Growing Through The Cracks Quotes

I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.

believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it. I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting. The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it. I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look. Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted. Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.

people used to tell me that i had beautiful hands told me so often, in fact, that one day i started to believe them until i asked my photographer father, “hey daddy could i be a hand model” to which he said no way, i dont remember the reason he gave me and i wouldve been upset, but there were far too many stuffed animals to hold too many homework assignment to write, too many boys to wave at too many years to grow, we used to have a game, my dad and i about holding hands cus we held hands everywhere, and every time either he or i would whisper a great big number to the other, pretending that we were keeping track of how many times we had held hands that we were sure, this one had to be 8 million 2 thousand 7 hundred and fifty three. hands learn more than minds do, hands learn how to hold other hands, how to grip pencils and mold poetry, how to tickle pianos and dribble a basketball, and grip the handles of a bicycle how to hold old people, and touch babies , i love hands like i love people, they're the maps and compasses in which we navigate our way through life, some people read palms to tell your future, but i read hands to tell your past, each scar marks the story worth telling, each calloused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory, now ive seen middle eastern hands clenched in middle eastern fists pounding against each other like war drums, each country sees theyre fists as warriors and others as enemies. even if fists alone are only hands. but this is not about politics, no hands arent about politics, this is a poem about love, and fingers. fingers interlock like a beautiful zipper of prayer. one time i grabbed my dads hands so that our fingers interlocked perfectly but he changed positions, saying no that hand hold is for your mom. kids high five, but grown ups, we learn how to shake hands, you need a firm hand shake,but dont hold on too tight, but dont let go too soon, but dont hold down for too long, but hands are not about politics, when did it become so complicated. i always thought its simple. the other day my dad looked at my hands, as if seeing them for the first time, and with laughter behind his eye lids, with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster, he said you know you got nice hands, you could’ve been a hand model, and before the laughter can escape me, i shake my head at him, and squeeze his hand, 8 million 2 thousand 7hundred and fifty four.

You’re like that single wild flower that grows from the crack in the pavement: miraculous growth with no water source or fertile soil. A person walking by would step around that flower to avoid crushing it. It’s not like the field of wild flowers you tromp through carelessly, crushing them under your feet, knowing that the next day will bring a hundred more.

I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without even realizing it.

I leaned against my door, struggling to catch my breath, and thought that maybe hell wasn't a place at all, but a thing. A contagious thing. A thing that could creep up the steps, seep through the crack under my door, grow horns and sprout fire - smelling faintly like sulfur. A thing that could sink its tendrils inside and take root, coloring everything gray and distorting a smile into a sneer. And while i got dressed for the play, swatted at my back and kept running my hands over my stomach because I could feel it, I swear, I could feel it reaching for me, trying to grab hold.

It is the devil's greatest triumph when he can deprive us of the joy of the Spirit. He carries fine dust with him in little boxes and scatters it through the cracks in our conscience in order to dim the soul's pure impulses and its luster. But the joy that fills the heart of the spiritual person destroys the deadly poison of the serpent. But if any are gloomy and think that they are abandoned in their sorrow, gloominess will continuously tear at them or else they will waste away in empty diversions. When gloominess takes root, evil grows. If it is not dissolved by tears, permanent damage is done.

It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, it’s happening. Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily. You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth. You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later. Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, you’re starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. They’re the ones that are holding your twenties hostage. Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. You’ve already spent enough time feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and you’re unable to hold on to anything. I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it. You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesn’t happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it. Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today? We shall see.

Every crack is also an opening. When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped. Eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world. Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. In that moment—growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking—the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn't die, but falls into the world.

Father Forgive Us For Livin’ Why All My Homies Stuck In Prison? Barely Breathin’ Believin That The World Is A Prison, It’s Like A Ghetto We Could Neva Leave… A Broken Rose, Trying to Bloom Through The Cracks Of The Concrete, So Many Otha Things For Us To See, Things To Be, Our History so Full Of Tragedy And Misery, To All My Homies Neva Made It Home, The Dead Peers I Shed Tatooed Tears For When I’m Alone, Picture Us Inside A Ghetto Heaven, A Place To Rest, Findin’ Peace Through This Land Of Stress, In My Chest I Feel Pain, Come In Sudden Storms, Life Full Of Rain In This Game Watch For landstorms, Our Unborn, Neva Gotta Grow Neva Gotta See What’s Next, In This World Full Of Countless Threats, I Beg God To Make A Way For Our Ghetto Kids To Breathe Show A Sign Make Us All Believe, Coz I Ain’t Mad At Cha

You ever notice how sometimes, in the middle of July, right downtown, you'll see a flower poking up through a crack in the asphalt. And you think, What a stupid place to set down roots. It'll get run over, or it'll dry up and blow away. But it hangs on, and it grows, and it blooms. Somehow, against the odds, it finds what it needs and it makes that place better for being there.

The Girl She Was She doesn't feel like herself. Not anymore. she was different once. Now she is like a watered-down version, pale and thin. She slips through the cracks unnoticed. She fades into the background, afraid of saying the wrong thing. She grows sharp edges and wont let anyone get close to her. She doesn't know how she came to be like this, how she ended up here. she only remembers the way she used to be—wild and reckless. Bold and unapologetic.

You growing up to be who you are is like a flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk.

I looked back at the vine growing through the crack in the path and wondered if I could take a chance like it had and change the course of my life.

Like a favorite song, old dreams keep on playing in my mind They've waited for so long, for their time to finally arrive I do believe now's the time, I've gone years and years without really living Minding squeaky wheels just giving and giving And dreaming, Like wildflowers growing through sidewalk cracks The weight of the world makes 'em change their tracks To find, the sun, and shine Now, now, now's the time

Darcy should've wanted as far away from her as earthy possible and yet her laugh was infectious and made something warm bloom inside Darcy's chest like stubborn wildflowers poking up through cracks in the pavement, growing where they didn't belongs.

I knew you were too fine for me." "No," she protested. "I'm not a highborn lady, I'm a commoner." "There's nothing common about you." Ethan began to play with her hair, sifting his fingers through it, lifting a lock to brush the ends against his lips and cheeks. "Do you want to know why I gave you violets? They're beautiful and small, but tough enough to grow in the cracks of city pavement. More than once, I've been in some dark place and seen them clustered near a broken stoop, or at the base of a brick wall, bright as jewels. Even without sunlight or good soil, they show up to do a flower's job.

This was a beautiful, old wood, all massive oak and ash trees finding footing among great slabs of cracked stone. Ferns sprang from rocks and verdant moss grew up the sides of the tree trunks. The air itself was scented with green and growing and water. The light was golden through the leaves. Everything was alive, alive.

And indeed, they are horrified at what they hear through the speakers, see on the screens. They begin to perceive that ours is a world where the notion that some people are less important than others has been allowed to take root, and grow until it buckles and cracks the foundations of our humanity. “How could they?” the gleaners exclaim, of us. “Why would they do such things? How can they just leave those people to starve? Why do they not listen when that one complains of disrespect? What does it mean that these ones have been assaulted and no one, no one, cares? Who treats other people like that?” And yet, even amid their shock, they share the idea. The evil … spreads.

The physicists called it an adjustment of quantum emphasis. But the effect was to change the role of the observer. Of you and me. For the will of the observer to matter. So man could control his environment directly through the force of his desire, rather than through machinery.” I had the feeling that if I died he would carry on saying his piece to my corpse. “Unfortunately that wheel wasn’t just turned—it was set turning. It hasn’t stopped. In fact, like so many things in nature, the process has a tipping point and we’re reaching it. The fractures in the world, in the walls between mind and matter, between energy and will, between life and death, they’re all growing. And everything is in danger of falling through the cracks. Each time these powers, the ability to influence energy or mass or existence, are used, the divergence grows. These are the magics you know as being fire-sworn, or rock-sworn, or as necromancy and the like. The more they are used, the easier they become, and the wider the world is broken open. And this Dead King of yours is just another symptom. Another example of a singular force of will being used to change the world and, in doing so, accelerating the turn of that wheel we released.

The back of my neck breaks out in a sweat, and I’m getting nervous. Why is he just standing there, staring at me? “What do you want?” I press, my tone curt. He opens his mouth but then closes it swallowing. “Pike, Jesus—” “The day you left,” he blurts out, and I stop. I wait, listening as a look of fear crosses his eyes. “The house was so empty,” he continues. “Like a quiet that was never there before. I couldn’t hear your footsteps upstairs or your hairdryer or anticipate you walking into a room. You were gone. Everything was…” he drops his eyes, “gone.” A ball lodges in my throat, and I feel tears threaten, but I tense my jaw, refusing to let it out. “But I could still feel you,” he whispers. “You were still everywhere. The container of cookies in the fridge, the backsplash you picked out, the way you put all my pictures back in the wrong spot after you dusted my bookshelves.” He smiles to himself. “But I couldn’t rearrange them, because you were the last to touch them, and I wanted everything the way you had it.” My chin trembles, and I fold my arms over my chest, hiding my balled fists under my arms. He pauses and then goes on. “Nothing would ever go back to the way it was before you came into my house. I didn’t want it to.” He shakes his head. “I went to work, and I came home, and I stayed there every night and all weekend, every weekend, because that’s where we were together. That’s where I could still feel you.” He steps closer, dropping his voice. “That’s where I could wrap myself up in you and hang on to every last thread in that house that proved you were mine for just a little while.” His tone grows thick, and I see his eyes water. “I really thought I was doing what was best,” he says, knitting his brow. “I thought I was taking advantage of you, because you’re young and beautiful and so happy and hopeful despite everything you’d been through. You made me feel like the world was a big place again.” My breathing shakes, and I don’t know what to do. I hate that he’s here. I hate that I love that he’s here. I hate him. “I couldn’t steal your life from you and keep you to myself, you know?” he explains. “But then I realized that you’re not happy or hopeful or making me feel good because you’re young. You are those things and you’re capable of those things, because you’re a good person. It’s who you are.” A tear spills over, gliding down my cheek. “Baby,” he whispers, his hands shaking. “I hope you love me, because I love you like crazy, and I’m going to want you the rest of my life. I tried to stay away, because I thought it was the right thing, but I fucking can’t. I need you, and I love you. This doesn’t happen twice, and I’m not going to be stupid again. I promise.” My chin trembles, and something lodges in my throat, and I try to hold it in, but I can’t. My face cracks, and I break down, turning away from him. The tears come like a goddamn waterfall, and I hate him. I fucking hate him. His arms are around me in a second, and he hugs me from behind, burying his face in my neck. “I’m sorry I took so long,” he whispers in my ear.

