Groups Lovers Quotes

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. Cora was right- we had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, as well as the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them were perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You couldn't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it. So my true family was not just my mom, lost or found; my dad, gone from the start; and Cora, the only one who had really been there all along. It was Jamie, who took me in without question and gave me a future I once couldn't even imagine; Oliva, who did question, but also gave me answers; Harriet, who, like me, believed she needed no one and discovered otherwise. And then there was Nate. Nate, who was a friend to me before I even knew what a friend was. Who picked me up, literally, over and over again, and never asked for anything in return except for my word and my understanding. I'd given him one but not the other, because at the time I thought I couldn't, and then proved myself right by doing exactly as my mother had, hurting to prevent from being hurt myself. Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete- like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key. ~Ruby (pgs 400-401)

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience.

There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails.

I Love Loving You You are my favorite song; a rhythm of beauty that captures my spirit. You are my favorite poem; an exquisite grouping of ideas set in motion with an unmatched enchanting elegance. You are my best friend; from our laughter to our deep conversations, our moments together are a timeless pleasure. You are my soul mate; a connection so pure, so powerful, that it can only be considered divine. You are my lover; a passionate entwinement, a chorus of ecstasy, and a feeling of complete unity that words could never adequately describe. You are my angel; you remind me of the goodness in this world and inspire me to be the greatest version of myself. You are my home; it is in your loving gaze that I find the comfort, acceptance, and the sense of belonging. You are my love ~ mi amor; there are not enough days in forever to allow me to fully express my love for you. I love loving you.

Girls say to me, very reasonably, 'why isn't it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?' Well, my reply is I was once a little boy - I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more ike a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society. The other thing is - why aren't they little boys AND little girls? Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.

Happy" was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people.

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends. Make it last forever friendship never ends

I'm scared of men in cars and men in doorways, men in groups and men alone. They are menacing. Men-acing. Men-dacious. Men-tal.

while humans traditionally divided themselves up into lovers and fighters, I considered myself living evidence that that was a false binary, having no skill with either set of tools. I belonged to a third group, equally useful: I was an engineer.

Yes there were two great groups of dogs wrangling for the bitching-goddess: the group of the flatterers, those who offered her amusement, stories, films, plays: and the other, much less showy, much more savage breed, those who gave her meat, the real substance of money. The well-groomed showy dogs of amusement wrangled and snarled among themselves for the favors of the bitch-goddess. But it was nothing to the silent fight-to-the-death that went on among the indispensables, the bone-bringers.

Like the turtle's shell, the sense of self serves as a shield against stimulation and as a burden which limits mobility into possibly dangerous areas. The turtle rarely has to think about what's on the other side of his shell; whatever it is, it can't hurt him, can't even touch him. So, too, adults insist on the shell of a consistent self for themselves and their children and appreciate turtles for friends; they wish to be protected from being hurt or touched or confused or having to think. If a man can rely on consistency, he can afford not to notice people after the first few times. But I imagined a world in which each individual might be about to play the lover, the benefactor, the sponger, the attacker, the friend: and once known as one of the next day he might yet be anything. Would we pay attention to this person? Would life be boring? Would life be livable? I saw then clearly for the first time that the fear of failure keeps us huddled in the cave of self - a group of behavior patterns we have mastered and have no intention of risking failure by abandoning.

In the support group, the counselor had said: When you lose a loved one, you feel as if you're inside a confined space. Everyone else will seem to be careening along outside of this space. In time, you will become aware of an opening you are going to have to step through. It might be the touch of a new lover, a new job, a move--but you'll know. You will step through.

Brian came in heavy at that moment on his guitar, the rapid, high-pitched squeal ranging back and forth as his fingers flew along the frets. As the intro's tempo grew more rapid, Bekka heard Derek's subtle bass line as it worked its way in. After another few seconds Will came in, slow at first, but racing along to match the others' pace. When their combined efforts seemed unable to get any heavier, David jumped into the mix. As the sound got nice and heavy, Bekka began to rock back-and-forth onstage. In front of her, hundreds of metal-lovers began to jump and gyrate to their music. She matched their movements for a moment, enjoying the connection that was being made, before stepping over to the keyboard that had been set up behind her. Sliding her microphone into an attached cradle, she assumed her position and got ready. Right on cue, all the others stopped playing, throwing the auditorium into an abrupt silence. Before the crowd could react, however, Bekka's fingers began to work the keys, issuing a rhythm that was much softer and slower than what had been built up. The audience's violent thrash-dance calmed at that moment and they began to sway in response. Bekka smiled to herself. This is what she lived for.

THE LESBIAN AVENGERS Their motto playfully proclaimed “we recruit,” and recruit this group did. Formed in the 1990s to bring attention to lesbian causes, the Lesbian Avengers spent Valentine’s Day handing out chocolate kisses in Grand Central Station that read, “You’ve just been kissed by a lesbian.” In Bryant Park, they unveiled a papier-mâché sculpture of Alice B. Toklas embracing her lover, Gertrude Stein. The Avengers also ate fire, which would become their dramatic trademark—first practiced as an homage to an Oregon gay man and lesbian woman who were burned to death after a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the apartment they shared.

So what if they weren’t as happy as they’d ever been? They were adults, with a nearly grown child. “Happy” was a word for sorority girls and clowns, and those were two distinctly fucked-up groups of people. They were just wading through the muck like everyone else.

Despite your best efforts and intentions, there's a limited reservoir to fellowship before you begin to rely solely on the vapors of nostalgia. Eventually, you move on, latch on to another group of friends. Once in a while, though, you remember something, a remark or a gesture, and it takes you back. You think how close all of you were, the laughs and commiserations, the fondness and affection and support. You recall the parties, the trips, the dinners and late, late nights. Even the arguments and small betrayals have a revisionist charm in retrospect. You're astonished and enlivened by the memories. You wonder why and how it ever stopped. You have the urge to pick up the phone, fire off an email, suggesting reunion, resumption, and you start to act, but then don't, because it would be awkward talking after such a long lag, and, really, what would be the point? Your lives are different now. Whatever was there before is gone. And it saddens you, it makes you feel old and vanquished--not only over this group that disbanded, but also over all the others before and after it, the friends you had in grade and high school, in college, in your twenties and thirties, your kinship to them (never mind to all your old lovers) ephemeral and, quite possibly, illusory to begin with.

James had been acting a little weird. After waking up yesterday, he'd been a little bit distant. It might just be the stress of the trip. It was probably hard on James to be in charge of the little group. He was responsible for the welfare of his lover, a nun, and a talking horse. That couldn't be easy.

I was aware of a gathering anxiety around the question of visibility. I wanted to be seen, taken in and accepted, the way one is by a lover’s approving gaze. At the same time I felt dangerously exposed, wary of judgement, particularly in situations where being alone felt awkward or wrong, where I was surrounded by couples or groups.

Books are part of how we understand ourselves. They shape our identities, even before we can read them. They accompany us throughout our lives. [...] They get tangled up in our relationships with parents, siblings, classmates, teachers, friends, lovers and children. They are part of how groups of people, and even nations, imagine and represent themselves. Books become meaningful objects in all sorts of ways: treasured possessions, talismans, bearers of significance. This book is about how that happens.

On the radio a rock group called the Motels were repeatedly singing the ingenious line Take the L out of lover, and it’s over. Deep. Literal, but still deep. The Motels. Whatever happened to them?

the group that stood for 'freedom' and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner.

I turn to look at Jake. “You’re running from a bunch of eight-year-olds?” The rambunctious groups starts to point at the library and clamors toward the door, ready to enter. Jake looks at me. “They scare me. Can you please help me out?

I love watching everyone’s reactions. There are always some people who are kind of feeling it, and some who look like they’re plotting murder, and then the ones who pretend it’s not happening. I always tip because I don’t want to live in a world where no one’s doing that. I can’t think of a greater symbol of hope than a person who’s willing to drag themselves out of bed and sing at the top of their lungs to a group of strangers trapped on a train. That tenacity should be rewarded.

My energies knew no bounds and I became more and more interested in civic causes, the first of which was The Tailwaggers. It was an organization that cared for abandoned and lost dogs. Its English progenitor had been started by the Duke of Windsor—now married to the lady at King’s Bench. A lifelong dog lover, I became president of the group and during my tenure of office we trained dogs for the blind. The work became infinitely satisfying and accomplished a twofold purpose. In order to raise money,

She is the perfect match for each of her Bonded. For North's desires to love and protect and covet, but also needing someone who can go toe to toe with him. For Gryphon’s desires to have someone who can keep up with him and stand with him against anything that might threaten the Bonded Group. For Gabe’s need to have companionship and a friend as much as a lover. And for whatever it is that Bassinger requires, she clearly fits that mold perfectly. There's also a part of me that thinks that maybe if things had gone a little differently in my life, she might have been perfect for me too.

Makeshift, adj. I had always thought there were two types of people: the helpless and the fixers. Since I`d always been in the first group, calling my landlord whenever the faucet dripped, I was hoping you`d be a fixer. But once we moved it together, I realized there is a third group: the inventors. You possessed only a vague notion of hot to fix things, but that doesn`t stop you from using bubble gum as a sealant, or trying to create ouchless mousetraps out of peanut-butter crackers, a hollowed-out Dustbuster, and a picture of a scarecrow torn out of a magazine fashion spread, Things rarely get fixed the way they need to be.

