to flesh, and bone cries out to bone; I die into this life, alone yet not alone. Was it a god his suffering renewed?– I saw my father shrinking in his skin; He turned his face: there was another man, Walking the edge, loquacious, unafraid. He quivered like a bird in birdless air, Yet dared to fix his vision anywhere. Fish feed on fish, according to their need: My enemies renew me, and my blood Beats slower in my careless solitude. I bare a wound, and dare myself to bleed. I think a bird, and it begins to fly. By dying daily, I have come to be. All exultation is a dangerous thing. I see you, love, I see you in a dream; I hear a noise of bees, a trellis hum, And that slow humming rises into song. A breath is but a breath: I have the earth; I shall undo all dying with my death. 5. They Sing, They Sing All women loved dance in a dying light– The moon’s my mother: how I love the moon! Out of her place she comes, a dolphin one, Then settles back to shade and the long night. A beast cries out as if its flesh were torn, And that cry takes me back where I was born. Who thought love but a motion in the mind? Am I but nothing, leaning towards a thing? I scare myself with sighing, or I’ll sing; Descend O gentlest light, descend, descend. I sweet field far ahead, I hear your birds, They sing, they sing, but still in minor thirds. I’ve the lark’s word for it, who sings alone: What’s seen recededs; Forever’s what we know!– Eternity defined, and strewn with straw, The fury of the slug beneath the stone. The vision moves, and yet remains the same. In heaven’s praise, I dread the thing I am. The edges of the summit still appall When we brood on the dead or the beloved; Nor can imagination do it all In this last place of light: he dares to live Who stops being a bird, yet beats his wings Against the immense immeasurable emptiness of things.

Nearer, my God, to Thee. Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee! E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me: Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God! to Thee, Nearer to Thee. Though, like the wanderer, The sun gone down, Darkness be over me, My rest a stone; Yet in my dreams I'd be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee. Then let the way appear Steps unto heaven; All that Thou sendest me In mercy given: Angels to beckon me Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee. Then with my waking thoughts Bright with Thy praise, Out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise; So by my woes to be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee. Or if on joyful wing, Cleaving the sky, Sun, moon, and stars forgot, Upward I fly: Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee.

O my dark Rosaleen,     Do not sigh, do not weep! The priests are on the ocean green,     They march along the deep. There’s wine from the royal Pope,     Upon the ocean green;    And Spanish ale shall give you hope,        My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! Shall glad your heart, shall give you hope, Shall give you health, and help, and hope,     My Dark Rosaleen! Over hills, and thro’ dales,     Have I roam’d for your sake; All yesterday I sail’d with sails     On river and on lake. The Erne, at its highest flood,     I dash’d across unseen, For there was lightning in my blood,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! O, there was lightning in my blood, Red lighten’d thro’ my blood.     My Dark Rosaleen! All day long, in unrest,     To and fro, do I move. The very soul within my breast     Is wasted for you, love! The heart in my bosom faints     To think of you, my Queen, My life of life, my saint of saints,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! To hear your sweet and sad complaints, My life, my love, my saint of saints,     My Dark Rosaleen! Woe and pain, pain and woe,     Are my lot, night and noon, To see your bright face clouded so,     Like to the mournful moon. But yet will I rear your throne     Again in golden sheen; ‘Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! ‘Tis you shall have the golden throne, ‘Tis you shall reign, and reign alone,     My Dark Rosaleen! Over dews, over sands,     Will I fly, for your weal: Your holy delicate white hands     Shall girdle me with steel. At home, in your emerald bowers,     From morning’s dawn till e’en, You’ll pray for me, my flower of flowers,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My fond Rosaleen! You’ll think of me through daylight hours My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,     My Dark Rosaleen! I could scale the blue air,     I could plough the high hills, Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,     To heal your many ills! And one beamy smile from you     Would float like light between My toils and me, my own, my true,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My fond Rosaleen! Would give me life and soul anew,     My Dark Rosaleen! O, the Erne shall run red,     With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath our tread,        And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan-cry     Wake many a glen serene, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,     My Dark Rosaleen!     My own Rosaleen! The Judgement Hour must first be nigh, Ere you can fade, ere you can die,     My Dark Rosaleen!

