Heights Travel Quotes

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.

It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.

On days like this I mourned the way the sheltering walls kept off the low sunlight but today I had resolved this by working from the middle. Just caught in sunlight the rays were strong and intense - not those of a distant weakening star. Still the frosty air and the spirit of our breathing told the truth: that at the height of his strength the sun struggled to fully protect us from the bitter iced heart of the universe. 

To get the best view of life, you have to reach heights above the life.

The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund. The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool. Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.

It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!" She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, "He's considering-he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that Kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!

How can the heart and mind work together? The mind wants logic and to travel in straight lines, while the heart wants to be free and travel upward in spirals to dizzying heights.

Traveling alone, you get to be whoever you want. I don't mean lie. I mean you get to be a blank slate. You can't leave behind your skin color, or your height, or the handsomeness or homeliness of your face. But you can leave your story behind. If you've broken hearts, the new place doesn't know. If you've lost trust in people and yourself, the new place doesn't know. If everyone thinks you love Jesus, but you never really have figured out what you believe, the new place doesn't care. It may assume you have it all tied nicely in a bow. All your thoughts and histories. Just feeling like your past isn't a vice to hold you in place can be very freeing. Feeling like your family and the expectations and the traditions and the judgments are absent... it can fill your veins with possibility and fire.

Man’s strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil?

And, as I traveled farther and farther, exploring the rich, sweet soul of her, my sense of pleasant friendship became but a broad foundation for such height, such breadth, such interlocked combination of feeling as left me fairly blinded with the wonder of it.

Much as I hate to stand out in a crowd, I have this terrible occasional compulsion to make myself a source of merriment for the world, and I had come close to sealing new heights with a Russian hat. Now, clearly, that would be unnecessary.

Because no matter how far you may travel, you are what you are, and even when you are flying at thrilling new heights, circling the sun and thinking you belong in the halo of that perfect golden light, you do not. The wings always melt, and you always crash-land in your same old self.

One could not but play for a moment with the thought of what might have happened if Charlotte Brontë had possessed say three hundred a year — but the foolish woman sold the copyright of her novels outright for fifteen hundred pounds; had somehow possessed more knowledge of the busy world, and towns and regions full of life; more practical experience, and intercourse with her kind and acquaintance with a variety of character. In those words she puts her finger exactly not only upon her own defects as a novelist but upon those of her sex. at that time. She knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted; they were withheld; and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, VILLETTE, EMMA, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, MIDDLEMARCH, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a respectable clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that they could not afford to, buy more than a few quires of paper at a time upon which to write WUTHERING HEIGHTS or JANE EYRE.

Redefine success. The most meaningful form of performance is progress. The ultimate mark of potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but the distance you’ve traveled—and helped others travel.

On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!--but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!

How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap. To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without firs traveling the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage…

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In the place of their self-content; There are souls like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran- But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. - Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by- The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban- Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. - I see from my house by the side of the road, By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears, Both parts of an infinite plan- Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead And mountains of wearisome height; That the road passes on through the long afternoon And stretches away to the night. But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice. And weep with the strangers that moan, Nor live in my house by the side of the road Like a man who dwells alone. - Let me live in my house by the side of the road- It's here the race of men go by. They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish- so am I; Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban? Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man.

Knowing that wisdom waits to be gathered, I actively search her out. I will change my actions TODAY! I will train my eyes and ears to read and listen to books and recordings that bring about positive changes in my personal relationships and a greater understanding of my fellow man. I will read and listen only to what increases my belief in myself and my future. I will seek wisdom. I will choose my friends with care. I am who my friends are. I speak their language, and I wear their clothes. I share their opinions and their habits. From this moment forward, I will choose to associate with people whose lives and lifestyles I admire. If I associate with chickens, I will learn to scratch at the ground and squabble over crumbs. If I associate with eagles, I will learn to soar to great heights. I am an eagle. It is my destiny to fly. I will seek wisdom. I will listen to the counsel of wise men. The words of a wise man are like raindrops on dry ground. They are precious and can be quickly used for immediate results. Only the blade of grass that catches a raindrop will prosper and grow. I will seek wisdom. I will be a servant to others. A wise man will cultivate a servant’s spirit, for that particular attribute attracts people like no other. As I humbly serve others, their wisdom will be freely shared with me. He who serves the most grows the fastest. I will become a humble servant. I will look to open the door for someone. I will be excited when I am available to help. I will be a servant to others. I will listen to the counsel of wise men. I will choose my friends with care. I will seek wisdom.

As much as I would like to know my path, a part of me is telling me that it is better not too know too many details about the end destination or the obstacles on the journey. If I can only see as much as my headlights will show me, I can travel safely through any kind of weather, knowing that there's life through every sunrise and sunset and when the light is not shining as I'm used to, I can always assure myself that the night sky will show me many fulfilled dreams and hopes portrayed through shining stars, and every now and then reveal me a part of the moon which reflects that everlasting light, whether fully or not, making me aware that the shadow will always have its' mysterious beauty as well in the process of underlying a part of the truth. So let's continue like this, with our eyes set out far away in the galaxy, but with our feet firm in the ground from which we have been raised. Only so will we be able to ground ourselves deeply and reach immeasurable heights, like a tree deeply rooted in mother Earth that stretches its' branches up to the heavens.

Every spring in the wet meadows and ditches I hear a little shrilling chorus which sounds for all the world like an endlessly reiterated “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here.” And so they are, as frogs, of course. Confident little fellows. I suspect that to some greater ear than ours, man’s optimistic pronouncements about his role and destiny may make a similar little ringing sound that travels a small way out into the night. It is only its nearness that is offensive. From the heights of a mountain, or a marsh at evening, it blends, not too badly, with all the other sleepy voices that, in croaks or chirrups, are saying the same thing.

At the tender age of 19 Bessie Stringfield commenced traveling across the United States. She’d toss a penny onto a map of the States and wherever it landed was where she’d go, and this was at the height of racism at its ugliest, yet this never stopped her. Though often denied accommodation because of the colour of her skin, she would find a place to sleep with black families or, if this wasn’t possible, she’d simply sleep on her motorbike at filling stations, using her rolled up jacket as a pillow

Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and ‘free spirit’ and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse.

The most splendid thing about the Amish is the names they give their towns. Everywhere else in America towns are named either after the first white person to get there or the last Indian to leave. But the Amish obviously gave the matter of town names some thought and graced their communities with intriguing, not to say provocative, appellations: Blue Ball, Bird in Hand, and Intercourse, to name but three. Intercourse makes a good living by attracting passers-by such as me who think it the height of hilarity to send their friends and colleagues postcards with an Intercourse postal mark and some droll sentiment scribbled on the back.

Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny.

It’s a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it.

FROM THE HEIGHT of a certain wisdom acquired across many decades, I look down now on those four children traveling a meandering river whose end was unknown to them.

Pilgrims Tuscan reds and ochre hues Olive greens and skies of blue Sunlit valleys full of charm Secluded homestead and hilltop farm Over hills skim birds in flight Aromas whet the appetite Autumn rustle fills the air Revealing grace of trees laid bare Pathways meander through the vale Inviting travelers its height to scale Sunset rewards as evening ends And pilgrims to the night descend

If I associate with chickens, I will learn to scratch at the ground and squabble over crumbs. If I associate with eagles, I will learn to soar to great heights. I am an eagle. It is my destiny to fly.

Heiron, Kyros of Aegina entered, a slow stately walk in a chiton that swept the floor, and fell in folds, like heavy Veretian curtains. ‘My son tells a different story.’ ‘Your son?’ said Charls. ‘Alexon,’ said Heiron, holding out his hand. ‘Come here.’ As Charls stood amazed, Alexon drew himself up to his full height, pushing back the blue cloak. ‘It’s true. I am Alexon, son of Heiron,’ said Alexon. ‘I am not a humble sheep farmer as I claimed.’ ‘But your insights about wool,’ said Charls. ‘I often travel anonymously through the province,’ said Alexon. ‘People show their true natures freely when they don’t know who I am.’ He

I am who my friends are. I speak their language, and I wear their clothes. I share their opinions and their habits. From this moment forward, I will choose to associate with people whose lives and lifestyles I admire. If I associate with chickens, I will learn to scratch at the ground and squabble over crumbs. If I associate with eagles, I will learn to soar to great heights. I am an eagle. It is my destiny to fly. I will seek wisdom.