People always talk about the health benefits of Japanese food,’ he said, ‘but I’m fascinated by other aspects of the Japanese dining experience. Like the whole system of serving food at a counter like this, with the customers all facing the same direction, instead of each other. It’s strange when you think about it. At a sushi bar, for example, everyone’s facing the itamae-san, and you discuss the things you’re eating – what type of squid this is, and where they’re caught, and how this is the season for them but they’ll only be at their best for another couple of weeks, and so on. Discussing the food with the chef even as you eat it – that’s a peculiar system.’ ‘I suppose it is, isn’t it? I don’t go to sushi restaurants very often – they’re so expensive – and I could probably count the number of times I’ve sat at the counter, but I know what you mean. There’s something about that atmosphere.’ ‘At its worst, it’s almost an atmosphere of collusion.’ ‘Collusion?’ ‘Everyone at the counter becomes a member of the group. In some sushi bars, all the customers are regulars and they all know each other. As an outsider, you need courage to walk into a place like that and take a seat. It’s a tight-knit little community, and harmony is of the utmost importance. Nobody’s confronting anyone else individually. The conversation all proceeds through the chef, who’s like a moderator or a master of ceremonies. You couldn’t spend some quiet time with a lover, for example, in a place like that, because you’d be isolating yourselves from the others and spoiling the atmosphere for everyone.

She is the perfect match for each of her Bonded. For North's desires to love and protect and covet, but also needing someone who can go toe to toe with him. For Gryphon’s desires to have someone who can keep up with him and stand with him against anything that might threaten the Bonded Group. For Gabe’s need to have companionship and a friend as much as a lover. And for whatever it is that Bassinger requires, she clearly fits that mold perfectly.

This man kept us standing and waiting for a good while, while a group of eight to ten Capos gathered round us and looked us up and down… They were on the lookout for a possible lover among the new arrivals. Because I still did not have a full beard, even though nearly twenty-three, so looked younger than my years, and because I had filled out a bit again thanks to the supplementary rations from my Sachsenhausen Capo, I was obviously very much at the center of these Capos' considerations… The situation in which the five of us found ourselves seemed to me very much like a slave-boy market in ancient Rome.

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. Cora was right - we had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, as well as the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them were perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You couldn't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

It is Cinderella in reverse. It is hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Nothing is as thrilling as they said it would be: no one is amusing, as clever, as attractive or as interesting. The sun never shines as bright as it used to, and even the fiercest thunderstorm lacks any real sense of drama or pizzaz. As the curtain falls, Group Captain Charming has left her for someone more suitable and has gone to live in France, and Buttons, in his zip-up jumpsuit, has taken up with a wearying succession of younger lovers. When Cinderella dies, her little glass slipper is put up for auction, a memento of days of hope and innocence. The catalogue entry reads: 'Only worn once.

we live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. the martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. by its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. we can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. from family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. most island universes are sufficiently like one another to permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or “feeling into”. thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, we can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly pickwickian sense) in their places. but in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. the mind is its own place, and the places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. words to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of existence.

To make your habits even more attractive, you can take this strategy one step further. Join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group. Steve Kamb, an entrepreneur in New York City, runs a company called Nerd Fitness, which “helps nerds, misfits, and mutants lose weight, get strong, and get healthy.” His clients include video game lovers, movie fanatics, and average Joes who want to get in shape. Many people feel out of place the first time they go to the gym or try to change their diet, but if you are already similar to the other members of the group in some way—say, your mutual love of Star Wars—change becomes more appealing because it feels like something people like you already do.

In their book Warrior Lovers, an analysis of erotic fiction by women, the psychologist Catherine Salmon and the anthropologist Donald Symons wrote, "To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other sex is to gaze into the psychological abyss that separates the sexes.... The contrasts between romance novels and porn videos are so numerous and profound that they can make one marvel that men and women ever get together at all, much less stay together and successfully rear children." Since the point of erotica is to offer the consumer sexual experiences without having to compromise with the demands of the other sex, it is a window into each sex's unalloyed desires. ... Men fantasize about copulating with bodies; women fantasize about making love to people. Rape is not exactly a normal part of male sexuality, but it is made possible by the fact that male desire can be indiscriminate in its choice of a sexual partner and indifferent to the partner's inner life--indeed, "object" can be a more fitting term than "partner." The difference in the sexes' conception of sex translates into a difference in how they perceive the harm of sexual aggression. ... The sexual abyss offers a complementary explanation of the callous treatment of rape victims in traditional legal and moral codes. It may come from more than the ruthless exercise of power by males over females; it may also come from a parochial inability of men to conceive of a mind unlike theirs, a mind that finds the prospect of abrupt, unsolicited sex with a stranger to be repugnant rather than appealing. A society in which men work side by side with women, and are forced to take their interests into account while justifying their own, is a society in which this thick-headed incuriosity is less likely to remain intact. The sexual abyss also helps to explain the politically correct ideology of rape. ... In the case of rape, the correct belief is that rape has nothing to do with sex and only to do with power. As (Susan) Brownmiller put it, "From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." ... Brownmiller wrote that she adapted the theory from the ideas of an old communist professor of hers, and it does fit the Marxist conception that all human behavior is to be explained as a struggle for power between groups. But if I may be permitted an ad feminam suggestion, the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex may be more plausible to a gender to whom a desire for impersonal sex with an unwilling stranger is too bizarre to contemplate. Common sense never gets in the way of a sacred custom that has accompanied a decline of violence, and today rape centers unanimously insist that "rape or sexual assault is not an act of sex or lust--it's about aggression, power, and humiliation, using sex as the weapon. The rapist's goal is domination." (To which the journalist Heather MacDonald replies: "The guys who push themselves on women at keggers are after one thing only, and it's not reinstatement of the patriarchy.")

1. Close Friend, someone who got yo back, yo "main nigga." 2. Rooted in blackness and the Black experience. From a middle-aged social worker: "That Brotha ain like dem ol e-lights, he real, he a shonuff nigga" 3. Generic, neutral refrence to African Americans. From a 30 something college educated Sista: "The party was live, it was wall to wall niggaz there" 4. A sista's man/lover/partner. from the beauty shop. "Guess we ain gon be seein too much of girlfriend no mo since she got herself a new nigga" From Hip Hop artist Foxy brown, "Ain no nigga like the on I got." 5. Rebellious, fearless unconventional, in-yo-face Black man. From former NBA superstar Charles Barkley, "Nineties niggas... The DailyNews, The Inquirer has been on my back... They want their Black Athletes to be Uncle Tom. I told you white boys you've never heard of a 90s nigga. We do what we want to do" quoted in The Source, December 1992). 6. Vulgar, disrespectful Black Person, antisocial, conforming to negative sterotype of African Americans. From former Hip Hop group Arrested Development, in their best-selling song, "People Everyday" 1992: A black man actin like a nigga... got stomped by an African" 7. A cool, down person, rooted in Hip Hop and black culture, regardless of race, used today by non-blacks to refer to other non-Blacks. 8. Anyone engaged in inappropriate, negative behavior; in this sense, Blacks may even apply the term to White folk. According to African American scholar Clarence Major's From Juba to Jive, Queen Latifah was quoted in Newsweek as criticizing the US government with these words. "Those niggers don't know what the fuck they doing

It is difficult to find any precise use of metaphor, simile, or other conceit, which is common to all the poets and at the same time important enough as an element of style to isolate these poets as a group. Donne, and often Cowley, employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically 'metaphysical'; the elaboration (contrasted with the condensation) of a figure of speech to the furthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it. Thus Cowley develops the commonplace comparison of the world to a chess-board through long stanzas ("To Destiny"), and Donne, with more grace, in "A Valediction," the comparison of two lovers to a pair of compasses. But elsewhere we find, instead of the mere explication of the content of a comparison, a development by rapid association of thought which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader.

Invisible Touch (Atlantic; 1986) is the group’s undisputed masterpiece. It’s an epic meditation on intangibility, at the same time it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. It has a resonance that keeps coming back at the listener, and the music is so beautiful that it’s almost impossible to shake off because every song makes some connection about the unknown or the spaces between people (“Invisible Touch”), questioning authoritative control whether by domineering lovers or by government (“Land of Confusion”) or by meaningless repetition (“Tonight Tonight Tonight”). All in all it ranks with the finest rock ’n’ roll achievements of the decade and the mastermind behind this album, along of course with the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford, is Hugh Padgham, who has never found as clear and crisp and modern a sound as this. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument.

I imagine you not telling me to whisper. I imagine you not saying oh don't say this literally. You want me to evoke as opposed to mere describing. You want me to be an invisible scribe that an octoepoose was hiding. I'm not sure if my facial features are an autograph that your Picasso smile is signing. Infamous for the mirror I shook when my sock puppets were pining? I am not just a fish that you gave wings to! I don't simply flop in the air whenever you brush some mannequinn's hair. There is a reason for the bad timing. Exquisite imbalances. A child enjoying the pink sky. I won't say that is my clue! Playing The Beatles on a kazoo is beautiful oooh ooooh Your laughter is a woman with alot of eyeballs on her stomach that pretends that she doesn't see the colors of all them songs. In the pre dawn hours we dance with delusions and illusions. The eternal seamstress does not care for Frakenstein's dress(she still loves our unique caress ) She loves and laughs despite some so-called scientist. Where is that emperor and his nakedness! Darling, our atoms need never split. We compliment in so many ways that all our night's and days have become one swirling sunrise/sunset that only true lovers can scoff at(those who shhhhh) The flower is not passive or apologetic. It blooms through the fractured net. Floating magnetic(eep eeep) You are not just some seductress. You are the leader of an elite group of intergalactic seductress impersonators who reveal corruption but then choose to love. We embrace conclusions that make the puddle heart awake with ethereal drum beat gongs. You think of a heroic poodle in the dark. We both know that the trapeze artist that followed us was not a cliche. He smelled differently. He had never met a floating lady that showed him how to appreciate a symphony without taking away his love for a good rock n roll melody. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities.-

The realisation that what are usually called ‘predictive’ technologies are in fact interested more in ‘nudging’ and mapping out the new rhythms of the city than in simply monitoring or surveilling also suggests the need for a new conception of digital time. Armen Arvanessian argues that as a result of digital data time itself – the direction of time – has changed. We no longer have a linear time, in the sense of the past being followed by the present and then the future. It’s rather the other way around: the future happens before the present, time arrives from the future. If people have the impression that time is out of joint, or that time doesn’t make sense anymore, or it isn’t as it used to be, then the reason is, I think, that they have – or we all have – problems getting used to living in such a speculative time or within a speculative temporality. Data technologies do not simply predict the future by guessing what an individual or group might do or want to do in the future. It is rather that those futures already exist, completely realised, and they reach backwards into the present to guide it. The possible paths for our desires to travel are mapped ahead of time by algorithms in the hands of platform capitalists.

