Hunker Down Quotes

When Great Trees Fall When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

We want life to make sense. If we don’t find meaning and orientation, we are bound to fabulate a living and invent an inspiring life story. When we write out a chosen script, we’ll have to make time to hunker down into attuning it to the hitches of the road map, time and again, with fractious patience. ( "Everybody his story" )

Every now and then you run up on one of those days when everything’s in vain … a stone bummer from start to finish; and if you know what’s good for you, on days like these you sort of hunker down in a safe corner and watch.

All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up.

I blew the horn a few times, hoping to call up an iguana. Get the buggers moving. They were out there, I knew, in that goddamn sea of cactus--hunkered down, barely breathing, and every one of the stinking little bastards was loaded with deadly poison.

Self-preservation is to hunker down in the suffocating confines of this infinitesimally tiny existence that I define as ‘me,’ instead of letting ‘me’ run through the infinitely massive expanse of everything that is not me. And if the beast of self-preservation does not permit such freedoms, I will preserve myself to my own death.

Oh dear. I have just seen Angus hunkering down in the long grass. He's stalking their poodle. I'll have to intervene to avert a massacre. Oh, it's OK, Mrs. Next Door has thrown a brick at him.

And if the world went to hell in a handbasket-as it seemed to be doing-you could say good-bye to everyone and retreat to your land, hunkering down and living off it.

Some people, he says, they hide themselves away from the eyes of the world. They hunker down and shiver. They find four walls high enough to put between them and everything else. Those people, to them the world is a frightful place. See, you and me, we're different. When we are called on to move, we move. It don't matter the cause or the distance. Revenge or ministration, reason or folly - it's all the same to us.

We have to get through the summer.' Finn didn't want to get through the summer. He wanted to fall into it, hunker down and stay for a while.

Lee threw down the tripod, and Trip dropped the FN MAG machine gun onto it...Lee hunkered down behind the big weapon. Holly handed me an RPG. The heavy tube was reassuring in my hands. Everyone dug down into the ditch, prepared to fight. Nervous but competent. Scared but professional. We were ready to put some smack down. Not bad for an accountant, a librarian, a schoolteacher, and a stripper.

But he’d also gotten a personal prickly chill all over from his own thinking. He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear of the A.D.A., whoever was out there in a hat eating Third World fast food; the fear of getting convicted of Nuckslaughter, of V.I.P.-suffocation; of a lifetime on the edge of his bunk in M.C.I. Walpole, remembering. It’s too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it’s as of now real. What’s real is the tube and Noxzema and pain. And this could be done just like the Old Cold Bird. He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What’s unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like G. Day or R. Lenz: clueless noise. He hadn’t quite gotten this before now, how it wasn’t just the matter of riding out the cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with unendurable news you then somehow believed.

In this land I have made myself sick with silence In this land I have wandered, lost In this land I hunkered down to see What will become of me. In this land I held myself tight So as not to scream. -But I did scream, so loud That this land howled back at me As hideously As it builds its houses. In this land I have been sown Only my head sticks Defiant, out of the earth But one day it too will be mown Making me, finally Of this land. -Charlie's poem

From the inside, a violent home looks starkly different than it does to outsiders. Children who grow up with cold, narcissistic, or sadistic parents don’t know that a caretaker with the potential for extreme cruelty is not the norm. Even when they see a contrast in the families of friends, they’ve already been robbed of the ability to challenge parental authority. Instead of seeking help, they hunker down and adapt.

There's somethin I learned when I was homeless: Our limitation is God's opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain't nothin you can do, that's when God takes over. I remember one time I was hunkered down in the hobo jungle with some folks. We was talkin 'bout life, and this fella was talkin, said, 'People think they're in control, but they ain't. The truth is, that which must befall thee must befall thee. And that which must pass the by must pass thee by.

You probably wouldn’t remember, but that night you had Noah?” he said. “You hunkered down on the side of the road and held my shoulders while you pushed him out.

Have you ever noticed that however uncomfortable you might have been when you first went to bed—the room too hot or too cold; the pillows not quite right; the mattress lumpy; the sheets scratchy by the time you should get up, your bed has transformed itself into the Platonic ideal of beds? The room is cool, the bed is soft, and the pillow may as well have been God’s Own Headrest. The transformation inevitably happens, of course, when you’re obligated to get up and out, when nothing sounds better than hunkering down in a pile of cool cotton.

No, it was too much. The line between madness and masochism was already hazy; the time had come to pull back ... to retire, hunker down, back off and "cop out," as it were. Why not? in every gig like this, there comes a time to either cut your losses or consolidate your winnings—whichever fits.

Most wars are won or lost in our own heads, and when we’re in a foxhole we usually aren’t alone, and we need to be confident in the quality of the heart, mind, and dialogue of the person hunkered down with us. Because at some point we will need some empowering words to keep us focused and deadly.

Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability to do anything about them. We sit, dumbfounded by despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all our extraordinary capacity to see the truth of things, we hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our precious pebble, fearing the moment is is dislodged beneath us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling. "Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are punished? Where justice is truly blind and holds out no hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence? Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge, dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur. Ourselves transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord. We are indeed masters of evasion--no doubt originally a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe sees before him." ~Kruppe,

My mother says it can't stay like this, but I believe it will. The Pants are like an omen. They stand for the promise we made to one another, that no matter what happens, we stick together. But they stand for a challenge too. It's not enough to stay in Bethesda, Maryland, and hunker down in air-conditioned houses. We promise one another that someday we'd get out in the world and figure some stuff out.

I walked to my window. It's pirch-dark outside. For the most part, I've always preffered night to day. At night, it's okay to be hunkered down in your house. During the day, people expect you to be out and about. You can start to feel pretty guilty about wasting so much time indoors.

Kid, nobody really gets anywhere in this life. Everybody just picks someplace to hunker down and barricade themselves in. Some of us just got better bricks than others.

It’s not enough to say your family is important. If “family” is really going to be top priority, you have to “hunker down, suck it up, and make it happen!

Life wasn’t about learning how to deflect the bad, but learning how to hunker down and weather it until it passed. I supposed . . . no, I knew, it was the same way with love.

Stay down!” Wolf yelled, pushing Scarlet to the ground and hunkering over her body. A living shield. His instinct was still there, at least. The desire to protect her above all else. That was all the confirmation she needed. Feeling

of those days when everything’s in vain … a stone bummer from start to finish; and if you know what’s good for you, on days like these you sort of hunker down in a safe corner and watch.

