Gardening Is My Passion Quotes

I reached and grabbed ahold of the garden rake that was leaned up against the tree, when suddenly I felt my heart begin to race and I began to feel dizzy as my visual field became black. That is the last thing I recall before awakening to find myself lying on the ground in the front yard, with the handle of the rake resting on my chest.

Looking for Your Face From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face but today I have seen it Today I have seen the charm, the beauty, the unfathomable grace of the face that I was looking for Today I have found you and those who laughed and scorned me yesterday are sorry that they were not looking as I did I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty and wish to see you with a hundred eyes My heart has burned with passion and has searched forever for this wondrous beauty that I now behold I am ashamed to call this love human and afraid of God to call it divine Your fragrant breath like the morning breeze has come to the stillness of the garden You have breathed new life into me I have become your sunshine and also your shadow My soul is screaming in ecstasy Every fiber of my being is in love with you Your effulgence has lit a fire in my heart and you have made radiant for me the earth and sky My arrow of love has arrived at the target I am in the house of mercy and my heart is a place of prayer

My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all, reading, or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.' 'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile. 'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.

Ô, Muse of the Heart’s Passion, let me relive my Love’s memory, to remember her body, so brave and so free, and the sound of my Dreameress singing to me, and the scent of my Dreameress sleeping by me, Ô, sing, sweet Muse, my soliloquy!

On the warm stone walls, climbing roses were just coming into bloom and great twisted branches of honeysuckle and clematis wrestled each other as they tumbled up and over the top of the wall. Against another wall were white apple blossoms on branches cut into sharp crucifixes and forced to lie flat against the stone. Below, the huge frilled lips of giant tulips in shades of white and cream nodded in their beds. They were almost finished now, spread open too far, splayed, exposing obscene black centers. I've never had my own garden but I suddenly recognized something in the tangle of this one that wasn't beauty. Passion, maybe. And something else. Rage.

But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach, And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling, The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road A gateless garden, and an open path: My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point -- and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

SONIA: What can we do? We must live our lives. [A pause] Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life; we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here; a tender smile—and—we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. [SONIA kneels down before her uncle and lays her head on his hands. She speaks in a weary voice] We shall rest. [TELEGIN plays softly on the guitar] We shall rest. We shall hear the angels. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. I have faith; I have faith. [She wipes away her tears] My poor, poor Uncle Vanya, you are crying! [Weeping] You have never known what happiness was, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest. [She embraces him] We shall rest. [The WATCHMAN’S rattle is heard in the garden; TELEGIN plays softly; MME. VOITSKAYA writes something on the margin of her pamphlet; MARINA knits her stocking] We shall rest.

A lot of people feel that way. That if you didn’t pay your dues by being ostracized then you’re not *really* a geek. I don’t think that though. It’s not an exclusive club that you need to pay some social price to get in. Being a geek is about loving something passionately beyond all reason or sense. And it need not necessarily be related to science fiction, fantas, superheroes, etcetera. You can be a gardening geek, a model train geek, stamp collecting geek, a baby geek… It’s about enthusiasm, in my opinion. From his blog RE: Thirty years of D&D

Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion. Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion. Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains,secluded its happiness and far away in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries. I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling with your own. I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it. On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but without water. I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory surrounded by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and stars. I saw you looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the soul is to the body. On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its loneliness. I saw that self stretching its hands as if begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except its solitude and seclusion. I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that love has erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which draws toward itself, with love, those who were separated by solitude and seclusion. On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in the palm of that woman. Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from any other residence and neighbors. Your inner soul is a home far away from other homes named after you. If this residence is dark, you cannot light it with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle of a desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by someone else. Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I. If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, i would imagine that I were looking into a mirror.

I’d say that the quantity of boredom, if boredom is measurable, is much greater today than it once was. Because the old occupations, at least most of them, were unthinkable without a passionate involvement: the peasants in love with their land; my grandfather, the magician of beautiful tables; the shoemakers who knew every villager’s feet by heart; the woodsmen; the gardeners; probably even the soldiers killed with passion back then. The meaning of life wasn’t an issue, it was there with them, quite naturally in their workshops, in their fields. Each occupation had created its own mentality, its own way of being. A doctor would think differently from a peasant, a soldier would behave differently from a teacher. Today we’re all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward our work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

A woman owes it to herself to have pretty things. And if she feels good she looks good. You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love. I cannot live without it. I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptons, became a caricature. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode. My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening. I am not a romantic. I am a domesticated animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.

My Dearest Theresa, I have read this book in your garden, my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them, which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book that was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours, Amor mio, is comprised my existence here and thereafter. I feel I exist here, and I feel that I shall exist hereafter – to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent, I wish you had stayed there, with all my heart, or at least, that I had never met you in your married state. But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me, at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, but they never will, unless you wish it.

I take my metal canister of tea off the shelf. It is my own mixture of dried lavender blossoms and lemon balm, harvested from my garden and hung in the storeroom to dry. Weed helped me hang these stalks, I think. His hands touched these tender leaves, just as they touch me.

Be true to yourself. Listen to your inner call and live life to the fullest. The flower focusses on the sunlight instead of the thorns that lie around it. Our life too is made beautiful by what we choose to focus upon.

I love your uneven soul, you bloom uniquely in my gardens giving me the most extraordinary view and upon tasting the edges of your temple you do remind me of ice cream.

According to Ibn ‘Abbās, may God be pleased with him and his father, the Prophet David, God bless him and give him peace, used to say in his intimate Prayers: ‘My God, who inhabits Your House? And from whom do you accept the Prayer?’ Then God told him by inspiration: ‘David, he who inhabits My House, and he whose Prayer I accept, is none but he who is humble before My Majesty, spends his days in remembrance of Me and keeps his passions in check for My sake, giving food to the hungry and shelter to the stranger and treating the afflicted with compassion. His light shines in the sky like the sun. If he invokes Me, I am at his service. If he asks of Me, I grant his request. In the midst of ignorance, I give him discernment; in heedlessness, remembrance, in darkness, light. He stands out among ordinary people as Paradise towers over earthly gardens, its rivers inexhaustible and its fruits not subject to decay.

I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:—all these were things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at all.

Some literary recommendations: James Salter’s erotic masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime; Anais Nin’s collections of short stories Delta of Venus and Little Birds; the erotic novels Emanuelle by Emanuelle Arsan and Story of O by Pauline Réage; Harold Brodkey’s sexual saga “Innocence”—perhaps the greatest depiction of a session of cunnilingus ever penned; novels by Jerzy Kosinski such as Passion Play and Cockpit; Henry Miller’s Under the Roofs of Paris and Quiet Days in Clichy; My Secret Life by Anonymous and The Pure and the Impure by Colette; Nancy Friday’s anthology of fantasies, Secret Garden (filled with the correspondence of real people’s fantasies); stories from The Mammoth Book of Erotica or one of the many erotic anthologies edited by Susie Bright. For those with a taste for poetry, try Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire or Flesh Unlimited by Guillaume Apollinaire. And for those who like comic books (kinky ones, that is), try the extra-hot works of writer/illustrator Eric Stanton, who specializes in female-domination fantasies.

That I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul.

You know how much Annie loved pearls. She owned some incomparable specimens…the most marvelous, I believe, that ever existed. You also remember the almost physical joy, the carnal ecstasy, with which she adorned herself with them. Well, when she was sick that passion became a mania with her…a fury, like love! All day long she loved to touch them, caress them and kiss them; she made cushions of them, necklaces, capes, cloaks. Then this extraordinary thing happened; the pearls died on her skin: first they tarnished, little by little…little by little they grew dim, and no light was reflected in their luster any more and, in a few days, tainted by the disease, they changed into tiny balls of ash. They were dead, dead like people, my darling. Did you know that pearls had souls? I think it’s fascinating and delicious. And since then, I think of it every day.

May you live in interesting times.’ –Chinese curse If you ask me ‘What’s new?’, I have nothing to say Except that the garden is growing. I had a slight cold but it’s better today. I’m content with the way things are going. Yes, he is the same as he usually is, Still eating and sleeping and snoring. I get on with my work. He gets on with his. I know this is all very boring. There was drama enough in my turbulent past: Tears and passion – I’ve used up a tankful. No news is good news, and long may it last. If nothing much happens, I’m thankful. A happier cabbage you never did see, My vegetable spirits are soaring. If you’re after excitement, steer well clear of me. I want to go on being boring. I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for, If you don’t need to find a new lover? You drink and you listen and drink a bit more And you take the next day to recover. Someone to stay home with was all my desire And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring, I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire To go on and on being boring.