This book festival...grew to attract thousands of visitors every year. Now they felt like they needed a new purpose. The festival’s continuing existence felt assured. What was it for? What could it do? How could it make itself count? The festival’s leadership reached out to me for advice on these questions. What kind of purpose could be their next great animating force? Someone had the idea that the festival’s purpose could be about stitching together the community. Books were, of course, the medium. But couldn’t an ambitious festival set itself the challenge of making the city more connected? Couldn’t it help turn strong readers into good citizens? That seemed to me a promising direction—a specific, unique, disputable lodestar for a book festival that could guide its construction...We began to brainstorm. I proposed an idea: Instead of starting each session with the books and authors themselves, why not kick things off with a two-minute exercise in which audience members can meaningfully, if briefly, connect with one another? The host could ask three city- or book-related questions, and then ask each member of the audience to turn to a stranger to discuss one of them. What brought you to this city—whether birth or circumstance? What is a book that really affected you as a child? What do you think would make us a better city? Starting a session with these questions would help the audience become aware of one another. It would also break the norm of not speaking to a stranger, and perhaps encourage this kind of behavior to continue as people left the session. And it would activate a group identity—the city’s book lovers—that, in the absence of such questions, tends to stay dormant. As soon as this idea was mentioned, someone in the group sounded a worry. “But I wouldn’t want to take away time from the authors,” the person said. There it was—the real, if unspoken, purpose rousing from its slumber and insisting on its continued primacy. Everyone liked the idea of “book festival as community glue” in theory. But at the first sign of needing to compromise on another thing in order to honor this new something, alarm bells rang. The group wasn’t ready to make the purpose of the book festival the stitching of community if it meant changing the structure of the sessions, or taking time away from something else. Their purpose, whether or not they admitted it, was the promotion of books and reading and the honoring of authors. It bothered them to make an author wait two minutes for citizens to bond. The book festival was doing what many of us do: shaping a gathering according to various unstated motivations, and making half-hearted gestures toward loftier goals.

Every man and every woman is a star: we all come from the same source, made from the same stuff, and it is that stuff that also makes the rest of the universe. When we are created, we contain within ourselves a spark of the divine, a star within our bodies of flesh that is eternal and a direct reflection of every other star contained within every other person and being upon the earth and in the heavens. Together we are constellations, and we come together in groups to create patterns in the sky. We move about in the heavens and in our orbits, and some of us collide while some of us find a mutually beneficial orbit; still others unite in the most beautiful constellations that their union will be seen and remembered throughout the ages. But we are all star-children, siblings under the canopy of heaven, and we all seek reunion with that from which we came bursting into life. The stars within us speak to their source and origin, and we yearn to return to it. The journey is long, but we find every now and then in another person a star that is closest to that which we yearn for, and we see in them the source of light, and they see it in us. We join with them, in yearning and desire and passion, and through them we are completed. This is love: the joining of two stars contained in the bodies of two human beings, expressed in their bridging of the gap between them and the gap between them and the divine. Yet do not curse the gap, Lover; do not bemoan the space that you must traverse to achieve reunion and love, for it is only by virtue of this gap that you might feel yearning and desire and love at all.

n 1985, Bob Munro volunteered his time to go and serve in the poorest slums of Africa on behalf of the United Nations. He loved football. One day, he was passing through the Mathare slums in Nairobi, Kenya, which happens to be one of the poorest areas in the world, and where more than a quarter million people live in abject poverty and filth. He saw some children playing football, bare feet, in total grime— they weren’t actually playing football, but kicking each other. As he saw one of the children kick the other, he immediately shouted, ‘Foul’, and the game stopped. He got out of his car and being the white man, obviously stood out. As an ardent lover of football, he said, ‘This is not the way to play football.’ He took the ball and told the boys, ‘Tomorrow I will bring another ball and teach you how to play football.’ The next day, 600 children were there to play football. He made a rule that only those children who clean up the place be allowed to play. He started a volunteers’ group for self-help and said, ‘Those who want to play football as part of my team must clean up.’ The children got involved and started cleaning the slums, and out of love for football, slowly the entire area was cleaned. As time went by, he developed teams to play. He developed referees from within. Guess what was the result in four years? The Kenyan football eleven national team emerged from the same Mathare slums. Bob Munro has created thousands of football teams from there, but the rules are very unique. The rules are very clear that every player in those football teams must contribute 60 hours to social work and community service per month. Only then can they play football. They get additional points not for winning a game, but for completing a community service project such as cleaning, counselling and helping others. He has created 8,000 volunteers out of this system of community service through the love of football.

Earth (481-640) People with this personality type are likely to become successful leaders. You tend to be more disciplined and careful at planning tasks. Loyalty and trust are important equations in your relationships hence they prove to be your strength in hard times. You respect others and keep people united which makes people flourish under your leadership. Earth signs are efficient decision makers hence always remain firm on the step they took. Fire: (400-300) Fire people are smart enthusiastic and energetic to be around. You are very competitive and curious, and more often very passionate about your goals and desires. Trusting people with a job or any important personal task is hard hence making emotional connections are difficult for you. making friends or getting a lover, your life is full of drama and there’s always a lot happening around you. You are intelligent and always find new ways to do things Water (160-320) Water people are kind and empathetic but sensitive. And you sometimes tend to become people pleasers. being quite impulsive and always in a hurry, you make decisions haphazardly. Water people are shy and introverted while partying around with friends on a weekend would be the last thing you want to do. You dread small talk and expressing yourself to a group of people is quite a demanding job. People feel relaxed in your presence you bring out the best in them. Decision-making can be demanding and you are sometimes regretful of overthinking and hence not capable of finding a firm decision. Air: (0-160) You have quite an entrancing personality. People are naturally drawn towards you and find your company comforting and friendly. Air signs are naturally smart and quite efficient in their workplace. While using your challenges and opportunities wisely you are likely to have great careers. you are good at advising your colleagues. But being bound in a relationship sometimes doesn’t seem to help you, rather you respect open free yet intimate emotional connections. Air people who are artistic and creative always look at things from a unique lens. So now you know your element.

The Right in the United States today is a social and political movement controlled almost totally by men but built largely on the fear and ignorance of women. The quality of this fear and the pervasiveness of this ignorance are consequences of male sexual domination over women. Every accommodation that women make to this domination, however apparently stupid, self-defeating, or dan- gerous, is rooted in the urgent need to survive somehow on male terms. Inevitably this causes women to take the rage and contempt they feel for the men who actually abuse them, those close to them, and project it onto others, those far away, foreign, or different. Some women do this by becoming right-wing patriots, nationalists determined to triumph over populations thousands of miles removed. Some women become ardent racists, anti-Semites, or homophobes. Some women develop a hatred of loose or destitute women, pregnant teenage girls, all persons unemployed or on welfare. Some hate individuals who violate social conventions, no matter how superficial the violations. Some become antagonistic to ethnic groups other than their own or to religious groups other than their own, or they develop a hatred of those political convictions that contradict their own. Women cling to irrational hatreds, focused particularly on the unfamiliar, so that they will not murder their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, the men with whom they are intimate, those who do hurt them and cause them grief. Fear of a greater evil and a need to be protected from it intensify the loyalty of women to men who are, even when dangerous, at least known quantities. Because women so displace their rage, they are easily controlled and manipulated haters. Having good reason to hate, but not the courage to rebel, women require symbols of danger that justify their fear. The Right provides these symbols of danger by designating clearly defined groups of outsiders as sources of danger. The identities of the dangerous outsiders can can change over time to meet changing social circumstances--for example, racism can be encouraged or contained; anti-Semitism can be provoked or kept dormant; homophobia can be aggravated or kept under the surface—but the existence of the dangerous outsider always functions for women simultaneously as deception, diversion, painkiller, and threat.

Weston, having been born in Chicago, was raised with typical, well-grounded, mid-western values. On his 16th birthday, his father gave him a Kodak camera with which he started what would become his lifetime vocation. During the summer of 1908, Weston met Flora May Chandler, a schoolteacher who was seven years older than he was. The following year the couple married and in time they had four sons. Weston and his family moved to Southern California and opened a portrait studio on Brand Boulevard, in the artsy section of Glendale, California, called Tropico. His artistic skills soon became apparent and he became well known for his portraits of famous people, such as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. In the autumn of 1913, hearing of his work, Margrethe Mather, a photographer from Los Angeles, came to his studio, where Weston asked her to be his studio assistant. It didn’t take long before the two developed a passionate, intimate relationship. Both Weston and Mather became active in the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was extremely outgoing and artistic in a most flamboyant way. Her bohemian sexual values were new to Weston’s conventional thinking, but Mather excited him and presented him with a new outlook that he found enticing. Mather was beautiful, and being bisexual and having been a high-class prostitute, was delightfully worldly. Mather's uninhibited lifestyle became irresistible to Weston and her photography took him into a new and exciting art form. As Mather worked and overtly played with him, she presented a lifestyle that was in stark contrast to Weston’s conventional home life, and he soon came to see his wife Flora as a person with whom he had little in common. Weston expanded his horizons but tried to keep his affairs with other women a secret. As he immersed himself further into nude photography, it became more difficult to hide his new lifestyle from his wife. Flora became suspicious about this secret life, but apparently suffered in silence. One of the first of many women who agreed to model nude for Weston was Tina Modotti. Although Mather remained with Weston, Tina soon became his primary model and remained so for the next several years. There was an instant attraction between Tina Modotti, Mather and Edward Weston, and although he remained married, Tina became his student, model and lover. Richey soon became aware of the affair, but it didn’t seem to bother him, as they all continued to remain good friends. The relationship Tina had with Weston could definitely be considered “cheating,” since knowledge of the affair was withheld as much as possible from his wife Flora May. Perhaps his wife knew and condoned this new promiscuous relationship, since she had also endured the intense liaison with Margrethe Mather. Tina, Mather and Weston continued working together until Tina and Weston suddenly left for Mexico in 1923. As a group, they were all a part of the cozy, artsy, bohemian society of Los Angeles, which was where they were introduced to the then-fashionable, communistic philosophy.