It was the moths that first revealed the change. Grey-tipped whispers in the moonlit night. Two or three here, a single one there. White ones slipping through the darkness, silent and seemingly harmless, but present. Growing in numbers until they erupted the quiet like flutters of falling ash. There was a music in their silence. The kind of music that attached itself to hums and vibrations in the waters of the earth. The hums, the vibrations, all but imperceptible. With the dawn the moths vanished, leaving a broken land in their wake. The Elian River leaked out into fissures of streams and brooks that first appeared as watery cracks throughout the Faeran Valley. So small at first, we didn't recognize the difference. But as the months and years passed, the Elian slipped further and deeper into the growing fractures of earth the moths had left. Trails of watery branches and veins that broke the ground until it couldn't sustain life any longer. This is what we have against the Bremistans. The land is delicate now, brittle like old bones. And I fear it is aging beyond our ability to heal it....

The fools thought they could treat her like a flower-take away her sunlight and water so she would shrivel up and die. But she was more the stubborn plant, the kind that thrived anywhere if that's what it took to live. Their first mistake was in thinking obstacles gave them an upper hand. Little did they know, she would always find a way to grow through cracks in the stone.

She loves the idea that love can be kept like a secret, that it can grow up through the cracks between things and take you by surprise. That it can be tender and powerful, forbidden and flourishing.

A few months ago on a school morning, as I attempted to etch a straight midline part on the back of my wiggling daughter's soon-to-be-ponytailed blond head, I reminded her that it was chilly outside and she needed to grab a sweater. "No, mama." "Excuse me?" "No, I don't want to wear that sweater, it makes me look fat." "What?!" My comb clattered to the bathroom floor. "Fat?! What do you know about fat? You're 5 years old! You are definitely not fat. God made you just right. Now get your sweater." She scampered off, and I wearily leaned against the counter and let out a long, sad sigh. It has begun. I thought I had a few more years before my twin daughters picked up the modern day f-word. I have admittedly had my own seasons of unwarranted, psychotic Slim-Fasting and have looked erroneously to the scale to give me a measurement of myself. But these departures from my character were in my 20s, before the balancing hand of motherhood met the grounding grip of running. Once I learned what it meant to push myself, I lost all taste for depriving myself. I want to grow into more of a woman, not find ways to whittle myself down to less. The way I see it, the only way to run counter to our toxic image-centric society is to literally run by example. I can't tell my daughters that beauty is an incidental side effect of living your passion rather than an adherence to socially prescribed standards. I can't tell my son how to recognize and appreciate this kind of beauty in a woman. I have to show them, over and over again, mile after mile, until they feel the power of their own legs beneath them and catch the rhythm of their own strides. Which is why my parents wake my kids early on race-day mornings. It matters to me that my children see me out there, slogging through difficult miles. I want my girls to grow up recognizing the beauty of strength, the exuberance of endurance, and the core confidence residing in a well-tended body and spirit. I want them to be more interested in what they are doing than how they look doing it. I want them to enjoy food that is delicious, feed their bodies with wisdom and intent, and give themselves the freedom to indulge. I want them to compete in healthy ways that honor the cultivation of skill, the expenditure of effort, and the courage of the attempt. Grace and Bella, will you have any idea how lovely you are when you try? Recently we ran the Chuy's Hot to Trot Kids K together as a family in Austin, and I ran the 5-K immediately afterward. Post?race, my kids asked me where my medal was. I explained that not everyone gets a medal, so they must have run really well (all kids got a medal, shhh!). As I picked up Grace, she said, "You are so sweaty Mommy, all wet." Luke smiled and said, "Mommy's sweaty 'cause she's fast. And she looks pretty. All clean." My PRs will never garner attention or generate awards. But when I run, I am 100 percent me--my strengths and weaknesses play out like a cracked-open diary, my emotions often as raw as the chafing from my jog bra. In my ultimate moments of vulnerability, I am twice the woman I was when I thought I was meant to look pretty on the sidelines. Sweaty and smiling, breathless and beautiful: Running helps us all shine. A lesson worth passing along.

We are all told from the very beginning that we are important. From the moment we can first understand words and perhaps even before then, we are continuously reassured that we have a place in things , that we have a part to play. The human race as a whole is a hopeful species. Of course there are exceptions. Some forgotten children, ones who slip through the cracks. And not everyone is told that they will be important in the same way. Not everyone will be a doctor, or a lawyer. Some people grow up believing that their importance is to love someone fully. Some people grow up believing that their importance is to be loved fully. Perhaps the reason my mailbox was always secret was that the people who visited it came to believe that keeping the secret was a piece of their importance. Maybe I was always given murders because they all thought that contributing to my legend was their importance. But we are all taught, in general, in some way, that someday our worth will be revealed. Someday we will be justified. Someday we will be free.

TOM Do you want to practise slapping me? EMMA (brow furrowed) Excuse me? TOM Because in the next film, that’s what you do. You slap me. (lying through his teeth) I just read it! EMMA OK, great. TOM (mansplaining) Right. So. Here’s what you do. You need to stand there, you need to use your body, you need to put everything into it to sell it, you need to… While Tom is talking, Emma calmly sizes him up, raises one hand and—not realising that he was talking about a stage slap—cracks him as hard as she can across the cheek.

The brugh is full of turned-over tables and rotting fruit. A crack runs through the ground to the split throne, with its wilted flowers. Cardan spreads his hands, and the earth heals along the seam, rock and stone bubbling up to fill it back in. Then he twists his fingers, and the divided throne grows anew, blooming with briars, sprouting into two separate thrones where there was once only one. 'Do you like it?' he asks me, which seems a little like asking if someone enjoys the crown of stars they conjured from the sky. 'Impressive,' I choke out.

It is not that we would oust the little people from the world,' he said, 'in order that we, who are no more than one step upwards from their littleness, may hold their world forever. It is the step we fight for an not ourselves... We are here, Brothers, to what end? To serve the spirit and the purpose that has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for ourselves - for we are but the momentary hands and eyes of the Life of the world... This earth is no resting place... We fight not for ourselves but for growth - growth that goes on forever. Tomorrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light! Greater,' he said, speaking with slow deliberation, 'greater, my Brothers! And then - still greater. To grow, and again - to grow. To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding of God. Growing... Till the earth is no more than a footstool... Till the spirit shall have driven fear into nothingness, and spread...' He swung his arm heavenward: - 'There!

The forest had crept up to the edges of the school parking lot and sent an advance party out toward the building, small trees growing through cracks in the pavement. There were a few cars parked on flat tires. “Let’s watch for a moment,” August said, and they stood for a while at the edge of the woods.

When a vase shatters and you try to put the broken pieces back together, they never fit again. Not perfectly. Not in the way they used to. There may be cracks in the new vase, but it’s thanks to those fissures that sunlight filters through. Life thrives under its glow, grows through the cracks, and blooms anew.

We navigate the produce stands, plucking palms full of cherries from every pile we pass, chewing them and spitting the seeds on the ground. We eat tiny tomatoes with taut skins that snap under gentle pressure, releasing the rabid energy of the Sardinian sun trapped inside. We crack asparagus like twigs and watch the stalks weep chlorophyll tears. We attack anything and everything that grows on trees- oranges, plums, apricots, peaches- leaving pits and peels, seeds and skins in our wake. Downstairs in the seafood section, the heart of the market, the pace quickens. Roberto turns the market into a roving raw seafood bar, passing me pieces of marine life at every stand: brawny, tight-lipped mussels; juicy clams on the half shell with a shocking burst of sweetness; tiny raw shrimp with beads of blue coral clinging to their bodies like gaudy jewelry. We place dominoes of ruby tuna flesh on our tongues like communion wafers, the final act in this sacred procession.

Now it’s clear to me, I haven’t understood as well as I should, the cracks on the ground we stood. A blast ignited through ballot boxes by the choices of unsuspecting and innocent Nigerians has rippled across the country and has torn the curtain open to set the stage for these cracks to grow into magnified quakes now swallowing us up.” - Dami K.

Nancy was very good at growing most things except for children. We never grew fast enough, or tall enough, or pretty enough, in her opinion. So she planted seeds of fear as well as doubt all around this house and throughout our childhoods, little saplings rising up through the floorboards, creeping in through the cracks, to remind us what a disappointing crop we were.

