Forest Bathing Quotes

Don’t go,” he said, still half asleep. “I have to bathe. I smell like a forest fire.” “You smell like wildflowers. You always do. What can I say to make you stay?” His words trailed off into a drowsy mumble as he fell back asleep. Tell me it’s more than war and worry that makes you speak those words. Tell me what they would mean if you weren’t a king and I weren’t a soldier.

And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.

Every morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and then you will die. So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the desperation. Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party. Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party and seduced you and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing. You want a better story. Who wouldn’t? A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing. Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on. What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon. Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly flames everywhere. I can tell already you think I’m the dragon, that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon. I’m not the princess either. Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later. Let me do it right for once, for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes, you know the story, simply heaven. Inside your head you hear a phone ringing and when you open your eyes only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer. Inside your head the sound of glass, a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion. Hello darling, sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. Inside your head you hear a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up in a stranger’s bathroom, standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away from the dirtiest thing you know. All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly darkness, suddenly only darkness. In the living room, in the broken yard, in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of unnatural light, my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away. I arrived in the city and you met me at the station, smiling in a way that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade, up the stairs of the building to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things, I looked out the window and said This doesn’t look that much different from home, because it didn’t, but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights. We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too, smiling and crying in a way that made me even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn’t say it out loud. Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you. Okay, if you’re so great, you do it— here’s the pencil, make it work … If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing river water. Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently we have had our difficulties and there are many things I want to ask you. I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again, years later, in the chlorinated pool. I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have these luxuries. I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together. I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes. Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you. Quit milling around the yard and come inside.

In Japanese, there is a term, “forest bathing,” where you take a walk under the trees and the coolness, the smell, and the silence wash over you. I feel relaxed, cleansed, and clear-minded afterward.

She is Melusina, the water goddess, and she is found in hidden springs and waterfalls in any forest in Christendom, even in those as far away as Greece. (...) A man may love her if he keeps her secret and lets her alone when she wants to bathe, and she may love him in return until he breaks his word, as men always do, and she sweeps him into the depths with her fishy tail, and turns his faithless blood to water. The tragedy of Melusina, whatever language tells it, whatever tune it sings, is that a man will always promise more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds. One wants to suffer in front of the stove and another believes that he will get well near the window. It always seems to me that I will be better off there where I am not, and this question of moving about is one that I discuss endlessly with my soul "Tell me, my soul, my poor chilled soul, what would you think about going to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and you'll be able to soak up the sun like a lizard there. That city is on the shore; they say that it is built all out of marble, and that the people there have such a hatred of the vegetable, that they tear down all the trees. There's a country after your own heart -- a landscape made out of light and mineral, and liquid to reflect them!" My soul does not reply. "Because you love rest so much, combined with the spectacle of movement, do you want to come and live in Holland, that beatifying land? Perhaps you will be entertained in that country whose image you have so often admired in museums. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts and ships anchored at the foot of houses?" My soul remains mute. "Does Batavia please you more, perhaps? There we would find, after all, the European spirit married to tropical beauty." Not a word. -- Is my soul dead? Have you then reached such a degree of torpor that you are only happy with your illness? If that's the case, let us flee toward lands that are the analogies of Death. -- I've got it, poor soul! We'll pack our bags for Torneo. Let's go even further, to the far end of the Baltic. Even further from life if that is possible: let's go live at the pole. There the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and augments monotony, that half of nothingness. There we could take long baths in the shadows, while, to entertain us, the aurora borealis send us from time to time its pink sheaf of sparkling light, like the reflection of fireworks in Hell!" Finally, my soul explodes, and wisely she shrieks at me: "It doesn't matter where! It doesn't matter where! As long as it's out of this world!

The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders of the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the dacayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light.

The Japanese have a concept, shinrin yoku—forest bathing—which is a form of therapy that uses nature as a treatment for mental and spiritual issues.

The best way to deal with stress at work is to go for a forest bath. I go for shinrin-yoku every lunchtime. You don’t need a forest; any small green space will do. Leave your cup of coffee and your phone behind and just walk slowly. You don’t need to exercise, you just need to open your senses to nature. It will improve your mood, reduce tension and anxiety, and help you focus and concentrate for the rest of the day.

The quality it had now, in fresh untempered sunlight, was neither faerie nor austere; the changing shadows of dusk and midnight had vanished with the darkness and the rain, and walls and roof and towers were bathed in the radiance that comes only in the first hours of the day, soft, new-washed, the delicate aftermath of dawn. The people who slept within must surely bear some imprint of this radiance in themselves, must turn instinctively to the light seeping through the shutters, while the ghostly dreams and sorrows of the night slipped away, finding sanctuary in the unwakened forest trees the sun had not yet touched.

A walk through the woods probably won’t change what’s wrong, but it can change how we respond to it.

May we each find a forest-bathing path that can be a daily balm in this taxing world.

What do these forests make you feel? Their weight and density, their crowded orderliness. There is scarcely room for another tree and yet there is space around each. They are profoundly solemn yet upliftingly joyous; like the Bible, you can find strength in them that you look for. How absolutely full of truth they are, how full of reality. The juice and essence of life are in them; they teem with life, growth and expansion. They are a refuge for myriads of living things. As the breezes blow among them, they quiver, yet how still they stand developing with the universe. God is among them. He has breathed with them the breath of life, might and patience. They stand developing, springing from tiny seeds, pushing close to Mother Earth. Fluffy baby things first, sheltering beneath their parents, mounting higher, spreading brave braches, pushing with mighty strength not to be denied skywards. Tossing in the breezes, glowing in the sunshine, bathing in the showers, bending below the snow piled on their branches, drinking the dew, rejoicing in creation, bracing each other, sheltering the birds and beasts, the myriad insects.

My wish for all of us is forest baths guided by our inner knowing. Where we don’t have any idea what is behind each turn. Immersed, unsettled forest baths—ones where we emerge with ankles enlivened by the prick of nettles, lichens in our tresses, pebbles in our pockets, an uncertainty about whether the tendrilly growth on our arms is hair or fur. Our heart rate calm yet beautifully feral. Let us return so mingled with the stuff of the earth that the first person to stumble upon us after we are home from our wandering looks at us and says, with a mixture of admonition, admiration, worry, and an urge to suddenly run out the door themselves, “You need a bath.

Think selfishly,' Daine said, trying to make these arrogant two-leggers see what she meant. 'You can't go on this way. Soon you will have no forests to get wood from or to hunt game in. You poison water you drink and bathe and fish in. Even if you keep the farms, they won't be enough to feed you if the rest of the valley's laid waste. You'll starve. Your people will starve- unless you buy from outside the valley, and that's fair expensive. You'll ruin Dunlath.

Bathing is not just about a quick rinse. Taking care of your whole self is essential in maintaining balance and contentment. And rituals around bathing play their part - they provide time in the day when you can focus on yourself, and clear your mind and body.

Dusk had fallen. Outside the lanterns in the garden were being lit, a string of stars strewn across the grounds. She had missed this room, who Nikolai became in this room, the man who for a moment might let the mantle of king fall away, who trusted her enough to close his eyes and fall in to dreams as she stood watch. She needed to get back to the Little Palace, check on Princess Ehri, talk to Tamar, forge a plan. But this might be the last time she saw him this way. At last she rose and turned down the lights. "Don't go," he said, still half asleep. "I have to bathe. I smell like a forest fire." "You smell like wildflowers. You always do. What can I say to make you stay?" His words trailed off in to a drowsy mumble as he fell back asleep. Tell me it's more than war and worry that makes you speak those words. Tell me what they would mean if you weren't a king and I weren't a soldier. But she didn't want to hear any of that, not really. Sweet words and grand declarations were for other people, other lives. She brushed the hair back from his face, planted a kiss on his forehead. "I would stay forever if I could," she whispered. He wouldn't remember anyway.

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans.

Some cultures venerate this experience: the Japanese, for example, have the glorious tradition of ‘forest bathing’ (shinrin-yoku): the practice of absorptive, enveloping walking in deep forests for the soothing properties of being connected to, and fully immersed in, the sights, sounds and feel of nature.

The plain of Bedegraine was a forest of pavilions. They looked like old-fashioned bathing tents, and were every colour of the rainbow. ... There were heraldic devices worked or stamped on the sides ... Then there were pennons floating from the tops of the tents, and sheaves of spears leaning against them. The more sporting barons had shields or huge copper basins outside their front doors, and all you had to do was to give a thump on one of these with the butt-end of your spear, for the baron to come out like an angry bee and have a fight with you, almost before the resounding boom had died away. Sir Dinadain, who was a cheerful man, had hung a chamber-pot outside his.

Bathed in light, submerged in sound and rapt in feeling, the sentient body, at once both perceiver and producer, traces the paths of the world’s becoming in the very course of contributing to its ongoing renewal. Here, surely, lies the essence of what it means to dwell. It is, literally to be embarked upon a movement along a way of life. The perceiver-producer is thus a wayfarer, and the mode of production is itself a trail blazed or a path followed. Along such paths, lives are lived, skills developed, observations made and understandings grown. But if this is so, then we can no longer suppose that dwelling is emplaced in quite the way Heidegger imagined, in an opening akin to a clearing in the forest. To be, I would now say, is not to be in place but to be along paths. The path, and not the place, is the primary condition of being, or rather of becoming.