The hard part, evolutionarily, was getting from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic ones, then getting from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones. Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, a timescale I simply cannot get my head around. Instead let’s imagine’s Earth’s history as a calendar year, with the formation of Earth being January 1 and today being December 31 at 11:59pm. The first life on Earth emerges around February 25. Photosynthetic organisms first appear in late March. Multicellular life doesn’t appear until August or September. The first dinosaurs like eoraptor show up about 230 million years ago, or December 13 in our calendar year. The meteor impact that heralds the end of the dinosaurs happens around December 26. Homo sapiens aren’t part of the story until December 31 at 11:48 pm. Agriculture and large human communities and the building of monolithic structures all occur within the last minute of this calendar year. The Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the invention of basketball, recorded music, the electric dishwasher, and vehicles that travel faster than horses all happen in the last couple of seconds. Put another way: It took Earth about three billion years to go from single-celled life to multicellular life. It took less than seventy million years to go from Tyrannosaurus rex to humans who can read and write and dig up fossils and approximate the timeline of life and worry about its ending. Unless we somehow manage to eliminate all multicellular life from the planet, Earth won’t have to start all over and it will be okay--- at least until the oceans evaporate and the planet gets consumed by the sun. But we`ll be gone by then, as will our collective and collected memory. I think part of what scares me about the end of humanity is the end of those memories. I believe that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it does make a sound. But if no one is around to play Billie Holiday records, those songs won’t make a sound anymore. We’ve caused a lot of suffering, but we’ve also caused much else. I know the world will survive us – and in some ways it will be more alive. More birdsong. More creatures roaming around. More plants cracking through our pavement, rewilding the planet we terraformed. I imagine coyotes sleeping in the ruins of the homes we built. I imagine our plastic still washing up on beaches hundreds of years after the last of us is gone. I imagine moths, having no artificial lights toward which to fly, turning back to the moon.

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd fine life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.

Spinning in April MOON in heaven's garden, among the clouds that wander, Crescent moon so young to see, above the April ways, Whiten, bloom not yet, not yet, within the twilight yonder; All my spinning is not done, for all the loitering days. Oh, my heart has two wild wings that ever would be flying! Oh, my heart's a meadow-lark that ever would be free! Well it is that I must spin until the light is dying; Well it is the little wheel must turn all day for me! All the hill-tops beckon, and beyond the western meadows Something calls for ever, calls me ever, low and clear: A little tree as young as I, the coming summer shadows,— The voice of running waters that I always thirst to hear. Oftentime the plea of it has set my wings a-beating; Oftentime it coaxes, as I sit weary-wise, Till the wild life hastens out to wild things all entreating, And leaves me at the spinning-wheel with dark, unseeing eyes.

and it was all he could do to restrain himself from shouting out: - "It was work performed! And now you feed me, when then you let me starve, forbade me your house, and damned me because I wouldn't get a job. And the work was already done, all done. And now, when I speak, you check the thought unuttered on your lips and hang on my lips and pay respectful attention to whatever I choose to say. I tell you your party is rotten and filled with grafters, and instead of flying into a rage you hum and haw and admit there is a great deal in what I say. And why? Because I'm famous; because I've a lot of money. Not because I'm Martin Eden, a pretty good fellow and not particularly a fool. I could tell you the moon is made of green cheese and you would subscribe to the notion, at least you would not repudiate it, because I've got dollars, mountains of them. And it was all done long ago; it was work performed, I tell you, when vou spat upon me as the dirt under your feet.

stand here for ever as a warning.’ ‘If you had been the first to lift the Orthanc-stone, and not he, how would it be now?’ said Aragorn. ‘You might have done worse. Who can say? But now it is your luck to come with me, I fear. At once. Go and get ready, and bring anything that Pippin left behind. Make haste!’ Over the plains Shadowfax was flying, needing no urging and no guidance. Less than an hour had passed, and they had reached the Fords of Isen and crossed them. The Mound of the Riders and its cold spears lay grey behind them. Pippin was recovering. He was warm, but the wind in his face was keen and refreshing. He was with Gandalf. The horror of the Stone and of the hideous shadow over the moon was fading, things left behind in the mists of the mountains or in a passing dream. He drew a deep breath. ‘I did not know you rode bare-back, Gandalf,’ he said. ‘You haven’t a saddle or a bridle!’ ‘I do not ride elf-fashion, except on Shadowfax,’ said Gandalf. ‘But Shadowfax will have no harness. You

Neither do I express well nor do I know how to write perfectly charming like writers do yet here I sit every night under the stars hoping one to break away so I could wish for the missing peace of my puzzle of life .. * Selfish isn't it wishing something to break so we can join ourselves  maybe thats the law of nature. One always has to give up for something to live. Tree dies  leaving the seed for a new bud behind.  Crazy! The sacrifice for one becomes the breath for the other one without even  him realizing what suffering something went through for its precious life * It gets cold fast once you decide to swim deep into your thoughts . Every thing from a star to even the buzzing of bees tell you a story about what your existence might be for but the city's lights and sound never let you realize how small yet how fascinating your existence is . We tend to forget the meaning of life even after preaching the same for others ourselves. . It feels good and at peace with nobody to bother you anymore . You can think and imagine stuff that might never be but this wonderful brain imagines  it . If not forever Atleast for sometime   you can feel the feeling you forever lust for.  Sure the usual disturbances try to lure my mind away from things but I'm used to it now . The gloominess  inside doesn't let them affect inside anymore. * The sky gets dark it really does . Maybe like the night sky's supposed to be so are my thoughts with a beating heart to support them and keep the flame of fight lit like the moon lights up the sky even if that means reflecting the harsh rays of sun. * The time flies and so do the body shivers for warmth but I feel like staying. Sure the exposed sky gives peace but it comes at a cost so I try to bargain with  it every night. She's a good at negotiating though only gives me some hours before she signal that time's over. * Hesitantly I move my numb body using the last remaining gas in  the dying  shell known as body. How much i try it won't let me stay so here I leave heartbroken once again like every other night.