Our mind is nothing but accumulated thoughts-good or evil recorded from the day the child is born. For memory or thought to work, a brain is needed. Software cannot work without a hardware. When a computer is damaged can we believe that its software is still somewhere in the sky? How can memory or thinking faculty exist outside brain? The neurotransmitters are responsible for the thought process and memory retention and retrival. All are elecrochemical impulses which cannot travel to sky. Our personality, individuality etc. are result of the accumulated thoughts in our brain. It is quality and nature of accumulated thoughts which decides if one is to become a scientist,poet or a terrorist. A guitar in the hands of a layman does not make any sense. If it is in the hands of a musician melodious tunes can come out. A child in the hands of lovable and intelligent parents go to heights.

Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his majesty’s mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1724 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By

A figure skater, for example, can only spin about four times in the air on the Earth. No skater has ever performed a quintuple jump. This is because the height of the jump is determined by the velocity at takeoff and the strength of gravity.

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass themselves by without wondering. —Saint Augustine

The visitor was about the same age as Hallgrimsson, but he looked older; certainly his face bore the marks of more experience and trial than did the professor’s smooth cheeks and unlined brow. He was a gyptian of the people of Eastern Anglia, a man called Coram van Texel, who had travelled much in the far north. He was lean, of middle height, and his movements were careful, as if he thought he might break something inadvertently, as if he were unused to delicate glasses and fine tableware. His dæmon, a large cat with fur of a thousand beautiful autumnal colours, stalked the corners of the study before leaping gracefully to Coram’s lap. Ten years after this evening, and again ten years after that, Lyra would marvel at the colouring of that dæmon’s fur

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars; and they pass themselves by without wondering.” —St. Augustine, 399 A.D.

When you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse you and do you good, for I shall go through the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new places. Our neighbours, the Filmores, are come; Alfred will join us at Basle, and we shall all go together to Vienna, and back by Prague...' My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and he left my mind resting on the word Prague with a strange sense that a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me: a city under the broad sunshine, that seemed to me as if it were summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course-unrefreshed for ages by dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching the dusty, weary, time-eaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like deposed and superannuated kings in their regal gold inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me; who pay their court in the worn and crumbling pomp of the palace which stretches its monotonous length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live on in perpetual midday, without the repose of night or the new birth of morning. A stunning clang of metal suddenly thrilled through me, and I became conscious of the objects in my room again: one of the fire-irons had fallen as Pierre opened the door to bring me my draught. My heart was palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to leave my draught beside me; I would take it presently. ("The Lifted Veil")

I walked awhile among the rocks: the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun so hot, that I was forced to turn my face from it: when all on a sudden it became obscure, as I thought, in a manner very different from what happens by the interposition of a cloud. I turned back, and perceived a vast opaque body between me and the sun moving forwards towards the island: it seemed to be about two miles high, and hid the sun six or seven minutes; but I did not observe the air to be much colder, or the sky more darkened, than if I had stood under the shade of a mountain. As it approached nearer over the place where I was, it appeared to be a firm substance, the bottom flat, smooth, and shining very bright, from the reflection of the sea below. I stood upon a height about two hundred yards from the shore, and saw this vast body descending almost to a parallel with me, at less than an English mile distance. I took out my pocket perspective, and could plainly discover numbers of people moving up and down the sides of it, which appeared to be sloping; but what those people where doing I was not able to distinguish.

The great issue with us males is our frailty," he went on. "When our awareness begins to grow, it grows like a column, right on the midpoint of our luminous being, from the ground up. That column has to reach a considerable height before we can rely on it. At this time in your life, as a sorcerer, you easily lose your grip on your new awareness. When you do that, you forget everything you have done and seen on the warrior-travelers' path because your consciousness shifts back to the awareness of your everyday life. I have explained to you that the task of every male sorcerer is to reclaim everything he has done and seen on the warrior-travelers' path while he was on new levels of awareness. The problem of every male sorcerer is that he easily forgets because his awareness loses its new level and falls to the ground at the drop of a hat.

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss; To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and shipwrecked ones! By diverse ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness. And unwillingly only did I ask my way - that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves. A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling: and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however - is my taste: Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy. "This is now my way - where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For "the way" - it doth not exist!

Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence—spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf. Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now? Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean. It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what tools are for. To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat? Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space. We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—until my own mother packed herself away like a larva in honeycomb, softened by machinery, robbed of incentive by her own contentment. But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools and stronger empires. The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered—or adapted to— they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one. And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

After every few steps, we huddle over our ice axes mouths agape, struggling for sufficient breath to keep our muscles going.... at a height of 8800 metres, we can no longer keep on our feet while we rest. We crumple to our knees, clutching our axes.... Every ten or fifteen steps we collapse into the snow to rest, then crawl on again.

Although, to restless and ardent minds, morning may be the fitting season for exertion and activity, it is not always at that time that hope is strongest or the spirit most sanguine and buoyant. In trying and doubtful positions, youth, custom, a steady contemplation of the difficulties which surround us, and a familiarity with them, imperceptibly diminish our apprehensions and beget comparative indifference, if not a vague and reckless confidence in some relief, the means or nature of which we care not to foresee. But when we come, fresh, upon such things in the morning, with that dark and silent gap between us and yesterday; with every link in the brittle chain of hope, to rivet afresh; our hot enthusiasm subdued, and cool calm reason substituted in its stead; doubt and misgiving revive. As the traveller sees farthest by day, and becomes aware of rugged mountains and trackless plains which the friendly darkness had shrouded from his sight and mind together, so, the wayfarer in the toilsome path of human life sees, with each returning sun, some new obstacle to surmount, some new height to be attained. Distances stretch out before him which, last night, were scarcely taken into account, and the light which gilds all nature with its cheerful beams, seems but to shine upon the weary obstacles that yet lie strewn between him and the grave.

The hawk turned slowly and flexed his great wings to maintain his height. In this cold wind, he flew merely to see and to travel. Gone was the exhilaration of fast-rising summer air carrying him so high into the sky's blue vacuum that the pond became a silver speck and the great southern lake dazzled him with a glaring slash of reflected sun.

An interesting fact is that astronauts become several inches taller in outer space due to the expansion of their spinal columns. Once back on Earth, their height reverts back to normal. Astronauts may also lose 1 percent of their bone mass per month in space. To slow down this loss, they have to exercise at least two hours a day on a treadmill

Looking at the sky from the bottom of the deep hole, below the visible surface & away from the superior heights once conquered, the traveler realized how he reached the rock-bottom! It all started with avoiding the issues by digging holes & hiding like the ostrich, thinking they would pass, but didn’t realize that issues multiplied and so did the depth of the hole.

Those whom [the Lord] teaches, are always increasing in knowledge, both of themselves and of him. The heart is deep, and, like Ezekiel's vision, presents so many chambers of imagery, one within another, that it requires time to get a considerable acquaintance with it, and we shall never know it thoroughly. It is now more than twenty-eight years since the Lord began to open mine to my own view; and from that time to this, almost every day has discovered to me something which until then was unobserved; and the farther I go, the more I seem convinced that I have entered but a little way. A person who travels in some parts of Derbyshire may easily be satisfied that the country is cavernous; but how large, how deep, how numerous the caverns may be, which are hidden from us by the surface of the ground, and what is contained in them—are questions which our most discerning inquirers cannot fully answer… And if our own hearts are beyond our comprehension, how much more incomprehensible is the heart of Jesus! If sin abounds in us—grace and love superabound in him! His ways and thoughts are higher than ours, as the heavens are higher than the earth; his love has a height, and depth, and length, and breadth, which passes all knowledge! The riches of his grace are unsearchable riches! Eph. 3:8, Eph. 3:18, Eph. 3:19. All that we have received or can receive from him, or know of him in this life, compared with what he is in himself, or what he has for us—is but as the drop of a bucket—compared with the ocean; or a single ray of light—compared with the sun. The waters of the sanctuary flow to us at first almost ankle deep—so graciously does the Lord condescend to our weakness; but they rise as we advance, and constrain us to cry out, with the Apostle, O the depth! We find before us, as Dr. Watts beautifully expresses it, A sea of love and grace unknown, Without a bottom or a shore!