You will not find WiFi in the forest, but you will find a better connection.

Evening light poured in through the high windows, bathing the whirling eddies of dust in a yellow glow.

Where perfumed rivers flow, Is the home of my beloved. Where passing breezes halt, Is the home of my beloved. Where dawn arrives on bare toes, Where night paints henna-beams on feet, Where fragrance bathes in moonlight, Is the home of my beloved. Where rays of light roam nakedly, In green forests of sandalwood. Where the flame seeks the lamp, Is the home of my beloved. Where sunsets sleep on wide waters, And the deer leap. Where tears fall for no reason, Is the home of my beloved. Where the farmer sleeps hungry, Even though the wheat is the color of my beloved, Where the wealthy ones lie in hiding, Is the home of my beloved. Where perfumed rivers flow, Is the home of my beloved. Where passing breezes halt, Is the home of my beloved.

Who among us has not heard it? The wolf of this beloved, damaged earth, beckoning us by name just outside our safe living room, demanding our own response? The strange and persistent furry-pawed knocking? We peek tentatively through the door, just ajar, and see that there is no road, no sidewalk, barely a trail—and that obscured by stones, by leaves, by an intimation of the remains of those who have walked before us upon the unyielding circle of life. In spite of it all, we long to walk this path. For we know that there is more than what has been given and named by the overculture, more than what we have been told is true, more than green gardens and nature calendars, and recycling, and a summer hike in the mountains, and an occasional camping trip. More, even, than an hourlong “forest bath,” however lovely that sounds. We know there is a wilder earth, and upon it—within it—a wilder, more authentic human self. We know the need of each for the other is absolute.

Nature pulls us up when we feel down, worked up, and vulnerable. It takes us out of our neurosis, shakes off the cobwebs, and helps us to mentally refresh. Nature shows us the way of the cycles and impermanence of all things and awakens the heart.

Tildy warned us the Winter King could identify a person by scent,” Summer said. “Since he thinks you’re Autumn, Tildy said the wedding night should take place here, in Autumn’s bedroom, where her scent is already absorbed into everything.” “She added the flowers and incense to help mask your own scent,” Spring added, “and deliberately arranged the candles so he won’t be able to get a good look at your face so long as you keep to the bed.” “Where’s Autumn?” she asked. “Here.” Khamsin turned. Her sister emerged from the connecting wardrobe room wrapped in a forest green satin robe. Her long auburn hair spilled around her shoulders in ringlets. “Scenting up your nightclothes.” Autumn grimaced. “I know I’m clean. I bathed this morning, but there’s still something wrong about rolling on sheets and rubbing myself on clothes all day. It just seems so . . . so . . . dirty.” Despite everything, Khamsin laughed. For some reason, Autumn’s complaint struck her as funny. “You rolled on the sheets?” “Tildavera suggested it.

Czy zwróciłeś kiedyś uwagę, jak przyjemnie chodzi się boso po piasku, trawie albo ziemi?Nie bierze się to tylko z ulgi po zdjęciu sztywnych butów albo zrzuceniu wysokich obcasów. Kiedy dotykasz podłoża bosymi stopami, twój organizm otrzymuję dawkę potężnych leczniczych elektronów.

Bush could never understand Hornblower's disciplinary methods. He had been positively horrified when he had heard his captain's public admission that he too had baths under the washdeck pump — it seemed madness for a captain to allow his men to guess that they were of the same flesh as his.

Tristan stood there dazed in the rain and mud with his friend embracing him in sorrow. The scout who was from their tent approached with an officer in tail. They raced to the paddock and quickly saddled three horses. The officer commanded them to stop and they knocked him aside in full gallop northward toward Calais reaching the forest by midnight. They sat still and fireless through the night and then at dawn in the fine sifting snow they crept forward in the snow and wiped it from the faces of the dozen or so dead until Tristan found Samuel, kissed him and bathed his icy face with his own tears: Samuel’s face gray and unmarked but his belly rended from its cage of ribs. Tristan detached the heart with a skinning knife and they rode back to camp where Noel melted down candles and they encased Samuel’s heart in paraffin in a small ammunition canister for burial back in Montana.

Carrefour” O You, Who came upon me once Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing, Why did you not strangle me before speaking Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words And then leave me to the mercy Of the forest bees. Originally published in Coterie: A Quarterly: Art, Prose, and Poetry No. 4. Edited by Lall Chaman (1920)

If all goes well we should be in Lusaka by tonight, then Victoria Falls, and from what I hear our troubles are over after that. Zimbabwe and South Africa are comfortable, efficient, Westernized. Akuna Matata. No Problem. Wild, uncomfortable, incomprehensible Africa will give way to tamed and tidied Africa – hot baths and iced beers, air-conditioning and daily newspapers, French wines and credit cards. Lying here, listening to the aching wind in a hut by a lake in a forest, I feel a pain of sadness at the prospect of leaving behind all I have been through these past months and returning to a world where experience is sanitized – rationed out second-hand by television and newspapers and magazines and marketing companies.

Finding contentment and happiness in your surroundings is a massive contributor to your overall happiness. One who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger. Japanese proverb Kaachu fuugetsu most commonly translates as learning about yourself through experiencing the beauty of nature. The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. Japanese proverb

I spent an hour yesterday watching the ladies bathe. What a sight! What a hideous sight! The two sexes used to bathe together here. But now they are kept separate by means of signposts, preventive nets, and a uniformed inspector – nothing more depressingly grotesque can be imagined. However, yesterday, from the place where I was standing in the sun, with my spectacles on my nose, I could contemplate the bathing beauties at my leisure. The human race must indeed have become absolutely moronic to have lost its sense of elegance to this degree. Nothing is more pitiful than these bags in which women encase their bodies, and these oilcloth caps! What faces! What figures! And what feet! Red, scrawny, covered with corns and bunions, deformed by shoes, long as shuttles or wide as washerwomen’s paddles. And in the midst of everything, scrofulous brats screaming and crying. Further off, grandmas knitting and respectable old gentlemen with gold-rimmed spectacles reading newspapers, looking up from time to time between lines to savor the vastness of the horizon with an air of approval. The whole thing made me long all afternoon to escape from Europe and go live in the Sandwich Islands or the forests of Brazil. There, at least, the beaches are not polluted by such ugly feet, by such foul-looking specimens of humanity.

Do you know a Ukraine night? No, you do not know a night in the Ukraine. Gaze your full on it. The moon shines in the midst of the sky; the immeasurable vault of heaven seems to have expanded to infinity; the earth is bathed in silver light; the air is warm, voluptuous, and redolent of innumerable sweet scents. Divine night! Magical night! Motionless, but inspired with divine breath, the forests stand, casting enormous shadows and wrapped in complete darkness. Calmly and placidly sleep the lakes surrounded by dark green thickets. The virginal groves of the hawthorns and cherry-trees stretch their roots timidly into the cool water; only now and then their leaves rustle slumber; but there is a mysterious breath upon the heights. One falls into a weird and unearthly mood, and silvery apparitions rise from the depths. Divine night! Magical night! Suddenly the woods, lakes, and steppes become alive. The nightingales of the Ukraine are singing, and it seems as though the moon itself were listening to their song. The village sleeps as though under a magic spell; the cottages shine in the moonlight against the darkness of the woods behind them. The songs grow silent, and all is still. Only here and there is a glimmer of light in some small window. Some families, sitting up late, are finishing their supper at the threshholds of their houses.

In 1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war. The reader will know that my efforts did not meet with success. I went to Petrograd from Vladivostok, .One day, on the way through Siberia, the train stopped at some station and the passengers as usual got out, some to fetch water to make tea, some to buy food and others to stretch their legs. A blind soldier was sitting on a bench. Other soldiers sat beside him and more stood behind. There were from twenty to thirty.Their uniforms were torn and stained. The blind soldier, a big vigorous fellow, was quite young. On his cheeks was the soft, pale down of a beard that has never been shaved. I daresay he wasn't eighteen. He had a broad face, with flat, wide features, and on his forehead was a great scar of the wound that had lost him his sight. His closed eyes gave him a strangely vacant look. He began to sing. His voice was strong and sweet. He accompanied himself on an accordion. The train waited and he sang song after song. I could not understand his words, but through his singing, wild and melancholy, I seemed to hear the cry of the oppressed: I felt the lonely steppes and the interminable forests, the flow of the broad Russian rivers and all the toil of the countryside, the ploughing of the land and the reaping of the wild corn, the sighing of the wind in the birch trees, the long months of dark winter; and then the dancing of the women in the villages and the youths bathing in shallow streams on summer evenings; I felt the horror of war, the bitter nights in the trenches, the long marches on muddy roads, the battlefield with its terror and anguish and death. It was horrible and deeply moving. A cap lay at the singer's feet and the passengers filled it full of money; the same emotion had seized them all, of boundless compassion and of vague horror, for there was something in that blind, scarred face that was terrifying; you felt that this was a being apart, sundered from the joy of this enchanting world. He did not seem quite human. The soldiers stood silent and hostile. Their attitude seemed to claim as a right the alms of the travelling herd. There was a disdainful anger on their side and unmeasurable pity on ours; but no glimmering of a sense that there was but one way to compensate that helpless man for all his pain.