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

Climb Is all we know When thaw Is not below us No, can't grow up In that iron ground Claire, all too sore for sound Bet Is hardly shown Scraped Across the foam Like they stole it And oh, how they hold it Claire, we nearly forfeit I, I'm growing like the quickening hues I, I'm telling darkness from lines on you Over havens fora full and swollen morass, young habitat All been living alone, where the ice snap and the hold clast are known Home We're savage high Come We finally cry Oh and we don it Because it's right Claire, I was too sore for sight I, we're sewing up through the latchet greens I, un-peel keenness, honey, bean for bean Same white pillar tone as with the bone street sand is thrown where she stashed us at All been living alone, where the cracks at in the low part of the stoning

Sergeant Pepper was dead. G.I. Joe lived on. George Bush was president, movies stars were dying from AIDS, kids were smoking crack in the ghettos and the suburbs, Muslims were blowing airliners from the skies, rap music ruled, and nobody cared much about the Movement anymore. It was a dry and dusty thing, like the air in the graves of Hendrix, Joplin, and God. She was letting her thoughts take her into treacherous territory, and the thoughts threatened her smiley face. She stopped thinking about the dead heroes, the burning breed who made the bombs full of roofing nails and planted them in corporate boardrooms and National Guard Armories. She stopped thinking before the awful sadness crushed her. The sixties were dead. The survivors limped on, growing suits and neckties and potbellies, going bald and telling their children not to listen to that satanic heavy metal. The clock of the Age of Aquarius had turned, hippies and yippies had become preppies and yuppies. The Chicago Seven were old men. The Black Panthers had turned gray. The Grateful Dead were on MTV, and the Airplane had become a Top-40 Starship. Mary Terror closed her eyes, and thought she heard the noise of wind whistling through the ruins.

The cricket doesn’t wonder if there’s a heaven or, if there is, if there’s room for him. It’s fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings. If he can, he enters a house through the tiniest crack under the door. Then the house grows colder. He sings slower and slower. Then, nothing. This must mean something, I don’t know what. But certainly it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been an excellent cricket all his life.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" i Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest. i You, drowning                         between my arms — stay. You, pushing your body                          into the river only to be left                          with yourself — stay. i I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing to surrender. i Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.                    Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green                    in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn                    mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you                    like a sparrow stunned with falling. i Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining. i I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once. i Say amen. Say amend. Say yes. Say yes anyway. i In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed. i In the life before this one, you could tell two people were in love because when they drove the pickup over the bridge, their wings would grow back just in time. Some days I am still inside the pickup. Some days I keep waiting. i It’s not too late. Our heads haloed             with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks.             Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio.             Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver             to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs.             This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already             here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body             beside a body must ma

Does God "temper the wind to the shorn lamb"? Does He never ask more of us than we can endure? My experience, alas, has been otherwise. I have seen people crack under the strain of unbearable tragedy. I have seen marriages break up after the death of a child, because parents blamed each other for not taking proper care or for carrying the defective gene, or simply because the memories they shared were unendurably painful. I have seen some people made noble and sensitive through suffering, but i have seen many more people grow cynical and bitter. I have seen people become jealous of those around them, unable to take part in the routines of normal living. I have seen cancers and automobile accidents take the life of one member of a family, and functionally end the lives of five others, who could never again be the normal, cheerful people they were before disaster struck. If God is testing us, He must know by now that many of us fail the test. If He is only giving us the burdens we can bear, I have seen Him miscalculate far too often.

And then I felt him next to me, his warm breath just above my ear. “Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, Winter Ashby, because we’re not done,” Damon warned in a low voice that snaked through my ear, taunting me. “Grow up, learn things, and have fun in high school, but don’t change the little girl who loves it ‘in the black’, because I like you there, too. And I will be back for what’s mine when you’re old enough for bigger things.” I turned my face away, breathing harder. “And be good,” he told me. “If I hear anyone touched you, I will crack his fucking skull.

Whoever has deeply and thirstily drunk, Is pulled down to the wondrous source, And melodically swims along as a wave, On which the world breaks into thousands of sparks. With yearning grows the holy well, crashes, Shines intoxicated, jubilant within, At times forging through the chasm to dazzling light, At times rushing cool then sunken in night. So let it eagerly roar and rush! For upon it floats the poet in golden bark, Himself a holy sacrifice in songs. The ancient rocks split with a crack, From yonder greet us kindred ballads, He guides us back to the eternal sea.

A leaf, large and rough, a thorny stalk, blue flower. I borage bring courage. Than a saw-toothed leaf. Lemon balm. Soothe all troublesome care. Marigold---cureth the trembling of harte. Perhaps their medicine will cross through the cell walls of my drawing hand. The plants grow into a schematic, a garden, geometrically arranged. I consult the crackly herbals by my bed. Chamomile, catmint, sorrel. In Latin: Matricaria chamomilla, Nepeta X faassenii, Rumex acetosa. I get out of bed, retrieve my colored pencils, come back. The smell of earth fills the room. Root and flower and loam. Decay and regeneration. Mullein and comfrey, costmary, feverfew, betony. I sink into the earth, below verbena and lavender, descending as I draw.

They [mountains] are portions of the heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out. For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot melted metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps the earth alive: it is a huge power of buried sunlight—that is what it is. Now think: out of that caldron, where all the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped—up and away, and there they stand in the cool, cold sky—mountains. Think of the change, and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about the very look of a mountain: from the darkness—for where the light has nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness—from the heat, from the endless tumult of boiling unrest—up, with a sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of the glaciers; and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little old cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house at night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that are studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of the glaciers fresh-born. Think too of the change in their own substance—no longer molten and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and cold. Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and the birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of its sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the valleys, and the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its armour of ice, like the rich embroidery of the garment below, and the rivers galloping down the valleys in a tumult of white and green! And along with all these, think of the terrible precipices down which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers, and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of ice. All this outside the mountain! But the inside, who shall tell what lies there? Caverns of awfullest solitude, their walls miles thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or iron, tin or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones—perhaps a brook, with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaseless, cold and babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles and golden topazes, or over a gravel of which some of the stones are rubies and emeralds, perhaps diamonds and sapphires—who can tell?—and whoever can't tell is free to think—all waiting to flash, waiting for millions of ages—ever since the earth flew off from the sun, a great blot of fire, and began to cool. Then there are caverns full of water, numbing cold, fiercely hot—hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the water cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood in the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it out again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and kinds, through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to the light, and rushes down the mountain side in torrents, and down the valleys in rivers—down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds back to the mountain tops and the snow, the solid ice, and the molten stream.

I'd been here before. Not to this Freedman Town, but to plenty of others. I've been all over the North, and every northern city has a Freedman Town. New York City's got a few, and Chicago's got more than a few. Baltimore, Washington. The manumitted have got to go somewhere, and the world doesn't give them a lot of options. The details are different - some of 'em are built on a high-rise model, bent towers clustered around courtyards, crammed to the gills with the poorest of the poor, living hard, the forgotten children of forgotten children. Some are like this one, blocks and blocks of small ramshackle homes, no sidewalks along narrow roads with the concrete worn and blasted through, the yards between the houses as weed-choked as vacant lots. Ivy growing in wild overlapping networks, engulfing the lower stories and sending menacing tendrils into upstairs windows. Gutters dangling or cracked, porches falling.

Is that what we do? We pitch our tents, do our little clown shows, and then take off up the road to the next town ahead? Leaving our science-fictional debris on the blasted dirt to poison the minds of future generations, like the alien litter in STALKER and ROADSIDE PICNIC. Flying cars rusting out like Saturn Five rockets propped up as roadkill talismans at Kennedy, leaking toxins into the soil. Jetpacks oozing fuel from cracks in their tanks and poisoning the grass. Three-ring moonbases crumbling in the solar wind. Birdshit on the time machines. Big fat rats scavenging broken packs of food capsules, Best Before Date of 1971. A Westinghouse Robot Smoking Companion, vintage of 1931, slumped up against a tree, tin fingers still twitching for a cigarette. Vines growing through a busted cyberspace deck. The shreds of inflatable furniture designed for the space hospitals of 1955. Lizards perched atop a weather control cannon. Atomic batteries mouldering inside the grips of laser pistols abandoned in the weeds.

To understand how seriously the people of Noto take the concept of waste, consider the fugu dilemma. Japanese blowfish, best known for its high toxicity, has been a staple of Noto cuisine for hundreds of years. During the late Meiji and early Edo periods, local cooks in Noto began to address a growing concern with fugu fabrication; namely, how to make use of the fish's deadly ovaries. Pregnant with enough poison to kill up to twenty people, the ovaries- like the toxic liver- had always been disposed of, but the cooks of Noto finally had enough of the waste and set out to crack the code of the toxic reproductive organs. Thus ensued a long, perilous period of experimentation. Locals rubbed ovaries in salt, then in nukamiso, a paste made from rice bran, and left them to ferment. Taste-testing the not-quite-detoxified fugu ovary was a lethal but necessary part of the process, and many years and many lives later, they arrived at a recipe that transformed the ovaries from a deadly disposable into an intensely flavored staple. Today pickled fugu ovaries remain one of Noto's most treasured delicacies.

