I Feel So Relieved Quotes

I don't hate you, Jace." "I don't hate you, either." She looked up at him, relieved. "I'm glad to hear that—" "I wish I could hate you," he said. His voice was light, his mouth curved in an unconcerned half smile, his eyes sick with misery. "I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. Sometimes I think I do hate you and then I see you and I—" Her hands had grown numb with their grip on the blanket. "And you what?" "What do you think?" Jace shook his head. "Why should I tell you everything about how I feel when you never tell me anything? It's like banging my head on a wall, except at least if I were banging my head on a wall, I'd be able to make myself stop." Clary's lips were trembling so violently that she found it hard to speak. "Do you think it's easy for me?" she demanded.

He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me. Then he was gone. Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted to run after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you. Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us. I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much grief. Bye bye, Birdie.

As a kid, I would count backwards from ten and imagine at one, there would be an explosion–perhaps caused by a rogue planet crashing into Earth or some other major catastrophe. When nothing happened, I'd feel relieved and at the same time, a little disappointed. I think of you at ten; the first time I saw you. Your smile at nine and how it lit up something inside me I had thought long dead. Your lips at eight pressed against mine and at seven, your warm breath in my ear and your hands everywhere. You tell me you love me at six and at five we have our first real fight. At four we have our second and three, our third. At two you tell me you can't go on any longer and then at one, you ask me to stay. And I am relieved, so relieved–and a little disappointed.

It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got ricing pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell what’s going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody’s looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it’s only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me, that is just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I suppose I’d be shocked, of course, but I don’t know, I think I’d be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn’t be so upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real.

Tam's shadow fell over hers, and he shadow-whispered, "I'm trusting you. I don't care about me, but if something happens to Linh..." 'I promise, we're only trying to help,' Sophie transmitted. Keefe let out a sigh that sounded more like a groan. "And I thought secret Telepath conversations were the worst. Just so we're clear," he told Tam. "I'M the president of the Foster fan club. And we're closed to new members." Tam's cheeks flushed. "Uh...not sure what that's about but...no worries there--no offense!" he told Sophie. She noticed he stole a quick glance at Biana after he said it. Sophie couldn't decide if she should feel relieved or insulted.

Because as much as I don’t need a knight in shining armor to defend my honor, I’m relieved I have one who feels compelled to do so.

Free, I think. They're free. (is this why she joined them?) I feel so- So relieved. I pick up the pace as I near the opening, my hands gripping my rifle but I have a feeling I ain't gonna need it. (ah, Viola, I knew I could count-) Then I reach the opening and stop. Everything stops. My stomach falls right thru my feet. "They're all gone?" Davy says, coming up beside me. Then he see what I see. "What the-?" Davy says. The Spackle ain't all gone. They're still here. Every single one. All 1150 of them. Dead.

Your ability to shoulder everything, to give 200% of yourself all the time, to be perfect at everything you attempt…these are not the attributes that make you a valuable human being.” I pause. “And they are not why I fell in love with you.” His black eyes shoot up to me. I smile. The weight of these heavy secrets falls off of me, and I feel relieved to continue. “I fell in love with you because you’re goofy. You’re fun. Your heart is so big I don’t know how it fits in here,” I say, pressing my hand to his chest. “You’re a terrible singer. You make me soup when I’m sick. You bought me tampons that time I was laid out on the couch with cramps and couldn’t move. You didn’t even send someone else for them. You went yourself!

Are you sure that’s a real spell?’ said the girl. ‘Well, it’s not very good, is it? I’ve tried a few simple spells just for practice and its all worked for me. Nobody in my family’s magic at all. It was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it’s the very best school of witchcraft there is, I’ve heard – I’ve learnt all our set books off by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough – I’m Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?’ She said all this very fast. Harry looked at Ron, and was relieved to see by his stunned face that he hadn’t learned all the course books by heart either. ‘I’m Ron Weasley,’ Ron muttered. ‘Harry Potter,’ said Harry. ‘Are you really?’ said Hermione. ‘I know all about you, of course – I got a few extra books for background reading, and you’re in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century.’ ‘Am I?’ said Harry, feeling dazed. ‘Goodness, didn’t you know, I’d have found out everything I could if it was me,’ said Hermione.

I have reveled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It’s a great load off my life, for I don’t mind being such a micro-organism—to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe—such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my “Soul,” my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part—I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me—but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

I wish someone would dare reproach me about the whole thing so that I could run a dagger through his heart. If only I could see blood. I know I would feel better. Oh, I have picked up a knife a hundred times with the intention of plunging it into my own heart! I have heard tell of a noble breed of stallions who when they are overheated and run wild, instinctively bite open one of their veins to relieve themselves. I feel like that often. I would like to open the vein that would give me eternal freedom.

The third day, he wasn’t on the road. I wanted to feel relieved. Instead, I was disappointed. Until I got home. Mom had had the day off, the first in a long while. So, of course, she was home when I got there. And so was Joe. Sitting at our kitchen table. Wearing dress pants, a dress shirt. And a bow tie. Which, unbeknownst to me, turned out to be one of my greatest weaknesses. I

I hurried to the southern corridor, relieved when I was safe in the blackness there. Relieved and horrified. It was really over now. I'm so afraid, I whimpered. Before Mel could respond, a heavy hand dropped on my shoulder from the darkness. "Going somewhere?" I was so tightly wound that I shrieked in terror; I was so terrified that my shriek was only a breathless little squeal. "Sorry!" Jared's arm went round my shoulders, comforting. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." "What are you doing here?" I demanded, still breathless. "Following you. I've been following you all night." "Well, stop it now." There was a hesitation in the dark, and his arm didn't move. I shrugged out from under it, but he caught my wrist. His grip was firm; I wouldn't be able to shake free easily. "You're going to see Doc?" he asked, and there was no confusion in his question. It was obvious that he wasn't talking about a social visit. "Of course I am." I hissed the words so that he wouldn't hear the panic in my voice. "What else can I do after today?It's not going to get any better. And this isn't Jeb's decision to make." "I know. I'm on your side." It made me angry that these words still had the power to hurt me, to bring tears stinging into my eyes. I tried to hold onto the thought of Ian - he was the anchor, as Kyle somehow had been for Sunny - but it was hard with Jared's hand touching me, with the smell of him in my nose. Like trying to make out the song of one violin when the entire percussion section was bashing away... "Then let me go, Jared. Go away. I want to be alone." The words came out fierce and fast and hard. It was easy to hear that they weren't lies. "I should come with you." "You'll have Melanie back soon enough," I snapped. "I'm only asking for a few minutes, Jared. Give me that much." Another pause; his hand didn't loosen. "Wanda, I would come to be with you." The tears spilled over. I was grateful for the darkness. "It wouldn't feel that way," I whispered. "So there's no point.

I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul, - and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

Habits are undeniably useful tools, relieving us of the need to run a complex mental operation every time we’re confronted with a new task or situation. Yet they also relieve us of the need to stay awake to the world: to attend, feel, think, and then act in a deliberate manner. (That is, from freedom rather than compulsion.) If you need to be reminded how completely mental habit blinds us to experience, just take a trip to an unfamiliar country. Suddenly you wake up! And the algorithms of everyday life all but start over, as if from scratch. This is why the various travel metaphors for the psychedelic experience are so apt. The efficiencies of the adult mind, useful as they are, blind us to the present moment. We’re constantly jumping ahead to the next thing. We approach experience much as an artificial intelligence (AI) program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future. One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful—wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself. (It’s so inefficient!) Alas, most of the time I inhabit a near-future tense, my psychic thermostat set to a low simmer of anticipation and, too often, worry. The good thing is I’m seldom surprised. The bad thing is I’m seldom surprised.

Rogue Planets As a kid, I would count backwards from ten and imagine at one, there would be an explosion—perhaps caused by a rogue planet crashing into Earth or some other major catastrophe. When nothing happened, I'd feel relieved and at the same time, a little disappointed. I think of you at ten; the first time I saw you. Your smile at nine and how it lit up something inside me I had thought long dead. Your lips at eight pressed against mine and at seven, your warm breath in my ear and your hands everywhere. You tell me you love me at six and at five we have our first real fight. At four we have our second and three, our third. At two you tell me you can't go on any longer and then at one, you ask me to stay. And I am relieved, so relieved—and a little disappointed.