Mother / Father (Noose break I’m coming down) I want to make friends with your father (No breath for lungs to move) So I can find out what your next mood is, your next move (Ahh tongue tied for once I’ve found) I want to get naked with your mother (No smoking on the wall) Like pictures I found, a flower Whenever I… Communicate Whenever I... You take, you change Whenever I… Communicate Whenever I… You take. you change (My attention I cant hold) I see your face rise in shallows (Become like steel to touch) Like the full moon and the hours (Oh, thoughts flying state to state) I want to strip off and run for cover (Oh, Only time will tell) Free look on our love, come follow Take it up with me, when you find yourself (Whenever I…) Communicate (Whenever I...) You take, you change (Whenever I…) Communicate (Whenever I…) You take. you change (Whenever I…) When you find yourself (Whenever I…) When you find yourself (Whenever I…) When you find yourself (Whenever I…) When you find yourself credits

No dragon was safe in the Sky Palace, but the ones in the most danger by far were the daughters of Queen Scarlet. Or was it now daughter, singular? Ruby hadn’t seen her sister, Tourmaline, in three days. Not since the night they went flying together and, high in the starlit sky, glowing in the light of two of the moons, Tourmaline had whispered that she was almost ready. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re only ten, and furthermore, you’ll never be ready,” Ruby had whispered back. “She killed her mother plus all three of her sisters and eleven of ours. There’s no way to defeat her.” “She can’t be queen forever,” Tourmaline said. “She has been queen forever,” Ruby argued. “Twenty-four years is a long time but not that long,” said Tourmaline. “Queen Oasis was queen longer than that, and look what happened to her.” “Are you planning to throw a scavenger at Mother?” Ruby asked. “Because I’m sure she’d appreciate a snack before she kills you.” “It’s always going to be like this,” Tourmaline hissed. She flicked clouds away with her dark orange wings. “Until one of us challenges her and wins. You and I are the only ones left now — the only hope the SkyWings have of a decent queen. Ruby, if I defeat her and become queen, we can get out of this war.” Ruby wasn’t so sure about that. She’d met Burn, and she suspected the SandWing wouldn’t let her allies go that easily. But it didn’t matter — there was no way Tourmaline could win a battle with their mother. “The prophecy will take care of the war,” she argued. “The brightest night is in four days … ” “Right.” Tourmaline rolled her eyes. “I’ll just wait for a bunch of eggs that haven’t even hatched yet to save us. Ruby, I don’t want to wait for things to happen to me. I want to make them happen.” “I don’t want to watch you die,” Ruby growled. Her sister hovered in front of her for a moment. Stars glittered in her eyes, searching Ruby’s. She’s wondering if I want the throne for myself, Ruby thought. She thinks I’m trying to talk her out of it because I’m planning something. Like I’m that stupid. “Well, don’t worry, I won’t do it yet,” Tourmaline promised. “Another few months of training, maybe. I’m feeling really strong, though. I beat Vermilion in a fight the other day. Want to hear about it?” Ruby

I think part of what scares me about the end of humanity is the end of those memories. I believe that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it does make a sound. But if no one is around to play Billie Holiday records, those songs really won't make a sound anymore. We've caused a lot of suffering, but we've also caused much else. I know the world will survive us—and in some ways, it will be more alive. More birdsong. More creatures roaming around. More plants cracking through our pavement, rewilding the planet we terraformed. I imagine coyotes sleeping in the ruins of the homes we built. I imagine our plastic still washing up on beaches hundreds of years after the last of us is gone. I imagine moths, having no artificial lights toward which to fly, turning back to the moon. There is some comfort for me in knowing that life will go on even when we don't. But I would argue that when our light goes out, it will be Earth's greatest tragedy, because while I know humans are prone to grandiosity, I also think we are by far the most interesting thing that ever happened on Earth. It's easy to forget how wondrous humans are, how strange and lovely.