In 1969, NASA scientist James Lovelock noticed something unusual happening in the earth’s atmosphere: inexplicably, its balance of oxygen and other gases was regulating itself like a thermostat. But what was doing the regulating? He looked at other planetary processes—including the stable concentration of ocean salinity and the cycling of nutrients—and came to a startling conclusion: the earth is alive. He proposed that the earth is a superorganism—one giant living system that includes not just animals and plants but rocks, gases, and soil—acting together as if the planet was a single living being. Its bodily systems, such as the water cycle and nitrogen cycle, are balanced to maintain life on earth. The throb of the tides was the systole and diastole of the earth, and water coursed like blood through its veins. We proud humans may simply be microbes on the surface of a superbeing whose entirety we cannot fully comprehend. Like the bacteria in our body, is it possible that we, too, are part of a larger living earth, a speck on the eyeball of the universe? Tree roots break the sidewalk. Dandelions spring through the cracks. Insects grow resistant to pesticides

build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else. When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at. Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke. It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly. Today, however, they were not playing. Uncle Henry sat upon the doorstep and looked anxiously at the sky, which was even grayer than usual. Dorothy stood in the door with Toto in her arms, and looked at the sky too. Aunt Em was washing the

This could get a little hairy,” I tell them in interruption. Seriously, I don’t want to know this secret. I’ve got too much other shit going on. I grimace at the very questionable intestines that belong to some fabled creature that surely can’t exist under the radar if all that fit inside it. “If you’re a respawner instead of an unkillable being, get out of the kitchen and at least a mile from the house.” Mom assured me there’s a five mile seclusion radius. Damien starts speaking to me, almost as though he’s too tired to deal with my tinkering right now. “Violet, that potion has to be fresh. There’s no need-" ... There’s a loud, bubbling, sizzling noise that cracks through the air, and I drop to the floor, as a pulse shoots from the pot. Damien yelps, as he and Emit are thrown into one wall, and Mom curses seconds before she and Arion are launched almost into each other, hitting opposing walls instead, when they manage to twist in the air to avoid touching. Everyone crashes to the ground at almost the same time. Groans and grunts and coughs of pain all ring out in annoyed unison. “I warned you,” I call out, even as most of them narrow their eyes in my direction. Damien shoots me a look of exasperation, and I shrug a shoulder. “She did warn us,” Mom grumbles as she remains lying on the floor, while everyone else pushes to their feet. “No one fucks up a potion better than I do. If I fuck it up enough, less power will be needed to raise them,” I go on, smiling over at Emit…who is just staring at me like he’s confused. “But it’s the exact right ingredients,” he says warily, as he stands. “She’s apples and oranges. You can’t compare her to anyone else using those ingredients for that reason,” Mom says dismissively, as I gesture to Vance. “Take him with you; I’m going to be a while. That was just the first volatile ingredient. I don’t think you want to be here for the yacktite—” “Ylacklatite,” they all correct in unison. “You don’t want to be here for those gross, possibly toxic, hard-to-say, fabled-creature intestines. It’s going to probably get crazy up in here,” I say as I twirl my finger around, staying on the floor for a minute longer. Sometimes there’s an echo. “Raise your heartbeat. You’re not taking this seriously enough,” Mom scolds. “What are you doing letting your heartbeat drop so much?” “You really should go. It gets unpredictable when—” The echo pulse I worried would come knocks Arion, Emit, and Damien to the ceiling this time, and I cringe when I hear things crack. When they drop, Arion and Emit land in a crouch, and Damien lands hard on his back, cursing the pot on the stove like it’s singled him out and has it in for sexual deviants. Arion’s lips twitch as he stares over at me, likely thinking what sort of punch a pencil could pack with this concoction. But I’ll be damned if Shera steals any of this juice for his freaky pencils. “Do you rip up those dolls to use them as a timer?” the vampire asks, as he stays on the floor, causing Mom to sneer in his direction. Another pulse cracks some glass, but everyone is under the reach of it now. Damien just shakes his head. “You have drawers full of toxic pencils I don’t even want to know the purpose of,” I tell him dryly. “You don’t get to judge.” His grin grows like he’s pleased with something. I think Mom is seconds away from a brain aneurism

What was the battle? What were the aims of the romantics? Why was the subject the focus of such violent interest? Hugo and his generation were all ‘enfants du siècle’, all, give or take a year or two, born with the century. Brought up amidst the dramas of Napoleon’s wars, they had reached manhood to the anticlimax of peace and Bourbon rule. Restless and dissatisfied, their dreams of military glory frustrated, they had turned them- selves instead towards the liberation of the arts, their foes no longer the armies of Europe but the tyrannies of classical tradition. For thirty years, while the nation’s energies had been absorbed in politics and war, the arts had virtually stood still in France, frozen, through lack of challenge, in the classical attitudes of the old régime. The violent emotions and experiences of the Napoleonic era had done much to render them meaningless. ‘Since the cam- paign in Russia,’ said a former officer to Stendhal, ‘Iphigénie en Aulide no longer seems such a good play.’ By the 1820s while the academic establishment, hiding its own sterility behind the great names of the past, continued to denounce all change, the ice of clas- sicism was beginning to crack. New influences were crowding in from abroad: Chateaubriand, the ‘enchanter’, had cast his spell on the rising generation; the po- etry of Lamartine, Hugo and Vigny heralded the spring. An old society lay in ruins; the tremendous forces which had overturned it were sweeping at last through the realms of art and literature, their momentum all the greater for having been so long delayed. Nor, despite the seeming stability of the Restoration, had the political impetus of earlier years been spent. In the aftermath of the Empire exhaustion had brought a temporary longing for repose. Now, to the excitement of creative ferment was added a hidden dimension: a growing undercurrent of political dissent, as yet unexpressed for fear of reprisal. The romantic rebellion, with its claims for freedom in the arts, cloaked the political revolution once more preparing in the shadows.

Pulling her head back, Lillian stared at him with wondering eyes, her lips damp and reddened. Her hands left his hair, her fingertips coming to the hard angles of his cheekbones, delicate strokes of coolness on the blazing heat of his skin. He bent his head, nuzzling his jaw against the pale silk of her palm. “Lillian,” he whispered, “I’ve tried to leave you alone. But I can’t do it anymore. In the past two weeks I’ve had to stop myself a thousand times from coming to you. No matter how often I tell myself that you are the most inappropriate…” He paused as she squirmed suddenly, twisting and craning her neck to look down at the floor. “No matter what I— Lillian, are you listening to me? What the devil are you looking for?” “My pear. I dropped it, and— oh, there it is.” She broke free of him and sank to her hands and knees, reaching beneath a chair. Pulling out the brandy bottle, she sat on the floor and held it in her lap. “Lillian, forget the damned pear.” “How did it get in there, d’you think?” She poked her finger experimentally into the neck of the bottle. “I don’ see how something so big could fit into a hole that small.” Marcus closed his eyes against a surge of aggravated passion, and his voice cracked as he replied. “They… they put it directly on the tree. The bud grows… inside…” He slitted his eyes open and squeezed them shut again as he saw her finger intruding deeper into the bottle. “Grows…” he forced himself to continue, “until the fruit is ripe.” Lillian seemed rather too impressed by the information. “They do? That is the cleverest, cleverest… a pear in its own little… oh no.” “What?” Marcus asked through clenched teeth. “My finger’s stuck.” Marcus’s eyes flew open. Dumbfounded, he looked down at the sight of Lillian tugging on her imprisoned finger. “I can’t get it out,” she said. “Just pull at it.” “It hurts. It’s throbbing.” “Pull harder.” “I can’t! It’s truly stuck. I need something to make it slippery. Do you have some sort of lubricant nearby?” “No.” “Not anything?” “Much as it may surprise you, we’ve never needed lubricant in the library before now.

What a lovely day again; were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm—frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!—it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing that that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along!

… Where are the ways through black wastes? God, do not abandon us! What are you summoning, God? Raise your hand up to the darkness above you, pray, despair, wring your hands, kneel, press your forehead into the dust, cry out, but do not name Him, do not look at Him. Leave Him without name and form. What should form the formless? Name the nameless? Step onto the great way and grasp what is nearest. Do not look out, do not want, but lift up your hands. The gifts of darkness are full of riddles. The way is open to whomever can continue in spite of riddles. Submit to the riddles and the thoroughly incomprehensible. There are dizzying bridges over the eternally deep abyss. But follow the riddles. Endure them, the terrible ones. It is still dark, and the terrible goes on growing. Lost and swallowed by the streams of procreating life, we approach the overpowering, inhuman forces that are busily creating what is to come. How much future the depths carry! Are not the threads spun down there over millennia? Protect the riddles, bear them in your heart, warm them, be pregnant with them. Thus you carry the future. The tension of the future is unbearable in us. It must break through the narrow cracks, it must force new ways. You want to cast off the burden, you want to escape the inescapable. Running away is deception and detour. Shut your eyes so that you do not see the manifold, the outwardly plural, the tearing away and the tempting. There is only way and that is your way; there is only one salvation and that is your salvation. Why are you looking around for help? Do you believe that help will come from outside? What is to come will be created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself. Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfil the way that is in you. Oh, that all men and all their ways become strange to you! Thus might you find them again within yourself and recognize their ways. But what weakness! What doubt! What fear! You will not bear going your way. You always want to have at least one foot on paths not your own to avoid the great solitude! So that maternal comfort is always with you! So that someone acknowledges you, recognizes you, bestows trust in you, comforts you, encourages you. So that someone pulls you over onto their path, where you stray from yourself, and where it is easier for you to set yourself aside. As if you were not yourself! Who should accomplish your deeds? Who should carry your virtues and your vices? You do not come to an end with your life, and the dead will besiege you terribly to live your unlived life. Everything must be fulfilled. Time is of the essence, so why do you want to pile up the lived and let the unlived rot?