When I visited my father yesterday, I went upstairs to my old room. For a time after my marriage the maid had occupied it. It was unused now, and I found in it many of the objects I had kept around me ten years ago, before I left for school. There was a Persian print over the bed, of a woman dropping a flower on her interred lover - visible in his burial gown under the stones; a bookcase my mother had bought me; a crude water color of a pitcher and glass done by Bertha, some nearly forgotten girl. I sat in the rocking chair, feeling that my life was already long enough to contain nearly forgotten periods, a loose group of undifferentiated years. Recently, I had begun to feel old, and it occurred to me that I might be concerned with age merely because I might never attain any great age, and that there might be a mechanism in us that tried to give us all of life when there was danger of being cut off. And while I knew it was absurd for me to think of my “age,” I had apparently come to a point where the perspectives of time appeared far more contracted than they had a short while ago. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of “irretrievable.” This rather ordinary and, in some ways mean, room, had for twelve years been a standard site, the bearded Persian under the round stones and the water color, fixtures of my youth. Ten years ago I was at school; and before that… It was suddenly given me to experience one of those consummating glimpses that come to all of us periodically. The room, delusively, dwindled and became a tiny square, swiftly drawn back, myself and all objects in it growing smaller. This was not a mere visual trick. I understood it to be a revelation of the ephemeral agreements by which we live and pace ourselves. I looked around at the restored walls. This place which I avoided ordinarily, had great personal significance for me. But it was not here thirty years go. Birds flew through this space. It may be gone fifty years hence. Such reality, I thought, is actually very dangerous, very treacherous. It should not be trusted. And I rose rather unsteadily from the rocker, feeling that there was an element of treason to common sense in the very objects of common sense. Or that there was no trusting them, save through wide agreement, and that my separation from such agreement had brought me perilously far from the necessary trust, auxiliary to all sanity. I had not done well alone. I doubted whether anyone could. To be pushed upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt. Perhaps the war could teach me, by violence, what I had been unable to learn during those months in the room. Perhaps I could sound creation through other means. Perhaps. But things were now out of my hands. The next move was the world’s. I could not bring myself to regret it... This is my last civilian day... I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled. Hurray for regular hours! And for the supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation!

When I visited my father yesterday, I went upstairs to my old room. For a time after my marriage the maid had occupied it. It was unused now, and I found in it many of the objects I had kept around me ten years ago, before I left for school. There was a Persian print over the bed, of a woman dropping a flower on her interred lover - visible in his burial gown under the stones; a bookcase my mother had bought me; a crude water color of a pitcher and glass done by Bertha, some nearly forgotten girl. I sat in the rocking chair, feeling that my life was already long enough to contain nearly forgotten periods, a loose group of undifferentiated years. Recently, I had begun to feel old, and it occurred to me that I might be concerned with age merely because I might never attain any great age, and that there might be a mechanism in us that tried to give us all of life when there was danger of being cut off. And while I knew it was absurd for me to think of my "age," I had apparently come to a point where the perspectives of time appeared far more contracted than they had a short while ago. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of “irretrievable.” This rather ordinary and, in some ways mean, room, had for twelve years been a standard site, the bearded Persian under the round stones and the water color, fixtures of my youth. Ten years ago I was at school; and before that… It was suddenly given me to experience one of those one of those consummating glimpses that come to all of us periodically. The room, delusively, dwindled and became a tiny square, swiftly drawn back, myself and all objects in it growing smaller. This was not a mere visual trick. I understood it to be a revelation of the ephemeral agreements by which we live and pace ourselves. I looked around at the restored walls. This place which I avoided ordinarily, had great personal significance for me. But it was not here thirty years go. Birds flew through this space. It may be gone fifty years hence. Such reality, I thought, is actually very dangerous, very treacherous. It should not be trusted. And I rose rather unsteadily from the rocker, feeling that there was an element of treason to common sense in the very objects of common sense. Or that there was no trusting them, save through wide agreement, and that my separation from such agreement had brought me perilously far from the necessary trust, auxiliary to all sanity. I had not done well alone. I doubted whether anyone could/. To be pished upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt. Perhaps the war could teach me, by violence, what I had been unable to learn during those months in the room. Perhaps I could sound creation through other means. Perhaps. But things were now out of my hands. The next move was the world's. I could not bring myself to regret it... This is my last civilian day... I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled. Hurray for regular hours! And for the supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation!

When I visited my father yesterday, I went upstairs to my old room. For a time after my marriage the maid had occupied it. It was unused now, and I found in it many of the objects I had kept around me ten years ago, before I left for school. There was a Persian print over the bed, of a woman dropping a flower on her interred lover - visible in his burial gown under the stones; a bookcase my mother had bought me; a crude water color of a pitcher and glass done by Bertha, some nearly forgotten girl. I sat in the rocking chair, feeling that my life was already long enough to contain nearly forgotten periods, a loose group of undifferentiated years. Recently, I had begun to feel old, and it occurred to me that I might be concerned with age merely because I might never attain any great age, and that there might be a mechanism in us that tried to give us all of life when there was danger of being cut off. And while I knew it was absurd for me to think of my "age," I had apparently come to a point where the perspectives of time appeared far more contracted than they had a short while ago. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of “irretrievable.” This rather ordinary and, in some ways mean, room, had for twelve years been a standard site, the bearded Persian under the round stones and the water color, fixtures of my youth. Ten years ago I was at school; and before that… It was suddenly given me to experience one of those one of those consummating glimpses that come to all of us periodically. The room, delusively, dwindled and became a tiny square, swiftly drawn back, myself and all objects in it growing smaller. This was not a mere visual trick. I understood it to be a revelation of the ephemeral agreements by which we live and pace ourselves. I looked around at the restored walls. This place which I avoided ordinarily, had great personal significance for me. But nit was not here thirty years go. Birds flew through this space. It may be gone fifty years hence. Such reality, I thought, is actually very dangerous, very treacherous. It should not be trusted. And I rose rather unsteadily from the rocker, feeling that there was an element of treason to common sense in the very objects of common sense. Or that there was no trusting them, save through wide agreement, and that my separation from such agreement had brought me perilously far from the necessary trust, auxiliary to all sanity. I had not done well alone. I doubted whether anyone could/. To be pished upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt. Perhaps the war could teach me, by violence, what I had been unable to learn during those months in the room. Perhaps I could sound creation through other means. Perhaps. But things were now out of my hands. The next move was the world's. I could not bring myself to regret it... This is my last civilian day... I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled. Hurray for regular hours! And for the supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation!

It is in the heart that the mystery of spiritual conception takes place. This is not the physical heart but what the Sufis call the heart of hearts. The heart of hearts is the heart of the Self which is on the right side of the physical body. In the moment of spiritual conception a special energy is infused into this heart which makes it spin in a particular way. I once had a vision in which my heart was cut open with a knife, taken out and breathed upon—the dust was blown off—and then spun. My teacher did not interpret this inner happening but said that I would come to understand it. Years later I heard her say to someone else that once the heart has been spun in this way it remains spinning for the rest of that person’s incarnation. The divine energy of the Self vibrates at a higher frequency to our ordinary human self. Through the spinning of the heart, the higher consciousness of the Self is able to be integrated into the lower vehicles, into the denser dimensions of the human being. All the wayfarer’s spiritual work has been a preparation for this moment, and from now on the work will be to give birth to this seed of consciousness, to attune one’s waking consciousness to the higher vibrations of the Self that are now spinning within the heart. This is the gradual process of awakening to the consciousness of the heart, opening the eye of the heart through which the Beloved is able to experience His creation. Sufis are known as “a brotherhood of migrants who ‘keep watch’ on the world and for the world,” because through the open eye of His lovers’ hearts the Beloved keeps watch on the world. Through His lovers’ hearts humanity is kept attuned to the Beloved. Just as a single heart is spun when the individual is ready to contain the higher energy of the Self, so does this same process happen with a group. When the group has a central core bonded together in love then its collective heart, its central core of light, is spun. In order to help this process, groups of souls that have been bonded together in past lifetimes are forming specific groups. They hold the spiritual core of the group that allows many others to be included in this dynamic unfolding. The spinning hearts of the lovers of God are forming the map made of points of light which I referred to in the previous chapter. At this time His lovers are being positioned around the planet. Some have already been positioned. Some are moving to physical locations while others are having their hearts awakened to this hidden purpose. Slowly this map is being unfolded, and in certain important places lovers are forming clusters of points of light. Certain spiritual groups have been formed or are being formed to contain these clusters as dynamic centers of light. When this map of light around the world is fully unfolded it will be able to contain and transform the energy structure of the planet. It has the potential to be the bond that will enable the world soul, the anima mundi, to be impregnated with a higher consciousness. The hearts of His lovers form part of the hidden heart of the world. As this map is unfolding so their spinning hearts can open the heart of the world. At this moment in cosmic time the planet is being aligned with its inner source, allowing the world to be infused with a certain cosmic energy that can dramatically speed up the evolution of this planet. If the heart of the world opens, it can receive this frequency of cosmic energy and directly implant it into the hearts of people. This would alter human life more than we could imagine. It is to help in this opening of the heart that many old souls have incarnated at this particular time and are working together. (p. 36 - 38)

