Greet And Pass Quotes

Hurt people hurt people. That’s how pain patterns gets passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future.

The wondrous moment of our meeting... Still I remember you appear Before me like a vision fleeting, A beauty's angel pure and clear. In hopeless ennui surrounding The worldly bustle, to my ear For long your tender voice kept sounding, For long in dreams came features dear. Time passed. Unruly storms confounded Old dreams, and I from year to year Forgot how tender you had sounded, Your heavenly features once so dear. My backwoods days dragged slow and quiet -- Dull fence around, dark vault above -- Devoid of God and uninspired, Devoid of tears, of fire, of love. Sleep from my soul began retreating, And here you once again appear Before me like a vision fleeting, A beauty's angel pure and clear. In ecstasy my heart is beating, Old joys for it anew revive; Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting The fire, and tears, and love alive.

She passed through a world of snowcapped mountains under shining stars. Passed over one of those mountains, where a winged male stood beside a heavily pregnant female, gazing out at those very stars. Fae. They were Fae, but this was not her world. She flung out a hand, as if she might signal them, as if they might somehow help her when she was nothing but an invisible speck of power— The winged male, beautiful beyond reason, snapped his head toward her as she arced across his starry sky. He lifted a hand, as in greeting. A blast of dark power, like a gentle summer night, slammed into her. Not to attack—but to slow her down. A wall, a shield, that she tore and plunged through. But it slowed her. That winged male's power slowed her, just enough. Aelin vanished from his world without a whisper.

We try, we struggle, all the time to find words to express our love. The quality, the quantity, certain that no two people have experienced it before in the history of creation. Perhaps Catherine and Heathcliff, perhaps Romeo and Juliet, maybe Tristan and Isolde, maybe Hero and Leander, but these are just characters, make-believe. We have known each other forever, since before conception even. We remember playing together in a playpen, crossing paths at FAO Schwarz. We remember meeting in front of the Holy Temple in the days before Christ, we remember greeting each other at the Forum, at the Parthenon, on passing ships as Christopher Columbus sailed to America. We have survived pogrom together, we have died in Dachau together, we have been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan together. There has been cancer, polio, the bubonic plague, consumption, morphine addiction. We have had children together, we have been children together, we were in the womb together. Our history is so deep and wide and long, we have known each other a million years. And we don't know how to express this kind of love, this kind of feeling. I get paralyzed sometimes. One day, we are in the shower and I want to say to him, I could be submerged in sixty feet of water right now, never drowning, never even fearing drowning, knowing I would always be safe with you here, knowing that it would be ok to die as long as you are here. I want to say this but don't.

Why Just ask the donkey in me To speak to the donkey in you, When I have so many other beautiful animals And brilliant colored birds inside That are longing to say something wonderful And exciting to your heart? Let's open all the locked doors upon our eyes That keep us from knowing the Intelligence That begets love And a more lively and satisfying conversation With the Friend. Let's turn loose our golden falcons So that they can meet in the sky Where our spirits belong-- Necking like two Hot kids. Let's hold hands and get drunk near the sun And sing sweet songs to God Until He joins us with a few notes From his own sublime lute and drum. If you have a better idea Of how to pass a lonely night After your glands may have performed All their little magic Then speak up sweethearts, speak up, For Hafiz and all the world will listen. Why just bring your donkey to me Asking for stale hay And a boring conference with the idiot In regards to this precious matter-- Such a precious matter as love, When I have so many other divine animals And brilliant colored birds inside That are all longing To so sweetly Greet You!

The Trial By Existence Even the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore’er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life’s little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth’s unhonored things Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end: ’One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.’ And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified.

On the return trip, they passed a brigade of black soldiers, who rushed forward to greet the president, “screaming, yelling, shouting: ‘Hurrah for the Liberator; Hurrah for the President.’ ” Their “spontaneous outburst” moved Lincoln to tears, “and his voice was so broken by emotion” that he could hardly reply.

With each passing day, I allowed myself to become a little more intoxicated by limitless possibilities which seemed sometimes to roll in with the fog, murmur suggestions that would have made me run yelling from them had I been anywhere [other than San Francisco], then leave me to cope with that special brand of terror bestowed by sweet and sour tastes of freedom.

That was Verity's way. MOnths had passed since we had last spoken but he took no times for greetings. Chade said it was a lack in him, that he didn't make his men feel their importance to him. I think he believed that if anything significant had happened to me, someone would have told him. He had a bluff heartiness to him that I enjoyed, an attitude that things must be going well unless someone ahd told him otherwise.

The traveller gets out, walks up and down the platform, sees the vast slow flare and steaming of the mighty engine, rushes into the station, and looks into the faces of all the people passing with the same sense of instant familiarity, greeting, and farewell,--that lonely, strange, and poignantly wordless feeling that Americans know so well.

I told her that we go to work to provide for our families, attend school functions that our children are involved in, take a few pieces of cake we just baked over to our neighbor next door, drive our children to school in the morning. “No! No!” She said. “How do you worship?” I said we make love to our spouses, smile and greet someone we pass on the street, help our children with their homework, hold open a door for someone behind us. “Worship! I’m asking about worship!” She exclaimed. I asked her exactly what she had in mind. “You know-Rituals!” She insisted. I answered her that we practice those also and that they are a very important part of Muslim worship. I was not trying to frustrate her, but I answered her in this way in order to emphasize Islam’s comprehensive conception of worship.

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy." "I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed Levin.

O my language, help me to adapt and embrace the universe. Inside me there’s a balcony no one passes under for a greeting. And outside me a world that doesn’t return the greeting. My language, will I become what you’ll become, or are you what becomes of me? […] For who, if I utter what isn’t poetry, will understand me? Who will speak to me of a hidden longing for a lost time if I utter what isn’t poetry? And who will know the stranger’s land? …

In their new personal development the girl and the woman will only be for a short time imitations of the good and bad manners of man and reiterations of man's professions. After the uncertainty of this transition it will appear that women have passed through those many, often ridiculous, changes of disguise, only to free themselves from the disturbing influence of the other sex. For women, in whom life tarries and dwells in a more incommunicable, fruitful and confident form, must at bottom have become richer beings, more ideally human beings than fundamentally easy-going man, who is not drawn down beneath the surface of life by the difficulty of bearing bodily fruit, and who arrogantly and hastily undervalues what he means to love. When this humanity of woman, borne to the full in pain and humiliation, has stripped off in the course of the changes of its outward position the old convention of simple feminine weakness, it will come to light, and man, who cannot yet feel it coming, will be surprised and smitten by it. One day—a day of which trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining forth especially in northern lands—one day that girl and woman will exist, whose name will no longer mean simply a contrast to what is masculine, but something for itself, something that will not make one think of any supplement or limit, but only of life and existence—the feminine human beings. This advance, at first very much against the will of man who has been overtaken—will alter the experience of love, which is now full of error, will change it radically and form it into a relationship, no longer between man and woman, but between human being and human being. And this more human love, which will be carried out with infinite consideration and gentleness and will be good and clean in its tyings and untyings, will be like that love which we are straining and toiling to prepare, the love which consists in this, that two lonely beings protect one another, border upon one another and greet one another.

Any second... now? No. I am a 'mourning person'. Not because anybody close to me has recently passed away, but because I use that term to describe my demeanour at daybreak and as a way of separating myself from what are known as 'morning people' - those high-functioning, grinning morons, who skip out their beds and pounce at the dawn as eagerly and energetically as a young puppy greets a hanging shoelace. My mornings are (with the exception of Christmas Day) dark and sombre affairs, spent grieving the sleep of which I've been robbed; morning is when blades of daylight hack viciously at the dreams that have kept you company through the night.

I hope you gaze at cloud art galleries against azure summer skies and pause to gasp at rainbows and watch butterflies fly by; I hope wildflowers make you happy and sad songs make you cry and old books stacked in dusty nooks are gems you can't pass by; I hope burnt toast mornings are little things you handle with a smile and midnight talks and starlit walks keep you up once in awhile; I hope laundry warm from the dryer brings a sigh of contentment and front porch swings on cool evenings offer rest when you are spent; I hope your life is light in sorrow and heavy with laughter and you greet each season of your life like a new favorite chapter; I hope you honor every soul you meet and always go that extra mile and when you think of me, my love, I hope it's with a smile.

The history of Immanuel Kant's life is difficult to portray, for he had neither life nor history. He led a mechanical, regular, almost abstract bachelor existence in a little retired street of Königsberg, an old town on the north-eastern frontier of Germany. I do not believe that the great clock of the cathedral performed in a more passionless and methodical manner its daily routine than did its townsman, Immanuel Kant. Rising in the morning, coffee-drinking, writing, reading lectures, dining, walking, everything had its appointed time, and the neighbors knew that it was exactly half-past three o'clock when Kant stepped forth from his house in his grey, tight-fitting coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, and betook himself to the little linden avenue called after him to this day the "Philosopher's Walk." Summer and winter he walked up and down it eight times, and when the weather was dull or heavy clouds prognosticated rain, the townspeople beheld his servant, the old Lampe, trudging anxiously behind Kant with a big umbrella under his arm, like an image of Providence. What a strange contrast did this man's outward life present to his destructive, world-annihilating thoughts! In sooth, had the citizens of Königsberg had the least presentiment of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt far more awful dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, who can but kill the body. But the worthy folk saw in him nothing more than a Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed at his customary hour, they greeted him in a friendly manner and set their watches by him.

Once we pass that rock, we’re on Terrasen soil.” Not quite daring to believe she wasn’t still asleep, Aelin walked toward that rock, whispering the Song of Thanks to Mala Fire-Bringer for leading her to this place, this moment. Aelin ran a hand over the rough rock, and the sun-warmed stone tingled as if in greeting. Then she stepped beyond the stone. And at long last, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was home.

Time is like the ancient Ouroboros. Time is fleeting moments, grains of sand passing through an hourglass. Time is the moments and events we so readily try to measure. But the ancient Ouroboros reminds us that in every moment, in every instant, in every event, is hidden the past, the present and the future. Eternity is hidden in every moment. Every departure is at once a return, every farewell is a greeting, every return is a parting. Everything is simultaneously a beginning and an end.

RANGE-FINDING The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird’s nest Before it stained a single human breast. The stricken flower bent double and so hung. And still the bird revisited her young. A butterfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.   On the bare upland pasture there had spread O’ernight ’twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew. A sudden passing bullet shook it dry. The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.

