Hanging Bridge Quotes

If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

That ticks me off!” She snapped. “Since when could you bribe me with treats like a fucking child.” I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. “So no smoothie then?” “Mango, banana, orange and extra kiwi,” she replied before hanging up.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . . History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . . There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

They say that if you really want to kill yourself, no one can stop you. There are too many ways to do it. You can jump off a bridge or a building. You can hang yourself. You can crash a car or slit your wrists or swim out really far into the ocean until you drown. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not dead, if I really wanted to kill myself.

Hua Cheng said quietly, "Your Highness, I understand your everything. "Your courage, your despair; your kindness, your pain; your resentment, your hate; your intelligence, your foolishness. "If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the corpse bones you need to trample to climb up, the sinner who deserved the butchering of a million knives. But, I know you wouldn't allow it." (...) However, Hua Cheng only replied, "To die in battle for you is my greatest honour." Those words were like a fatal blow. The tears in Xie Lian's eyes could no longer be restrained, and they came pouring out. Like he was hanging on the thread of his life, he pleaded, "You said you would never leave me." However, Hua Cheng replied, "There is no banquet in this world that doesn't come to an end." Xie Lian bowed his head and buried it deep into his chest, his heart and throat in constricted agony, unable to speak. Yet soon after, he heard Hua Cheng say above him, "But, I will never leave you." Hearing this, Xie Lian's head shot up. Hua Cheng said to him, "I will come back. Your Highness, believe me.

Why had such a promising world been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by customs?

If you're strong enough to take that blade and draw it across your skin. If you're strong enough to take those pills and swallow them when no one's home. If you're strong enough to tie that rope and hang it from the ceiling fan. If you're strong enough to jump off the bridge, my friend. You are strong enough to live.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.... Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Woman, where are they? Has no one judged you guilty?" She answers "No one, sir." Then Jesus says, "I also don't judge you guilty. You may go now, but don't sin anymore." If you have ever wondered how God reacts when you fail, frame these words and hang them on the wall.Read them. Ponder them.Drink from them. Stand below them and let them wash over your soul. Or better still, take him with you to to your canyon of shame. Invite Christ to journey with you back to the Fremont Bridge of your world. Let Him stand beside you as you retell the events of the darkest nights of your soul. And then listen. Listen carefully. He's speaking. "I don't judge you guilty." And watch. Watch carefully. He's writing. He's leaving a message. Not in the sand, but on a cross. Not with his hand, but with his blood. His message has two words: not guilty.

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds. Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute.

I rose to standing, like Lars upon the barbican, the dark city spread at my feet. Lights twinkled in tavern windows, bobbed at the Wolfstoot Bridge construction. Once I had been suspended over this vast space, hanging and helpless, at a dragon’s mercy. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own. We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.

BEFORE YOU JUMP OFF A BRIDGE OR HANG YOURSELF OR BE UNHAPPY PLEASE CONSIDER: LIVE FOR YOURSELF; THOSE WHO HATE YOU HAVE NO PURCHASE

I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more.

The greatest hope, I say, is the one in which all the others are met, is that it is exists for everyone and that for everyone it lasts. That the absolute gift of one being to another, which can exist only in reciprocity, be in the eyes of everyone the only natural and supernatural hanging bridge cast across life itself.

Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountain side: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge, and peer out through a-quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at black-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not.

I'm here." St. Clair is angry. "I'm just sorry I'm not there. With you. I wish there was something I could do." "Wanna come beat her up for me?" "I'm packing my throwing stars right now." I sniffle and wipe my nose. "I'm such an idiot. I can't believe I thought he liked me.That's the worst part, knowing he was never even interested." "Bollocks.He was interested." "No,he wasn't," I say. "Bridge said so." "Because she's jealous! Anna, I was there that first night he called you. I've seen how he looked at you in pictures." I protest,but he interrupts. "Any bloke with a working prick would be insane not to like you." There's a shocked pause,on both ends of the line. "Because,of course,of how intelligent you are. And funny.Not that you aren't attractive.Because you are. Attractive. Oh,bugger..." I wait. "Are you still there,or did you hang up because I'm such a bleeding idiot?" "I'm here." "God,you made me work for that." St. Clair said I'm attractive.That's the second time. "You're so easy to talk to," he continues, "that sometimes I forget you're not one of the guys." Scratch that. He thinks I'm Josh. "Just drop it. I can't take being compared to a guy right now-" "That's not what I meant-" "How's your mom? I'm sorry, I've hogged ur entire conversation,and this was supposed to be about her,and I didn't even ask-" "You did ask. It was the first thing you said when you answered. And technically I called you. And I was calling to see how the show went, which is what we've been talking about.

They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side. If they'd hang head-down at the top of the thing and wait quietly, maybe something good would come along.

New skin, a new land! And a land of liberty, if that is possible! I chose the geology of a land that was new to me, and that was young, virgin, and without drama, that of America. I traveled in America, but instead of romantically and directly rubbing the snakeskin of my body against the asperities of its terrain, I preferred to peel protected within the armor of the gleaming black crustacean of a Cadillac which I gave Gala as a present. Nevertheless all the men who admire and the women who are in love with my old skin will easily be able to find its remnants in shredded pieces of various sizes scattered to the winds along the roads from New York via Pittsburgh to California. I have peeled with every wind; pieces of my skin have remained caught here and there along my way, scattered through that "promised land" which is America; certain pieces of this skin have remained hanging in the spiny vegetation of the Arizona desert, along the trails where I galloped on horseback, where I got rid of all my former Aristotelian "planetary notions." Other pieces of my skin have remained spread out like tablecloths without food on the summits of the rocky masses by which one reaches the Salt Lake, in which the hard passion of the Mormons saluted in me the European phantom of Apollinaire. Still other pieces have remained suspended along the "antediluvian" bridge of San Francisco, where I saw in passing the ten thousand most beautiful virgins in America, completely naked, standing in line on each side of me as I passed, like two rows of organ-pipes of angelic flesh with cowrie-shell sea vulvas.

Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this is exactly what's happening, it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics of mournful Whistlers, the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge. I like the idea of different theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass, a Bronx where people talk like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow kind, perhaps in the nook of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed anyone. Here I have two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back to rest my cheek against, your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish. My hands are webbed like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed something in the womb but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds or a life I felt passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly she had to scream out. Here, when I say I never want to be without you, somewhere else I am saying I never want to be without you again. And when I touch you in each of the places we meet, in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying and resurrected. When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life, in each place and forever.

There is a strange intangible place on the outside edges of the human mind. It hangs there like a constant witness. It judges a person's every move, every thought and every action. Some people think it is “big brother” or God, but it is just a critical place inside the person’s own mind that judges and condemns. It is the very place where we judge ourselves when we cross Rainbow Bridge into Heaven.

She saw beauty in ordinary little things and took pleasure in it (and this was just as well because she had had very little pleasure in her life). She took pleasure in a well-made cake, a smoothly ironed napkin, a pretty blouse, laundered and pressed; she liked to see the garden well dug, the rich soil brown and gravid; she loved her flowers. When you are young you are too busy with yourself... you haven't time for ordinary little things but, when you leave youth behind, your eyes open and you see magic and mystery all around you: magic in the flight of a bird, the shape of a leaf, the bold arch of a bridge against the sky, footsteps at night and a voice calling in the darkness, the moment in a theatre before the curtain rises, the wind in the trees, or (in winter) an apple-branch clothed with pure white snow and icicles hanging from from a stone and sparkling with rainbow colours.