He could do the dextral pain the same way: Abiding. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. And the projected future fear. ... It's too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it's as of now real. ... He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. ... But he could choose not to listen.

We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.

My grief is a windstorm. Sometimes I can stand straight up in it, and when I'm angry, I can lean into it and dare it to blow me over. But other times I need to hunker down, tuck around myself, and let it pummel my back.

The lucidity, the clarity of light that afternoon was sufficient to itself; perfect transparency must be impenetrable, these vertical bars of brass-coloured distillation of light coming down from sulphur-yellow interstices in a sky hunkered with grey clouds that bulge with more rain. It struck the wood with nicotine-stained fingers, the leaves glittered. A cold day of late October, when the withered blackberries dangled like their own dour spooks on the discoloured brambles. There were crisp husks of beechmast and cast acorn cups underfoot in the russet slime of the dead bracken where the rains of the equinox had so soaked the earth that the cold oozed up through the soles of the shoes, lancinating cold of the approaching winter that grips hold of your belly and squeezed it tight. Now the stark elders have an anorexic look; there is not much in the autumn wood to make you smile but it is not yet, not quite yet, the saddest time of the year. Only, there is a haunting sense of the imminent cessation of being; the year, in turning, turns in on itself. Introspective weather, a sickroom hush.

The final two words of his challenge, “no tears”, meant that the loser was expected to suffer a great deal of pain, but wasn’t entitled to whine, bitch or moan about it. He’d just have to hunker down and keep his poverty to himself.

And so, feeling the line between "researcher" and "conspiracy theorist" blurring before me, I hunkered down in the library to read about the many ways our government has deceived us.

It is the moral anesthetic of our day to ask God and our friends to only understand our sin from our point of view. This mind-set of seeing sin from a personal point of view has led to, at best, weak Christians crippled by sin and untouched by gospel power, or at worst, wolves in sheep’s clothing who hunker down with offices in the church, teaching feeble sheep a perverted catechism, one that renders sin grace and grace sin, one that confuses doubt with intelligence and skepticism with renewed hope. When we live by the belief that sin is best discerned from our own point of view, we cannot help but to develop a theology of excuse-righteousness. We become anesthetized to the reality of our own sin. One consequence of this moral anesthesia is the belief that you are in good standing with God if you give to him what the desires of your flesh can spare. But sin, biblically rendered, is both a crime and a disease, requiring both the law of God and his grace to apply it for true help.

Sometimes the newer kids who won’t even let him near them come in and set the resistance on the shoulder-pull at a weight greater than their own weight. The guru on the towel dispenser just sits there and smiles and doesn’t say anything. They hunker, then, and grimace, and try to pull the bar down, but, like, lo: the overweighted shoulder-pull becomes a chin-up. Up they go, their own bodies, toward the bar they’re trying to pull down. Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down to himself.

Her gingerbread keeps and keeps. It outlasts all daintier gifts. Flowers wilt and shed mottled petals, mold blooms greenish-white on chocolate truffles, and Harriet's gingerbread hunkers down in its tin, no more attractive than the day it arrived, but no more repellent either.

The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and surprises that it takes years for most people to begin to notice that it is, also, irretrievably broken. We call this period of research “childhood.” There follows a program of renewed inquiry, often involuntary, into the nature and effects of mortality, entropy, heartbreak, violence, failure, cowardice, duplicity, cruelty, and grief; the researcher learns their histories, and their bitter lessons, by heart. Along the way, he or she discovers that the world has been broken for as long as anyone can remember, and struggles to reconcile this fact with the ache of cosmic nostalgia that arises, from time to time, in the researcher’s heart: an intimation of vanished glory, of lost wholeness, a memory of the world unbroken. We call the moment at which this ache first arises “adolescence.” The feeling haunts people all their lives. Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouin tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again. Two difficulties with this latter scheme at once present themselves. First of all, we have only ever glimpsed, as if through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box. Second, no matter how diligent we have been about picking up pieces along the way, we will never have anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most we can hope to accomplish with our handful of salvaged bits—the bittersweet harvest of observation and experience—is to build a little world of our own. A scale model of that mysterious original, unbroken, half—remembered. Of course the worlds we build out of our store of fragments can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate. As representations of the vanished whole that haunts us, they must be accounted failures. And yet in that very failure, in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps, accurate scale models, of this beautiful and broken world. We call these scale models “works of art.

His legs remembered the correct position for squatting down with toys. He played. He fit the round male studs into the round female grooves. He got some thinking done as he hunkered down on his fallen-sleep legs.

Planning Meetings might be the greatest art form ever, since what happens is nothing less than this: a soul shapes a new incarnation, then boldly commits. Quite the contrast to Life Reviews, when a soul comes out the other end. Frankly this returning to heaven to learn about your recent incarnation… it’s like coming out the poop end of life… in contrast to the restaurant-like, lip-smacking deliciousness of a planning meeting. Around here we have this saying, “Planning Meetings for joy. Life Reviews for… compassion.” Basically, watching a Life Review makes you want to hunker down with some celestial tissues, feeling sorry for the sad parts of the story, consoling yourself with knowledge of growth that took place anyway, and maybe wondering if you’ll ever risk leaving heaven again. By contrast, how do you feel after watching an inspiring Planning Meeting? You can’t wait to leave.

Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides. It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds. Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body. How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!" What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out. There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe. There is no policeman. There is no way out. And the night never ends.

In a way, he was just like the rest of us—trying out different theories for what had happened, trying to figure out what it meant, what it said about us as a country. But of course he was different. He’d seen the country, and the world, from a different perch. And the one thing he kept coming back to was the expanse of time, the fact that we were just “a blip” in human history. In giving advice on how to deal with Trump, he offered a simple maxim: “Find some high ground, and hunker down.

Abiding. No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was the second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instants all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. [...] It's too much to think about. To Abide there. But none of it's as of now real. [...] He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like G. Day or R. Lenz: clueless noise.

With the exception perhaps of a massive earthquake, we are protected from real awe. Few people even know any longer what it’s like to stand alone in a thunderstorm on the open plains, or to feel the shore vibrate beneath you as a gale sends millions of tons of water pounding in across thousands of miles of ocean. We close the doors and hunker down, convinced that we are in control, or at least hoping for control, and lose touch with what it is to be overwhelmed by a force much greater than ourselves.

I think the idea of holing up and hunkering down against the larger forces of the world has not lost its allure since Thoreau's time. If anything that instinct, or impulse, continues to reside in almost all of us, sometimes activated or bestirred and other times dormant but always present.