I sit here and watch the world pass by, since I can't go greet it myself anymore.

Whispers of a forgotten shore When I die, throw my ashes to the wind… Let it carry me along as my heart will lead my soul, to the places that took my breath away. Let it blow me about to return to those places.. That I swore were so magical I would return, But have not, Let those forgotten shores, forgotten places, Be reunited with my eyes, The splendour and the overwhelming feeling of sheer happiness, Etch into my soul as I pass through one heaven into the next Where I shall live for eternity Knowing I made a promise and kept it, I forgot nothing, I left nothing behind, My loved ones will greet me or follow me, My broken promises were fixed, And the screams in my ears of a conscience I couldn’t escape, Faded to whispers, Till one day I shall return to Earth in a new vessel, Reborn to live and suffer and wish this wish of mine all over again, Knowing the fulfillment of being forever free….

Absolute silence greeted the mystery of death, and for a time impossible to measure they waited, motionless, while Lynn's spirit rose from her body. Severo felt a long howl surging from the center of the earth and passing through his body to his lips, but it did not escape. The scream invaded him, filled him, and burst inside his head in a silent explosion. Portrait in Sepia, Isabel Allende.

Since my daughter died I am perfectly aware of death's proximity; and now, in my seventies, death is my friend. It's not true that she looks like a skeleton armed with a scythe and trailed by a rotten odor; she is a mature and elegant lady who smells of gardenias. At first she was lurking in the neighborhood, then in the house next door, and now she is waiting patiently in my garden. Sometimes, when I pass in fornt of her, we greet each and she reminds me that I should enjoy this day as if it were my last.

But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head. .. But everybody knows life isn't worth living. Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn't much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living— and for thousands of years. .. At that point, what would disturb my train of thought was the terrifying leap I would feel my heart take at the idea of having twenty more years of life ahead of me. But I simply had to stifle it by imagining what I’d be thinking in twenty years when it would all come down to the same thing anyway. Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter. .. It would take all my strength to quiet my heart, to be rational. .. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. .. for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. .. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

It was difficult to say which were the more dismal, these deserted streets that wandered away to right and left, or the great main thoroughfare with its narcotic and shadowy life. For the latter appeared vast, interminable, grey, and those who travelled by it were scarcely real, the bodies of the living, but rather the uncertain and misty shapes that come sand go across the desert in an Eastern tale, when men look up from the sand and see a caravan pass them, all in silence, without a cry or a greeting. So they passed and repassed each other on those pavements, appearing and vanishing, each intent on his own secret, and wrapped in obscurity.

The Doper's Dream Last night I dreamed I was plugged right in To a bubblin' hookah so high, When all of a sudden some Arab jinni Jump up just a-winkin' his eye. 'I'm here to obey all your wishes,' he told me. As for words I was trying to grope. 'Good buddy,' I cried, 'you could surely oblige me By turning me on to some dope!' With a bigfat smile he took ahold of my hand, And we flew down the sky in a flash, And the first thing I saw in the land where he took me Was a whole solid mountain of hash! All the trees was a-bloomin' with pink 'n' purple pills, Whur the Romilar River flowed by, To the magic mushrooms as wild as a rainbow, So pretty that I wanted to cry. All the girls come to greet us, so sweet in slow motion, Mourning glories woven into their hair, Bringin' great big handfuls of snowy cocaine, All their dope they were eager to share. We we dallied for days, just a-ballin' and smokin', In the flowering Panama Red, Just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea, And those brownies so kind to your head. Now I could've passed that good time forever, And I really was fixing to stay, But you know that jinni turned out, t'be a narco man, And he busted me right whur I lay. And he took me back to a cold, cold world 'N' now m'prison's whurever I be... And I dream of the days back in Doperland And I wonder, will I ever go free?

...the notion of the classroom as an intellectual community gets lost when conference rooms by the principal's office are turned into data rooms - rooms in which walls, floor to ceiling, are covered with test scores of every child in the school - and "Days Until the TEST" banners greet students and parents as they enter the school. That, at the very least, suggests the school is more interested in making sure students pass a test than in creating an intellectual community.

You’ve given up on yourself before anyone else has a chance to.” Silence greeted me. I could feel Rider’s stare on me. Several moments passed. “That’s bullshit, and kind of priceless coming from you. You gave up on me yesterday.” I started to defend myself, but I couldn’t. I swallowed hard. “I know. You’re right about that, but I’m also right.” “And how’s that?” Challenge hardened his tone. “Because I give up on myself on a daily basis,” I admitted. My cheeks heated but I continued. “I know.” He sucked in an audible breath. “Mallory...” I shook my head as I thought about all the conflicting emotions and needs and wants. “It’s true. It’s what I do. I don’t mean to. Or maybe I do. It’s...it’s easier being scared of everything.” “How...how can that be?” His voice softened. “How can that be easier?” My smile was faint. Suddenly, I really wished I was at home, with my head under the blankets. “You can’t fail when you don’t really try, right? You’d know that.

Thankful another tomorrow greets As I drink from cup of time And prepare to lock the door behind me and leave it to others

Don't be too anxious on my account. I have but one wish—to be in good health; the tedium is a passing matter, and cheerfulness depends in the last resort upon myself. Human beings have an incredible amount of endurance and will to live; I should never have expected to find so much in myself; now I know it from experience. Farewell! I hope that these few lines will give you much pleasure. Greet every one you see whom I have known—forget no one. I have not forgotten anybody. What can the children be thinking of me, and how do they explain to themselves my disappearance ? Farewell.

As he looked up and saw is audience poised on the staircase, he gave a curt nod that barely passed for a greeting. "Well," Lucy said, "it looks as if you Christmas spirit has undergone a beating.

There is an old anecdote in which a mystic, an evangelical pastor and a fundamentalist preacher die on the same day and awake to find themselves by the pearly gates. Upon reaching the gates they are promptly greeted by Peter, who informs them that before entering heaven they must be interviewed by Jesus concerning the state of their doctrine. The first to be called forward is the mystic, who is quietly ushered into a room. Five hours later the mystic reappears with a smile, saying, ‘I thought I had got it all wrong.’ Then Peter signals to the evangelical pastor, who stands up and enters the room. After a full day has passed the pastor reappears with a frown and says to himself, ‘How could I have been so foolish!’ Finally Peter asks the fundamentalist to follow him. The fundamentalist picks up his well-worn Bible and walks into the room. A few days pass with no sign of the preacher, then finally the door swings open and Jesus himself appears, exclaiming, ‘How could I have got it all so wrong!

2-Make eye contact. When someone is speaking, keep your eyes on him or her at all times. If someone makes a comment, turn and face that person. 3-During discussions, respect other students’ comments, opinions, and ideas. When possible, make statements like, “I agree with John, and I also feel that…” or “I disagree with Sarah. She made a good point I feel that…” or “I think Victor made an excellent observation, and it made me realize…” 4-If you win or do well at something, do not brag. If you lose, do not show anger. Instead, say something like, “I really enjoyed the competition, and I look forward to playing you again,” or “good game,” or don’t say anything at all. To show anger or sarcasm, such as “I wasn’t playing hard anyway” or “You really aren’t that good,” shows weakness. 5-“When you cough or sneeze or burp, it is appropriate to turn your head away from others and cover your mouth with the full part of your hand. Using a fist is not acceptable. Afterward, you should say, “Excuse me.” 6- “Do not smack your lips, tsk, roll your eyes, or show disrespect with gestures.” 7-“Always say thank you when I give you something. 8-“Surprise others by performing random acts of kindness. Go our of your way to do something surprisingly kind and generous for someone at least once a month.” 9-“You will make every effort to be as organized as possible.” 10-"Quickly learn the name of other teachers in the school and greet them by saying things like, "Good morning Mrs. Graham," or "Good afternoon Ms. Ortiz. 11-"When we go on field trips, we will meet different people. When I introduce you to people, make sure that you remember their names. Then, when we are leaving, make sure to shake their hands and thank them, mentioning their names as you do so." 12-“If you approach a door and someone is following you, hold the door. If the door opens by pulling, pull it open, stand to the side, and allow the other person 13-to pass through it first, then you can walk through. If the door opens by pushing, hold the door open after you push through." "Be positive and enjoy life. Some things just aren't worth getting upset over. Keep everything in perspective and focus on the good in your life.

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport’s location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer and closer, a runway appeared, a slight bump or two was felt as the craft landed, and they were surrounded by the steel and glass buildings of the airport. Slightly disappointed with this mysterious game of hide-and-seek, the voyager must continue on and collect their baggage, consoled by the reflection that they will see the metropolis as they make their way into town. For those travelling by road, the concrete motorway with its blue road signs, the underpasses and the typical traffic-logged hubbub of industrial areas were the first landmarks to greet the eye, without a doubt, it was a disheartening first impression. Then, the real introduction began. Quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the modern confusion of steel and asphalt was effaced little by little as the exquisite timelessness of Parisian heritage architecture was gradually unveiled. Popping up like mushrooms were cream sandstone edifices filigreed with curled, swirling carvings, gently sloping mansard roofs, elegant ironwork lanterns and wood doors that charmed the eye, until finally, the traveller was completely submerged in the glory of the Second Empire ala Baron Haussmann’s master plan of city design, the iconic grand mansions, tree-lined boulevards and avenues, the quaint gardens, the majestic churches with their towers and spires, the shops and cafés with their colourful awnings, all crowded and nestled together like jewels encrusted on a gold setting.

And that I was finally, safely back in the folds of a culture where people aren't expected to exchange smiles or greetings with every passing stranger. I couldn't understand why this caused such a wrenching sense of solitude in me then.

This is my delight, thus to wait and watch at the wayside where shadow chases light and the rain comes in the wake of the summer. Messengers, with tidings from unknown skies, greet me and speed along the road. My heart is glad within, and the breath of the passing breeze is sweet. From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door, and I know that of a sudden the happy moment will arrive when I shall see. In the meanwhile I smile and I sing all alone. In the meanwhile the air is filling with the perfume of promise.