I think part of what scares me about the end of humanity is the end of those memories. I believe that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it does make a sound. But if no one is around to play Billie Holiday records, those songs really won't make a sound anymore. We've caused a lot of suffering, but we've also caused much else. I know the world will survive us—and in some ways, it will be more alive. More birdsong. More creatures roaming around. More plants cracking through our pavement, rewilding the planet we terraformed. I imagine coyotes sleeping in the ruins of the homes we built. I imagine our plastic still washing up on beaches hundreds of years after the last of us is gone. I imagine moths, having no artificial lights toward which to fly, turning back toward the moon. There is some comfort for me in knowing that life will go on even when we don't. But I would argue that when our light goes out, it will be Earth's greatest tragedy, because while I know humans are prone to grandiosity, I also think we are by far the most interesting thing that ever happened on Earth. It's easy to forget how wondrous humans are, how strange and lovely.

really going on in RiverClan.” “And hedgehogs fly,” Puddleshine sighed under his breath, while Frostpaw blinked in gratitude at Shadowsight for his support. “Okay,” the medicine cat added aloud. “I know I won’t be able to talk either of you out of it now, so you might as well come along, Frostpaw. But don’t blame me if it all goes wrong.” The half-moon was floating in the sky by the time Frostpaw pushed through the bushes that barred the way to the Moonpool. Its light glinted silver on the cascade that flowed down the rock face and shimmered on the surface of the water. Frostpaw drew a deep breath. In all her travels she had never seen anything half so beautiful. Alderheart and Jayfeather of ThunderClan were already sitting beside the Moonpool. The SkyClan medicine cats, Frecklewish and Fidgetflake, sat beside them. Kestrelflight from WindClan was standing by himself a short distance away; Frostpaw couldn’t see his apprentice, Whistlepaw, anywhere. A worm of guilt stirred in her belly. Was Kestrelflight still so angry with Whistlepaw that he had forbidden her to come to the meeting? Mothwing and Podlight were missing, too. Frostpaw bit back a hiss of annoyance. She had counted on speaking to Mothwing, and she had been curious to see how Podlight would

He clipped the male again, this time in the shoulder, sending Einar flying backward. He was vaguely aware of Cyn racing to Leilani. He could hear her calling out his own name, but he tuned everything out, including her. Con couldn’t go to her yet. The threat needed to be eliminated. A red haze had descended across his vision as he body-slammed Einar, who was attempting to stand. That male wasn’t walking out of here. He knew he wasn’t acting rational, that the threat could be put down easier than this, but he couldn’t stop the rage that had overtaken him. Einar pumped a fist against Con’s ribcage as they tumbled to the ground. He barely felt it as he slammed a left hook across the male’s jaw. Didn’t feel anything as he jabbed him in the gut, the ribs, the face. Over and over. He felt a bloodlust overtake him as he pounded at Einar’s face. This male had wanted to hurt Leilani, to take her from Con. Strong arms wrapped around Con, tackling him to the ground and rolling him off his target. “Con!” Cyn held him tight, his eyes wild as he kept him pinned down. “It’s done. You’re scaring her.” Those words snapped him out of the dark fog of savagery that had overtaken him. Leilani stood a few feet away, her eyes wide as she stared at him. Fuck, he had scared her. “I’m fine,” he rasped to his brother. Cyn paused before loosening his grip. When he did, Con stood, terrified he’d screwed things up for good. He didn’t glance at Einar, who he was certain was dead. He’d never lost control like that, had never even come close. It pierced him that Leilani had seen him kill someone, that he literally had blood on his hands in front of her now. “Leilani—” She jumped at him, throwing her arms around his neck on a sob. “You came for me.” Unable to do anything about the blood, he wrapped his arms around her and held tight. Of course he’d come for her. There was nowhere she could go that he wouldn’t follow. That realization slammed into him as if someone had actually struck him. They’d known each other less than two weeks but she’d changed his world without even trying. He would give up his role of leader for her. The thought should have terrified him, but it didn’t. He buried his face against her neck, inhaled her sweet, arilod scent. “I’m not letting you go after the moon cycle.” She sniffled, her fingers gripping his shoulders tight. “Good because I’m not going anywhere,” she said as she pulled back. Her eyes were bright with tears as she looked at him. “I would move to the mainland for you.” She blinked once in surprise before her lips pulled up into a smile. “No. This is your home— my home now.” No, he realized, she was his home, but he simply nodded and crushed his mouth to hers.

Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of licking clean The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin. The tinder cries. The indelible smell Of a snuffed candle! Love, love, the low smokes roll From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel, Such yellow sullen smokes Make their own element. They will not rise, But trundle round the globe Choking the aged and the meek, The weak Hothouse baby in its crib, The ghastly orchid Hanging its hanging garden in the air, Devilish leopard! Radiation turned it white And killed it in an hour. Greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. The sin. The sin. Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss. Three days. Three nights. Lemon water, chicken Water, water make me retch. I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern—— My head a moon Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. Does not my heat astound you! And my light! All by myself I am a huge camellia Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush. I think I am going up, I think I may rise—— The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I Am a pure acetylene Virgin Attended by roses, By kisses, by cherubim, By whatever these pink things mean! Not you, nor him Nor him, nor him (My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)—— To Paradise.

What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks! 'tis whole again; oars! oars! Burst in upon him! I grow blind; hands! stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night? Oars, oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark; I see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! - Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say ye fools. Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my lifelong fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now! - Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though; cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die! - Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up.