When we first come into the world, we are small, fragile, and defenseless. We are totally dependent on the love and care of our parents, especially our mothers. In our modern society, we have learned very well how to take care of the physical, biological, and even the developmental needs of our babies, even though parents at various socio-economic levels still face vastly different challenges as they meet their infants’ needs. But we have let a vital need, the one whose fulfillment will determine our ability to have a feeling of self-worth and security, slip through the cracks of modern life. If our emotional needs are not met at the right time, we will face a daunting task later in life as we try to heal the structural wounds of our personalities. Like a plant that doesn’t get enough water or sun early on, we will have trouble growing to our full height, no matter how much fertilizer we get later. Fortunately, unlike plants, we can direct our consciousness and self-awareness toward healing, which can give us new foundations for fulfilling our lives.

I am the weed growing through the sidewalk's cracks, resilient, but knowing I'll someday be ripped out by the root

I don’t take kindly to any of you shanty boys touching me,” she said. “So unless I give you permission, from now on, you’d best keep your hands off me.” With the last word, she lifted her boot and brought the heel down on Jimmy’s toes. She ground it hard. Like most of the other shanty boys, at the end of a day out in the snow, he’d taken off his wet boots and layers of damp wool socks to let them dry overnight before donning them again for the next day’s work. Jimmy cursed, but before he could move, she brought her boot down on his other foot with a smack that rivaled a gun crack. This time he howled. And with an angry curse, he shoved her hard, sending her sprawling forward. She flailed her arms in a futile effort to steady herself and instead found herself falling against Connell McCormick. His arms encircled her, but the momentum of her body caused him to lose his balance. He stumbled backward. “Whoa! Hold steady!” Her skirt and legs tangled with his, and they careened toward the rows of dirty damp socks hanging in front of the fireplace. The makeshift clotheslines caught them and for a moment slowed their tumble. But against their full weight, the ropes jerked loose from the nails holding them to the beams. In an instant, Lily found herself falling. She twisted and turned among the clotheslines but realized that her thrashing was only lassoing her against Connell. In the downward tumble, Connell slammed into a chair near the fireplace. Amidst the tangle of limbs and ropes, she was helpless to do anything but drop into his lap. With a thud, she landed against him. Several socks hung from his head and covered his face. Dirty socks covered her shoulders and head too. Their stale rotten stench swarmed around her. And for a moment she was conscious only of the fact that she was near to gagging from the odor. She tried to lift a hand to move the sock hanging over one of her eyes but found that her arms were pinned to her sides. She tilted her head and then blew sideways at the crusty, yellowed linen. But it wouldn’t budge. Again she shook her head—this time more emphatically. Still the offending article wouldn’t fall away. Through the wig of socks covering Connell’s head, she could see one of his eyes peeking at her, watching her antics. The corner of his lips twitched with the hint of a smile. She could only imagine what she looked like. If it was anything like him, she must look comical. As he cocked his head and blew at one of his socks, she couldn’t keep from smiling at the picture they both made, helplessly drenched in dirty socks, trying to remove them with nothing but their breath. “Welcome to Harrison.” His grin broke free. “You know how to make a girl feel right at home.” She wanted to laugh. But as he straightened himself in the chair, she became at once conscious of the fact that she was sitting directly in his lap and that the other men in the room were hooting and calling out over her intimate predicament. She scrambled to move off him. But the ropes had tangled them together, and her efforts only caused her to fall against him again. She was not normally a blushing woman, but the growing indecency of her situation was enough to chase away any humor she may have found in the situation and make a chaste woman like herself squirm with embarrassment. “I’d appreciate your help,” she said, struggling again to pull her arms free of the rope. “Or do all you oafs make a sport of manhandling women?” “All you oafs?” His grin widened. “Are you insinuating that I’m an oaf?” “What in the hairy hound is going on here?” She jumped at the boom of Oren’s voice and the slam of the door. The room turned quiet enough to hear the click-click of Oren pulling down the lever of his rifle. She glanced over her shoulder to the older man, to the fierceness of his drawn eyebrows and the deadly anger in his eyes as he took in her predicament.

Like flowers blooming through cement, we, too, can grow beyond our cracks.

Dandelions represent the easy way. You pick up a dandelion and it's so soft, and it's so easy and even fun sometimes to blow the seeds everywhere. And you don't even realize what you're doing. Nothing happens right then, except you get a pretty little show in the breeze. It's not until later, sometimes, a long time later, that you look out in your garden and realize what you did. It's easy, love, to pull back, to hide in yourself, to run and say you're just taking some time, to keep all of your emotions inside, maybe even to think you're protecting me from something. It would be easier still for me to let you do that. To watch you blow those dandelion seeds everywhere, and pretend it won't damage anything. To pretend we won't wake up one summer morning to discover we've allowed a huge patch of weeds to grow between us, opening up cracks in the foundation of our marriage. Thorns, on the other hand... they're not easy. They hurt. They make you want to give up on the whole plant sometimes. But if you don't give up, love, if you fight through it, allow yourself to be hurt - the result is beautiful and strong. And it will last forever if you care for it.

Lilian?” Kevin needed a moment to register that, indeed, Lilian was standing before him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were taking a bath with the others.” “I was going to,” Lilian admitted, “but then I realized that my mate and I haven’t been able to spend much time alone together because my family kept getting in the way, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for us to bond.” “Bond?” He studied the girl, and eventually realized that she wasn’t looking at his face. Feeling a sense of unease growing in the pit of his stomach, Kevin looked down. His face grew red. He let out a loud “eep!” and tried to cover himself with his hands. “Ufufufu,” Lilian chuckled. “You’re still too cute when you get embarrassed like that.” Kevin tried to glare at her, but the blush on his face lessened the effect. “It’s got nothing to do with being embarrassed and everything to do with common decency,” he insisted, lying through his teeth. “Most people don’t stand around in the nude while someone else is present, not even if they’re dating that person.” “Most people aren’t mated to a kitsune.” “Ugh…” She had him there. “Kevin” Lilian’s eyes were warm and so incredibly earnest that Kevin was unable to look away, “you are my mate; the person I love more than anyone else in this world.” Delicate hands reached up and cupped his face. “This isn’t some random person wanting to see you naked. This is me, your mate, who wants to become more intimate with you. If it helps, I promise not to touch anything below the belt.” Staring at the girl with an uncomprehending gaze, Kevin’s mind became a warzone, a battle the likes of which no one had ever seen before—mostly because it was all happening in his mind. *** The desolate wasteland spread out for miles, its borders traveling far beyond the distant horizon. Cracks traversed the ground like a myriad system of interconnecting spiderwebs. There was no flora or fauna in this wasteland. It was the perfect place… for war. Two forces stood on opposite ends of each other, armies of nearly equal might. Multi-segmented plates clicked together as figures moved and jostled each other. Horned helms adorned the many heads, their faceplates masking their identities. Hands gripped massive halberds with leaf-shaped blades that gleamed like a thousand suns. The army on the northern border wore white armor, while those in the southern quadrant wore red. A moment of silence swept through the clearing. A tumbleweed rolled across the ground. It was the unspoken signal for the battle to start, and the two forces rushed in toward the center, yelling out their battle cries. “For Lilian!!” “For chastity!!” Thunder struck the earth as these two titanic armies fought. Bodies were thrown into the air with impunity. Halberds clashed, the sound of metal on metal, steel ringing against steel, rang out in a symphony of chaos. Sparks flew and shouts accompanied the maelstrom of combat. It was, indeed, a battle worthy of being placed within the annals of history. A third party soon entered the fray. From one of the many cliffs surrounding the battlefield, an army appeared. Unlike the two forces duking it out down below, this army was bereft of nearly all their clothes. Wearing nothing but simple loincloths and bandoleers similar to Tarzan’s, the group of individuals looked identical. Messy blond hair framed bright blue eyes that glared down at the battlefield. With nary a thought, this force surged down the cliff, their own battle cry echoing across the land. “DEATH TO THE CHERRY!!” And so more chaos was unleashed upon the battlefield. ***

All the roads are covered in trees. But they aren’t, you know, fallen. The trees are growing in the middle of the street. Cracking right up through the pavement.

Humanitarian Industrialization Fourth industrial revolution my eye! We haven't yet recovered from the disparities produced by the first, second and third industrial revolutions. Morons keep peddling cold and pompous dreams devoid of humanity, and morons keep consuming them like good little backboneless vermin. Grow a backbone already! We always look at the glorious aspects of industrialization and overlook all those countless lives that are ruined by it. But it's okay! As long as we are not struck by a catastrophe ourselves, our sleep of moronity never breaks - so long as our comfort is unchallenged, and enhanced rather, it's okay if millions keep falling through the cracks. So long as you can afford a smartphone that runs smooth like butter, it doesn't matter if it is produced by modern day slave labors who can't even afford the basic essentials of living. With all the revenue the tech companies earn by charging you a thousand dollar for a hundred dollar smartphone, they can't even pay decent wages to the people working their butt off to manufacture their assets - because apparently, it is more important for the people at the top to afford private jets and trips to space, than the factory workers to afford healthcare, housing and a couple of square meals a day. And this you call industrialization - well done - you just figured out the secret to glory without being bothered by something so boring as basic humanity. I say to you here and now, listen well - stop abusing revolutionary scientific discoveries in the making of a cold, mechanistic, disparity infested world - use science and technology to wipe out the disparities, not cause them. Break free from your modern savagery of inhuman industrialization, and focus your mind on humanitarian industrialization.