If, by the virtue of charity or the funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts. You will find out that once MA’s Department of Social Services has taken a mother’s children away for any period of time, they can always take them away again, D.S.S ., like at will, empowered by nothing more than a certain signature-stamped form. I.e. once deemed Unfit— no matter why or when, or what’s transpired in the meantime— there’s nothing a mother can do.(...)That a little-mentioned paradox of Substance addiction is: that once you are sufficiently enslaved by a Substance to need to quit the Substance in order to save your life, the enslaving Substance has become so deeply important to you that you will all but lose your mind when it is taken away from you. Or that sometime after your Substance of choice has just been taken away from you in order to save your life, as you hunker down for required A.M. and P.M. prayers , you will find yourself beginning to pray to be allowed literally to lose your mind, to be able to wrap your mind in an old newspaper or something and leave it in an alley to shift for itself, without you.(...)That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on.(...)That evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil. That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds.(...)That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people.(...)That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.(...)That most Substance -addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for addictive -type thinking is: Analysis-Paralysis. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good.(...)That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.(...)That certain sincerely devout and spiritually advanced people believe that the God of their understanding helps them find parking places and gives them advice on Mass. Lottery numbers.

The start of a run is like the start of a writing session: First you resist, then you threaten to quit, then you roll your eyes and hunker down, and then suddenly you sprout wings and take flight.

We will martyr ourselves, suffering under the weight of a non-reciprocal relationship until some part of us bursts in protest. Suddenly, we lose our mind, and allowing ourselves to heap all manner of nastiness, name calling, patronizing, death threats on the “deserving” jerk who has it coming after all we do for him/her! As the final insult rings across the room and we regain consciousness, we are horrified by what has come out of our mouth. After all, we LOVE these people, and we quickly move into anxious terror that this time we have gone too far . . . this time we crossed the line and they will leave us. So, we hunker back down and the martyrdom begins again. It’s a terrible cycle.

She understood now that knowing when to walk away and when to hunker down and refuse to leave were equally difficult decisions to make in a marriage; that going back didn't have to mean settling; and that the most fulfilling times weren't always before a storm, but sometimes long after the dust had settled, when you were able to lift your chin and see what was left standing so you could wrap yourself around it with all of the wonder it deserved.

As we reach the next corner, the entire block ahead of us lights up with a rich purple glow. We backpedal, hunker down in a stairwell, and squint into the light. Something’s happening to those illuminated by it. They’re assaulted by . . . what? A sound? A wave? A laser? Weapons fall from their hands, fingers clutch their faces, as blood sprays from all visible orifices — eyes, noses, mouths, ears. In less than a minute, everyone’s dead and the glow vanishes.

Abracadabra," Roarke stated, and opened it. "Now that's more like it." Hunkered down beside him, Eve studied the neat stacks of cash. "This is how he stayed out of a cage so long. No credit, no e-transfers. Cash on the line. And a file box, loaded with discs and vids." "Best of all." Roarke reached in, took out a PPC. "His personal palm, very likely uninfected and chock-full of interesting data." "Let's load it up, get it in." She pulled out her memo book. "What're you doing?" "Logging the entry. I better not see any of that green stuff or those baubles go into your pockets, Ace." "Now I'm offended." He straightened, brushed at his shirt. "If I nipped anything, you can bet your ass you wouldn't see me do it.

I could have stopped going to classes but at the time, I was going to be the first Edelman to graduate (my sister, Nicki, beat me to it). It was important to Mom and Dad and it's still important to me. I only have two classes left to take but I need to hunker down and finish.

There was nothing to compare with standing on a piece of land you owned free and clear. No one could push you off it, no one could take it from you, no one could tell you what to do with it. The soil belonged to you, and so did every rock, every blade of grass, every tree, and all the water and minerals under the land all the way to the center of the earth. And if the world went to hell in a hand-basket—as it seemed to be doing—you could say good-bye to everyone and retreat to your land, hunkering down and living off it. Land belonged to you and yours forever.

Peering down the hallway, she saw Wolf hunkered over a counter, holding a tin can. Stepping into the galley’s light, Scarlet saw that the can was labeled with a picture of cartoon-red tomatoes. Judging from the enormous dents in its side, Wolf had been trying to open it with a meat tenderizer. He glanced up at her, and she was glad that she wasn’t the only one red faced. “Why would they put food in here if they were going to make it so hard to open?

No women up here. You know the rules. We aren’t into renting to strangers, either. Especially not high fallutin’ city slickin’ judgy judgertons like this one. No offense,” he said as he flicked his attention to her, then away. “None taken.” She didn’t want to hunker down in hillbilly town any more than Bruiser wanted her here. Connor

vein over the next month. He intended to hunker down and write. This, Dixon knew, was entirely in character for Hart—trusting in the inevitability of his superior ideas and leaving the tactics to others—and didn’t indicate any special level of avoidance; at this point no one really feared that the campaign itself was in mortal jeopardy.

It's rude to discuss religion', the Buraq sniffed. 'But I don't hold with Teatimers. I'm of the Midnight Snack school. You have tea because it's three o'clock and that's what's done and yes, yes, it's pleasant to have a nice cup and a sandwich with no crusts on, but pleasant is not enough for me! When you tuck into a Midnight Snack, it's because you're hungry in the dark. You want that bit of roast you couldn't finish at supper and you want it now. Midnight Snackery is primal, like a wolf in the wood, hunkering down over her kill.

A dutiful soldier, I retreated to the ditches as ordered and hunkered down there. In those ditches, I had an epiphany. People treat you as badly as you let them treat you.

I set the pumpkin on the ground between my feet and put my arm around Charlie. Pull her in closer, tucking her under my armpit like I’d do a football – or a pumpkin. “Better?” “Yes, thank you.” She hunkers down a little more. “You’re blocking the wind, which is nice.” I’m blocking the wind because I’m a fortress of strength and steel and goddamn power, and don’t you forget it.

Nor is it a trivial matter that whites and men do so strongly feel themselves beleaguered by cultural change. In January 2019, South Carolina’s Winthrop poll conducted a fascinating experiment. Winthrop polled people of all races across eleven Southern states. One question was phrased in two slightly different ways. Half of the people surveyed were asked whether they agreed that “whites have privileges that non-whites do not have.” The other half were asked whether they agreed that “non-whites face barriers that whites do not face.” Logically, of course the two questions mean exactly the same thing. But they yielded very different answers. When asked whether they enjoyed special “privilege,” only 50 percent of whites agreed. Among the most conservative whites, only 36 percent agreed. But when asked whether nonwhites faced extra “barriers,” 70 percent of all whites and a majority even of the most conservative whites agreed.18 People do not like being negatively judged. When they feel negatively judged, they hunker down. On the other hand, people do have a sense of fairness. When that is appealed to, they respond more generously.