Travel in a rocket at 99 percent the speed of light and you’ll enjoy the consequential sevenfold time dilation: from your perspective nothing has changed; you have aged a decade in ten years’ worth of travel. But upon returning to Earth you’d find that seventy years have passed and none of your old friends are still alive to greet you. (For the famous formula that lets you calculate the slowdown of time at any speed you care to consider, see the Lorentz transformation in Appendix 1.) Then the truth rather than the theory

The Place Faidherbe had the characteristic atmosphere, the overdone décor, the floral and verbal excess, of a subprefecture in southern France gone mad. The ten cars left the Place Faidherbe only to come back five minutes later, having once more completed the same circuit with their cargo of anemic Europeans, dressed in unbleached linen, fragile creatures as wobbly as melting sherbet. For weeks and years these colonials passed the same forms and faces until they were so sick of hating them that they didn’t even look at one another. The officers now and then would take their families out for a walk, paying close attention to military salutes and civilian greetings, the wives swaddled in their special sanitary napkins, the children, unbearably plump European maggots, wilted by the heat and constant diarrhea. To command, you need more than a kepi; you also need troops. In the climate of Fort-Gono the European cadres melted faster than butter. A battalion was like a lump of sugar in your coffee; the longer you looked the less you saw. Most of the white conscripts were permanently in the hospital, sleeping off their malaria, riddled with parasites made to order fo every nook and cranny of the body, whole squads stretched out flat between cigarettes and flies, masturbating under moldy sheets, spinning endless yarns between fits of painstakingly provoked and coddled fever.

But I can see him studying his newspaper, breaking off regularly to look up at the passers-by on the pavement outside. From the way he does this, I had thought at first that he was waiting for a companion, but it would seem he wishes merely to greet acquaintances as they pass by.

Peace be with you,” Pope Francis said. “This is not a greeting nor even a simple good wish: it is a gift, indeed, the precious gift that Christ offered his disciples after he had passed through death and hell.” (Regina Caeli, April 7, 2013). Peace is experienced by the one who allows himself to be loved.

But if we look a little deeper we shall find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching the merry groups, and he longs to speak and to claim kindred with them. But they pass him by, chatting gayly to one another, and he cannot stay them. He tries to reach them, but his prison walls move with him and hem him in on every side. In the busy street, in the crowded room, in the grind of work, in the whirl of pleasure, amid the many or amid the few—wherever men congregate together, wherever the music of human speech is heard and human thought is flashed from human eyes, there, shunned and solitary, the shy man, like a leper, stands apart. His soul is full of love and longing, but the world knows it not. The iron mask of shyness is riveted before his face, and the man beneath is never seen. Genial words and hearty greetings are ever rising to his lips, but they die away in unheard whispers behind the steel clamps. His heart aches for the weary brother, but his sympathy is dumb. Contempt and indignation against wrong choke up his throat, and finding no safety-valve whence in passionate utterance they may burst forth, they only turn in again and harm him. All the hate and scorn and love of a deep nature such as the shy man is ever cursed by fester and corrupt within, instead of spending themselves abroad, and sour him into a misanthrope and cynic.

You wish to hear the origin story?” “Uh, yes.” I passed him the bottle. “Very well.” He drank, handing it to Jack, starting another round. “A goddess of magic devised a contest to the death for select mortals. She invited deities of other realms to send a representative from their most prestigious house, all youths. Each one bore their god’s emblem upon his or her right hand.” My heart raced . . . I had been one of those youths. “These players would fight inside Tar Ro, a sacred realm as large as a thousand kingdoms, harvesting their victims’ emblems; only the player who’d collected them all would leave Tar Ro alive. Naturally, the gods cheated, gifting their own representative with superhuman abilities, making them more than mortal. Secret abilities. That’s why we’re called Arcana.” “Hail Tar Ro,” I murmured. “The High Priestess told me that.” “An old-fashioned greeting. She’s quite knowledgeable about the games. Very respectful of the old ways.

White cosmos nodded their heads in the breeze as if greeting them. In front of the taller flowers were blue cornflowers and mauve asters, mixed with pink phlox, spikes of grape hyacinth and purple salvias. As they walked around the path leading towards the front of the house, they passed beds of roses, the buds showing the promise of beauty to come

The next day he passed Alai in the corridor, and they greeted each other, touched hands, talked, but they both knew that there was a wall there now. It might be breached, that wall, sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.

Mussolini and Ciano, in black Fascist uniforms, sauntered along behind the two ridiculous-looking Englishmen, Musso displaying a fine smirk on his face the whole time. When he passed me he was joking under his breath with his son-in-law, passing wise-cracks. He looks much older, much more vulgar than he used to, his face having grown fat. My local spies tell me he is much taken with a blonde young lady of nineteen whom he’s installed in a villa across from his residence and that the old vigour and concentration on business is beginning to weaken. Chamberlain, we’re told, much affected by the warmth of the greeting he got at the stations along the way to Rome. Can it be he doesn’t know how they’re arranged?

In South Texas I saw three interesting things. The first was a tiny girl, maybe ten years old, driving in a 1965 Cadillac. She wasn't going very fast, because I passed her, but still she was cruising right along, with her head tilted back and her mouth open and her little hands gripping the wheel. Then I saw an old man walking up the median strip pulling a wooden cross behind him. It was mounted on something like a golf cart with two spoked wheels. I slowed down to read the hand-lettered sign on his chest. JACKSONVILLE FLA OR BUST I had never been to Jacksonville but I knew it was the home of the Gator Bowl and I had heard it was a boom town, taking in an entire county or some such thing. It seemed an odd destination for a religious pilgrim. Penance maybe for some terrible sin, or some bargain he had worked out with God, or maybe just a crazed hiker. I waved and called out to him, wishing him luck, but he was intent on his marching and had no time for idle greetings. His step was brisk and I was convinced he wouldn't bust. The third interesting thing was a convoy of stake-bed trucks all piled high with loose watermelons and cantaloupes. I was amazed. I couldn't believe that the bottom ones weren't crushed under all that weight, exploding and spraying hazardous melon juice onto the highway. One of nature's tricks with curved surfaces. Topology! I had never made it that far in mathematics and engineering studies, and I knew now that I never would, just as I knew that I would never be a navy pilot or a Treasury agent. I made a B in Statics but I was failing in Dynamics when I withdrew from the field. The course I liked best was one called Strength of Materials. Everybody else hated it because of all the tables we had to memorize but I loved it, the sheared beam. I had once tried to explain to Dupree how things fell apart from being pulled and compressed and twisted and bent and sheared but he wouldn't listen. Whenever that kind of thing came up, he would always say - boast, the way those people do - that he had no head for figures and couldn't do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.

When I sit up I am greeted by the world. Level with the treetops I look down on sparrows swooping in and out of the branches. The tide, the new rising moon, the clouds, the wind - these greet me. These are my allies. The whole planet is laid out before me and available for whatever adventure the day will take me on. By comparison, living in society seems to require an alarm clock. Primarily assembled from angst and fish anuses, these contraptions, regardless of your soul's whereabouts, will slap and assault you into a pitiful state of what passes for consciousness. Your first sight is the Time, an arragement of molecules on the clock's face to whom you will be enslaved for the rest of the day. You may as well call him "master." Next, a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, a knocked-over glass of water, and so forth, until you are so overwhelmed with despair that to prevent hurling yourself through the window, you must ignore your personal bill of rights, put on an acceptable frown, and go about your business, disregarding the pleas from you increasingly timid soul.

From the book Ell's Double Down - He waited but when she remained with her back to him, he grew concerned. She finally squared her shoulders and seemingly gathered inner strength then turned around. She raised her head and her hair fell away revealing her face fully. His heart clinched. The bruise marred an otherwise perfect plane; he scowled. She greeted his gaze with a look of pure defiance from red-rimmed eyes. Smiling slightly she confirmed, “Don’t worry handsome, he didn't tarnish my brass!” He started to approach but she brushed passed him. Regaining his composure he called to her, “You should put something cold on that.” She reached into the small ice chest pulling out a bottle of wine; she turned and inquired, “Will red work?

I Love Thee I love thee, as I love the calm Of sweet, star-lighted hours! I love thee, as I love the balm Of early jes'mine flow'rs. I love thee, as I love the last Rich smile of fading day, Which lingereth, like the look we cast, On rapture pass'd away. I love thee as I love the tone Of some soft-breathing flute Whose soul is wak'd for me alone, When all beside is mute. I love thee as I love the first Young violet of the spring; Or the pale lily, April-nurs'd, To scented blossoming. I love thee, as I love the full, Clear gushings of the song, Which lonely--sad--and beautiful-- At night-fall floats along, Pour'd by the bul-bul forth to greet The hours of rest and dew; When melody and moonlight meet To blend their charm, and hue. I love thee, as the glad bird loves The freedom of its wing, On which delightedly it moves In wildest wandering. I love thee as I love the swell, And hush, of some low strain, Which bringeth, by its gentle spell, The past to life again. Such is the feeling which from thee Nought earthly can allure: 'Tis ever link'd to all I see Of gifted--high--and pure!

Cassandra caught my quizzical look and shrugged. “Problems adjusting. You just missed the latest of the new souls. It would seem none of us are quite as good with people as you are.” That was an understatement. With any luck, Cassandra hadn’t caused any psychological scarring with her “Yeah, you’re dead, get over it” speech. She wasn’t a people person. Ordinarily, I greeted the new souls and took special care to deal with any “adjustment problems.” I enjoyed that part of my work. It was one of the few good deeds I could credit myself with. But as much as I’d love to tell myself otherwise, I wasn’t settling in the souls out of the goodness of my heart. Just lack of better alternatives. The other gods had difficulties relating to humans. But those difficulties were nothing compared to the problems the humans in my court had relating to each other. Souls lose something the longer they’re dead. They forget what it was like to worry, to be scared, to be human. Just yesterday, I’d caught Cassandra telling a frightened new soul I’d gone through a dark phase back when Dante passed through, but not to worry. I hadn’t gone off my meds for centuries. Fucking Dante.

I will greet the sun again, greet the stream that once flowed in me, the clouds that were my unfurling thoughts, the aching growth of the grove’s poplars who passed with me through seasons of draught. I will greet the flock of crows who gifted me the groves’ night perfume and my mother who lived in the mirror and was my old age’s reflection. Once more I will greet the earth who, in her lust to re-create me, swells her flaming belly with green seeds. I will come. I will come. I will. My hair trailing deep-soil scents. My eyes intimating the dark’s density. I will come with a bouquet picked from shrubs on the other side of the wall. I will come, I will come. I will. The doorway will glow with love and I will once again greet those in love, greet the girl standing in the threshold’s blaze.