Evil doesn't die. It grows back through the cracks of our apathy.

It was fucking awful,” I profess, the words spilling out of me like I’m an overfull levee. Rogan’s quiet as he runs a hand soothingly down my back while holding me tightly to him. “I tried so hard to keep her away from him, to focus on me, but…” “I know,” Rogan comforts, placing light kisses on the back of my hands. “Elon told me what happened. How you…” Emotion bleeds out of his words, and he pauses to try and rein it in. The vehemence leaking to me through the tether has me cracking my fingers so I can look at his face through them. “I fucked up so bad, Lennox. I thought I had to choose, that after everything Elon had been through, he needed to come first no matter what. I didn’t want to admit how I was feeling about you. If I did, it felt like I was betraying Elon. I mean, what kind of person finds happiness and hope when his brother is suffering?” he asks, anguish etched in his features. He shakes his head, ashamed, an indignant scoff sneaking out of his full lips. “I didn’t want to make room for you,” he admits, bringing his hand to his chest and placing it over his heart. “I didn’t want to see that you’d already sunk inside of me so deeply that there wasn’t a me without you anymore. It was the wrong time, too fast, too uncertain, but there you were all the same,” he tells me, gesturing to his heart. His last words coax a small smile to one corner of his mouth, but it’s gone in a blink. “That night when you were torn away from me. It was like I was back in that room with my uncle as he tortured Elon and tried to steal his birthright. I lost it completely. I probably would have taken out half the order if Marx hadn’t been there to stop me. They brought that Saxon fucker in to search your room for who could have planted the trap, and it hit me like a punch to the gut. You were gone. You were gone, and you didn’t know how I felt. I never let you see what you were starting to mean to me. “I knew wherever that portal was leading, it was going to be bad, and I hated myself for not giving you something to fight for, for failing to show you that we were worth fighting for. I’m never going to do that again, Lennox. Never.” Slowly, he pulls my hands from my face, lifting up a corner of the quilt to wipe the tears and snot away. “I love you, Lennox,” he tells me evenly with absolutely no hesitation. “I love you in the way that grows as we grow together. The kind of love worth fighting for, that has me waking up every day grateful and willing to do whatever it takes. I know what you did for Elon, because it’s the same thing you did for me. You’re the light in the darkness. The stars that guide you home when you’re lost. You carry the broken from battle and lift the drowning from the clawing cold that’s trying to claim them. You slay the demons.

What this means is that the highest goal of spiritual immortality can only be reached through the living vehicle of the human body and its powerful vitality. But once the adept has arrived at this goal, he may only realize the ultimate truth by abandoning the body for his spiritual 'flight into space'. A good analogy here is a chicken embryo growing inside its eggshell. If the shell breaks before incubation is complete, there is no life; similarly, if an adept's body 'breaks' and dies before he has completed 'incubation' of his spirit-body, he loses his chance of spiritual immortality after death. When the inner embryo in a chicken egg is fully developed, however, it must crack open the shell and discard it in order to live. Similarly, once the adept has fully developed his spirit-body, he must abandon the flesh sooner or later in order to let his spirit roam freely in the cosmos. This exit occurs through an actual crack that develops in the suture on the crown of the skull in such adepts. Only newborn babies and the most advanced adepts have such loose sutures in their skulls. p393

Liam is the concrete foundation keeping me on my feet, and Sebastian is the wild vines growing through the cracks, endangering my foothold.

Enjoying life is a powerful way to care for yourself. Think about some of the things you enjoy. For me, they include smelling coffee, talking with my kids, and seeing a blade of grass push up through a crack in a sidewalk.

Look at the lovely dandelions growing through a crack in the pavement. Maybe, you’re one of them. Maybe, we all are.

Prepare drones," Metatron commanded. Nephilim grabbed her backpack and put it on the ground beside her feet. She opened it and revealed a black metallic cube. It made a soft click as it came to life. Within seconds it enfolded itself and turned into a flying drone—slightly resembling a black firefly—that was about the size of a small eagle. It hovered next to Nephilim's head, humming softly. Each one of the soldiers had unique drones, directly linked to their neural system. Some drones had flying capabilities, others resembled ground predators in the form of insects or mammals. To be able to simultaneously, mentally control a drone during actual combat was difficult, required years of practice, and brought the term multi-tasking to a whole new level. However, once mastered, it was an incredibly effective combat tool. Nephilim held still and waited for the commander to order the assault. She wasn't excited or scared that she was about to go into battle. Her artificially augmented heart didn't beat faster. Her lungs, securely sealed through a silicate membrane from any kind of poison or chemical warfare attack, didn't enhance their pace. Her mind was focused and clear. So were her ice-cold, artificially blue eyes, studying the target area. She came here to do her job, her duty. What she had been created for. The righteous thing. Furthermore, it was something she was very good at. Adriel had stated, prior to leaving Olympias, that they should be back by breakfast. The target area ahead was in shabby condition. Shacks and makeshift houses built in and around the ruins of old, overgrown industrial premises. The location was partly hidden by the remains of an old Highway bridge, its old asphalt cracked, with weeds growing everywhere, and some of its circling sidearms had collapsed. The ancient roads and self-made paths were covered with mud. It had been raining a lot, as it almost always did in this area. This was only one of the reasons why any sane person would never understand that people actually chose to live here. The small settlement was surrounded by some archaic plantations and little fields, hidden in between old buildings. Everything here was designed to stay unnoticed, to not be found. And yet they had been discovered. Eventually, all of them were. Metatron was right. These subjects here were completely oblivious of what was coming their way. Only a few guards were on duty, sitting on two of the old chimneys of the facility. They would have no chance to spot the attacking troops before sharpshooters took them out. After that, they would ambush those that remained in their sleep. Standard procedure, requiring a minimum of time, resources, and casualties. Nephilim's scanner showed one hundred twenty-six human life forms in the settlement. There wouldn't be any left when the sun rose in less than an hour. *** Jeff woke up from a bad dream. He couldn't remember what it was he had dreamt, but it had left him with this uneasy feeling

The sorrow on that lonely walk back to my apartment was like the strike of lightning that cracked the dam. I didn’t know this then, but depression can be like a slow leak. Once the dam’s hit, water starts to seep through and as the days and weeks go by, the crack grows bigger.

My life has always been a series of goals. I may grow bored with them all eventually, but the beginning is always sustaining enough to keep me going, keep me moving. This is all just something to do to fill in the time and to keep the feeling at bay. But I worry it is returning anyway, seeping through the cracks. I fear the gnawing nothingness that will overtake me if I let it.

Children speak honestly what they feel, forgive quickly, and run outside to play. They hug the same mommy who spanked them last night... play with the same friend who made fun of them yesterday... and imagine endless gardens growing through the cracks in their sidewalks. They always engage life with their most AUTHENTIC SELVES. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could be children again?” – T. D. Jakes

I could grow from that broken place and be better for it. A flower growing through a crack in the pavement, as it were.

Licorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue Scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town Took the one eyed-jacks across the railroad tracks And the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through He's a juvenile delinquent, never learned how to behave But the cops would never think to look in Burma-Shave And the road was like a ribbon and the moon was like a bone He didn't seem to be like any guy she'd ever known He kind of looked like Farley Granger with his hair slicked back She says, I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat How far are you going? Said depends on what you mean He says I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline I guess I'm going thataway just as long as it's paved And I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma Shave And with her knees up on the glove compartment She took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like root beer And she popped her gum and arched her back Hell, Marysville ain't nothing but a wide spot in the road Some nights my heart pounds like thunder Don't know why it don't explode 'Cause everyone in this stinking town's got one foot in the grave And I'd rather take my chances out in Burma Shave Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the stations? Count the grain elevators in the rearview mirror She said mister, anywhere you point this thing It got to beat the hell out of the sting Of going to bed with every dream that dies here every mornin' And so drill me a hole with a barber pole And I'm jumping my parole just like a fugitive tonight Why don't you have another swig and pass that car if you're so brave I wanna get there before the sun comes up in Burma Shave And the spiderweb crack and the mustang screamed The smoke from the tires and the twisted machine Just a nickel's worth of dreams and every wishbone that they saved Lie swindled from them on the way to Burma Shave And the sun hit the derrick and cast a batwing shadow Up against the car door on the shotgun side And when they pulled her from the wreck You know she still had on her shades They say that dreams are growing wild Just this side Of Burma Shave

There was a time in the beginning when I too questioned the plan—staring out over the deadlands, the wastelands, at the dry, desert landscape, the hellfires that burned over the horizon, the masses growing in number, filling in one valley after another. The way the earth cracked open, strange appendages and tentacles spooling out of the steaming cracks. The forests at the edge of the mountains spilling creatures on four legs, humping and galloping over the foliage, and into the high grasses as the growth turned into spoil. And up over the range lurked flying beasts with cracked, leathery wings—thick purple veins running through the expanding, unfurling flesh—elongated skulls holding back rows of sharp teeth, chittering in the settling gloam. Below the hills, pools of water, sometimes blue, but more likely a mossy green, a dark scum, filled with gelatinous blobs, covered with spiky hairs, a collection of yellowing eyes atop what might have been considered some kind of head. And snapping at my own heels, the furry creatures with mottled, diseased skin revealed in chunks, snouts exposed to show the fractured, bony skulls beneath it all, long, slavering tongues distending, lapping at the foul air around us. (In His House)

Bella inspired this book through a series of questions and conversations that circled around how people live together. Growing up on Maui (and in California), she has observed the challenges of food production, housing, global economies, and environmental losses. She has watched people lose their options, and people fall through the cracks in systems. As a father, it is emotionally cutting to see pain and heartbreak in your daughter's eyes, to witness her start to realize social equations do not calculate toward equity. Her brilliance across these conversations has been the ever-present solutions, her ingenuity and moxie, and the art for creating visions for change. She inspires me to be more present with each choice that circles around her future.

