Grease Love Quotes

I’m stuck babysitting turtle eggs while a volleyball player slash grease monkey slash aquarium volunteer tries to hit on me.” I’m not hitting on you,” he protested. No?” Believe me, you’d know if I was hitting on you. You wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from succumbing to my charms.

Love, Peace, and taco grease!

Real love feels less like a throbbing, pulsing animal begging for its freedom and beating against the inside of my chest and more like, 'Hey, that place you like had fish tacos today and i got you some while i was out', as it sets a bag spotted with grease on the dining room table. It's not a game you don't understand the rules of, or a test you never got the materials to study for. It never leaves you wondering who could possibly be texting at 3 am. Or what you could possibly do to make it come home and stay there. It's fucking boring, dude. I don't walk around mired in uneasiness, waiting for the other shoe to drop. No parsing through spun tales about why it took her so long to come back from the store. No checking her emails or calling her job to make sure she's actually there. No sitting in my car outside her house at dawn, to make sure she's alone when she leaves. This feels safe, and steadfast, and predictable. And secure. It's boring as shit. And it's easily the best thing I've ever felt.

Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt - a grease spot on the grass.

Since Love is a greased pig wasn't a particularly dignified motto, she decided the Latin translation was more elegant: Amor est uncta porcus.

Real love feels less like a throbbing, pulsing animal begging for its freedom and beating against the inside of my chest and more like, “Hey, that place you like had fish tacos today and I got you some while I was out,” as it sets a bag spotted with grease on the dining room table.

Traffic's not too bad on Sheridan, and I'm cornering the car like it's the Indy 500, and we're listening to my favorite NMH song, "Holland, 1945," and then onto Lake Shore Drive, the waves of Lake Michigan crashing against the boulders by the Drive, the windows cracked to get the car to defrost, the dirty, bracing, cold air rushing in, and I love the way Chicago smells—Chicago is brackish lake water and soot and sweat and grease and I love it, and I love this song, and Tiny's saying I love this song, and he's got the visor down so he can muss up his hair a little more expertly.

Because sometimes we fall in love with a face and not what’s behind it. My mother used to pour the grease off the meat when she cooked, and she stored it in a tin the cupboard. For a while, she used a tin that had once held those long, praline-covered cookies with hazelnut crème inside. The expensive ones? More than once I got that tin down thinking I’d found my mom’s secret stash, only to take off the lid and see smelly mounds of grease.” Elliott laughed, getting the point. “The container didn’t matter much at that point, huh?” “That’s right. It made me want cookies, but that container was major false advertising. I think sometimes a beautiful face is false advertising too, and too many of us don’t take the time to look beneath the lid. ….

He stepped closer to her and put his head in the crook of her neck and breathed his inadequacy out there, breathed in her love and the grease of her travels and knew he had been lucky, and that he had escaped the hungry dark once more.

WASHINGTON LOVES the ones who grease its gears. But history only remembers the ones who shift them,” the late Washington Post writer Marjorie Williams wrote of Baker.

There was a young lady called Peaches, who simply loved animals to pieces. She ate pigs and sheep, and for cows she would weep, when baked in a sauce of rich greases.

There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world-its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles. The more you understand, the more you look, the greater is your enjoyment of life and your sense of peace. That's all there is to it. Everything else is fun and games. If an activity is not grounded in "to love" or "to learn," it does not have value. - Zurvan

Describing good relatedness to someone, no matter how precisely or how often, does not inscribe it into the neural networks that inspire love. Self-help books are like car repair manuals: you can read them all day, but doing so doesn't fix a thing. Working on a car means rolling up your sleeves and getting under the hood, and you have to be willing to get dirt on your hands and grease beneath your fingernails. Overhauling emotional knowledge is no spectator sport; it demands the messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from a limbic bond. If someone's relationship today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child's mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.

Straightening, I asked, "What do you believe in?" "Old love songs, best friends, the collected works of J.R.R.Tolkien, crispy pork egg rolls with just the right amount of grease, the Big Boss and eternity." "The Big Boss?" Zachary pointed up, as if to heaven. "Pious,"I teased.

Heroin makes you sick the first try. Cigarette smoking too if you're lucky. But if you're not lucky, and you develop a taste, if you're one who senses that cocaine gets better with time, or you're one who jumps out of a plane and becomes an adrenaline junky, or you're one who loves the feel of grease melting over your tongue in the form of pecan pie or thick clam chowder or a fat porterhouse or just plain ol' Doritos by the bagful, and you want to repeat the same comfort and recognizable surprise of that first go, that first indulgence, and yet with each succeeding bite the small hope of true satisfaction slides farther away, then you understand Celeste, at least a little.

Take one Naive Girl. Bring to room temperature in the Big City. Add three cups Academia. If in one cup Encouragement. Fold in two drop Love. Sprinkle with one teaspoon Adoration. Mix thoroughly. Spoon carefully into greased Pan of Matrimony. Bake in Desert Heat for 25. Test doneness with Careless Toothpick. Let cool on Wire Rack of Inertia. Serve with generous dollops of Benign Neglect.

Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; it is a continuous friction otherwise.

Between the onion and the parsley, therefore, I shall give the summation of my case for paying attention. Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences. It can cost him time and effort, but it pays handsomely. If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil's Cathedral. Or how much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the inside of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses and the juice of pine trees to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. No doubt his wife urged him to get up and do something useful. I am sure that he was a stalwart enough lover of things to pay no attention at all to her nagging; but how wonderful it would have been if he had known what we know now about his dawdling. He could have silenced her with the greatest riposte of all time: Don't bother me; I am creating the possibility of the Bach unaccompanied sonatas. But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him - every time he substitutes a conceit for a fact - he gets grease all over the kitchen of the world. Reality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods - to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things. They made a calf in Horeb; thus they turned their Glory into the similitude of a calf that eateth hay. Bad enough, you say. Ah, but it was worse than that. Whatever good may have resided in the Golden Calf - whatever loveliness of gold or beauty of line - went begging the minute the Israelites got the idea that it was their savior out of the bondage of Egypt. In making the statue a matter of the greatest point, they missed the point of its matter altogether.

Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women.

She took refuge in her newborn son. she had felt him leave her body with a sensation of relief at freeing herself from something that did not belong to her and she had been horrified at herself when she confirmed that she did not feel the slightest affection for that calf from her womb the midwife showed her in the raw, smeared with grease and blood and with the umbilical cord rolled around his neck. But in her lonliness in the palace she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but becuase of the friendship formed while raising them.

Fear is the primary tool of the mafiya. It's how they contain their vast criminal enterprise. For the mafiya, fear is the grease in the wheel. Fear is much stronger than love | Fear lasts much longer. Love fades and is replaced by hatred and contempt. Fear lingers and brings forth other emotions such as doubt. Fear encourages procrastination and cowardice. Besides, you always hurt the ones you love. Most are too afraid to hurt the ones they fear.

Leaning against my car after changing the oil, I hold my black hands out and stare into them as if they were the faces of my children looking at the winter moon and thinking of the snow that will erase everything before they wake. In the garage, my wife comes behind me and slides her hands beneath my soiled shirt. Pressing her face between my shoulder blades, she mumbles something, and soon we are laughing, wrestling like children among piles of old rags, towels that unravel endlessly, torn sheets, work shirts from twenty years ago when I stood in the door of a machine shop, grease blackened, and Kansas lay before me blazing with new snow, a future of flat land, white skies, and sunlight. After making love, we lie on the abandoned mattress and stare at our pale winter bodies sprawling in the half-light. She touches her belly, the scar of our last child, and the black prints of my hand along her hips and thighs.

The little one-story house was as neat as a fresh pinafore. The front lawn was cut lovingly and very green. The smooth composition driveway was free of grease spots from standing cars, and the hedge that bordered it looked as though the barber came every day. The white door had a knocker with a tiger's head, a go-to-hell window and a dingus that let someone inside talk to someone outside without even opening the little window. I'd have given a mortgage on my left leg to live in a house like that. I didn't think I ever would. (The Pencil)

It was the touch that made him realize he loved her. Warmth from her scalp. Grease from her locks. He entwined his hand in her hair. It shrank through his moving fingers like sand. They lay together for a long time. Somewhere outside, a dog barked. He could barely believe he had lived so long without wanting to touch. Photography had made him forget the necessity of this feeling.

But, imagining Scott’s nights here, I populated the emptiness. This had been one of his places and some small part of his spirit had been left here. Holding my own brief séance for my brother, I conjured vivid faces and loud nights. I saw that smile of his, sudden as a sunray, when he loved what you were saying. I saw the strained expression when he felt you must agree with him and couldn’t get you to see that. I caught the way the laughter would light up his eyes when he was trying to suppress it. I heard the laughing when it broke. He must have had some nights here. He had lived with such intensity. The thought was my funeral for him. Who needed possessions and career and official achievements? Life was only in the living of it. How you act and what you are and what you do and how you be were the only substance. They didn’t last either. But while you were here, they made what light there was – the wick that threads the candle-grease of time. His light was out but here I felt I could almost smell the smoke still drifting from its snuffing.