Perhaps all I hoped would come to pass, and Telemachus and I would go to Egypt indeed, and all those other places. We would cross and recross the seas, living on my witchcraft and his carpentry, and when we came to a town a second time, the people would step out of their houses to greet us. He would patch their ships, and I would cast charms against biting flies and fevers, and we would take pleasure in the simple mending of the world.

As Guy passed a member who greeted him another turned and asked : “Who was that ? Someone new isn’t it?” ‘No, he’s belonged for ages. You’ll never guess who he is. Virginia Troy’s first husband.’ ‘Really? I thought she was married to Tommy Blackhouse.’ ‘This chap was before Tommy. Can’t remember his name. I think he lives in Kenya. Tommy took her from him, then Gussie had her for a bit, then Bert Troy picked her up when she was going spare.

The curtain behind the counter whipped aside and a woman emerged dressed in flowing purple robes, a silk headscarf, and a lace shawl. She wore heavy makeup, her eyelids smoky blue and her eyes framed by thick black lashes. As she surveyed us, she adjusted a bronze tiara just above her hairline. It was strung with delicate dangling chains that swayed hypnotically across her forehead. "Greetings weary travellers," she said. "I sense that you - " "Nope," Jackaby said and pushed passed up back out of the shop.

When the sun is strong and the air is warm, however, we shout greetings to one another down the lengths of long driveways and from the windows of our cars as we pass; we hold our heads high as we walk, staring up into the sky with our eyes shut and our faces widened by smiles. We breathe in deeply the summery air, but this sort of inhalation doesn’t result in a sigh; it’s a precursor to a purr, or the moans one might make during a backrub. We no longer mope, we no longer grouse. We are filled with energy. Although

Scared?” Terrified. “Of you? Nah. If you grow claws, I might get my sword, but I’ve fought you in your human shape.” It took all my will to shrug. “You aren’t that impressive.” He cleared the distance between us in a single leap. I barely had time to jump to my feet. Steel fingers grasped my left wrist. His left arm clasped my waist. I fought, but he outmuscled me with ridiculous ease, pulling me close as if to tango. “Curran! Let . . . “ I recognized the angle of his hip but I could do nothing about it. He pulled me forward and flipped me in a classic hip-toss throw. Textbook perfect. I flew through the air, guided by his hands, and landed on my back. The air burst from my lungs in a startled gasp. Ow. “Impressed yet?” he asked with a big smile. Playing. He was playing. Not a real fight. He could’ve slammed me down hard enough to break my neck. Instead he had held me to the end, to make sure I landed right. He leaned forward a little. “Big bad merc, down with a basic hip toss. In your place I’d be blushing.” I gasped, trying to draw air into my lungs. “I could kill you right now. It wouldn’t take much. I think I’m actually embarrassed on your behalf. At least do some magic or something.” As you wish. I gasped and spat my new power word. “Osanda.” Kneel, Your Majesty. He grunted like a man trying to lift a crushing weight that fell on his shoulders. His face shook with strain. Ha-ha. He wasn’t the only one who got a boost from a flare. I got up to my feet with some leisure. Curran stood locked, the muscles of his legs bulging his sweatpants. He didn’t kneel. He wouldn’t kneel. I hit him with a power word in the middle of a bloody flare and it didn’t work. When he snapped out of it, he would probably kill me. All sorts of alarms blared in my head. My good sense screamed, Get out of the room, stupid! Instead I stepped close to him and whispered in his ear, “Still not impressed.” His eyebrows came together, as a grimace claimed his face. He strained, the muscles on his hard frame trembling with effort. With a guttural sigh, he straightened. I beat a hasty retreat to the rear of the room, passing Slayer on the way. I wanted to swipe it so bad, my palm itched. But the rules of the game were clear: no claws, no saber. The second I picked up the sword, I’d have signed my own death warrant. He squared his shoulders. “Shall we continue?” “It would be my pleasure.” He started toward me. I waited, light on my feet, ready to leap aside. He was stronger than a pair of oxen, and he’d try to grapple. If he got ahold of me, it would be over. If all else failed, I could always try the window. A forty-foot drop was a small price to pay to get away from him. Curran grabbed at me. I twisted past him and kicked his knee from the side. It was a good solid kick; I’d turned into it. It would’ve broken the leg of any normal human. “Cute,” Curran said, grabbed my arm, and casually threw me across the room. I went airborne for a second, fell, rolled, and came to my feet to be greeted by Curran’s smug face. “You’re fun to play with. You make a good mouse.” Mouse? “I was always kind of partial to toy mice.” He smiled. “Sometimes they’re filled with catnip. It’s a nice bonus.” “I’m not filled with catnip.” “Let’s find out.” He squared his shoulders and headed in my direction. Houston, we have a problem. Judging by the look in his eyes, a kick to the face simply wouldn’t faze him. “I can stop you with one word,” I said. He swiped me into a bear hug and I got an intimate insight into how a nut feels just before the nutcracker crushes it to pieces. “Do,” he said. “Wedding.” All humor fled his eyes. He let go and just like that, the game was over.

Fred had first come to Fire Island Pines when he was thirty. He wasn’t ready for such beauty, such potential, such unlimited choice. The place scared him half to death. It was a warm and sunny weekend and there were one thousand bathing-suited handsomenesses on The Botel deck at Tea Dance. They all seemed to know each other and to touch and greet and smile at each other. And there he was, alone. Though he had acquired his 150-pound body for the first time (of his so-far three: the first for himself, the second for Feffer, number three, with muscles, for Dinky), he still felt like Mrs. Shelley’s monster, pale, and with a touch of leprosy thrown in. Not only had he no one to talk to, not only did the overwhelmingness of being confronted by so much Grade A male flesh, most of which seemed superior to his, which would make it difficult to talk to, even if he could utter, which he could not, floor him, but everyone else seemed so secure, not only with their bodies (all thin and no doubt well-defined since birth), tans, personalities, their smiles and chat, but also with that ability to use their eyes, much like early prospectors must have looked for gold, darting them hither and yon, seeking out the sparkling flecks, separating the valued from the less so, meaning, he automatically assumed, him. Their glances his way seemed like disposable bottles, no deposit, no return. He felt like Mr. Not Wanted On The Voyage, even though it was, so be it, his birthday. Many years would pass before he would discover that everybody else felt exactly the same, but came out every weekend so to feel, thus over the years developing more flexible feelings in so feeling.

Along the shores of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean I went through fishing ports where the elegant poverty of the fishermen wounded my own. Without their seeing me, I would brush against men and women standing in a patch of shade, against boys plying on a square. The love that human beings seem to feel for one another tortured me at the time. If two men exchanged a greeting or a smile in passing, I would retreat to the farthest edges of the world. The glances exchanged by the two friends—and sometimes their words—were the subtlest emanation of a ray of love from the heart of each. A ray of very soft light, delicately coiled: a spun ray of love. I was amazed that such delicacy, so fine a thread and of so precious, and so chaste, a substance as love could be fashioned in so dark a smithy as the muscular bodies of those males, though they themselves always emitted that gentle ray in which there sometimes sparkled the droplets of a mysterious dew. I would fancy hearing the elder say to the other, who was no longer I, speaking of that part of the body which he must have loved dearly: "I'm going to dent your halo for you again tonight!" I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.

Brightly and merrily swaying, like an April shower, came the young lady. Perhaps if she had been sad and conscience stricken, like certain dames of old who left the site of their illicit love as woe-begone as the passing moment that never returns; if the lady had approached in full cognizance of her frailty, ready to forego a man's respectful handkisses of greeting, and trembling in shame at the tryst exposed in broad daylight, like Risoulette, sixty-six times, whenever having misbehaved, she hastened back home teary-eyed to her Captain; or if a lifelong memory's untearable veil had floated over her fine features, like the otherworldly wimple of a nun . . . Then Pistoli would have stood aside, closed his eyes, swallowed the bitter pill, and come next winter, might have scrawled on the wall something about women's unpredictability. Then he would have glimpsed ghostly, skeletal pelvic bones reflected in his wine goblet, and strands of female hair, once wrapped around the executioner's wrist, hanging from his rafters; and would have heard wails and cackles emanating from the cellar's musty wine casks, but eventually Pistoli would have forgiven this fading memory, simply because women are related to the sea and the moon, and that is why at times they know not what they do.

Nick leans down and kisses my eyelids. “Loving you, Zara, is a full-time job. It’s a great job, don’t get me wrong. It’s the best job in the universe. But it is not easy, because you tend to . . .” “Get hurt?” Betty suggests. “Find trouble? Pass out? Break arms?” “All of the above.” Nick laughs. My hand finds Nick’s wrist and I grab onto its thickness. “You know, I’m the patient here. Where’s the bedside manner? Where’s the sympathy?” “Zara, sympathy is just a good excuse to buy greeting cards and make sorry eyes and secretly gloat over how glad you are that you aren’t the person whose crap is hanging out there for the world to see,” Betty says.

When the congregation began to disperse, a number of persons, chiefly ladies, waited for him near the pulpit, and, as he came down, met him with greetings and compliments. Nora watched him from her place, listening, smiling and passing his handkerchief over his forehead. At last they relieved him, and he came up to her. She remembered for years afterward the strange half-smile on his face. There was something in it like a pair of eyes peeping over a wall. It seemed to express so fine an acquiescence in what she had done, that, for the moment, she had a startled sense of having committed herself to something. He gave her his hand, without manifesting any surprise. “How

There,” said the elf. “The ancient snake Ouroboros. Ouroboros symbolises eternity and is itself eternal. It is the eternal going away and the eternal return. It is something that has no beginning and no end. “Time is like the ancient Ouroboros. Time is fleeting moments, grains of sand passing through an hourglass. Time is the moments and events we so readily try to measure. But the ancient Ouroboros reminds us that in every moment, in every instant, in every event, is hidden the past, the present and the future. Eternity is hidden in every moment. Every departure is at once a return, every farewell is a greeting, every return is a parting. Everything is simultaneously a beginning and an end.

There,’ said the elf. ‘The ancient snake Ouroboros. Ouroboros symbolises eternity and is itself eternal. It is the eternal going away and the eternal return. It is something that has no beginning and no end. ‘Time is like the ancient Ouroboros. Time is fleeting moments, grains of sand passing through an hourglass. Time is the moments and events we so readily try to measure. But the ancient Ouroboros reminds us that in every moment, in every instant, in every event, is hidden the past, the present and the future. Eternity is hidden in every moment. Every departure is at once a return, every farewell is a greeting, every return is a parting. Everything is simultaneously a beginning and an end.