As they walked toward the dance floor, Pamela barely felt the bruises on her feet from Henry. The thrill of waltzing with Mr. Carter practically banished the ache. On the floor, he took her into his arms. She liked the feel of his hand on her waist, the press of their gloved palms together. For the first time, the intimate posture, which had always made her feel uncomfortable and stiff, seemed right, and she wished he would pull her closer. Throughout the beginning of the waltz, they remained silent. She had the sense that Mr. Carter was concentrating on his steps, and she didn't want to distract him. He frowned. "I'm sorry I'm not a very good dancer." "Not at all." Pamela thought of Henry and had to restrain a laugh. She didn't want Mr. Carter to think she was making fun of him. "You couldn't possibly be worse than my previous partner, who led me in the wrong direction and trod on my toes!" His troubled expression cleared. "Well, then, I'm grateful you decided to risk your toes again with me. I promise, I'll try to keep my boots on the floor where they belong." He wiggled his eyebrows. Pamela laughed at his playful act. "I watched you with Elizabeth, and you were fine. So accepting your invitation to dance was not such a risk as you're making it out to be." As they bantered, Pamela found herself relaxing. Conversing with this stranger she'd only met twenty minutes ago was far easier than talking with some men she'd known all her life. Mr. Carter also seemed to become comfortable. His lead became more expert, and he picked up their speed. As they became in tune with each other, they flowed in perfect step to the music. Exhilaration welled up in Pamela. She'd never known dancing could feel like this. She glanced up at him, feeling a smile as wide as the moon stretch across her face. "We're flying!

Springs and summers full of song and revolution. The Popular Front, demonstrations and confrontations, time that takes you away from yourself and your poetry, so that you could see them as if from cosmic space, a way of looking that changes everything into stars, our Earth, you and me, Estonia and Eritrea, blue anemones and the Pacific Ocean. Even the belief that you will write more poems. Something that was breathing into you, as May wind blows into a house bringing smells of mown grass and dogs' barks, - this something has dissipated, become invisible like stars in daylight. For quite a time I haven't permitted myself to hope it would come back. I know I am not free, I am nothing without this breathing, inspiration, wind that comes through the window. Let God be free, whether he exist or no. And then, it comes once again. At dusk in the countryside when I go to an outhouse, a little white moth flies out of the door. That's it, now. And the dusk around me begins little by little to breathe in words and syllables. * In the morning, I was presented to President Mitterrand, in the evening, I was weeding nettles from under the currant bushes. A lot happened inbetween, the ride from Tallinn to Tartu and to our country home through the spring that we had waited for so long, and that came, as always, unexpectedly, changing serious greyish Estonia at once into a primary school child's drawing in pale green, into a play-landscape where mayflies, mayors and cars are all somewhat tiny and ridiculous... In the evening I saw the full moon rising above the alder grove. Two bats circled over the courtyard. The President's hand was soft and warm. As were his eyes, where fatigue was, in a curious way, mingled with force, and depth with banality. He had bottomless night eyes with something mysterious in them like the paths of moles underground or the places where bats hibernate and sleep.

That was amazing,” she told him. He kissed the top of her thigh. “For me, too.” She heard him sit up and prepared to pass over the condom. But before she could, she felt his finger enter her again. Just the finger. It shouldn’t have been that exciting, but there was something about the way he touched her. She’d just had more than her fill of orgasms, but she couldn’t help clamping around him, drawing him in deeper. “Good?” he asked. “Oh, yeah. Don’t stop.” Without thinking, she reached down and grabbed his wrist. Holding his hand still, she thrust her hips forward and back, finding the right pace until the heavy tension returned, and she felt the telltale contractions begin again. He swore softly. “Can you do that while I’m inside of you?” “Absolutely.” She pulled his hand free and pressed the condom into his palm. “Can you put this on in the dark?” He chuckled. “With you as motivation, I could probably put it on after I was dead.” Then he was pressing against her. She reached between them and guided him inside of her. As he entered her, she contracted around him. He filled her slowly, stretching her, delighting her. Each thrust was enough to send her flying. Zane shifted so he could hold on to her hips. “I can feel you coming,” he murmured. “You’re killing me. I can’t hold on much longer.” “Go for it,” she told him. He took her at her word. Moving faster and faster, he pulled out of her, then slipped back inside. She lost herself in the movement, in what she was feeling. The pleasure was greater than any she’d ever experienced. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it was something about being outdoors or the placement of the moon. Whatever. At this point, she didn’t much care. Instead, as she felt Zane tensing for his own release, she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him close. One last shudder rippled through her. She gave herself up to the feel of him, to the sudden weight as he wrapped his arms around her and groaned his surrender.