We all knew where the goop originated and could have defended ourselves, but the origin of the fusillade doubled as the center of the action. Once the baby’s scalp protruded, we all hunkered down and braced ourselves.

I have another scan this week," I say lightly, hoping to reassure my loved ones that it is safe to rejoin my orbit. There is always another scan, because this is my reality. But the people I know are often busy contending with mildly painful ambition and the possibility of reward. I try to begrudge them nothing, except I'm not alongside them anymore. In the meantime, I have been hunkering down with old medical supplies and swelling resentment. I tried— haven't I tried? — to avoid fights and remember birthdays. I showed up for dance recitals and listened to weight-loss dreams and kept the granularity of my medical treatments in soft focus. A person like that would be easier to love, I reasoned. I try a small experiment and stop calling my regular rotation of friends and family, hoping that they will call me back on their own. _This is not a test. This is not a test._ The phone goes quiet, except for a handful of calls. I feel heavy with strange new grief. Is it bitter or unkind to want everyone to remember what I can't forget? Who wants to be confronted with the reality that we are all a breath away from a problem that could alter our lives completely? A friend with a very sick child said it best: I'm everyone's inspiration and and no one's friend. I am asked all the time to say that, given what I've gained in perspective, I would never go back. Who would want to know the truth? Before was better.

Darius glided toward Tempest in his silent, intimidating way. “You are going to bed now, honey. I will not listen to any arguments.” Tempest was already lying down. “Does anyone else besides me ever get the urge to throw things at you?” She sounded drowsy, not combative. Darius hunkered down beside her so he was at eye level with her. “I do not think so. If they do, they do not have the audacity to tell me.” “Well, I think throwing something at you is the only way to go,” Tempest told him. Her eyes were already closing, and her voice was weary and sad despite her heavy words. Darius stroked the wealth of red-gold hair away from her face, his fingers soothing her scalp. “Do you? Maybe tomorrow might be a better time to try it.” “I have a very good aim,” she warned him. “It would be easier on you if you just quit giving me orders.” “That would ruin my reputation,” he objected. A smile curved the corners of her mouth, emphasizing the thin red cut at the side of her lip.

Being part of an attack was a strange thing, Marcus had always thought. It was like being a component in a larger organism, something that could live or die, stand or flee, all on its own and independent of the will of the men who made it up. Sometimes it drove you onward, into the face of what seemed like certain death, in spite of every instinct screaming for flight. Other times, you could feel it falling apart, turning at bay like a whipped dog, hunkering down or turning tail to run.

The winter was harsh. Kay had been spending days in her trailer hunkered down under piles of blankets—some even say with an older bear named Betty Sue. Her skin was turning gray, which could suggest emphysema, pneumonia, or a pending heart attack. The fact that her outerwear was found untorn could also suggest hypothermia, which sometimes makes victims feel like they’re burning up. Hopkins told me that Kay probably collapsed while walking back to her home. He said it’s even possible that

When older people ask me, “How have you been so successful after age 65?” I tell them, “Anyone who’s reached 65 years of age has had a world of experience behind him. He’s had his ups and downs and all the trials and tribulations of life. He certainly ought to be able to gather something out of that, something he can put together at the end of his 65 years so he can get a new start.” The way I see it, a man’s life is written by the way he lives it. It’s using any talent God has given him, even if his talent is cooking food or running a good motel. You can reach higher, think bigger, grow stronger and live deeper in this country of ours than anywhere else on Earth. The rules here give everybody a chance to win. If my story is different, it’s because my life really began at age 65 when most folks have already called it a day. I’d been modestly successful before I hit 65. After that I made millions. When they’re about 60 or 65, a lot of people feel that life is all over for them. Too many of them just sit and wait until they die or they become a burden to other people. The truth is they can make a brand new life for themselves if they just don’t give up and hunker down. I want to tell people, “You’re only as old as you feel or as you think, and no matter what your age there’s plenty of work to be done.” I don’t want to sound like I’m clearing my throat and giving advice about how a man can be successful. I’m not all puffed up. My main trade secret is I’m not afraid of hard, back-cracking work. After all, I was raised on a farm where hard work is the way of life.

Was this my last walk? The wind was blowing and it was cold. Annika hadn’t told me how cold Venice could be before I got there, even in summer. It was something I had to figure out for myself. With the wind blowing, the beach houses looked warm and inviting. From the outside they made it look so easy to be alive on Earth, to hunker down all cozy and warm. I wondered if it felt that way for the people inside them, like a relief to be out of the elements. Or did they quickly forget about the chill outside and take the warmth for granted?

There is a longing in us all to be God-enthralled. So enthralled that to those hunkered down in their disgrace, in the shadow of death, we become transparent messengers of God's own tender mercy. We want to be seized by that same tenderness; we want to bear the largeness of God. (p45)

great. This is a good description of Rovio, which was around for six years and underwent layoffs before the “instant” success of the Angry Birds video game franchise. In the case of the Five Guys restaurant chain, the founders spent fifteen years tweaking their original handful of restaurants in Virginia, finding the right bun bakery, the right number of times to shake the french fries before serving, how best to assemble a burger, and where to source their potatoes before expanding nationwide. Most businesses require a complex network of relationships to function, and these relationships take time to build. In many instances you have to be around for a few years to receive consistent recognition. It takes time to develop connections with investors, suppliers, and vendors. And it takes time for staff and founders to gain effectiveness in their roles and become a strong team.* So, yes, the bar is high when you want to start a company. You’ll have the chance to work on something you own and care about from day to day. You’ll be 100 percent engaged and motivated, and doing something you believe in. You can lead an integrated life, as opposed to a compartmentalized one in which you play a role in an office and then try to forget about it when you get home. You can define an organization, not the other way around. But even if you quit your job, hunker down for years, work hard for uncertain reward, and ask everyone you know for help, there’s still a great chance that your new business will not succeed. Over 50 percent of companies fail within their first three years.2 There’s a quote I like from an unknown source: “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

I'm turning fifty, and it is just now dawning on me that I have limited time," Nash said. "No kidding. I always felt my life was circumscribed by the finite terms, you know? There is a whole world of things I missed out on and will never experience. Whatever I have done, there is an endless amount I have not done. Do you know what that tells me?" ... "It tells me it is not meant to be this all-encompassing journey. It is not meant to be catholic or encyclopedic. By now I have carved some grooves in this life. A few. What I need to do is hunker down and make those grooves deep and indelible.