Reader's Digest (Reader's Digest USA) - Clip This Article on Location 56 | Added on Friday, May 16, 2014 12:06:55 AM Words of Lasting Interest Looking Out for The Lonely One teacher’s strategy to stop violence at its root BY GLENNON DOYLE MELTON  FROM MOMASTERY.COM PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN WINTERS A few weeks ago, I went into my son Chase’s class for tutoring. I’d e-mailed Chase’s teacher one evening and said, “Chase keeps telling me that this stuff you’re sending home is math—but I’m not sure I believe him. Help, please.” She e-mailed right back and said, “No problem! I can tutor Chase after school anytime.” And I said, “No, not him. Me. He gets it. Help me.” And that’s how I ended up standing at a chalkboard in an empty fifth-grade classroom while Chase’s teacher sat behind me, using a soothing voice to try to help me understand the “new way we teach long division.” Luckily for me, I didn’t have to unlearn much because I’d never really understood the “old way we taught long division.” It took me a solid hour to complete one problem, but I could tell that Chase’s teacher liked me anyway. She used to work with NASA, so obviously we have a whole lot in common. Afterward, we sat for a few minutes and talked about teaching children and what a sacred trust and responsibility it is. We agreed that subjects like math and reading are not the most important things that are learned in a classroom. We talked about shaping little hearts to become contributors to a larger community—and we discussed our mutual dream that those communities might be made up of individuals who are kind and brave above all. And then she told me this. Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her. And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who can’t think of anyone to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had a million friends last week and none this week? You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down—right away—who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying. As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children, I think this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold—the gold being those children who need a little help, who need adults to step in and teach them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside her eyeshot and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But, as she said, the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper. As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea, I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said. Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine. Good Lord. This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that all violence begins with disconnection. All

In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I have never read any good book that was not related intimately to at least a score of other books. It is true that in a measure a book gives to us what we take to it; and we can only take much out of it when we approach the group of ministering authors who alone make life both cheerful and endurable.

BIG-HEARTED New Yorkers would get a $100 state tax break for adopting a homeless pet under a proposed bill being championed by some lawmakers. City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-Queens) will introduce the resolution next week, urging state legislators to approve the tax credit after previous attempts to get it passed in Albany have failed to gain traction. "Encouraging New Yorkers with a tax credit to adopt pets is not only compassionate but would bring relief to our overburdened animal shelters and to animal lovers who want to adopt but can’t afford the initial costs," Ferreras said. Animal Care & Control of NYC took in more than 30,000 homeless dogs and cats last year. About 21,000 were taken by animal rescue groups and 6,100 were adopted from the shelter.

Father God, I want to be a person that others can trust when I make a promise. Let me examine my words to make sure I only give promises to others when I'm committed to fulfill what I've uttered. Truly, keeping promises reflects on my Christian witness. Convict me to be true to my words. Amen. HEART ACTION Practice integrity in all that you say and do. Work on making promises only when you are certain you will keep them. Become a woman that others can trust. Drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary. CHINESE PROVERB The LORD has done what He purposed; He has accomplished His word. -LAMENTATIONS 2:17 I often have an instinctive feeling that something isn't right, that I should do this or that, but I usually pass over this because peer pressure tells me my inner feelings should be ignored. The older I become, however, the more I realize that living from my heart has value. I don't want to get into the trap of following everyone else because it's the group thing to do. I want to live a life that is meaningful to me and my family. I want my decisions to be based on my Christian values. To help me make major decisions, I want to use these values, not what TV, Madison Avenue, or popular newsstand magazines tell me to do or think. In order to live intuitively one must have some quiet times to read and think. Hectic lives don't permit one to hear the heartbeat of the soul. When we are too busy we don't

PRAYER Father God, I thank You for providing a way so I can know where my tomorrow will be. Thank You for sending Jesus to pay the price on the cross for my sins. I'm so gladIsaid `Yes"as a young girl.!Amen. HEART ACTION If you haven't answered the tomorrow question, today might be the day to settle the most important question in your life. PERSONALIZED TEA PARTY In advance of a tea party, create a list of what makes each woman you have invited beautiful in your eyes. Use examples from that woman's life of how she demonstrates areas of beauty and grace. Share these with the group and encourage others to offer their words of honor as you lift up each person in attendance. Where there's tea there's hope.

Mr. Minasian informed me of the group's plan and asked whether I would cooperate in the creation of the play. I enthusiastically agreed. I wanted Selma to be famous, if only posthumously. For a year we spoke almost every week, about the town, the community, the war, Selma's lover for Leiser (my husband's cousin). I answered their questions, in German, and some of my statements were incorporated into the play. In march of 2001, I was told the the premiere would take place on April 21, in the Stadttheater Fürth, Studio auf dem Theater. The theater invited my husband and me to attend the premiere, all expenses paid! We were of course moved and were excited to have the opportunity to be there.

We can land on the "right" side of a controversy and keep that personified mystery of evil, called the devil, happy. So long as we cede the territory he is trying to occupy: that this moral concern deserves our attention more than all others, that one's position on this question determines one's belonging to or leaving a faith community. When we do this—and it is standard practice in many churches today—we stigmatize an entire group of people. We're not just singling "the issue" out. We are singling people out. This pleases the hater of humanity and grieves humanity's lover.

LAST DAYS’ LAWLESSNESS There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. . . . 2 Timothy 3:1–4 It’s certainly hard to argue we’re not living in the last days as described in the Bible. Everything in these verses matches up with our current circumstances; there’s a never-ending road of examples lately. Our culture, and Western civilization as a whole, has been declining for a long while—but things can look especially grim today. We do seem to live in evil times when evil is celebrated—whether it’s in the brazen rejection of the Gospel or in the unashamed brutality of terrorist groups like ISIS. A surprising number of our fellow Americans don’t like the word “evil.” They’re always voicing the need for “tolerance” or “understanding”—or what you and I would call “moral relativism.” But these same people sure are keen on trying to legislate “evil” away when it comes to issues like guns, as if gun control laws (that only the good guys will follow) are a solution rather than an added problem.

The spirit of hate, the anti-Christ, is contention, strife, fault-finding, lovers of self, lovers of praise. Those are the anti-Christ, and take possession of groups, masses, and show themselves even in the lives of men.30

Cemetery Nights V Wheel of memory, wheel of forgetting, bitter taste in the mouth--those who have been dead longest group together in the center of the graveyard facing inward. The sooner they become dust the better. They pick at their flesh and watch it crumble, they chip at their bones and watch them dissolve. Do they have memories? Just shadows in the mind like a hand passing between a candle and a wall. Those who have been dead a lesser time stand closer to the fence, but already they have started turning away. Maybe they still have some sadness. And what are their thoughts? Colors mostly, sunset, sunrise, a burning house, someone waving from the flames. Those who have recently died line up against the fence facing outward, watching the mailman, deliverymen, the children returning from school, listening to the church bells dealing out the hours of the living day. So arranged, the dead form a great spoked wheel-- such is the fiery wheel that rolls through heaven. For the rats, nothing is more ridiculous than the recently dead as they press against the railing with their arms stuck between the bars. Occassionally, one sees a friend, even a loved one. Then what a shouting takes place as the dead tries to catch the eye of the living. One actually sees his wife waiting for a bus and reaches out so close that he nearly touches her yellow hair. During life they were great lovers. Maybe he should throw a finger at her, something to attract her attention. Like a scarecrow in a stiff wind, the dead husband waves his arms. Is she aware of anything? Perhaps a slight breeze on an otherwise still day, perhaps a smell of earth. And what does she remember? Sometimes, when she sits in his favorite chair or drinks a wine that he liked, she will recall his face but much faded, like a favorite dress washed too often. And her husband, what does he think? As a piece of crumpled paper burns within a fire, so the thought of her burns within his brain. And where is she going? These days she has taken a new lover and she's going to his apartment. Even as she waits, she sees herself sitting on his bed as he unfastens the buttons of her blouse. He will cup her breasts in his hands. A sudden breeze will invade the room, making the dust motes dance and sparkle as if each bright spot were a single sharp eyed intelligence, as if the vast legion of the dead had come with their unbearable jumble of envy and regret to watch the man as he drops his head presses his mouth to the erect nipple.

Europe was gripped by nationalist movements in the late nineteenth century, and the intellectual ferment inevitably affected the Jews. Soon a number of writers and intellectuals were advocating the re-creation of the Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Two groups formed to bring Jews back to Palestine, one called the “Lovers of Zion” and the other the Bilu, a Hebrew acronym from the biblical verse “O House of Jacob, come and let us go!” With Jews leaving Mother Russia in droves, these movements now had their recruits. They would send young Jews to Palestine, buy land, and have them settle it. They had high hopes, as the Bilu manifesto made clear.

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn’t just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. Cora was right—we had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, as well as the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers.