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,— Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved! Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise! Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine, Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well, Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight. In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth, Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth, As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky: Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far. Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow, Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;

ACT I Dear Diary, I have been carrying you around for a while now, but I didn’t write anything before now. You see, I didn’t like killing that cow to get its leather, but I had to. Because I wanted to make a diary and write into it, of course. Why did I want to write into a diary? Well, it’s a long story. A lot has happened over the last year and I have wanted to write it all down for a while, but yesterday was too crazy not to document! I’m going to tell you everything. So where should we begin? Let’s begin from the beginning. I kind of really want to begin from the middle, though. It’s when things got very interesting. But never mind that, I’ll come to it in a bit. First of all, my name is Herobrine. That’s a weird name, some people say. I’m kinda fond of it, but that’s just me I suppose. Nobody really talks to me anyway. People just refer to me as “Him”. Who gave me the name Herobrine? I gave it to myself, of course! Back in the day, I used to be called Jack, but it was such a run-of-the-mill name, so I changed it. Oh hey, while we’re at the topic of names, how about I give you a name, Diary? Yeah, I’m gonna give you a name. I’ll call you… umm, how does Doris sound? Nah, very plain. I must come up with a more creative name. Angela sounds cool, but I don’t think you’ll like that. Come on, give me some time. I’m not used to coming up with awesome names on the fly! Yes, I got it! I’ll call you Moony, because I created you under a full moon. Of course, that’s such a perfect name! I am truly a genius. I wish people would start appreciating my intellect. Oh, right. The story, right, my bad. So Moony, when it all started, I was a miner. Yep, just like 70% of the people in Scotland. And it was a dull job, I have to say. Most of the times, I mined for coal and iron ore. Those two resources were in great need at my place, that’s why so many people were miners. We had some farmers, builders, and merchants, but that was basically it. No jewelers, no booksellers, no restaurants, nothing. My gosh, that place was boring! I had always been fascinated by the idea of building. It seemed like so much fun, creating new things from other things. What’s not to like? I wanted to build, too. So I started. It was part-time at first, and I only did it when nobody was around. Whenever I got some free time on my hands, I spent it building stuff. I would dig out small caves and build little horse stables and make boats and all. It was so much fun! So I decided to take it to the next level and left my job as a miner. They weren’t paying me well, anyway. I traveled far and wide, looking for places to build and finding new materials. I’m quite the adrenaline junkie, I soon realized, always looking for an adventure.

But the bed I made up for myself was sufficiently uncomfortable to give me a wakeful night, and I thought a good deal of what the unlucky Dutchman had told me.I was not so much puzzled by Blanche Stroeve’s action, for I saw in that merely the result of a physical appeal. I do not suppose she had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a passive feeling capable of being roused for any object, as the vine can grow on any tree; and the wisdom of the world recognizes its strength when it urges a girl to marry the man who wants her with the assurance that love will follow. It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction in security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable vanity that women ascribe to its spiritual value. It is an emotion which is defenceless against passion. I suspected that Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in it from the beginning a vague element of sexual attraction. Who am I that I should seek to unravel the mysterious intricacies of sex? Perhaps Stroeve's passion excited without satisfying that part of her nature, and she hated Strickland because she felt in him the power to give her what she needed.I think she was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband's desire to bring him into the studio; I think she was frightened of him, though she knew not why; and I remembered how she had foreseen disaster. I think in some curious way the horror which she felt for him was a transference of the horror which she felt for herself because he so strangely troubled her. His appearance was wild and uncouth; there was aloofiness in his eyes and sensuality in his mouth; he was big and strong; he gave the impression of untamed passion; and perhaps she felt in him, too, that sinister element which had made me think of those wild beings of the world's early history when matter, retaining its early connection with the earth, seemed to possess yet a spirit of its own. lf he affected her at all. it was inevitable that she should love or hate him. She hated him. And then I fancy that the daily intimacy with the sick man moved her strangely. She raised his head to give him food, and it was heavy against her hand; when she had fed him she wiped his sensual mouth and his red beard.She washed his limbs; they were covered with thick hair; and when she dried his hands, even in his weakness they were strong and sinewy. His fingers were long; they were the capable, fashioning fingers of the artist; and I know not what troubling thoughts they excited in her. He slept very quietly, without movement, so that he might have been dead, and he was like some wild creature of the woods, resting after a long chase; and she wondered what fancies passed through his dreams. Did he dream of the nymph flying through the woods of Greece with the satyr in hot pursuit? She fled, swift of foot and desperate, but he gained on her step by step, till she felt his hot breath on her neck; and still she fled silently. and silently he pursued, and when at last he seized her was it terror that thrilled her heart or was it ecstasy? Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appetite. Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for him, and everything that had made up her life till then became of no account. She ceased to be a woman, complex, kind, and petulant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a Maenad. She was desire.

As much as I hated flying, I hated the anticipation of flying more. And all the waiting around was making me squirrelly. One and a half hours already shot. Couldn’t we just drive there at six hundred miles per hour? We can send a man to the moon, but no one has figured out how to build one long runway across the country? Gas up the plane and just drive that sucker. So it would take a little longer. So what? At least we’d know what we were up against. Currently, we were involuntary captives. Tarmac delays sucked.