But Lilith was not there to trick Eve. As Goddess of sex, fertility, women’s cycles, the moon, and blood mysteries, Lilith initiates naïve Eve into her own shakti—the liquid red power to heal her body, awaken her intuition, and create life itself. Lilith knows that our bleeding days unleash our physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual powers. We see and feel things more purely and potently. Lilith defines PMS as the blessed time you become a powerful, magical Sorceress. Lilith is the Wild Woman within every woman who would rather become notorious than be refrained from bathing in the sea, howling at the moon, dancing in the forest, and making love to life itself. She wants Eve and every woman to know her worth and own her power, no matter how hard they try to keep you from it. She wants you to be the authority in your life without having to seek permission from anyone or anything outside of yourself to be or do what your heart calls you to.

This place, our little cloud forest, even though we missed our papi, it was the most beautiful place you've ever seen. We didn't really know that then, because it was the only place we'd ever seen, except in picture in books and magazines, but now that's I've seen other place, I know. I know how beautiful it was. And we loved it anyway even before we knew. Because the trees had these enormous dark green leaves, as a big as a bed, and they would sway in the wind. And when it rain you could hear the big, fat raindrops splatting onto those giant leaves, and you could only see the sky in bright blue patches if you were walking a long way off to a friend's house or to church or something, when you passed through a clearing and all those leaves would back away and open up and the hot sunshine would beat down all yellow and gold and sticky. And there were waterfalls everywhere with big rock pools where you could take a bath and the water was always warm and it smelled like sunlight. And at night there was the sound of the tree frogs and the music of the rushing water from the falls and all the songs of the night birds, and Mami would make the most delicious chilate, and Abuela would sing to us in the old language, and Soledad and I would gather herbs and dry them and bundle them for Papi to sell in the market when he had a day off, and that's how we passed our days.' Luca can see it. He's there, far away in the misty cloud forest, in a hut with a packed dirt floor and a cool breeze, with Rebeca and Soledad and their mami and abuela, and he can even see their father, far away down the mountain and through the streets of that clogged, enormous city, wearing a long apron and a chef's hat, and his pockets full of dried herbs. Luca can smell the wood of the fire, the cocoa and cinnamon of the chilate, and that's how he knows Rebeca is magical, because she can transport him a thousand miles away into her own mountain homestead just by the sound of her voice.

Colby Lane and Pierce Hutton had the manager of Tate’s apartment building open his door for them. They knew that Tate had come back from Tennessee, and that he’d saved Cecily from Gabrini, but nobody had seen him for almost a week. His answering machine was left on permanently. He didn’t answer knocks at the door. It was such odd behavior that his colleague and his boss became actually concerned. They were more concerned when they saw him passed out on the couch in a forest of beer cans and discarded pizza boxes. He hadn’t shaved or, apparently, bathed since his return. “Good God,” Pierce said gruffly. “That’s a familiar sight,” Colby murmured. “He’s turned into me.” Pierce glared at him. “Don’t be insulting.” He moved to the sofa and shook Tate. “Wake up!” he snapped. Tate didn’t open his eyes. He shifted, groaning. “She won’t come back,” he mumbled. “Won’t come. Hates me…” He drifted off again. Pierce and Colby exchanged knowing glances. Without a word, they rolled up their sleeves and set to work, first on the apartment, and then on Tate.

that was still okay because this place, our little cloud forest, even though we missed our papi, it was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. We didn’t really know that then, because it was the only place we’d ever seen, except in pictures in books and magazines, but now that I’ve seen other places, I know. I know how beautiful it was. And we loved it anyway even before we knew. Because the trees had these enormous dark green leaves, as big as a bed, and they would sway in the wind. And when it rained you could hear the big, fat raindrops splatting onto those giant leaves, and you could only see the sky in bright blue patches if you were walking a long way off to a friend’s house or to church or something, when you passed through a clearing and all those leaves would back away and open up and the hot sunshine would beat down all yellow and gold and sticky. And there were waterfalls everywhere with big rock pools where you could take a bath and the water was always warm and it smelled like sunlight. And at night there was the sound of the tree frogs and the music of the rushing water from the falls and all the songs of the night birds, and

I have come to think of it as prayer, although I ask for nothing, and speak to no one within it. It is a profoundly non-verbal experience, a sharp breath of pure being amid a forest of words. It is an untangling, a moment to feel the true ache of desire, the gentle wash of self-compassion, the heart-swell of thanks, the tick tick tick of existence. It is a moment when, alone, I feel at my most connected with others. I can feel entirely separate in a crowd of people, but closing my eyes, I can feel as though I have walked into a river of all consciousness, bathed in common humanity.

But that was still okay because this place, our little cloud forest, even though we missed our papi, it was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. We didn’t really know that then, because it was the only place we’d ever seen, except in pictures in books and magazines, but now that I’ve seen other places, I know. I know how beautiful it was. And we loved it anyway even before we knew. Because the trees had these enormous dark green leaves, as big as a bed, and they would sway in the wind. And when it rained you could hear the big, fat raindrops splatting onto those giant leaves, and you could only see the sky in bright blue patches if you were walking a long way off to a friend’s house or to church or something, when you passed through a clearing and all those leaves would back away and open up and the hot sunshine would beat down all yellow and gold and sticky. And there were waterfalls everywhere with big rock pools where you could take a bath and the water was always warm and it smelled like sunlight. And at night there was the sound of the tree frogs and the music of the rushing water from the falls and all the songs of the night birds, and Mami would make the most delicious chilate, and Abuela would sing to us in the old language

Lilith is the Wild Woman within every woman who would rather become notorious than be refrained from bathing in the sea, howling at the moon, dancing in the forest, and making love to life itself. Lilith knows that it is only through setting your boundaries that you can set yourself free. She knows the price both the Goddess and Her daughters pay to honor their ways, for She is not the only one to suffer condemnation by those who fear feminine power. Like Her, they defamed Her sisters too: magical Hecate became the baby-killing hag and wicked witch, and mystical Mary Magdalene was turned into the sinful whore. Know this: there is nothing more threatening to those enslaved by their fears than someone who dares to live freely. And live freely you must. As a bird-snake Goddess who dwells in the dark depths of your holy yoni and crown, Lilith compels you to harness your untapped life-force energy to do all that you wish to do without explanation or apology. Far from being the deceptive serpent, Lilith is the wise liberator. And She is on Eve’s side. Of course She wants her (and everyone) to “be like God,” for She knows that we are the embodiment of the Divine. She wants to free Eve and every woman (and man) from the illusion of the perfect life that comes at the price of blind obedience. She invites us to bite into the forbidden fruit of knowledge so that we may be free to think for ourselves and decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. She knows this comes with responsibility and consequence, and She emboldens you to take it on. Yes, Lilith wants you to be God-like, to have Divine authority and will in your own life. She calls you to leap boldly forward as you take the inspired action you need to take to live your most physically- and spiritually-free life. Those who live freely will join you. Those who don’t will no longer have the power to hold you back.

I only wish to discuss with you one possibility: Perhaps seeds of love are present in other places in the universe. We ought to encourage them to sprout and grow. “That’s a goal worth taking risks for.” Yes, we can take risks. “I have a dream that one day brilliant sunlight will illuminate the dark forest.” The sun was setting. Now only its tip was exposed beyond the distant mountains, as if the mountaintop was inset with a dazzling gemstone. Like the grass, the child running in the distance was bathed in the golden sunset. The sun will set soon. Isn’t your child afraid? “Of course she’s not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.

Step out barefoot and notice that your mind starts to quiet and you feel more present in your body. Walk on the Earth as though each step is a prayer. Studies have shown that earthing, contacting the earth directly with your feet—in the soil, grass, sand, moss, anything—can help reduce inflammation and chronic pain, reduce stress, improve energy, and improve sleep. Earthing is a cure-all. The two hundred thousand nerve endings on the sole of each foot pick up the electrons transferred from the earth. Walking barefoot will calm your nervous system and help your body return to an optimal electrical state, from which you’re better able to self-regulate and self-heal.

What rending pains were close at hand! Death! and what a death! worse than any other that is to be named! Water, be it cold or warm, that which buoys up blue icefields, or which bathes tropical coasts with currents of balmy bliss, is yet a gentle conqueror, kisses as it kills, and draws you down gently through darkening fathoms to its heart. Death at the sword is the festival of trumpet and bugle and banner, with glory ringing out around you and distant hearts thrilling through yours. No gnawing disease can bring such hideous end as this; for that is a fiend bred of your own flesh, and this — is it a fiend, this living lump of appetites? What dread comes with the thought of perishing in flames! but fire, let it leap and hiss never so hotly, is something too remote, too alien, to inspire us with such loathly horror as a wild beast; if it have a life, that life is too utterly beyond our comprehension. Fire is not half ourselves; as it devours, arouses neither hatred nor disgust; is not to be known by the strength of our lower natures let loose; does not drip our blood into our faces with foaming chaps, nor mouth nor slaver above us with vitality. Let us be ended by fire, and we are ashes, for the winds to bear, the leaves to cover; let us be ended by wild beasts, and the base, cursed thing howls with us forever through the forest.