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself. Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth. For the creative artist there is no poverty—nothing is insignificant or unimportant. Even if you were in a prison whose walls would shut out from your senses the sounds of the outer world, would you not then still have your childhood, this precious wealth, this treasure house of memories? Direct your attention to that. Attempt to resurrect these sunken sensations of a distant past. You will gain assuredness. Your aloneness will expand and will become your home, greeting you like the quiet dawn. Outer tumult will pass it by from afar.

[After a period of separation, Phaeton and Daphne are cuddling.] Diomedes, meanwhile, was leaning to look behind Helion, staring with open fascination at the display Phaethon and Daphne made. “I have not seen non-parthenogenic bioforms before. Are they going to copulate?” Atkins and Helion looked at him, then looked at each other. A glance of understanding passed between them. Atkins put his hand on Diomedes’s elbow, and pulled him back in front of Helion. “Perhaps not at this time,” Atkins said, straight-faced. “They are young and in love,” explained Helion, stepping so as to block Diomedes’s view. “So perhaps the excesses and, ah, exuberance of their, ah, greeting, can be overlooked this once.” Diomedes craned his neck, trying to peer past Helion. “There’s nothing like that on Neptune.” Helion murmured, “Perhaps certain peculiarities of the Neptunian character are thereby clarified, hmm…?” “It looks very old-fashioned,” said Diomedes. Helion said, “It is that most ancient and most precious romantic character of mankind which impels all great men to their greatness.” Atkins said, “It’s what young men do before they go to war.” Diomedes said, “It is not the way Cerebellines or Compositions or Hermaphrodites or Neptunians arrange these matters. I’m not sure I see the value of it. But it looks interesting. Do all Silver-Gray get to do that? I wonder if Phaethon would mind if I helped him.” “He’d mind.” Atkins interrupted curtly. “Really. He’d mind.

There are tiers,” he said neutrally, “within our circle. Amren is my Second in command.” A female? The surprise must have been written on my face because Rhys said, “Yes. And Mor is my Third. Only a fool would think my Illyrian warriors were the apex predators in our circle.” Irreverent, cheerful Mor—was Third to the High Lord of the Night Court. Rhys went on, “You’ll see what I mean when you meet Amren. She looks High Fae, but something different prowls beneath her skin.” Rhys nodded to a passing couple, who bowed their heads in merry greeting. “She might be older than this city, but she’s vain, and likes to hoard her baubles and belongings like a firedrake in a cave. So … be on your guard. You both have tempers when provoked, and I don’t want you to have any surprises tonight.

Over a span of twenty years, Shakespeare churned out an impressively whopping thirty-eight plays, 154 love sonnets, and two epic narrative poems. While most people associate him with his plays, it was his sonnets that likely earned him admiration among his contemporaries. Yes, that’s right: In his lifetime, Shakespeare garnered more acclaim for his sonnets than he did for his plays. In England during the 1590s, writing plays was considered a bit hackish—a way to pay the bills—and not an intellectual pursuit. Writing sonnets was all the rage— and a way to gain literary prestige. These poems weren’t published for the plebeian public, but were written down and shared among the literati—and aristocrats looking for some intellectual cachet by becoming patrons to brilliant but perhaps financially strapped writers. So, while Shakespeare likely wrote nearly all of his love sonnets in the early to mid 1590s, they weren’t officially collected and published until 1609, well after the fad had passed. W. H. Auden said of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “They are the work of someone whose ear is unerring.” In today’s less poetry-friendly world, appreciation of these sonnets tends, sadly, to be relegated to classrooms, Valentine’s Day, and anniversaries. Which is too bad, because—though they do indeed rhyme—they are far superior to the ditties found in ninety-nine-cent greeting cards. In fact, they cover the whole gamut of love—the good, the bad, the erotic, and the ugly, including love triangles, being dumped, and jealousy. There is also speculation as to how autobiographical the sonnets are. The truth is that we know so little about Shakespeare’s private life.

The male staff all wore gorgeous colored loin cloths that always seem to be about to fall off they’re wonderful hips. Their upper bodies were tanned sculpted and naked. The female staff wore short shorts and silky flowing tops that almost but didn’t expose their young easy breasts. I noticed we only ever encountered male staff, and the men walking through the lobby were always greeted by the female staff. Very ingenious, as Rebecca said later - if we had ticked Lesbians on the form I wonder what would have happened? -There was a place to tick for Lesbians, I said ? -Sexual Persuasion- it was on all the forms -Really. And, how many options were there? -You’re getting the picture, said Jillian. This was not your basic check in procedure as at say a Best Western. Our Doormen/Security Guards , held out our chairs for us to let us sit at the elegant ornate table. Then they poured us tea, and placed before each of us a small bowl of tropical fruit, cut into bite size pieces. Wonderful! Almost immediately a check in person came and sat opposite us at the desk. Again a wonderful example of Island Male talent. (in my mind anyway) We signed some papers, and were each handed an immense wallet of information passes, electronic keys, electronic ID’s we would wear to allow us to move through the park and its ‘worlds’ and a small flash drive I looked at it as he handed it to me, and given the mindset of the Hotel and the murals and the whole ambiance of the place, I was thinking it might be a very small dildo for, some exotic move I was unaware of. -What’s this? I asked him -Your Hotel and Theme Park Guide I looked at it again, huh, so not a dildo.

When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, ‘Who are you? Where is the voice?’ His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man’s black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, ‘Cesar!’ The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the PROFETA, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost’s prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you not, Raoul?” “Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Profeta?” “I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces … Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and sure-footed. I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I don’t think so: no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!” - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre

Catherine glimpsed him again, leaning against the wall, arms folded. People passed back and forth between them, but she caught flashes of his face. His expression was tense and unhappy and his eyes still focused on her. She ducked behind a large man to hide and chatted with various people to keep the distance of a room between them. She’d known Jim would probably be here tonight and she’d planned to greet him politely as a teacher would treat a student since everyone knew she was tutoring him anyway. But that smoldering look he’d given her had changed everything. The way he looked and the way she felt, surely if they got within a foot of each other the entire town would see the combustible attraction between them as if they’d shouted it aloud. No. Better to accept a dance with some white-bearded farmer who would swing her around hard enough to tear her bodice seam. Better to help Mrs. Hildebrandt cut one of the cakes at the refreshment table and gush over Polly Flint’s new baby or spend a moment in the coatroom fixing Jennie’s straggling curls. Better to chat or dance with every member of the Broughton community than admit to the fact that Jim was standing solitary and friendless in his brand new suit, waiting for her to acknowledge him At one point it seemed he might approach her as he moved through the crowd in her direction. But when Catherine flitted away, putting more distance between them, he stopped and stationed himself by the wall once more, leaving it up to her to come to him. To her infinite shame, she didn’t—not even to say a quick “hello,” and when she next stole a surreptitious glance toward him, he was gone. She scanned the room. He’d left the building. She had no idea how long he’d been gone.

Running a restaurant means setting a stage. The believability hinges on the details. We control how they experience the world: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch. That starts at the door, with the host and the flowers.” And then, the bar. Timeless: long, dark mahogany, with stools high enough to make you feel like you were afloat. The bar had soft music, dim lighting, tinkling layers of noise, the bumps of a neighbor’s knee, the reach of someone’s arm by your face to take a glittering martini, the tap of a hostess as she escorted guests behind your back, the blur of plates being passed, the rattle of drinks, the virtuoso performance of bartenders slapping bottles into the back bar while also delivering bread, while also taking an order with the requisite substitutions and complications. All the best regulars came in and greeted the hostess saying, Any space at the bar tonight?

Then they went floating under vernal arches, where a murmurous rustle seemed to whisper, "Stay!" along shadowless sweeps, where the blue turned to gold and dazzled with its unsteady shimmer; passed islands so full of birds they seemed green cages floating in the sun, or doubled capes that opened long vistas of light and shade, through which they sailed into the pleasant land where summer reigned supreme. To Sylvia it seemed as if the inhabitants of these solitudes had flocked down to the shore to greet her as she came. Fleets of lilies unfurled their sails on either hand, and cardinal flowers waved their scarlet flags among the green. The sagittaria lifted its blue spears from arrowy leaves; wild roses smiled at her with blooming faces; meadow lilies rang their flame-colored bells; and clematis and ivy hung garlands everywhere, as if hers were a floral progress, and each came to do her honor.

And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy. As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, but she understands. Language no longer matter. There are no barriers between herself and others, just love. The gorgeous views seem to go on forever. Ornate structures, mansions, banquet halls, and natural beauty, orchards, gardens. People congregate around huge marble fountains. In the distance are snow-capped mountains of the purist white. She can hear the sounds of rushing rivers and the surf of the ocean at once. Everyone around her is happy, loving, thankful. A choir sings songs of joy and peace while others play musical instruments of every kind in perfect harmony. Children laugh and play in the streets as well as in the clouds above her head.

And then came a damp, cold night in Flanders, through which we marched in silence, and when the day began to emerge from the mists, suddenly an iron greeting came whizzing at us over our heads, and with a sharp report sent the little pellets flying between our ranks, ripping up the wet ground; but even before the little cloud had passed, from two hundred throats the first hurrah rose to meet the first messenger of death. Then a crackling and a roaring, a singing and a howling began, and with feverish eyes each one of us was drawn forward, faster and faster, until suddenly past turnip fields and hedges the fight began, the fight of man against man. And from the distance the strains of a song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, leaping from company to company, and just as Death plunged a busy hand into our ranks, the song reached us too and we passed it along: Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, über Alles in der Welt!

Is anybody happier because you passed his way? Does anyone remember that you spoke to him today? This day is almost over, and its toiling time is through; Is there anyone to utter now a kindly word of you? Did you give a cheerful greeting to the friend who came along? Or a churlish sort of "Howdy" and then vanish in the throng? Were you selfish pure and simple as you rushed along the way, Or is someone mighty grateful for a deed you did today? Can you say tonight, in parting with the day that's slipping fast, That you helped a single brother of the many that you passed? Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said; Does a man whose hopes were fading now with courage look ahead? Did you waste the day, or lose it, was it well or sorely spent? Did you leave a trail of kindness or a scar of discontent? As you close your eyes in slumber do you think that God would say, You have earned one more tomorrow by the work you did today?