The winter solstice marks the longest night of the year and the promise that soon the sun will be back again. But winter is not merely a trial to be got through while we wait for warmer times. You must embrace the cold days and long dark nights and learn to find the joy in them, for there is much joy to be found. Hunker down and revel in the warmth of soft blankets when the weather is howling outside. Make the time to take time, not just for others but for yourselves. Read books, light candles, take long baths, watch the flames flickering in the fireplace or the rain dribbling down the windowpanes. Open your eyes to the beauty in the winter landscape and count your blessings every single day. Slow down. There will be time enough for buzzing around with the bees when the sun comes back. For now, let the moments stretch long and lazy. Recuperate, rejuvenate, reflect, and let winter soothe you. Let this winter solstice be the first of many times this winter that you come together to give thanks and appreciate the people in your life. Gratitude is everything. It is infinite, and even in death I know that the warmth of my gratitude for all of you lives on in the spirit of this season." -Augustus

if your view of the future depends on an irreversible movement toward the worst possible scenario, you must not let your posture become purely defensive. Pessimism can lead you to adopt a “hunker down with the faithful” approach to the world that is largely driven by fear, not faith. The truth is, every generation believes that things are getting worse when compared to the past. Every generation adopts, at some level, a variation of the myth of decline or the myth of progress. Every generation of Christians believes they are in the last days of this world. And every generation, so far, has been wrong.

I could murder a Jack and Coke. Really, really murder one,” said Kate. “I could double homicide a Newcastle Brown Ale with a shot of Teacher’s,” said Myra, going to the kettle and switching it on. “And I’m holding twenty-six years’ sobriety in my hand.” Kate put her head forward on the table. Myra came over and patted her on the back. “You know the score. Hunker down. Grit your teeth. Imagine you’re having really great sex,” she said. “I hate it.” “Really great sex?” “No, not that that’s happened for a while. The cravings.” “Grit, grit, grit those teeth, love, and grit some more,” she said, rubbing Kate on the back.

She hunkered down, stared across the horizon. Felt the vast cold world spread out all around her and was reassured by the impersonality of it. This land--wild and serene, huge, ruthless and gentle by turns, was always unconcerned with her, small Madeline who was a tiny dot on it's landscape for a moment in time.

She heard a crash from the galley as soon as she pulled it open. Peering down the hallway, she saw Wolf hunkered over a counter, holding a tin can. Stepping into the galley's light, Scarlet saw that the can was labeled with a picture of cartoon-red tomatoes. Judging from the enormous dents in its side, Wolf had been trying to open it with a meat tenderizer. He glanced up at her, and she was glad that she wasn't the only one red faced. "Why would they put food in here if they were going to make it so hard to open?" She bit her lip against a weak smile, not sure if it was from pity or amusement. "Did you try a can opener?

Winter tightened its grip on Alaska. The vastness of the landscape dwindled down to the confines of their cabin. The sun rose at quarter past ten in the morning and set only fifteen minutes after the end of the school day. Less than six hours of light a day. Snow fell endlessly, blanketed everything. It piled up in drifts and spun its lace across windowpanes, leaving them nothing to see except themselves. In the few daylight hours, the sky stretched gray overhead; some days there was merely the memory of light rather than any real glow. Wind scoured the landscape, cried out as if in pain. The fireweed froze, turned into intricate ice sculptures that stuck up from the snow. In the freezing cold, everything stuck -- car doors froze, windows cracked, engines refused to start. The ham radio filled with warnings of bad weather and listed the deaths that were as common in Alaska in the winter as frozen eyelashes. People died for the smallest mistake -- car keys dropped in a river, a gas tank gone dry, a snow machine breaking down, a turn taken too fast. Leni couldn't go anywhere or do anything without a warning. Already the winter seemed to have gone on forever. Shore ice seized the coastline, glazed the shells and stones until the beach looked like a silver-sequined collar. Wind roared across the homestead, as it had all winter, transforming the white landscape with every breath. Trees cowered in the face of it, animals built dens and burrowed in holes and went into hiding. Not so different from the humans, who hunkered down in this cold, took special care.

is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female’s offspring—one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently—even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as “sneaky fuckers.

This is the heart of it, the scared woman who does not want to go alone to the man any longer, because when she does, when she takes of her baggy dress, displaying to him rancid breasts each almost as big as his own head, or no breasts, or mammectomized scar tissues taped over with old tennis balls to give her the right curves; when, vending her flesh, she stands or squats waiting, congealing the air firstly with her greasy cheesey stench of unwashed feet confined in week-old socks, secondly with her perfume of leotards and panties also a week old, crusted with semen and urine, brown-greased with the filth of alleys; thirdly with the odor of her dress also worn for a week, emblazoned with beer-spills and cigarette-ash and salted with the smelly sweat of sex, dread, fever, addiction—when she goes to the man, and is accepted by him, when all these stinking skins of hers have come off (either quickly, to get it over with, or slowly like a big truck pulling into a weigh station because she is tired), when she nakedly presents her soul’s ageing soul, exhaling from every pore physical and ectoplasmic her fourth and supreme smell which makes eyes water more than any queen of red onions—rotten waxy smell from between her breasts, I said, bloody pissy shitty smell from between her legs, sweat-smell and underarm-smell, all blended into her halo, generalized sweetish smell of unwashed flesh; when she hunkers painfully down with her customer on bed or a floor or in an alley, then she expects her own death. Her smell is enough to keep him from knowing the heart of her, and the heart of her is not the heart of it. The heart of it is that she is scared.

I knelt down to pick up the hatchling to . . . . what? Give it back to its mother? Here is your dying chick? Just before I made contact with it, she dive-bombed me. The mother actually dive-bombed me. I sat back on my hunkers in surprise and admiration. So slight, so drab, so courageous. She put me to shame. I stood up and backed off and she alighted in front of her young, setting herself and her pattering heart between us. Babies die, I thought as I regarded her. That is the world we live in. I did not make this world. If I could, I thought, I would make a different world. I would make a different world for you and me, Sailor. And for this brave bird. But I can't.