There is no doubt that creative work is itself done under a compulsion often indistinguishable from a purely clinical obsession. In this sense, what we call a creative gift is merely the social license to be obsessed. And what we call “cultural routine” is a similar license: the proletariat demands the obsession of work in order to keep from going crazy. I used to wonder how people could stand the really demonic activity of working behind those hellish ranges in hotel kitchens, the frantic whirl of waiting on a dozen tables at one time, the madness of the travel agent’s office at the height of the tourist season, or the torture of working with a jack-hammer all day on a hot summer street. The answer is so simple that it eludes us: the craziness of these activities is exactly that of the human condition. They are “right” for us because the alternative is natural desperation. The daily madness of these jobs is a repeated vaccination against the madness of the asylum. Look at the joy and eagerness with which workers return from vacation to their compulsive routines. They plunge into their work with equanimity and lightheartedness because it drowns out something more ominous.

Until as late as the early 1950s a round-trip aeroplane ticket from Australia to England cost as much as a three-bedroom suburban home in Melbourne or Sydney. With the introduction by Qantas of larger Lockheed Super Constellation airliners in 1954, prices began to fall, but even by the end of the decade travelling to Europe by air still cost as much as a new car. Nor was it a terribly speedy or comfortable service. The Super Constellations took three days to reach London and lacked the power or range to dodge most storms. When monsoons or cyclones were encountered, the pilots had no choice but to put on the seat-belt signs and bounce through them. Even in normal conditions they flew at a height guaranteed to produce more or less constant turbulence. (Qantas called it, without evident irony, the Kangaroo Route.) It was, by any modern measure, an ordeal.

The air was cool and soft. The desert looked empty from our great height, enough to believe the geographers and travel writers who tell of the terrible desert life, the stillness, harshness, and death. I lay against the cold sand, tiny grains dancing fast and furious across my skin. I saw insects and scorpions, the line of a snake. Mohammed said the dunes moved millimeters a day. They inched across the desert floor toward the ocean. I smiled. The geographers were blind.

Concrete is an invention as transformative as fire or electricity. It has changed where and how billions of people live, work, and move around. Concrete is the skeleton of the modern world, the scaffold on which so much else is built. It gives us the power to dam enormous rivers, erect buildings of Olympian height, and travel to all but the remotest corners of the world with an ease that would astonish our ancestors. Measured by the number of lives it touches, concrete is easily the most important man-made material ever invented.

Centuries later, an Arab traveler would visit a town on the edge of Europe and reflect on what had happened in the Roman Empire. “During the early days of the empire of the Rum,” he wrote—meaning the Roman and Byzantine Empire—“the sciences were honoured and enjoyed universal respect. From an already solid and grandiose foundation, they were raised to greater heights every day, until the Christian religion made its appearance among the Rum; this was a fatal blow to the edifice of learning; its traces disappeared and its pathways were effaced.

They were not a large tribe as these things were counted then: nomads of the Northern Plains. They had a god, who was the skull of a mammoth, and the hide of a mammoth fashioned into a rough cloak. Nunyunnini they called him. When they were not traveling, he rested on a wooden frame, at man height. She was the holy woman of the tribe, the keeper of its secrets, and her name was Atsula, the fox. Atsula walked before the two tribesmen who carried their god on long poles, draped with bearskins, that it should not be seen by profane eyes, nor at times when it was not holy.

In late 1983, Lithuania’s brand new Ignalina Power Station began commission testing its first RBMK reactor and soon encountered a problem: control rods entering the reactor together caused a power surge. This is basically what caused the Chernobyl disaster a few years later. At Ignalina, the fuel was brand new, the reactor was stable, and the rods travelled down the entire height of the core, allowing boron to be introduced and the reaction to be brought back under control. This critical discovery was passed around the relevant nuclear Ministries and Institutes, but again nothing changed.

One author, in writing of the Bible’s uniqueness, put it this way: Here is a book: 1. written over a 1500 year span; 2. written over 40 generations; 3. written by more than 40 authors, from every walk of life— including kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, scholars, etc.: Moses, a political leader, trained in the universities of Egypt Peter, a fisherman Amos, a herdsman Joshua, a military general Nehemiah, a cupbearer Daniel, a prime minister Luke, a doctor Solomon, a king Matthew, a tax collector Paul, a rabbi 4. written in different places: Moses in the wilderness Jeremiah in a dungeon Daniel on a hillside and in a palace Paul inside a prison Luke while traveling John on the isle of Patmos others in the rigors of a military campaign 5. written at different times: David in times of war Solomon in times of peace 6. written during different moods: some writing from the heights of joy and others from the depths of sorrow and despair 7. written on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe 8. written in three languages: Hebrew… , Aramaic… , and Greek… 9. Finally, its subject matter includes hundreds of controversial topics. Yet, the biblical authors spoke with harmony and continuity from Genesis to Revelation. There is one unfolding story…

I thought again of the mountain climbers we had met as we traveled. They were young and wore brightly colored clothing so as to be easily spotted should they become lost in the snow. They knew the right path to follow to the peaks. The heights were already festooned with aluminum pins; all they had to do was attach their lines to them, and they could climb safely. They were there for a holiday adventure, and on Monday they would return to their jobs with the feeling that they had challenged nature and won. But this wasn't really true. The adventurous ones were those who had climbed there first, the ones who had found the routes to the top.

You lie still and you go on watching: words cannot express the delight and quiet, and how sweet is the feeling that creeps over your heart. You go on watching, and that deep, clear azure brings a smile to your lips as innocent as the azure itself, as innocent as the clouds passing across it, and as if in company with them there passes through your mind a slow cavalcade of happy recollections, and it seems to you that all the while your gaze is travelling farther and farther away and drawing all of you with it into that calm, shining infinity, making it impossible for you to tear yourself away from those distant heights, from those distant depths …

Questioner: How did you learn all that you are talking about, and how can we come to know it? KRISHNAMURTI: That is a good question, is it not? Now, if I may talk about myself a little, I have not read any books about these things, neither the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, nor any psychological books; but as I told you, if you watch your own mind, it is all there. So when once you set out on the journey of self-knowledge, books are not important. It is like entering a strange land where you begin to find out new things and make astonishing discoveries; but, you see, that is all destroyed if you give importance to yourself. The moment you say, “I have discovered, I know, I am a great man because I have found out this and that,” you are lost. If you have to take a long journey, you must carry very little; if you want to climb to a great height, you must travel light. So this question is really important, because discovery and understanding come through self-knowledge, through observing the ways of the mind. What you say of your neighbour, how you talk, how you walk, how you look at the skies, at the birds, how you treat people, how you cut a branch—all these things are important, because they act like mirrors that show you as you are and, if you are alert, you discover everything anew from moment to moment. Questioner: Should we form an

One day, around the time Tibby was twelve, she realized she could judge her happiness by her guinea pig, Mimi. When she was feeling busy, full of plans and purpose, she raced out of her room, past Mimi’s glass box, feeling faintly sad that Mimi just had to lie there lumpen in her wood shavings while Tibby’s life was so big. She could tell she was miserable when she stared at Mimi with envy, wishing it was her who got to drink fat water droplets from a dispenser positioned at exactly the height of her mouth. Wishing it was her who could snuggle into the warm shavings and decide only whether to spin a few rotations on her exercise wheel or just take another nap. No decisions, no disappointments.

The Tang Dynasty has always held a special lure for me. This was a time when women rose to the highest ranks as warriors, courtesans and scholars. Anyone with the will and the perseverance to excel could make it. The imperial capital of Changan emerged as a cosmopolitan center of trade and culture. The most famous love stories, the most beautiful poetry and the most elegant fashions came from this era. The Silk Road which connected East to West was at its height during the eighth century and the empire embraced different cultures to a greater extent than ever before. I wanted to know what it was like to wear silk and travel to the edges of the empire during this golden age. And I wanted sword fights!