Okay, here’s the deal – your aunt and I have noticed that you and Peter seem…pretty serious. And…we want to make sure you’re being safe. The last word hangs heavy in the air. Like one of Cousin It’s rancid dog farts. Riley’s face turns a startling shade of fire-endine red. “Oh my God. Is this really happening?” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I know, I know, it’s fucking awful.

A Faint Music by Robert Hass Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days— likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears— that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one— except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend told once about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,” that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs, and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child—the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house. There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,” she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. “You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?” “Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now, “I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while— Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall— and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up. It’s not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,” which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps— First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing

The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread.

Ars Poetica I taught my words to love, I showed them my heart and would not give up until their syllables did not start to beat. I showed them trees and what words wouldn't rustle I hanged, without pity, from the branches. In the end, words needed to resemble both me and the world. Then I came to me, I braced myself between two banks of a river, to present a bridge, a bridge between a bull's horn and grass, between black stars of light and earth, between the temple of a woman's head and a man's, letting words travel over me like racing cars, electric trains, only so they could cross faster, only so they would learn to transport the world, from itself, to itself.

I hang here like Hallaj, feeling those lips on me, the honor of being lifted up on a crucifixion apple tree. Now the kissing is over. Fold your love in. Hide it like pastry filling. Whisper within with a shy girl's tenderness

I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they've killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she's white.

Around us, the city twinkled, the stars themselves seeming to hang lower, pulsing with ruby and amethyst and pearl. Above, the full moon set the marble of the buildings and bridges glowing as if they were all lit from within. Music played, strings and gentle drums, and on either side of the Sidra, golden lights bobbed over riverside walkways dotted with cafes and shops, all open for the night, already packed. Life- so full of life. I could nearly taste it crackling on my tongue.

I’m drinking a glass of water in the empty hotel bar at the Principe di Savoia and staring at the mural behind the bar and in the mural there is a giant mountain, a vast field spread out below it where villagers are celebrating in a field of long grass that blankets the mountain dotted with tall white flowers, and in the sky above the mountain it’s morning and the sun is spreading itself across the mural’s frame, burning over the small cliffs and the low-hanging clouds that encircle the mountain’s peak, and a bridge strung across a path through the mountain will take you to any point beyond that you need to arrive at, because behind that mountain is a highway and along that highway are billboards with answers on them – who, what, where, when, why – and I’m falling forward but also moving up toward the mountain, my shadow looming against its jagged peaks, and I’m surging forward, ascending, sailing through dark clouds, rising up, a fiery wind propelling me, and soon it’s night and stars hang in the sky above the mountain revolving as they burn. The stars are real. The future is that mountain.

What is great about man is that he is a bridge, not an end: what can be loved about man is that he is a going-over and a going-under. I love those who do not know how to live except as downgoers, for they are going over. [...] I love all those who are like heavy raindrops falling individually from the dark cloud that hang over man: they herald the coming of the lightning and perish as heralds.

Eiffel Tower" To Robert Delaunay Eiffel Tower Guitar of the sky Your wireless telegraphy Attracts words As a rosebush the bees During the night The Seine no longer flows Telescope or bugle EIFFEL TOWER And it's a hive of words Or an inkwell of honey At the bottom of dawn A spider with barbed-wire legs Was making its web of clouds My little boy To climb the Eiffel Tower You climb on a song Do re mi fa sol la ti do We are up on top A bird sings in the telegraph antennae It's the wind Of Europe The electric wind Over there The hats fly away They have wings but they don't sing Jacqueline Daughter of France What do you see up there The Seine is asleep Under the shadow of its bridges I see the Earth turning And I blow my bugle Toward all the seas On the path Of your perfume All the bees and the words go their way On the four horizons Who has not heard this song I AM THE QUEEN OF THE DAWN OF THE POLES I AM THE COMPASS THE ROSE OF THE WINDS THAT FADES EVERY FALL AND ALL FULL OF SNOW I DIE FROM THE DEATH OF THAT ROSE IN MY HEAD A BIRD SINGS ALL YEAR LONG That's the way the Tower spoke to me one day Eiffel Tower Aviary of the world Sing Sing Chimes of Paris The giant hanging in the midst of the void Is the poster of France The day of Victory You will tell it to the stars

Fear, hydra-headed fear, which is rampant in all of us, is a hang-over from lower forms of life. We are straddling two worlds, the one from which we have emerged and the one towards which we are heading. This is the deepest meaning of the word human, that we are a link, a bridge, a promise. It is in us that the life process is being carried to fulfillment. We have a tremendous responsibility, and it is the gravity of that which awakens our fears. We know that if we do not move forward, if we do not realize our potential being, we shall relapse, sputter out, and drag the world down with us. We carry Heaven and Hell within us; we are the cosmogonic builders. We have choice—and all creation is our range. For some it a terrifying prospect. It would be better, think they, if Heaven were above and Hell below—anywhere outside, but not within. But that comfort has been knocked from under us. There are no places to go to, either for reward or punishment. The place is always here and now, in your own person and according to your own fancy. The world is exactly what you picture it to be, always, every instant. It is impossible to shift the scenery about and pretend that you will enjoy another, a different act. The setting is permanent, changing with the mind and heart, not according to the dictates of an invisible stage director. You are the author, director and actor all in one: the drama is always going to be your own life, not some one else’s. A beautiful, terrible, ineluctable drama, like a suit made of your own skin. Would you want it otherwise? Could you invent a better drama?

it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

Tengo was about to say something when he heard the connection cut. Everybody was hanging up on him. Like chopping down a rope bridge.

Even in the still shadowed places, glowbirds nestled like Japanese lanterns above lighted walkways, glowing swingvines, and illuminated hanging bridges, while fireflies from Old Earth and radiant gossamers from Maui-Covenant blinked and coded their way through labyrinths of leaves, mixing with constellations sufficiently to fool even the most starwise traveler.

And yet—and yet—she enchants me, intrigues me, draws me like sin to hellfire. The infernal regions in the hollow between her breasts, wet and warm, dark and dense, offers delicious emptiness, captivating, overpowering, like the bottom of a well, the abyss beneath a hanging bridge on a dreary, gloomy day when all hope is gone and death is like the serpent in Eden.

When my hips buck against my hand, he presses me hard against the wall, keeping me in place. I come, letting the exquisite sensation wash over me again and again until I’m spent, my head hanging.