I leave my hotel around two. Without thinking, I go in the direction of the Place du Vieux Marché. It is a truly vast square, bordered entirely by cafés, restaurants and luxury shops. It's here that Joan of Arc was burnt more than five hundred years ago. To commemorate the event they've piled up a load of weirdly curved concrete slabs, half stuck in the ground, which turn out on closer inspection to be a church. There are also embryonic lawns, flowerbeds, and some ramps which seem destined for lovers of skateboarding - unless it be for the cars of the disabled, it's hard to tell. But the complexity of the place does not end here: there are also shops in the middle of the square, under a sort of concrete rotunda, as well as an edifice which looks like a bus station. I settle myself on one of the concrete slabs, determined to get to the bottom of things. It seems highly likely that this square is the heart, the central nucleus of the town. Just what game is being played here exactly? I observe right away that people generally go around in bands, or in little groups of between two and six individuals. No one group is exactly the same as another, it appears to me. Obviously they resemble each other, they resemble each other enormously, but this resemblance could not be called being the same. It's as if they'd elected to embody the antagonism which necessarily goes with any kind of individuation by adopting slightly different behavior patterns, ways of moving around, formulas for regrouping. Next I notice that all these people seem satisfied with themselves and the world; it's astonishing, even a little frightening. They quietly saunter around, this one displaying a quizzical smile, that one a moronic look. Some of the youngsters are dressed in leather jackets with slogans borrowed from the more primitive kind of hard rock; you can read phrases on their backs like Kill them all! or Fuck and destroy! ; but all commune in the certainty of passing an agreeable afternoon devoted primarily to consumerism, and thus to contributing to the consolidation of their being. I note, lastly, that I feel different from them, without however being able to define the nature of this difference.

We live in a time when everyone must bear arms on behalf of something on the outside of them that moves on the inside of their hearts. We no longer live in an era where peace was equivalent to detachment. Peace thanks to detachment is just an unwillingness to commit to being alive. That era is over. Peace by means of invalidation is over. Peace through the validation of what is essential to others, is the only way through this now. I validate you, you validate me, we validate each other, we are attached to each other. Peace through the acknowledgement of what is human. This is the way forward. "Invalidation" is an act of tyranny that is carried out daily at the personal level, between friends, family, lovers, co-workers, etc. It is the easiest and most prevalent form of "little tyrannies" that are enacted upon, and are carried out every day. Invalidating another's experience, feeling, thought, action, by making it seem irrelevant or small, is cowardice, and at the root of it is a fear of living life beyond your own borders. We talk about national borders all the time, when in reality, it's the borders that we place between ourselves and the people close to us, that take profound effect in human lives, on the daily. There is even a spiritual movement in the New Age group that focuses so much on putting up borders, that these borders are simply passive aggressive behaviours designed to pamper a person in their own preconceived or misconceived bubbles. The borders are old and that era is over. Peace in this new era is not about sitting on top of a rock in alienation to gain a selfish version of peace. Peace, in our new era now, is about the realisation that peace for all is peace for one! We now bear arms for battles happening beyond our own little worlds because this is what it means to be the new human.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies – all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

As he and Beth hit the stairs, he called out to his brothers, “Thanks for having my back once again.” The group stopped and turned to face him. After a beat of silence, they formed a half circle around the foot of the grand staircase, each making a thick fist with his weapon hand. With a great whoop! of a war cry, they went down on their right knee and slammed their heavy knuckles into the mosaic floor. The sound was thunder and bass drums and bomb explosions, ricocheting outward, filling all the rooms of the mansion. Wrath stared at them, seeing their heads bent, their broad backs curled, their powerful arms planted. They had each gone to that meeting prepared to take a bullet for him, and that would ever be true. Behind Tohr’s smaller form, Lassiter, the fallen angel, stood with a straight spine, but he wasn’t cracking any jokes at this reaffirmation of allegiance. Instead, he was back to staring at the damn ceiling. Wrath glanced up at the mural of warriors silhouetted against a blue sky and could see nothing much of the pictures that he’d been told were there. Getting back with the program, he said in the Old Language, “No stronger allies, no greater friends, no better fighters of honor could a king behold than these assembled afore me, mine brothers, mine blood.” A rolling growl of ascent lifted as the warriors got to their feet again, and Wrath nodded to each one of them. He had no more words to offer as his throat had abruptly choked, but they didn’t seem to need anything else. They stared at him with respect and gratitude and purpose, and he accepted their enormous gifts with grave appreciation and resolve. This was the ages-old covenant between king and subjects, the pledges on both sides made with the heart and carried out by the sharp mind and the strong body. “God, I love you guys,” Beth said. There was a lot of deep laughter, and then Hollywood said, “You want us to stab the floor for you again? Fists are for kings, but the queen gets the daggers.” “I wouldn’t want you to take chips out of this beautiful floor. Thank you, though.” “Say the word and it’s nothing but rubble.” Beth laughed. “Be still, my heart.” The Brothers came over and kissed the Saturnine Ruby that rode on her finger, and as each paid his honor, she gave him a gentle stroke of the hair. Except for Zsadist, who she smiled tenderly at. “Excuse us, boys,” Wrath said. “Little quiet time, feel me?” There was a ripple of male approval, which Beth took in stride—and with a blush—and then it was time for some privacy.

General Raikes watched the antics of the nobles with disdainful interest, like a man studying a group of monkeys at play.

What’s wrong, Mom?” Anna asked. Mom looked like she’d been crying, but she said, “Nothing, sweetie.” “Who is Dad talking to?” I asked. I knew she’d protect us from whatever was happening, so I went straight for facts. If I gathered enough facts I could figure it out on my own. “Some friends of his from work.” “Uncle Jack?” I asked. Jack wasn’t an uncle but we called him that. He was my dad’s foreman in the roofing business. “No, honey. From the Army. His old work.” It was September 11, 2001, and the call he’d made was to his commanding officer in the Reserve. I’d figure that out later. And I’d learn that he’d done ROTC through college, then served with the Fifth Special Forces Group in Desert Storm. I’d learn that his shoulder injury had come from shrapnel embedded in his rotator cuff. I’d learn, just from watching him, from listening to him talk to his buddies, about Ranger School. Jump school. The Ranger Battalions. The Scroll. The Creed. That Rangers lead the way. But I didn’t know any of that then. I knew my dad as a roofer. A fisherman. A lover of Pearl Jam and Giants baseball. He was the guy who launched me over the waves on the beach, and who bench-pressed Anna because it made her giggle in a way that nothing else did. He was my mom’s best friend, with some additional elements like kissing that seemed pretty gross because, you know, I was six. But I learned something new about him that morning. I learned that when bad things happened, my dad stepped forward first. I learned he was a hero. A real one. And that I wanted to be like him

To Loretta’s dismay, the closer they got to her home, the less anxious she was to get there. The time passed too quickly. At dust the next day they stopped for the night at the base of Whiskey Mountain. During the trip, the men had collected slender willow limbs, and they now sat in small groups to make lances, each of which was marked with the maker’s feathers. Loretta was at first alarmed, but after Hunter assured her they had no intention of making war at her farm, she relaxed and sat beside him to watch. His long, lean fingers fascinated her--graceful, yet leathery and strong. She recalled how they felt against her skin, warm and feather light, capable of inflicting pain yet always gentle. A tingling sensation crawled up her throat. She noticed that each man’s feathers were painted differently. “What do your feathers say?” “They have my mark. And tell a little bit my life song.” His full lower lip quirked in a grin. “My marks say I am a fine fellow--a good lover, a good hunter, with a mighty arm to shield a little yellow-hair.” She hugged her knees and grinned back at him. “I bet your marks say you’re a fierce warrior, and yellow-hairs should beware.

Ultimately, the justification for the cartoon contest in Garland, as well as for the quixotic idea of writing a breezy book about a group devoted to mass murder, rape, slavery, and other far-from-light-hearted topics, is this: in the face of evil, especially evil that demands respect and obeisance at the point of a gun, mockery is not only justified, but required. Thomas More said, “The devil . . . the proud spirit . . . cannot endure to be mocked.” But the lovers of life, and of humanity, and of freedom must mock humorless evil—and its enablers in our willfully blind intelligentsia and political leadership—for not to do so would be to leave unpunctured its pride, its hubris, its arrogance, its hatred of all that is good, decent, vibrant, and alive. It would be to grant evil the victory, to concede that death will overcome life.

ease. He walked under a bright summer sky, over sunlit fields and through little groves that danced and whispered in the wind. The houses of men were scattered here and there, the houses which practically took care of themselves; over beyond the horizon was one of the giant, almost automatic food factories; a few self-piloting carplanes went quietly overhead. Humans were in sight, sun-browned men and their women and children going about their various errands with loose bright garments floating in the breeze. A few seemed to be at work, there was a colorist experimenting with a new chromatic harmony, a composer sitting on his verandah striking notes out of an omniplayer, a group of engineers in a transparent-walled laboratory testing some mechanisms. But with the standard work period what it was these days, most were engaged in recreation. A picnic, a dance under trees, a concert, a pair of lovers, a group of children in one of the immemorially ancient games of their age-group, an old man happily en-hammocked with a book and a bottle of beer— the human race was taking it easy.

Your Soul Mates are deeply connected to your Soul, and your Twin Flame. Twin Flames are two sides of the same Soul. But nonetheless all are connected to your Soul Group. 

. . . Wasted. . . . Breakfast with the Great Judge was uneventful. They did not talk of the Jorgian war. Shortly after breakfast Marin winged away from the Judge’s Court. As he removed the Marin disguise from the face and body of Wade Trask, he could mentally list only two things that had occurred during his visit. The Great Judge had listened to his plea on behalf of Wade Trask. And Delindy had secretly come to him to arrange the details of her going with him to Asia. It seemed to him, who could leave nothing to chance, that either event could have been the main reason for his being invited to Court. He could well imagine that the conversation of the previous evening had been promoted by the Great Judge himself, and not by Edmund Slater. And Delindy’s coming to him had three possible explanations. On the one hand the Great Judge might be coolly using his own mistress to spy on her former lover, clearly confident that she would be loyal to the ruler of a planet rather than to some underling. On the other hand, Delindy herself might be a Jorgian spy using her body, first to ensnare a Group Master, and then the dictator, for her own country. The third possibility was that she loved David Marin. There was actually, Marin realized, a fourth consideration that he could have. She was a pawn of the Brain, unconsciously doing that mechanical being’s work and consciously just being whatever she normally was. Uneasily, Marin put that thought away from him. Not that it didn’t have substance or meaning. It was simply too bizarre and out of his control.