We warily sipped ‘fresh’ buffalo milk in a Krishna temple. We travelled into the Himalayas until, at a height of two kilometres above sea level where we found ourselves surrounded by men as hard and tough as the mountains that bred them. We negotiated a price of 100 rupees for one of these men to carry our two heaviest bags the 15-minute walk to the hotel with nothing more than rope and a forehead strap. I paid him 300 rupees and his face lit up! We watched the morning mist clear to reveal views of the green Doon Valley and the distant white-capped Himalayan peaks. We rode an elephant up to the Amber Fort of Jaipur, and the next day we painted, washed and fed unpeeled bananas to another elephant, marvelling at her gentle nature as we placed the bananas on her huge bubble-gum coloured tongue.

Evil people relate more to the black pole. It's - this is not exact, of course, as the science of magic is as complex as the magic of electronics - it's like traveling past a mountain. The white pole is at the apex, and it is an exhilarating height, but it takes a lot of work and few missteps to ascend it. The black pole is at the nadir, and it is easy to walk downhill; sometimes you can just sit down and slide or roll and, if you fall, you can get there very fast indeed. If you don't pay attention to where you're going, you'll tend to go down, because it is the course of least resistance. Since the average person has only the vaguest notion where he is going and tends to shut out awareness of the consequence of evil, he inevitably drifts downward. There is much more space at the base of the mountain than at the peak!

I walked slowly on, without envying my companions on horseback: for I could sit down upon an inviting spot, climb to the edge of a precipice, or trace a torrent by its sound. I descended at length into the Rheinthal, or Valley of the Rhine; the mountains of Tyrol, which yielded neither in height or in cragginess to those of Appenzel, rising before me. And here I found a remarkable difference: for although the ascending and descending was a work of some labor; yet the variety of the scenes had given me spirits, and I was not sensible of the least fatigue. But in the plain, notwithstanding the scenery was still beautiful and picturesque, I saw at once the whole way stretching before me, and had no room for fresh expectations: I was not therefore displeased when I arrived at Oberried, after a walk of about twelve miles, my coat flung upon my shoulder like a peripatetic by profession. -William Coxe

2/ KICK YOUR OWN ASS, GENTLY. I’ve been trying to set a few modest goals, both daily and weekly. In the course of a day, it’s good to get some stupid things accomplished, and off your “list.” I guess because it leaves you feeling that you and the “rest of the world” still have something to do with each other! Like today, for example, I can think back on sending a fax to my brother on his birthday, leaving a phone message for Brutus at his “hotel” on his birthday, phoning my Dad on his birthday (yep, all on the same day), then driving to Morin Heights to the ATM machine, to St. Sauveur for grocery shopping, and planning all that so I’d still have enough daylight left to go snowshoeing in the woods. And then I could drink. Not a high-pressure day, and hardly earth-shaking activities, but I laid them out for myself and did them (even though tempted to “not bother” with each of them at one point or another). I gave myself a gentle kick in the ass when necessary, or cursed myself out for a lazy fool, and because of all that, I consider today a satisfactory day. Everything that needed to be done got done. And by “needs” I certainly include taking my little baby soul out for a ride. And drinking. And there are little side benefits from such activities, like when the cashier in the grocery store wished me a genuinely-pleasant “Bonjour,” and I forced myself to look at her and return the greeting. The world still seems unreal to me, but I try not to purposely avoid contact with pleasant strangers. It wouldn’t be polite! Another “little goal” for me right now is spending an hour or two at the desk every morning, writing a letter or a fax to someone like you, or Brutus, or Danny, who I want to reach out to, or conversely, to someone I’ve been out of touch with for a long while, maybe for a year-and-a-half or two years. These are friends that I’ve decided I still value, and that I want as part of my “new life,” whatever it may be. It doesn’t really matter what, but just so you can say that you changed something in the course of your day: a neglected friend is no longer neglected; an errand that ought to be dealt with has been dealt with.

But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize [*realisere*] its existence [*Existents*] and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn first to know himself before knowing anything else (γνῶθι σε αυτόν). Not until a man has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning; only then is he free of the irksome, sinister traveling companion―that irony of life which manifests itself in the sphere of knowledge and invites true knowing to begin with a not-knowing (Socrates), just as God created the world from nothing. But in the waters of morality it is especially at home to those who still have not entered the tradewinds of virtue. Here it tumbles a person about in a horrible way, for a time lets him feel happy and content in his resolve to go ahead along the right path, then hurls him into the abyss of despair. Often it lulls a man to sleep with the thought, "After all, things cannot be otherwise," only to awaken him suddenly to a rigorous interrogation. Frequently it seems to let a veil of forgetfulness fall over the past, only to make every single trifle appear in a strong light again. When he struggles along the right path, rejoicing in having overcome temptation's power, there may come at almost the same time, right on the heels of perfect victory, an apparently insignificant external circumstance which pushes him down, like Sisyphus, from the height of the crag. Often when a person has concentrated on something, a minor external circumstance arises which destroys everything. (As in the case of a man who, weary of life, is about to throw himself into the Thames and at the crucial moment is halted by the sting of a mosquito). Frequently a person feels his very best when the illness is the worst, as in tuberculosis. In vain he tries to resist it but he has not sufficient strength, and it is no help to him that he has gone through the same thing many times; the kind of practice acquired in this way does not apply here. Just as no one who has been taught a great deal about swimming is able to keep afloat in a storm, but only the man who is intensely convinced and has experiences that he is actually lighter than water, so a person who lacks this inward point of poise is unable to keep afloat in life's storms.―Only when a man has understood himself in this way is he able to maintain an independent existence and thus avoid surrendering his own I. How often we see (in a period when we extol that Greek historian because he knows how to appropriate an unfamiliar style so delusively like the original author's, instead of censuring him, since the first prize always goes to an author for having his own style―that is, a mode of expression and presentation qualified by his own individuality)―how often we see people who either out of mental-spiritual laziness live on the crumbs that fall from another's table or for more egotistical reasons seek to identify themselves with others, until eventually they believe it all, just like the liar through frequent repetition of his stories.

She goes to the window, curious to look out, and her senses awaken. It was only a moment ago (for sleep knows no time) that the flat horizon was a loamy gray swell merging into the fog behind the icy glass. But now rocky, powerful mountains are massing out of the ground (where have they come from?), a vast, strange overwhelming sight. This is her first glimpse of the unimaginable majesty of the Alps, and she sways with surprise. Just now a first ray of sun through the pass to the east is shattering into a million reflections on the ice field covering the highest peak. The white purity of this unfiltered light is so dazzling and sharp that she has to close her eyes for a moment, but now she's wide awake. One push and the window bangs down, to bring this marvel closer, and fresh air - ice-cold, glass-sharp, and with a bracing dash of snow - streams through her lips, parted in astonishment, and into her lungs, the deepest, purest breath of her life. She spreads her arms to take in this first reckless gulp, and immediately, her chest expanding, feels a luxurious warmth rise through her veins - marvelous, marvelous. Inflamed with cold, she takes in the scene to the left and the right; her eyes (thawed out now) follow each of the granite slops up to the icy epaulet at the top, discovering, with growing excitement, new magnificence everywhere - here a white waterfall tumbling headlong into a valley, there neat little stone houses tucked into crevices like birds' nests, farther off an eagle circling proudly over the very highest heights, and above it all a wonderfully pure, sumptuous blue whose lush, exhilarating power she would never have thought possible. Again and again she returns to these Alps sprung overnight from her sleep, an incredible sight to someone leaving her narrow world for the first time. These immense granite mountains must have been here for thousands of years; they'll probably still be here millions and millions of years from now, every one of them immovably where it's always been, and if not for the accident of this journey, she herself would have died, rotted away, and turned to dust with no inkling of their glory, She's been living as though all this didn't exist, never saw it, hardly cared to; like a fool she dozed off in this tiny room, hardly longer than her arm, hardly wide enough for her feet, just a night away, a day away from this infinitude, these manifold immensities! Indifferent and without desires before, now she's beginning to realize what she's been missing. This contact with the overpowering is her first encounter with travel's disconcerting ability to strip the hard shell of habit from the heart, leaving only the bare, fertile kernel.