I certainly prefer buying new rose-trees to new dresses, if I cannot comfortably have both; and I see a time coming when the passion for my garden will have taken such a hold on me that I shall not only entirely cease buying more clothes, but begin to sell those that I already have.

Yes, I had dreamed of becoming a botanist, my entire life, really. I'd thought a great deal about the various species of maple and rhododendron while braiding challah, and I'd successfully planted a wisteria vine in a large pot and trained it over the awning of the bakery. And at night, after we closed shop, I volunteered at the New York Botanical Garden. Sweeping up cuttings and fallen leaves hardly seemed like work when it provided the opportunity to gaze into the eye of a Phoenix White peony or a Lady Hillingdon rose, with petals the color of apricot preserves. Yes, horticulture, not pastries, was my passion.

Poem: Roses And Rue (To L. L.) Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love's song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! I remember we used to meet By an ivied seat, And you warbled each pretty word With the air of a bird; And your voice had a quaver in it, Just like a linnet, And shook, as the blackbird's throat With its last big note; And your eyes, they were green and grey Like an April day, But lit into amethyst When I stooped and kissed; And your mouth, it would never smile For a long, long while, Then it rippled all over with laughter Five minutes after. You were always afraid of a shower, Just like a flower: I remember you started and ran When the rain began. I remember I never could catch you, For no one could match you, You had wonderful, luminous, fleet, Little wings to your feet. I remember your hair - did I tie it? For it always ran riot - Like a tangled sunbeam of gold: These things are old. I remember so well the room, And the lilac bloom That beat at the dripping pane In the warm June rain; And the colour of your gown, It was amber-brown, And two yellow satin bows From your shoulders rose. And the handkerchief of French lace Which you held to your face - Had a small tear left a stain? Or was it the rain? On your hand as it waved adieu There were veins of blue; In your voice as it said good-bye Was a petulant cry, 'You have only wasted your life.' (Ah, that was the knife!) When I rushed through the garden gate It was all too late. Could we live it over again, Were it worth the pain, Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead! Well, if my heart must break, Dear love, for your sake, It will break in music, I know, Poets' hearts break so. But strange that I was not told That the brain can hold In a tiny ivory cell God's heaven and hell.

In my imagination, this life has been a path with many, many forks, each one a choice to be made. Each unchosen route fading from view as it became the past, its destination unknowable. No destination is really known until you arrive, and then it becomes merely a point along the way - a vague place rarely planned for, simply the start of another adventure. The only thing to do is be happy with the outcome, whatever it is. The path leads to the end, as all paths do. I've had some rocky paths and dead ends, and decisions that led to disaster, and others that led to love and passion and poetry, to excitement and adventure. All I can do is embrace them all and move on. People sometimes get frozen and unable to decide which path to take; others instantly regret their choices, because their dreamlike fantasies about the unchosen path were far brighter in their minds than the reality and effort of their chosen one. What could have been has never been, and never will be. This is the Tree of Life where each branch grows and bears fruit and, ultimately, ends in a bud. There are no rules, and nothing planned by humans is ever planned that way again. The way is vague and unknowable.

You are wrong if you think you cannot live without love, Edith.' 'No, I am not,' she said, slowly. 'I cannot live without it. Oh, I do not mean that I go into a decline, develop odd symptoms, become a caricature. I mean something far more serious than that. I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode. My idea of absolute happiness is to sit in a hot garden all day, reading or writing, utterly safe in the knowledge that the person I love will come home to me in the evening. Every evening.' 'You are a romantic, Edith,' repeated Mr Neville, with a smile. 'It is you who are wrong,' she replied. 'I have been listening to that particular accusation for most of my life. I am not a romantic. I am a domestic animal. I do not sigh and yearn for extravagant displays of passion, for the grand affair, the world well lost for love. I know all that, and know that it leaves you lonely. No, what I crave is the simplicity of routine. An evening walk, arm in arm, in fine weather. A game of cards. Time for idle talk. Preparing a meal together.

A morning-flowered dalliance demured and dulcet-sweet with ebullience and efflorescence admiring, cozy cottages and elixirs of eloquence lie waiting at our feet - We'll dance through fetching pleasantries as we walk ephemeral roads evocative epiphanies ethereal, though we know our hearts are linked with gossamer halcyon our day a harbinger of pretty things infused with whispers longing still and gamboling in sultry ways to feelings, all ineffable screaming with insouciance masking labyrinthine paths where, in our nonchalance, we walk through the lilt of love’s new morning rays. Mellifluous murmurings from a babbling brook that soothes our heated passion-songs and panoplies perplexed with thought of shadows carried off with clouds in stormy summer rains… My dear, and that I can call you 'dear' after ripples turned to crashing waves after pyrrhic wins, emotions drained we find our palace sunned and rayed with quintessential moments lit with wildflower lanterns arrayed on verandahs lush with mutual love, the softest love – our preferred décor of life's lilly-blossom gate in white-fenced serendipity… Twilight sunlit heavens cross our gardens, graced with perseverance, bliss, and thee, and thou, so splendid, delicate as a morning dove of charm and mirth – at least with me; our misty mornings glide through air... So with whippoorwill’d sweet poetry - of moonstones, triumphs, wonder-woven in chandliers of winglet cherubs wrought with time immemorial, crafted with innocence, stowed away and brought to light upon our day in hallelujah tapestries of ocean-windswept galleries in breaths of ballet kisses, light, skipping to the breakfast room cascading chrysalis's love in diaphanous imaginings delightful, fleeting, celestial-viewed as in our eyes which come to rest evocative, exuberant on one another’s moon-stowed dreams idyllic, in quiescent ways, peaceful in their radiance resplendent with a myriad of thought soothing muse, rhapsodic song until the somnolence of night spreads out again its shaded truss of luminescent fantasies waiting to be loved by us… Oh, love! Your sincerest pardons begged! I’ve gone too long, I’ve rambled, dear, and on and on and on and on - as if our hours were endless here… A morning toast, with orange-juiced lips exalting transcendent minds suffused with sunrise symphonies organic-born tranquilities sublimed sonorous assemblages with scintillas of eternity beating at our breasts – their embraces but a blushing, longing glance away… I’ll end my charms this enraptured morn' before cacophony and chafe coarse in crude and rough abrade when cynical distrust is laid by hoarse and leeching parasites, distaste fraught with smug disgust by hairy, smelly maladroit mediocrities born of poisoned wells grotesque with selfish lies - shrill and shrieking, biting, creeping around our love, as if they rose from Edgar Allen’s own immortal rumpled decomposing clothes… Oh me, oh my! I am so sorry! can you forgive me? I gone and kissed you for so long, in my morning imaginings, through these words, through this song - ‘twas supposed to be "a trifle treat," but little treats do sometimes last a little longer; and, oh, but oh, but if I could, I surly would keep you just a little longer tarrying here, tarrying here with me this pleasant morn

After three years of music-hall and theatre I'm still the same: always ready too soon. Ten thirty-five. . . . I'd better open that book lying on the make-up shelf, even though I've read it over and over again, or the copy of Paris-Sport the dresser was marking just now with my eyebrow pencil; otherwise I'll find myself all alone, face to face with that painted mentor who gazes at me from the other side of the looking-glass, with deep-set eyes under lids smeared with purplish grease-paint. Her cheek-bones are as brightly coloured as garden phlox and her blackish-red lips gleam as though they were varnished. She gazes at me for a long time and I know she is going to speak to me. She is going to say: "Is that you there? All alone, therr in that cage where idle, impatient, imprisoned hands have scored the white walls with interlaced initials and embellished them with crude, indecent shapes? On those plaster walls reddened nails, like yours, have unconsciously inscribed the appeal of the forsaken. Behind you a feminine hand has carved Marie, and the name ends in a passionate mounting flourish, like a cry to heaven. Is it you there, all alone under that ceiling booming and vibrating beneath the feet of dancers, like the floor of a mill in action? Why are you there, all alone? And why not somewhere else?" Yes, this is the dangerous, lucid hour. Who will knock at the door of my dressing-room, what face will come between me and the painted-mentor peering at me from the other side of the looking-glass? Chance, my master and my friend, will, I feel sure, deign once again to send me the spirits of his unruly kingdom. All my trust is now in him----and in myself. But above all in him, for when I go under he always fishes me out, seizing and shaking me like a life-saving dog whose teeth tear my skin a little every time. So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days. Faith, that is what it is, genuine faith, as blind as it sometimes pretends to be, with all the dissembling renunciations of faith, and that obstinacy which makes it continue to hope even at the moment if crying. "I am utterly forsaken!" There is no doubt that, if ever my heart were to call my master Chance by another name, I should make an excellent Catholic.