The feeble flames glinted off hidden facets in the crystal matrix of the rocks, and were reflected in the glistening sheen of damp stalactites hanging in eternal icicles from the roof, longing to reach their inverted counterparts growing from the floor. Some had succeeded in forming a union. Strained through the stone of ages, the calcereous drops had culminated in stately columns that reached from floor to vaulted ceiling, thinning at the center. One straining stalactite missed the satisfying kiss of its stalagmitic mate by barely a hairbreadth—that would take more ages yet to bridge.

but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

Sofiowka was found the next morning, swinging by the neck from the wooden bridge. His severed hands were hanging from strings tied to his feet, and across his chest was written, in Brod's red lipstick, ANIMAL

The truth is you already know what it’s like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes. But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think. But what if you could? Think for a second — what if all the infinitely dense and shifting worlds of stuff inside you every moment of your life turned out now to be somehow fully open and expressible afterward, after what you think of as you has died, because what if afterward now each moment itself is an infinite sea or span or passage of time in which to express it or convey it, and you don’t even need any organized English, you can as they say open the door and be in anyone else’s room in all your own multiform forms and ideas and facets? Because listen — we don’t have much time, here’s where Lily Cache slopes slightly down and the banks start getting steep, and you can just make out the outlines of the unlit sign for the farmstand that’s never open anymore, the last sign before the bridge — so listen: What exactly do you think you are? The millions and trillions of thoughts, memories, juxtapositions — even crazy ones like this, you’re thinking — that flash through your head and disappear? Some sum or remainder of these? Your history? Do you know how long it’s been since I told you I was a fraud? Do you remember you were looking at the respicem watch hanging from the rearview and seeing the time, 9:17? What are you looking at right now? Coincidence? What if no time has passed at all?* The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali — it’s not English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole. So cry all you want, I won’t tell anybody.

My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me? But the world did not stop, it took no notice at all Morrie's doctors guessed he had two years left. Morrie knew it was less. But my old professor had made a profound decision, one he began to construct the day he came out of the doctor's office with a sword hanging over his head. Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left? he had asked himself. He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying. Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.

Breath, to a Sufi, is a bridge between himself and God; it is a rope for him, hanging down to earth, attached to the heavens. The Sufi climbs up by the help of this rope. In the Qur’anic language it is called Burak, a steed which was sent to the Prophet for his journey to the heavens. Hindus call it prana, which means life, but they picture it symbolically as a bird, which is named in Sanskrit Garuda, on which rode Narayana, the godhead. There is no mystical cult in which the breath is not given the greatest importance in spiritual progress. Once man has touched the depths of his own being by the help of the breath, then it becomes easy for him to become at one with all that exists on earth and in heaven.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.… History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that… There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.… And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.… So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The sky was leaden, with tufts of low, scudding grey cloud and filled with a numberless flock of rooks. There was a little hump-backed bridge over a muddy, swollen stream; joyless, beggarly, half-naked trees. A lone aspen, and in the distance, past a vegetable garden stood a log cabin that looked like a kind of outhouse. The surroundings looked so lifeless and miserable that one might easily have been tempted to hang oneself on that aspen by the little bridge. Not a breath of wind, not a cloud, not a living soul. In short—hell. Suddenly

I noticed a small frame of parch paper with a quote in calligraphy hanging outside next to the door: “Respect Buddha and the gods, but don’t count on their help.” – Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings. I had no idea who this Musashi guy was, but he tickled me with that line.

By the dim light of the hanging lantern she looked incredibly ancient and awe-inspiring. She spoke in the impressive voice one would expect from someone who had been in sacred service for so long, and I was convinced that she was no ordinary mortal but a manifesting of the Goddess herself.

The soul often hangs in a balance of some sort. Tonight do I lie down in the high fields with Dirk Tanner or not? At the fair, do I buy ribbons or wine? For the new ferry’s headboard, do I use camphor or pearwood? Small things. A kiss, a ribbon, a grain that coaxes the knife this way or that. They are not, Kit Meinem of Atyar. Our souls wait for our answer because any answer changes us. This is why I wait to decide what I feel about your bridge. I’m waiting until I know how I will be changed.” “You never know how things will change you,” Kit said. “If you don’t, you have not waited to find out.

You could simply tell them you prefer silver." For this is the customary offering in Ireland, at least for the courtly fae. Almost every species of Folk disdains human metals, yet the Irish fae are unique in their ability to tolerate---and, indeed, to love---silver. It is said that they fill their vast, dark forests with silver mirrors like jewels, which drink in the little sun and starlight that penetrates the boughs and reflect it back at the will of the Folk; it is also said that they use silver to construct fantastical staircases that wind up and up those vast trunks, and bridges that hang between them like delicate necklaces.

There is no river in the world to be compared for majesty and the witchery of association, to the Thames; it impresses even the unreading and unimaginative watcher with a solemnity which he cannot account for, as it rolls under his feet and swirls past the buttresses of its many bridges; he may think, as he experiences the unusual effect, that it is the multiplicity of buildings which line its banks, or the crowd of sea-craft which floats upon its surface, or its own extensive spread. In reality he feels, although he cannot explain it, the countless memories which hang for ever like a spiritual fog over its rushing current. ("The Phantom Model")

You are familiar, no doubt, with Sebastiano del Piombo's huge painting "The Raising of Lazarus", which hangs in the National Gallery in London, having been purchased in the last century from the Angerstein collection. Against a background of water, arched bridges, and a hot blue sky, a crowd of people -- presumably the neighbours -- cluster about the risen man. Lazarus has turned rather yellow in death, but he is a muscular, well-set-up type. Hid grave-clothes are draped like a towel over his head, and people lean towards him solicitously, and seem to confer; what he most resembles is a boxer in his corner. The expressions of those around are puzzled, mildly censorious. Here -- in the very act of extricating his right leg from a knot of the shroud --one feels his troubles are about to begin again. A woman -- Mary, or maybe Martha -- is whispering behind her hand. Christ points to the revenant, and holds up his other hand, fingers outstretched: so many round down, five to go.

Yeah. I know, I’m so bridge-and-tunnel—for as long as I’ve been able to catch the train, I’ve been sneaking into the city to go to Midtown. Hang out with the bankers, merge some mergers and acquire some acquisitions. The whole thing just reeked of sex and rock ’n’ roll to me. Can’t you feel it in the air? Close your eyes. Feel it?” I

Violence; violence, and power, in the context of yet somebody else walking up to the groaning boards of fantasy’s eternal wedding feast, still laden with the cold meats from Tolkien’s funeral, and cheekily joining everyone who’s trying to send the whole thing smashing to the ground just to hear the noise all that crockery will make. —But! Also: genderfuck, hearts broken cleanly and otherwise, the City of Portland, Spenser, those moments in pop songs when the bass and all of the drums except maybe a handclap suddenly drop out of the bridge leaving you hanging from a slender aching thread of melody waiting almost dreading the moment when the beat comes back, and the occasional bit of swordplay.

prisoner, and give no trouble. That’s what the Governor’s wife says, I have overheard her saying it. I’m skilled at overhearing. If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving,

Did you ever hear of the Queensborough Bridge?' 　　Wilbur shook his head. 'Is it a web?' 　　'Sort of,' replied Charlotte. 'But do you know how long it took men to build it? Eight whole years. My goodness, I would have starved to death waiting that long. I can make a web in a single evening.' 　　'What do people catch in the Queensborough Bridge—bugs?' asked Wilbur. 　　'No,' said Charlotte. 'They don’t catch anything. They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side. If they’d hang head-down at the top of the thing and wait quietly, maybe something good would come along. But no—with men it’s rush, rush, rush, every minute. I’m glad I’m a sedentary spider.