Even before i had children, I knew that being a parent was going to be challenging as well as rewarding. But I didn't really know. I didn't know how exhausted it was possible to become, or how clueless it was possible to feel, or how, each time I reached the end of my rope, I would somehow have to find more rope. I didn't understand that sometimes when your kids scream so loudly that the neighbors are ready to call the Department of Child Services, it's because you've served the wrong shape of pasta for dinner. I didn't realize that those deep-breathing exercises mothers are taught in natural-childbirth class dont really start to pay off until long after the child is out. I couldn't have predicted how relieved I'd be to learn that other peoples children struggle with the same issues, and act in some of the same ways, mine do. (Even more liberating is the recognition that other parents, too, have dark moments when they catch themselves not liking their own child, or wondering whether it's all worth it, or entertaining various other unspeakable thoughts). The bottom line is that raising kids is not for whimps.

I perfected my craft, playing the quarterlords and merchants against one another as if I was a musician and they were crude drums rumbling beneath my hands, making one boast to another that I had never pulled anything over on him, making them all feel so very smart, even as I relieved them of items I could put to better use elsewhere.

Standing at the edge of time Almost falling down to the dark abyss As I near the end of mine I reminisce the things I will miss The smiles and laughter Running around without a care The time when my grin will never falter Being so free, willing my soul to bare Heartaches, heartbreaks and tears Now I know better and to myself I will never lie Because in woe, I learned to love and never fear Those were the best and worst moments of my life As the memories rush back to me I look down and now I feel relieved Because when it is time Everything will be fine when I leave

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee. ... I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck. I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?” I said: “I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.” And I told him how I came to discover it all. Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it – a cowardly thing to do, I call it – and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it. I said: “You are a chemist?” He said: “I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.” I read the prescription. It ran: “1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.” I followed the directions, with the happy result – speaking for myself – that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

So me and her, we dated for a while. A long while. Then, one day, we got to talking, and I told her how much I loved her, and she looked at me and told me, 'I don't love you. I never will...' I told her I thought I could change that. Maybe she didn't love me right now, but she would eventually...She said okay. And we stayed together. And we fought. We fought a lot. And then I realized I had made a big mistake. She had given me her youth, and it was gone, and I didn't know how to get out of it. And then she got sick. And she was dying. So I made good with her, and I stuck by her. And I felt horrible. Because I felt like here was this woman who didn't want to be with me, she told me that, and I ignored it. And she was spending the end of her like with someone she didn't love. And now she was gone. And part of me felt relieved that I was freed of this relationship, and that made me feel so terrible. I couldn't deal with it. People are always trying to tell you something, how they feel. Some of them say it outright, and some of them, they tell you with their actions. And your have to listen...Listen, and don't ignore what you hear.

Before your breaths pick up pace and our bodies are aching because everything we're feeling is just making us want more and more and more of each other...until I'm afraid I'll beg you not to ask me to slow down. So instead, I regrettably tear my mouth from yours and force myself away from your bed and you life up unto your elbows and look at me, disappointed, because you kind of wished I would have kept going, but at the same time you're relieved I didn't, because you know you would have given in. So instead of giving in, we just stare. We watch each other silently as my heart rate begins to slow down and your breaths are easier to catch and the insatiable need is still there, but our minds are clearer now that I'm not pressed against you anymore. I turn around and walk to your window and leave without even saying goodbye, because we both know if either of us speaks...it'll be the collective demise of our willpower and we'll cave. We'll cave so hard.

Hot.” The last word, barely a whisper, lost itself in my hair as he pressed his lips to that spot just below my ear that can, apparently, flip the off switch in my brain. Before I realized it my hands were inside that jacket, stroking the hard planes of his chest and stomach. And then, as if moving without any prompting from me they reached down, undid his belt, pulled it loose, and…“Ahhh, that feels great,” I moaned.“I am completely grossed out over here!” Cassandra informed us.Vayl, who’d been peering down at me with an expression of utter disbelief, stared at Cassandra over the top of my head. “It is not what you think,” he assured her.“As if I’d do something that disgusting,” I said, pulling away from him, but keeping the belt, because the buckle relieved the itching so much better than fingernails. I continued using it to scratch the inflamed skin across my stomach as I sat down by Cassandra. “You are pathetic,” she told me. “I’d get all offended, but I’m pretty sure you’re right.

With Maddy in my life I felt whole. She added a magical sparkle that I'd never want to live without. And so I told her, with those three little squeezes. I had no agenda, no hidden plan or desire for anything to change between us - my only thought was to relieve myself of those feelings by communicating them in the only way felt I could. Three squeezes of love. From me. To her.

I can’t sleep,” he says so quietly that only I can hear. “I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep.” “Nor I.” “You neither?” “No.” “Truly?” “Yes.” He sighs a deep sigh, as if he is relieved. “Is this love then?” “I suppose so.” “I can’t eat.” “No.” “I can’t think of anything but you. I can’t go on another moment like this; I can’t ride out into battle like this. I am as foolish as a boy. I am mad for you, like a boy. I cannot be without you; I will not be without you. Whatever it costs me.” I can feel my color rising like heat in my cheeks, and for the first time in days I can feel myself smile. “I can’t think of anything but you,” I whisper. “Nothing. I thought I was sick.” The ring like a crown is heavy in my pocket, my headdress is pulling at my hair; but I stand without awareness, seeing nothing but him, feeling nothing but his warm breath on my cheek and scenting the smell of his horse, the leather of his saddle, and the smell of him: spices, rosewater, sweat. “I am mad for you,” he says. I feel my smile turn up my lips as I look into his face at last. “And I for you,” I say quietly. “Truly.

If he scratches my baby . . .” Ben tried to scowl, but it didn’t take. He seemed relieved. And still hadn’t let go of my hand. I heard a shoe scuff the ground. Shelton and Hi were standing across from Ben and me. Shelton took a deep breath. “So it’s like that, huh?” “Guys.” I felt my stomach lurch. “I know this is weird. Ben and I, we—” Hi’s face was pained. “I don’t even get a chance? No shot to say how I feel?” My head jerked back. “What?” “So it’s all decided.” Shelton sullenly kicked a rock, his voice resentful. “What does Ben have that I don’t?” I stared, openmouthed. Hi dropped to a knee and pinned me with solemn eyes. “I can’t hide it anymore, Victoria. You need to know the truth. I love you, too. Forever and ever. I want to be your sweet babushka.” My mind reeled. “Hi, I . . . I didn’t—” “I’m gonna wring your stupid necks.” Ben’s face was burning. Hi burst out laughing, rolling away from his kick. I glanced at Shelton, who was trying—and failing—to hold it together. “I love you, Tory Brennan!” Hi bounced to his feet, ready to bolt at Ben’s slightest twitch. “Let me rub your supple feet!” I covered my face with both hands. “Oh God.

I lower onto him, inch by inch, marveling at the stretching sensation, the easy slide, the perfect fit. It’s never this wet, this careful. Fuck, I feel so full. Hungry. Relieved. The

We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me. "This might sound weird; it's not typical guy response." I froze, suddenly awkward. "I mean, if I didn't feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I've rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake." He shrugged apologetically. "I mean, if it's safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time." I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn't quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved. "Of course. I agree totally." I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. "And yes, I am on the same date you are on." "I thought so," he said. "I mean, I don't think you can feel like this when it's not reciprocal." He left at 2:00 A.M. and called me at 11:00 the next morning to schedule our second date.

Next time, involve me in what you’re planning. How had I gone so easily from feeling excluded to doing the excluding? Did I dislike the reminder that I hadn’t always been on the inside looking out? Was I so relieved to be there that I didn’t notice the people who still wanted desperately to be invited in? Had I learned that the only way to be part of a society was to shun its outcasts?

I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew when the thirtieth anniversary reissue of his Orientalism was published, but his long-precarious condition would hardly argue for giving him a lenient review, let alone denying him one altogether, which would have been the only alternatives. In the introduction he wrote for the new edition, he generally declined the opportunity to answer his scholarly critics, and instead gave the recent American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of 'Orientalism' in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of United States vandalism, perpetrated in order to shear the Iraqi people of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. So when the Atlantic invited me to review Edward's revised edition, I decided I'd suspect myself more if I declined than if I agreed, and I wrote what I felt I had to. Not long afterward, an Iraqi comrade sent me without comment an article Edward had contributed to a magazine in London that was published by a princeling of the Saudi royal family. In it, Edward quoted some sentences about the Iraq war that he off-handedly described as 'racist.' The sentences in question had been written by me. I felt myself assailed by a reaction that was at once hot-eyed and frigidly cold. He had cited the words without naming their author, and this I briefly thought could be construed as a friendly hesitance. Or as cowardice... I can never quite act the stern role of Mr. Darcy with any conviction, but privately I sometimes resolve that that's 'it' as it were. I didn't say anything to Edward but then, I never said anything to him again, either. I believe that one or two charges simply must retain their face value and not become debauched or devalued. 'Racist' is one such. It is an accusation that must either be made good upon, or fully retracted. I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice, and I decided to presume that Edward was honest and serious enough to feel the same way. I feel misery stealing over me again as I set this down: I wrote the best tribute I could manage when he died not long afterward (and there was no strain in that, as I was relieved to find), but I didn't go to, and wasn't invited to, his funeral.