I was nineteen at the time, and like any other besotted teenage girl, I was desperately eager to please the object of my affections. I didn’t argue the point, but set to work producing the desired loaf. The result was barely chewable when it emerged hot from the oven. By the time it cooled, it seemed significantly more resistant to fire, flood, or earthquakes than my dormitory’s concrete walls. After a brief discussion, Gabriel and I both decided that this rye-brick was more appropriate food for crows than for humans. I carried the slab to the balcony of my eighth-floor dormitory apartment, expecting that a fall from that height would smash it to crumbs. I peered over the edge to make sure no one was below me; I didn’t want to drop the hardened mass onto someone’s head and make a murderess of myself. After verifying that the concrete walkway below was clear, I dropped the rye-brick over the side of the balcony. Down, down, it plummeted—past the seventh floor, the sixth, the fifth … Nearly a hundred feet below, and traveling somewhere around eighty feet per second, the rye-brick finally hit the ground—and didn’t break. Despite an eight-story drop onto concrete, the rye-brick maintained its integrity. One of my roommates inspected the situation and expressed surprise that the stones of the walkway itself remained unscathed. I didn’t try making any wheat-free loaves for a while after that.

Think about it. Think about how we start off . . . as this set thing. Like the seed of a tree planted in the ground. And then we . . . we grow . . . we grow . . . and at first we are a trunk . . .’ Absolutely nothing. ‘But then the tree – the tree that is our life – develops branches. And think of all those branches, departing from the trunk at different heights. And think of all those branches, branching off again, heading in often opposing directions. Think of those branches becoming other branches, and those becoming twigs. And think of the end of each of those twigs, all in different places, having started from the same one. A life is like that, but on a bigger scale. New branches are formed every second of every day. And from our perspective – from everyone’s perspective – it feels like a . . . like a continuum. Each twig has travelled only one journey. But there are still other twigs. And there are also other todays. Other lives that would have been different if you’d taken different directions earlier in your life. This is a tree of life. Lots of religions and mythologies have talked about the tree of life. It’s there in Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. Lots of philosophers and writers have talked about tree metaphors too. For Sylvia Plath, existence was a fig tree and each possible life she could live – the happily-married one, the successful-poet one – was this sweet juicy fig, but she couldn’t get to taste the sweet juicy figs and so they just rotted right in front of her. It can drive you insane, thinking of all the other lives we don’t live.

Filming was done outside San Antonio, Texas. The scale of the production was vast and complex. Whole battlefields were scrupulously re-created on the plains of Texas. Wellman deployed as many as five thousand extras and sixty airplanes in some scenes—an enormous logistical exercise. The army sent its best aviators from Selfridge Field in Michigan—the very men with whom Lindbergh had just flown to Ottawa—and stunt fliers were used for the more dangerous scenes. Wellman asked a lot of his airmen. One pilot was killed, another broke his neck, and several more sustained other serious injuries. Wellman did some of the more dangerous stunt flying himself. All this gave the movie’s aerial scenes a realism and immediacy that many found almost literally breathtaking. Wellman captured features of flight that had never been caught on film before—the shadows of planes moving across the earth, the sensation of flying through drifting smoke, the stately fall of bombs, and the destructive puffs of impact that follow. Even the land-bound scenes were filmed with a thoughtfulness and originality that set Wings apart. To bring the viewer into a Parisian nightclub, Wellman used a boom shot in which the camera traveled through the room just above table height, skimming over drinks and between revelers, before arriving at the table of Arlen and Rogers. It is an entrancing shot even now, but it was rivetingly novel in 1927. “Wings,” wrote Penelope Gilliatt simply in The New Yorker in 1971, “is truly beautiful.” Wings was selected as best picture at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Wellman, however, wasn’t even invited to the ceremony.

He had been a timid child in New York City, cut off from schoolboy society by illness, wealth, and private tutors. Inspired by a leonine father, he had labored with weights to build up his strength. Simultaneously, he had built up his courage “by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness.” With every ounce of new muscle, with every point scored over pugilistic, romantic, and political rivals, his personal impetus (likened by many observers to that of a steam train) had accelerated. Experiences had flashed by him in such number that he was obviously destined to travel a larger landscape of life than were his fellows. He had been a published author at eighteen, a husband at twenty-two, an acclaimed historian and New York State Assemblyman at twenty-three, a father and a widower at twenty-five, a ranchman at twenty-six, a candidate for Mayor of New York at twenty-seven, a husband again at twenty-eight, a Civil Service Commissioner of the United States at thirty. By then he was producing book after book, and child after child, and cultivating every scientist, politician, artist, and intellectual of repute in Washington. His career had gathered further speed: Police Commissioner of New York City at thirty-six, Assistant Secretary of the Navy at thirty-eight, Colonel of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the “Rough Riders,” at thirty-nine. At last, in Cuba, had come the consummating “crowded hour.” A rush, a roar, the sting of his own blood, a surge toward the sky, a smoking pistol in his hand, a soldier in light blue doubling up “neatly as a jackrabbit” … When the smoke cleared, he had found himself atop Kettle Hill on the Heights of San Juan, with a vanquished empire at his feet.

In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: for that purpose he leaves the city. "Thoughts concerning moral prejudices," if they are not to be prejudices concerning prejudices, presuppose a position outside of morality, some sort of world beyond good and evil, to which one must ascend, climb, or fly―and in the given case at any rate, a position beyond our good and evil, an emancipation from all "Europe," understood as a sum of inviolable valuations which have become part and parcel of our flesh and blood. That one does want to get outside, or aloft, is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiar, unreasonable "thou must" - for even we thinkers have our idiosyncrasies of "unfree will"―: the question is whether one can really get there. That may depend on manifold conditions: in the main it is a question of how light or how heavy we are, the problem of our "specific gravity." One must be very light in order to impel one’s will to knowledge to such a distance, and as it were beyond one’s age, in order to create eyes for oneself for the survey of millenniums, and a pure heaven in these eyes besides! One must have freed oneself from many things by which we Europeans of today are oppressed, hindered, held down, and made heavy. The man of such a "Beyond," who wants to get even in sight of the highest standards of worth of his age, must first of all "surmount" this age in him self - it is the test of his power - and consequently not only his age, but also his past aversion and opposition to his age, his suffering caused by his age, his unseasonableness, his Romanticism...

The birds had multiplied. She'd installed rows upon rows of floating melamine shelves above shoulder height to accommodate the expression of her once humble collection. Though she'd had bird figurines all over the apartment, the bulk of her prized collection was confined to her bedroom because it had given her joy to wake up to them every morning. Before I'd left, I had a tradition of gifting her with bird figurines. It began with a storm petrel, a Wakamba carving of ebony wood from Kenya I had picked up at the museum gift shop from a sixth-grade school field trip. She'd adored the unexpected birthday present, and I had hunted for them since. Clusters of ceramic birds were perched on every shelf. Her obsession had brought her happiness, so I'd fed it. The tiki bird from French Polynesia nested beside a delft bluebird from the Netherlands. One of my favorites was a glass rainbow macaw from an Argentinian artist that mimicked the vibrant barrios of Buenos Aires. Since the sixth grade, I'd given her one every year until I'd left: eight birds in total. As I lifted each member of her extensive bird collection, I imagined Ma-ma was with me, telling a story about each one. There were no signs of dust anywhere; cleanliness had been her religion. I counted eighty-eight birds in total. Ma-ma had been busy collecting while I was gone. I couldn't deny that every time I saw a beautiful feathered creature in figurine form, I thought of my mother. If only I'd sent her one, even a single bird, from my travels, it could have been the precursor to establishing communication once more. Ma-ma had spoken to her birds often, especially when she cleaned them every Saturday morning. I had imagined she was some fairy-tale princess in the Black Forest holding court over an avian kingdom. I was tempted to speak to them now, but I didn't want to be the one to convey the loss of their queen. Suddenly, however, Ma-ma's collection stirred. It began as a single chirp, a mournful cry swelling into a chorus. The figurines burst into song, tiny beaks opening, chests puffed, to release a somber tribute to their departed beloved. The tune was unfamiliar, yet its melancholy was palpable, rising, surging until the final trill when every bird bowed their heads toward the empty bed, frozen as if they hadn't sung seconds before. I thanked them for the happiness they'd bestowed on Ma-ma.