I concentrate on the picturesque sight of the beach, whose light sand offers a fascinating contrast to the rugged black rocks. The rolling waves with their white crests add even more sparkling nuances to the countless shades of blue and white of the sky with the low-hanging fog. And the Golden Gate Bridge towers majestically above it all. It’s overwhelming.

Back in Pittsburgh, if someone had infiltrated the library with fifty squirrels, that person would have been hailed as a hero. But Ellingham was full of library lovers, and there was the feeling in the air that this was, perhaps, a bridge too far. You could be naked, you could scream and hang out on the roof, but you do not mess with the place with the books.

Does that have to go in?” Lada asked. “What do you mean?” Wistala said, brought back to the dictation. “The battle. Betrayals. Incompetence, even cowardice. Boats falling, mud everywhere, blood running from balconies, carrion birds poking marrow from bones, dwarves hanging from bridges, burned corpses, but worst of all, no hero whose courage and skill is put to the ultimate test.” “They asked for a history, they shall have my history. If someone else will have the battle take place on a spring-green field with pennants at the lance points and songs sung over the honored dead, let them write it thus. This history is a story of death begetting death, and should end with carrion birds, for they are the only ones who come out the better at the end.

On the way we talked about the road sign Bridge Ices Before Road. I always wondered, If that's a problem, why don't they just build the bridge out of the same stuff they use to build the road? Drema explained that the bridge isn't made out of different material than the road, but that the bridge ices quicker because it's alone, hanging there without the land under it to keep it warm.

(From Chapter 1: Jagged Edge) I am a model prisoner, and give no trouble. That’s what the Governor’s wife says, I have overheard her saying it. I am very skilled at overhearing. If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.

At one point in 2015, a few Instagrammers in Barnieh's crowd in Hong Kong took the game to another level: they made a habit of hanging off the side of buildings and the tops of bridges. In one shot by Lucian Yock Lam, @yock7, a man is holding another man's arm while he dangles from the side of a skyscraper at night, hovering above a busy street. The caption is a simple hashtag: #followmebro. It got 2,550 likes, a fleeting reward for putting one's life at risk.

It’s true that when it’s time to go, someone will be waiting for you. It might be a relative or a loved one, but not always. It could be a dog, hanging out with a tennis ball and ready to play again. Sometimes, when children die, they don’t know any of their relatives who are on the other side, so they’ll have an angel or even maybe a cartoon character or Santa Claus waiting to pull them across that bridge. It’s just a manifestation of energy saying, “Come on, baby, it’s okay.

At this moment, we’re suspended in time, the outside world ceasing to exist. The words between us, both spoken and silent, hang in the air like a breeze, thin and easy to dismiss. I suck in a deep breath as if to trap them before releasing them to Calista. In the form of a kiss. I tell her of my adoration, my loyalty, and my willingness to sacrifice anything for her. All without uttering a single word. It’s a declaration that goes beyond sound, transcending the realm of spoken language.

So out we go. It’s a habit by now, Freak riding up high on my shoulders and using his little feet to steer me if I forget where we’re going. Not that we always know. Freak likes to make things up as he goes along. You think you’re just walking down this ordinary sidewalk and really you’re crossing this dangerous bridge, the kind made of vines that hangs high up in the air over a deep canyon, and when Freak makes it up it seems so real, you’re afraid to look down or you’ll get dizzy and fall off the sidewalk.

He still didn't have half an idea how to behave around her. There was a hell of a gap between them in the daylight, a yawning great gap of race, and age, and language that he wasn't sure could ever be bridged. Strange, how the gap dwindled down to nothing at night. They understood each other well enough in the dark. Maybe they'd work it out, in time, or maybe they wouldn't, and that'd be that. Still, he was glad she was there. Made him feel like a proper human man again, instead of just an animal slinking in the woods, trying to scratch his way from one mess to another.

I wanted to write an adventure story, not, it's true, I really did. I shall have failed, that's all. Adventures bore me. I have no idea how to talk about countries, how to make people wish they had been there. I am not a good travelling salesman. Countries? Where are they , whatever became of them. When I was twelve I dreamed of Hongkong. That tedious, commonplace little provincial town! Shops sprouting from every nook and cranny! The Chinese junks pictured on the lids of chocolate boxes used to fascinate me. Junks: sort of chopped-off barges, where the housewives do all their cooking and washing on deck. They even have television. As for the Niagara Falls: water, nothing but water! A dam is more interesting; at least one can occasionally see a big crack at its base, and hope for some excitement. When one travels, one sees nothing but hotels. Squalid rooms, with iron bedsteads, and a picture of some kind hanging on the wall from a rusty nail, a coloured print of London Bridge or the Eiffel Tower. One also sees trains, lots of trains, and airports that look like restaurants, and restaurants that look like morgues. All the ports in the world are hemmed in by oil slicks and shabby customs buildings. In the streets of the towns, people keep to the sidewalks, cars stop at red lights. If only one occasionally arrived in a country where women are the colour of steel and men wear owls on their heads. But no, they are sensible, they all have black ties, partings to one side, brassières and stiletto heels. In all the restaurants, when one has finished eating one calls over the individual who has been prowling among the tables, and pays him with a promissory note. There are cigarettes everywhere! There are airplanes and automobiles everywhere.

But how…how am I a dragon? How are you a starman?” “I don’t think of myself as a starman, exactly,” he said soberly, though I sensed he wanted to smile. His hand released mine, the bridge broken; he moved to hang the lantern on a shiny new hook dug into the wall behind us. “I was born here, on earth. Not even far from here, in fact. Just over in Devon. My parents died young, when I was only five. Hastings is my great-uncle and he took me in, and I’ve lived here ever since. But I’ve always known what I am, as far back as I can remember. I’ve always been able to do the things I do. The stars have always spoken to me.” “And you…speak back to them?” “Yes,” he said simply. “But not to people.” “No. Just to Hastings, and to you.” A shiver took me; I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do the stars say?” “All manner of things. Amazing things. Secret things. Things great and small, things profound and insignificant. They told me that, throughout time, there’ve been only a scattering of people like me, folk of both flesh and star. That even the whisper of their magic in my blood could annihilate me if I didn’t learn to control it. That I’d crisp to ash without control. Or, worse, crisp someone else.” His smile broke through. “And they told me about you. That you were born and would come to me when the time was right.” “Did you summon me here?” The muted echo of my voice rebounded against the firefly walls: here-here-here. “To Iverson, I mean?” …mean-mean-mean… He didn’t answer at first. He looked at his feet, then walked to the edge of the embankment and squatted down, raking his fingers through the bright water near the toes of his boots. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” he said softly to the water. “Both infinite and finite, human and not. I’m of comet and clay and the sparks of sun across the ocean waves.” He sighed. “I know what it’s like to doubt yourself, to comprehend that you’re so unique you’re forced to wonder about…everything. But, yes, I called you to Iverson.

Every week or so, a gay kid somewhere jumps off a bridge or slashes his wrists. I am told that a boy near here hanged himself because his father could not accept who he was. On television, I listen to the things they say, the right-wingers, and fundamentalists, and all the people who consolidate their power by hurting other people. I want to cover up the ears of kids and say, “Do not take it in.” I took it in. I really did. I heard everything that people in the world around me said about who I was. It hurt me, but I thought I had no right to say anything because I was wrong. I didn’t know what silence would cost, how it would change my life. It takes a long time to outrun the things that the world drills into you. Our

Morrie's doctors guessed he had two years left. Morrie knew it was less. But my old professor had made a profound decision, one he began to construct the day he came out of the doctor's office with a sword hanging over his head. Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left? he had asked himself. He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying. Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip.