You look like something rare and wild,” he whispers, pushing the hair back from my cheek. My breath catches at the feel of his fingers on my skin. “Something they locked up in a cage. And I think you were so relieved to find a safe place to land you didn’t even realize it happened. I thought I could save you if I came here this summer, but even if someone opens the cage, you’ve got to be willing to fly away, too, Jules.

Oh, good, it worked,” Archer said, his ghostly face relieved. Unlike Elodie, his voice came in loud and clear, and so familiar that my heart broke all over again. I stood frozen, my back against the door. Even though he was faint, I could see him smirk. “Um…Mercer? Haven’t seen you in nearly a month. I was expecting something like, ‘Oh, Cross, love of my heart, fire of my loins, how I’ve longed-“ “You’re dead,” I blurted out, pressing a hand against my stomach. “You’re a ghost, and you think-“ All the humor disappeared from his face, and he held up both hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not dead. Promise.” My heart was still hammering. “Then what the heck are you?” Archer almost looked sheepish as he reached inside his shirt and pulled out some kind of amulet on a thin silver chain. “It’s a speaking stone. Lets you appear to people kind of like a hologram. You know. ‘Help me, Sophie-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.’” “Did you steal it from the cellar at Hecate, too?” Archer had collected all sorts of magical knickknacks back when we had cellar duty at Hex Hall. “No,” he said, offended. “I found it at a…store. For magical stuff. Okay, yes, I stole it from the cellar.” I rushed across the room and thrust my fist at his solar plexus. It went right through him, but it was still kind of satisfying. “You jerk!” I cried, striking at his head. “You scared me to death! Cal said The Eye probably had you, and I thought they’d found out about you and me working together, and killed you, you arrogant piece of-“ “I’m sorry!” he shouted, waving his translucent hands. “I-I thought the talking would give it away, and I didn’t mean to scare you, but I’m not dead! So would you please stop hitting me?” I paused. “You can feel it?” “No, but it’s still kind of unsettling to see your fist coming at my face.

It is always so strange that when you are working you never think of all the inspiring thoughts that made you take up the work in the first instance. Before I was in hospital at all I thought that because I suffered myself I should feel it a grand thing to relieve the sufferings of other people. But now, when I am actually doing something which I know relieves someone's pain, it is nothing but a matter of business. I may think lofty thoughts about the whole thing before or after but never at the time. At least, almost never. Sometimes some quite little thing makes me stop short all of a sudden and I feel a fierce desire to cry in the middle of whatever it is I am doing.

Don’t look so shocked, Eden,” Hunter replies as he holds open the door for us. “Oh, I’m not surprised. I’m actually a little relieved. I was waiting for this to happen.” “I have a feeling we’re going to get that a lot,” Drake replies.

She CAN’T say it. To tell someone who cares about you that you’re being teased is really hard to do. I…couldn’t say it either. But after a while my mom found out and then…I would apologize to her like I was stupid. I would feel so pathetic. I would think that I was so pathetic for being teased. I was ashamed when my mom found out. I wondered…what would I do if she started to hate me? I was so scared. I was so scared I didn’t want anyone to know I was like that. I would desperately make up stories to try and hide it. And then I’d feel even more pathetic and ashamed so when mom told me, “It’s okay” I was so relieved. When she told me, “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” I was so relieved that I started crying again. Kisa-san might be feeling the same way. She didn’t want you to hate her. It’s because she loves you…that she couldn’t tell you.

It's like Romeo & Juliet,' I say. 'You can't separate them. Otherwise, there would be no Shakespeare.' Silence. I decide to be more straightforward. I tell him, 'Nothing frightens me anymore. I am not even afraid to die.' Bussey's eyes, already wide open, grow even wider. My death is the last thing he needs. I have the strange feeling that there are two of me. One observes the conversation while the other does the talking. Everything is abnormal, especially this extreme calm that has taken me over. I try to explain to Bussey that if I decide to die, it will be without bitterness. I know I did everything I possibly could, so it will be respectful farewell. I will bow to life like an actor, who, having delivered his lines, bends deeply to his audience & retires. I tell Bussey that this decision has nothing to do with him, that it is entirely mine. I will choose either to live or to die, but I cannot allow myself to live in the in-between. I do not want to go through life like a ghost. 'Do you think you'll find Danny this way?' Bussey asks. My mind sifts through all available theories on the afterlife. It is as if this metaphysical question has become as real as the air we breathe. Buddhism teaches that life is an eternal cycle without beginning or end. I recall the metaphor: "Our individual lives are like waves produced from the great ocean that is the universe. The emergence of a wave is life, and its abatement is death. This rhythm repeats eternally." Finally I answer Bussey, 'No, I don't think so.' Bussey seems relieved, but I'm more panicky, because I had never thought that I could wind up alone. In my mind, whatever the odds, Danny & I were & would be together forever.

As I speak, his fingers trail down my arm. I’m just so relieved he’s willing to touch me after I’ve told him this. He turns my hand over and traces the fine lines on my palm. “And?” He looks up beneath heavy lids. “What else should I know about you?” “My skin—” I stop, swallow. He leans down, presses his lips to my wrist in a feathery kiss. “What about your skin?” “You know. You’ve seen it,” I rasp. “It changes. The color becomes—” “Like fire.” His gaze lifts from my wrist and he says that word he said so long ago surrounded in cold mists, tucked on a ledge above a whispering pool of water. “Beautiful.” “You said that before. In the mountains.” “I meant it. Still do.” I laugh weakly. “I guess this means you’re not mad at me.” “I would be mad, if I could.” He frowns. “I should be.” He inches closer to me on the couch. We sink deeper into the tired cushions. “This is impossible.” “This what?” I clutch the collar of his shirt in my fingers. His face is so close I study the varying color of his eyes. For a long time, he says nothing. Stares at me in that way that makes me want to squirm. For a moment, it seems that his irises glow and the pupils shrink to slits. Then, he mutters, “A hunter in love with his prey.” My chest squeezes. I suck in a breath. Pretty wonderful, I think, but am too embarrassed to say it. Even after what he just admitted. He loves me? Studying him, I let myself consider this and whether he can possibly mean it. But what else could it be? What else could drive him to this moment with me? To turn his back on his family’s way of life? As he looks at me in that desperate, devouring way, I’m reminded of those moments in his car when he tended the cut on my palm and ran his hand over my leg. My belly twists. I glance around, see how seriously, dangerously alone we are. More alone than in the stairwell. Or even the first time together, on that ledge. I lick my lips. Now we’re alone with no school bell ready to rip us apart. Even more alarming, no more secrets stand between us. No barriers. Nothing to stop us at all. I hold my breath until I feel the first press of his lips, certain I’ve never been this close to another soul, this vulnerable. We kiss until we’re both breathless, warm and flushed, twisting against each other on the couch. His hands brush my bare back beneath my shirt, trace every bump of my spine. My back tingles, wings vibrating just beneath the surface. I drink the cooler air from his lips, drawing it into my fiery lungs. I don’t even mind when he stops and watches my skin change colors, or touches my face as it blurs in and out. He kisses my changing face. Cheeks, nose, the corners of my eyes, sighing my name it like a benediction between each caress. His lips slide to my neck and I moan, arch, lost to everything but him. In this, with him . . . I’m as close to the sky as I’ve ever been.

If only I could look after them for longer,” he thought to himself. But in his heart he knew he didn’t really want to. He only wanted one thing: to be rid of them as soon as possible, to be relieved of his responsibility and this feeling of unease he felt weighing down on him. The duty of love which, until now, he had felt was almost simple, so great was the Grace of God within him, now seemed almost impossible to feel. “Even though,” he thought humbly, “it would mean that, for the first time perhaps, I would really have to try, it would be a true sacrifice. How weak I am!

Her hand reached up and took a strand of his hair between her fingers. “Simple as that.” She gently pulled on that curl and let it go. “It’s so springy.” They’d barely grazed at the truth, but I she was satisfied—and distracted. By his hair, of all things. “I feel like a sheep that has been overlooked during spring shearing,” he murmured. “Yes, adorably fluffy.” Another time he might have protested the use of that adjective. But now he was all too relieved. “Would you like me to pull my chair closer, so you may fondle my hair with greater ease?” he asked. She beamed at him. “Why, yes, I’d like exactly that.