I insist on the following point: people should finally stop confusing philosophical labourers and scientific people in general with philosophers - that in this particular matter we strictly assign "to each his due" and do not give too much to the former and much too little to the latter. It may be that the education of a real philosopher requires that he himself has stood for a while on all of those steps where his servants, the scientific labourers in philosophy, remain - and must remain. Perhaps he must himself have been critic and sceptic and dogmatist and historian and, in addition, poet and collector and traveller and solver of riddles and moralist and prophet and "free spirit" and almost everything, in order to move through the range of human worth and feelings of value and to be able to look with a variety of different eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every expanse. But all these things are only pre-conditions for his task: the task itself seeks something different - it demands that he create values. Those philosophical labourers on the noble model of Kant and Hegel have to establish some large collection of facts or other concerning estimates of value - that is, earlier statements of value, creations of value which have become dominant and for a while have been called "truths." They have to press these into formulas, whether in the realm of logic or politics (morality) or art. The task of these researchers is to make everything that has happened and which has been valued up to now clear, easy to imagine, intelligible, and manageable, to shorten everything lengthy, even "time" itself, and to overpower the entire past, a huge and marvellous task, in whose service every sophisticated pride and every tough will can certainly find satisfaction. But the real philosophers are commanders and lawgivers: they say "That is how it should be!" They determine first the "Where to?" and the "What for?" of human beings, and, as they do this, they have at their disposal the preliminary work of all philosophical labourers, all those who have overpowered the past - they reach with their creative hands to grasp the future. In that process, everything which is and has been becomes a means for them, an instrument, a hammer. Their "knowing" is creating; their creating is establishing laws; their will to truth is - will to power. - Are there such philosophers nowadays? Have there ever been such philosophers? Is it not necessary that there be such philosophers?....

Matt thought camping in Tony’s yard was okay, but he wished it were a little more wild and dangerous. If Tony’s father had let them make camp along the lake like they had wanted to do, it would have been perfect. As it was, Tony’s parents kept coming to the kitchen door and peeking out to check on them every ten minutes. “Sometimes they treat me like I was in second grade or something,” Tony groaned, waving his mother away from the door. “It’s probably because you’re so small,” Q pointed out. “Yeah, Tony, you know, I’ve seen some second-graders that are a whole lot bigger than you,” Hooter added. Tony shrugged his shoulders. He was used to people pointing out his height or lack of it. He was the shortest boy in the fifth grade. “It’s just because of his size that Tony is such an important member of the club,” Matt said with authority, sitting back down in front of the fire. “It is?” Tony squeaked, sitting beside him. “Sure, since you’re the smallest man, you’ll be our scout. You can do all the tracking, traveling ahead of us to check things out without being seen. And since you’re so small you weigh less than any of us. Do you remember those Indian scouts in the Davy Crockett book we read? Remember how they could walk through the woods without making a sound? Well, you don’t think they weighed three hundred pounds, do you?” “No, I guess not.” Tony grinned, throwing his shoulders back and sitting up straight like an Indian scout.

To make a pound of it, the 50,000 or 80,000 bees who live together in a hive at the height of summer will travel a collective fifty-five thousand miles and visit more than two million flowers.

marriage would necessitate a change of religion, the still-hesitant Alix at first refused. But the otherwise impassive Nicky was nothing if not determined. The very day after Ernie and Ducky were married, the overwhelmed princess finally agreed to become both Russian Orthodox and wife of the heir to the Russian throne. Just as Queen Victoria, the preeminent guest at the festivities, was finishing her breakfast, Ella burst in on her grandmother with the dramatic announcement that “Alix and Nicky are to be engaged.” The wedding was planned for the spring of 1895, but the death of Nicky’s father changed all the elaborate arrangements, including sufficient time for Alix to become literate in the Russian language. Alix had just joined her future husband at the imperial summer palace of Livadia in the Crimea when Tsar Alexander III died on November 1, 1894. His widow Minnie, the princess of Wales’s sister, became the dowager empress; and her son Nicky the new tsar, Nicholas II. The morning after her fiancé’s accession, Alix was received into the Orthodox faith and at the same time given the new name of Alexandra Feodorovna. The imperial family decided the wedding should follow the late tsar’s funeral within the week. Like her mother’s wedding at Osborne in 1862, Alix’s was far more funereal in tone than joyous. All that saved it from complete gloom was the depth of the young bride and groom’s love for each other. During the years when Alice’s children were marrying their cousins and producing a multitude of little second cousins, Vicky had moved from the hurricane’s eye to near oblivion. Though she had been wounded by Fritz’s illness and Willy’s uncivil behavior, until June 1888 she at least had a loving and sympathetic husband to share her distress and lighten her sometimes intolerable burden. After his death, Vicky was left to face her martyrdom stripped of that unfaltering support. With her widowhood, her difficulties centered, inevitably, on the new emperor. Such was the exquisite release Willy experienced in succeeding his father to the throne that he took vainglory to new heights. To the horror of his mother and English grandmother, he jettisoned the standard symbols of mourning that were obligatory for a son in so visible a role, notably refusing to refrain from travel for pleasure. On a grander scale, in his eagerness to test his new powers, Willy made the most disastrous mistake of his early reign only two years after coming

Old Babylonian Period. Thanks substantially to the royal archives from the town of Mari, the eighteenth century BC has become thoroughly documented. As the century opened there was an uneasy balance of power among four cities: Larsa ruled by Rim-Sin, Mari ruled by Yahdun-Lim (and later, Zimri-Lim), Assur ruled by Shamshi-Adad I, and Babylon ruled by Hammurapi. Through a generation of political intrigue and diplomatic strategy, Hammurapi eventually emerged to establish the prominence of the first dynasty of Babylon. The Old Babylonian period covered the time from the fall of the Ur III dynasty (c. 2000 BC) to the fall of the first dynasty of Babylon (just after 1600 BC). This is the period during which most of the narratives in Ge 12–50 occur. The rulers of the first dynasty of Babylon were Amorites. The Amorites had been coming into Mesopotamia as early as the Ur III period, at first being fought as enemies, then gradually taking their place within the society of the Near East. With the accession of Hammurapi to the throne, they reached the height of success. Despite his impressive military accomplishments, Hammurapi is most widely known today for his collection of laws. The first dynasty of Babylon extends for more than a century beyond the time of Hammurapi, though decline began soon after his death and continued unabated, culminating in the Hittite sack of Babylon in 1595 BC. This was nothing more than an incursion on the part of the Hittites, but it dealt the final blow to the Amorite dynasty, opening the doors of power for another group, the Kassites. Eras of Mesopotamian History (Round Dates) Early Dynastic Period 2900–2350 BC Dynasty of Akkad 2350–2200 BC Ur III Empire 2100–2000 BC Old Babylonian Period 2000–1600 BC Go to Chart Index Eras of Egyptian History (Round Dates) Old Kingdom 3100–2200 BC First Intermediate Period 2200–2050 BC Middle Kingdom 2050–1720 BC Second Intermediate Period 1720–1550 BC Hyksos 1650–1550 BC Go to Chart Index Palestine: Middle Bronze Age Abraham entered the Palestine region during the Middle Bronze Age (2200–1550 BC), which was dominated by scattered city-states, much as Mesopotamia had been, though Palestine was not as densely populated or as extensively urbanized as Mesopotamia. The period began about the time of the fall of the dynasty of Akkad in Mesopotamia (c. 2200 BC) and extended until about 1500 BC (plus or minus 50 years, depending on the theories followed). In Syria there were power centers at Yamhad, Qatna, Alalakh and Mari, and the coastal centers of Ugarit and Byblos seemed to be already thriving. In Palestine only Hazor is mentioned in prominence. Contemporary records from Palestine are scarce, though the Egyptian Story of Sinuhe has Middle Bronze Age Palestine as a backdrop and therefore offers general information. Lists of cities in Palestine are also given in the Egyptian texts. Most are otherwise unknown, though Jerusalem and Shechem are mentioned. As the period progresses there is more and more contact with Egypt and extensive caravan travel between Egypt and Palestine.