The Allies housed a hundred patients there. Before that the Germans held it with a small army, their last stronghold. Some rooms are painted, each room has a different season. Outside the villa is a gorge. All this is about twenty miles from Florence, in the hills. You will need a pass, of course. We can probably get someone to drive you up. It is still terrible out there. Dead cattle. Horses shot dead, half eaten. People hanging upside down from bridges. The last vices of war. Completely unsafe. The sappers haven’t gone in there yet to clear it. The Germans retreated burying and installing mines as they went. A terrible place for a hospital. The smell of the dead is the worst. We need a good snowfall to clean up this country. We need ravens.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were here and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant . . . . History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half - crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn - off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll - gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. .There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high - water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

flew toward them with the goal hanging over it. He glanced in front and the bridge-opening suddenly engulfed them, Dancer barreling between the metal rails and its hooves hitting wood. VrrrrOOOOOMMMMM! The SUV’s front bumper slammed the narrow bridge’s metal railings, snapping the bolts and curling the steel on both sides of the horse. Greyson felt the engine’s heat on his back and grimaced, bracing for impact. But then it happened – the goal’s net snagged the edge of the bridge rail and pulled the metal frame down like a clamp around the hood; the front wheels dug into the bridge and stopped, but the back of the vehicle carried the momentum and swung over top, the rear wheels spinning loudly as they pointed toward the falling rain. The speed carried the huge metal beast over the net and flung it at the children from behind. Dancer leapt from the bridge just as the SUV struck it like a colossal pendulum, exploding in a cluster bomb of splinters and a tidal wave of water. The shockwave of wood and water washed over them from behind, hitting them with stinging shrapnel as Dancer galloped with the wave into open field. Sydney pulled on the reins and Dancer curled to a stop. Breathing heavy with adrenaline,

when expressing her own. Despite what happened in August, there is still something in her soft brown eyes—a cheerfulness and curiosity—that reminds me of the daughters I lost so many years ago. It’s what drew me to Rebecca in the first place. Every interaction with her since has made me wonder what my daughters would be doing now had they survived that long, horrid summer. She cups her tea in both hands and holds it to her lips, letting the steam curl around her cheeks, before taking a sip. “So what is this news you have for me?” Instead of answering Rebecca’s question, I once again look to the door, listen for a beat, then ask one of my own. “Do you happen to know where Isaac was last night?” “I don’t. In his study, I suppose. But I wasn’t feeling well, and I went to bed early. Why?” I can remember a time, when my sons were younger, when they loved throwing stones over the bridge into the river. They loved the splash and the noise. Being boys, they loved the disturbance that it caused. I study Rebecca’s face and take no pleasure in upsetting the still waters of her soul. “Joshua Burgess is dead. They found his body in the river this morning.” Rebecca shakes her head, as though unable to comprehend. “Was he…? Did…?” Whatever questions she means to ask won’t form. “It was not an accident. He didn’t drown,” I tell her. “He was hanged.” Rebecca goes completely still, except for her hands, which begin a frantic

Ave Maria BY FRANK O'HARA Mothers of America let your kids go to the movies! get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to it’s true that fresh air is good for the body but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images and when you grow old as grow old you must they won’t hate you they won’t criticize you they won’t know they’ll be in some glamorous country they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey they may even be grateful to you for their first sexual experience which only cost you a quarter and didn’t upset the peaceful home they will know where candy bars come from and gratuitous bags of popcorn as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg near the Williamsburg Bridge oh mothers you will have made the little tykes so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy and they’ll have been truly entertained either way instead of hanging around the yard or up in their room hating you prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet except keeping them from the darker joys it’s unforgivable the latter so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice and the family breaks up and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set seeing movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young

The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still. In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat. Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis. Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener. A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls. People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone. Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica. Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment. The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet. The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless. The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers. The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out. And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis. He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him. The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out: ‘Monsieur Bouvet!

Honestly, sir,” I said, “I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss.” We had excused ourselves to speak privately for a moment, leaving poor Charlie politely rocking on his heels in the foyer. The office was warm and smelled of sage and witch hazel, and the desk was littered with bits of twine and herbs where Jackaby had been preparing fresh wards. Douglas had burrowed into a nest of old receipts on the bookshelf behind us and was sound asleep with his bill tucked back into his wing. I had given up trying to get him to stop napping on the paperwork. “You’re the one who told me that I shouldn’t have to choose between profession and romance,” I said. “I’m not the one making a fuss. I don’t care the least bit about your little foray into . . . romance.” Jackaby pushed the word out of his mouth as though it had been reluctantly clinging to the back of his throat. “If anything, I am concerned that you are choosing to make precisely the choice that I told you you should not make!” “What? Wait a moment. Are you . . . jealous?” “Don’t be asinine! I am not jealous! I am merely . . . protective. And perhaps troubled by your lack of fidelity to your position.” “That is literally the definition of jealous, sir. Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’m not choosing Charlie over you! I’m not going to suddenly stop being your assistant just because I spend time working on another case!” “You might!” he blurted out. He sank down into the chair at his desk. “You just might.” “Why are you acting like this?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because things change. Because people change. Because . . . because Charlie Barker is going to propose,” he said. He let his hand drop and looked me in the eyes. “Marriage,” he added. “To you.” I blinked. “I miss a social cue or two from time to time, but even I’m not thick enough to believe all that was about analyzing bloodstains together. He has the ring. It’s in his breast pocket right now. He’s attached an absurd level of emotional investment to the thing—I’m surprised it hasn’t burned a hole right through the front of his jacket, the way its aura is glowing. He’s nervous about it. He’s going to propose. Soon, I would guess.” I blinked. The air in front of me wavered like a mirage, and in another moment Jenny had rematerialized. “And if he does,” she said softly, “it will be Abigail’s decision to face, not yours. There are worse fates than to receive a proposal from a handsome young suitor.” She added, turning to me with a grin, “Charlie is a good man.” “Yes, fine! But she has such prodigious potential!” Jackaby lamented. “Having feelings is one thing—I can grudgingly tolerate feelings—but actually getting married? The next thing you know they’ll be wanting to do something rash, like live together ! Miss Rook, you have started something here that I am loath to see you leave unfinished. You’ve started becoming someone here whom I truly want to meet when she is done. Choosing to leave everything you have here to go be a good man’s wife would be such a wretched waste of that promise.” He faltered, looking to Jenny, and then to the floorboards. “On the other hand, you should never have chosen to work for me in the first place. It remains one of your most ill-conceived and reckless decisions to date—and that is saying something, because you also chose to blow up a dragon once.” He sighed. “Jenny is right. You could make a real life with that young man, and you shouldn’t throw that away just to hang about with a fractious bastard and a belligerent duck.” He sagged until his forehead was resting on his desk.