Exploring all I could find, often with reckless dedication, I devoured the philosophies and theologies of animistic and shamanistic traditions. Hungrily I began learning: how to feel connection with the wind and the waves, how to hear the songs of the land and the stories of the ancestors, how to dissolve into darkness and ride the thermals of light. Slowly I discovered how these traditions are still alive, not just in lands that, with a mix of disquiet and envy, Western cultures call primitive and uncivilized. Returning to the islands of my ancestors, with wonder and relief, I found animistic religions in the rolling hills and flowering gardens of Britain. To my surprise and delight, I found too that here my passion for science was as nurtured as my soul’s artistic creativity. There was nothing in quantum physics or molecular biology, or the theories of the physiology of consciousness that could negate my growing understanding and experience of sanctity. I found the power of reason here, naturally inherent within the language of a religion.

Thus spoke the Beauty and her voice had a cheerful ring, and her face was aflame with a great rejoicing. She finished her story and began to laugh quietly, but not cheerfully. The Youth bowed down before her and silently kissed her hands, inhaling the languid fragrance of myrrh, aloe and musk which wafted from her body and her fine robes. The Beauty began to speak again. 'There came to me streams of oppressors, because my evil, poisonous beauty bewitches them. I smile at them, they who are doomed to death, and I feel pity for each of them, and some I almost loved, but I gave myself to no one. Each one I gave but one single kiss — and my kisses were innocent as the kisses of a tender sister. And whomsoever I kissed, died.' The soul of the troubled Youth was caught in agony, between two quite irresolvable passions, the terror of death and an inexpressible ecstasy. But love, conquering all, overcoming even the anguish of death's grief, was triumphant once again today. Solemnly stretching out his trembling hands to the tender and terrifying Beauty, the Youth exclaimed, 'If death is in your kiss, o beloved, let me revel in the infinity of death. Cling to me, kiss me, love me, envelop me with the sweet fragrance of your poisonous breath, death after death pour into my body and into my soul before you destroy everything that once was me!' 'You want to! You are not afraid!' exclaimed the Beauty. The face of the Beauty was pale in the rays of the lifeless moon, like a guttering candle, and the lightning in her sad and joyful eyes was trembling and blue. With a trusting movement, tender and passionate, she clung to the Youth and her naked, slender arms were entwined about his neck. 'We shall die together!' she whispered. 'We shall die together. All the poison of my heart is afire and flaming streams are rushing through my veins, and I am all enveloped in some great holocaust.' 'I am aflame!' whispered the Youth, 'I am being consumed in your embraces and you and I are two flaming fires, burning with the immense ecstasy of a poisonous love.' The sad and lifeless moon grew dim and fell in the sky — and the black night came and stood watch. It concealed the secret of love and kisses, fragrant and poisonous, with gloom and solitude. And it listened to the harmonious beating of two hearts growing quieter, and in the frail silence it watched over the final delicate sighs. And so, in the poisonous Garden, having breathed the fragrances which the Beauty breathed, and having drunk the sweetness of her love so tenderly and fatally compassionate, the beautiful Youth died. And on his breast the Beauty died, having delivered her poisonous but fragrant soul up to sweet ecstasies. ("The Poison Garden")

Bygones" The weatherman says heavy rain, instead it dribbles like an old man unable to urinate. In the small orbit of the car, daylight clings to my collar, simmers in sweat, but I shall drive despite this meridian fry. I travel in the tremble of tin and tires. Up ahead, Barron Lake, your lost butterfly locket, Woodport, the warm rocks before the dive. The sun legs gently over the turbine hills, and always with a little luck I find your house, where torn cotton knits dry on an iron gate, and a vintage bicycle sinks in the garden. Over rum we discuss the length of our severance, agree to let bygones vanish amid the fray. Then kisses wheedle the lower back down till daybreak quiet as cat paws... treads the bedroom floor.

I’m the same kind of brute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman — it lies very deep, and men and woman must fight it together before they shall enter the Garden. But I do love you — surely in a better way than he does.’ He thought. ‘Yes — really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.’ He stretched them towards her. ‘Lucy, be quick — there's no time for us to talk now — come to me as you came in the spring, and afterwards I will be gentle and explain. I have cared for you since that man died. I cannot live without you. “No good,” I thought: “she is marring someone else”; but I meet you again when all the world is glorious water and sun. As you came through the wood, I saw that nothing else mattered. I called. I wanted to live and have my chance of joy.

This is not a barren place. Villanelle, whose talent is to look at everything at least twice, taught me to find joy in the most unlikely places and still to be surprised by the obvious. She had a knack of raising your spirits just by saying, 'Look at that,' and that was always an ordinary treasure brought to life. She can even charm the fishwives. So I go from my room in the morning and make the journey to the garden very slowly, feeling the walls with my hands, getting a sense of surface, of texture. I breathe carefully, smelling the air, and when the sun is up I turn my face that way and let it lighten me. . . . At the garden, although I have a spade and a fork, I often dig with my hands if it’s not too cold. I like to feel the earth, to squeeze it hard and tight or to crumble it between my fingers. There's time here to love slowly.

After nine nights must come ten and every desperate meeting only leaves you desperate for another. There is never enough to eat, never enough garden for your love. So you refuse and then you discover that your house is haunted by the ghost of a leopard. When passion comes late in life it is hard to bear. One more night. How tempting. How innocent. I could stay tonight surely? What difference could it make, one more night? No. If I smell her skin, find the mute curves of her nakedness, she will reach in her hand and withdraw my heart like a bird’s egg. I have not had time to cover my heart in barnacles to elude her. If I give in to this passion, my real life, the most solid, the best known, will disappear and I will feed on shadows again like those sad spirits whom Orpheus fled. I wished her goodnight, touching her hand only and thankful for the dark that hid her eyes.

We've taken it away too much, the funeral people take over. No. Let people bury their own." "Do you think it helps people to go through the process and be intimately involved?" "Yes of course, of course!" It's the most emphatic Steve has been about anything. "Keep the body at home, put it on the dining table, let the kids sleep under the table, paint the coffin, decorate it, eat. When my brother died we had fights over the coffin drinking whiskey. I remember one brother pounding Bill's coffin 'Oh you bastard!' It was our lives. We carried the coffin, we filled in the hole. I used to work in the garden as a boy with my father. And I dug the hole to put his plants in and filled in the hole. In the end we put Dad into the ground and I helped my brothers fill in the hole. We need to do it ourselves." "Why do you think it helps to have that involvement?" "It's our responsibility, it's not to help, it's enabling us to grieve, it's enabling us to go through it together. Otherwise it's taken away and whoosh - it's gone. And you can't grieve. You've got to feel, you've got to touch, you've got to be there." Steve is passionate. He reaches into his bag to pull out something to show me. It's an old yellowing newspaper clipping. The caption reads 'Devastation: a woman in despair at the site of the blasts near the Turkey-Syrian border'. The photograph is a woman, she has her arms open to the sky and she is wailing, her head thrown back. "I pray in front of that" Steve tells me as I look at it. "That's a wonderful photo of the pain of our world. I don't know if she's lost relatives or what's blown up. You have a substance to your life if you've felt pain, you've got understanding, that's where compassion is, it makes you a deeper richer human being.