To build a fire, you need more wood. To build a team, you need more people.

In the Declaration of Independence, freedom comes right after equality. For Reagan and the narrative of Free America, it meant freedom from government and bureaucrats. It meant the freedom to run a business without regulation, to pay workers whatever wage the market would bear, to break a union, to pass all your wealth on to your children, to buy out an ailing company with debt and strip it for assets, to own seven houses—or to go homeless. But a freedom that gets rid of all obstructions is impoverished, and it degrades people. Real freedom is closer to the opposite of breaking loose. It means growing up, and acquiring the ability to participate fully in political and economic life. The obstructions that block this ability are the ones that need to be removed. Some are external: institutions and social conditions. Others are embedded in your character and get in the way of governing yourself, thinking for yourself, and even knowing what is true. These obstructions crush the individuality that freedom lovers cherish, making them conformist, submissive, a group of people all shouting the same thing—easy marks for a demagogue.

Our group date is cut short again. This is most unfortunate, and I’m sorry for the discomfort this is causing you.” I addressed the contestants. Whoever this assassin was, he was ruining my competition! All I wanted was to spend time with these astounding young men, and sort out my heart’s true desire; not deal with centaurs, my parents abandoning me, the threat of my crown being given to my brother, or a lover trying to kill me! - Royal Matchmaking Competition: Princess Qloey

I am an independent painter and I only live from the sale of my works of art. I really care about this. I do not want to be part of one group or another, because I understand not to be the stake of a game of interests that considers the artist a product and not his creations as a real measure of talent and inspiration. That's why I chose to decline to participate in a classic painting exhibition, and to present my works in the virtual space - the place where true art lovers can be found. The art must remain for all, enjoying and illuminating the spirit of every human being, it is the embodiment of unrestrained freedom. Art must breathe through our desires, our pleasures and our common fantasies. That is why I continue to visually express what I feel most authentic in people - the intimate emotion.

Doing shadow-work means peering into the dark corners of our minds in which secret shames lie hidden and violent voices are silenced. Doing shadow-work means asking ourselves to examine closely and honestly what it is about a particular individual that irritates us or repels us; what it is about a racial or religious group that horrifies or captivates us; and what it is about a lover that charms us and leads us to idealize him or her. Doing shadow-work means making a gentleman’s agreement with one’s self to engage in an internal conversation that can, at some time down the road, result in an authentic self-acceptance and a real compassion for others.

Unlike the United Nations, the U.S. State Department doesn’t restrict its definition to specific named acts: ““Terrorism is premeditated, politically motivated violence, perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine state agents.”” Some of us might find this a fairly workable description of rape, battery, child abuse, homophobia, sexual harassment, economic exploitation, educational discrimination, and religious manipulation. We must be confused.

The cathexis of male identity, fascistic politics, woman-hatred, violence, and religious institutions is an infamous alliance. In the 1930s, the German National Socialists—the Nazis—agitated against employed women, contraception and abortion, and homosexuality, and revived the ideal of Kinder, Kirche, Kiiche (children, church, and kitchen) for German womanhood. A working coalition of misogyny between the Nazi party and the religious establishment served long enough for Hitler to consolidate his power. Feminist groups and publications were closed down, as were contraception clinics. In 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor, feminists, along with “non-Aryans,” were forced out of their jobs in teaching and other public positions. Women were barred from political office and from the judicial bench. In 1934, abortion was banned and made a criminal offense against the State, punishable by hard labor or the death penalty.

It always happens when women become at last the subject and not the object: in order to define what women, or a group of women, or an individual woman are/is, first one must define what this subject is not. So thorough is the stereotyping, the perception of female as Other, the deliberate misinterpretation of motive, that the lies must be peeled away before a female reality can even be approached.

I am one of seven women—three of us white—in the office of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality); at a joint meeting with SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commit- tee). More than twenty men, black and white, are present, run- ning the meeting. Three civil-rights workers—one black man and two white men—have disappeared in Mississippi, and the groups have met over this crisis. (The lynched bodies of the three men—James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—are later found, tortured to death.) Meanwhile, the FBI, local police, and the National Guard have been dredging lakes and rivers in search of the bodies. During the search, the mutilated parts of an estimated seventeen different human bodies are found. All of us in the New York office are in a state of shock. As word filters in about the. difficulty of identifying mutilated bodies long decomposed, we also learn that all but one of the unidentified bodies are female. A male CORE leader mutters, in a state of fury, ““There’s been a whole goddamned lynching we never even knew about. There’s been some brother disappeared who never even got reported.” My brain goes spinning. Have I heard correctly? Did he mean what I think he meant? If so, is it my racism showing itself in that I am appalled? Finally, I hazard a tentative question. Why one lynching? What about the sixteen unidentified female bodies? What about - Absolute silence. The men in the room, black and white, stare at me. The women in the room, black and white, stare at the floor. Then the answer comes, in a tone of impatience, as if I were politically retarded. "Those were obviously sex murders. Those weren't political." I fall silent.

Buckingham, Nicks’s former lover and a bandmate of hers since the late ’60s, when both were members of a Bay Area group called Fritz, admits to having always considered her songs “a little flaky.” But, “there’s obviously something about her material that people relate to. She’s always been a little bit hard for me to take seriously, because I really appreciate a beat, having been weaned on Elvis and Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

Love! How many legends were organized for it? It was said that it is the most mysterious human feeling that pushes us to do things we are not ready for and heedless of us. Despite the reality, and the difficulties, we do the impossible, and in the name of love, we do miracles. Just legends but the truth is that history did not mention that any miracle has happened thanks to love. Myths, of which there is no use but our consolation, and the justification of our blind rush behind unjustified, incomprehensible feelings, to do what we were not ready to do, and then we pay the price with a reassuring conscience, and with a comfortable mind, in the name of love. If we analyze these feelings, love, anger, hate, tranquility, fear, we will find that they are another face of pain, just chemical reactions inside our bodies, and hormones controlled by our mind, it decides when to kindle the fire of love in us, and when to make hate blind us. If you know how to motivate the mind to produce the hormone needed to produce the desired emotions, then you do not have to talk about anything anymore. It is all your emotions, which are yours. This inevitably makes human feelings subject to causation in the universe, unless our feelings are from another world, not causal. Therefore, the most magical words remain, those that come out of the mouth of a lover describing his love for his lover, “I love you without reason.” This is the impossibility desired, and in the subconscious, these words have charm and glamour, and the tongue of the lover says, “My love for you is not from this causal world, neither the color of your hair, nor your eyes, nor your body, nor your sweet voice, nor your way of speaking, nor anything that you possess is a reason why I love you, because my love for you is not causal, does not belong to this world.” A lie loved by the mind of the lovers, a legend among the millions which says, that nothing in this world can anticipate the feelings and moods of human beings before they occur, and more precisely, the private feelings and fluctuations, of an individual, to be precise, and not just of a large group of people, the more we try to customize it, the more difficult it becomes. And where the indicators of the collective mind, the demagogue, can give us an idea of the general direction and the future fluctuations of a society or group of people, not because of a weakness in the lines of defense of feelings, but rather because we know that the mob, the collective mind, and the herd, will force many to follow it, even if it violates what they feel, what they want at their core. The mind is designed for survival, and you know that survival’s chances are stronger with the stronger group, the more number, it will secrete all the necessary hormones, to force you to follow the herd. However, the feelings assigned to a particular person remain an impossible task, so many people are able to deceive each other by showing signs of expected trends and fluctuations that contradict the reality of what they feel. Humans and scientists have treated it as something unpredictable, coming from another world, a curse on science, as if it were a whiff of a magical spell cast on us from the immemorial. But in fact, emotions are causal, and every cause has a causative. Like everything else in this world, the laws of chaos and randomness apply to them. They can be accurately predicted, formulated into mathematical equations, and even manipulated. All it takes is to have something that contains all the cosmic events, a number we did not imagine, starting with the flutter of a butterfly, a breath of air, temperatures across the universe, a word a man says to his son, a donkey’s kick, a rabbit’s jump, and ending with the movement of stars and planets, and cosmic explosions, and beyond, and able to deal with them, and with the hierarchical possibilities of their occurrence.

Mystery men with strange persuasive powers, sometimes good but more often evil, are described and discussed in many books with no UFO or religious orientation. A dark gentleman in a cloak and hood is supposed to have handed Thomas Jefferson the design for the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States (you will find this on a dollar bill). Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and many others are supposed to have had enigmatic meetings with these odd personages. These stories turn up in such unexpected places as Madame Du Barry’s memoirs. She claimed repeated encounters with a strange young man who would approach her suddenly on the street and give her startling prophecies about herself. He pointedly told her that the last time she would see him would serve as an omen for a sudden reversal of her fortunes. Sure enough, on April 27, 1774, as she and her ailing lover, King Louis XV, were heading for the palace of Versailles, the youthful mystery man appeared one final time. “I mechanically directed my eyes toward the iron gate leading to the garden,” she wrote. “I felt my face drained of blood as a cry of horror escaped my lips. For, leaning against the gate was that singular being.” The coach was halted, and three men searched the area thoroughly but could find no trace of him. He had vanished into thin air. Soon afterward Madame Du Barry’s illustrious career in the royal courts ended, and she went into exile. Malcolm X, the late leader of a black militant group, reported a classic experience with a paraphysical “man in black” in his autobiography. He was serving a prison sentence at the time, and the entity materialized in his prison cell: "As I lay on my bed, I suddenly became aware of a man sitting beside me in my chair. He had on a dark suit, I remember. I could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at. He wasn’t black, and he wasn’t white. He was light-brown-skinned, an Asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily black hair. I looked right into his face. I didn’t get frightened. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I couldn’t move, I didn’t speak, and he didn’t. I couldn’t place him racially—other than I knew he was a non-European. I had no idea whatsoever who he was. He just sat there. Then, as suddenly as he had come, he was gone.