Filling Station Oh, but it is dirty! --this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it's a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty. Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy. Some comic books provide the only note of color-- of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia. Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.) Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: ESSO--SO--SO--SO to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.

In all seriousness, Archer claims that if you, as a living, alive person, hear the song “You’re the One That I Want” from the musical Grease three times in a single day—seemingly by accident, whether in an elevator, on a radio, a telephone hold button, or wherever—it indicates that you’ll surely die before sunset. In contrast, the phantom odor of scorched toast merely means that a deceased loved one continues to watch over you and protect you from harm.

It takes love and trust and a whole lot of elbow grease to go the distance. Marriage is hard work, all relationships are. And sometimes we make mistakes, get scared, but how you deal with your own devil shows the character of the man.

If I'm in this war, too, then I should be upset. You know I'm not the type to think collecting bacon grease and scrap metal will keep anyone from dying. How about you give me the words so you don't have to hold them in? It's the least I can do.

Pessimism is a towering skyscraper eighty stories high in the suburbs of the soul at the end of a long avenue with waste ground on either side and a few poorly-stocked little shops. Several ultra-fast staircases give access to the building, running up from the cellars to the roof-gardens. The comfort of this place leaves nothing to be desired and only the greatest luxury is acceptable, but every Friday the residents gather on the ground floor to read from a bible bound in the skin of a blind man. The psalmic words they intone rise up through the pipes, sigh in the stoves and sweep the chimneys coated inside with black grease which leaves dirt on the skin. Water runs constantly in the bathrooms and the showers beat down on the numbered bodies, peppering them with sand. On Sundays the bed linen unrolls by itself and nobody makes love. For this tower block, like an obscure phallus scraping the vulva of the sky, is usually a hive of sexual activity. The most beautiful woman lives there, but no-one has ever known her. It is said, that dressed in furs and feathers, she keeps herself shut away in a first-floor apartment as if in a white safe. Her windows are scissors which cut short both shadow and breath. Her name is AURORA.

if they label you soft, feather weight and white-livered, if the locker room tosses back its sweaty head, and laughs at how quiet your hands stay, if they come to trample the dandelions roaring in your throat, you tell them that you were forged inside of a woman who had to survive fifteen different species of disaster to bring you here, and you didn’t come to piss on trees. you ain’t nobody’s thick-necked pitbull boy, don’t need to prove yourself worthy of this inheritance of street-corner logic, this blood legend, this index of catcalls, “three hundred ways to turn a woman into a three course meal”, this legacy of shame, and man, and pillage, and man, and rape, and man. you boy. you won’t be some girl’s slit wrists dazzling the bathtub, won’t be some girl’s, “i didn’t ask for it but he gave it to me anyway”, the torn skirt panting behind the bedroom door, some father’s excuse to polish his gun. if they say, “take what you want”, you tell them you already have everything you need; you come from scabbed knuckles and women who never stopped swinging, you come men who drank away their life savings, and men who raised daughters alone. you come from love you gotta put your back into, elbow-grease loving like slow-dancing on dirty linoleum, you come from that house of worship. boy, i dare you to hold something like that. love whatever feels most like your grandmother’s cooking. love whatever music looks best on your feet. whatever woman beckons your blood to the boiling point, you treat her like she is the god of your pulse, you treat her like you would want your father to treat me: i dare you to be that much man one day. that you would give up your seat on the train to the invisible women, juggling babies and groceries. that you would hold doors, and say thank-you, and understand that women know they are beautiful without you having to yell it at them from across the street. the day i hear you call a woman a “bitch” is the day i dig my own grave. see how you feel writing that eulogy. and if you are ever left with your love’s skin trembling under your nails, if there is ever a powder-blue heart left for dead on your doorstep, and too many places in this city that remind you of her tears, be gentle when you drape the remains of your lives in burial cloth. don’t think yourself mighty enough to turn her into a poem, or a song, or some other sweetness to soften the blow, boy, i dare you to break like that. you look too much like your mother not t

The trumpet, an incredible brass invention, is the king of instruments. This wild machine, its curved pipes, valves, and flowering bell. A puzzle of cold metal and grease, but when placed against the lips of a human being, and love is blown into it, it becomes warm and alive, a conduit for god, a spokesman for the divine.

I eye the karaoke machine in alarm. Shit. I’m going to need a shot. “Let’s do Ssssummer Nightsssss! I jusssst love Greasssse!” Scratch that … I’m going to need a shitload of alcohol before I even think about singing! I turn to Mavis. “Give me everything you’ve got. If I’m going to sing a ‘Grease’ song, I’m not going to do it sober!

Are you going to let me take you out to dinner now?” “Depends,” Remus laughed. “Can I reach across the table and wipe pizza grease off your lip as much as I want?” That made Sirius laugh loudly, and he felt Remus’ own laugh against his chest. “As long as I…” Sirius reached for Remus’ hand and their palms slotted together. He watched their fingers lace. “Can hold your hand.

Dear Love, just a minute please, there is a memory caught up in grease, tears in my heart are dying to escape, the burden itself has changed its shape, would it be fair to return you to me, I'm now learning from my mistakes you see, with you around pain would be just a thing, your love to me being everybling.. Dearest of all, it's just a memory taken up on lease, treat it with justice if you may please.

Ehlena was naturally lovely, with fine small features and that strawberry blond hair and those long, lean limbs. Her lips were pink because they were pink—not from some eighteen-hour, glossy, frosted grease coat. And her toffee-colored eyes were luminescent because they were yellow and red and gold all mixed together—not from a whole lot of paint-by-numbers shimmery shadow and slathered-on mascara. And her cheeks were flushed because he was getting under her skin. -Rehv's thoughts

No one was a stranger in that crowd. We had all heard FDR's "Fireside Chats" and Edward R. Murrow's "This is London," listened to H.V. Kaltenborn for the evening news, and watched the newsreels before the movies. We'd read Ernie Pyle's columns, planted victory gardens, written V mails, sent care packages, gathered phonograph records for the USO, given up nylon for parachutes, saved bacon grease for explosives, and turned in tin foil, saved from gum wrappers, for ammunition. Most of all, we'd prayed that our loved ones would be safe.

1/2 cup plain flour 1 cup caster sugar 3/4 cup desiccated coconut 4 eggs vanilla 125 g butter, melted 1/2 cup flaked almonds 1 cup milk Grease a deep pie dish and preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put all the ingredients except half the almonds and the milk in a bowl and mix well, then add the milk slowly and beat until you get a cake batter. Pour it into the pie dish, top with the with rest of the almonds. Bake for about 35 minutes. It miraculously turns itself into a spongy sort of layered coconut cake, lovely with stewed fruit and cream.

I pulled Slayer from its sheath and pushed the door open with my fingertips. It swung soundlessly on well-greased hinges. Through the hallway, I saw the living room lamp glowing with soothing yellow light. I smelled coffee. Who breaks into a house, turns on the lights, and makes coffee? I padded into the living room on soft feet, Slayer ready. “Loud and clumsy, like a baby rhino,” said a familiar voice. I stepped into the living room. Curran sat on my couch, reading my favorite paperback. His hair was back to its normal short length. His face was clean shaven. He looked nothing like the dark, demonic figure who shook a would-be god’s head on a field a month ago. I thought he had forgotten about me. I had been quite happy to stay forgotten. “The Princess Bride?” he said, flipping the book over. “What are you doing in my house?” Let himself in, had he? Made himself comfortable, as if he owned the place. “Did everything go well with Julie?” “Yes. She didn’t want to stay, but she’ll make friends quickly, and the staff seems sensible.” I watched him, not quite sure where we stood. “I meant to tell you but haven’t gotten a chance. Sorry about Bran. I didn’t like him, but he died well.” “Yes, he did. I’m sorry about your people. Many losses?” A shadow darkened his face. “A third.” He had taken a hundred with him. At least thirty people had never come back. The weight of their deaths pressed on both of us. Curran turned the book over in his hands. “You own words of power.” He knew what a word of power was. Lovely. I shrugged. “Picked up a couple here and there. What happened in the Gap was a one shot deal. I won’t be that powerful again.” At least not until the next flare. “You’re an interesting woman,” he said. “Your interest has been duly noted.” I pointed to the door. He put the book down. “As you wish.” He rose and walked past me. I lowered my sword, expecting him to pass, but suddenly he stepped in dangerously close. “Welcome home. I’m glad you made it. There is coffee in the kitchen for you.” My mouth gaped open. He inhaled my scent, bent close, about to kiss me . . . I just stood there like an idiot. Curran smirked and whispered in my ear instead. “Psych.” And just like that, he was out the door and gone. Oh boy.

Like the Gadarene demoniac, Jesus heals our demonic visions of God, and presents us instead with a vision of a loving Father, a compassionate Son, and an affirming Holy Spirit.  Yet somehow, people find this safer, more loving vision of God terrifying, and often seek to chase away the Living Word, with His warm smile and open arms, and long for the terrifying comfort of normalcy.  I believe we react this way because we have grown afraid of not being afraid.  Fear has become such a common component in our “relationship” with God that we simply don’t know how to function without it.  When we cannot feel its presence, we panic, and assume we must be on a greased pole to heresy land, as, so we’re taught, being afraid of God is essential to being a Christian.