For the rest of that term he haunted us. Now that we were ‘gated’ we could not spend our evenings together, and from nine o’clock onwards were alone and at Mr Samgrass’s mercy. Hardly an evening seemed to pass but he called on one or the other of us. He spoke of ‘our little escapade’ as though he, too, had been in the cells, and had that bond with us …. Once I climbed out of college and Mr Samgrass found me in Sebastian’s rooms after the gate was shut and that, too, he made into a bond. It did not surprise me, therefore, when I arrived at Brideshead, after Christmas, to find Mr Samgrass, as though in wait for me, sitting alone before the fire in the room they called the ‘Tapestry Hall’. ‘You find me in solitary possession,’ he said, and indeed he seemed to possess the hall and the sombre scenes of venery that hung round it, to possess the caryatids on either side of the fireplace, to possess me, as he rose to take my hand and greet me like a host:

We were all, I thought, counting on the probability that, simply by living in a big North American city, we would be greeted as warriors on our arrival back home by those who knew us and those who didn’t alike. Greeted as champions. I was a champ for giving up the perks of living with family, among friends whose families had known mine for generations, among people familiar to me from primary school days. I lived now without the deep comfort of neighbours who cooked more food than they needed for themselves so that they could parcel it up and bring you some. I had left behind strangers who, passing on the street, bid each other good day, and people who put off their own chores to lend you a hand. I had given up all of this in the hope that I would no longer have to live a lie, that I could, at last, come into my authentic self. So on this particular occasion I had dressed as I always did, to announce my individuality and assert that I had indeed found authenticity. No one here needed to know the truth or to question whether such authenticity was achievable.

He was passing at that moment before the jesuit house in Gardiner Street, and wondered vaguely which window would be his if he ever joined the order. Then he wondered at the vagueness of his wonder, at the remoteness of his own soul from what he had hitherto imagined her sanctuary, at the frail hold which so many years of order and obedience had of him when once a definite and irrevocable act of his threatened to end for ever, in time and in eternity, his freedom. The voice of the director urging upon him the proud claims of the church and the mystery and power of the priestly office repeated itself idly in his memory. His soul was not there to hear and greet it and he knew now that the exhortation he had listened to had already fallen into an idle formal tale. He would never swing the thurible before the tabernacle as priest. His destiny was to be elusive of social or religious orders. The wisdom of the priest’s appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.

Before reaching it, we would meet the smell of his lilacs, coming out to greet the strangers. From among the fresh green little hearts of their leaves, the flowers would curiously lift above the gate of the park their tufts of mauve or white feathers, glazed, even in the shade, by the sun in which they had bathed. A few, half hidden by the little tiled lodge called the Archers’ House, where the caretaker lived, overtopped its Gothic gable with their pink minarets. The Nymphs of Spring would have seemed vulgar compared to these young houris, which preserved within this French garden the pure and vivid tones of Persian miniatures. Despite my desire to entwine their supple waists and draw down to me the starry curls of their fragrant heads, we would pass by without stopping because my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since Swann’s marriage… We stopped for a moment in front of the gate. Lilac time was nearly over; a few, still, poured forth in tall mauve chandeliers the delicate bubbles of their flowers, but in many places among the leaves where only a week before they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, a hollow scum now withered, shrunken and dark, dry and odorless.

Her feet now safely planted on level flooring, Willow nervously smoothed her skirts before lifting her head. Turquoise eyes met deep brown. Willow's mouth dropped open in shock. "Lieutenant Numbskull?" Rider stiffened, but recovered quickly. "Freckles?" he pretended surprise. Backing up a step, his appreciative gaze raked her from head to toe. "My God! It is you!" Willow's cheecks burned beneath his conspicuous appraisal. The lieutenant's pleased grin fueled her simmering anger at Miriam's unwelcome matchmaking venture. "What are you doing here?" she huffed. Rider arched a dark brow in ironic amusement. "Is that any way to greet an old friend...Freckles?" "You two know each other?" Miriam interjected, astonished. "You might say that." Rider chuckled. Willow didn't know who she wanted to murder most, Miriam or the lieutenant. But standing here in all her ladylike spendor, she remembered his hurtful maligning of her femininity. For some inexplicable reason she felt compelled to prove that she could be every bit as feminine as any other woman. Despite her stormy emotions, her next words dripped off her lips like warm honey. "Unfortunately, Miriam"-she caressed Rider's coat sleeve and flapped her lashes outrageously-"we were never formally introduced." Rider eyed Willow's hand where it petted his arm, expecting claws to spring from her fingertips at any moment. Then he lifted his gaze to twin pools of mischief. One corner of his mouth crved in a wry grin. "What are you up to, Freckles?" His devastating smile was unnerving. Suddenly all too aware of her ineptitude at coquetry. Willow's confidence slipped a notch. Nevertheless, she was determined not to let him intimidate her. Casting him what she hoped would pass for a coy smile, she answered his question with an innocent shrug. Miriam blinked, agog at Willow s antics. "Well,ah...let me properly introduce you two. Mr. Sinclair, this is Miss Willow Vaughn. Willow, this is Mr. Rider Sinclair." Willow inclined her head with forced politeness. Rider tossed her a sly wink. Befuddled by the stratified undercurrents, Miriam sputtered. "I...ah...I'm sorry to hurry the introductions, but we really are late. My carriage is waiting out front for us. Shall we go?" "But of course." Rider held the door open, indicating they should proceed him. "Ladies..." Willow waited while he closed the door, then draped herself over his proferred arm. Miriam took his other arm and cast a warning glance at the younger woman. The girl smiled back angelically, deciding Miriam deserved to worry-just a little.

I’m sorry,” said the kitty. “I’ve wrecked your broomstick ride.” “No matter,” said Witch Mildred. “We’re here. Let’s go inside!” The clock atop the castle read twenty after eight, but the promised buffet table held only emptied plates! “No eye or newt? No sautéed slug? No pickleworm pate? No casserole of cockroach! No spiderweb soufflé! Those greedy gobbling goblins left zilch for us to eat.” Said the starving skeleton, “Why don’t we trick-or-treat?” They passed a lighted cottage, from which rose song and laughter. The mummy boldly rang the bell, All others traipsing after. The children squealed and giggled as they greeted their new guests, for of all the trick-or-treaters, these costumes were the best! The hostess asked the callers to join them at their party. “Check out this spread!” the mummy said. The hostess said, “Eat hearty.” “Taffy apples! Candy corn! Purple punch, ice-cold! My tongue’s not touched such tastiness since I was six years old!” In the corner of the kitchen Witch Mildred found a mop. “I think this will do nicely while my broom is in the shop.” “May I, please?” asked Mildred, and seated her new friends. With a loud “Thank you!” away they flew, in loopy swoops and bends. That night Witch Mildred dreamed of cakes and lemonade, but far more sweet than party treats were the friendships she had made!

That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you. Fingertip gliding over the faded-out photo—the conservator’s touch, a touch-without-touching, a communion wafer’s space between the surface and his forefinger. “An individual heart-shock. Your dream, Welty’s dream, Vermeer’s dream. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entire, and that’s not even to mention the people separated from us by time—four hundred years before us, four hundred years after we’re gone—it’ll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it’ll never strike in any deep way at all but—a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you. And—oh, I don’t know, stop me if I’m rambling…” passing a hand over his forehead.… “but Welty himself used to talk about fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn’t be an object. It’d be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek. —Heavenly God! cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy. He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him. Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!

He passed into the galley and was greeted by a cloud of fragrant steam. The exotic scent of spices mingled with the tang of roasting meat. Startled, Gabriel choked on a sip from a tankard. In the corner, Stubb quickly shoved something behind his back. The old men’s eyes shone with more than holiday merriment. “Happy Christmas, Gray.” Gabriel extended the tankard to him. “Here. We poured you some wine.” Gray waved it off with a chuckle. “That my new Madeira you’re sampling?” Gabriel nodded as he downed another sip. “Thought I should taste it before you serve it to company. You know, to be certain it ain’t poisoned.” He drained the mug and set it down with a smile. “No, sir. Not poisoned.” “And the figs? The olives? The spices? I assume you checked them all, too? For caution’s sake, of course.” “Of course,” Stubb said, pulling his own mug from behind his back and taking a healthy swallow. “Everyone knows you can’t trust a Portuguese trader.” Gray laughed. He plucked an olive from a dish on the table and popped it into his mouth. Rich oil coated his tongue. “Did you find the crate easily enough?” he asked Stubb, reaching for another olive. The old steward nodded. “It’s all laid out, just so. Candles, too.” “Feels like Christmas proper.” Gabriel tilted his head. “Miss Turner even gave me a gift.” Gray followed the motion, squinting through the steam. I’ll be damned.

From Tomorrow to Yesterday The tree trunks move in time with the rhythm of her rubber soles on the wet path, where the air is still cool after the night rain. The woodland floor is white with anemones; in one place, growing close to the roots of an ancient tree, they make her think of an old, wrinkled hand. She could go on and on without getting tired, without meeting anyone or thinking of anything in particular, and without coming to the edge of the woods. As if the town did not begin just behind the trees, the leafy suburb with its peaceful roads and its houses hidden behind close-trimmed hedges. She doesn't want to think about anything, and almost succeeds; her body is no more than a porous, pulsating machine. The sun breaks through the clouds as she runs back, its light diffused on the gravel drive and the magnolia in front of the kitchen window. His car is no longer parked beside hers, he must have left while she was in the woods. He hadn't stirred when she rose, and she'd already been in bed when he came home late last night. She lay with her back turned, eyes closed, as he undressed, taking care not to wake her. She leans against one of the pillars of the garage and stretches, before emptying the mailbox and letting herself into the house. She puts the mail on the kitchen table. The little light on the coffeemaker is on; she switches it off. Not so long ago, she would have felt a stab of irritation or a touch of tenderness, depending on her mood. He always forgets to turn off that machine. She puts the kettle on, sprinkles tea leaves into the pot, and goes over to the kitchen window. She observes the magnolia blossoms, already starting to open. They'll have to talk about it, of course, but neither of them seems able to find the right words, the right moment. She pauses on her way through the sitting room. She stands amid her furniture looking out over the lawn and the pond at the end of the garden. The canopies of the trees are dimly reflected in the shining water. She goes into the bathroom. The shower door is still spotted with little drops. As time went on they have come to make contact during the day only briefly, like passing strangers. But that's the way it has been since the children left home, nothing unusual in that. She takes off her clothes and stands in front of the mirror where a little while ago he stood shaving. She greets her reflection with a wry smile. She has never been able to view herself in a mirror without this moue, as if demonstrating a certain guardedness about what she sees. The dark green eyes and wavy black hair, the angularity of her features. She dyes her hair exactly the color it would have been if she hadn't begun to go gray in her thirties, but that's her only protest against age.