Top Dog" If I could, I would take your grief, dig it up out of the horseradish field and grate it into something red and hot to sauce the shellfish. I would take the lock of hair you put in the locket and carry it in my hand, I would make the light strike everything the way it hit the Bay Bridge, turning the ironwork at sunset into waffles. If I could, I would blow your socks off, they would travel far, always in unison, past the dead men running, past the cranes standing in snow, beyond the roads we rode, so small in our little car, it was like riding in a miner's helmet. If I could I would make everyone vote and call their public servants to say, “No one was meant for this.” I would go back to the afternoon we made love in the tall grass under the full sun not far from the ravine where the old owner had flung hundreds of mink cages. I would memorize gateways to the afterworld, the electric third rail, the blond braid our girl has hanging down her back, the black guppy we killed at our friends’ when we unplugged the bubbler and the fish floated to the top, one eye up at the ceiling, the other at the blue gravel on the bottom of the tank. I would beg an audience with Sister Lucia, the last living of the children visited by Our Lady of Fatima, I would ask her about the weight of secrets, if they let her sleep or if she woke at night with a body on her body, if the body said, “Let's play top dog, first I'll lie on you, then you lie on me.” I would ask how she lived with revelation, the normal state of affairs amplified beyond God, bumped up to the Virgin Mother, who no doubt knew a few things, passed them on, quietly, and I would ask Lucia how she lived with knowing, how she could keep it under her hat, under wraps, button up, zip her lip, play it close to the vest, never telling, never using truth as a weapon.

Senor, a large river separated two districts of one and the same lordship—will your worship please to pay attention, for the case is an important and a rather knotty one? Well then, on this river there was a bridge, and at one end of it a gallows, and a sort of tribunal, where four judges commonly sat to administer the law which the lord of river, bridge and the lordship had enacted, and which was to this effect, 'If anyone crosses by this bridge from one side to the other he shall declare on oath where he is going to and with what object; and if he swears truly, he shall be allowed to pass, but if falsely, he shall be put to death for it by hanging on the gallows erected there, without any remission.' Though the law and its severe penalty were known, many persons crossed, but in their declarations it was easy to see at once they were telling the truth, and the judges let them pass free. It happened, however, that one man, when they came to take his declaration, swore and said that by the oath he took he was going to die upon that gallows that stood there, and nothing else. The judges held a consultation over the oath, and they said, 'If we let this man pass free he has sworn falsely, and by the law he ought to die; but if we hang him, as he swore he was going to die on that gallows, and therefore swore the truth, by the same law he ought to go free.' It is asked of your worship, senor governor, what are the judges to do with this man? For they are still in doubt and perplexity; and having heard of your worship's acute and exalted intellect, they have sent me to entreat your worship on their behalf to give your opinion on this very intricate and puzzling case." To this Sancho made answer, "Indeed those gentlemen the judges that send you to me might have spared themselves the trouble, for I have more of the obtuse than the acute in me; but repeat the case over again, so that I may understand it, and then perhaps I may be able to hit the point." The querist repeated again and again what he had said before, and then Sancho said, "It seems to me I can set the matter right in a moment, and in this way; the man swears that he is going to die upon the gallows; but if he dies upon it, he has sworn the truth, and by the law enacted deserves to go free and pass over the bridge; but if they don't hang him, then he has sworn falsely, and by the same law deserves to be hanged." "It is as the senor governor says," said the messenger; "and as regards a complete comprehension of the case, there is nothing left to desire or hesitate about." "Well then I say," said Sancho, "that of this man they should let pass the part that has sworn truly, and hang the part that has lied; and in this way the conditions of the passage will be fully complied with." "But then, senor governor," replied the querist, "the man will have to be divided into two parts; and if he is divided of course he will die; and so none of the requirements of the law will be carried out, and it is absolutely necessary to comply with it." "Look here, my good sir," said Sancho; "either I'm a numskull or else there is the same reason for this passenger dying as for his living and passing over the bridge; for if the truth saves him the falsehood equally condemns him; and that being the case it is my opinion you should say to the gentlemen who sent you to me that as the arguments for condemning him and for absolving him are exactly balanced, they should let him pass freely, as it is always more praiseworthy to do good than to do evil; this I would give signed with my name if I knew how to sign; and what I have said in this case is not out of my own head, but one of the many precepts my master Don Quixote gave me the night before I left to become governor of this island, that came into my mind, and it was this, that when there was any doubt about the justice of a case I should lean to mercy; and it is God's will that I should recollect it now, for it fits this case.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were here and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant . . . . History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half - crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn - off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll - gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high - water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . . History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . . There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. ― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Sure. Maybe we’ll just hang a sign out the window, Come Get The Fairy. She’s In Here.” Dex pinches the bridge of his nose. “Coffee isn’t a bad idea, though.

Our bus pulled in to a museum consisting of only one exhibit—a history of lynching. Every wall was filled with photographs of dark-skinned human beings swinging by their necks. A mother and son hanging over a bridge. Burned bodies swinging over dying fires. White children staring in wide-eyed wonder while their parents proudly point to the mutilated body behind them. The cruel smiles of white faces testifying to the joy of the occasion. We came across newspaper stories that advertised lynchings as community events. In another case we saw a postcard. On the front was a photo of a mutilated man still hanging from a rope. On the other side, a handwritten note: “Sorry we missed you at the barbecue.

My husband laughed without smiling. He looked at the last of the sun-colored water as we approached the Brooklyn Bridge's system of angled shadows. "If no one is really the way we see them, that would include me," I said. "And you." Rudy admired the sunset. He said it looked explosive, hanging, all round, just over the water. Reflected and doubled in that bit of river. But he was looking only at the water. I saw him.

My husband laughed without smiling. He looked at the last of the sun-colored water as we approached the Brooklyn Bridge's system of angled shadow. "Because if no one is really the way we see them," I said, "that would include me. And you." Rudy admired the sunset out loud. He said it looked explosive, hanging, all round, just slightly over the water. Reflected and doubled in that bit of river. But he'd been looking only at the water. I'd watched him.

Schaffer was feeling even more vague and woolly than Smith, if for different reasons. He was waking, slowly and painfully, from a very bad dream and in this dream he could taste salt in his mouth and hear a soft urgent feminine voice calling his name, calling it over and over again. In normal times Schaffer would have been all for soft feminine voices, urgent or not, but he wished that this one would stop for it was all part of the bad dream and in this bad dream someone had split his head in half and he knew the pain wouldn't go until he woke up. He moaned, put the palms of his hands on the floor and tried to prop himself up. It took a long time, it took an eternity, for someone had laid one of the girders from the Forth bridge across his back, but at last he managed to straighten both his arms, his head hanging down between them. His head didn't feel right, it didn't even feel like his head, for, apart from the fact that there seemed to be a butcher's cleaver stuck in it, it seemed to be stuffed with cotton wool, grey and fuzzy round the edges. He shook his head to clear it and this was a mistake for the top of his head fell off. Or so it felt to Schaffer as the blinding coruscation of multi-coloured lights before his eyes arranged themselves into oddly kaleidoscopic patterns. He opened his eyes and the patterns dimmed and the lights began to fade: gradually, beneath his eyes the pattern of floorboards began to resolve themselves, and, on the board, the outlines of hands. His own hands. He was awake, but this was one of those bad dreams which stayed with you even when you were awake. He could still taste salt—the salt of blood—his head still felt as if one incautious shake would have it rolling across the floor and that soft and urgent voice was still calling.