I feel like it's comically obvious whose meal is whose. Benny's fish is beautifully seared, with a lemon-rosemary glaze and sitting on a bed of wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side. It's becoming clearer to me all the time that the boy understated his abilities that first day, telling me he could only do pasta and pastries. Anyone who can whip something like that up without a recipe at their side is a pro in my book. On the other hand, my dish is straight out of a heart surgeon's worst nightmares. Piles of fried fish still shimmery with grease and heavily salted and peppered, next to mashed potatoes with an extra pat of butter on top, as if the multiple sticks that went into their preparation weren't enough. It's stick-to-your-ribs, clog-your-arteries goodness.

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight 1 You scream, waking from a nightmare. When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you. 2 I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down, I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die. Little Maud, I would blow the flame out of your silver cup, I would suck the rot from your fingernail, I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light, I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones, I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body, I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood, I would let nothing of you go, ever, until washerwomen feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands, and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades, and rats walk away from the culture of the plague, and iron twists weapons toward truth north, and grease refuse to slide in the machinery of progress, and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men, and the widow still whispers to the presence no longer beside her in the dark. And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls. 3 In a restaurant once, everyone quietly eating, you clambered up on my lap: to all the mouthfuls rising toward all the mouths, at the top of your voice you cried your one word, caca! caca! caca! and each spoonful stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering steam. Yes, you cling because I, like you, only sooner than you, will go down the path of vanished alphabets, the roadlessness to the other side of the darkness, your arms like the shoes left behind, like the adjectives in the halting speech of old folk, which once could call up the lost nouns. 4 And you yourself, some impossible Tuesday in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out among the black stones of the field, in the rain, and the stones saying over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît, and the raindrops hitting you on the fontanel over and over, and you standing there unable to let them in. 5 If one day it happens you find yourself with someone you love in a café at one end of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar where wine takes the shapes of upward opening glasses, and if you commit then, as we did, the error of thinking, one day all this will only be memory, learn to reach deeper into the sorrows to come—to touch the almost imaginary bones under the face, to hear under the laughter the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss the mouth that tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones. The still undanced cadence of vanishing. 6 In the light the moon sends back, I can see in your eyes the hand that waved once in my father's eyes, a tiny kite wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look: and the angel of all mortal things lets go the string. 7 Back you go, into your crib. The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell. Your eyes close inside your head, in sleep. Already in your dreams the hours begin to sing. Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among the ten thousand things, each scratched in time with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

A month from now, in early April, at the time when far away, outside the city, the water hyacinths would be covering every inch of bayou, lagoon, creek, and backwater with a spiritual-mauve to obscene-purple, violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid, throttling mass of bloom over the black water, and the first heartbreaking, misty green, like girlhood dreams, on the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf and not a damned thing else, and the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick mocassins would heave out of the swamp and try to cross the highway and your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump and make a sound like kerwhush and a tinny thump when he slapped heavily up against the underside of the fender, and the insects would come boiling out of the swamps and day and night the whole air would vibrate with them with a sound like an electric fan, and if it was night the owls back in the swamps would be whoo-ing and moaning like love and death and damnation, or one would sail out of the pitch dark into the rays of your headlights and plunge against the radiator to explode like a ripped feather bolster, and the fields would be deep in that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass which the cattle gorge on and never get flesh over their ribs for that grass is in that black soil and no matter how far the roots could ever go, if the roots were God knows how deep, there would never be anything but that black, grease-clotted soil and no stone down there to put calcium into that grass—well, a month from now, in early April, when all those things would be happening beyond the suburbs, the husks of the old houses in the street where Anne Stanton and I were walking would, if it were evening, crack and spill out onto the stoops and into the street all that life which was now sealed up within.

Ever since I had ceased to see actors solely as the depositories, in their diction and acting ability, of an artistic truth, they had begun to interest me in their own right; with the feeling that I was watching the characters from some old comic novel, I was amused to see the naïve heroine of a play, her attention drawn to the new face of some young duke who had just taken his seat in the theatre, listen abstractedly to the declaration of love the juvenile lead was addressing to her, while he, through the rolling passion of this declaration, was in turn directing an enamoured eye at an old lady seated in a stage box, whose magnificent pearls had caught his interest; and in this way, largely owing to what Saint-Loup had told me about the private lives of actors, I saw another drama, silent but telling, being played out beneath the words of the play that was being performed, yet the play itself, however uninspired, was still something that interested me too; for within it I could feel germinating and blossoming for an hour in the glare of the footlights, created out of the agglutination on the face of an actor of another face of grease-paint and pasteboard, and on his individual soul the words of a part, the ephemeral and spirited personalities, captivating too, who form the cast of a play, whom one loves, admires, pities, whom one would like to meet again after the play is over, but who by that time have already disintegrated into the actors who are no longer what they were in their roles, into a script which no longer shows the actors’ faces, into a coloured powder that can be wiped off by a handkerchief, who have reverted, in a word, to elements that contain nothing of them, because their dissolution is complete as soon as the play has ended, and this, like the dissolution of a loved one, causes one to doubt the reality of the self and to meditate on the mystery of death.

The Greeks were the first people in the world to play, and they played on a great scale. All over Greece there were games, all sorts of games; athletic contests of every description: races—horse-, boat-, foot-, torch-races; contests in music, where one side out-sung the other; in dancing—on greased skins sometimes to display a nice skill of foot and balance of body; games where men leaped in and out of flying chariots; games so many one grows weary with the list of them. They are embodied in the statues familiar to all, the disc thrower, the charioteer, the wrestling boys, the dancing flute players. The great games—there were four that came at stated seasons—were so important, when one was held, a truce of God was proclaimed so that all Greece might come in safety without fear. There “glorious-limbed youth”—the phrase is Pindar’s, the athlete’s poet—strove for an honor so coveted as hardly anything else in Greece. An Olympic victor—triumphing generals would give place to him. His crown of wild olives was set beside the prize of the tragedian. Splendor attended him, processions, sacrifices, banquets, songs the greatest poets were glad to write. Thucydides, the brief, the severe, the historian of that bitter time, the fall of Athens, pauses, when one of his personages has conquered in the games, to give the fact full place of honor. If we had no other knowledge of what the Greeks were like, if nothing were left of Greek art and literature, the fact that they were in love with play and played magnificently would be proof enough of how they lived and how they looked at life. Wretched people, toiling people, do not play. Nothing like the Greek games is conceivable in Egypt or Mesopotamia. The life of the Egyptian lies spread out in the mural paintings down to the minutest detail. If fun and sport had played any real part they would be there in some form for us to see. But the Egyptian did not play. “Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children,” said the Egyptian priest to the great Athenian.

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

The thunder howled and the rain splashed, the leaves played with the breeze and the lightning flashed, and the tigress growled at last. She looked here and she looked there, she hadn't seen so much rain anywhere, a desire suddenly came in her heart, a mad longing that had to start, she felt deep love in the rain, looking at her cubs all over again But two years ago she had been wounded, By cowardly men who wanted her grounded, They were afraid of her power, they wanted to capture her and to enslave her in their tower They laid traps and they waited in the trees, The jungle was full of birds and the bees, The tigress was out hunting for meat, her cubs awaiting in the cave for their treat There was something missing in the air, the fragrance of jasmine was not there, The tigress looked up into the trees and saw the men's faces painted in grease, She challenged them looking into their eyes, And saw fear, fright , and faces full of lies! She roared with all her might, This was her land, She had all the right! The cowardly men crouching behind the trees, Fired their guns in twos and threes, The brave Tigress looked them in the eye, She was the fire and she was the sky, Indomitable force, invincible power, She was the Tigress, The Queen in her Empire None of the bullets could break her Spirit, Only one could graze her right leg a bit, She roared with all her heart's might, For she was the Queen for all to sight! The guns emptied and no more bullets to shoot, The cowardly men jumped from the trees and ran away in two hoots! The Tigress laughed and loudly roared, For she was the power and her Spirit soared She is the Tigress inside every Woman, She has the Power to defeat any Man, Love her and she would love you back, Respect her and she would respect you back, Dare to harm her and she would defeat you till the Last!