God is not dead— She has forsaken us. We wipe our angry, hate-filled tears after another shooting, as a man polishes his gun outside a mosque. All those stolen lives—we scream for justice! But God has quietly left our temples and churches. She will not return, for what WE have done is much worse. We have murdered humanity. God has deserted even the devout of us who save our love and compassion for those good and righteous, as we abandon the bigots brimming with hate. Yes, those least deserving of love, but the most in need of it. God’s agony rings in our hearts. She wails for the future shooters. Though we reject them, God greets these cracked and confused creatures— the least deserving of compassion but the most in need of it! We’ve read their spiteful tweets, but when we pass them in classrooms, in trains and markets, we dismiss those seemingly small opportunities for kindness. We don’t know—and how ignorant we are— that every time we ignore them, we sharpen our daggers and stab humanity in its pink raw flesh, not in dark alleyways. No, we do this openly in broad daylight, for hating them shows how loving we are. For condemning them proves how moral we are. But every shooting illumines the failure of our collective duty to love as God loves, to be compassionate as God is compassionate. Your prayers heal, yes, but for God’s sake, let God be. I say: First, resurrect your humanity!

I wanted to be Feinberg's student, but I didn't know how to go about it. Since it was premature for formal arrangements and since I was naturally reticent and shy, I simply began to greet him very politely whenever our paths crossed. Graduate school was a small community. In corridors and elevators and on campus, I was soon running into Feinberg several times a day, always giving him a polite hello and a nice smile. He would reciprocate similarly with a sort of nervous curling of the lips. As time passed, this limbo of flirtatious foreplay continued unabated. I could never find the courage to broach the question of being his student; I supposed I must have hoped it would just happen wordlessly. Every time I saw him I smiled; every time I smiled he bared his lips back at me with greater awkwardness. Our facial manipulations bore increasingly less resemblance to anything like a real smile; each of our reciprocated gestures was a caricature, a Greek theatrical mask signaling friendliness. One day, on about the fifth intersection of our paths on that particular day, I could stand it no longer. I saw him heading towards me down one of the long dark, old-fashioned Pupin corridors, and immediately turned towards the nearest stairwell and went up one floor to avoid him. Having succeeded at this once, I was compelled to do it repeatedly. Soon I was moving upstairs or downstairs to another floor as soon as I saw him approaching, like the protagonist in some ghastly version of the video game Lode Runner.

The eyes from Burma, from Tonkin, watch these women at their hundred perseverances—stare out of blued orbits, through headaches no Alasils can ease. Italian P/Ws curse underneath the mail sacks that are puffing, echo-clanking in now each hour, in seasonal swell, clogging the snowy trainloads like mushrooms, as if the trains have been all night underground, passing through the country of the dead. If these Eyeties sing now and then you can bet it’s not “Giovinezza” but something probably from Rigoletto or La Bohème—indeed the Post Office is considering issuing a list of Nonacceptable Songs, with ukulele chords as an aid to ready identification. Their cheer and songfulness, this lot, is genuine up to a point—but as the days pile up, as this orgy of Christmas greeting grows daily beyond healthy limits, with no containment in sight before Boxing Day, they settle, themselves, for being more professionally Italian, rolling the odd eye at the lady evacuees, finding techniques of balancing the sack with one hand whilst the other goes playing “dead”—cioé, conditionally alive—where the crowds thicken most feminine, directionless . . . well, most promising. Life has to go on. Both kinds of prisoner recognize that, but there’s no mano morto for the Englishmen back from CBI, no leap from dead to living at mere permission from a likely haunch or thigh—no play, for God’s sake, about life-and-death! They want no more adventures: only the old dutch fussing over the old stove or warming the old bed, cricketers in the wintertime, they want the semi-detached Sunday dead-leaf somnolence of a dried garden.

I decide to be proactive. “Hey, be careful with them apples,” I call out, imitating a harsh Mike voice. Mike always shows up in his ragged, half-rotten clothes and tells us how to do things, like he’s some kind of big expert. All faces turn toward me, including Dutch’s equine one. Dutch cants his head to one side to examine me with one great eye. They all get the joke and laugh. Mark tosses me an apple. It comes tumbling to me in a long golden arc like something out of mythology. The throw is so expert that I easily catch it. I take a bite, and get lost for a moment in its sweet juiciness, get lost in the whole idea of an apple tree, how it makes sweet food out of sunlight and earth. I think about how the tree spreads out above ground to catch air and light and below ground to catch water, minerals, and nourishment; about how at the end of the season it drops its leaves at its feet to reabsorb their nutrients. There is such Knowingness in this bite that I feel I have just eaten from the tree of knowledge. Stewart looks benevolently down at me from Dutch’s back. He is only twenty and has a ruddy face that glows with health and openness. He embodies the very bloom of youth. His young muscled body sits easily on the horse; his dark brown eyes are alive with merriment and friendliness. The whole scene is like a painting from another time. The Apple Pickers. I see it frozen for a moment, but then, in the silence of our greeting, a jet passes overhead, far away, in a series of deep distant rumbles that makes the canvas shimmer for a moment, reminding me that there is more to this moment than the simplicity that meets the eye.

When I first started to run the Jingu Gaien course, Toshihiko Seko was still an active runner and he used this course too. The S&B team used this course every day for training, and over time we naturally grew to know each other by sight. Back then I used to jog there before seven a.m. — when the traffic wasn’t bad, there weren’t as many pedestrians, and the air was relatively clean—and the S&B team members and I would often pass each other and nod a greeting. On rainy days we’d exchange a smile, a guess-we’re-both-havingit-tough kind of smile. I remember two young runners in particular, Taniguchi and Kanei. They were both in their late twenties, both former members of the Waseda University track team, where they’d been standouts in the Hakone relay race. After Seko was named manager of the S&B team, they were expected to be the two young stars of the team. They were the caliber of runner expected to win medals at the Olympics someday, and hard training didn’t faze them. Sadly, though, they were killed in a car accident when the team was training together in Hokkaido in the summer. I’d seen with my own eyes the tough regimen they’d put themselves through, and it was a real shock when I heard the news of their deaths. It hurt me to hear this, and I felt it was a terrible waste. Even now, when I run along Jingu Gaien or Asakasa Gosho, sometimes I remember these other runners. I’ll round a corner and feel like I should see them coming toward me, silently running, their breath white in the morning air. And I always think this: They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?

I got back into my car and followed the trucks; at the end of the road, the Polizei unloaded the women and children, who rejoined the men arriving on foot. A number of Jews, as they walked, were singing religious songs; few tried to run away; the ones who did were soon stopped by the cordon or shot down. From the top, you could hear the gun bursts clearly, and the women especially were starting to panic. But there was nothing they could do. The condemned were divided into little groups and a noncom sitting at a table counted them; then our Askaris took them and led them over the brink of the ravine. After each volley, another group left, it went very quickly. I walked around the ravine by the west to join the other officers, who had taken up positions above the north slope. From there, the ravine stretched out in front of me: it must have been some fifty meters wide and maybe thirty meters deep, and went on for several kilometers; the little stream at the bottom ran into the Syrets, which gave its name to the neighborhood. Boards had been placed over this stream so the Jews and their shooters could cross easily; beyond, scattered pretty much everywhere on the bare sides of the ravine, the little white clusters were multiplying. The Ukrainian “packers” dragged their charges to these piles and forced them to lie down over them or next to them; the men from the firing squad then advanced and passed along the rows of people lying down almost naked, shooting each one with a submachine bullet in the neck; there were three firing squads in all. Between the executions some officers inspected the bodies and finished them off with a pistol. To one side, on a hill overlooking the scene, stood groups of officers from the SS and the Wehrmacht. Jeckeln was there with his entourage, flanked by Dr. Rasch; I also recognized some high-ranking officers of the Sixth Army. I saw Thomas, who noticed me but didn’t return my greeting. On the other side, the little groups tumbled down the flank of the ravine and joined the clusters of bodies that stretched farther and farther out. The cold was becoming biting, but some rum was being passed around, and I drank a little. Blobel emerged suddenly from a car on our side of the ravine, he must have driven around it; he was drinking from a little flask and shouting, complaining that things weren’t going fast enough. But the pace of the operations had been stepped up as much as possible. The shooters were relieved every hour, and those who weren’t shooting supplied them with rum and reloaded the clips. The officers weren’t talking much; some were trying to hide their distress. The Ortskommandantur had set up a field kitchen, and a military pastor was preparing some tea to warm up the Orpos and the members of the Sonderkommando. At lunchtime, the superior officers returned to the city, but the subalterns stayed to eat with the men. Since the executions had to continue without pause, the canteen had been set up farther down, in a hollow from which you couldn’t see the ravine. The Group was responsible for the food supplies; when the cases were broken open, the men, seeing rations of blood pudding, started raging and shouting violently. Häfner, who had just spent an hour administering deathshots, was yelling and throwing the open cans onto the ground: “What the hell is this shit?” Behind me, a Waffen-SS was noisily vomiting. I myself was livid, the sight of the pudding made my stomach turn. I went up to Hartl, the Group’s Verwaltungsführer, and asked him how he could have done that. But Hartl, standing there in his ridiculously wide riding breeches, remained indifferent. Then I shouted at him that it was a disgrace: “In this situation, we can do without such food!