It was midnight. The road above the bridge that connected the midtown and the outskirts was deserted, save for a few cars that drove over every couple of minutes. The underside, however, was teeming with life. Hanging from the bottom of the bridge were creatures that couldn’t be detected by a normal person. They used their claws to hang like bats from the steel frame, chattering amongst themselves in secret.

Cassandra,” Falco murmured. He reached up and twisted all her hair into one of his hands, pulling it slightly as he held it behind her head. His lips made their way across her cheek and her jaw and her brow bone. His other hand caressed her left leg through her cotton stocking. His fingers followed the repeating diamond pattern embossed into her leather garter and then stroked the soft skin just above it. Cass felt transported by his touch, his soft voice, and the mist rising off the canals. Everything felt otherworldly. It was a dream or a hallucination. Any moment now she’d wake up tucked beneath her covers with Slipper snuggled against her chest. Just let go. The batèla floated beneath a bridge. A man shrouded in darkness hung over its edge, leering at her. Cass sat up suddenly, wrapping the rough blanket up around her shoulders. She looked back toward the bridge. No one was there. “What’s wrong?” Falco asked. “I thought I saw someone. Hanging over the bridge. Watching.” “Probably just some deviant. Not lucky enough to have the company of a beautiful woman.” Falco moved to kiss Cass again. But fear was drumming through her. It sharpened her focus, and made reality come slamming back. Cass put her hand out. “Wait. We have to stop, to slow down.” Falco sighed. “You’re right,” he said, running both hands through his hair. “Sometimes I think--well, I fear that you shouldn’t trust me.” “Why?” Cass asked. Holding her lantern high in the air, she looked back toward the bridge again, but it was still deserted. “Because I don’t trust myself around you.” Falco’s voice turned soft again. He ran the knuckles of his right hand down the side of her face. “Who knows what I might do?” Cass blushed. “Who knows what I might let you do?” The words just slipped out, but she didn’t want to take them back. She didn’t want to hide any longer. Falco pulled her close to him, positioning her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her slender waist and leaned his chin on her left shoulder, his jawbone against her cheek. “Your beauty lights up the darkest night,” he said. “I could paint an entire chapel just for you. Maybe I will someday.

Cass felt transported by his touch, his soft voice, and the mist rising off the canals. Everything felt otherworldly. It was a dream or a hallucination. Any moment now she’d wake up tucked beneath her covers with Slipper snuggled against her chest. Just let go. The batèla floated beneath a bridge. A man shrouded in darkness hung over its edge, leering at her. Cass sat up suddenly, wrapping the rough blanket up around her shoulders. She looked back toward the bridge. No one was there. “What’s wrong?” Falco asked. “I thought I saw someone. Hanging over the bridge. Watching.” “Probably just some deviant. Not lucky enough to have the company of a beautiful woman.” Falco moved to kiss Cass again. But fear was drumming through her. It sharpened her focus, and made reality come slamming back. Cass put her hand out. “Wait. We have to stop, to slow down.” Falco sighed. “You’re right,” he said, running both hands through his hair. “Sometimes I think--well, I fear that you shouldn’t trust me.” “Why?” Cass asked. Holding her lantern high in the air, she looked back toward the bridge again, but it was still deserted. “Because I don’t trust myself around you.” Falco’s voice turned soft again. He ran the knuckles of his right hand down the side of her face. “Who knows what I might do?

The world in which we live can be a narrow bridge. The most important thing is not to fear. Keep moving straight ahead and your heart will be led by God. Don’t waste your day in dread. Help is near. A narrow bridge, a narrow bridge, but every step across will lead you home. So many things have changed, nothing near the same. Is it the way you thought it would be? Hang on every hope. I climb the burning rope. Suspended free, I float, look up and see. A narrow bridge, a narrow bridge, but every step across

Building with Its Face Blown Off How suddenly the private is revealed in a bombed-out city, how the blue and white striped wallpaper of a second story bedroom is now exposed to the lightly falling snow as if the room had answered the explosion wearing only its striped pajamas. Some neighbors and soldiers poke around in the rubble below and stare up at the hanging staircase, the portrait of a grandfather, a door dangling from a single hinge. And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed by its uncovered ochre walls, the twisted mess of its plumbing, the sink sinking to its knees, the ripped shower curtain, the torn goldfish trailing bubbles. It's like a dollhouse view as if a child on its knees could reach in and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture. Or it might be a room on a stage in a play with no characters, no dialogue or audience, no beginning, middle, and end– just the broken furniture in the street, a shoe among the cinder blocks, a light snow still falling on a distant steeple, and people crossing a bridge that still stands. And beyong that–crows in a tree, the statue of a leader on a horse, and clouds that look like smoke, and even farther on, in another country on a blanket under a shade tree, a man pouring wine into two glasses and a woman sliding out the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.

...I conducted a number of experiments to get in touch with my future self. Here are my favorite three: • Fire up AgingBooth. While hiring a programmer to create a 3-D virtual reality simulator is probably out of your price range, I personally love an app called AgingBooth, which transforms a picture of your face into what you will look like in several decades. There are also other apps like it, like Merrill Edge’s web app that shows you a live avatar of what you’ll look like at retirement (faceretirement.merilledge.com). AgingBooth is my favorite of them all, and it’s available for both Android and iOS, and it’s free. On the website for this book (productivityprojectbook.com), you can see what to expect out of the app—I’ve framed a picture of myself that hangs above my computer in my office, where I see it every day. Visitors are usually freaked out. • Send a letter to your future self. Like the letter I wrote at camp, writing and sending a letter to yourself in the future is a great way to bridge the gap between you and your future self. I frequently use FutureMe.org to send emails to myself in the future, particularly when I see myself being unfair to future me. • Create a future memory. I’m not a fan of hocus-pocus visualizations, so I hope this doesn’t sound like one. In her brilliant book The Wallpaper Instinct, Kelly McGonigal recommends creating a memory of yourself in the future—like one where you don’t put off a report you’re procrastinating on, or one where you read ten interesting books because you staved off the temptation of binge-watching three seasons of House of Cards on Netflix. Simply imagining a better, more productive version of yourself down the line has been shown to be enough to motivate you to act in ways that are helpful for your future self.