STRAWBERRY SHORTBREAD BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   Hannah’s 1st Note: These are really easy and fast to make. Almost everyone loves them, including Baby Bethie, and they’re not even chocolate! 3 cups all purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ¾ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (don’t sift un- less it’s got big lumps) 1 and ½ cups salted butter, softened (3 sticks, 12 ounces, ¾ pound) 1 can (21 ounces) strawberry pie filling (I used Comstock)*** *** - If you can’t find strawberry pie filling, you can use another berry filling, like raspberry, or blueberry. You can also use pie fillings of larger fruits like peach, apple, or whatever. If you do that, cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces so that each bar cookie will have some. I just put my apple or peach pie filling in the food processor with the steel blade and zoop it up just short of being pureed. I’m not sure about using lemon pie filling. I haven’t tried that yet. FIRST STEP: Mix the flour and the powdered sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the softened butter with a two knives or a pastry cutter until the resulting mixture resembles bread crumbs or coarse corn meal. (You can also do this in a food processor using cold butter cut into chunks that you layer between the powdered sugar and flour mixture and process with the steel blade, using an on-and-off pulsing motion.) Spread HALF of this mixture (approximately 3 cups will be fine) into a greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) 9-inch by 13-inch pan. (That’s a standard size rectangular cake pan.) Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner on the stove, but DON’T TURN OFF THE OVEN! Let the crust cool for 5 minutes. SECOND STEP: Spread the pie filling over the top of the crust you just baked. Sprinkle the crust with the other half of the crust mixture you saved. Try to do this as evenly as possible. Don’t worry about little gaps in the topping. It will spread out and fill in a bit as it bakes. Gently press the top crust down with the flat blade of a metal spatula. Bake the cookie bars at 350 degrees F. for another 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden. Turn off the oven and remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner to cool completely. When the bars are completely cool, cover the pan with foil and refrigerate them until you’re ready to cut them. (Chilling them makes them easier to cut.) When you’re ready to serve them, cut the Strawberry Shortbread Bar Cookies into brownie-sized pieces, arrange them on a pretty platter, and if you like, sprinkle the top with extra powdered sugar.

Zesty Pork Party Dip   I love the hot sausage used in this dip. It’s an easy recipe that goes great with the big game.   Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cook Time: 15 Minutes   Ingredients   1  – Package (16oz) Hot Pork Sausage 1 – 8oz bar Cream Cheese 1 – 10oz Can Diced Tomatoes with Green Chile Peppers (such as Rotel) 1/4 – Cup Chopped Onions   Cooking Instructions Sauté sausage and onions in a medium skillet over medium heat until browned. Crumble sausage into bits. Drain grease, and return to skillet. Stir in the cream cheese, and diced tomatoes.   Serving Tips Serve in a bowl, with tortilla chips. Tastes even better if kept in a warming dish to stay hot during the party!

Wouldn’t hurt if you used your connections to grease the wheels.” “I can do that. But damn, Cole how hard is it to just ask?” “Hard,” Cole said, pushing his hand through his hair. “Especially when you’re afraid asking is going to blow up the family.” Cade nodded. “So we both know.” “Yeah.” “And Lark doesn’t.” “Nope.” “Keep it that way?” Cole tapped the side of his beer bottle. “I don’t know. I don’t like being a part of the deception.” “We didn’t lie, Cole; he did.” “But we know the truth. Do we keep covering for him?” “He never covered for us. He’d tell Mom on us, and then she’d whup our asses.” Cole laughed. Sometimes the memories were still good. They still seemed intact and not just like a facade that hadn’t meant a damn thing. “Yeah, he did. But he’s not alive to answer for it, or learn from it.” “How about we drink alcohol and make no decisions?” “I’m cool with that.” Cade took the bottle opener off the fridge and popped the top off his beer, taking a long drink

Papaya-Banana Muffins This recipe is a solution to the problem of too much ripe tropical fruit. These muffins have lovely color and flavor, and are nice and moist. 12⁄3 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1⁄4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg 1 egg 1⁄3 cup oil 3⁄4 cup sugar 1 cup mashed ripe papaya 1⁄2 cup mashed ripe banana (1 large banana) 1⁄4 cup chopped walnuts (optional) 1. Preheat oven to 375°F and grease a medium-sized muffin pan or line it with muffin papers. 2. Combine dry ingredients and set aside. 3. Beat egg with oil, sugar, and mashed papaya and banana in a large bowl. 4. Mix in dry ingredients and walnuts (if using). Scoop mixture into prepared muffin pan. Bake in preheated oven for 18–23 minutes, until toothpick inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out clean. Makes 1 dozen Tips • If the papaya is quite ripe, it will yield a lot of liquid when mashed. Drain off this excess liquid before adding the fruit. • You can make the muffins entirely with papaya if you like; just increase the quantity to 11⁄2 cups. The muffins will have a slightly moister texture and a flatter top.

In the shop, breathing the scent of dusty grease and oil; in the old house, staring into the living room where Dad and Jake used to take naps together on the couch; in the sheep barn, remembering the joy implicit in so much baaing life; in every inch of the farm, I recalled my father’s presence.

Sandy Stranded at the drive in Branded a fool What will they say Monday at school? Sandy, can't you see I'm in misery? You made a start, now we're apart There's nothing left for me Love has flown all alone I sit and wonder why, oh? Why you left me, oh Sandy Oh Sandy, baby, someday When high school is done Somehow, someway Our two worlds will be one In Heaven forever And ever we will be Oh please, say you'll stay Oh Sandy Sandy my darling', you hurt me real bad You know it's true But baby you gotta believe me when I say I'm helpless without you Love has flown all alone I sit I wonder why Why you left me, oh Sandy? Sandy, Sandy, why, oh Sandy?

Fate will play the hand it wants to play - regardless of what we do. The best we can control is how we react to things and hope for the best. We all have our own destiny - big or small. If a person loosest everything. If you have a dream, do the work and research to make it a reality. if you can dream it, you can do it...it just takes some elbow grease. As a child, I loved to draw and write. I even made my own comic books. I think the best story was a twenty part cross over between two series I worked on. I never expected - being a small town kid in a remote area of Canada - that I would ever get published. Yet, here I am and I am working on book number two.

Everyone loves banana bread! This banana bread recipe cooks up moist and delicious. It also makes a great bread for a nut butter sandwich. Ingredients 1/2 cup butter or unrefined coconut oil 3/4 tsp celtic sea salt 6 eggs, preferably pasture-raised 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 tsp almond extract 1/2 cup honey 3/4 cup coconut flour 1 large or 2 small ripe bananas, mashed Directions Melt butter or coconut oil in a small saucepan over low heat. Turn off heat and allow to cool slightly. Meanwhile, combine the eggs, salt, vanilla extract, and almond extract in a large bowl. If using an immersion blender, pulse a few times to combine. Otherwise, mix to combine with a whisk or mixer. Add the honey to the butter (or coconut oil) and stir slightly. Pour this mixture into the wet ingredients and blend well with immersion blender or mixer. Measure out the coconut flour. Since coconut flour clumps, it will need to be sifted if you are not using an immersion blender. Pour the coconut flour into the bowl with the wet ingredients. Use an immersion blender or mixer to thoroughly combine all ingredients, making sure there are no lumps. (Since coconut flour does not contain gluten, there is no worry of over-mixing the batter). Add mashed banana and mix to combine. Using butter or coconut oil, generously grease one large (9”X5”) loaf pan or two small (7.5”X3.75”) loaf pans. Pour the batter into the loaf pan(s). Bake in a 325 degrees F oven until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. This will take 50-60 minutes for two loaves. Remove from oven and cool. Delicious with a pat of butter and a big glass of raw milk or milk kefir!

How Good It Can Be" With the cops on your lips it's a holy routine If you'd stop all your trips you could see what I mean I forgot not to slip 'bout you're under 18 You had it in your hands, had it in your hands You had it in your hands, had it in your hands your hands, oh oh hoo Leave it up to me It's a known disease Keep it in your fleece Don't worry about the custom police, don't I'll tell you just how good it can be, this lazy summer But you got no relief from the pain in your head And it's hollow and greased and it says that you're dead But you make fun and tease and the things that you said They always stab your back, always stab your back... They always stab your back, always stab your back Your back, oh ho hoo Leave it up to me It's a known disease Keep it in your fleece Don't worry about the custom police, don't I'll tell you just how good it can be, this lazy summer They always stab your back, always stab your back... They always stab your back, always stab your back Your back, ouh ho hoo Leave it up to me It's a known disease Keep it in your fleece Don't worry about the custom police, don't I'll tell you just how good it can be, this lazy summer But you got no relief from the pain in your head And it's hollow and greased and it says that you're dead But you make fun and tease and the things that you said They always stab your back, always stab your back... They always stab your back, always stab your back Your back Leave it up to me It's a known disease Keep it in your fleece Don't worry about the custom police, don't I'll tell you just how good it can be, this lazy summer Leave it up to me It's a known disease Keep it in your fleece Don't worry about the custom police, don't I'll tell you just how good it can be, this lazy summer But you got no relief from the pain in your head And it's hollow and greased and it says that you're dead But you make fun and tease and the things that you said They always stab your back, always stab your back... They always stab your back, always stab your back Your back Leave it up to me It's a known disease Keep it in your fleece Don't worry about the custom police, don't I'll tell you just how good it can be And I've been holding out for love ever since I had a heart

If love makes the world go around, then money greases the axles.

Nothing like a bit of flattery to grease the wheels.