This is why I feel frustrated now when I hear people referring to suicide as a self-centered act: of course it is. Nobody would commit suicide if the pain of being inside her self, the agony of the sleepless, tortured hours spent watching the world get smaller and uglier, were bearable or could be relieved by other people telling her how they wanted her to feel. A depressed person is selfish because her self, the very core of who she is, will not leave her alone, and she can no more stop thinking about this self and how to escape it than a prisoner held captive by a sadistic serial killer can forget about the person who comes in to torture her every day. Her body is brutalized by her mind. It hurts to breathe, sleep, eat, walk, think. The gross maneuverings of her limbs are so overwhelming, so wearying, that the fine muscle movements or quickness of wit necessary to write, to actually say something, are completely out of the question.

She's probably just tired of seeing you miserable.Like we all are," I add. "I'm sure...I'm sure she's as crazy about you as ever." "Hmm." He watches me put away my own shoes and empty the contents of my pockets. "What about you?" he asks, after a minute. "What about me?" St. Clair examines his watch. "Sideburns. You'll be seeing him next month." He's reestablishing...what? The boundary line? That he's taken, and I'm spoken for? Except I'm not. Not really. But I can't bear to say this now that he's mentioned Ellie. "Yeah,I can't wait to see him again. He's a funny guy, you'd like him.I'm gonna see his band play at Christmas. Toph's a great guy, you'd really like him. Oh. I already said that,didn't I? But you would. He's really...funny." Shut up,Anna. Shut.Up. St. Clair unbuckles and rebuckles and unbuckles his watchband. "I'm beat," I say. And it's the truth. As always, our conversation has exhausted me. I crawl into bed and wonder what he'll do.Lie on my floor? Go back to his room? But he places his watch on my desk and climbs onto my bed. He slides up next to me. He's on top of the covers, and I'm underneath. We're still fully dressed,minus our shoes, and the whole situation is beyond awkward. He hops up.I'm sure he's about to leave,and I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed,but...he flips off my light.My room is pitch-black. He shuffles back toward my bed and smacks into it. "Oof," he says. "Hey,there's a bed there." "Thanks for the warning." "No problem." "It's freezing in here.Do you have a fan on or something?" "It's the wind.My window won't shut all the way.I have a towel stuffed under it, but it doesn't really help." He pats his way around the bed and slides back in. "Ow," he says. "Yes?" "My belt.Would it be weird..." I'm thankful he can't see my blush. "Of course not." And I listen to the slap of leather as he pulls it out of his belt loops.He lays it gently on my hardwood floor. "Um," he says. "Would it be weird-" "Yes." "Oh,piss off.I'm not talking trousers. I only want under the blankets. That breeze is horrible." He slides underneath,and now we're lying side by side. In my narrow bed. Funny,but I never imagined my first sleepover with a guy being,well,a sleepover. "All we need now are Sixteen Candles and a game of Truth or Dare." He coughs. "Wh-what?" "The movie,pervert.I was just thinking it's been a while since I've had a sleepover." A pause. "Oh." "..." "..." "St. Clair?" "Yeah?" "Your elbow is murdering my back." "Bollocks.Sorry." He shifts,and then shifts again,and then again,until we're comfortable.One of his legs rests against mine.Despite the two layers of pants between us,I feel naked and vulnerable. He shifts again and now my entire leg, from calf to thigh, rests against his. I smell his hair. Mmm. NO! I swallow,and it's so loud.He coughs again. I'm trying not to squirm. After what feels like hours but is surely only minutes,his breath slows and his body relaxes.I finally begin to relax, too. I want to memorize his scent and the touch of his skin-one of his arms, now against mine-and the solidness os his body.No matter what happens,I'll remember this for the rest of my life. I study his profile.His lips,his nose, his eyelashes.He's so beautiful.

elsewhere and leave me here alone with a whole plantation and two hundred woolly cannibals on my hands.  Therefore you stay, and I stay.  It is very simple.  Also, it is adventure.  And furthermore, you needn’t worry for yourself.  I am not matrimonially inclined.  I came to the Solomons for a plantation, not a husband.” Sheldon flushed, but remained silent. “I know what you are thinking,” she laughed gaily.  “That if I were a man you’d wring my neck for me.  And I deserve it, too.  I’m so sorry.  I ought not to keep on hurting your feelings.” “I’m afraid I rather invite it,” he said, relieved by the signs of the tempest subsiding. “I have it,” she announced.  “Lend me a

I can’t sleep,” he says so quietly that only I can hear. “I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep.” “Nor I.” “You neither?” “No.” “Truly?” “Yes.” He sighs a deep sigh, as if he is relieved. “Is this love then?” “I suppose so.” “I can’t eat.” “No.” “I can’t think of anything but you. I can’t go on another moment like this; I can’t ride out into battle like this. I am as foolish as a boy. I am mad for you, like a boy. I cannot be without you; I will not be without you. Whatever it costs me.” I can feel my color rising like heat in my cheeks, and for the first time in days I can feel myself smile. “I can’t think of anything but you,” I whisper. “Nothing. I thought I was sick.” The ring like a crown is heavy in my pocket, my headdress is pulling at my hair; but I stand without awareness, seeing nothing but him, feeling nothing but his warm breath on my cheek and scenting the smell of his horse, the leather of his saddle, and the smell of him: spices, rosewater, sweat. “I am mad for you,” he says. I feel my smile turn up my lips as I look into his face at last. “And I for you,” I say quietly. “Truly.” “Well then, marry me.” “What?” “Marry me. There is nothing else for it.” I give a nervous little laugh. “You are joking with me.” “I mean it. I think I will die if I don’t have you. Will you marry me?” “Yes,” I breathe. “Tomorrow morning, I will ride in early. Marry me tomorrow morning at your little chapel. I will bring my chaplain, you bring witnesses. Choose someone you can trust. It will have to be a secret for a while. Do you want to?” “Yes.” For the first time he smiles, a warm beam that spreads across his fair broad face. “Good God, I could take you in my arms right now,” he says. “Tomorrow,” I whisper. “At nine in the morning,” he says.

Desecrate our temple, will you? Go ahead. However, I suggest you say goodbye to your cock before you do so.” Win! Not a challenge, not a challenge, not a fucking challenge. Please don’t let that be a challenge. He had a feeling the woman meant what she’d said. If he whipped out Stridy Monster to relieve himself, he’d lose Stridy Monster. And there was no greater tragedy than that. Ask anyone who’d been with him. “Uh,

When I was a kid, I used to have these panic attacks thinking about how I could never be anyone else. I couldn't be my mom or my dad, and for my whole life, I'd have to walk around inside a body that kept me from ever truly knowing anyone else. It made me feel lonely, desolate, almost hopeless. When I told my parents about this, I expected them to know the feeling I was talking about, but they didn't. "That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with feeling that way, though, sweetie!" Mom insisted. "Who else do you think about being?" my dad said with his particular blunt fascination. The fear lessened, but the feeling never went away. Every once in a while, I'd roll it back out, poke at it. Wonder how I could ever stop feeling lonely when no one could ever know me all the way. When I could never peer into someone else's brain and see it all. And now I'm crying because reading this story makes me feel for the first time that I'm not in body. Like there's some bubble that stretches around me and Alex and makes it so we're just two different colored globs in a lava lamp, mixing freely, dancing around each other, unhindered. I'm crying because I'm relieved. Because I will never again feel as alone as I did during those long nights as a kid. As long as I have him, I will never be alone again.

It means that I’m going to make you want me as bad as I want you. I’m going to make you fantasize about how it feels to have my fingers in your greedy little cunt. I’m going to make you beg for my tongue against your clit. I’m going to make you so wet and needy for me that you’ll do anything to get me to relieve that hot, achy feeling inside you. Once you admit you want me, that’s when I’ll show my appreciation. With every part of me. On every part of you.

There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen]." "Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…" "What is this one obsession?" "I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it." "There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'" "Inside the rain?" "When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well." "It's strange you say that," Maurice answers, "because rain has become one of the potent images of my new book. It sort of scares me that you mentioned that line. Maybe that's what rain means. It's such an important ingredient in this new work, and I've never understood what it meant. There was a thing about me and rain when I was a child: if I could summon it up in one sentence, I'd be happy to. It's such connected tissue…

Had you asked me back then, I would have described this compulsion as a pressure, a sort of tension building in my head. It was like mercury slowly rising in an old-fashioned thermometer. At first it was barely noticeable, just a blip on my otherwise peaceful cognitive radar. But over time it would get stronger. The quickest way to relieve the pressure was to do something undeniably wrong, something I knew would absolutely make anyone else feel one of the emotions I couldn’t. So that’s what I did.