It’s so cute, isn’t it?” Arianna said dreamily. “Are we seeing the same creature? It’s like a demented goat with a bone growth.” “You’re going to hurt its feelings! Now shut up and sit on the ground.” I did as I was told, sticking my ankle out. “How is it going to heal me?” I asked, suddenly nervous. I pictured it licking my ankle and gagged. I could only imagine the diseases unicorn saliva had or what it carried around in its filthy, matted beard and hair. Bleating reproachfully, it stared at me with its doleful, square-pupiled brown eyes. “Oh, fine. Great, glorious unicorn, beloved of oblivious girls everywhere, please heal me. Now, if you don’t mind.” With one last bat of its gunk-crusted eyelashes, it lowered its head and put its stubby horn against my ankle. I cringed, waiting for pain, but felt instead tingling warmth spread out, almost like having butterflies in my stomach. Only in my ankle. Butterflies . . . with rainbows. The feeling of wholeness and well-being spread up my leg and into my entire body, and I couldn’t stop grinning. The forest was beautiful! The tree branches, naked against the brightening sky, held unimaginable wonders. The hard-packed dirt beneath me was a treasure trove of unrealized potential, lovely for what it could eventually give life to. I could sit out here forever and just enjoy nature. I was so happy! And rainbows! Why did I keep thinking of rainbows? Who cared! Rainbows were totally awesome! And the unicorn! I beamed at it, reaching out my hand to stroke it. There was never a creature more beautiful, more majestic. I’d spend the rest of my life out here, and we’d prance around the forest, worship the sunlight, bathe in the moonlight, and . . . I shook my head, scattering the idiotic warm fuzzies that had invaded. “Whoa,” I said, shoving the unicorn’s head away. “That’s enough of that.” I looked down at my ankle, which was now completely healed, not even a scar left. I fixed a stern look on the unicorn. “I am not going to frolic in an eternal meadow of sunshine and moonlight with you, you rotten little fink. But thanks.” I smiled, just enough to be nice without being too encouraging, and patted it quickly on the head. I was going to soak that hand in bleach. “Okay, let’s get out of here.” I stood, testing my ankle and relieved with the utter lack of pain. I still had an irrational desire to do an interpretive dance about rainbows, but it was a small price to pay for being healed.

IN THE SHADE OF THE house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling,

shortly I should be able to live at peace in my cottage, with all the twenty four hours of the day to myself. Forty-six I am, and never yet had a whole week of leisure. What will 'for ever' feel like, and can I use it all? Please note its address from March onwards - Clouds Hill, Moreton, Dorset - and visit it, sometime, if you still stravage the roads of England in a great car. The cottage has two rooms; one, upstairs, for music (a gramophone and records) and one downstairs for books. There is a bath, in a demi-cupboard. For food one goes a mile, to Bovington (near the Tank Corps Depot) and at sleep-time I take my great sleeping bag, embroidered MEUM, and spread it on what seems the nicest bit of floor. There is a second bag, embroidered TUUM, for guests. The cottage looks simple, outside, and does no hurt to its setting which is twenty miles of broken heath and a river valley filled with rhododendrons run wild. I think everything, inside and outside my place, approaches perfection.

Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed. This one would prefer to suffer in front of the stove, and that one believes he would get well if he were placed by the window. It seems to me that I should always be happier elsewhere than where I happen to be, and this question of moving is one that I am continually talking over with my soul. "Tell me, my soul, poor chilled soul, what do you say to living in Lisbon? It must be very warm there, and you would bask merrily, like a lizard. It is by the sea; they say that it is built of marble, and that the people have such a horror of vegetation that they uproot all the trees. There is a landscape that would suit you -- made out of light and minerals, with water to reflect them." My soul does not answer. "Since you love tranquillity, and the sight of moving things, will you come and live in Holland, that heavenly land? Perhaps you could be happy in that country, for you have often admired pictures of Dutch life. What do you say to Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and ships anchored at the doors of houses?" My soul remains silent. Perhaps Batavia seems more attractive to you? There we would find the intellect of Europe married to the beauty of the tropics. Not a word. Can my soul be dead? "Have you sunk into so deep a stupor that only your own torment gives you pleasure? If that be so, let us flee to those lands constituted in the likeness of Death. I know just the place for us, poor soul! We will leave for Torneo. Or let us go even farther, to the last limits of the Baltic; and if possible, still farther from life. Let us go to the Pole. There the sun obliquely grazes the earth, and the slow alternations of light and obscurity make variety impossible, and increase that monotony which is almost death. There we shall be able to take baths of darkness, and for our diversion, from time to time the Aurora Borealis shall scatter its rosy sheaves before us, like reflections of the fireworks of Hell!" At last my soul bursts into speech, and wisely cries to me: "Anywhere, anywhere, as long as it be out of this world!

The nahab are like the dead; their souls have escaped their breasts,” he said. “The nahab have no knowledge, they know nothing; they cannot spear a fish with a lance or fell a monkey with a dart, or climb a tree. They do not go dressed in air and light, as we do, but wear stinking cloth. They do not bathe in the river, they do not know the rules of decency or courtesy, they do not share their house, their food, their children, or their women. They have soft bones and their skulls split at the least blow. They kill animals and do not eat them, leaving them on the ground to rot. Wherever they pass they leave a trail of filth and poison, even in water. The nahab are so crazed that they try to take with them the stones of the earth, the sand of the rivers, and the trees of the forest. Some want the earth itself. We tell them that the jungle cannot be carried away on their backs like a dead tapir, but they do not listen. They speak to us of their gods but they do not want to hear of ours. Their appetites are unbounded, like the caimans’s. These terrible things I have seen with my own eyes, and I have heard with my own ears, and touched with my own hands.

(from Lady of the Lake) The western waves of ebbing day Rolled o’er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; Round many an insulated mass, The native bulwarks of the pass, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain. The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement, Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o’er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen, The brier-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs. Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child. Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale, and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrowed sky. Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, Where glist’ning streamers waved and danced, The wanderer’s eye could barely view The summer heaven’s delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep A narrow inlet, still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim As served the wild duck’s brood to swim. Lost for a space, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark-blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter strayed, Still broader sweep its channels made. The shaggy mounds no longer stood, Emerging from entangled wood, But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, Like castle girdled with its moat; Yet broader floods extending still Divide them from their parent hill, Till each, retiring, claims to be An islet in an inland sea. And now, to issue from the glen, No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken, Unless he climb, with footing nice A far projecting precipice. The broom’s tough roots his ladder made, The hazel saplings lent their aid; And thus an airy point he won, Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnished sheet of living gold, Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled, In all her length far winding lay, With promontory, creek, and bay, And islands that, empurpled bright, Floated amid the livelier light, And mountains, that like giants stand, To sentinel enchanted land. High on the south, huge Benvenue Down to the lake in masses threw Crags, knolls, and mountains, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world; A wildering forest feathered o’er His ruined sides and summit hoar, While on the north, through middle air, Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

They stood around a bleeding stump of a man lying on the ground. His right arm and left leg had been chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, he had crawled to the camp. The chopped-off arm and leg were tied in terrible bleeding chunks onto his back with a small wooden board attached to them; a long inscription on it said, with many words of abuse, that the atrocity was in reprisal for similar atrocities perpetrated by such and such a Red unit—a unit that had no connection with the Forest Brotherhood. It also said that the same treatment would be meted out to all the partisans unless, by a given date, they submitted and gave up their arms to the representatives of General Vitsyn’s army corps. Fainting repeatedly from loss of blood, the dying man told them in a faltering voice of the tortures and atrocities perpetrated by Vitsyn’s investigating and punitive squads. His own sentence of death had been allegedly commuted; instead of hanging him, they had cut off his arm and leg in order to send him into the camp and strike terror among the partisans. They had carried him as far as the outposts of the camp, where they had put him down and ordered him to crawl, urging him on by shooting into the air. He could barely move his lips. To make out his almost unintelligible stammering, the crowd around him bent low. He was saying: “Be on your guard, comrades. He has broken through.” “Patrols have gone out in strength. There’s a big battle going on. We’ll hold him.” “There’s a gap. He wants to surprise you. I know. ... I can’t go on, men. I am spitting blood. I’ll die in a moment.” “Rest a bit. Keep quiet.—Can’t you see it’s bad for him, you heartless beasts!” The man started again: “He went to work on me, the devil. He said: You will bathe in your own blood until you tell me who you are. And how was I to tell him, a deserter is just what I am? I was running from him to you.” “You keep saying ‘he.’ Who was it that got to work on you?” “Let me just get my breath. ... I’ll tell you. Hetman, Bekeshin. Colonel, Strese. Vitsyn’s men. You don’t know out here what it’s like. The whole town is groaning. They boil people alive. They cut strips out of them. They take you by the scruff of the neck and push you inside, you don’t know where you are, it’s pitch black. You grope about—you are in a cage, inside a freight car. There are more than forty people in the cage, all in their underclothes. From time to time they open the door and grab whoever comes first—out he goes. As you grab a chicken to cut its throat. I swear to God. Some they hang, some they shoot, some they question. They beat you to shreds, they put salt on the wounds, they pour boiling water on you. When you vomit or relieve yourself they make you eat it. As for children and women—O God!” The unfortunate was at his last gasp. He cried out and died without finishing the sentence. Somehow they all knew it at once and took off their caps and crossed themselves. That night, the news of a far more terrible incident flew around the camp. Pamphil had been in the crowd surrounding the dying man. He had seen him, heard his words, and read the threatening inscription on the board. His constant fear for his family in the event of his own death rose to a new climax. In his imagination he saw them handed over to slow torture, watched their faces distorted by pain, and heard their groans and cries for help. In his desperate anguish—to forestall their future sufferings and to end his own—he killed them himself, felling his wife and three children with that same, razor-sharp ax that he had used to carve toys for the two small girls and the boy, who had been his favorite. The astonishing thing was that he did not kill himself immediately afterward.