Mashed potatoes have a best friend in this savory meat. The gravy for both only takes a few minutes to prepare from the drippings. You’ll love the marriage! Yield: 6 servings 1 (4-pound) boneless chuck roast, trimmed and cut in half 1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped 1 ⅓ cups plus 3 tablespoons water, divided 1 (10.5-ounce) can condensed French onion soup 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar ½ cup Worcestershire sauce ¼ cup cider vinegar 6 garlic cloves, peeled and minced ¼ teaspoon black pepper 3 tablespoons cornstarch Place the roast in a lightly greased large slow cooker and surround it with the onions. In a medium bowl whisk together 1 ⅓ cups of the water with the soup, brown sugar, Worcestershire, vinegar, garlic, and pepper. Pour over the roast, cover, and cook on low for 8 hours. Remove the meat and place on a large cutting board. Cover with aluminum foil to keep warm. Skim the fat from the cooking liquid and pour into a small saucepan over high heat. In a small bowl whisk together the remaining 3 tablespoons of water and cornstarch until smooth. When the cooking liquid comes to a boil, gradually whisk in the cornstarch mixture. Cook and stir constantly for 2 minutes or until thickened. Meanwhile, slice the meat and transfer to a serving platter. Serve the warm gravy with

I’ve often thought that beauty can be a deterrent to love,” Fern’s father mused. “Why?” “Because sometimes we fall in love with a face and not what’s behind it. My mother used to pour the grease off the meat when she cooked,

I was in the middle of a grueling workout and someone came over to me and asked what I was listening to... it was the Grease soundtrack. Definitely not what they were expecting! I think we all have those things on our playlists that we don't brag about, but we definitely love.

The Monster is who I would be if I were a man and had better control over my feelings: loving when I felt like it, ruthlessly irreverent and impolite, ease greasing up all the gears of my life.

[...]I saw the way the water changed color with the day and the weather. The salt cracked my palms and the woman I was with made me sleep with greased cloth on my hands. I think I'll miss that the most." "Cracked palms?" "The sea. I think that will be the worst of it." Sinja shifted. The rain intensified and then slackened as suddenly as it had come. The trees stood straighter. The pools of water danced less. "The sea hasn't gone anywhere," Sinja said. "No, but I have. I've gone to the mountains. And I don't expect I'll ever leave them again. I knew it was the danger when I became a courier. I was warned. But I hadn't understood it until now. It's the problem in seeing too much of the world. In loving too much of it. You can only live in one place at a time. And eventually, you pick your spot, and the memories of all the others just become ghosts.

I’ve often thought that beauty can be a deterrent to love,” Fern’s father mused. “Why?” “Because sometimes we fall in love with a face and not what’s behind it. My mother used to pour the grease off the meat when she cooked, and she stored it in a tin in the cupboard. For a while, she used a tin that had once held those long, praline-covered cookies with hazelnut crème inside. The expensive ones? More than once I got that tin down thinking I’d found my mom’s secret stash, only to take off the lid and see smelly mounds of grease.” Elliott laughed, getting the point. “The container didn’t matter much at that point, huh?” “That’s right. It made me want cookies, but that container was major false advertising. I think sometimes a beautiful face is false advertising too, and too many of us don’t take the time to look beneath the lid.

The trumpet, an incredible brass invention, is the king of instruments. This wild machine, its curved pipes, valves, and flowering bell. A puzzle of cold metal and grease, but when placed against the lips of a human being, and love is blown into it, it becomes warm and alive, a conduit for god, a spokesman for the divine. The more love in, the more warmth out, its finger-propelled pistons changing the shape and speed of the rainbows of curved air blown through its passageways. The expansion and contraction of lip muscles a feat of strength. From the first second I put that cold mouthpiece against my chops and started blowing warm, I yearned to create a beautiful sound, to feel my whole being vibrating one with a tone. I wanted that same oneness I felt when I hit a sweet jumper, or when I euphorically rolled on the floor as Walter and his friends jammed the hard bebop back in New York. When I played it right, I was living in the infinite present.

He opened the small brown bag and held it toward her, and she could smell the butter. Notably, though, there was no grease soaking the bottom of the bag, like when Mom brought home donuts. She peered in. "I think it's a croissant. And a chocolate croissant. And some kind of roll. And some other thing I didn't know what it was." "Chausson aux pommes," Rosie said, pulling it from the bag. She was pretty sure anyway- it had the distinctive half-moon shape, and the slashes on top let her see a peek of what looked like apple filling. "What's that?" Rosie stilled as Henry shifted closer to her. He was just looking at the pastry, and she knew that, but still. He was close, and he smelled warm, and sleepy. And male. "It's kind of like an apple croissant," she said, ignoring the rapid rise of her heartbeat. "Or an apple strudel. An apple turnover, I guess." "Try it." "You should have the first bite. You got it." "I insist," Henry said, and he wouldn't take it from her. So she bit in, and the pastry flaked instantly, then yielded into sweet, soft cinnamon apples. It was so good that she had to imagine this would be the best thing she'd try today. But then Henry was grinning, chocolate smeared on his face, and he passed her the pain au chocolat, and she thought that had to be the best thing. But then the classic croissant was so perfect, each layer of lamination distinct, and then the brioche was dangerously rich, yet so light at the same time, and the éclair's filling was perfectly smooth, and the baguette made Rosie rethink what, exactly, the stuff she'd been eating for the last sixteen years was, because it couldn't possibly be bread, not like this...

FOR SOPHIE, WHO’LL BE IN FIRST GRADE IN THE YEAR 2000 No bright toy this world we’ve left you. Even the wrapping is torn, the ribbons grease-flecked and askew. Still, it’s all we have. Wait a moment before you pick it up. Study its scratches, how it shines in places. Now love what you touch, and you will touch wisely. May the world, in your hands, brighten with use. May you sleep in sweet breath and rise always in wonder to mountain and forest, green gaze and silk cheek—

Harper became a little distracted watching her. This morning she wore a soft t-shirt he didn’t recognize and a pair of blue jeans he seemed to remember ripping off her a time or two. His anger faded away as he watched her lean body move. There was no wasted motion with her. It was one of the things that had drawn his eye when he first met her. She hadn’t been through the training he had, but she had a natural grace to her that was spellbinding. Cat was competent and controlled in all things, body, mind and spirit. Even at twenty-two when he’d first met her, he knew he’d been none of those things. His body had been maturing faster than his mind. His spirit had never caught up. The most complete his spirit had ever been had been when he was living with her. All of the fucked up shit he’d grown up with had faded away. There were a couple of brief, shining moments he remembered being completely content with everything in his life. Stupid things like watching her cook him a monster dinner after being deployed for months. Real food made with loving hands after living on government supplied freeze-dried crap made by machines. Playing in the snow on a trip up north, Cat pregnant with Dillon at the time. Watching her tinker under the hood of the truck with him, grease streaked on her cheek. Cat had been at the center of all of those. The past year and a half had been hard. Remembering those brilliant moments had kept him moving through his monotonous life. “I miss watching you,” he admitted. She paused long enough to smile at him, hand propped on her hip. “And I miss feeling the weight of your gaze on me.” Arousal

Kahnawake August 1704 Temperature 75 degrees It was worth going into the water just to get away from Ruth’s nagging. Mercy waded in, appalled by how cold it was. Snow Walker towed her around for a minute and then let go. At first Mercy couldn’t take two strokes without having to stand up and reassure herself that there was a bottom, but soon she could swim ten, and then twenty, strokes. Joseph, who had been swimming with the boys, paddled over to admire her new skill. Snow Walker coaxed them to put their heads under the water and swim like fish. Mercy loved it. Wiping river water from her eyes and laughing, she shouted, “Come on in, Joanna!” In front of Snow Walker, she spoke Mohawk. “It feels so cool and slippery inside the water.” Joanna shook her head. “I can’t see where I’m going on land. I don’t want to be blind in water over my head.” “Ruth!” yelled Joseph, in English so she’d answer. “Try it. I won’t pull you under by the toes. I promise.” “Savages swim,” said Ruth. “English people walk or ride horses.” By now, Mercy had flung her tunic onto the grass and was as bare as everybody else. When Ruth scolded, Mercy ducked under the water and stayed there until the yelling was over. “Just wait till you get out, Mercy,” said Ruth. “The mosquitos are going to feast on your wet bare skin.” Mercy translated for Snow Walker, who said, “No, no. We grease to keep the mosquitos away.” Joseph, of course, had been greasing for weeks, but so far Mercy had not submitted. Ruth, unwilling to see Mercy slather bear fat over her nakedness, stalked away. “Good,” said Snow Walker, giggling. “The fire is out. We are safe now.” Mercy was startled. “I never heard you use her old name.” “I don’t call her Let the Sky In,” explained Snow Walker. “She would let nothing in but storms.” Snow Walker’s not such a fence post after all, thought Mercy. “Snow Walker, why have they given Ruth such a fine new name?” “I don’t know. One day at a feast, the story will be told.” “They’ll have to gag Ruth before they tell it,” said Joseph. “She hates her new name even more than she hated her old one.” They got out of the water, racing in circles to dry off, and then Snow Walker rubbed bear grease all over Mercy. “I can’t see you from here, Munnonock,” said Joanna, “but I can smell you.” “Want some?” said Mercy, planning to attack with a scoop of bear grease, but Joanna left for the safety of the cornfields and her mother. Snow Walker went back in to join a water ball team.