The perfectionist is a frightened, competitive individual who wants always to win and be secure. He mistakenly believes that he is a lover of the truth for its own sake. But the reality is that he only wants to be above criticism and, therefore, superior to those who are less perfect. He is constantly comparing himself with others. He feels exposed to danger if any error is allowed to creep into his own activity. He is seldom aware of his hostile downgrading of those whom he regards as less perfect than he; he belittles their standards and their personal value in order to exalt his own. The perfectionist is a faultfinder, and nothing is ever good enough for him. He disrupts situations by his belittling of others and disturbs cooperation in a group by trying to exalt and impose his standards on them. He sees only the hole in the doughnut and insists on others condemning it along with him. The perfectionist loves to collect and tabulate evidence against others to prove their inferiority as human beings and thus put himself in a clear light of superiority. He is proud of his ability to find the Achilles heel and the imperfections of other people-to expose them. Perfectionism is a side-show activity which destroys the spontaneity and creative power he might otherwise bring to the solution of his own problems. He flees from reality into a search for ideal solutions and thus isolates himself from effective contact with confronting problems; he blinds and deafens himself to the What Is in his illusions of What Should Be.

Celeste had a look on her face like she was trying to remember something, then she snapped her fingers. “Yeah! I bet they’re from Canne—they had a big vote there to make the crab their city animal. It lost to the armadillo though. Anyway, there’s a huge group of crab lovers from there.

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Following the Beatles, who incidentally were put together by the Tavistock Institute, came other "Made in England" rock groups, who, like the Beatles, had Theo Adorno write their cult lyrics and compose all the "music." I hate to use these beautiful words in the context of "Beatlemania"; it reminds me of how wrongly the word "lover" is used when referring to the filthy interaction between two homosexuals writhing in pigswill. To call "rock" music, is an insult, likewise the language used in "rock lyrics.

When we give up on teaching (and, therefore, on those we need to teach), we tend to manoeuvre around the objects of our despair. We tell them their work is OK, but silently redo it with other colleagues. We set up secret side groups. It’s meant to be a collaboration between twenty equals. But we go out and hire two external consultants. It sounds Machiavellian – but it’s merely the outcome of a very nervous personality with low faith in others and in the chances of working through problems. In their personal lives, such types might be married but seek a lover: for they have areas of disappointment and anger they have never found ways of discussing – and it seemed better to steer around the conflict and take a lover to soak up some of the disappointment.

I can’t think of a greater symbol of hope than a person who’s willing to drag themselves out of bed and sing at the top of their lungs to a group of strangers trapped on a train. That tenacity should be rewarded.

Connection to Others (Lifetraps: Emotional Deprivation and Social Exclusion) To develop a sense of connection, we need love, attention, empathy, respect, affection, understanding, and guidance. We need these things from both our family and peers. There are two forms of connection to others. The first involves intimacy. Usually, intimate relationships are those with family, lovers, and very good friends. They are our closest emotional ties. In our most intimate relationships, we feel the kind of connection that one feels with a mother or father. The second form involves our social connections. This is a sense of belonging, of fitting into the larger social world. Social relationships are those with circles of friends and with groups in the community. Connection problems can be subtle. You can look like you fit in perfectly well. You might have a family, loved ones, or be part of the community. Yet, deep down you feel disconnected. You feel alone, and long for a kind of relationships that you do not have. Only someone astute would notice that you are not really connecting with the people around you. You keep people at a little bit of a distance. You do not let anyone come too close. Or your problems may be more extreme. You be a loner – a person who has always been alone. If you have connection problems, then loneliness is an issue for you. You may feel that no one really knows you deeply and cares about you (the Emotional Deprivation lifetrap). Or you may feel isolated from the world, that you do not fit in anywhere (the Social Exclusion lifetrap). It is a feeling of emptiness – a hunger for connection.

The commanding officer at Camp Upton in New York, General F. Franklin Bell, took it upon himself to quell an escalating dispute between a group of black soldiers and a regiment of white Southern servicemen who had attempted to remove the black soldiers from a recreational facility. General Bell dismissed all the soldiers except the Southern white officers. “Now, gentlemen,” he said to them, “I am not what you would call ‘a Negro lover.’ I have seen service in Texas and elsewhere in the South.” The fact was, however, that the Southern whites had “started this trouble. I don’t want any explanation. These colored men did not start it. It doesn’t matter how your men feel about these colored men. They are United States soldiers. They must and shall be treated as such. If you can’t take care of your men, I can take care of you.” If the Southerners instigated another racial incident, Bell assured them, “you will be tried, not by a Texas jury but by General Bell, and not one of you will leave this camp for overseas.”16 After Bell delivered this message to the white officers on his base, Camp Upton quickly developed what one contemporary historian called “the finest atmosphere surrounding Negro soldiers in America,” which was due primarily to “the high stand and impartial attitude taken by the late Gen. Franklin Bell, commander.

In late 1985, the Reagan White House blocked the use of CDC money for education, leaving the US behind other Western nations in telling its citizens how to avoid contracting the virus. Many Americans still thought you could get AIDS from a toilet seat or a glass of water. According to one poll, the majority of Americans supported quarantining AIDS patients. This heightened awareness set off waves of anxiety across the country, which was often express through jokes (Q: What do you call Rock Hudson in a wheelchair? A: Roll-AIDS!) and violence. Between the years 1985 and 1986, anti-gay violence increased by 42 percent in the US. Even in San Francisco, where Greyhound buses still dropped off gay men and women taking refuge from the prejudice of their hometowns, carloads of teenagers would drive through the Castro looking for targets. In December 1985, a group of teenagers, shouting “diseased faggot” and “you’re killing us all,” dragged a man named David Johnson from his car in a San Francisco parking lot. While his lover looked on in horror, the teenagers kicked and beat Johnson with their skateboards, breaking three of his ribs, bruising his kidneys, an gashing his face and neck with deep fingernail scratches.

Rene is my Friday night girl. She is also one of my harem; A group of women that I affectionately refer to my sladies (his last name is Slade). There are eight girls I see regulary. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer a certain level intimacy between lovers: the kind of passionate closeness that can only be built through repeated, non exclusive fornication.

Andy remained seated. I chirped, “Sir, please tell me the reason for your visit. My guardian is fully aware of your proposal.” Struck by my candidness, Ozwalt stammered, “Very well, I will tell you the reason I’m here,” he raised his voice in displeasure. “Your counterproposal is deplorable!” My lover remarked aggressively, “What’s deplorable about Young wishing to be kept in the style he is accustomed to?” The Englishman exclaimed, “He’s not even of age to drive, and he wants a Lamborghini or a Ferrari? What is he thinking?!” “You offered him a city car,” my Valet countered. “He has every right to ask for what he desires.” The man repudiated defensively, “I offered him a city car upon his coming of age to drive, not before!” He was seething with anger. “Atop this, he demands a luxury penthouse in Mayfair or Park Lane, not to mention the live-in personal tutor! Is he insane? Most adults wouldn’t be able to afford a luxury flat and experienced educator, let alone an adolescent who is barely out of his teens.” “Sir, if you do not have the financial capabilities to accommodate the boy’s expectations, there are others who are perfectly capable of doing so,” my chaperone asserted. “Andy! Are you telling me that the lad has other well-endowed suitors willing to pay for such frivolousness?” My lover and I sniggered at the Englishman’s comment, but we managed to suppress our mirth. My guardian answered solemnly, “That, Sir, is none of your concern. I presume you’re here to discuss Young’s counterproposal, not the proposals of his other suitors.” He was taken aback by my mentor’s forthrightness. He raised his voice in retaliation. “I’m here to talk to Young. I would like Young to speak for himself.” I spoke unrelentingly, “I have asked Andy to negotiate on my behalf. I have heard everything he has said and challenge none of it. If my terms are not met, I’m afraid our arrangement is over. There is no further need for discussion.” By now, Ozwalt was on fire. He waved his fist at me and shouted, “You rapacious whore! You’re nothing but a self-indulgent sybaritic slut from a third-world country!” Before he could continue lambasting me with further insults, Wilhem entered. “What’s going on here?” my big-brother questioned. Mossey resumed berating my integrity, calling me a barrage of repugnant names while my chaperones carted him off the campus grounds to his waiting chauffeur and Bentley. Groups of students stood gaping at the wild man, speculating about the nature of the ruckus they were witnessing.

I’m not going to group your father in with all men, Patrick, but Eve had a strange power. She evoked vibrant sexual attraction. Few men, according to her diary, could resist her.” “That might have been her opinion of herself, but it’s rude of you to think that about my father.

There you are wrong … I know love not lust. When I love, it is done with my soul involved. As for loners, there are two worlds of loners. One, those who are alone and confused and get into evil; and two, those who are alone and productive. The latter group I belong to. I need to be away from the crowd, to think and find solutions to nagging problems around me. Being on my own enables me to think and see clearly the solutions to the many problems plaguing our world. I wish everyone could have some quality time to themselves and this world in no time would be a better place for all to live in.