Nancy was very good at growing most things except for children. We never grew fast enough, or tall enough, or pretty enough, in her opinion. So she planted seeds of fear as well as doubt all around this house and throughout our childhoods, little saplings rising up through the floorboards, creeping in through the cracks, to remind us what a disappointing crop we were.

Punk might be dead, or it might be more alive than ever—growing like weeds through the cracks of the concrete that is our daily lives struggling to get by in a system of capitalism.

Love. It finds its way like a weed growing through the cracks of cement meant to hold it out. It’s determined to show its beautiful self, even in the midst of the darkness surrounding it. Crazy things happen because of love, unimaginable things that seem too rare to be purely coincidence.

The wildflowers,” she said as she extended her arm and there were a lot of them twining around her arm. More, there was a moth, a raven, a moon… so many different elements intertwined with the flowers. There was a rose on her shoulder…a very familiar one. “They’re about living life on my terms. Wildflowers—they grow anywhere, in any terrain, and sometimes in the most inhospitable conditions. They’ll grow right up through a crack in the sidewalk.

This new sense of personal awareness also comes with many added social accessories (batteries included). Adolescent insecurity can be a devastating plague for a youngster, especially ones whose bodies are growing faster than their emotional and social maturity. One misstep can spell disaster from which recovery is next to impossible. Drop your books in the hall once between classes. Trip going up the school steps. Let a facial blemish emerge on the wrong day. Your voice cracks in class while asking a question. Suffer through the accusation of liking someone of the opposite sex. And pray hard that you don't wear the wrong clothes to your first dance. All these near-fatal mishaps can mark you forever in your classmates' eyes, socially branding you with a label that sticks like super-glue throughout your grade-school career. Most adults can recall childhood classmates from their childhood who failed to make the grade socially. Even today, though a former classmate may be a physician, she is still remembered for the time she cried and ran off stage during the school talent show. Or the successful businessman is forever known as the boy who wet his pants and had to go home early from school. We can still name the girl who always sat out during recess games because she was athletically uncoordinated.

We actually have a misperception of reality. And what we're doing through meditation is training in being able to perceive reality correctly. Enlightenment is perceiving reality with an open, unfixated mind, even in the most difficult circumstances... You could say it's as if we are in a box with a tiny little slit. We perceive reality out of that little slit, and we think that's how life is. And then as we meditate - if we train in gentleness, and if we train in letting go, if we bring relaxation as well as faithfulness to the technique into the equation; if we work with open eyes and with being awake and present, and if we train that way moment after moment in our real life - what begins to happen is that the crack begins to get bigger, and it's as if we perceive more. We develop a wider and more tolerant perspective. It might just be that we notice that we're sometimes awake and we're sometimes asleep; or we notice that our mind goes off, and our mind comes back. We begin to notice - the first big discovery, of course - that we think so, so much. We begin to develop what's called prajna, or "clear wisdom." With this clear wisdom, we are likely to feel a growing sense of confidence that we can handle more, that we can even love more. Perhaps there are times when we are able to climb out of the box altogether. But believe me, if that happened too soon, we would freak out. Usually we're not ready to perceive out of the box right away. But we move in that direction. We're becoming more and more relaxed with uncertainty, more and more relaxed with groundlessness, more and more relaxed with not having walls around us to keep us protected in a little box or cocoon. Enlightenment isn't about going someplace else or attaining something that we don't have right now. Enlightenment is when the blinders start to come off. We are uncovering the true state, or uncovering buddha nature. This is important because each day when you sit down, you can recognize that it's a process of gradually uncovering something that's already here. That's why relaxation and letting go are so important. You can't uncover something by harshness or uptightness because those things cover our buddha nature. Stabilizing the mind, bringing out the sharp clarity of mind, needs to be accompanied by relaxation and openness.

Even the smallest and most unwanted seed can slip through the cracks and, against all odds, grow up to be a tall, strong, beautiful thing.

I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives. Why would the world need more anger, more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world. When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us? The clouds open when we mouth thanks.

A childhood never fully dies. Stories of life come up through cracks in the accounts, the spaces between death sentences, the pauses in obituaries, finding light and air to grow.

digging when she got back. It was estimated that there were more than eight thousand people sleeping rough on the streets of London. And last year more than six hundred deaths of homeless people were recording across the country. More than a hundred of those were in London alone. And those were just the ones who were found. She wondered how many died and never got recorded — how many slipped through the cracks and weren’t added to the statistics.  More than a quarter of a million people were reported missing every year in the UK, and these numbers were growing. Twenty-eight missing kids, though. She looked at the files. They had nothing in common other than that they were young, and someone, somewhere, was wondering where they were. How many were dead already?  ‘Johansson,’ Roper said, his voice hard. ‘Hmm?’ She looked up, still in her chair. ‘I asked what you’d been doing all morning?

tarmac only slightly cracked, at other times the tarmac was broken and fractured by the plants growing through. But on the road went, narrowing slightly. He could feel the change in the air, smelling the sea breeze, the scent of salt on his face. It was fresher up here, away from the perfume of the trees and the winter undergrowth, the bare

In a hole, in a hole.” Skodi piped, “. . . in the ground, in a hole, where the wet-nosed mole sings a song of cold stone, and of mud and gray bone, a quiet, small song all the chill, dark night long as he digs in the deep, where the white worms creep, and the dead all sleep, with their eyes full of earth where the beetles give birth, laying little white eggs, and their brittle black legs go scrape, scrape, scrape, and the dark, like a cape, covers all just the same, darkness hiding their shame as it covered their names, the names of the dead, all gone, all fled, empty winds, empty heads, Above grass grows on stone, fields lie fallow, unsown all is gone that they’ve known so they wail in the deep, crying out in their sleep, without eyes, still they weep, calling out for what’s lost, in the darkness they toss, under pitweed and moss in the deeps of the grave, neither master or slave, has now feature or fame, needs knowledge or name, but they long to come back, and they stare through the cracks at the dim sun above, and they curse cruel love, and the peace lost in life, think of worry and strife, ruined child or wife, all the troubles that burned, dreadful lessons unlearned, still they long to return, to return, to return, they long to return. Return! In a hole, in the ground, under old barrow-mound, where skin, bone, and blood turn to jelly-soft mud, and the rotting world sings . . .

The Chick Being Born Every crack is also an opening. When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped. Eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world. Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. In that moment—growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking—the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn't die, but falls into the world. The lesson is profound. Transformation always involves the falling away of things we have relied on, and we are left with a feeling that the world as we know it is coming to an end, because it is. Yet the chick offers us the wisdom that the way to be born while still alive is to eat our own shell. When faced with great change—in self, in relationship, in our sense of calling—we somehow must take in all that has enclosed us, nurtured us, incubated us, so when the new life is upon us, the old is within us. The next chance you get, watch something being born. If moved by this notion, actively pursue this. Go to a zoo. Or a farm. Or a nursery. Or an aquarium. Or walk the floor of newborns at your local hospital. As you witness birth of some kind, note what detail touches you. Take it as a teacher and see if it describes something struggling to be born in you.

A train horn blew, but it seemed a little distant, like it was coming from somewhere up ahead. It blew again, louder this time. “There’s another train coming!” shouted Ruby. “We’re going to crash!” “Don’t worry,” said the captain cheerfully. “Vermillion knows what to do.” Matt closed his eyes and waited for impact, but it never came. The train picked up speed, faster and faster. It roared so loud Matt couldn’t even hear his own voice. He covered his ears. The whole train was vibrating violently, and then it lurched forward with such a jolt that the three Hudsons toppled over each other and landed hard on the floor. Ruby gasped. “The floor!” she said. “What the . . . what?” said Corey. Matt looked down. He could hardly believe his eyes. The floor appeared to be melting, morphing from the smooth worn floors of the subway car to cracked and rough wooden planks. A nail head poked at his hand. Matt looked up. All around him the train car was altering, growing, transforming. The walls expanded, and the windows shrank. Lacy curtains unfurled and crawled down the sides of the windows like fast-growing vines. The hard plastic benches of the subway swelled into plush chairs and tables with white tablecloths. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling contracted and then dropped, forming crystal chandeliers. A plush rug sprouted beneath him. It grew through the floor as though it were a carpet of grass pushing through dirt. Matt picked himself up, then helped Corey and Ruby, who had somehow gotten tangled in the rug. It seemed to have grown up and around Ruby’s wrists and ankles, as though it were trying to weave her into itself. Matt and Corey helped free her, and then Ruby yelped as the white rat leaped across their faces and landed on a little table. It pulled a match out of the table drawer with its tail, struck it against the wall, and began lighting lanterns and sconces, then the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, until the space was well lit once again. It was not at all like the train they had been in before. The subway car no longer looked like a subway at all. Rather, it looked like a very old-fashioned train, but one for rich passengers.

The tree still celebrates its essential treeness through song, as nature will do whatever we impose on her. Birds still sing their ancient songs in the middle of a bustling city, with all its cacophony of man-made sounds. Dry leaves still rustle like dice even when growing against concrete or hewn stone. Out of a tiny crack in a pavement will crawl a perfectly formed insect, a creature of curves and protrusions amidst a linear world of man’s engineering.