Mrs. O’Brien’s Shepherd’s Pie Recipe Ingredients: 5 cups mashed, boiled potatoes (could be reduced to 4 cups)* 1/2 cup sour cream 2 ounces cream cheese 2 tablespoons butter, softened, divided 1 egg yolk 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1-1/2 teaspoon olive oil 1 pound ground lamb (We substituted ground chicken. You could also use ground beef or turkey.) 1 pinch salt and ground black pepper to taste 1 (16 ounce) can stewed tomatoes with juice, chopped 1 small yellow onion, chopped 1 small carrot, peeled and chopped 1/2 cup peas (frozen or fresh) 1 cup Irish stout beer (such as Guinness(R)) 1 cube beef bouillon (we used chicken bouillon) 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese 2 teaspoons smoked paprika (optional) * 1 tsp. liquid smoke (optional) * Directions: -Stir cooked potatoes, sour cream, cream cheese, 1 tablespoon butter, egg yolk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper together in a bowl until smooth. -Heat olive oil in a cast iron skillet or nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Add ground lamb (or meat). Reduce heat to medium, and cook, stirring frequently, until browned, 4 to 5 minutes. Pour off excess grease and season meat with salt and black pepper to taste. -Add stewed tomatoes with juice, onion, and carrot into meat mixture; Stir and simmer until vegetables are tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Add peas; reduce heat to low and continue cooking, stirring frequently, 2 to 3 minutes. -Add one teaspoon of liquid smoke to meat mixture. Mix thoroughly. -Heat beer in a saucepan over medium heat; add (beef) bouillon cube. Cook and stir beer mixture until bouillon dissolves, about 5 minutes. - Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a separate pan over medium-low heat. Whisk flour into butter until it thickens, about 1 minute. -Stir beer mixture and Worcestershire sauce into flour mixture until gravy is smooth and thickened, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir gravy into meat mixture and simmer until mixture thickens, at least 5 minutes. -Set top oven rack roughly 6 inches from the oven broiler and preheat the broiler. Grease a 9x12-inch baking dish. - Pour (meat) mixture into the prepared baking dish. -Spoon mashed potatoes over (meat) mixture, covering like a crust. Sprinkle cheddar cheese and paprika evenly over mashed potatoes. -Broil in the preheated oven until the crust browns and the cheese is melted, 4 to 5 minutes. -Cool for about 5 minutes before serving. NOTES: We thought the smoked paprika added little flavor to the original recipe.  We added liquid smoke to the meat and it gave it a nice smoky flavor. Next time, we’ll reduce the amount of mashed potatoes to four cups.  We thought the layer of potatoes was a little too thick. (But if you love mashed potatoes, five cups would work ☺  )

The Virgin Mary is a girl gang leader in Heaven. She is a Hell’s Angel and she rides a Harley. This I know for I come from people who think axle grease is holy water. They hold Mass out in the driveway under the hood on Saturdays. The engine is their altar. They genuflect and say prayers all day, and baptize themselves in crankcase oil. The soles of their shoes always smell like gasoline. I come from people who think Confession a necessity only the moment before a head-on collision.

he noticed a faint spot of grease on the bright blue cover of one of the files. I often handled the records in the course of my dissections, and had probably spotted it with a bit of grease. Dr. Mengele shot a withering glance at me and said, very seriously: “How can you be so careless with these files, which I have compiled with so much love!” The word “love” had just crossed Dr. Mengele’s lips. I was so taken aback that I sat there dumbfounded, unable to think of anything to say in reply.

What a sight we must be right now, a ritzy, pretty thing laid out, a dirtbag with dried blood and grease slicked on his hands standing over her, railing her perfectly pink pussy while she tangos on my rock-hard cock. Fuck, I want to talk to her. Tell her how good she feels. How tight this pussy is, how her arousal is coating me, allowing me in even deeper. I want to tell her my dick loves the feel of her and that, for the first time in a long fucking time, I want to stay buried where I am, grind my piercings at every angle in her heat and watch her fucking thrash beneath me, pleading for more.

...the most wonderful form of crazy that love brings: idealization... A 1999 study showed that people in happy relationships spend five times as long talking about their sweetheart's good qualities as bad. As Robert Seidenberg said, "Love is a human religion in which another person is believed in." ...Realism may be accurate, but it's our illusions that foretell our happiness in love. And the more crazy, the better. People who idealized their partner the most felt no decline in relationship satisfaction over a study of the first three years in marriage. ...When researchers ask people in the throes of infatuation about their partner's downsides, they can recognize and identify the bad stuff... But they emotionally discount the negative: it's not a big deal. Or those flaws are even "charming." This attitude helps grease the wheels of a relationship

Many of the first generation of Psychobillies were often ignorant about the history of Rockabilly and gained their love of Rock’n’Roll not from lovingly collecting twenty-five year old 45’s tracked down in dusty American record stores but by watching ‘Grease’ and ‘Happy Days’ alongside seeing Matchbox and The Stray Cats on ‘Top Of The Pops’. This was a generation weaned on ‘The Wanderers’, ‘Lemon Popsicle’ and stacks of low-rent TV advertised Rock’n’Roll albums.... They may not have known who [1950s rockabilly-country singer] Narvel Felts and [1950s rockabilly artist] ‘Groovey’ Joe Poovey were but they sure as hell had heard of Darts and Showaddywaddy and they undoubtedly knew “who put the bomp in the bompshoobompshoobomp” never mind the fucking ramalamadingdong.

Whatever music you were into, it was exploding in the Nineties. Guitar bands, hip-hop, R&B, techno, country, Britpop, trip-hop, blip-hop, ambient, illbient, jungle, ska, swing, Belgian jam bands, Welsh gangsta rap—every music genre you could name (or couldn’t)—(and a few that probably didn’t really exist) was on a roll that made the Sixties look picayune and provincial. We can argue all day whether Nineties music holds up, but fans devoured—and paid for—more music than ever before or since. The average citizen purchased CDs in numbers that look shocking now, and even shocking then. Every week, thousands of people bought new copies of the Grease soundtrack, from 1978, and nobody knew why. Even critics had trouble finding things to complain about (though we sure tried).

Chili Upside-Down Pie Serves 6 Ingredients 1-1/2 Pounds Ground Beef 1/2 Cup Chopped Onions (1 Cup if you love onions) 1 Tablespoon Chili Powder 1 Small Can of Tomato Paste 1 Small Can of Tomato Sauce 1 Can of Chili Beans 1-1/4 Teaspoons Salt Sliced Jalapenos (optional) 1 Package Corn Muffin Mix (like Jiffy Mix) 1 Egg 1/4 Cup Milk 1 Small Can of Creamed Sweet Corn 2 Cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese Chili Brown ground beef and onions. Drain grease. Add chili powder, salt, tomato paste, and tomato sauce. Cook 30 minutes. Add chili beans and cook 10 minutes. Put meat mixture in 9”x13” pan. Corn Bread: Mix muffin mix, egg, milk, and creamed corn well. Pour over meat mixture. Bake for 25 minutes at 400o F or until golden brown. Let stand 2 minutes and then turn over onto cookie sheet. Top with shredded cheddar cheese and place in turned-off oven until melted.

THE SUMMER BEFORE COLLEGE Mick drove trucks for the Coke plant, big lumbering GMCs with slide-up side doors from which he pulled down wooden cases of bottles and slung back cases of empties, delivering to corner markets, restaurants and grocery stores in Rockland County. He loved the hard labor and the changing scenes and people, the sun hot on his face through the GMC’s big windshield and on his arm through the open window full of all the scents of summer – spicy fresh-mown alfalfa, sun-warm bark of beeches and birches, black-furrowed soil, the redolent pastures of cattle and sheep, the cool moist air when the road went over a stream. Wherever he sold, people upped their orders. “What I like,” one corner grocer said, “is you never let me down. You always come when you say you will.” Mick shrugged it off but smiled, “Isn’t everybody like that?” “The way you work, you’re gonna make somethin’ of yourself some day.” He drove on, one arm out the window, shoulder warm in the sun, wind cooling his face, in the friendly grease, diesel and sun-hot plastic smell of the truck. Of course you worked hard, everybody should. It made you happy. How could you not work when your family needed it? Tara waiting tables full-time at Primo’s Café on Main Street, Troy running the farm all by himself and delivering papers at four every morning; Dad’s salary at the plastic factory had gone

We didn’t make love that night but rather the next morning. Reeking. Our entombed hangover processes released into the air, whatever happens inside a body to convert poison into harmless agony. We weren’t embarrassed or anxious or sad, just tired and needing grease and salt and soap and hot water, but first thin, breathless kisses, then thicker, surer, bodies twisted up together like tree branches growing around each other, so close and so deep and I was nothing but Ralph’s then and he was nothing but mine.