Eragon! Saphira! Rouse yourselves! Eragon’s eyes snapped open. He sat upright and grabbed Brisingr. All was dark, save for the dull red glow of the bed of coals to his right and a ragged patch of starry sky off to the east. Though the light was faint, Eragon was able to make out the general shape of the forest and the meadow…and the monstrously large snail that was sliding across the grass toward him. Eragon yelped and scrambled backward. The snail--whose shell was over five and a half feet tall--hesitated, then slimed toward him as fast as a man could run. A snakelike hiss came from the black slit of its mouth, and its waving eyeballs were each the size of his fist. Eragon realized that he would not have time to get to his feet, and on his back he did not have the space he needed to draw Brisingr. He prepared to cast a spell, but before he could, Saphira’s head arrowed past him and she caught the snail about the middle with her jaws. The snail’s shell cracked between her fangs with a sound like breaking slate, and the creature uttered a faint, quavering shriek. With a twist of her neck, Saphira tossed the snail into the air, opened her mouth as wide as it would go, and swallowed the creature whole, bobbing her head twice as she did, like a robin eating an earthworm. Lowering his gaze, Eragon saw four more giant snails farther down upon the rise. One of the creatures had retreated within its shell; the others were hurrying away upon their undulating, skirtlike bellies. “Over there!” shouted Eragon. Saphira leaped forward. Her entire body left the ground for a moment, and then she landed upon all fours and snapped up first one, then two, then three of the snails. She did not eat the last snail, the one hiding in its shell, but drew back her head and bathed it in a stream of blue and yellow flame that lit up the land for hundreds of feet in every direction. She maintained the flame for no more than a second or two; then she picked up the smoking, steaming snail between her jaws--as gently as a mother cat picking up a kitten--carried it over to Eragon, and dropped it at his feet. He eyed it with distrust, but it appeared well and truly dead. Now you can have a proper breakfeast, said Saphira.

My blood froze as a creeping, leeching cold lurched by. I couldn't see anything, just a vague shimmering in the corner of my vision, but my horse stiffened beneath me. I willed my face in to blackness. Even the balmy spring woods seemed to recoil, to wither and freeze. The cold thing whispered past, circling. I could see nothing, but I could feel it. And in the back of my mind, an ancient hollow voice whispered: I will grind your bones between my claws; I will drink your marrow; I will feast on your flesh. I am what you fear; I am what you dread... Look at me. Look at me. I tried to swallow, but my throat had closed up. I kept my eyes on the trees, on the canopy, on anything but the cold mass circling us again and again. Look at me. I wanted to look- I needed to see what it was. Look at me. I stared at the coarse trunk of a distant elm, thinking of pleasant things. Like hot bread and full bellies- I will fill my belly with you. I will devour you. Look at me. A starry, unclouded night sky, peaceful and glittering and endless Summer sunrise. A refreshing bath in a forest pool. Meetings with Issac, losing myself for an hour or two in his body, in our shared breaths. It was all around us, so cold that my teeth chattered. Look at me. I stared and stared at the ever-nearing tree trunk, not daring to blink. My eyes strained, filling with tears, and I let them fall, refusing to acknowledge the thing that lurked around us. Look at me. And just as I thought I would give in, when my eyes so much from not looking, the cold disappeared in to the brush, leaving a trail of still, recoiling plants behind. Only after Lucien exhaled and our horses shook their heads did I dare sag in my seat. Even the crocuses seemed to straighten. 'What was that?' I asked, brushing the tears from my face. Lucien's face was still pale. 'You don't want to know.' 'Please. Was it that... Suriel you mentioned?' Lucien's russet eye was dark as he answered hoarsely. 'No. It was a creature that should not be in these lands. We call it the Bogge. You can not hunt it, and you cannot kill it. Even with your beloved ash arrows.' 'Why can't I look at it?' 'Because when you look at it- when you acknowledge it- that's when it becomes real. That's when it can kill you.

The Outer Cape is famous for a dazzling quality of light that is like no other place on Earth. Some of the magic has to do with the land being surrounded by water, but it’s also because that far north of the equator, the sunlight enters the atmosphere at a low angle. Both factors combine to leave everything it bathes both softer and more defined. For centuries writers, poets, and fine artists have been trying to capture its essence. Some have succeeded, but most have only sketched its truth. That’s no reflection of their talent, because no matter how beautiful the words or stunning the painting, Provincetown’s light has to be experienced. The light is one thing, but there is also the way everything smells. Those people lucky enough to have experienced the Cape at its best—and most would agree it’s sometime in the late days of summer when everything has finally been toasted by the sun—know that simply walking on the beach through the tall seagrass and rose hip bushes to the ocean, the air redolent with life, is almost as good as it gets. If in that moment someone was asked to choose between being able to see or smell, they would linger over their decision, realizing the temptation to forsake sight for even one breath of Cape Cod in August. Those aromas are as lush as any rain forest, as sweet as any rose garden, as distinct as any memory the body holds. Anyone who spent a week in summer camp on the Cape can be transported back to that spare cabin in the woods with a single waft of a pine forest on a rainy day. Winter alters the Cape, but it doesn’t entirely rob it of magic. Gone are the soft, warm scents of suntan oil and sand, replaced by a crisp, almost cruel cold. And while the seagrass and rose hips bend toward the ground and seagulls turn their backs to a bitter wind, the pine trees thrive through the long, dark months of winter, remaining tall over the hibernation at their feet. While their sap may drain into the roots and soil until the first warmth of spring, their needles remain fragrant through the coldest month, the harshest storm. And on any particular winter day on the Outer Cape, if one is blessed enough to take a walk in the woods on a clear, cold, windless day, they will realize the air and ocean and trees all talk the same language and declare We are alive. Even in the depths of winter: we are alive. It

Desire is… " Desire is the glow of bathing lunatics. Starlight is the liquid used to power a whispering machine. Humming is the music of a forest moving in unison with your eyes. * A slip of the tongue and the hummingbird’s empty throne make the acquaintance of the word frenzy, which in turn adopts the phrase: “I am closest to you when we are furthest apart,” and together they follow the anxious doorway that leads far out of the city, where travelers always meet, alone and abandoned with only their mysteries to guide them… and when the sun bleeds out of the dampness of the earth, like pale limbs entwined and exhausted, they all pause in their own fashion to reflect not upon themselves but on the white wolves in the garden shivering like mist, in the mirror hiding your face. * The nature of movement is an image lost between the objects of an eclipse fervently scratched into the face of a sleeping woman when she approaches the liquid state of a circle, wandering aimlessly in search of lucidity and those moments of inarticulate suspicion… when the riddle is only half solved and the alphabet is still adding letters according to the human motors that have not yet arrived, as a species, scintillating in the grass, burning time. Not far from your name there is always a question mark, followed by silent paws… * It is not without the mask of the Enchanter’s dance of unreason, that joy follows the torment of seductive shapes, and sudden appearances in the whisper of long corridors. Tribal veils rising out of fingerprints on invisible entrances in the middle of the landscape, assume the form of her shoulders and the intimacy of her bones making dust, taking flight. * The axis of revolt and the nobility of a springtime stripped of its flowers, expertly balanced with a murmur of the heart on the anvil of chance. Your voice arcing between the two points of day and night, where the oracle of water spinning rapidly above, that is your city of numerology, mixes with the flux of a long voyage more stone-like and absurdly graceful then either milkweed or deadly nightshade, when it acclimatizes the elements of transparency in the host of purity. * The dream birds of a lost language are growing underground in the bed of sorcery. It is all revealed in the arms of your obsession, Arachne, (crawling to kiss) pale Ariadne, (kneeling to feed) in a pool of light that exceeds the dimensions of the loveliest crime. She turns into your evidence, gaining speed and recognition, becoming a brightness never solved, and a clarity that makes crystals. * The early morning hours share their nakedness with those who bare fruit and corset fireflies in long slender bath-like caresses. “Your serum, Sir Moor’s Head, follows the grand figures of the sea, ignites them, throws them like vessels out of fire, raising the sand upwards into oddly repetitive enchantments. Drown me in flight, daughter of wonder…