Your ability to shoulder everything, to give 200% of yourself all the time, to be perfect at everything you attempt…these are not the attributes that make you a valuable human being.” I pause. “And they are not why I fell in love with you.” His black eyes shoot up to me. I smile. The weight of these heavy secrets falls off of me, and I feel relieved to continue. “I fell in love with you because you’re goofy. You’re fun. Your heart is so big I don’t know how it fits in here,” I say, pressing my hand to his chest.

Now come on, we’re off.” He marched out of the room. They heard the front door open, but Dudley did not move and after a few faltering steps Aunt Petunia stopped too. “What now?” barked Uncle Vernon, reappearing in the doorway. It seemed that Dudley was struggling with concepts too difficult to put into words. After several moments of apparently painful internal struggle he said, “But where’s he going to go?” Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked at each other. It was clear that Dudley was frightening them. Hestia Jones broke the silence. “But…surely you know where your nephew is going?” she asked, looking bewildered. “Certainly we know,” said Vernon Dursley. “He’s off with some of your lot, isn’t he? Right, Dudley, let’s get in the car, you heard the man, we’re in a hurry.” Again, Vernon Dursley marched as far as the front door, but Dudley did not follow. “Off with some of our lot?” Hestia looked outraged. Harry had met this attitude before: Witches and wizards seemed stunned that his closest living relatives took so little interest in the famous Harry Potter. “It’s fine,” Harry assured her. “It doesn’t matter, honestly.” “Doesn’t matter?” repeated Hestia, her voice rising ominously. “Don’t these people realize what you’ve been through? What danger you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the anti-Voldemort movement?” “Er--no, they don’t,” said Harry. “They think I’m a waste of space, actually, but I’m used to--” “I don’t think you’re a waste of space.” If Harry had not seen Dudley’s lips move, he might not have believed it. As it was, he stared at Dudley for several seconds before accepting that it must have been his cousin who had spoken; for one thing, Dudley had turned red. Harry was embarrassed and astonished himself. “Well…er…thanks, Dudley.” Again, Dudley appeared to grapple with thoughts too unwieldy for expression before mumbling, “You saved my life.” “Not really,” said Harry. “It was your soul the dementor would have taken…” He looked curiously at his cousin. They had had virtually no contact during this summer or last, as Harry had come back to Privet Drive so briefly and kept to his room so much. It now dawned on Harry, however, that the cup of cold tea on which he had trodden that morning might not have been a booby trap at all. Although rather touched, he was nevertheless quite relieved that Dudley appeared to have exhausted his ability to express his feelings. After opening his mouth once or twice more, Dudley subsided into scarlet-faced silence. Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an approving look that changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forward and embraced Dudley rather than Harry. “S-so sweet, Dudders…” she sobbed into his massive chest. “S-such a lovely b-boy…s-saying thank you…” “But he hasn’t said thank you at all!” said Hestia indignantly. “He only said he didn’t think Harry was a waste of space!” “Yeah, but coming from Dudley that’s like ‘I love you,’” said Harry, torn between annoyance and a desire to laugh as Aunt Petunia continued to clutch at Dudley as if he had just saved Harry from a burning building.

Dearest Eva, Something has happened to me that I realise I have to tell you about. I’m so happy, so elated and relieved. You know I feel like Atos’s wife, and I expect I always shall. But what has happened now is that I’ve fallen madly in love with a woman. And it seems to me so absolutely natural and genuine – there’s nothing problematic about it at all. I just feel proud and uncontrollably glad. These last weeks have been like one long dance of rich adventure, tenderness, intensity – an expedition into new realms of great simplicity and beauty.

A good cry was all I needed, and it served me well. It brought back that blissful feeling of childhood confidence–that somehow, through the unproductive act of crying, you are, in fact, achieving something. That something, of course, not being easily obtainable through any other productive measure, like hard work, for instance. Life was hard. Fuck, it was so hard. But crying, somehow temporarily, made it feel not so miserable. It was relieving, comparable to the denouement of an orgasm, before reality floods back in, where your mind is at total peace, if only for a moment.

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on. It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups. I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it’s close to 70 degrees. There’s a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board. I’m thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off. Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures. Then the hollow percussion sounds of the ice thudding, crackling under my feet, breaking off little ice flows carried away into a snow-covered cavern and out the other side of the tunnel. And I followed it all the way to bridge under Maple Road as if I didn't have a care in the world.

I spot a mirror on the opposite wall, where everyone else in the reflection is talking, eating, happy. I position myself near a corner of the reflection and slowly edge myself out. Slowly move out of the frame inch by inch, to the left at first and then down, slouching lower and lower on my chair so I’m no longer in the reflection and the scene is left intact. Looking at the scene in the mirror - everyone else still gathered, talking, eating, happy - makes me feel strangely relieved. As if these people never knew me, as if I had never come to this party, as I’d I had never been born.

No one will ever know what manifold difficulties I’ve had to overcome in order to bring to a conclusion this first part of my chronicle. In certain dreams you feel leaden, numb, paralyzed, incapable of moving even though frightful and ferocious enemies are closing in on you. A constraint, curb, impediment of this order were a constant obstacle to the, oh, so very long and arduous composition of this work. And yet with every one of these stories the fact of having committed it to writing relieved me of a genuine millstone. My only regret is not to have completely unburdened myself. I’m still sadly short of reaching that target.

From my distance the loss was theoretical, and though I couldn’t have said so, I preferred it that way. I felt relieved to be so far away, because I was excused from grieving. I felt nothing but tenderness for her, but there was an emotional emancipation to being here and not there. Even though I didn’t believe in God or heaven, I could childishly go on believing that she was still around. When it happened, the specific timing of my grandmother’s death seemed like a footnote: She died just after I went away. But a lesson would persist as I formed and unformed long-distance relationships over the years. Going away could free you from feeling too much.

Bless me, readers, for I have published. It's been five years since my last book. Greetings, fellow sinners! If you picked up a copy of this book, it means you are either: 1) wracked with guilt and are looking for penance, or 2) need to spend over $10.00 at the airport newsstand so you can use your credit card. Either way, welcome to Stephen Colbert's Midnight Confessions. As America's foremost TV Catholic, it was natural for me to do a segment inspired by the church. After all, the Catholic Church and late night TV actually have a lot in common: our shows last about an hour, we're obsessed with reaching younger demographics, and the hosts are almost always men. This religious-adjacent tome contains all my favorite confessions from The Late Show. These are things that aren't necessarily sins, but I do feel guilty about them. For instance, repackaging material from the show and selling it in a book. I've always been a big fan of confession. The confessional is a great place to go to relieve yourself of your sins. Unless you're claustrophobic, in which case it's a suffocating death trap of despair! And while most confession books just give you run-of-the-mill mortal sins, I go one step further and provide you with mortal sins, venial sins, deadly sins, and even sins of omission (Notice that the previous sentence didn't have a period!) This book is a throwback to a simpler life when people would go to a priest to confess their sins. As opposed to how it's done now - getting drunk and weeping to Andy Cohen on Bravo. Confessing your sins is a great way to get things off your chest. Second only to waxing. The only downside is that you get introduced to it as a kid, before you have any juicy sins to confess. Oh, you stole a cookie? That's adorable, Becky. Come back when you total your dad's Chevy. Now you might be asking yourself, "What if I'm not Catholic - can I still enjoy this book?" Of course. After all, no matter what religion you are - be it Jewish, Muslim, Lutheran, Pagan, or SoulCycle - we all have things to feel guilty about. For example, not being Catholic.

Quite our of the blue a bizarre and compelling idea came into my head today: that we have ended up as human beings through forgetfulness, through lack of attention, and that in reality we are creatures participating in a vast, cosmic battle that has probably been going on since time immemorial and which, for all we know, may never end. All we see of it are glimmers, in blood-red moons, in fires and gales, in frozen leaves that fall in October, in the jittery flight of a butterfly, in the irregular pulse of time that can lengthen a night into infinity or come to a violent stop each day at noon. I am actually an angel or a demon sent into the turmoil of one life on a sort of mission, which is either carrying itself out without my help, or else I have totally forgotten about it. This forgetfulness is part of the war--it's the other side's weapon, and they've attacked me with it so that I'm wounded, invalided out of the game for a while. As a result, I don't know how powerful or how weak I am--I don't know anything about myself because I can't remember anything, and that's why I don't try to look for either weakness or power in myself. It's an extraordinary feeling--to imagine that somewhere deep inside, you are someone completely different from the person you always thought you were. But it didn't make me feel anxious, just relieved, finally free of a kind of weariness that used to permeate my life.