One article on reproductive strategies was titled "Sneaky Fuckers." Kya laughed. As is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female's offspring- one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently- even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as "sneaky fuckers." Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. "Unworthy boys make a lot of noise," Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone. Another article delved into the wild rivalries between sperm. Across most life-forms, males compete to inseminate females. Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other's flesh. Though very ritualized, the conflicts can still end in mutilations. To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods. Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removes sperm ejected by a previous opponent before he supplies his own. Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

Body Prayer We must hunker down into the “Body of Hope and Resurrection” (Philippians 3:9–11; 1 Corinthians 15:44) and pray also from below and from within, on a cellular and energetic level too—or the attitude of prayer does not last or go deep. You are not thinking your prayer as much as energetically feeling your prayer. You pay attention from the bottom up and from the inside out. Rest into the Body of Christ energy instead of trying to pull an Infinite God into your finite world. Your body itself receives and knows, and is indeed “a temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17) where God dwells in the Spirit. Walking meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises are all helpful here. Body prayer actually works much more quickly and more naturally than thought prayer alone. Body prayer is what we have tried to do with inspiring music, body gestures, and all sacraments, so this is not a new idea. It is what many are seeking in tai chi, pilgrimages, prayer beads, chanting, repeating the Jesus Prayer until it prays itself in us and through us, and so on. To “pray from the clay” will also move you to the shared level of prayer. You will know that “you” are not doing the prayer, but you are falling into the unified field, and the Body of Christ is now praying through you (Romans 8:26–27) and with you. It becomes “our” prayer, and not just my prayer. Now you pray not so much to Christ as much as through Christ, and you will know experientially that you are Christ's Body too.

On one occasion Walter Brueggemann said, "If you are a coward by nature, don't worry. We can still use you. You can get down behind the biblical text. You can peek out from behind the text, saying, 'I don't know if I would say this, but I do think the text does.' " I like that image—the preacher hunkered down, taking cover behind the biblical text, speaking a word not of the preacher's devising.

I realized I still had my eyes shut. I had shut them when I put my face to the screen, like I was scared to look outside. Now I had to open them. I looked out the window and saw for the first time how the hospital was out in the country. The moon was low in the sky over the pastureland; the face of it was scarred and scuffed where it had just torn up out of the snarl of scrub oak and madrone trees on the horizon. The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon. It called to mind how I noticed the exact same thing when I was off on a hunt with Papa and the uncles and I lay rolled in blankets Grandma had woven, lying off a piece from where the men hunkered around the fire as they passed a quart jar of cactus liquor in a silent circle. I watched that big Oregon prairie moon above me put all the stars around it to shame. I kept awake watching, to see if the moon ever got dimmer or if the stars got brighter, till the dew commenced to drift onto my cheeks and I had to pull a blanket over my head. Something moved on the grounds down beneath my window — cast a long spider of shadow out across the grass as it ran out of sight behind a hedge. When it ran back to where I could get a better look, I saw it was a dog, a young, gangly mongrel slipped off from home to find out about things went on after dark. He was sniffing digger squirrel holes, not with a notion to go digging after one but just to get an idea what they were up to at this hour. He’d run his muzzle down a hole, butt up in the air and tail going, then dash off to another. The moon glistened around him on the wet grass, and when he ran he left tracks like dabs of dark paint spattered across the blue shine of the lawn. Galloping from one particularly interesting hole to the next, he became so took with what was coming off — the moon up there, the night, the breeze full of smells so wild makes a young dog drunk — that he had to lie down on his back and roll. He twisted and thrashed around like a fish, back bowed and belly up, and when he got to his feet and shook himself a spray came off him in the moon like silver scales. He sniffed all the holes over again one quick one, to get the smells down good, then suddenly froze still with one paw lifted and his head tilted, listening. I listened too, but I couldn’t hear anything except the popping of the window shade. I listened for a long time. Then, from a long way off, I heard a high, laughing gabble, faint and coming closer. Canada honkers going south for the winter. I remembered all the hunting and belly-crawling I’d ever done trying to kill a honker, and that I never got one. I tried to look where the dog was looking to see if I could find the flock, but it was too dark. The honking came closer and closer till it seemed like they must be flying right through the dorm, right over my head. Then they crossed the moon — a black, weaving necklace, drawn into a V by that lead goose. For an instant that lead goose was right in the center of that circle, bigger than the others, a black cross opening and closing, then he pulled his V out of sight into the sky once more. I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.

gonna need this if you go out on the next set of rounds.” “Apart from the weather, how is it out there?” said Bob. “What kind of activity is taking place around town?” “Awful quiet,” replied Fred, shrugging out of his own bulky slicker and carrying it over to hang it on a peg next to where Bob had hung his earlier. “The storm’s got everybody sort of hunkered in close and tight. Only a handful of customers in Bullock’s, nothing like it usually would be. Little livelier up in New Town. You know how those miners are hell-bent on having their fun, no matter what, when they get down out of the hills. But even there, in the saloons and gambling dens, it’s a little slower than normal. And all those tents up and down Gold Avenue? Boy, are they flapping and shivering and shuddering in this wind. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them don’t tear loose and end up over in Nebraska somewhere before

I was starting to remember the whole problem now: I hate these fucking people [people at Tea Party rallies, ed]. It's never been just political, it's personal. I'm not convinced anyone in this country except the kinds of weenies who thought student council was important really cares about large versus small government or strict constructionalism versus judicial activism. The ostensible issues are just code words in an ugly snarl of class resentment, anti-intellectualism, old-school snobbery, racism, and who knows what else - grudges left over from the Civil War, the sixties, gym class. The Tea Party likes to cite a poll showing that their members are wealthier and better educated than te general populace, but to me they mostly looked like the same people I'd had to listen to in countless dive bars railing against "edjumicated idiots" and explaining exactly how Nostradamus predicted 9/11, the very people I and everyone I know fled our hometowns to get away from. So far all my interactions at the rally were only reinforcing my private theory - I suppose you might call it a prejudice - that liberals are the ones who went to college, moved to the nearest city where no one would call them a fag, and now only go back for holidays; conservatives are the ones who married their high school girlfriends, bought houses in their hometowns, and kept going to church and giving a shit who won the homecoming game. It's the divide between the Got Out and the Stayed Put. This theory also account for the different reactions of these two camps when the opposition party takes power, raising the specter of either fascist or socialist tyranny: the Got Outs always fantasize about fleeing the country for someplace more civilized - Canada, France, New Zealand; the Stayed Put just di further in, hunkering down in compounds, buying up canned goods and ammo.