This is the mighty and branching tree called mythology which ramifies round the whole world whose remote branches under separate skies bear like colored birds the costly idols of Asia and the half-baked fetishes of Africa and the fairy kings and princesses of the folk-tales of the forest and buried amid vines and olives the Lares of the Latins, and carried on the clouds of Olympus the buoyant supremacy of the gods of Greece. These are the myths and he who has no sympathy with myths has no sympathy with men. But he who has most Sympathy with myths will most fully realize that they are not and never were a religion, in the sense that Christianity or even Islam is a religion. They satisfy some of the needs satisfied by a religion; and notably the need for doing certain things at certain dates; the need of the twin ideas of festivity and formality. But though they provide a man with a calendar they do not provide him with a creed. A man did not stand up and say 'I believe in Jupiter and Juno and Neptune,' etc., as he stands up and says 'I believe in God the Father Almighty' and the rest of the Apostles' Creed.... Polytheism fades away at its fringes into fairy-tales or barbaric memories; it is not a thing like monotheism as held by serious monotheists. Again it does satisfy the need to cry out on some uplifted name, or some noble memory in moments that are themselves noble and uplifted; such as the birth of a child or the saving of a city. But the name was so used by many to whom it was only a name. Finally it did satisfy, or rather it partially satisfied, a thing very deep in humanity indeed; the idea of surrendering something as the portion of the unknown powers; of pouring out wine upon the ground, of throwing a ring into the sea; in a word, of sacrifice....A child pretending there is a goblin in a hollow tree will do a crude and material thing like leaving a piece of cake for him. A poet might do a more dignified and elegant thing, like bringing to the god fruits as well as flowers. But the degree of seriousness in both acts may be the same or it may vary in almost any degree. The crude fancy is no more a creed than the ideal fancy is a creed. Certainly the pagan does not disbelieve like an atheist, any more than he believes like a Christian. He feels the presence of powers about which he guesses and invents. St. Paul said that the Greeks had one altar to an unknown god. But in truth all their gods were unknown gods. And the real break in history did come when St. Paul declared to them whom they had worshipped. The substance of all such paganism may be summarized thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone; in its own field reason does not restrain it at all..... There is nothing in Paganism whereby one may check his own exaggerations.... The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull’s blood, as did Julian the Apostate.

timelines register the pain of her loss for the first time. “I’m sorry, honey.” He remembers the day she died, eight weeks ago. She had become almost childlike by that point, her mind gone. He had to feed her, dress her, bathe her. But this was better than the time right before, when she had enough cognitive function left to be aware of her complete confusion. In her lucid moments, she described the feeling as being lost in a dreamlike forest—no identity, no sense of when or where she was. Or alternatively, being absolutely certain she was fifteen years old and still living with her parents in Boulder, and trying to square her foreign surroundings with her sense of place and time and self. She often wondered if this was what her mother felt in her final year. “This timeline—before my mind started to fracture—was the best of them all. Of my very long life. Do you remember that trip we took—I think it was during our first life together—to see the emperor penguins migrate? Remember how we fell in love with this continent? The way it makes you feel like you’re the only people in the world? Kind of appropriate, no?” She looks off camera, says, “What? Don’t be jealous. You’ll be watching this one day. You’ll carry the knowledge of every moment we spent together, all one hundred and forty-four years.” She looks back at the camera. “I need to tell you, Barry, that I couldn’t have made it this long without you. I couldn’t have kept trying to stop the inevitable. But we’re stopping today. As you know by now, I’ve lost the ability to map memory. Like Slade, I used the chair too many times. So I won’t be going back. And even if you returned to a point on the timeline where my consciousness was young and untraveled, there’s no guarantee you could convince me to build the chair. And to what end? We’ve tried everything. Physics, pharmacology, neurology. We even struck out with Slade. It’s time to admit we failed and let the world get on with destroying itself, which it seems so keen on doing.” Barry sees himself step into the frame and take a seat beside Helena. He puts his arm around her. She snuggles into him, her head on his chest. Such a surreal sensation to now remember that day when she decided to record a message for the Barry who would one day merge into his consciousness. “We have four years until doomsday.” “Four years, five months, eight days,” Barry-on-the-screen says. “But who’s counting?” “We’re going to spend that time together. You have those memories now. I hope they’re beautiful.” They are. Before her mind broke completely, they had two good years, which they lived free from the burden of trying to stop the world from remembering. They lived those years simply and quietly. Walks on the icecap to see the Aurora Australis. Games, movies, and cooking down here on the main level. The occasional trip to New Zealand’s South Island or Patagonia. Just being together. A thousand small moments, but enough to have made life worth living. Helena was right. They were the best years of his lives too. “It’s odd,” she says. “You’re watching this right now, presumably four years from this moment, although I’m sure you’ll watch it before then to see my face and hear my voice after I’m gone.” It’s true. He did. “But my moment feels just as real to me as yours does to you. Are they both real? Is it only our consciousness that makes it so? I can imagine you sitting there in four years, even though you’re right beside me in this moment, in my moment, and I feel like I can reach through the camera and touch you. I wish I could. I’ve experienced over two hundred years, and at the end of it all, I think Slade was right. It’s just a product of our evolution the way we experience reality and time from moment to moment. How we differentiate between past, present, and future. But we’re intelligent enough to be aware of the illusion, even as we live by it, and so,

Although a few legends tell of Callisto welcoming Zeus with open arms, most of the versions have Zeus resorting to trickery. In these versions, knowing that Callisto was completely devoted to both Artemis and her vow of chastity, Zeus appeared to the nymph as the goddess Artemis herself while Callisto lay resting under a tree. Once Callisto’s guard was down, Zeus abandoned his disguise and used force against her. To make matters worse, Callisto ended up pregnant from the encounter. Fearing Artemis’ legendary wrath, Callisto tried to conceal her condition but finally was no longer able to one morning when all the nymphs bathed together in a forest glade. Furious that Callisto betrayed her vow (even though by most accounts Callisto hadn’t done so willingly), Artemis turned her into a bear, which she then hunted down and killed. In other versions, Callisto was still allowed to give birth to her son, Arcas, who in turn encountered his mother in her bear form and killed her. In yet other versions, Artemis was on the verge of killing Callisto when Zeus interfered and placed her in the sky where she can be seen as Ursa Major. (Interestingly enough, Riordan’s Artemis takes credit for placing Callisto in the sky herself.)

I feel free. Like some whimsical child in an enchanted forest, I feel free. Amazed at the power of the colors that surround me, I feel free. The cool water that quenches my thirst also warms my skin as I bathe, my pores opening to the pleasure of the clear pools embracing my soul. The colors reflect on the mirrored glass that supports me. I can see beauty all around. Here I float, effortlessly, and here I will remain. I feel free. I make my commitments and my agreements in complete liberation. I love freely, openly, within the bounds of my own moral compass. I give, and I take, learning to do each with equal excitement, with equal vigor. The odd thing about receiving is how hard it can be. Yet, we owe it to those we love, who love us back, to do just that. Then, we can explore the vibrant colors of our enchanted forests together, and bathe one another in the refreshing springs of nature's own charity. I love, and therefore am safe in all things.

Felke realized that prescribing herbal teas, homeopathic remedies, diet and water applications was not sufficient. Inspired by the examples of Rikli and Just, he envisioned a therapeutic setting close to nature where patients could escape their accustomed environments and enjoy the benefits of light, air, sun and healthful food. Surprisingly, the residents of the small rural town of Repelen immediately warmed to their new pastor's idea. A delegation undertook the arduous and costly journey to the Hartz mountains to inspect Just's Jungborn. This visit resulted in the formation of the Repelen Jungborn Society, Ltd., with eighty-one associates, mostly members of a local homeopathic lay society. With a capital of 50,000 goldmark, quite a high sum, the group purchased sixty acres of land, which included a forested area and a dead channel of the Rhine abounding in fish. Two large light and air parks, one for women and the other for men, were created and surrounded with high wooden fences. Naked patients took light, air, water and loam baths and engaged in gymnastics twice a day. Felke himself often directed the male patients. Inside the two parks approximately 50 air huts with two or four rooms each were erected. To guarantee maximum access to fresh air they had no doors or windows, only curtains for privacy. An open wooden hall in the center of the park was used for walking during the day, for gymnastics during bad weather and for sleeping on straw mats at night. In the beginning the spa offered friction sitz baths in flat zinc tubs as the only cold water application. Felke also took up Just's earth-and-sand bath, but it was not until he introduced the loam bath in 1912 that he gained fame as the "loam pastor.

Forest bathing is a process of rewilding, simultaneously the most natural and the hardest thing. It’s a stomping out of all our learned behaviors so we can reacquaint with our true selves and, with that, the web that comprises every living thing.

In the forest, there’s no need to try to relax. Just go outside and Nature will work her magic to relax and restore you. Studies show that people feel more relaxed after just fifteen minutes of being in nature. And they report feeling greater vitality, too. Being surrounded by aliveness literally makes us feel more alive.

Nothing that’s living is fixed or finished; all is constantly emerging. It’s the same with our bodies. We are not stagnant beings. Our heart rates are always fluctuating in a fractal process. Laid out on a graph over time, the fluctuations of the heart rate look similar to the fluctuations of a coastline, canyons, or mountain ranges. Our blood vessels mirror the pattern of tree branches or root systems. “This is the grandeur of Nature,” said Goethe, “that she is so simple, and that she always repeats her greatest phenomena on a small scale.