Almost a year after the start of the corona crisis, how is the mental health of the population? MD: For the time being, there are few figures that show the evolution of possible indicators such as the intake of antidepressants and anxiolytics or the number of suicides. But it is especially important to place mental well-being in the corona crisis in its historical continuity. Mental health had been declining for decades. There has long been a steady increase in the number of depression and anxiety problems and the number of suicides. And in recent years there has been an enormous growth in absenteeism due to psychological suffering and burnouts. The year before the corona outbreak, you could feel this malaise growing exponentially. This gave the impression that society was heading for a tipping point where a psychological 'reorganization' of the social system was imperative. This is happening with corona. Initially, we noticed people with little knowledge of the virus conjure up terrible fears, and a real social panic reaction became manifested. This happens especially if there is already a strong latent fear in a person or population. The psychological dimensions of the current corona crisis are seriously underestimated. A crisis acts as a trauma that takes away an individual's historical sense. The trauma is seen as an isolated event in itself, when in fact it is part of a continuous process. For example, we easily overlook the fact that a significant portion of the population was strangely relieved during the initial lockdown, feeling liberated from stress and anxiety. I regularly heard people say: "Yes these measures are heavy-handed, but at least I can relax a bit." Because the grind of daily life stopped, a calm settled over society. The lockdown often freed people from a psychological rut. This created unconscious support for the lockdown. If the population had not already been exhausted by their life, and especially their jobs, there would never have been support for the lockdown. At least not as a response to a pandemic that is not too bad compared to the major pandemics of the past. You noticed something similar when the first lockdown came to an end. You then regularly heard statements such as "We are not going to start living again like we used to, get stuck in traffic again" and so on. People did not want to go back to the pre-corona normal. If we do not take into account the population's dissatisfaction with its existence, we will not understand this crisis and we will not be able to resolve it. By the way, I now have the impression that the new normal has become a rut again, and I would not be surprised if mental health really starts to deteriorate in the near future. Perhaps especially if it turns out that the vaccine does not provide the magical solution that is expected from it.

The night before I leave for college, there is a Perseids meteor shower in the forecast. It’s supposed to be a good one. Peter and I are going out to the lake to watch. Kitty doesn’t say so, but she wants to come too; she’s dying to. Her whole body is rigid with wanting and not being able to ask. Any other time I would say yes. When I say good-bye, her lips twist in disappointment for just a second, but she hides it well. How hard it must be to be the youngest sometimes, to be the one left behind. In the car I feel sick with guilt for being so possessive about my time with Peter. It’s just that there’s so little time left now…I’m a terrible big sister. Margot would have brought her. “What are you thinking about?” Peter asks me. “Oh, nothing,” I say. I’m too ashamed to say out loud that I should have invited Kitty along. When I come home for fall break, we’ll do something the three of us. Peter and I will take her to the midnight show at the drive-in, and she’ll go in her pajamas and I’ll set up the backseat with a blanket for when she falls asleep. But tonight I want it to be just Peter and me, just this once. There’s no use lingering in the guilt and ruining the night, when I’ve already done the selfish deed. And if I am truly honest with myself, I would do it again. That’s how covetous I am of every last moment I have left with Peter. I want his eyes only on me; I want to talk only to him, to be just him and me for this little while longer. One day she’ll understand. One day she’ll love a boy and want to keep him all to herself and not share his attention with anyone else. “We should have let Kitty come,” I burst out suddenly. “I know,” he says. “I feel bad too. Do you think she’s mad?” “Sad, probably.” But neither of us suggests turning the car around and going back to get her. We are silent, and then we are both laughing, sheepish and also relieved. Assuredly, Peter says, “We’ll bring her next time.” “Next time,” I echo. I reach over and grab his hand, and lock my fingers around his, and he locks back, and I am comforted in knowing that tonight he feels the exact same way, and there is no distance between us.

However strange my circumstances, and however out of place I might be, it was somehow very comforting to realize that these were truly other people. Warm-fleshed and hairy, with hearts that could be felt beating and lungs that breathed audibly. Bad-smelling, louse-ridden, and filthy, some of them, but that was nothing new to me. Certainly no worse than conditions in a field hospital, and the injuries were so far reassuringly minor. It was immensely satisfying to be able once again to relieve a pain, reset a joint, repair damage. To take responsibility for the welfare of others made me feel less victimized by the whims of whatever impossible fate had brought me here, and I was grateful to Colum for suggesting it.

Rogue Planets As a kid, I would count backwards from ten and imagine at one, there would be an explosion—perhaps caused by a rogue planet crashing into Earth or some other major catastrophe. When nothing happened, I'd feel relieved and at the same time, a little disappointed.   I think of you at ten; the first time I saw you. Your smile at nine and how it lit up something inside me I had thought long dead. Your lips at eight pressed against mine and at seven, your warm breath in my ear and your hands everywhere. You tell me you love me at six and at five we have our first real fight. At four we have our second and three, our third. At two you tell me you can't go on any longer and then at one, you ask me to stay.   And I am relieved, so relieved—and a little disappointed.

I felt relieved to see him. He was, so to speak, normally blind. His dark glasses were much less disturbing than the staring but useless eyes of the others. "Stand still, then," he said. "I've already been bumped into by God knows how many fools today. What the devil's happened? Why is it so quiet? I know it isn't night-I can feel the sunlight. What's gone wrong with everything?" I told him as much as I knew of what had happened. When I had finished he said nothing for almost a minute, then he gave a short, bitter laugh. "There's one thing," he said. "They'll be needing all their damned patronage for themselves now." With that he straightened up, a little defiantly. "Thank you. Good luck," he said to me, and set off westward wearing an exaggerated air of independence.

It’s so cute, isn’t it?” Arianna said dreamily. “Are we seeing the same creature? It’s like a demented goat with a bone growth.” “You’re going to hurt its feelings! Now shut up and sit on the ground.” I did as I was told, sticking my ankle out. “How is it going to heal me?” I asked, suddenly nervous. I pictured it licking my ankle and gagged. I could only imagine the diseases unicorn saliva had or what it carried around in its filthy, matted beard and hair. Bleating reproachfully, it stared at me with its doleful, square-pupiled brown eyes. “Oh, fine. Great, glorious unicorn, beloved of oblivious girls everywhere, please heal me. Now, if you don’t mind.” With one last bat of its gunk-crusted eyelashes, it lowered its head and put its stubby horn against my ankle. I cringed, waiting for pain, but felt instead tingling warmth spread out, almost like having butterflies in my stomach. Only in my ankle. Butterflies . . . with rainbows. The feeling of wholeness and well-being spread up my leg and into my entire body, and I couldn’t stop grinning. The forest was beautiful! The tree branches, naked against the brightening sky, held unimaginable wonders. The hard-packed dirt beneath me was a treasure trove of unrealized potential, lovely for what it could eventually give life to. I could sit out here forever and just enjoy nature. I was so happy! And rainbows! Why did I keep thinking of rainbows? Who cared! Rainbows were totally awesome! And the unicorn! I beamed at it, reaching out my hand to stroke it. There was never a creature more beautiful, more majestic. I’d spend the rest of my life out here, and we’d prance around the forest, worship the sunlight, bathe in the moonlight, and . . . I shook my head, scattering the idiotic warm fuzzies that had invaded. “Whoa,” I said, shoving the unicorn’s head away. “That’s enough of that.” I looked down at my ankle, which was now completely healed, not even a scar left. I fixed a stern look on the unicorn. “I am not going to frolic in an eternal meadow of sunshine and moonlight with you, you rotten little fink. But thanks.” I smiled, just enough to be nice without being too encouraging, and patted it quickly on the head. I was going to soak that hand in bleach. “Okay, let’s get out of here.” I stood, testing my ankle and relieved with the utter lack of pain. I still had an irrational desire to do an interpretive dance about rainbows, but it was a small price to pay for being healed.

it is the end of july and the idle breeze of gentle childhood befogs my mind once more, as the foreign dull heat holds my body so close i feel it’s scarce and quiet breathing brush against my stomach. i have not written since paris and i feel true in my youth at last. the sun strips me of my fatigued masquerading while summer feeds me plump peaches and wrinkly with ripeness figs ; softly reciting the writings of sylvia plath and patti smith. my bare feet greedily absorb the coolness of the cerulean tiles carpeting the guest bathroom floor. the sea covers my ears it’s waves plaiting my hair with the pacific touch of a mother lulling me to a somnolent state as the lenient light of the afternoon blinks through my fluttering eyes and the sparse flare of wind relieves the creases between my eyebrows.