He was in love with his best friend and it was new and scary and perfect and so fucking beautiful that half the time he felt like he was just going to take off flying at any moment. “Jess, what’s wrong? You don’t want me to touch you?” Please say it’s okay. I’m dying… “I just thought you wouldn’t want to…because, well, you know.” Shane slipped his hands beneath Jesse’s T-shirt, wedging them between Jesse’s back and the bed. Jesse arched to give him more room. The skin on his back was smooth and a little damp from the heat. Shane wanted more. He had to feel more. “Jess, do you have any idea how sexy you are right now?” And he was. His spiky hair was all askew, glasses long lost to the carpet, those big gray eyes were shining up at Shane and his mouth was parted and wet, begging for more kisses. Shane wanted to show Jesse everything. Wanted to be his first. “I want whatever is okay with you.” “R-really?” Ah, shit, he’s nervous. He never stutters like that anymore. “It’s okay. Only if you want to. We can just kiss.” Shane ran his fingers through Jesse’s silky spikes and kissed him again, soft and romantic like they usually did. “N-no. I want you to do it. I do.” With trembling hands, Jesse unbuttoned his cargo shorts and loosened the zipper. Shane couldn’t help grinning at him. He’d wanted to touch Jesse for so long.

One night he left his tent and rambled around aimlessly in the sleeping camp. He wandered to the enclosure where the captives’ tents stood near the banks of the river Rha. The night was cold, silvery with moonlight, and silent; he could hear the river gently lapping against its banks. It was a sweet, soothing sound like the lullaby his mother used to sing. As he listened a change came into the rhythm of the river’s song—now it was sad, yearning . . . and he could hear words. Someone was singing near by. The melody coiled around his heart and drew him, down the grassy slope, down to the river’s edge he went. The soft grass deadened his footsteps and he saw the singer before she heard him. Leaning against a tree so close to the river that her moonlit figure was reflected in the water, stood one of the captive girls. Bendeguz stood motionless, watching and listening. Her deep sad voice seemed to melt the fierceness around his heart, the restlessness left him, he was at peace. The song came to an end. The girl turned away from the river with a sigh . . . she saw Bendeguz. She made a move as if to run away, then shrank against the tree and faced him defiantly. There was contempt in her eyes and pride in the lift of her head. Bendeguz wanted to say: “Do not be afraid,” but now he could not, for there was no fear in her eyes—just cold, proud contempt. He walked closer, he could have touched her, and still she faced him defiantly. “What is your name?” he asked and his voice was gentle. “Alleeta.” “Alleeta . . .” he repeated slowly. “Alleeta, your eyes are as cold as ice. Do you hate me?” She looked at him for a long time then she turned her head away. “No, not now,” she whispered. “Always I have before, but not now.” She was speaking the language of the Huns, yet it wasn’t the same. To Bendeguz the words she spoke were like her elusive reflection in the water, the same words he knew but subtly different. And suddenly the words of her song rang again in his ears: Lead me westward, White Eagle of the Moon, oh, lead me On silvery rays of the Moon— Westward I long to fly . . . . “Alleeta, where did you learn that song—where did you learn the language of my people?” he asked. She looked at him, surprised. “It is the language of my people and it is a song we all know, the Song of the White Eagle.” “The White Eagle!” exclaimed Bendeguz.

Who are you? Who are your people?” Alleeta lifted her head proudly. She stood like a white flame before him. “I am the daughter of King Ashkenaz and my people are the Cimmerians, homeless wanderers upon the earth. Lost in the wilderness, downtrodden by the Scythians, slain by the enemy’s swords, and torn by the fangs of famine for longer years than I can remember, we have never lost hope. We believed that some day we would find the land of peace, believed that some day the leader promised to us by our great forefather Gomer would come and lead us to that land—the leader who shall be called the White Eagle. And now we have been taken as slaves by you, Bendeguz, and hope is dead in our hearts. The White Eagle is but a song.” Bendeguz listened to her rushing words in silence. Then he said: “Alleeta, do you know what my people call me?” “Your name is Bendeguz—I know.” He held out his hand to her. “Alleeta, listen to me. My name is Bendeguz, the White Eagle! My people are also seeking a land of peace, promised to them by our forefather, Nimrod. We have been slain by swords and torn by famine on the way; now we kill and destroy not because we want to but because nothing must stand in our way, we must and we will reach the land of our destiny.” While he spoke these words, Alleeta came slowly closer to him and took his hand. He closed his strong fingers on her hand and went on: “Tomorrow, Alleeta, your people shall be free. Tell them that they may leave us, or stay with us not as slaves but as our brothers. Tell them that our strength will be their strength, that we will never forsake them.” She had been looking into his eyes intently, searching. Now she smiled. “I can speak for my people now, Bendeguz. I will follow wherever you go. We will follow the White Eagle of the Moon westward . . . always.” She stepped back and slipped away between the dark trees. She might have been a dream, but her voice floated back to Bendeguz, growing fainter and fainter: Lead me westward, White Eagle of the Moon, oh, lead me . . . Bendeguz, back in his tent, was also singing softly: On silvery rays of the Moon Westward I long to fly . . . And, as he drifted into sleep, his last thought was: “Westward . . . but not alone, not alone any more.