The Bridges of Marin County harbor views back east never so panoramic but here driving the folds of mt tamalpais the whole picture smooth blue of the bay set like a table for dinner guests who seat themselves in berkeley oakland and san jose pass around delicate dishes of angel island ferry boats and alcatraz i'll save a spot for you in san francisco spread with your favorite dishes don't leave me hanging in marin dinner at eight and everyone else on time you said you'd bring the wine we waited as long as we could the food went cold witnesses said that you stood nearly an hour i imagine you crossing back and forth leaning tower to tower finally choosing the southern your wish to rest nearer the city than the driveway how long had you been letting your two selves push each other over the edge stuffing your pockets with secrets and shame weighing yourself down with cement shoes a gangster assuring your own silence i pay the toll daily wondering as the dark shroud of the bay smoothed over you that night who did you think your quiet splash was saving were you keeping yourself from the pleasures you found in the city boys in dark bars handsome men who loved you did they love you too did you wrestle with vertigo lose your sense of balance imagine yourself icarus dizzied by your own precarious perch glorious ride on flawed wings was it so impossible to live and love on both sides of the bay did you think i couldn't feel your love when it was there for me your distraction when desires divided history like the water smoothes over with half-truth story of good job and grieving widow but each time i cross this span i wonder about the men with whom i share the loss of you invisibly i sit unseen in a castro cafe wondering which men gave you what kinds of comfort delight satisfaction these men of leather metal tattoos did you know them how did you get their attention how did they get yours did you walk hand-in-hand with a man who looked like you the marlboro man double exposed did you bury a love of bondage dominance submission in the bay did you find friendship too would you and i have found the same men handsome where are you in this cafe crowd i want to love what you wouldn't show me dance with more than a slice of truth hold your halves together in my arms and rock the till i have mourned and honored the whole of you was it so impossible to cross that divide to live and love on both sides of the bay hey isn't that what bridges are for

A seagoing lieutenant in the United States Navy once asked me if merchant ships have radar. After learning that they do, he asked if the mates use grease pencils. He seemed surprised. Merchant mariners, for their part, tend to characterize Navy people as green and earnest. They joke about the redundant multitudes that inhabit a Navy-ship bridge. There is a story much told by Navy people and yachtsmen about a merchant ship steaming somewhere at nineteen knots with a dog on the bridge, alone on watch. Andy and I call a tale like that an asmut: an apocryphal story much told. One such yarn, which he told that morning, led up to a question that was supposedly put to a merchant skipper as he arrived in port: “Captain, have you seen any sailboats recently?” “No.” “Well, you should have. There’s a mast and rigging hanging from your anchor.” Without

And because I’d begged my mom for the damn cat, guess who got stuck picking up after her?” I poked both of my thumbs hard into my chest. “This girl. But that wasn’t the worst of it.” “Should I pull over for this?” Jamie teased. “This is serious, Jamie Shaw!” I smacked his bicep and he chuckled, holding the steering wheel with his thumbs but lifting the rest of his fingers as if to say “my bad.” “Anyway,” I continued. “So, Rory would always find small ways to torture me. Like she would eat her string toys and then throw up on my favorite clothes. Or wait until I was in the deepest part of sleep and jump onto my bed, meowing like an alleycat right up in my ear.” “I think I like this Rory.” I narrowed my eyes, but Jamie just grinned. “You think you’re hilarious, don’t you? Do you just sit around and laugh at your own jokes? Do you write them down and re-read them at night?” Jamie laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “As I was saying,” I voiced louder. “She was a little brat. But for some weird reason, she always loved to be in the bathroom with me when I took my baths.” “You take baths?” “You’re seriously missing the point of this story!” “There’s a point to this story?” I huffed, but couldn’t fight the smile on my face. “Yes! The point is, I thought that was our bonding time. Rory would weave around my legs while I undressed and she’d hang out on the side of the tub the entire time I was in the bath, meowing occasionally, pawing at the water. It was kind of cute.” “So you bridged your relationship with your cat during bath time?” “Ah, well see, one would think that. But, one night, that little demon hopped onto the counter and just stared at me. I couldn’t figure out why, but she just wouldn’t stop staring. She kept inching her paw up, setting it back down, inching it up, setting it down. And finally I realized what she was going to do — and she knew I did — because as soon as realization dawned, Rory smiled at me — swear to God — and flipped the light off in the bathroom.” Jamie doubled over that time, and I spoke even louder over his laughter. “I’m terrified of the dark, Jamie! It was awful! And so I jumped up, scrambling to find a towel so I could turn the light back on. But because I’m a genius, I yanked on the shower curtain to help me stand up, but that only took it down and me along with it. I fell straight to the floor, but I broke my fall with my hands instead of my face.” “Luckily.” “Oh,” I chided. “Yeah. So lucky. Except guess where Rory’s litter box was?” Jamie’s eyes widened and he tore his eyes from the road to meet mine. “No!” Ohhh yeah.

Perhaps the greatest wound a shame-based person carries is the inability to be intimate in a relationship. This inability flows directly out of the fundamental dishonesty at the core of toxic shame. To be a false self, always hiding and filled with secrets, precludes any possibility of honesty in relationships. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, shame-based people always seek out relationships with shame-based people. Hockey players don’t usually hang out with professional bridge players. They don’t know each other’s rules. We tend to find those who play by the same rules. Secretiveness, dishonesty and game-playing were certainly the substance of my relational history. During my drunken

Strength Work Pull-ups: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo Dips: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo Wide Ring Rows: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo Rings Pushups: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo Squats (pistol progression or barbell): 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo Deep Step-ups: 3×5→15 with 3 minutes of rest at 10×0 tempo L-sit for 60s total, in as many sets as needed, not to failure Compression Work for 3×10s (Organized according to: exercise, exercise order, sets × reps with progressive principle, rest time, tempo.) Prehabilitation, Isolation Work, Flexibility Work, and Cool Down 3×1 minute sets of Rice Bucket for the wrists 3×10 Biceps Curls 3-5×30s Splits Holds 3-5×30s German Hangs 3-5×20s Back Bridges 1 minute of Deep Breathing (in through the nose, out through the mouth)

I am a wind-swayed bridge, a crossroads inhabited by whirlwinds, Gloria, the facilitator, Gloria, the mediator, straddling the walls between abysses. "Your allegiance is to La Raza, the Chicano movement,” say the members of my race. “Your allegiance is to the Third World,” say my Black and Asian friends. “Your allegiance is to your gender,” say the feminists. Then there’s my allegiance to the Gay movement, to the socialist revolution, to the New Age, to magic and the occult. And there’s my affinity to literature, to the world of the artist. What am I? A third world lesbian feminist with Marxist and mystic leanings. They would chop me up into little fragments and rag each piece with a label. You say my name is ambivalence? Think of me as Shiva, a many-armed and -legged body with one foot on brown soil, one on white, one in straight society, one in the gay world., the man’s world, the women’s, one limb in the literary world, another in the working class, the socialist, an the occult worlds. A sort of spider woman hanging by one thin strand of web. Who, me, confused? Ambivalent? Not so. Only your labels split me.

I am a wind-swayed bridge, a crossroads inhabited by whirlwinds, Gloria, the facilitator, Gloria, the mediator, straddling the walls between abysses. "Your allegiance is to La Raza, the Chicano movement,” say the members of my race. “Your allegiance is to the Third World,” say my Black and Asian friends. “Your allegiance is to your gender,” say the feminists. Then there’s my allegiance to the Gay movement, to the socialist revolution, to the New Age, to magic and the occult. And there’s my affinity to literature, to the world of the artist. What am I? A third world lesbian feminist with Marxist and mystic leanings. They would chop me up into little fragments and rag each piece with a label. You say my name is ambivalence? Think of me as Shiva, a many-armed and -legged body with one foot on brown soil, one on white, one in straight society, one in the gay world., the man’s world, the women’s, one limb in the literary world, another in the working class, the socialist, an the occult worlds. A sort of spider woman hanging by one thin strand of web. Who, me, confused? Ambivalent? Not so. Only your labels split me.