In this country faith is absolute and universal. The choice, if there is a choice, is made at birth. Everyone believes. For these people, God is a near neighbour. I thought of Sundays at home when I was a child, buttoned up in an uncomfortable tweed jacket and forced to go to Sunday communion. I remember mouthing the hymns without really singing, peering between my fingers at the rest of the congregation when I was supposed to be praying, twisting in my seat during the sermon, aching with impatience for the whole boring ritual to be over. I can’t remember when I last went to church. I must have been since Mary and I were married but I can’t remember when. I don’t know anyone who does go to church now. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? I know I live amongst scientists and civil servants, and Mary’s friends are all bankers or economists, so perhaps we are not typical. You still see people coming out of church on Sunday morning, chatting on the steps, shaking hands with the vicar, as you drive past on your way to get the Sunday papers, relieved you are too old now to be told to go. But no one I know goes any more. We never talk about it. We never think about it. I cannot easily remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer. We have moved on from religion. Instead of going to church, which would never occur to us, Mary and I go to Tesco together on Sundays. At least, that is what we did when she still lived in London. We never have time to shop during the week and Saturdays are too busy. But on Sunday our local Tesco is just quiet enough to get round without being hit in the ankles all the time by other people’s shopping carts. We take our time wheeling the shopping cart around the vast cavern, goggling at the flatscreen TVs we cannot afford, occasionally tossing some minor luxury into the trolley that we can afford but not justify. I suppose shopping in Tesco on Sunday morning is in itself a sort of meditative experience: in some way a shared moment with the hundreds of other shoppers all wheeling their shopping carts, and a shared moment with Mary, come to that. Most of the people I see shopping on Sunday morning have that peaceful, dreamy expression on their faces that I know is on ours. That is our Sunday ritual. Now, I am in a different country, with a different woman by my side. But I feel as if I am in more than just a different country; I am in another world, a world where faith and prayer are instinctive and universal, where not to pray, not to be able to pray, is an affliction worse than blindness, where disconnection from God is worse than losing a limb.

Now he touched two fingers to his forehead and I did the same, relieved. We’d done this saluting thing the first time we ever laid eyes on each other and across many crowded rooms ever since. There you are. He didn’t look away. Dancers kept moving between us, but he held on for a moment longer, we both did. I smiled a little but this wasn’t really about happiness; it hit below fleeting feelings. At this slight remove all our formality falls away, revealing a mutual and steadfast devotion so tender I could have cried right there on the dance floor. Sure, he’s good‑looking, unflappable, insightful, but none of that would mean anything without this strange, almost pious, loyalty between us. Now we both knew to turn away. Other couples might have crossed the room toward each other and kissed, but we understood the feeling would disappear if we got too close. It’s some kind of Greek tragedy, us, but not all told.

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?” “Nah I had to go relieve myself.” After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.” After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. Thats one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.

If you consider, I said, that when in misfortune we feel a natural hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow by weeping and lamentation, and that this feeling which is kept under control in our own calamities is satisfied and delighted by the poets;—the better nature in each of us, not having been sufficiently trained by reason or habit, allows the sympathetic element to break loose because the sorrow is another's; and the spectator fancies that there can be no disgrace to himself in praising and pitying any one who comes telling him what a good man he is, and making a fuss about his troubles; he thinks that the pleasure is a gain, and why should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem too? Few persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from the evil of other men something of evil is communicated to themselves. And so the feeling of sorrow which has gathered strength at the sight of the misfortunes of others is with difficulty repressed in our own.

I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to look at my arm trailing away like the streamer on a bike handle. “I can’t be stuck like this!” I wailed. Visions of having to gnaw it off like a jackal in a trap flooded my brain. Quentin knelt before me and put his hands on my trembling shoulders. “You’re not going to be stuck,” he said, his voice low and reassuring in my ears. “You are the most powerful thing on Earth short of a god. You can do absolutely anything. So believe me when I say you can certainly change your arm back to normal.” He held me firmly, the way you’d brace someone trying to pop a dislocated joint back into place. “Just relax and breathe,” he said. “It’ll happen as you will it.” I took his advice and focused on calming down. Focused on nothing. Focused on him. I couldn’t really feel my arm retracting. And I certainly didn’t want to look at it happening. I just . . . remembered how I was supposed to be. I kept quiet, kept at it for what must have been a good ten minutes, until I could feel both of my hands firmly on Quentin’s broad back. “There you go,” he said. I opened my eyes. My arm was normal again. I was aware that we were sort of hugging. I buried my face in his chest and blew my nose on his shirt. “I’m a human being,” I muttered. “I never said you weren’t.” I raised my head. Quentin looked at me with a smile that was free of any smugness. He didn’t even mind my snot on his lapel. “Reincarnation as a human is practically the highest goal any spirit can achieve,” he said. “It’s considered the next best thing to enlightenment. If anything, I’m proud of you for what you’ve accomplished.” I’m not sure why, but the rage that had been so palpable before seemed to float away at his words. Like I could have been angry with him forever had he said anything different. I was mildly relieved. It was a hell of a one-eighty on my part, but right now I didn’t think I wanted to hate Quentin until the end of time. “Genie Lo, you are unquestionably, undeniably human,” he said. “You just . . . have a whole bunch of other stuff going on as well.” “Tell me about it.

Many potential readers will skip the shopping cart or cash-out clerk because they have seen so many disasters reported in the news that they’ve acquired a panic mentality when they think of them. “Disasters scare me to death!” they cry. “I don’t want to read about them!” But really, how can a picture hurt you? Better that each serve as a Hallmark card that greets your fitful fevers with reason and uncurtains your valor. Then, so gospeled, you may see that defeating a disaster is as innocently easy as deciding to go out to dinner. Remove the dread that bars your doors of perception, and you will enjoy a banquet of treats that will make the difference between suffering and safety. You will enter a brave new world that will erase your panic, and release you from the grip of terror, and relieve you of the deadening effects of indifference —and you will find that switch of initiative that will energize your intelligence, empower your imagination, and rouse your sense of vigilance in ways that will tilt the odds of danger from being forever against you to being always in your favor. Indeed, just thinking about a disaster is one of the best things you can do —because it allows you to imagine how you would respond in a way that is free of pain and destruction. Another reason why disasters seem so scary is that many victims tend to see them as a whole rather than divide them into much smaller and more manageable problems. A disaster can seem overwhelming when confronted with everything at once —but if you dice it into its tiny parts and knock them off one at a time, the whole thing can seem as easy as eating a lavish dinner one bite at a time. In a disaster you must also plan for disruption as well as destruction. Death and damage may make the news, but in almost every disaster far more lives are disrupted than destroyed. Wit­ness the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 and killed 158 people. The path of death and destruction was less than a mile wide and only 22 miles long —but within thirty miles 160,000 citizens whose property didn’t suffer a dime of damage were profoundly disrupted by the carnage, loss of power and water, suspension of civic services, and inability to buy food, gas, and other necessities. You may rightfully believe your chances of dying in a disaster in your lifetime may be nearly nil, but the chances of your life being disrupted by a disaster in the next decade is nearly a sure thing. Not only should you prepare for disasters, you should learn to premeditate them. Prepare concerns the body; premeditate concerns the mind. Everywhere you go, think what could happen and how you might/could/would/should respond. Use your imagination. Fill your brain with these visualizations —run mind-movies in your head —develop a repertoire —until when you walk into a building/room/situation you’ll automatically know what to do. If a disaster does ambush you —sure you’re apt to panic, but in seconds your memory will load the proper video into your mobile disk drive and you’ll feel like you’re watching a scary movie for the second time and you’ll know what to expect and how to react. That’s why this book is important: its manner of vivifying disasters kickstarts and streamlines your acquiring these premeditations, which lays the foundation for satisfying your needs when a disaster catches you by surprise.