In Broadway, I suddenly found myself face to face with William de la Touche Clancey. "Well!" A long drawn-out syllable, in which fear and condescension were unpleasantly mingled. "What is the young Old Patroon about to turn his hand to next?" "The Vauxhall Gardens, I should think." My dislike of Clancey is almost physical. Yet I stare at him with fascination; note that his protuberant eyes are yellowish; that he scratches himself compulsively; that his tongue darts in and out of his mouth like a lizard's catching flies. "Of the delicious nymphs you sport with there?" "Of the delicious fauns, too — and their goatish friends." "Uh-huh..." A long, drawn-out attempt at sounding amused failed of its object. "I hope you realize that your editor's unholy passion for the Negro grows more embarrassing each day. If I were he I should beware. He might simply vanish one dark night." "Murdered? Or sold into slavery?" Clancey recently delighted his admirers by proposing that since the institution of slavery has been an integral part of every high civilization (and peculiarly well-adapted to those nations that follow the word as well as the spirit of Old and New Testaments), poor whites should be bought and sold as well as blacks. "I don't believe that poor sick Mr. Leggett would command a high price in the bazaar. Only his diseased mind would have a certain morbid interest to the special collector. You, on the other hand, ought to fetch a pretty price." "More than the usual two dollars you pay?" Two dollars is the current rate for a male prostitute. "Much more! Why, just for those pink Dutch cheeks alone!" It would be nice to record that I thought to something terminal to say but in my rage I could think of absolutely nothing and so left him with the last word.

In class, we identified some elements essential to creativity: risk, perseverance, novel problem solving, disciplined spontaneity, the need to make exterior one’s inner universe, openness to experience, luck, genetics, a willingness to react against the status quo, delight, mastery, the ability to live not only one’s own life but also the life of one’s time, childlike innocence guided by the sophistication of an adult, resourcefulness, a sense of spirituality a mind of large general knowledge fascinated by particulars, passion, the useful application of obsession, a sacred place (abstract or physical), among many others. That all these qualities, and more, might combine to produce what we refer to as a moment of inspiration is one of the great mysteries and triumphs of mind. Our minds grow. Not because we always need them to but because it is their nature, just as it is the nature of flies to seek out open wounds and the nature of flowers to follow the sun.

Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knock know jokes. Hot dogs - not even East 86th Street bratwurst but mealy, greasy big guts that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six-packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds. Fucks hard and talks dirty; a private though unapologetic taste for porn. Mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction; a subscription to National Geographic. Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up golf. Delights in crappy snack foods of ever description: Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies - you're laughing - but I don't eat them - anything that looks less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation from the farm. Bruce Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and your hair flying. Sings along, off-key - how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a tin ear?Beach Boys. Elvis - never lose your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast. Though not impossibly stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when Kevin went off them...(sorry). It just had to be noisy; you hadn't any time for my Elgar, my Leo Kottke, though you made an exception for Aaron Copeland. You wiped your eyes brusquely at Tanglewood, as if to clear gnats, hoping I didn't notice that "Quiet City" made you cry. And ordinary, obvious pleasure: the Bronx Zoo and the botanical gardens, the Coney Island roller coaster, the Staten Island ferry, the Empire State Building. You were the only New Yorker I'd ever met who'd actually taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. You dragged me along once, and we were the only tourists on the boat who spoke English. Representational art - Edward Hopper. And my lord, Franklin, a Republican. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes. Physically, too, you were such a surprise - yourself a strong defense. There were times you were worried that I thought you too heavy, I made so much of your size, though you weighed in a t a pretty standard 165, 170, always battling those five pounds' worth of cheddar widgets that would settle over your belt. But to me you were enormous. So sturdy and solid, so wide, so thick, none of that delicate wristy business of my imaginings. Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches. How luck we are, when we've spared what we think we want! How weary I might have grown of all those silly pots and fussy diets, and how I detest the whine of sitar music!

Being Boring 'May you live in interesting times.' - Chinese Curse If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say Except that the garden is growing. I had a slight cold but it's better today. I'm content with the way things are going. Yes, he is the same as he usually is, Still eating and sleeping and snoring. I get on with my work. He gets on with his. I know this is all very boring. There was drama enough in my turbulent past: Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful. No news is good news, and long may it last. If nothing much happens, I'm thankful. A happier cabbage you never did see, My vegetable spirits are soaring. If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me. I want to go on being boring. I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for, If you don't need to find a new lover? You drink and you listen and drink a bit more And you take the next day to recover. Someone to stay home with was all my desire And, now that I've found a safe mooring, I've just one ambition in life: I aspire To go on and on being boring.

In a battle ‘Alī confronted a powerful enemy and after a fierce fight was able to throw the enemy to the ground and sit on his chest with his sword drawn. At this moment the enemy warrior spat in ‘Alī’s face, whereupon ‘Alī immediately disengaged himself and abstained from delivering a blow with his sword. The enemy warrior, who was an idol worshipper, had never seen such an event. He became agitated and asked ‘Alī why he had not killed him. The response of ‘Alī, which in the verses of the Mathnawī constitutes one of the masterpieces of Sufi poetry, was that ‘Alī was fighting at first for the preservation of the Truth, but once the enemy warrior spat in his face ‘Alī became angry, and he would never react on the basis of anger and certainly not get into a battle or slay someone for personal or selfish reasons. In Rūmī’s words, ‘Alī responded: Said he, “I wield the sword for the sake of the Truth, I am the servant of the Truth not the functionary of the body. I am the lion of the Truth, not the lion of passions, My action does witness bear to my religion.

Emily turned to me. “You’re not happy at work. You’re not following a passion.” I wondered if faking a stroke was an option, as there was nothing I wanted to do less than have this conversation again. “I like my work,” I said. “I get to help people, it’s challenging.” “But are you passionate?” I shrugged. “I was passionate about things when I was your age, and working is easier when you love what you do, but even something you love contains hours and days of repetition and grind. It’s only on the internet that everything is easy.” Emily looked at Cassidy. “See what I mean? Work is not life. Work is how you pay for food. You should ask us the kind of life we want to live instead.” She started counting on her fingers. “I want a job I can forget at the end of the day, where I don’t work weekends, where I make enough money to live on my own and have a garden. Wouldn’t it be better to start there? There must be hundreds of jobs like that. Work isn’t supposed to be your life . . . Your life is supposed to be your life.” She fell silent. Then she said, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m hungry.” She got up and went to get breakfast.

Domesticated animals like cats and dogs can look at their human companions’ facial expressions and discern their moods and whether the humans like them or not. The same is true for smart tigers in the wild. Why are those humans here? By coincidence or by design? They figure out human intentions based on behavior, expressions, and the energy radiated by people and take precautions or even attack accordingly. A jay once built a nest in the juniper tree at a temple I used to go to. Out of curiosity one day, a monk at the temple peeked inside and happened to meet the gaze of the jay brooding an egg. The monk felt sorry, as if he’d invaded someone’s privacy by looking into their bedroom. From that day on, the monk purposefully ignored the jay when he passed by the nest. The jay also grew to ignore the presence of the monk coming and going, and it was able to raise its young and leave the nest. In contrast, an azure-winged magpie once built a nest in my friend’s garden. Enchanted by its light blue wings and long tail, my friend looked in on the bird often. Not long after, the magpie gave up the nest and flew away, leaving behind a rotten egg. We

She had plenty of leisure now, day in, day out, to survey her life as a tract of country traversed, and at last become a landscape instead of separate fields or separate years and days, so that it became a unity and she could see the whole view, and could even pick out a particular field and wander round it again in spirit, though seeing it all the while as it were from a height, fallen in its proper place, with the exact pattern drawn round it by the hedge, and the next field into which the gap in the hedge would lead. So, she thought, could she at last put circles on her life. Slowly she crossed that day, as one crosses a field by a little path through the grasses, with the sorrel and the buttercups waving on either side; she crossed it again slowly, from breakfast to bed-time, and each hour, as one hand of the clock passed over the other, regained for her its separate character: this was the hour, she thought, when I first came downstairs that day, swinging my hat by its ribbons; this was the hour when he persuaded me into the garden, and sat with me on the seat beside the lake, and told me it was not true that with one blow of its wing a swan could break the leg of a man.

The Garden" How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crown’d from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow’rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men; Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow. Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So am’rous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress’ name; Little, alas, they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. The gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race: Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow; And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wond’rous life in this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepar’d for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walk’d without a mate; After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share To wander solitary there: Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone. How well the skillful gard’ner drew Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new, Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And as it works, th’ industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!