You're the exact height and color you should be. Your complexion highlights the features of your face that make me want to stare at it for eternity. Your eyes are the perfect shade of 'gaze into my soul'. Everything about your figure makes me burn with a passion which words can't express.

I've met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go - in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab...

You have never seen the sun set at this height. Come, look.’ The puller went to the edge and sat down, his legs hanging over the side. He saw that they hesitated. ‘Come. You can lie down and peer over the edge, if you like.’ Hillalum did not wish to seem like a fearful child, but he could not bring himself to sit at a cliff face that stretched for thousands of cubits below his feet. He lay down on his belly, with only his head at the edge. Nanni joined him. ‘When the sun is about to set, look down the side of the tower.’ Hillalum glanced downward, and then quickly looked to the horizon. ‘What is different about the way the sun sets here?’ ‘Consider, when the sun sinks behind the peaks of the mountains to the west, it grows dark down on the plain of Shinar. Yet here, we are higher than the mountaintops, so we can still see the sun. The sun must descend further for us to see night.’ Hillalum’s jaw dropped as he understood. ‘The shadows of the mountains mark the beginning of night. Night falls on the earth before it does here.’ Kudda nodded. ‘You can watch night travel up the tower, from the ground up to the sky. It moves quickly, but you should be able to see it.’ He watched the red globe of the sun for a minute, and then looked down and pointed. ‘Now!’ Hillalum and Nanni looked down. At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight. Hillalum rolled over and looked up, in time to see darkness rapidly ascend the rest of the tower. Gradually, the sky grew dimmer as the sun sank beneath the edge of the world, far away. ‘Quite a sight, is it not?’ said Kudda. Hillalum said nothing. For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.

we spirit souls and you Earth souls do meet constantly and almost every day. You will ask how? When you are in deep sleep, people on Earth leave their body and travel up to certain heights to meet their departed loved ones. Only a magnetic cord known as the Silver Cord joins you to your body. This cord will bring you back to your body if you are woken up suddenly. This happens only if your sleep is deep and dreamless. You have no memory of this, but we can assure you that you meet your departed loved ones almost everyday. Let

Martin suggests, let's see Chartres on the way back. The cathedral with its bleached stone and green roofs is visible across miles of flat fields and popular breaks. Approaching it through the dog's leg alleyways of the old town, its proportions are dizzying. Pigeons wheel about its height like cliff birds. The afternoon light begins to go; a battery of floodlights makes an unearthly theatre of spires, pinnacles and buttresses. Martin quotes Ruskin. ' "Trees of stone" '. Inside the cathedral is humbling, it's like walking into the belly of a whale. The glass is a deep rich crimson of blue, eliminating what daylight's left. Furtive figures scurry off into angles of shadow. The medieval darkness is pricked with lighted candles. Martin says it's like Debussy's 'Drowned Cathedral'. 'La Cathédrale Engloutie'. I don't know it, but he's right, exactly right. The weeping wax smells cloyingly sweet. While a priest intones, worshippers kneel and pray in whispers - and it seems to me that what they're begging from the mother of God is hope, and luck, and to be spared this survival game, living from minute to minute to minute. It's what drowning must be like. You find you've somersaulted head-over-heels and upside-down and you're travelling backwards through a vast, lightless place. So much sweet, lulling darkness in the middle of the world, it 'is' a kind of dying...

During World War II trolley tracks ran down Central Avenue, the main street of the Jersey City Heights, before traveling off of the cliffs and continuing down to Hoboken on a high wooden trestle. At best, it was a hairy ride as it jostled around, nearly coming off of the rails. For some of us kids, it was exciting to hop onto the back of the trolley for a free ride, and then snap the cord to the electrical rod, which provided power from an overhead wire, when I wanted to get off. This would leave the conductor spewing a streak of profanity, as his trolley ground to a standstill. Departing the scene in haste, I would run and quickly disappear into the darkness, leaving him with the daunting task of getting the rod back onto the overhead wire in the dark.

The key to great bamboo, Yamashita tells me, is space. Bamboo trees can reproduce for six years, but their roots need room to spread, and the sun needs room to bake the forest floor. More than a farmer, Yamashita is a constant gardener, pruning branches, keeping the trees to a height of six meters, using rice husk to sow nutrients into the soil. The best bamboo is found deep underground, safely away from sunlight, turning the harvest into something resembling a truffle hunt. We walk carefully and quietly through the forest, looking for little cracks in the earth that indicate a baby bamboo trying to make its way to the surface. When we spot cracks, Yamashita comes by with a small pick and gently works the soil until he reaches the bulb. Most bamboo you see is ruddy brown or purple, but Yamashita's takenoko comes out lily white, tender, and sweet enough to eat like an apple. "You have to cook it right away, otherwise you begin to lose the flavor," says Shunichi.

12. Know Yourself The most sacred place in the ancient world was the oracle at Delphi in central Greece. Kings, warriors and envoys travelled from across the known world to hear the prophecies of the oracle. Above the gates at Delphi, a short inscription greeted every weary traveler: Know thyself. This simple advice was considered the most important piece of knowledge anyone could possess. And to understand what the oracle told you, you first had to understand yourself. There is good reason for this: if we do not know our own mind, our dreams, strengths and failings, how can we reach the heights we seek? We become like a ship with no rudder. Which is why knowing yourself is so important: it helps you make decisions that make you happier, because you end up pursuing goals that are true to your very nature and core.

The main thing spring preload adjustments really do is change the ride height. A change in ride height affects what percentage of suspension travel is available for absorbing bumps and for extending into holes or dips in the road surface.

CV-17 Chinese Point name: Shan Zhong;20 English translation: “Chest Center;” Special Attributes: Intersection Point of the Spleen, Small Intestine, Triple Warmer and the Conception Vessel. Additionally, it is the alarm point for the Pericardium Meridian; Location: On the centerline of the body on the same level as the nipples; Western Anatomy: Branches of the internal mammary artery and vein are found with the anterior cutaneous branch of the fourth intercostal nerve; Comments: This is a major point of interest to combative martial artists. A blow to CV-17 can affect the electrical pattern of the heart resulting in arrhythmia. Western science refers to this as Commotio cordis and it is documented with strikes to the chest as in a baseball striking the chest of a child. While interviewing a former infantry point man who served in Vietnam confirmation was added to the lethality of a strike to CV-17. According to this individual, a life-long karate practitioner, while he was walking point one night he actually bumped into an enemy soldier who was traveling down the same trail from the opposite direction. The American struck the Viet Cong with a strong punch to CV-17 killing him instantly. His small frame combined with the larger stature of the American allowed for a perfect 45-degree strike (strikes to CV-17 should be downward at a 45-degree angle). These strikes will generally be open palm or hammer fist type strikes given the height of an average sized opponent and the location of the point. Additional energetic disruption can be added by rotating your striking hand outward on contact.

must feel to be speeding along at this height with no visible means of support. Twilight fell: the sky was turning to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars, and soon only the lights of Muggle towns gave them any clue of how far from the ground they were, or how very fast they were travelling. Harry’s arms were wrapped tightly around his horse’s neck as he willed it to go even faster. How much time had elapsed since he had seen Sirius lying on the Department of Mysteries floor? How much longer would Sirius be able to resist Voldemort? All Harry knew for sure was that his godfather had neither done as Voldemort wanted, nor died, for he was convinced that either outcome would have caused him to feel Voldemort’s jubilation or fury course through his own body, making his scar sear as painfully as it had on the night Mr Weasley was attacked. On they flew through the gathering darkness; Harry’s face

Syria, following the 1967 defeat of the Syrian forces and the loss of the Golan Heights to Israel, new regulations were imposed on the country’s 3,500 Jews. These new laws harked back to a much earlier time when the Covenant of Omar could be burdensome in the extreme. There were twelve laws in all. The first: ‘The Jewish right to emigrate is completely forbidden. This applies even to Jews in Syria who hold foreign passports.’ The second: ‘Jews are forbidden to move more than three kilometres from their place of residence. Those wishing to travel further must apply for a special permit.’ The third: ‘Identity cards issued to Jews are stamped in red with the word Mussawi (Jew).