It was colder that winter than I knew cold could be, even though the girl from Minnesota down the hall declared it “nothing.” Out in Oregon, snow had been a gift, a two-day dusting earned by enduring months of gray, dripping sky. But the wind whipping up the Hudson from the city was so vehement that even my bone marrow froze. Every morning, I hunkered under my duvet, unsure of how I’d make it to my 9:00 a.m. Latin class. The clouds spilled endless white and Ev slept in.

It is very hard to break armored infantry groups without artillery or machines,” Darrow explained as if detailing how to clean a rifle. “So you don’t target them. You target their psyche. You target their groupthink. “First you send in a man like Sev or Valdir with their best ghouls—that’s what we call them. If you can’t plant the ghouls ahead of time, they should sneak deep as possible into the enemy ranks before hunkering down. “Then you kill a scout on the outskirts. Badly. The more screaming the better. That’ll draw curiosity and a heavy squad. The squad will investigate. If you can, make them disappear in silence. You want the rest of them using their imagination. You want the commander wondering if he should send another squad, maybe even a century. “Then you confirm their worst fear. Give them a death chant—we carry recordings when we don’t have Obsidians. You want anticipation. You want them preparing to face a known fear, physically, mentally. That’s when your ghouls awaken and start killing the command chain. “Then you have your main force close in silence at a fast pace and hit them as hard as you possibly can. Groups can hold a line together. Groups will make last stands. But alone, rarely. It’s very hard for the human mind to accept dying alone. No matter their number, if you summon enough chaos they will feel alone. Especially with anonymity, especially in the dark. Once the first breaks, the rest will feel like they have permission to follow.

Some readers might well be curious: was Nana upset at being left home from all these adventures- school, Never Land, doings with pirates and pixies? No, she was a dog, with dog dreams. Few things made her happier than the stories in her own head when she was hunkered down in front of a warm fire with a full belly. She would have appreciated some gratitude, however, for time well served. Perhaps a nice juicy steak on her birthday and Christmas- and maybe the occasional Tuesday as a welcome surprise.

The Turtle breaks from the blue-black skin of the water, dragging her shell with its mossy scutes across the shallows and through the rushes and over the mudflats, to the uprise, to the yellow sand, to dig with her ungainly feet a nest, and hunker there spewing her white eggs down into the darkness, and you think of her patience, her fortitude, her determination to complete what she was born to do— and then you realize a greater thing— she doesn't consider what she was born to do. She's only filled with an old blind wish. It isn't even hers but came to her in the rain or the soft wind, which is a gate through which her life keeps walking. She can't see herself apart from the rest of the world or the world from what she must do every spring. Crawling up the high hill, luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin. she doesn't dream she knows she is a part of the pond she lives in, the tall tress are her children, the birds that swim above her are tied to her by an unbreakable string.

Hi Ayden!" Oh, come on! I skidded a sharp right and hunkered down, peeking through shelves. Ayden strode past the front desk. "Ladies. Don't you all look especially radiant today." They giggled like toddlers. Pushovers. "Ayden, could you help us put some of the books away on the taller shelves?" "Can't. Sorry." He faced them but walked backwards, arms spread wide. "I'm on a mission. Maybe you can help. Did you happen to see a stunning redhead? Tall, leggy. I call her my goddess of a girlfriend." More giggles. From me. Pull it together, Aurora. A&E Kirk, Drop Dead Demons

Whatever he touched burst into bloom, scattering the snow with leaves like beaten emeralds, red berries, pussy willows and seed cones, a riot of color and texture crackling through that white world. Soon enough our little wilderness path could have been a grand avenue decked out for a returning general's triumphant procession. Birds hunkered down for the long winter crept out of their burrows, chirruping their alarmed delight as they grew drunk on berries. A narrow fox darted across our path, a starling clutched in its mouth, sparing us a dismissive glance as it slunk back into the velvet shadow.

When they first developed the organs of exploration, there was no there there. So they built timid, stupid machines and hurled them into the airless void to report back. Then they built idiot phone exchanges and put them in orbit to fill the void with chatter. Obsessed with biological replicators, they ignored the most interesting corners of the solar system and focused on dull, arid Mars. They periodically scurried up above the atmosphere and hunkered down in tunnels on Luna or ventured on expedition to domes on Mars, and they died in significant numbers before the end, simply because canned primates couldn’t thrive in vacuum or survive solar flares.

Hell and damnation! Is that your destiny?" Willow's eyes flew open as she shot out of the church pew. Her voluminous hymnal crashed to the floor like the slam of a door on an empty tomb. Silence. Oh,hell, she silently groaned. Trying her best to disappear, she hunkered down between her two companions. Her expression sheepish, she leaned toward Miriam and whispered, "I wasn't expecting the reverend to yell like that." "You weren't expecting anything," Miriam whispered back accusingly. "You were sleeping!" Soft tittering buzzed throughout the congregation, coloring Willow's cheeks a bright pink. Even Sinclair's shoulders shook will ill-repressed mirth. "Quit it," Willow hissed, elbowing his ribs. His muffled grunt earned them both Miriam's castigating frown. "Shushhhh!" This came from a hawk-nosed old lady in the pew behind them. Willow flashed the woman a withering glance and straightened to face the front of the church. Her eyes immediately collided with Reverend Peabody's visage and to her surprise, his face was contorted in a comic attempt not to laugh. Willow ducked her head, grinning to herself. Well, she thought, at least the preacher has a sense of humor. With that in mind, she endeavored to remain attentive throughout the sermon, not an easy task considering the church felt like an airless box.

Only Andy didn’t drink. I already told you about his drinking habit. He sat hunkered down in the shade, hands dangling between his knees, watching us and smiling a little. It’s amazing how many men remember him that way, and amazing how many men were on that work-crew when Andy Dufresne faced down Byron Hadley. I thought there were nine or ten of us, but by 1955 there must have been two hundred of us, maybe more… if you believed what you heard. So yeah—if you asked me to give you a flat-out answer to the question of whether I’m trying to tell you about a man or a legend that got made up around the man, like a pearl around a little piece of grit—I’d have to say that the answer lies somewhere in between.

I am not of sound mind. I cannot seem to stop moving - as I write this I have clocked 7,000 miles by truck in the last thirty days and I am hunkered in a motel room high in the Rocky Mountains and yet no nearer to God. I seek roots, just so long as they can accommodate themselves to around seventy-five miles and hour and no unseemly whining about rest stops or sit down dinners. I am, I suspect, a basic American, a perpetual violation that loves the land and cannot kick the addiction of velocity. A person fated never to settle yet always seeking the place to settle. Like cocaine-powered athletes, lying presidents, Miss America, and the Internal Revenue Service, I am not a role model. I am always hungry.