It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its spellbinding, narrow streets. Charleston was my father’s ministry, his hobbyhorse, his quiet obsession, and the great love of his life. His bloodstream lit up my own with a passion for the city that I’ve never lost nor ever will. I’m Charleston-born, and bred. The city’s two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, have flooded and shaped all the days of my life on this storied peninsula. I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones, I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory. As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter.

Eventually, the men’s talk of politics turned to poetry. The recitations could begin with a quatrain from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat: I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, Half a loaf for a bite to eat, Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm. To which a voice might answer with a poem by Rumi: My arrow of love has arrived at the target I am in the house of mercy and my heart is a place of prayer. These gatherings went on for hours, with one guest after another reciting poems of the Persian masters—Rumi, Khayyam, Sa’adi, snd Hafez. That my father, the Colonel, who could make us cower with a single sidelong glance, produced the most skillful recitations both bewildered and fascinated me. His voice had a deep timbre perfectly suited to reciting verse, and the frequent cries of “Lovely!” and “Exquisite!” roused him to ever more passionate declamation. I listened from behind the window, enraptured by the music of a language that can sometimes sound like susurrations of a lover and sometimes like the reed’s plaintive song. The words hooked into me and wouldn’t let me go. Rivers, oceans, and deserts, the nightingale and the rose—the perennial symbols of Persian poetry first grew familiar to me through these late-night scenes in the garden, and even though I was still a young girl, only just a child, the verses called me away to different lands.

Many a time when I sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars. These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee’s thoughtful majesty of face lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel for this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love. Is it that, among the race I belong to, man’s pride so far influences his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me with her preference?

That the life of Man is but a dream has been sensed by many a one, and I too am never free of the feeling. When I consider the restrictions that are placed on the active, inquiring energies of Man; when I see that all our efforts have no other result than to satisfy needs which in turn serve no purpose but to prolong our wretched existence, and then see that all our reassurance concerning the particular questions we probe is no more than dreamy resignation, since all we are doing is to paint our prison walls with colourful figures and bright views – all of this, Wilhelm, leaves me silent. I withdraw into myself, and discover a world, albeit a notional world of dark desire rather than one of actuality and vital strength. And everything swims before my senses, and I go my way in the world wearing the smile of the dreamer. All our learned teachers and educators are agreed that children do not know why they want what they want; but no one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod. And yet it seems palpably clear to me. I gladly confess, since I know the reply you would want to make, that they are the happiest who, like children, live for the present moment, drag their dolls around and dress and undress them, and watchfully steal by the drawer where Mama has locked away the cake, and, when at last they get their hands on what they want, devour it with their cheeks crammed full and cry, ‘More!’ – They are happy creatures. And those others, who give pompous titles to their beggarly pursuits and even to their passions, and chalk them up as vast enterprises for the good and well-being of mankind, they too are happy. – It is all very well for those who can be like that! But he who humbly perceives where it is all leading, who sees how prettily the happy man makes an Eden of his garden, and how even the unhappy man goes willingly on his weary way, panting beneath his burden, and that all are equally interested in seeing the light of the sun for one minute more – he indeed will be silent, and will create a world from within for himself, and be happy because he is a man. And then, confined as he may be, he none the less still preserves in his heart the sweet sensation of freedom, and the knowledge he can quit this prison whenever he wishes.

So,” I cleared my throat, unable to tolerate his moans of pleasure and praise any longer, “uh, what are your plans for the weekend?” “The weekend?” He sounded a bit dazed. “Yes. This weekend. What do you have planned? Planning on busting up any parties?” I asked lightly, not wanting him to know that I was unaccountably breathless. I moved to his other knee and discarded the towel. “Ha. No. Not unless those wankers down the hall give me a reason to.” Removing his arms from his face, Bryan’s voice was thick, gravelly as he responded, “I, uh, have some furniture to assemble.” “Really?” Surprised, I stilled and stared at the line of his jaw. The creases around his mouth—when he held perfectly still—made him look mature and distinguished. Actually, they made him even more classically handsome, if that was even possible. “Yes. Really. Two IKEA bookshelves.” I slid my hands lower, behind his ankle, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I prompted, “That’s it?” “No.” He sighed, hesitated, then added, “I need to stop by the hardware store. The tap in my bathroom is leaking and one of the drawer handles in the kitchen is missing a screw. I just repainted the guest room, so I have to take the excess paint cans to the chemical disposal place; it’s only open on Saturdays before noon. And then I promised my mam I’d take her to dinner.” My mouth parted slightly because the oddest thing happened as he rattled off his list of chores. It turned me on. Even more so than running my palms over his luscious legs. That’s right. His list of adult tasks made my heart flutter. I rolled my lips between my teeth, not wanting to blurt that I also needed to go to the hardware store over the weekend. As a treat to myself, I was planning to organize Patrick’s closet and wanted to install shelves above the clothes rack. Truly, Sean’s penchant for buying my son designer suits and ties was completely out of hand. Without some reorganization, I would run out of space. That’s right. Organizing closets was something I loved to do. I couldn’t get enough of those home and garden shows, especially Tiny Houses, because I adored clever uses for small spaces. I was just freaky enough to admit my passion for storage and organization. But back to Bryan and his moans of pleasure, adult chores, and luscious legs. I would not think about Bryan Leech adulting. I would not think about him walking into the hardware store in his sensible shoes and plain gray T-shirt—that would of course pull tightly over his impressive pectoral muscles—and then peruse the aisles for . . . a screw. I. Would. Not. Ignoring the spark of kinship, I set to work on his knee, again counting to distract myself. It worked until he volunteered, “I’d like to install some shelves in my closet, but that’ll have to wait until next weekend. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off. I’d do just about anything to get someone to help me organize my closet.” He chuckled. I’d like to organize your closet. I fought a groan, biting my lip as I removed my hands, turned from his body, and rinsed them under the faucet. “We’re, uh, finished for today.

If you’d convinced Nancy to marry you, you might not have had to go off to be a Bow Street runner. You could have had an easier life, a better life in high society than you could have had with me if you’d married me. Without being able to access my fortune, I could only have dragged you down.” “You don’t really believe that I wanted to marry her for her money,” he gritted out. “It’s either that or assume that you fell madly in love with her in the few weeks we were apart.” They were nearly to the inn now, so she added a plaintive note to her voice. “Or perhaps it was her you wanted all along. You knew my uncle would never accept a second son as a husband for his rich heiress of a daughter, so you courted me to get close to her. Nancy was always so beautiful, so--” “Enough!” Without warning, he dragged her into one of the many alleyways that crisscrossed York. This one was deeply shadowed, the houses leaning into each other overhead, and as he pulled her around to face him, the brilliance of his eyes shone starkly in the dim light. “I never cared one whit about Nancy.” She tamped down her triumph--he hadn’t admitted the whole truth yet. “It certainly didn’t look that way to me. It looked like you had already forgotten me, forgotten what we meant to each--” “The hell I had.” He shoved his face close to hers. “I never forgot you for one day, one hour, one moment. It was you--always you. Everything I did was for you, damn it. No one else.” The passionate profession threw her off course. Dom had never been the sort to say such sweet things. But the fervent look in his eyes roused memories of how he used to look at her. And his hands gripping her arms, his body angling in closer, were so painfully familiar... “I don’t…believe you,” she lied, her blood running wild through her veins. His gleaming gaze impaled her. “Then believe this.” And suddenly his mouth was on hers. This was not what she’d set out to get from him. But oh, the joy of it. The heat of it. His mouth covered hers, seeking, coaxing. Without breaking the kiss, he pushed her back against the wall, and she grabbed for his shoulders, his surprisingly broad and muscular shoulders. As he sent her plummeting into unfamiliar territory, she held on for dear life. Time rewound to when they were in her uncle’s garden, sneaking a moment alone. But this time there was no hesitation, no fear of being caught. Glorying in that, she slid her hands about his neck to bring him closer. He groaned, and his kiss turned intimate. He used lips and tongue, delving inside her mouth in a tender exploration that stunned her. Enchanted her. Confused her. Something both sweet and alien pooled in her belly, a kind of yearning she’d never felt with Edwin. With any man but Dom. As if he sensed it, he pulled back to look at her, his eyes searching hers, full of surprise. “My God, Jane,” he said hoarsely, turning her name into a prayer. Or a curse? She had no time to figure out which before he clasped her head to hold her for another darkly ravishing kiss. Only this one was greedier, needier. His mouth consumed hers with all the boldness of Viking raiders of yore. His tongue drove repeatedly inside in a rhythm that made her feel all trembly and hot, and his thumbs caressed her throat, rousing the pulse there. Thank heaven there was a wall to hold her up, or she was quite sure she would dissolve into a puddle at his feet. Because after all these years apart, he was riding roughshod over her life again. And she was letting him. How could she not? His scent of leather and bergamot engulfed her, made her dizzy with the pleasure of it. He roused urges she’d never known she had, sparked fires in places she’d thought were frozen. Then his hands swept down her possessively as if to memorize her body…or mark it as belonging to him. Belonging to him.