Now you see it. This is the moment. Humans have been on a trajectory of distraction and overconsumption for centuries, and we had to reach the breaking point for the great transformation to begin. We’ve become completely misaligned—with ourselves and the earth. Now is the time to begin the process of coming back to ourselves and to one another. This is what forest bathing is all about.

iwanu ga hana,

If a man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.

A backlit mist bathed the Cascade foothills in silver as Justin and I pledged our love before a justice of the peace. Standing in the same lush mountains where we’d first met, we exchanged rings, grinning on a stone stage in a fog-flowered forest clearing.

Rwanda in 1949 was a land of enchantment—a wilderness where people and animals lived in harmony untouched by the outside world. Shepherds led their cattle to drink at the lakes and pools until evening, when elephants began to migrate toward the watering holes to drink and bathe. Time was told by the sun, and the moon was the calendar. A house could be built in a few days, made from trees and bamboo gathered from the forests and roofed with grass. Men prayed that the weather would be favorable for their crops, young boys dreamed of owning large herds of cattle, and little girls cradled and sang to their dolls made of spiky flowers called red-hot pokers, imagining a baby of their own. The markets were social gathering places and trading centers where a finely woven grass mat was exchanged for forty pounds of potatoes or a basket for storing grain.

Humans have evolved in nature; we’ve spent 99.9 percent of our time in the natural world, and our physiological functions are adapted to it. We’re evolved to find relaxation and restoration in nature. It’s been scientifically shown that spending time immersed in nature reduces stress, lowers heart rate, lowers cortisol levels, decreases inflammation, boosts the immune system, improves mood, increases the ability to focus, jump-starts creativity, increases energy levels, and makes us more generous and compassionate.

Shinrin-yoku literally translates to “forest bathing,” or taking in the atmosphere of the forest, and refers to soaking up the sights, smells, and sounds of a natural setting to promote physiological and psychological health.

A bright, opalescent light flooded her being. As she soared high above the treetops she could see Jacob racing through the forest below with Nicky by his side, the little boy's expression fierce... running far, far away. An indescribable peace set in, covering her like a whisper-soft cashmere blanket, coddling her frail limbs. Warmth spread throughout her body for the first time in these frigid winter months. The iridescent glow spread from her limbs too encompass her, bathing her very being in a shimmering white light that shone with such clarity. So beautiful, so transparent, so ethereal. Her pain dissolved and fell to earth, like chains cast aside. She could breathe without effort, sweetly perfumed air refreshed and revived.

Nature offers us signposts, but they can be difficult to notice unless you are paying attention. Nature’s signposts confirm that you’re exactly where you are meant to be. You may see them over and over again—a type of plant you always seem to spot, a shrub with particularly tasty fruit, or an animal that crosses your path. Every time you see Nature’s signposts, she is reminding you that you are in conversation with her and that you’re going the right way.

We’re not even breathing. Many of us suffer from “screen apnea” or “email apnea”—we stop breathing or breathe shallowly when we look at screens. The apps that we download might be “free,” but when we spend hours scrolling on social media, what we’re paying with is our attention and health—the most valuable things we have. What we pay attention to determines the quality of our lives. As twentieth-century Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gassett said, “Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.” We owe it to ourselves to look and listen closely to understand the systems and biological technologies that have created the conditions for life for the past four and a half billion years. We must first learn to listen and look to nature to see how we can design technology that is aligned to how the systems of the earth work.

Like trees, we are in an inextricable relationship with the earth for the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. As American naturalist John Burroughs wrote, “We are rooted to the air through our lungs and to the soil through our stomachs. We are walking trees and floating plants.” When we forget this, we become disconnected and ungrounded. We need to reestablish the connection by taking in energy from Earth and the cosmos and releasing energy that’s been stuck inside our bodies. Energy does best when it is free to flow.

The countryside around us changed again. Now we were driving through forest. Sørland forests with mountain crags here and there among the trees, hills covered with spruce and oaks, aspen and birch, sporadic dark moorland, sudden meadows, flatland with densely growing pine trees. When I was a boy I used to imagine the sea rising and filling the forest so that the hilltops became islets you could sail between and on which you could bathe. Of all my childhood fantasies this was the one that captivated me most; the thought that you could swim over bus shelters and roofs, perhaps dive down and glide through a door, up a staircase, into a living room. Or just through a forest, with its slopes, cliffs, cairns, and ancient trees. At a certain point in childhood my most exciting game was building dams in streams, watching the water swell and cover the marsh, the roots, the grass, the rocks, the beaten earth path beside the stream. It was hypnotic. Not the mention the cellar we found in an unfinished house filled with shiny, black water we sailed on in two styrofoam boxes, when we were around five years old. Hypnotic. The same applied to winter when we skated along frozen streams in which grass, sticks, twigs, and small plants stood upright in the translucent ice beneath us. What had been the great attraction? And what had happened to it? Another fantasy I had at that time was that there were two enormous saw blades sticking out from the side of the car, chopping off everything as we drove past. Trees and streetlamps, houses and outhouses, but also people and animals. If someone was waiting for a bus they would be sliced through the middle, their top half falling like a felled tree, leaving feet and waist standing and the wound bleeding.

Hornblower sat in his private sitting-room in the Golden Cross inn. There was a fire burning, and on the table at which he sat there were no fewer than four wax candles lighted. All this luxury — the private sitting-room, the fire, the wax candles — gave Hornblower uneasy delight. He had been poor for so long, he had had to scrape and economize so carefully all his life, that recklessness with money gave him this queer dubious pleasure, this guilty joy. His bill tomorrow would contain an item of at least half a crown for light, and if he had been content with rush dips the charge would not have been more than twopence. The fire would be a shilling, too. And you could trust an innkeeper to make the maximum charges to a guest who obviously could afford them, a Knight of the Bath, with a servant, and a two-horse chariot. Tomorrow’s bill would be nearer two guineas than one, Hornblower touched his breast pocket to reassure himself that his thick wad of one-pound notes was still there. He could afford to spend

Mind connecting to Earth is not mere mental projection. You are, in fact, being met. Body connecting to Earth is not mere leisure. Life-healing powers are extending outward to embrace you.

There is a way of entering the forest when the breeze of the trees becomes your guide...there is a way of approaching the self without a heavy-hand, when the heart-mind slowly becomes unburdened by the past, where the body listening with the whole of itself finally becomes attuned to all the subtle happenings in the realm not yet stained by the faithless world of man.

In these times, when even a simple day can feel like a firing pin, stretching corpse-like upon the earth is not leisure. It is medicine.

There is a way of entering the forest when the breeze of the trees becomes your guide; there is a way of approaching the self without a heavy-hand, when the heart-mind slowly becomes unburdened by the past, where the body listening with the whole of itself finally becomes attuned to all the subtle happenings in the realm not yet stained by the faithless world of man. -- from "Forest Bathing," The School of Soft-Attention

Maté The moon was simply dying to tread the earth. She wanted to sample the fruit and to bathe in some river. Thanks to the clouds, she was able to come down. From sunset until dawn, clouds covered the sky so that no one could see the moon was missing. Nighttime on the earth was marvelous. The moon strolled through the forest of the high Paranà, caught mysterious aromas and flavors, and had a long swim in the river. Twice an old peasant rescued her. When the jaguar was about to sink his teeth into the moon’s neck, the old man cut the beasts throat with his knife; and when the moon got hungry, he took her to his house. “We offer you our poverty,” said the peasant’s wife, and gave her some corn tortillas. On the next night the moon looked down from the sky at her friends’ house. The old peasant had built his hut in a forest clearing very far from the villages. He lived there like an exile with his wife and daughter. The moon found that the house had nothing left in it to eat. The last corn tortillas had been for her. Then she turned on her brightest light and asked the clouds to shed a very special drizzle around the hut. In the morning some unknown trees had sprung up there. Amid their dark green leaves appeared white flowers. The old peasant’s daughter never died. She is the queen of the maté and goes about the world offering it to others. The tea of the maté awakens sleepers, activates the lazy, and makes brothers and sisters of people who don’t know each other. (86

Có thể nói rằng, một điều hết sức quan trọng là đừng quay lưng với bất cứ ai, vì bạn không bao giờ biết được những gì họ đang phải trốn tránh thế giới bên ngoài.

We can see American English downtown in any city in the States. We would look up a block of “apartments” to a “penthouse,” be deluged by the “mass media,” go into a “chain store,” breakfast on “cornflakes,” avoid the “hot dog,” see the “commuters” walking under strips of “neon,” not “jaywalking,” which would be “moronic,” but if they were “executives” or “go-getters” (not “yes-men” or “fat cats”), they would be after “big business,” though unlikely to have much to do with an “assembly line” or a “closed shop.” There’s likely to be a “traffic jam,” so no “speeding,” certainly no space for “joy-riding” and the more “underpasses” the better. And of course in any downtown city we would be surrounded by a high forest of “skyscrapers.” “Skyscraper” started life as an English naval term — a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions. It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers. Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air. Now its world meaning is very tall building, as typified by those in American cities. Then you could go into a “hotel” (originally French for a large private house) and find a “lobby” (adopted from English), find the “desk clerk” and the “bell boy,” nod to the “hat-check girl” as you go to the “elevator.” Turn on the television, flick it all about and you’re bound to find some “gangsters” with their “floozies” in their “glad rags.” In your bedroom, where the English would have “bedclothes,” the Americans have “covers”; instead of a “dressing gown” you’ll find a “bathrobe,” “drapes” rather than “curtains,” a “closet” not a “wardrobe,” and in the bathroom a “tub” with a “faucet” and not a “bath” with a “tap.