His list of natural attributes are as follows: long, glorious blond hair; rather nice teeth; height (he is six-three and very proud); whistling. The list of his shortcomings is rather longer, but he doesn’t acknowledge their existence, so it doesn’t matter.

Thankfully I wasn’t the only one staring, his hazel eyes swirling with emotion taking in my small form. Using his own distraction to my advantage my eyes travel down his masculine nose that gives way to plump lips. I continue taking in his face with a strong jaw, and harsh angles but overall, his face was one that could make anyone's panties catch on fire. I continue to peruse this fine male specimen gazing down to his large chest and onto his tree trunks for legs, his gray sweatpants skin-tight leaving nothing to the imagination. Everything screamed ginormous about the man, his height hitting close to seven feet.

The energy developed and the employment afforded by the State will descend like water that the sun has sucked out of the sea to fall upon a mountain range, and back to the sea again it will come at last, debouching in ground rent and royalty and license fees, in the fees of travellers and profits upon carrying and coinage and the like, in death duty, transfer tax, legacy and forfeiture, returning to the sea. Between the clouds and the sea it will run, as a river system runs, down through a great region of individual enterprise and interplay, whose freedom it will sustain. In that intermediate region between the kindred heights and deeps those beginnings and promises will arise that are the essential significance, the essential substance, of life.

At her final dinner in Imperial Heights, she notices afresh all that a week has made familiar: the silk runner, the brass casseroles, and the many little bowls on her plate that Sita, already turning invisible, keeps refilling. The meal is elaborate. There is saag paneer because it is her favourite Indian dish; corn bake, should the curry get too spicy; what she now knows is dal, not soup; yogurt, rotis, pilaf rice and pickle. Her first night here, she asked what order to eat things in, and everyone laughed like it was the most charming thing to say. Tonight, she folds her roti into a roll, one bite for each spoonful of curry, and as the subject of her new rental in Santacruz leads to a discussion on the city's suburbs, she feels reassured that Nana is right, people are people; no matter where you go and how confusing or daunting or hilarious they seem, there is always room to be kindred.

the distance between these two posts was less than five leagues. The rude path, which originally formed their line of communication, had been widened for the passage of wagons; so that the distance which had been travelled by the son of the forest in two hours, might easily be effected by a detachment of troops, with their necessary baggage, between the rising and setting of a summer sun.

Now in this forest is a dwarf who is no more than three feet in height, but whose beauty eclipses that of the summer sun. His name is Aubéron. Once they have entered this wood, none can escape him. If ever they address a word to him and once they have spent an instant near him, they will no longer ever be able to leave. I must add that this dwarf possesses three great powers: when you seek to travel through this forest, before you have crossed twelve leagues, you will find him standing in your way. He will speak the name of majestic God in such wise that none can fail to be impressed, and if you refuse to speak to this noble person, he will become so furious that you will become terrified, for he will make it rainy and blustery, he will break the trees and tear them to pieces; after this demonstration he will make appear a river so large that a large boat could sail down it. . . . But take it as written, all of this is naught but illusion

The Alchemy of Poetry The alchemy of poetry can turn the profane into the sacred, the prosaic into the spiritual. and the ordinary into the extraordinary, It can let your mind travel the world, let you soar to unimaginable heights, or let you drown in another's misery. It can turn silence into birdsong, turn the clock back to eternal time and bring the voices of angels to earth. It can feed teaspoons of love to the lonely, bring consolation to the bereaved, and open a window of hope to the despairing. Alas, the alchemy of poetry turns our brutal leaden lives into songs of golden celebration and turn each of us into a poet.

Even in 1963, only a year before opening, the director-general of the Construction Department of JNR, stated to new JNR employees: The Tokaido Shinkansen is the height of madness. As the gauge of the Tokaido Shinkansen is different from existing lines, track sharing is not possible. Even if the journey time between Tokyo and Osaka is shortened, passengers have to change trains at Osaka in order to travel further west. A railway system which lacks smooth connections and networks with other lines is meaningless and destined to fail.

Most of us inherit one shame or another. [...] I met a guy named Mike during my travels in Alaska. We've stayed in touch. He's blond and blue-eyed, and does not fit comfortably in most chairs and beds because he's six foot nine. He's often embarrassed by his height and sometimes tells people he's six foot eight. He stoops on purpose. Once, while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, he and I stood in front of a full-length mirror. His reflection wasn't all there. His head was cut off. There were so many ways to be invisible.

Come along.” Nick took her arm when they left the box, and with his superior height, navigated her deftly through the crowds. “Where are we going?” Ellen asked, for she did not recognize the path they were traveling. “To meet your fate, my lady,” Nick said, but his eyes were sparkling, and Ellen didn’t realize the significance of his comment until she was being tugged backstage toward a growing buzz of voices. “The green room is this way”—Nick steered her along—“but for you, we will refer to it as the throne room. Ladies and gentlemen…” Nick bellowed as he gently pushed Ellen into a crowded, well-lit room. “Make way for the artist’s muse and for a large fellow bent on reaching that punch bowl.” Applause burst forth, and the crowd parted, leaving Ellen staring across the room at Valentine where he stood, a glass in his hand, still in his formal attire. He’d never looked so handsome to her, or so tired and happy and uncertain. He set the glass down and held out his left hand to her. “My Ellen,” he said, as if introducing her. She tried to make her steps dignified before all these strangers, but then she was walking very quickly, then, hang it, she pelted the rest of the distance right into his arms, holding on to him with every ounce of her strength. She did not leave his side when the duke and duchess were announced or when his various siblings and friends came to congratulate him. She was still right by his side when the duke approached. “Well.” Moreland smiled at his youngest son. “Suppose I was mistaken, then.” “Your Grace?” Ellen heard surprise in Val’s voice, and pleasure. “I kept trying to haze you off in a different direction, afraid the peasants wouldn’t appreciate you for the virtuoso you are.” The duke sipped his drink, gaze roving the crowd until it lit on his wife standing beside Westhaven. “I was worrying for nothing all those years. Of course they’re going to love you—you are my son, after all.” “I am that,” Val said softly, catching his father’s eye. “I always will be.” “I think you’re going to be somebody’s husband too, eh, lad?” The duke winked very boldly at Ellen then sauntered off, having delivered a parting shot worthy of the ducal reputation. “My papa is hell-bent on grandchildren. I hope you are not offended?” Ellen shook her head. “Of course not, but Valentine, we do need to talk.” “We do.” He signaled to Nick, where that worthy fellow stood guarding the punch bowl. Nick nodded imperceptibly in response and called some inane insult over the crowd to Westhaven, who quipped something equally pithy right back to the amusement of all onlookers, while Val and Ellen slipped out the door. By the light of a single tallow candle, he led Ellen to a deserted practice room. He set the candle on the floor before tugging her down beside him on the piano bench. “I can’t marry you,” Ellen said, wanting to make sure the words were said before she lost her resolve. “Hear me out,” Val replied quietly. “I think you’ll change your mind. I hope and pray you’ll change your mind, or all my talent, all my music, all my art means nothing.

Coach Bobby put up his fists like a boxer. I did likewise, though my stance was far less rigid. I kept my knees flexed, bounced a bit. Bobby was a very big guy and local-neighborhood tough and used to intimidating opponents. But he was out of his league. A few quick facts about fighting. One, the cardinal rule: You never really know how it is going to go. Anyone can land a lucky blow. Overconfidence is always a mistake. But the truth was, Coach Bobby had virtually no chance. I don’t say this to sound immodest or repetitive. Despite what the parents in those rickety stands want to believe with their private coaches and overly aggressive third-grade travel league schedules, athletes are mostly created in the womb. Yes, you need the hunger and the training and the practice, but the difference, the big difference, is natural ability. Nature over nurture every time. I had been gifted with ridiculously quick reflexes and hand-eye coordination. That’s not bragging. It’s like your hair color or your height or your hearing. It just is. And I’m not even talking here about the years of training I did to improve my body and to learn how to fight. But that’s there too. Coach