Apple Kuchen In the story, Jace and Grant both love sweets. This apple kuchen is something Cora Lee would have made that they both enjoyed. Happy baking! Apple Kuchen Cake 1 cup flour 2 tablespoons sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup butter, softened Blend together with a fork, or pastry blender, until crumbly and well mixed. Pat into a greased 9” x 9” or 8” x 8” square pan. Set aside. Filling 4 cups apples, peeled and sliced (Granny Smith works great) 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon Mix apples with sugar and cinnamon. Layer over cake batter. Topping 1/3 cup flour 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter, softened 1 teaspoon cinnamon Use a fork to combine. Sprinkle on top of apples. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until edges are lightly browned. Serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream or ice cream. Refrigerate leftovers – if you have any!

Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I never wanted for diner food, whether it was from Bob's Diner in Roxborough or the Trolley Car Diner in Mount Airy. The food wasn't anything special- eggs and toast, meat loaf and gravy, the omnipresent glass case of pies- but I always found the food comforting and satisfying, served as it was in those old-fashioned, prefabricated stainless steel trolley cars. Whenever we would visit my mom's parents in Canterbury, New Jersey, we'd stop at the Claremont Diner in East Windsor on the way home, and I'd order a fat, fluffy slice of coconut cream pie, which I'd nibble on the whole car ride back to Philly. I'm not sure why I've always found diner food so comforting. Maybe it's the abundance of grease or the utter lack of pretense. Diner food is basic, stick-to-your-ribs fare- carbs, eggs, and meat, all cooked up in plenty of hot fat- served up in an environment dripping with kitsch and nostalgia. Where else are a jug of syrup and a bottomless cup of coffee de rigueur? The point of diner cuisine isn't to astound or impress; it's to fill you up cheaply with basic, down-home food. My menu, however, should astound and impress, which is why I've decided to take up some of the diner foods I remember from my youth and put my own twist on them. So far, this is what I've come up with: Sloe gin fizz cocktails/chocolate egg creams Grilled cheese squares: grappa-soaked grapes and Taleggio/ Asian pears and smoked Gouda "Eggs, Bacon, and Toast": crostini topped with wilted spinach, pancetta, poached egg, and chive pesto Smoky meat loaf with slow-roasted onions and prune ketchup Whipped celery root puree Braised green beans with fire-roasted tomatoes Mini root beer floats Triple coconut cream pie

6 large eggs 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves 1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 tablespoon olive oil 2 cups sliced baby bella mushrooms 1 small yellow onion, peeled and diced 1 cup water 1 In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, basil, goat cheese, salt, and pepper. Set aside. 2 Press the Sauté button on the Instant Pot®. Heat oil 30 seconds and stir-fry mushrooms and onions 5 minutes until onions are translucent. 3 Transfer cooked mushroom mixture to a 7-cup glass bowl greased with either oil or cooking spray and set aside to cool 5 minutes. Pour

Anoint the saucepan with a touch of sunflower seed oil. Grease its scars, and as soon as the oils heats up, sprinkle with flour, pour on the bouillon and the moonshine strong as the hearts of the village man who knows not how to love with his words, only with his actions, and ass the chopped apple.

Stefan’s lips had been softer than he’d thought they would be— yet rougher than he was used to. No lipstick, or gloss, or balm had greased them, and he’d loved the naked feel of them beneath his own mouth. He’d tasted of the sweetness of his pudding. He’d made soft moaning noises as he’d kissed that turned Max the fuck on and that, Max was sure, Stefan was completely unaware of making.

Let's imagine... if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to... the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because, what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they've ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse. But, how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn't fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms. All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won't take the hint! In every moment there's the possibility of a better future, but you people won't believe it. And because you won't believe it you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up!

looks flawless, even… Inhuman. I look around her. Next to the rocking chair in which she’s seated is a— “Oh, Jesus—” My hand jerks, and the beam of light shoots to the ceiling. Hands shaking, I sweep the light through the darkness again, past the woman— A man. Wearing some kind of coat, tweed. Hair greased back. A thin face, eyes open and vacant. Sitting on a love seat, legs crossed. Same deal with the glossy skin, the immobile eyes, unresponsive to light. Not dead people. Not people at all. Wax figures. I exhale with the realization. I was two seconds away from kicking in this window to rescue a couple of wax mannequins. I keep the light moving. An area rug on the floor. A battered coffee table with a vase and flowers—fresh flowers, not fake. Against the wall, a faux fireplace—something painted on the wall, complete with logs and a spirited flame. A television set. I can only

The first time I noticed Francesca in the Rialto, I thought she was alone. Then the crowd shifted and I saw her massive Mother Superior standing at the stall of a spice merchant, picking through a sack of peppercorns, her nose twitching like a rabbit's, her face set and ready to do battle over the price. Francesca waited nearby, swinging her market basket and smiling at passersby. That smile snagged me, held me, and wouldn't let me go. She had all her teeth and they were white, so white, and her face was clean and sunstruck. A dog, small and wiry, sniffed the hem of her robe, and she knelt down to pet it. I heard her cooing and the dog nuzzled into her arms. She glanced around to be sure Mother Superior wasn't watching, then quickly took a sausage from her basket and fed it to the dog. He bolted it down greedily and then looked up at her with naked adoration. She laughed, and her laughter made me think of a field of wildflowers. Francesca pulled a square of lace from her sleeve to wipe the sausage grease from her fingers, and I had the fleeting thought that I'd never before seen a nun with such a fine lace handkerchief. But that thought vanished with the sight of Mother Superior rising up behind her. The older nun stood over her, shouting. "Don't you know better than to touch a stray animal? I swear, you're hopeless, girl. Hopeless." The light went out of Francesca's face. She moved off behind the older woman but looked back at the little dog and rolled her eyes. She waved good-bye and her fingers moved like butterflies.

3. Bake 1 sheet at 350°F for 7 to 9 minutes or until the edges of the mounds are lightly browned and beginning to set. Working quickly, transfer the cheese rounds to a lightly greased (with cooking spray) 24-cup miniature muffin pan, pressing gently into each cup to form shells. Repeat the procedure with the second baking sheet. 4. Microwave the milk in a microwave-safe measuring cup for 30 seconds on high or until warm. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Whisk in the flour; cook, whisking constantly, for 1 minute. Gradually whisk in the warm milk. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, for 1 to 2 minutes, or until thickened. Whisk in the cheddar cheese, kosher salt, and black pepper. 5. Increase the oven temperature to 425°F. Line each Parmesan shell with 2 turkey pieces and fill each with 1 teaspoon cheese sauce. Bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the pan to a wire rack and top with crumbled bacon and diced tomato. Garnish with flat-leaf parsley leaves.

Fine. I’ll get them myself. You can go cook something. Make it fattening and filled with grease. No point in worrying now, droite?

Mother once said I’d marry a quarryman. She looked at me as we washed clothes in the giant steel washtub, two pairs of water-wrinkled hands scrubbing and soaking other people’s laundry. We were elbow-deep in dirty suds and our fingers brushed under the foamy mounds. “Some mistakes are bound to be repeated,” she murmured We lived in Stony Creek, a granite town at a time when granite was going out of fashion. There were only three types of men here: Cottagers, rich, paunchy vacationers who swooped into our little Connecticut town in May and wiled away time on their sailboats through August; townsmen, small-time merchants and business owners who dreamed of becoming Cottagers; and quarrymen, men like my father, who worked with no thought to the future. The quarrymen toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week. They didn’t care that they smelled of granite dust and horses, grease and putty powder. They didn’t care about cleaning the crescents of grime from underneath their fingernails. Even when they heard the foreman’s emergency signal, three sharp shrieks of steam, they scarcely looked up from their work. In the face of a black powder explosion gone awry or the crushing finality of a wrongly cleaved stone, they remained undaunted. I knew why they lived this way. They did it for the granite. Nowhere else on earth did such stone exist—mesmerizing collages of white quartz, pink and gray feldspar, black lodestone, winking glints of mica. Stony Creek granite was so striking, it graced the most majestic of architecture: the Battle Monument at West Point, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Fulton Building in Pittsburgh, the foundations of the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The quarrymen of Stony Creek would wither and fall before the Cottagers, before the townsmen. But the fruits of their labor tethered them to a history that would stand forever. “You’ll marry one, Adele—I’m sure of it. His hands will be tough as buckskin, but you’ll love him regardless,” Mother told me, her breath warm in my ear as the steam of the wastewater rose around us. I didn’t say that she was wrong, that she couldn’t know what would happen. I’d learned that from the quarry. Pa was a stonecutter and he cut the granite according to rift and grain, to what he could feel with his fingertips and see with his eyes. But there were cracks below the surface, cracks that betrayed the careful placement of a chisel and the pounding of a mallet. The most beautiful piece of stone could shatter into a pile of riprap. It all depended on where those cracks teased and wound, on where the stone would fracture when forced apart. “Keep your eyes open, Adele. I don’t know who it will be—a steam driller, boxer, derrickman, powderman? Maybe a stonecutter like your father?” I turned away from her, feigning disinterest. “There’s no predicting, I told her.