The operation would be in a week...I didn't know if I would survive. How I longed to go back to reading! There was nowhere I longed to be more than the university campus. I was preparing for a master's on fantasy literature. I was interested in why the country's literature did not include this distinctive genre. I had this great passion for studying and writing, which they explained in my household with the story of the umbilical cord. When I was born, and at my father's request, my elder sister buried my umbilical cord in the courtyard of her primary school. My father attributed my {brother's} academic failure to the fact that my mother buried his umbilical cord in the garden of our house.

To express my sincere ardor for the beauty of nature, I was so colloquial in saying that "I am batshit passionate for enchanting gardens

Not Suffering Alone Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done. Luke 22:42 The “Agony in the Garden” has always moved me deeply. Up to this moment, even at the Last Supper, Jesus has appeared to be strong and in control. Now, however, he is weak, vulnerable and very much alone. Jesus is in a state of profound fear over his upcoming passion and death. Along with the fear is a terrible loneliness; Jesus can find no human support. Like any of us, he would hope that at least one of his disciples would notice his pain and come to his side. But they are sound asleep. Perhaps this is why Luke includes the note that “an angel from heaven appeared to him” to strengthen him, as if the angel were saying, “Be assured: countless souls will be willing to suffer their own agony and death for love of you and your teachings.” As our own Lenten journey nears its conclusion this Holy Week, may we find the spiritual strength we need to bear our cross in union with Jesus and support our brothers and sisters in their times of suffering. Fr. Martin Pable, O.F.M. Cap.

Writing is a Passion, Art is my Dreams, Crafting is something I Enjoy. The day one stops learning is the day one stops living.

The Personal Touch Thou great I AM, I acknowledge and confess that all things come of Thee life, breath, happiness, advancement, sight, touch, hearing, goodness, truth, beauty – all that makes existence amiable. In the spiritual world also I am dependent entirely upon Thee. Give me grace to know more of my need of grace; Show me my sinfulness that I may willingly confess it; Reveal to me my weakness that I may know my strength in Thee. I thank Thee for any sign of penitence; give me more of it; My sins are black and deep, and rise from a stony, proud, self-righteous heart; Help me to confess them with mourning, regret, self-loathing with no pretence to merit or excuse; I need healing, Good Physician, here is the scope for Thee; come and manifest They power; I need faith; Thou who hast given it me, maintain, strengthen, increase it, Centre it upon the Savior's work, upon the majesty of the Father, upon the operations of the Spirit; Work it in me now that I may never doubt Thee as the truthful, mighty, faithful God. Then I can bring my heart to Thee full of love, gratitude, hope, joy. May I lay at Thy feet these fruits grown in Thy garden, love Thee with a passion that can never cool, believe in Thee with a confidence that never staggers, hope in Thee with an expectation that can never be dim, delight in Thee with a rejoicing that cannot be stifled, glorify Thee with the highest of my powers, burning, blazing, glowing, radiating, as from Thy own glory.

How spacious are these squares, How resonant bridges and stark! Heavy, peaceful, and starless Is the covering of the dark. And we walk on the fresh snow As if we were mortal people. That we are together this hour Unseparable -- is it not a miracle? The knees go unwittingly weaker It seems there's no air -- so long! You are my life's only blessing, You are the sun of my song. Now the dark buildings are stirring And I'll fall on earth as they shake -- Inside of my village garden I do not fear to awake. Escape "My dear, if we could only Reach all the way to the seas" "Be quiet" and descended the stairs Losing breath and looking for keys. Past the buildings, where sometime We danced and had fun and drank wine Past the white columns of Senate Where it's dark, dark again. "What are you doing, you madman!" "No, I am only in love with thee! This evening is wide and noisy, Ship will have lots of fun at the sea!" Horror tightly clutches the throat, Shuttle took us at dusk on our turn. The tough smell of ocean tightrope Inside trembling nostrils did burn. "Say, you most probably know: I don't sleep? Thus in sleep it can be" Only oars splashed in measured manner Over Nieva's waves heavy. And the black sky began to get lighter, Someone called from the bridge to us, As with both hands I was clutching On my chest the rim of the cross. On your arms, as I lost all my power, Like a little girl you carried me, That on deck of a yacht alabaster Incorruptible day's light we'd meet.

I absolutely love gardening. I love flowers. Plants. Growing things. It’s my passion.

Fantasize, together: Take a page from The Thousand and One Nights and incorporate a story into foreplay. If you’re not a born storyteller, try reading one aloud together. Some literary recommendations: James Salter’s erotic masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime; Anais Nin’s collections of short stories Delta of Venus and Little Birds; the erotic novels Emanuelle by Emanuelle Arsan and Story of O by Pauline Réage; Harold Brodkey’s sexual saga “Innocence”—perhaps the greatest depiction of a session of cunnilingus ever penned; novels by Jerzy Kosinski such as Passion Play and Cockpit; Henry Miller’s Under the Roofs of Paris and Quiet Days in Clichy; My Secret Life by Anonymous and The Pure and the Impure by Colette; Nancy Friday’s anthology of fantasies, Secret Garden (filled with the correspondence of real people’s fantasies); stories from The Mammoth Book of Erotica or one of the many erotic anthologies edited by Susie Bright. For those with a taste for poetry, try Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire or Flesh Unlimited by Guillaume Apollinaire. And for those who like comic books (kinky ones, that is), try the extra-hot works of writer/illustrator Eric Stanton,

Are you wanting a passionate liaison, Lady Rose?” He kept his voice teasing, though he didn’t bother to hide his interest. “Don’t be silly. You’ve helped me to bed, and now you can go.” He drew the covers over her, well aware of her body warmth. He tucked her in, sitting on the edge of the bed. “There, now. Would you like a bedtime story?” His voice came out husky, and she glared at him. “Get. Out.” There was no mistaking her annoyance. “Where is my garden rake when I need it?” Instead, she gathered up one of the smaller pillows, holding it like a shield. But in spite of her warning, there was something else in her eyes. Not fear or loathing—but her own interest. In the dim candlelight of the room, her brown eyes were fixed upon him as if she saw nothing else. She leaned forward with the pillow, instead of cowering backward. He wasn’t about to refuse that invitation. “I know what it is we’re missing, a chara. A goodnight kiss.” Her eyes widened with shock. And yet, her hands relaxed from the pillow, while she supported her weight on her wrists. She looked nothing like a lady who was terrified of a stolen kiss. Instead, her mouth was slightly open, her cheeks flushed. “Absolutely not. I will scream if you even try such a thing.” He was tempted to lean in and taste her offering. What would it be like to feel her soft body against his own, stroking the line of her back? Would she wind her arms around his neck and open to him like a summer blossom? Iain moved a breath closer, watching her reaction. For a moment, she held herself in place, waiting. But instead of desire in her eyes, he saw the first trace of fear. Before she could protest again, he kissed her forehead. “Sweet dreams, Lady Rose.” Then he stepped back to leave. It wasn’t the kiss he’d wanted, but at least she would not be angry with him. Yet, he was wrong about that. She appeared angry that he hadn’t stolen a true kiss. “You are a wretched man,” she informed him as he strode to her bedroom door. In one hand, she held the pillow. But he only paused and smiled. “What was that?” He raised a hand to his ear and said, “You wanted to thank me for taking you back to bed? Oh, aye, a chara, you’re very welcome, then.” With that, he closed the door gently behind him. A moment later, he heard a soft thunk as the pillow struck the wood.

Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ. The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end. But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

I’ve been a passionate adventurer in the solar industry and the sustainability movement my whole life. I try hard to walk my talk. My wife, Nantzy, and I live in an off-the-grid home (see page 70) built of recycled and green materials, powered by solar (passive and active) and hydroelectric energy, with gorgeous biodynamic gardens and fruit orchards that provide most of our food, a 15-acre biodynamic olive orchard, an 8-acre biodynamic vineyard, and a dozen beehives. I’m fortunate to benefit from the fruits of all our collective labors. As the solar industry continues to grow and mature, and as our cultural consciousness evolves, I remain hopeful that, once and for all, we will get things right in

You want what your parents have, my lord,” Anna said, rising. “Children who refuse to marry—assuming they remain extant?” the earl shot back. “Your parents love each other,” Anna said, taking in the back gardens below as moonlight cast them in silvery beauty. “They love each other as friends and lovers and partners and parents.” She turned, finding him on his feet directly behind her. “That is why you will not settle for some little widgeon picked out by your well-meaning papa.” The earl took a step closer to her. “And what if I am in need, Anna Seaton, not of this great love you surmise between my parents but simply of some uncomplicated, lusty passion between two willing adults?” He took the last step between them, and Anna’s middle simply vanished. Where her vital organs used to reside, there was a great, gaping vacuum, a fluttery nothingness that grew larger and more dumbstruck as the earl’s hands settled with breathtaking gentleness on her shoulders. He slid his palms down her arms, grasping her hands, and easing her toward him. “Passion between two willing adults?” Anna repeated, her voice coming out whispery, not the incredulous retort she’d meant it to be. The earl responded by taking her hands and wrapping them around his waist then enfolding Anna against his body. She had been here before, she thought distractedly, held in his arms, the night breezes playing in the branches above them, the scent of flowers intoxicatingly sweet in the darkness. And as before, he caressed her back in slow, soothing circles that urged her more fully against him. “I cannot allow this.” Anna breathed in his scent and rested her cheek against the cool silk of his dressing gown. He shifted, easing the material aside, and her face touched his bare chest. She did not even try to resist the pleasure of his clean, male skin beneath her cheek. “You cannot,” he whispered, but it didn’t sound like he was agreeing with her. “You should not,” he clarified, “but perhaps, Anna Seaton, you can allow just a kiss, stolen on a soft summer evening.” Oh

I get up and stare out at the place where I live. I’m right at the heart of Planet Normal. Its strangest resident maybe, but I don’t care about that. I like a place where dads go to work in the mornings and people grumble when the post is late. If Rattigan’s army of the undead is out there waiting for me, they’re well disguised. There are some clouds dotting the sky. Those high stately ones that look like ships sailing in from the west. There aren’t many of them, though, and the sun is already well into its stride. It’s going to be hot. Drift downstairs. Eat a nectarine straight from the fridge. Make tea. Eat something else, because we citizens of Planet Normal don’t get by on a single nectarine. I unlock my garden shed and open a window in there, because if it’s hot outside, the shed can get boiling. It’ll be too hot even with the window open, but I lock up all the same. I always do. I’d intended to shower and stuff, but I did all that last night and I’ve already let too much time drift by to do it all again now. Sharp means sharp, now, Griffiths. Apart from sniffing my wrists to make sure they don’t smell of the firing range, I do as little as I can. But I have to get dressed. That’s easy, normally. Select a bland, appropriate outfit from the array of bland, appropriate outfits I have in my wardrobe. I used to own almost nothing that wasn’t black, navy, tan, white, charcoal or a pink so muted that you might as well call it beige. I never thought those colours suited me particularly. I didn’t have an opinion on the subject. It was just a question of following the golden rule: observe what others do, then follow suit. A palette of muted classic colours seemed like the safest way to achieve the right effect. Since Kay turned fourteen or fifteen, however, she’s campaigned to get me to liven up my wardrobe. It’s still hardly vibrating with life. It still looks something like an exhibition of Next office wear, 2004‒10. All the same, I have options now that I wouldn’t have had a few years back. And today I’ll be seeing Dave Brydon. He’ll be seeing me. I want his eyes on me, and I want his eyes to be hungry ones, sexed up and passionate. I

For God’s sake, Eve Windham, it was just a kiss under the mistletoe, probably inspired by your papa’s wassail more than anything else.” She had to put her hand on his arm while the feeling of the ground shifting beneath her feet swept over her. “My brothers said it was white rum.” “The occasional tot makes the holiday socializing less tedious. You really do not look well.” The last observation was grudging, almost worried. “I did not mean to swill from your glass, Deene. You should have stopped me.” They had to get to the coach. The night felt like it was closing in, and Deene’s voice—a perfect example of male aristocratic euphony—was swelling and shrinking in the oddest way. “I might have stopped you, except you downed the whole drink before I realized what was afoot, and then you were accosting me in the most passionate—” Eve clutched his arm and swayed into him, breathing shallowly through her mouth. “If you insist on arguing with me, my lord, I will be ill all over these bushes.” “Why didn’t you say so?” He slipped an arm around her waist and promenaded her down the steps. By the time they got to the garden gate, the nausea was subsiding, though Eve was leaning heavily on her escort. She had the notion that the scents of cedar and lavender coming from Deene’s jacket might have helped quiet her stomach. Deene ushered her through the gate, which put them on a quiet, mercifully dark side street. “How often do these headaches befall you?” “Too often. Sometimes I go for months between attacks, sometimes only days. The worst is when it hits on one side, subsides for a day, then strikes on the other.” Deene pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth, then used two fingers to give a piercing, three-blast whistle. “Sorry.” All the while he kept his arm around Eve’s waist, a solid, warm—and quite unexpected—bulwark against complete disability. “The coach will here in moments. Is there anything that helps?” “Absolute quiet, absolute dark, time.” Though her mother used to rub her neck, and that had helped the most. He said nothing more—Deene wasn’t stupid—and Eve just leaned on him. Her grandmother had apparently suffered from these same headaches, though neither Eve’s parents nor her siblings were afflicted. The clip-clop of hooves sounded like so much gunfire in Eve’s head, but it was the sound of privacy, so Eve tried to welcome it. Deene gave the coachy directions to the Windham mansion and climbed in after Eve. “Shall I sit beside you, my lady?” An odd little courtesy, that he would even ask. “Please. The less I move, the less uncomfortable I am.” He settled beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders. Without a single thought for dignity, skirmishes, or propriety, Eve laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and was grateful. ***

I am home for good like a tiny shoot. The tiny shoots in my mother's garden. I have a passion for idle chatter about books, language and literature. Preparing a meal together, that can be romantic.

Then, by asking questions methodically, he got me to recount in their proper sequence my own memories of that night; they were as written down above. And I attempted a conclusion: 'And that's how I came to see that we were less than nothing and had no hope. After that, would it not be the right thing to go out and hang yourself?' He laughed and said: 'But what could be more comforting than to discover that we are less than nothing? It's only by turning ourselves inside out that we shall become something. Is it not a great comfort to the caterpillar to learn that she is a mere larva, that her time of being a semi-crawling digestive tube will not last, and that after a period of confinement in the mortuary of her chrysalis, she will be born again as a butterfly—not in a nonexistent paradise dreamed up by some caterpillary, consoling philosophy, but here in this very garden, where she is now laboriously munching on her cabbage leaf? We are all caterpillars and it is our misfortune that, in defiance of nature, we cling with all our strength to our condition, to our caterpillar appetites, caterpillar passions, caterpillar metaphysics, and caterpillar societies. Only in our outward physical appearance do we bear to the observer who suffers from psychic shortsightedness any resemblance whatsoever to adults; the rest of us remain stubbornly larval. Well, I have very good reasons for believing (indeed if I didn't there'd be nothing for it but to go off and dangle from the end of a rope) that man can reach the adult stage, that a few of us already have, and that those few have not kept the knack to themselves. What could be more comforting?

A Sikh told me once that everyone was a flower in the Lord God's garden - all the individuals, the colours and races, tribes and religions; it was an idea that I fell in love with, and kept coming back to over the years, and eventually I chose to be a flower. I don't believe in any kind of God; if there is such a beast, he has horns and hooves and plays the pipes and doesn't live in the sky, for us to look up to and worship, but underground, and pushes all the wonderful things out of the soil for us to admire, pushes us out into the world, then takes us back again to join the earth. A creator that gives us passion and music and lust: that's my kind of deity, should I ever need one.