The waltz was dwindling away, and with a supreme effort he let her go. They talked through the crowd together, smiling politely at people who intercepted them without the slightest idea of anything that was said. When they neared the Townsendes’ group Ian delayed her with a touch of his hand. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you,” he said. Scrupulously keeping up appearances, he reached out to take a drink from a tray being passed by a servant, using that to cover their having stopped. “I would have told you before, but until now you would have questioned my motives and not believed me.” Elizabeth nodded graciously to a woman who greeted her, then she slowly reached for the glass, listening to him as he quietly said, “I never told your brother I didn’t want to wed you.” Her hand stayed, then she took the glass from him and walked beside him as they made their slowest possible way back to their friends. “Thank you,” she said softly, pausing to sip from her glass in another delaying tactic. “There’s one more thing,” he added irritably. “What’s that?” she asked. “I hate this damn ball. I’d give half what I own to be anywhere else with you.” To his surprise, his thrifty fiancé nodded complete agreement. “So would I.” “Half?” he chided, grinning at her in complete defiance of the rules of propriety. “Really?” “Well-at least a forth,” she amended helplessly, giving him her hand for the obligatory kiss as she reached for her skirts, preparing to curtsy. “Don’t you dare curtsy to me,” he warned in a laughing underbreath, kissing her gloved fingers. “Everywhere I go women are falling to the floor like collapsing rigging on a ship.” Elizabeth’s shoulders shook with mirth as she disobediently sank into a deep throne-room curtsy that was a miracle of grace and exaggeration. Above her she heard his throaty chuckle. In an utter turnabout of his earlier feelings, Ian suddenly decided this ball was immensely enjoyable.

When in the course of my work at the luminar, I was reviewing public law, from Aristotle to Hegel and beyond, I thought of an Anglo Saxon's axiom about human equality. He seeks it not in the ever-changing distribution of power and means, but in a constant: the fact that anyone can kill anyone else. This is a platitude, albeit reduced to a striking formula. The possibility of killing someone else is part of the potential of the anarch whom everyone carries around inside himself, even though he is seldom aware of that possibility. It always slumbers in the underground, even when two people exchange greetings in the street or avoid each other. When one stands atop a tower or in front of an oncoming train, that possibility is already drawing closer. Aside from the technological dangers, we also register the nearness of the Other. He can even be my brother. An old poet, Edgar Allen Poe, grasped this possibility in ‘Descent into the Maelstrom’. In any case, we watch our backs. Then comes the thronging in the catastrophe, the raft of the Méduse, the starving in the lifeboat. I want to indicate this only insofar as it concerns my service. In any event, I brought this knowledge into the Condor’s range, into the inner sanctum that Monseigneur described as his ‘Parvulo.’ I can kill him, dramatically or discreetly. His beverages – he especially likes a light red wine – ultimately pass through my hands. Now granted, it is unlikely that I would kill him, albeit not impossible. Who can tell what astrological conjunctions one may get involved in? So, for now, my knowledge is merely theoretical, though important insofar as it puts me in his level. Not only can I kill him; I can also grant him amnesty. This is in my hands. Naturally, I would not try to strike him just because he is tyrant – I am too well versed in history, especially the model that we have attained in Eumeswil. An immoderate tyrant settles his own hash. The execution can be left to the anarchists; that is all they think about.

Once upon a time, through a strange country, there rode some goodly knights, and their path lay by a deep wood, where tangled briars grew very thick and strong, and tore the flesh of them that lost their way therein. And the leaves of the trees that grew in the wood were very dark and thick, so that no ray of light came through the branches to lighten the gloom and sadness. And, as they passed by that dark wood, one knight of those that rode, missing his comrades, wandered far away, and returned to them no more; and they, sorely grieving, rode on without him, mourning him as one dead. Now, when they reached the fair castle towards which they had been journeying, they stayed there many days, and made merry; and one night, as they sat in cheerful ease around the logs that burned in the great hall, and drank a loving measure, there came the comrade they had lost, and greeted them. His clothes were ragged, like a beggar’s, and many sad wounds were on his sweet flesh, but upon his face there shone a great radiance of deep joy. And they questioned him, asking him what had befallen him: and he told them how in the dark wood he had lost his way, and had wandered many days and nights, till, torn and bleeding, he had lain him down to die. Then, when he was nigh unto death, lo! through the savage gloom there came to him a stately maiden, and took him by the hand and led him on through devious paths, unknown to any man, until upon the darkness of the wood there dawned a light such as the light of day was unto but as a little lamp unto the sun; and, in that wondrous light, our way-worn knight saw as in a dream a vision, and so glorious, so fair the vision seemed, that of his bleeding wounds he thought no more, but stood as one entranced, whose joy is deep as is the sea, whereof no man can tell the depth. And the vision faded, and the knight, kneeling upon the ground, thanked the good saint who into that sad wood had strayed his steps, so he had seen the vision that lay there hid. And the name of the dark forest was Sorrow; but of the vision that the good knight saw therein we may not speak nor tell.

Three cats stood in the center of the camp, their fur frosted by the dazzling white light. “Who are you?” Graywing stammered. These weren’t RiverClan warriors, and she didn’t recognize them from Gatherings. She wondered how they had managed to get all the way into the camp without being challenged. The tallest of the strangers, hard-muscled beneath his brown tabby coat, dipped his head. “Greetings, Graywing,” he meowed. “My name is Runningstorm of WindClan. This is Wolfheart”—he nodded to the elegant gray she-cat beside him—“and our leader, Smallstar.” The third cat, whose tiny frame was covered in sleek black-and-white fur, looked at Graywing. His blue eyes were friendly as he mewed, “We have traveled far to see you.” Graywing looked from one cat to the other. “I don’t understand. Has something happened to Fallowstar?” Smallstar shook his head. “Fallowstar is fine. We are the cats who would have been.” Graywing stared at them in horror. The image of three terrified bundles, falling one by one into the churning river, filled her eyes. “You are the kits who drowned,” she whispered. Wolfheart bent her head. “That is so. Come, we have something to show you.” She turned and led the way across the clearing toward the nursery. Graywing followed without having to tell her paws what to do; they seemed to be carrying her on their own. Runningstorm nosed aside the bramble that was draped across the entrance to the nursery, protecting the precious cats inside. “Look,” he urged Graywing. Oh, StarClan, let our kits be all right, Graywing prayed as she poked her head inside. Had the WindClan kits returned to punish her by hurting the youngest RiverClan cats? The den smelled warm and milky, and enough moonlight filtered through the branches for Graywing to see Hayberry curled around Wildkit and Minnowkit, who snuffled gently in their sleep. Hayberry’s flank rose and fell in time with her kits’ breathing, and although her eyelids flickered when Graywing looked at her, she didn’t stir. Graywing pulled her head out. “They’re safe,” she breathed. Smallstar looked surprised. “Of course. Did you think we’d hurt one hair on their pelts? Kits are the most special part of a Clan. They are the warriors who will defend their Clanmates in moons to come, the hunters who will find food even in the coldest leaf-bare, the cats who will have kits of their own to pass on everything they have learned. A Clan that has no kits might as well be dead.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. …yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; Nor do we merely feel these essences For one short hour; no, even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast, They alway must be with us, or we die. For ‘twas the morn: Apollo’s upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold, To feel this sun-rise and its glories old. With a faint breath of music, which ev’n then Fill’d out its voice, and died away again. Within a little space again it gave Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave, To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking Through copse-clad vallies,—ere their death, oer-taking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay Watching the zenith, where the milky way Among the stars in virgin splendour pours; And travelling my eye, until the doors Of heaven appear’d to open for my flight, I became loth and fearful to alight From such high soaring by a downward glance: So kept me stedfast in that airy trance, Spreading imaginary pinions wide. When, presently, the stars began to glide, And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er A shell for Neptune’s goblet: she did soar So passionately bright, my dazzled soul Commingling with her argent spheres did roll Through clear and cloudy, even when she went At last into a dark and vapoury tent— Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train Of planets all were in the blue again. To commune with those orbs, once more I rais’d My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed By a bright something, sailing down apace, Making me quickly veil my eyes and face: What I know not: but who, of men, can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet?

The greeting of risk, the willingness to discover through (certain classes of non-lethal) trial and error, the subordination of success to exploration and discovery, and the insistence of finding the edge of patterns; where they fail, all of these seem to contain echoes of field work in Special Forces and related intelligence organizations, the passion for languages, the recognition that much of what passes for effective communication can be achieved with very little actual understanding, the primacy of non-verbal communication in influencing face-to-face communications, a tolerance for ambiguity and vagueness, and a fascination with the unknown.

The twanging of life Thirteenth part : The essence of the beauty is unity in variety We are only able to contempt and treat people in a bad way, when we forget that the other person belongs to us and to the society as well as we too, when we only forget that in the form of doing the action, there is a strong relationship between the subject and the object so avarice, violence, egoism, sadness and looking at others as pawns of market's chess to get money arise from losing their unity, from forgetting their spirit of cooperation and collaboration and then starting perceiving others in terms of their individual differences. A humanitarian action that isn't intended to be done can make a huge storm of humanity, a single word can give people the feeling of unity, just like every time when a person passes by you and you say for him "السلام عليكم" both of you start to feel like there is a candle within both of you turning into clemency, the more love, the more mercy and the more salaam you show on your face the more light is reflected form that candle, you should start thinking that, greeting the people is proclamations of peace, every time you say "السلام عليكم" to a stranger your heart admits over and over again that we are all united, what I am trying to say is, in your heart's deepest place where the onus of your ego are fallen to pieces and the enigma of your soul is infiltrated, you find the awareness isn't different in any way from what all others may find, the mutuality of Sudanese people is appeared as the sun in the morning but only when our own humanness is surpassed our own dishumanness by accepting that we are all one in the fact that we are all made of diversified differences. We are all equal in the fact that our own society is made by different tribes, we are all the same in the fact that we will never have the same colour, life, thinking, dreams, feelings and luxury, we are united by the reality that Sudan is able to combine all colours, all cultures, all tribes and all of us in the fact that every one believes his tribe and culture are distinguished and individual, we are compatible in the reality that we are all recaptured to this country by the same history, the same conditions of living and the longest river in the world that all of them together give us a light to shine the darkness that covers the sky to allow for us to walk as one hand in the right direction, we don't share the colours but we share the blood, we aren't equal in existence of happiness but we drink River Nile's water that keeps us alive, we are different in existence of tribes but we share the same air that is blended by our breath, so I am you as much as I am me and you are me as much as I am you. Finally swingeing internal ructions and overmuch narcissism of a society devastate the tissue of its unity, not the differences of that society, Lord Robin said that unity begins at home within family is the strength to survive and win the fight of life.

he proceeded to greet each of his cousins with a rather unpleasantly wet kiss on the back of their hands. Elizabeth covertly wiped her hand on her skirt after he had passed on to greet Mary.