When you are forest bathing and breathing in the “aroma of the forest,” you are also absorbing substances known as phytoncides, which protect trees from insects and other stressors. As we have learned over the past decade, these phytoncides can also protect us by increasing our natural killer immune cells and decreasing cortisol levels.28 While spending time in nature or green spaces has long been recommended to improve mental well-being, we now understand what that aroma of the forest is really doing for our bodies and brains.

Mindfully immersing yourself in nature is a Japanese practice known as forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku.

Linked to the Buddhist theme of mortaility, mindfulness and living in the present, cherry blossom is a timeless metaphor for human existence. The display of blossom is powerful, glorious, and intoxicating, but tragically short-lived - a reminder that our lives, too, are fleeting but beautiful.

Wading into silver grass is akin to bathing in a sharpened pool of reeds, the fronds of seed holding fast to the rain. A wet slap is followed by the leaves, whetted as a blade, leaving paper cuts on the skin of our necks and hands. The grass rises above us, screening our view of the trail ahead, leaving us to traverse a patch just wide enough to set one foot in front of the other. I soon find myself lost in the task of swimming through them.

a son renounces sex so that his old father can remarry a daughter is a prize in an archery contest a teacher demands half a kingdom as his tuition fee a student is turned away because of his caste a mother asks her sons to share a wife a father curses his son-in-law to be old and impotent a husband lets another man make his wife pregnant a wife blindfolds herself to share her husband's blindness a forest is destroyed for a new city a family is divided over inheritance a king gambles away his kingdom a queen is forced to serve as a maid a man is stripped of his manhood for a year a woman is publicly disrobed a war is fought where all rules are broken a shift in sexuality secures victory the vanquished go to paradise the victors lose their children the earth is bathed in blood God is cursed until wisdom prevails

He seemed unable to enjoy the stark beauty of it all, the wild terror of the mountains, the towering glaciers, the little ribbons of time that clung to the rock in the form of frozen cataracts. The aurora danced above us both nights, green and blue and white undulating together, a cold ocean up there in the sky, and even that he barely glanced at. On the second night, he used his magic to summon a thick green hedge of prickly holly and a trio of willow saplings that enfolded our tent in drapery like bed curtains to keep out the chill wind. "Will you look at that!" I couldn't help but exclaiming as I sat by the fire, gazing up at the riot of light. I will admit, I wished for him to share the sight with me and was disappointed when he only sighed. "Give me hills round as apples and forests of such green you could bathe in it," he said. "None of these hyperborean baubles." "Baubles!" I exclaimed, and would have snapped at him, but his face as he gazed into the fire was open and forlorn, and I realized that he wasn't trying to be irksome---he missed his home. He had been longing for it all along, and this place, so alien and unfriendly, had sharpened the longing into a blade.

I only wish to discuss with you one possibility: Perhaps seeds of love are present in other places in the universe. We ought to encourage them to sprout and grow. "That's a goal worth taking risks for." Yes, we can take risks. "I have a dream that one day brilliant sunlight will illuminate the dark forest." The sun was setting. Now only its tip was exposed beyond the distant mountains, as if the mountaintop was inset with a dazzling gemstone. Like the grass, the child running in the distance was bathed in the golden sunset. The sun will set soon. Isn't your child afraid? "Of course she's not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.

I only wish to discuss with you one possibility: Perhaps seeds of love are present in other places in the universe. We ought to encourage them to sprout and grow. "That's a goal worth taking risks for." Yes, we can take risks. "I have a dream that one day brilliant sunlight will illuminate the dark forest." The sun was setting. Now only its tip was exposed beyond the distant mountains, as if the mountaintop was inset with a dazzling gemstone. Like the grass, the child running in the distance was bathed in the golden sunset. The sun will set soon. Isn't your child afraid? "Of course she's not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.

Practice & Ash 2. Scales of the Malefic Viper 3. Lucenti Plains 4. Pondering on Ponds 5. Introspection 6. Intermission 1 – Viridia (1/2) 7. Intermission 1 – The Malefic Viper (2/2) 8. Moment of Curiosity 9. Cleaning Up the Plains 10. The Great White Stag 11. No Rest for the Wicked 12. Loot & Healing 13. True Protagonist 14. Into the Dark 15. The Right Way 16. Dark Mana & Dark Tunnels 17. Many Rats! Handle it! 18. Dark Attunement 19. Nest Watcher 20. A Final Gift 21. Willful Ignorance 22. The Balance Broken 23. Beers & Exposition 24. Of Fate & Destiny 25. William & Jake 26. Spring Cleaning = Loot 3.0 27. Valley of Tusks 28. Going with the Flow 29. The Right Way Forward 30. Mana 101 31. A Thoughtful Touch 32. Pigs for Slaughter 33. Limit Break 34. Falling Rocks 35. Horde Leader 36. Next Target: King of the Forest 37. King 38. Eclipse 39. Fall 40. When the Curtains Fall 41. Tutorial Rewards: Titles & Math 42. Tutorial Rewards: Narrowing Down Options 43. Tutorial Rewards: Getting Stuff 44. Intermission 2 - Life after Death (Casper) 45. Records 46. A Godlike Getaway 47. Danger Bath 48. Second Part? 49. Embracing Power 50. Defiance & Gains 51. You know, I'm something of a sage myself 52. Homecoming 53. Intermission 3 - Carmen 54. Intermission 4 - Noboru Miyamoto 55. Intermission 5 - Eron 56. The Blue Marble 57. One Step Mile 58. Pylon of Civilization 59. Intermission 6 - Matteo (1/2) 60. Intermission 6 - Matteo (2/2) 61. The Times They Are A-Changin' 62. Monsters 63. Living with the Consequences 64. Points of View 65. Going Down 66. Two Kinds of People 67. Big Blue Mushroom 68. Delegating (avoiding) Responsibilities 69. Construction Plans 70. First World Problems 71. How to Train Your Dragon Wings 72. Freedom

Her body clenched with hot desire, and without thinking she bathed Jacques’ mind in her heat. She saw his body hunch, as if someone had physically punched him. Guilt stirred for a moment, but then he was stroking her throat, his mental touch every bit as exciting in her state of arousal as his physical one. Gregori straightened up slowly and inhaled sharply, turned to glare at Jacques. Take your woman and find a place away from us. You know how dangerous Carpathian men can be at such a time. See to your needs, Jacques. I have little memory of these parts. If you recall, our home was invaded, and the vampire knows where it is. Go deeper into the earth. The cave continues until you find the very core, the hot springs. You will be safe there. And alone. And Byron? He cannot speak. As yours was, his voice is paralyzed. I doubt if he can recall his betrayer. I will put him in the ground to heal. And I will seek out Rand. Our prince has passed sentence upon such a betrayer. Make no mistake--I will make certain he is the one before I destroy him. Jacques reached down and touched Byron’s shoulder. “Go to the sleep of our earth, Byron. I will return each day to see that you are fed and your wounds are healing. Do you trust me to do this?” Byron nodded wearily and closed his eyes. He welcomed the solace of the healing earth. Already the blood was flowing through his veins, giving him strength to heal. He felt better knowing he had somehow warned the others of the trap the vampire had set. He had been used to lure the men away from the women. The vampire had even whispered to him of the plan to sacrifice Smith while Slovensky and his nephew killed Raven and took Shea. The earth opened, and his weightless body floated into the cradle. All around him the rich soil reached out for him, welcomed him. He gave himself up to sleep and earth. Jacques nodded in a slight salute to Gregori and reached out to Shea. The moment his fingers closed around hers, the electricity arced sharply and cleanly between them. He pulled her out of the chamber and into the tunnel. To her horror, instead of going back up toward the forest, Jacques drew her down toward the very bowels of the earth. The tunnel was wide enough that they could walk together, but she didn’t move fast enough to suit him. With every step he took, Jacques’ body became tighter and more painful. His breath was coming in hoarse gasps. He swung her into his arms and raced down the tunnel’s twists and turns.

In the end, it is our children’s relationship with the natural world that determines its future. If we let our children go into the forest, they will become adults who will protect it.

Children who have fun in nature will become adults to care for and protect it. If we let our children play outside now, they will become the green architects of the future…

I mean...we used to take baths together!” He grins wickedly. “In a washbasin!” I splutter, making it worse. “Lucky for him,” he says, raising his eyebrows in delight. “No, no...it’s not at all what you’re thinking.” “I’m thinking that I’m becoming more envious of Gareth Keeler by the minute.

meet me in the backyard with a kiddie pool i just want to splash around like i’m seven call up the neighbors let’s make new friends run through sprinklers throw water balloons (i’ll miss) let’s laugh real loud scream for fun eat watermelon and orange slices remind each other to reapply sunscreen forget what we were supposed to do today forget what we were supposed to do this week call in sick for work no—quit our jobs break our leases move to the forest bathe in the river fall asleep on the grass let’s quit adulthood