As soon as we arrived home, I told Bliss I was going to take a shower. Sundays were a two-show day, so I certainly needed it. I let her go in first to brush her teeth. I waited for the water to turn on, then leapt into action. I found Hamlet’s feathered cat toy (the only reason she would ever willingly get close to Bliss), and hid it underneath the bed. Then I went to the closet and found the suit coat pocket where I’d hidden the ring. I popped open the box to look at it one more time. It wasn’t much. I was only an actor, after all. But Bliss wasn’t one to wear much jewelry any way. It was simple and sparkling, and I hoped she would love it as much as I loved her. A popping sensation filled my gut like those silly candy rocks that Bliss loved. What if I was pushing her too fast? No. No, I’d thought this out. It was the best way. I opened the top drawer of the nightstand, and slid the ring box toward the back. The water in the bathroom shut off, and I went back to the closet, shucking my shirt. I tossed it in the hamper at the same time Bliss walked in the room. She came up behind me and placed a hand on my bare back. She pressed a small kiss on my shoulder and asked, “Get Hamlet for me before you shower?” I smiled, and nodded. Bliss was so determined to make Hamlet like her that she played with the cat for at least half an hour before bed every night. Hamlet would stick around for as long as Bliss waved that feathered toy in the air, but the minute Bliss tried to touch her, she was gone. I found Hamlet in the kitchen, hiding underneath the kitchen table. I reached a hand down, and she butted her head against my fingers, purring. I picked her up at the same time that Bliss asked, “Babe, have you seen the cat toy?” I walked into the room, and deposited Hamlet on the bed. She hunkered down and eyed Bliss with distrust. “Where did you see it last?” I asked her. “I thought I’d left it on the dresser, but I can’t find it. “ I petted Hamlet once to keep her calm, then placed a quick kiss on Bliss’s cheek. “I don’t know, honey. Are you sure you didn’t leave it somewhere else?” She sighed, and started looking in other spots around the room. I turned and hid my smile as I left. I nipped into the bathroom and turned the shower on. I waited a few seconds, went back in the hallway.

We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

Kane crossed the room and hunkered down next to me. He placed his elbow on the arm of the sofa behind me and gently scratched my back which his fingers. “Why don’t you come to bed?” His voice was low and inviting. “Maybe because she has company, i.e. me, you dirty bastard.” Keela flared. “Stop seducin’ her when I’m sittin’ right next to your nasty arse.” I beamed at Keela, and Kane smiled at me. He used his free hand to swipe away the already forgotten tears on my cheeks. “There’s my babydoll.” Keela giggled. “That’s adorable, but you’re still nasty.” I flicked my eyes in her direction and playfully narrowed them. “Do you mind?” “Not at all,” she acknowledged. “You do your thing.” Kane nudged me and gave me a wink. “You shouldn’t have ever fed her, she’ll never leave now.” Keela gasped in mock horror. “I’m not a dog. How dare you!

One pioneer remembered seeing “an open bleak prairie, the cold wind howling overhead…a new-made grave, a woman and three children sitting near by, a girl of 14 summers walking round and round in a circle, wringing her hands and calling upon her dead parent.” Janette Riker was only a young girl when she headed for Oregon with her father and two brothers in 1849. Late in September they camped in a valley in Montana, and the men went out to hunt. They never returned. While she waited, Janette built a small shelter, moved the wagon stove in with all the provisions and blankets, and hunkered down. She killed the fattest ox from her family’s herd, salted down the meat, and lived alone through the winter, amid howling wolves and mountain lions. She was discovered in April by Indians who were so impressed by her story that they took her to a fort in Washington. She never found out what happened to her family.

out that the shootin is comin from in front of us, meanin that the gooks is in between us an our own position. In other words, we is out here alone. Sooner or later, he says, if the gooks do not overrun Charlie Company, they will come back this way, an if they find us here, they will not like it one bit. Point is, we got to move our asses. We get our shit together an begin to work back towards the ridge, but as we do, Doyle suddenly look down off our right to the bottom of the saddle an he see an entire busload of new gooks, armed to the teeth, movin up the hill towards Charlie Company. Best thing we coulda done then was to try an make friends with em an forget all this other shit, but that were not in the cards. So we jus hunkered down in some big ole shrubs an waited till they got to the top of the hill. Then Bones let loose with the machine gun and he must of kilt ten or fifteen of them gooks right off. Doyle an me an the other two guys is thowin grenades, an things is goin our way until Bones runs out of ammo an need a fresh belt. I feed

The wars break out and die down, but then there’s a flareup elsewhere. Houses cracked open like eggs, their contents torched or stolen or stomped vindictively underfoot; refugees strafed from airplanes. In a million cellars the bewildered royal family faces the firing squad; the gems sewn into their corsets will not save them. Herod’s troops patrol a thousand streets; just next door, Napoleon makes off with the silverware. In the wake of the invasion, any invasion, the ditches fill up with raped women. To be fair, raped men as well. Raped children, raped dogs and cats. Things can get out of control. But not here; not in this gentle, tedious backwater; not in Port Ticonderoga, despite a druggie or two in the parks, despite the occasional break-in, despite the occasional body found floating around in the eddies. We hunker down here, drinking our bedtime drinks, nibbling our bedtime snacks, peering at the world as if through a secret window, and when we’ve had enough of it we turn it off. So much for the twentieth century, we say, as we make our way upstairs. But there’s a far-off roaring, like a tidal wave racing inshore. Here comes the twentyfirst century, sweeping overhead like a spaceship filled with ruthless lizard-eyed aliens or a metal pterodactyl. Sooner or later it will sniff us out, it will tear the roofs off our flimsy little burrows with its iron claws, and then we will be just as naked and shivering and starving and diseased and hopeless as the rest. Excuse this digression. At my age you indulge in these apocalyptic visions. You say, The end of the world is at hand. You lie to yourself – I’m glad I won’t be around to see it – when in fact you’d like nothing better, as long as you can watch it through the little secret window, as long as you won’t be involved. But why bother about the end of the world? It’s the end of the world every day, for someone. Time rises and rises, and when it reaches the level of your eyes you drown. What happened next? For a moment I’ve lost the thread, it’s hard for me to remember, but then I do. It was the war, of course. We weren’t prepared for it, but at the same time we knew we’d been there before. It was the same chill, the chill that rolled in like a fog, the chill into which I was born.