When I rode along the Kinshasa Highway as a boy, it was a dusty, unpaved thread that wandered through the Rift Valley toward Lake Victoria, carrying not much traffic. It was a gravel road engraved with washboard bumps and broken by occasional pitlike ruts that could crack the frame of a Land Rover. As you drove along it, you would see in the distance a plume of dust growing larger, coming toward you: an automobile. You would move to the shoulder and slow down, and as the car approached, you would place both hands upon the windshield to keep it from shattering if a pebble thrown up by the passing car hit the glass. The car would thunder past, leaving you blinded in yellow fog. Now the road was paved and had a stripe painted down the center, and it carried a continual flow of vehicles. The overlanders were mixed up with pickup trucks and vans jammed with people, and the road reeked of diesel smoke. The paving of the Kinshasa Highway affected every person on earth, and turned out to be one of the most important events of the twentieth century. It has already cost at least ten million lives, with the likelihood that the ultimate number of human casualties will vastly exceed the deaths in the Second World War. In effect, I had witnessed a crucial event in the emergence of AIDS, the transformation of a thread of dirt into a ribbon of tar.

And he was telling me that behind everyone’s learned behaviors and odd eccentricities lurks a soul, ready to make contact if only coaxed out through a crack in the ego. Would that it take something less than fierce grace to break us open.

They’re a lot bigger than the last ones,” I say. “Yeah, they must be four weeks old. She must have dropped this litter early. Can you sit with your legs out to hold them?” Without a subterranean den, we had to coral them somehow. Inside the copse, there is barely room to move. I drop down to a sitting position with my legs splayed out, and the pups wiggle en masse against my thigh. Their noses press against my pant leg. They calm down and begin to nuzzle into each other. Dirt streaks their coats, which range from coal to warm gray. Their heads are covered in dense auburn fur, and all of them have now closed their milky-gray eyes. I stare at them in disbelief at the thought that, not so long ago, settlers threw dynamite into wolf puppy dens. Their muzzles appear foreshortened and out of proportion to the long and wide jaws they will grow into one day. Something compels one pup to move closer and closer to me until the little wolf wedges its nose firmly into my groin. The other pups trail behind it, tunneling between each other and pawing their way over one another until all four are piled together between my legs. I try not to think about the fact that suddenly I am a temporary nursemaid to some of the world’s rarest wolves while their mother likely paces a few dozen yards away. Adjusting the puppies is futile, as they seem hardwired to nuzzle their way into the warmest, tightest spot they can find. The brambles, while thick on the outside, form a natural opening in the middle that is just large enough for a wolf to circle around in. The mother had dug a very shallow earthen dish - only a few inches deep - to keep her babies in. “Doesn’t seem like much of a den,” I remark. “I thought we’d find another big hole in the ground.” “It varies,” Ryan says. “Sometimes we find them in these bowl depressions, usually where the woods are thicker and the ground is flatter, like here. But sometimes they’re in holes. When the ground is sloped, they’ll dig back into the slope. That’s the most typical kind of den. But we’ve found them in storm culverts, too. It’s all over the map.” Ryan sets to work pulling out rubber gloves, blood-sample supplies and ID chips. Chris snaps and cracks his way to us. He crawls through the copse and curses at the dense vegetation. Finally, he reaches the inner sanctum, where there is barely enough room to sit Indian style jammed up against Ryan’s legs and mine. Roomy for a wolf, maybe, but cramped for three human adults. “What a sorry little den,” Chris remarks. He glances at the scratched-out dirt bed and porous brush overhead. Rain drips through, wetting our heads. “Is she nearby?” “Somewhere over there.” Ryan gestures behind us. “She’s not going far, though, you can be sure of that. These guys squealed their guts out.

The project often feels like a failure in the middle. But if the team persists through this valley of angst and doubt, it eventually emerges with a growing sense of momentum. Team members begin to test out their new designs, and they realize the improvements they’ve made, and they keep tweaking the design to make it better. And they come to realize, we’ve cracked this problem. That’s when the team reaches the peak of confidence.

I don’t know how I’m going to get through you leaving. I don’t know how I’m going to keep living my life without you in it,” Lottie sniffed. At thirteen, she was tall for her age and her limbs seemed to be growing faster than her body. “I’ll be back someday, I promise,” I answered. “No, you won’t,” she cried. “I know I’ll never see you again.” I remember how her heartbreak made her voice crack. How her chin trembled as she tried, but lost the battle to hold back her tears. “Listen, I’ll be back. You have my word on that,” I looked into her eyes. I knew for years that Lottie had a crush on me, but it wasn’t until that moment that I saw the depth of it. She’d always been my best friend’s little sister. The annoying one who tattled on us or tried to follow us around like a lost puppy dog. It wasn’t until I was ready to leave that I could see a glimmer of who she would grow up to become. “I’ll miss you,” she wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, trying to be brave. Lottie pulled the envelope from her back pants pocket and shoved it into my hands then marched away quickly.

Leo Tolstoy was fond of an old eastern fable that describes the mysterious way that even tragedy lures us back to life. His story is about a traveler on the steppes who was surprised by a rampaging tiger. The traveler ran for his life, but the beast was gaining on him, so he leapt into a dried-up well, which roused a dragon that had been sleeping on the bottom. As the traveler fell, he was alert enough to grab on to a single, slim branch growing between the cracks of the bricks in the well. There he clung for his life—above him the tiger roaring, below him the dragon snapping its jaws. The traveler's arms grew tired, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the tiger swiped at him from above or he fell to his death. Stubbornly, he held on. The moment he began to hope for a way out, he noticed two mice, one black, one white, gnawing away at either side of the tender branch he clung to. His time was almost up. Surely, he would die soon. Then a glint of sunlight fell on the wall of the well. The traveler's eyes widened. There on the leaves of the bush were drops of honey. He felt a rush of happiness and with the few moments he had left, he calmly stretched out his tongue and tasted the precious honey. Imagine the time you have spent working your way through the labyrinth of your travels. What was chasing you? What stares up at you from below? Are there no drops of honey on the leaves right before your eyes?

In the cold of winter, the wind blows the snow off the ground and waves of white come sweeping across our tiny stretch of lawn and hit the house in sprinklings of icy snow. Invisible streams of air seep through the cracks of the old windows and the smell of our rice-scented home swims in the currents of cold. Outside, the sound of police sirens resonates in the rippling, urgent winter winds. In the warmth of spring, the wind transforms the empty parking lot by the corner Laundromat into a field of fallen petals as crab apple trees release their blooms and the hard pavement feels the soft brush of tender, ephemeral beauty. Wet rain falls into shattered concrete and the pools of black water lie still for the pink and white and red petals to swim in. The wind carries the voices of laughing children into our house as we watch the petals sway to and fro in the dark puddles across our street. In the heat of hot summer, the green grass grows while the yellow dandelions die, and in the wake of their demise the wind carries their spirits and their seeds across open lots, rotting houses, small yards, littered avenues, and everywhere there are little parachutes of pollen floating away. Late into the night, we listen to the voices of friends and neighbors talking outside on their porches, hear the clinking of cans, turn our heads toward their laughter and their tears, and the wind loses its appeal for a season because the pull of people grows strong across the fertile green.

When I was thirteen, my parents and I drove to Disney World, fleeing a hurricane. The magic there was packaged, perfectly choreographed, frothy as the carbonated drinks that crackled on my tongue. It didn’t creep through the cracks and secret spaces of the world, like moss growing between broken slabs of concrete. That kind of magic didn’t ask for blood or tears. It simply was. So

was launched forward into Queen Elvia’s mind, seeing it all through her eyes once more and feeling Tory’s soul joining mine. My palm tingled painfully where it still lay against the gleaming surface of the fallen star. The brightness made me wince, my eyes hurting and a ringing growing in my ears. I screamed as it intensified, begging to be spared, unsure if I had angered it somehow. But then a part of the star cracked off in my palm, a tremendous blast of magic cutting it clean from the star itself. The light faded and I found a rough, unhewn piece of the star lying in my palm that hummed with unimaginable power, so beautiful it left me speechless. “Wield my heart, and you will win your war. But when it is done, you will return my heart to me, and use it for one final cast, as only a Fae can.” “What cast?” I breathed, fear knotting in my chest as a terrible sense of foreboding washed over me. “You will breathe life into my heart when it is returned to me. You will offer me the power to take the form of a Fae and walk among the world.” My throat thickened at the idea of that, the thought of a star living on earth seeming wholly unnatural. But power was licking at my fingers hungrily, and while the heart of the star was clutched in my fist, I couldn’t deny the temptation of it. I could win my war, and pass this gift down to my children. “If you do not return my heart, there will be dire consequences,” the star warned, and my body trembled with the omen of devastation that laced its words. “How long?” I asked. “Until it must be returned?” “A hundred years, no more. Buy you and your child the glory you crave, then have one of your bloodline offer me what I seek.” I nodded, relief setting in at knowing I could claim this power for so long. “I will make sure it is returned. And the promise is kept,” I vowed, and a snap of power struck me in the chest, binding me body and soul to that promise, leaving me breathless as it sank into my very blood. “Then it is done,” the star hissed. “Thank you,” I breathed, and those words leaving my lips set the earth quaking and the sky singing. No, not singing. That beautiful, haunting noise that hovered on the edges of my hearing was screams, the stars above trying to defy what had been done, what this star had offered me going against all nature of its kind and mine.