The Collapse of Society 21Look how the once faithful city has become as unfaithful as a prostitute! She who was once the “Center of Justice,” where righteousness made its home, is now the dwelling place of murderers!ap 22She was once like sterling silver, now only mixture; once so pure, now diluted like watered-down wine.aq 23Your rulers are rebellious and companions of crooks. They are self-centered racketeers who love a bribe and who chase after payoffs. They don’t defend the fatherless or consider the rights of a helpless widow. 24Therefore, here is what the Sovereign One decrees, the Lord God of Angel Armies, the Mighty One of Israel: “Ah,ar I will get relief from my adversaries and avenge myself on my foes!as 25I will bring my fiery hand upon you and burn you and purify you into something clean.”at God Promises Deliverers 26“I will restore deliverers as in former times and your wise counselors as at the beginning.au Only then will you be called the Righteous City and the Faithful City!”av 27Yes, Zion will be redeemed with justice and her repentant converts with righteousness.aw 28There will be a shattering of rebels and sinners together, and those who forsake the Lord will be consumed. 29You will reap shame from the idols you once delighted in and you will be humiliated by your cultic sacred groves,ax where you chose to worship. 30You will be like an oak tree with faded, fallen leaves and like a withered, waterless garden. 31The “powerful elite” will become like kindling and their evil deeds like sparks—both will burn together and no one will be able to put out the fire. a 1:1 Or “prophecy.

I imagine I shall hunt orchids, in one fashion or another, until the day I die. My father considers the whole thing a mania, and perhaps he's right." "A mania," she repeated. "Why, that's putting it rather strongly!" James shrugged. "I'm not so sure. If something brings you more grief and heartache than reward and pleasure, yet you persist in the endeavour anyway, then how else might one describe it?

She grows within me She wakes up like a beautiful dream in my mind, Seeking something and desperately trying to find, My memories where she lives everywhere, And as she discovers her thoughts dashing here and there, In every corner of my mind, She loves me in ways refined and undefined, As she discovers my true feelings of love, That fly always unto her, bearing the wings of dove, Then as she dislodges herself intentionally, From this state of loving me endlessly, She wanders tirelessly in the garden of life, To pick a rose that represents love and life, And gifts it to me, Then as its scent floods through me, She gushes like a feeling within me, And how I love in this state to be, Forever within her, and she within me, Where she is not she, I am not who I am, Because we have fused together and that is now who she is and who I am, Two lovers existing as one, One heartbeat, one passion, one strife, one feeling, no other thoughts, none, And as this feelings grows over me, I feel a sense of infinite glee, And ah the wonder that now I can see, Her holding me in her arms in that embrace of eternity, In the light of the day, in the dark of the night, It is she, who now is my only delight, And she lives in my mind, in its thoughts, in my memories all, It is a feeling that nothing can uninstall, I no more feel anything, I only see her wherever I see, And this is how, now I wish it to be, She and I , where her mind grows inside me, And creates a sea, the endless sea, Where we lie hidden from the sun, the moon and the Heaven too, And I confess ceaselessly to her, I love you, I do, yes, I do! In the form of waves in the sea and in the form of tender breeze, So begins our romance that is not meant to cease.

My garden grows in its own good time. Every plant has its season. Lettuce comes up early and must be picked or else it will bolt. Kale gets planted late in the season because it loves the cool weather of fall. Asparagus takes years to prosper, and strawberries can take up to two seasons to provide a harvest. Frost-sensitive crops like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and zucchini love the sweltering, sultry heat of the depths of summer, when they propagate so passionately that the bees can barely keep up. Even though I know all of this, sometimes I can't wait to find out what's going to happen next.

Now I know that when we show only our light side to the world, our shadow grows restless, sucking into itself much of our energy and passion. In order to release my trapped energy and awaken my best qualities, I had to engage with my shadow. I had to see how everything that I judged and feared in others was also in me. I had to be broken open so fully that my whole self was laid out before me to own and to forgive and to love. Before I could participate freely in wonders of the world, I had to taste the dark fruit and leave the garden of my innocence.

Make your life like a garden where you have all types of people and interests and hobbies so that you always have something or someone to love and receive love. Have friends you adore, enjoy the hobbies you are passionate about, water your plants, and love your pets. Create things and build that relationship around you that keeps you excited so that love is always around you in every form. Life will be more colorful that way

The Poised Edge of Chaos Sand sifts down, one grain at a time, forming a small hill. When it grows high enough, a tiny avalanche begins. Let sand continue to sift down, and avalanches will occur irregularly, in no predictable order, until there is a tiny mountain range of sand. Peaks will appear, and valleys, and as sand continues to descend, the relentless sand, piling up and slipping down, piling up and slipping down, piling up - eventually a single grain will cause a catastrophe, all the hills and valleys erased, the whole face of the landscape changed in an instant. Walking yesterday, my heels crushed chamomile and released intoxicating memories of home. Earlier this week, I wrote an old love, flooded with need and desire. Last month I planted new flowers in an old garden bed - one grain at a time, a pattern is formed, one grain at a time, a pattern is destroyed, and there is no way to know which grain will build the tiny mountain higher, which grain will tilt the mountain into avalanche, whether the avalanche will be small or catastrophic, enormous or inconsequential. We are always dancing with chaos, even when we think we move too gracefully to disrupt anything in the careful order of our lives, even when we deny the choreography of passion, hoping to avoid earthquakes and avalanches, turbulence and elemental violence and pain. We are always dancing with chaos, for the grains sift down upon the landscape of our lives, one, then another, one, then another, one then another. Today I rose early and walked by the sea, watching the changing patterns of the light and the otters rising and the gulls descending, and the boats steaming off into the dawn, and the smoke drifting up into the sky, and the waves drumming on the dock, and I sang. An old song came upon me, one with no harbour nor dawn nor dock, no woman walking in the mist, no gulls, no boats departing for the salmon shoals. I sang, but not to make order of the sea nor of the dawn, nor of my life. Not to make order at all. Only to sing, clear notes over sand. Only to walk, footsteps in sand. Only to live.

She turned absently from her contemplative study of the lily pads. "Your garden is beautiful." He shrugged and glanced around at it. "It is overgrown." "Yes, but it has a lost, eerie beauty that quite pleases me. I wish I had my watercolor set." Lucien lifted his eyebrows. "Ah, are you an artistic young lady, Miss Montague?" She smiled reluctantly. "I have been known to dabble." He laughed softly, tickled by the revelation. 'An artist. Of course.' Those beautiful hands. That penetrating gaze. The seething passion under her cool, demure surface. "What sort of work do you most enjoy?" he asked as they sauntered past rows of one-conical yews that had grown into huge, dark green lumps. "Sketching faces." "Really?" "Portraits in charcoal are my forte, but I love watercolors and all sorts of crafts. Japanning, fancy embroidery.

I travelled alone as a cloud Which was floating on high over vale and mountains. Sometime off I see few horde, a guest, beautiful lake under the trees. Fluttering and dancing in the chill breeze. The golden sunflower garden welcomes me to the side of vale. As the stars shine and twinkle on the Milky Way, They overlooked in never finish line across the margin of glance. Thousands of stars I see at a glance, tossing their tail in bright frame dance. The bronze faced magnetic stars welcomes me to the side of vale. The birds chirping towards the beach, I hear the shuttling of sand and water, the waves beside them dance but they do sparkle under stars. The blue mirage welcomes me to the side of vale. This poet could not but be passionate, in such a colorful company, I watched and felt I saw wealth in paper but the show here got me real wealth. The black words welcome me to the side of vale. Often, when I’m in my bed I rest I space or in penning mood, this show flashes upon inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude. Then my heart is full of pleasure and dances with the green leaves. No color no substance feelings welcome me to the side of vale.

I love you Of the tempestuous love That unites the sea and the sailor I love you Like the round of the sun High up on my garden Like the shape of your hand in my own Like the breath of your breath -at dawn I love you beyond life itself Beyond obviousness I love you in the union of my senses When they order yours In the evening silences

Now my heart was born dry and barren. I grieved like a dessert grieves. A desert that allows nothing to grow. A desert where the only passion is the blowing of sand, the shrouding of all that lives.