Bear fat for the burn. You will lie on your face.” Their gazes locked, laughter still shimmering in his. Seconds dragged by, measured by the wild thumping of her heart. He wanted to rub her down? Oh, God, what was she going to do? She clutched the fur more tightly. Hunter shrugged as if her defiance bothered him not at all and tossed down the pouch. “You are sure enough not smart, Blue Eyes. You will lie on your face,” he said softly. “Don’t fight the big fight. If my strong arm fails me, I will call my friends. And in the end, you will lie on your face.” Loretta imagined sixty warriors swooping down on her. As if he needed more of an advantage. Hatred and helpless rage made her tremble. Hunter watched her, his expression unreadable as he waited. She wanted to fly at him, scratching and biting. Instead she loosened her hold on the buffalo robe and rolled onto her stomach. As she pressed her face into the stench-ridden buffalo fur, tears streamed down her cheeks, pooling and tickling in the crevices at each side of her nose. She clamped her arms to her sides and lay rigid, expecting him to jerk back the robe. Shame swept over her in hot, rolling waves as she imagined all those horrible men looking at her. She felt the fur shift and braced herself. His greased palm touched her back and slid downward with such agonizing slowness that her skin shriveled and her buttocks quivered. So focused was she on his touch, on the shame of it, that several seconds passed before she realized he had slipped his arm beneath the fur, that no one, not even he, could see her. Relief, if she felt any at all, was short-lived, for he laved every inch of her back with grease and then tried to nudge her arms aside to get at the burned skin along her ribs. She resisted him, but in the end his strength won out. When his fingertips grazed the swell of her left breast, her lungs ceased working and her body snapped taut. He hesitated, then resumed the rubbing, diving his fingertips between her and the fur to graze her nipple. She wasn’t burned there, and she knew he pressed the issue only to drive home his point. She belonged to him, and he would touch her whenever and wherever he pleased. A sob caught in her throat. Once again she felt his hand pause. His gaze burned into the back of her head, tangible in its intensity. At last he withdrew his arm from under the fur and sat back. Loretta twisted her neck to look up at his dark face, not bothering to wipe away her tears, too defeated to care if he saw them. He set the leather pouch on the pallet beside her. For an instant she thought she glimpsed pity in his eyes. “You rub the rest, eh? And put yourself into the clothes.” With that, he rose, presented his broad back to her, and walked away to crouch by the only remaining fire. Loretta clutched the fur to her breasts and sat up, not quite able to believe he had left her alone to dress.

After Hunter lowered her onto her fur pallet, which she was swiftly coming to regard as her prison, she clutched the buffalo robe around her and rolled onto her side. Make no grief behind you. She felt like an animal caught in a snare--awaiting the trapper and certain death. The sun burned through her closed eyelids, red and hot. Loretta heard Hunter walk a short distance away, heard him murmur something. His stallion nickered in response. She lifted her lashes and watched the Comanche go through the contents of a parfleche. He withdrew her ruffled drawers, the buckskin shirt he had worn to the farm yesterday morning, and a drawstring pouch. As he walked back to her, he pressed her bloomers to his nose and sniffed. He met her gaze as he drew the lavender-scented cloth away from his face. For the first time, he smiled a genuine smile. It warmed his expression so briefly that she might have believed she imagined it but for the twinkle that remained in his dark eyes as he knelt beside her. He dropped the clothing onto the fur and held up the pouch. “Bear fat for the burn. You will lie on your face.” Their gazes locked, laughter still shimmering in his. Seconds dragged by, measured by the wild thumping of her heart. He wanted to rub her down? Oh, God, what was she going to do? She clutched the fur more tightly. Hunter shrugged as if her defiance bothered him not at all and tossed down the pouch. “You are sure enough not smart, Blue Eyes. You will lie on your face,” he said softly. “Don’t fight the big fight. If my strong arm fails me, I will call my friends. And in the end, you will lie on your face.” Loretta imagined sixty warriors swooping down on her. As if he needed more of an advantage. Hatred and helpless rage made her tremble. Hunter watched her, his expression unreadable as he waited. She wanted to fly at him, scratching and biting. Instead she loosened her hold on the buffalo robe and rolled onto her stomach. As she pressed her face into the stench-ridden buffalo fur, tears streamed down her cheeks, pooling and tickling in the crevices at each side of her nose. She clamped her arms to her sides and lay rigid, expecting him to jerk back the robe. Shame swept over her in hot, rolling waves as she imagined all those horrible men looking at her. She felt the fur shift and braced herself. His greased palm touched her back and slid downward with such agonizing slowness that her skin shriveled and her buttocks quivered. So focused was she on his touch, on the shame of it, that several seconds passed before she realized he had slipped his arm beneath the fur, that no one, not even he, could see her.