Mother once said I’d marry a quarryman. She looked at me as we washed clothes in the giant steel washtub, two pairs of water-wrinkled hands scrubbing and soaking other people’s laundry. We were elbow-deep in dirty suds and our fingers brushed under the foamy mounds. “Some mistakes are bound to be repeated,” she murmured We lived in Stony Creek, a granite town at a time when granite was going out of fashion. There were only three types of men here: Cottagers, rich, paunchy vacationers who swooped into our little Connecticut town in May and wiled away time on their sailboats through August; townsmen, small-time merchants and business owners who dreamed of becoming Cottagers; and quarrymen, men like my father, who worked with no thought to the future. The quarrymen toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week. They didn’t care that they smelled of granite dust and horses, grease and putty powder. They didn’t care about cleaning the crescents of grime from underneath their fingernails. Even when they heard the foreman’s emergency signal, three sharp shrieks of steam, they scarcely looked up from their work. In the face of a black powder explosion gone awry or the crushing finality of a wrongly cleaved stone, they remained undaunted. I knew why they lived this way. They did it for the granite. Nowhere else on earth did such stone exist—mesmerizing collages of white quartz, pink and gray feldspar, black lodestone, winking glints of mica. Stony Creek granite was so striking, it graced the most majestic of architecture: the Battle Monument at West Point, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Fulton Building in Pittsburgh, the foundations of the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The quarrymen of Stony Creek would wither and fall before the Cottagers, before the townsmen. But the fruits of their labor tethered them to a history that would stand forever. “You’ll marry one, Adele—I’m sure of it. His hands will be tough as buckskin, but you’ll love him regardless,” Mother told me, her breath warm in my ear as the steam of the wastewater rose around us. I didn’t say that she was wrong, that she couldn’t know what would happen. I’d learned that from the quarry. Pa was a stonecutter and he cut the granite according to rift and grain, to what he could feel with his fingertips and see with his eyes. But there were cracks below the surface, cracks that betrayed the careful placement of a chisel and the pounding of a mallet. The most beautiful piece of stone could shatter into a pile of riprap. It all depended on where those cracks teased and wound, on where the stone would fracture when forced apart. “Keep your eyes open, Adele. I don’t know who it will be—a steam driller, boxer, derrickman, powderman? Maybe a stonecutter like your father?” I turned away from her, feigning disinterest. “There’s no predicting, I told her.

The drawback is that while we can use fashion as a back-door method of confronting prejudice, this also results in massive pressure for fat people to be extra put-together, all the time, to be respectable fatasses, to stand in opposition to those unacceptable fat people, the ones who wear sweatpants and shirts with grease stains on them. You know them. The ones who make fat people look bad, like every stereotype is deserved, like we really are the disgusting horrors that we’re made out to be.

Cool Dust" A heave of afternoon light pulls a tulip from the turf, a bower for locusts, a cup of shells. The farmhouse tilts, a bent shadow on wheels. In cedar rooms a family is molded, silent, wrapped in the wire of steel eyes and stopped voice, romantic ash. This is not my house, my ghost, my uninvited guest, my lost labor of love, my thicket or grease, my JPEG gessoed or rawhide suit. The yellow light throbs like an internal organ — soft body of an overture to insect sounds — sapling of a new world — whose future awaits me at the tilting window of my own domestic hut. Perhaps this is my mesh of hours, my muscular ache, my guardian sash, twist of rope carved around an old maple trunk, my rod of power red with anticipatory friction at the edge of an emerging set of planetary rings. Stained ochre by the air I pitch forward, a vanilla-scented pear that floats or falls. In the rattan chair on the front porch by the blistered boards of the front door a figure of tar watches. Cool dust sparkles and settles. Shadows have made me visible. An empty wagon flares on the hillside.

I READ MY POEM “Recipe for Crushed Hope” to the women’s discussion group: Take one Naïve Girl. Bring to room temperature in the Big City. Add three cups Academia. Sift in one cup Encouragement. Fold in two drops Love. Sprinkle with one teaspoon Adoration. Mix thoroughly. Spoon carefully into greased Pan of Matrimony. Bake in Desert Heat for 25 years. Test doneness with Careless Toothpick. Let cool on Wire Rack of Inertia.

I READ MY POEM “Recipe for Crushed Hope” to the women’s discussion group: Take one Naïve Girl. Bring to room temperature in the Big City. Add three cups Academia. Sift in one cup Encouragement. Fold in two drops Love. Sprinkle with one teaspoon Adoration. Mix thoroughly. Spoon carefully into greased Pan of Matrimony. Bake in Desert Heat for 25 years. Test doneness with Careless Toothpick. Let cool on Wire Rack of Inertia. Serve with generous dollops of Benign Neglect.

They rolled past the prison and, without a word, James shifted on the narrow seat. He filled the space between them and this time he pushed his spine into Mungo's cavity. Each bony vertebra was a knuckle that pressed into the places that hurt the worst. Mungo exhaled into the sandy hair. His arms disobeyed him as they wrapped around James's waist. He laid his face against the Shetland wool and inhaled the grease of the lanolin and the musk from his armpits. James leaned back into him as hard as Mungo was pressing forward.

I told my stomach that I am more than my hunger. I exceed the sum total of any want that is merely physical. And we have standards, damn it! Would we really settle for anything less than excellence, out of mere convenience? Apparently we would. Seven minutes later I was wiping the last tendrils of grease from my chin and throwing away the meager detritus of my shameful downfall. Lo, how far the proud Dexter has fallen, I thought, and I heard the burbling echo as my stomach replied, And loving it.

to release his bed, and there was probably an alcove behind it with storage, maybe some traps to keep out unwanted visitors. At least, that’s the way Leo would’ve designed it. A fire pole came down from the second floor, even though the cabin didn’t appear to have a second floor from the outside. A circular staircase led down into some kind of basement. The walls were lined with every kind of power tool Leo could imagine, plus a huge assortment of knives, swords, and other implements of destruction. A large workbench overflowed with scrap metal—screws, bolts, washers, nails, rivets, and a million other machine parts. Leo had a strong urge to shovel them all into his coat pockets. He loved that kind of stuff. But he’d need a hundred more coats to fit it all. Looking around, he could almost imagine he was back in his mom’s machine shop. Not the weapons, maybe—but the tools, the piles of scrap, the smell of grease and metal and hot engines. She would’ve loved this place. He pushed that thought away. He didn’t like painful memories. Keep moving—that was his motto. Don’t

Music is exquisite and requisite. It is the creative juice that greases the machinery for insight and serendipity. It unlocks the right brain, opening a door to novel domains. It constructs neural networks and fosters pattern recognition. It trains willpower and discipline. Playing music builds a bigger and better highway between the two sides of the brain. Its myelinated interconnectivity nurtures out-of-the-box thinking and simulates meditation and flow. Like dreaming, it allows our powerful unconscious mind to sift and filter all the accumulated detritus into a meaningful story.

Just like a city, parts of the Archives teemed with activity. The Scriptorium held rows of desks where scrivs toiled over translations or copied faded texts into new books with fresh, dark ink. The Sorting Hall buzzed with activity as scrivs sifted and reshelved books. The Buggery was not at all what I expected, thank goodness. Instead, it proved to be the place where new books were decontaminated before being added to the collection. Apparently all manner of creatures love books, some devouring parchment and leather, others with a taste for paper or glue. Bookworms were the least of them, and after listening to a few of Wilem’s stories I wanted nothing more than to wash my hands. Cataloger’s Mew, the Bindery, Bolts, Palimpsest, all of them were busy as beehives, full of quiet, industrious scrivs. But other parts of the Archives were quite the opposite of busy. The acquisitions office, for example, was tiny and perpetually dark. Through the window I could see that one entire wall of the office was nothing but a huge map with cities and roads marked in such detail that it looked like a snarled loom. The map was covered in a layer of clear alchemical lacquer, and there were notes written at various points in red grease pencil, detailing rumors of desirable books and the last known positions of the various acquisition teams. Tomes was like a great public garden. Any student was free to come and read the books shelved there. Or they could submit a request to the scrivs, who would grudgingly head off into the Stacks to find if not the exact book you wanted, then at least something closely related. But the Stacks comprised the vast majority of the Archives. That was where the books actually lived. And just like in any city, there were good neighborhoods and bad. In the good neighborhoods everything was properly organized and cataloged. In these places a ledger-entry would lead you to a book as simply as a pointing finger. Then there were the bad neighborhoods. Sections of the Archives that were forgotten, or neglected, or simply too troublesome to deal with at the moment. These were places where books were organized under old catalogs, or under no catalog at all. There were walls of shelves like mouths with missing teeth, where longgone scrivs had cannibalized an old catalog to bring books into whatever system was fashionable at the time. Thirty years ago two entire floors had gone from good neighborhood to bad when the Larkin ledger-books were burned by a rival faction of scrivs. And, of course, there was the four-plate door. The secret at the heart of the city. It was nice to go strolling in the good neighborhoods. It was pleasant to go looking for a book and find it exactly where it should be. It was easy. Comforting. Quick. But the bad neighborhoods were fascinating. The books there were dusty and disused. When you opened one, you might read words no eyes had touched for hundreds of years. There was treasure there, among the dross. It was in those places I searched for the Chandrian.