A bout of nerves crept up my spine and I tilted my head at him, hoping I was imagining the heat spreading over my cheeks to spare myself the embarrassment of blushing merely because he was piercing me with those chocolate eyes that I had never noticed were so amazing. “What are you staring at?” “Can I take you to prom?” He asked me. Just like that, no hesitation or insecurity to be found in his tone or facial expression. His confidence caught me completely off guard and I gaped at him in a stunned silence for almost twenty full seconds. His expression never faltered, though. He just watched my mouth work to make some sort of intelligible sound, waiting for my answer as he oozes at least the illusion of complete calm. “Huh?” I blurted in an embarrassingly high-pitched squeak. I sounded like a chipmunk and his smirk made me turn a deep shade of red. “Um… Uh… Prom?” I managed, eloquent as ever. He laughed at me fondly, nodding his head. “Yeah, prom.” Shock was not a deep enough word to describe what I was feeling over this proposal. This was Jim, the kid who swore up and down he would rather gouge out his eyes with a grapefruit spoon than put on dress clothes and he was offering to take me to a place where flannel shirts and ratty jeans were unacceptable and dance me around a room in uncomfortable shoes all night long? This couldn’t be real life. But it was real life. I was sitting in the car with him with my mouth hanging open like a fish waiting for him to laugh and tell me he was kidding, that there was no way he was going to put on a tie for my benefit, and he was sitting right there, a slightly nervous look crossing his features over my dumbstruck expression. Breathe, Lizzie, I scolded myself. Answer him! Say yes! You could have knocked me over with a feather and I was very relieved to be sitting down in a car so I could prevent anything humiliating from happening. Having already proved I could not trust my voice to answer him I jerkily nodded my head as my mouth grew into a Cheshire cat sized smile. I turned my face away and hid behind my hair as if I could hide my excitement from the world. Jim was visibly euphoric and that only made me want to squeal even more. He was excited to take me out. How cool was that?

What are we talking about?” Alex says. “This is fucking nonsense.” The couple ahead of us turns slightly. “What are you looking at?” Alex says to them. I don’t bother to reprimand her, because really, what are they looking at? I slow my pace and Alex punches Scottie in the arm. “Ow!” Scottie screams. “Alex! Why are we still on this pattern?” “Hit her back, Dad,” Scottie yells. Alex grabs Scottie’s neck. “You’re hurting me,” Scottie says. “That’s kind of the point,” Alex says. I grab both children by the arm and pull them down to the sand. Sid covers his mouth with his hand and bends over, laughing silently. “‘What do you love about Mom?’” Alex says, mimicking her sister. “Shut up, already. And stop babying her.” I sit down between them and don’t say a word. Sid sits next to Alex. “Easy, tiger,” he says. I look at the waves crashing down on the sand. A few women walk by and give me this knowing look, as though a father with his kids is such a precious sight. It takes so little to be revered as a father. I can tell the girls are waiting for me to say something, but what can I say that hasn’t been said? I’ve shouted, I’ve reasoned, I’ve even spanked. Nothing works. “What do you love about Mom, Scottie?” I ask, glaring at Alex. She takes a moment to think. “Lots of stuff. She’s not old and ugly, like most moms.” “What about you, Alex?” “Why are we doing this?” she asks. “How did we get here in the first place?” “Swimming with the sharks,” I say. “Scottie wanted to swim with sharks.” “You can do that,” Sid says. “I read about it in the hotel.” “She’s not afraid of anything,” Alex says. She’s wrong, and besides, I think this is a statement and not something that Alex truly loves. “Let’s get back,” I say. I stand up and wipe the sand off of me. I look at our hotel on the cliff, pink from the sunset. The girls’ expressions when I told them about their mom made me feel so alone. They won’t ever understand me the way Joanie does. They won’t know her the way I do. I miss her despite the fact that she envisioned the rest of her life without me. I look at my daughters, utter mysteries, and for a brief moment I have a sick feeling that I don’t want to be alone in the world with these two girls. I’m relieved they haven’t asked me what it is I love about them.

Neither of us says anything for a moment. Then, quietly, he asks, “Do you want to break up?” Break up? “No.” All of a sudden I feel shaky, like I could cry. “Do you?” “No!” “You asked me first!” “So that’s it. Neither of us wants to break up, so we just move on.” Peter sinks down on a chair at the kitchen table and rests his head on it. I sit across from him. He feels so far away from me. My hand is itching to reach out and touch his hair, smooth it out, to make this fight be over and in our rearview. He lifts his head; his eyes are sad and enormous. “Can we hug now?” Shakily I nod, and we both get up and I wrap my arms around his middle. He holds me tight against him. His voice is muffled against my shoulder as he says, “Can we never fight again?” I laugh a shaky kind of laugh, shaky and relieved. “Yes, please.” And then he’s kissing me; his mouth is urgent against mine, like he’s searching for some sort of reassurance, some kind of promise only I can give. In answer I kiss him back--yes, I promise, promise, promise, let’s never fight again. I start to lose my balance, and his arm locks around me tight, and he kisses me until I am breathless.

I’m happy here, Tate. I’ll let you know when the baby comes,” she added quietly. “Certainly, you’ll have access to him any time you like.” Doors were closing. Walls were going up around her. He clenched his teeth together in impotent fury. “I want you,” he said forcefully, which was not at all what he wanted to say. “I don’t want you,” she replied, lying through her teeth. She wasn’t about to become an obligation again. She even smiled. “Thanks for coming to see about me. I’ll phone Leta when she and Matt come home from Nassau.” “They’re already home,” he said flatly. “I’ve been to make peace with them.” “Have you?” She smiled gently. “I’m glad. I’m so glad. It broke Leta’s heart that you wouldn’t speak to her.” “What do you think it’s going to do to her when she hears that you won’t marry the father of your child?” She gaped at him. “She…knows?” “They both know, Cecily,” he returned. “They were looking forward to making a fuss over you.” He turned toward the door, bristling with hurt pride and rejection. “You can call my mother and tell her yourself that you aren’t coming back. Then you can live here alone in the middle of ‘blizzard country,; and I wish you well.” He turned at the door with his black eyes flashing. “As for me, hell will freeze over before I come near you again!” He went out and slammed the door. Cecily stared after him with her heart in her throat. Why was he so angry that she’d relieved him of any obligations about the baby? He couldn’t want her for herself. If he had, if he’d had any real feeling for her, he’d have married her years ago. It was only the baby. She let the tears rush down her face again with pure misery as she heard the four-wheel drive roar out of the driveway and accelerate down the road. She hoped he didn’t run over anybody. Her hand went to her stomach and she remembered with anguish the look on his face when he’d put his big, strong hand over his child. She’d sent him away for the sake of his own happiness, didn’t he know that? She supposed it was just hurt pride that had caused his outburst. But she wished he hadn’t come. It would be so much harder to live here now that she could see him in this house, in these rooms, and be haunted by the memory of him all over again. He wouldn’t come back. She’d burned her bridges. There was no way to rebuild them.

I’ve always been disturbed by confrontation and conflict, even when I’m only a bystander. By default, Sang is in charge of Confrontation With Others. If something needs to be argued over or complained about—a botched repair job or an over-cooked restaurant meal—that’s his department. While he’s making that phone call or waiting for the manager to appear, I go off and hide. As an adult, I’m not proud of this. Why do I desperately need to flee a situation where I’m nothing more than an observer? Because, I’ve realized, I don’t discriminate between anger that is aimed at me and anger in general. When someone is angry, I invariably feel like I’m the cause or the target, even when I rationally know that I’m not. If Sang calls me when he’s having a bad day, I hear how upset he is and immediately feel distressed. Not distressed as in, “I should console my husband because he’s had a bad day.” I feel distressed in a “this is incredibly stressful and I want it to stop” kind of way. When confronted with emotional upset, my brain immediately goes into “fix it” mode, searching for a way to make the other person feel better so I can also relieve my own distress.

You’re good at this,” said Ronan. “What?” He leaned to touch the baby’s head. “Being a mother.” “What is that supposed to mean?” Ronan looked awkward. Then he said glibly, “Nothing, if you don’t like it.” He glanced at Benix, Faris, and the others, but they were discussing thumbscrews and nooses. “It didn’t mean anything. I take it back.” Kestrel set the baby on the grass next to Faris. “You cannot take it back.” “Just this once,” he said, echoing her earlier words during the game. She stood and walked away. He followed. “Come, Kestrel. I spoke only the truth.” They had entered the shade of thickly grown laran trees, whose leaves were a bloody color. They would soon fall. “It’s not that I wouldn’t want to have a child someday,” Kestrel told Ronan. Visibly relieved, he said, “Good. The empire needs new life.” It did. She knew this. As the Valorian empire stretched across the continent, it faced the problem of keeping what it had won. The solutions were military prowess and boosting the Valorian population, so the emperor prohibited any activities that unnecessarily endangered Valorian lives--like dueling and the bull-jumping games that used to mark coming-of-age ceremonies. Marriage became mandatory by the age of twenty for anyone who was not a soldier. “It’s just--” Kestrel tried again: “Ronan, I feel trapped. Between what my father wants and--” He held up his hands in flat-palmed defense. “I am not trying to trap you. I am your friend.” “I know. But when you are faced with only two choices--the military or marriage--don’t you wonder if there is a third, or a fourth, or more, even, than that?” “You have many choices. The law says that in three years you must marry, but not whom. Anyway, there is time.” His should grazed hers in the teasing push of children starting a mock fight. “Time enough for me to convince you of the right choice.” “Benix, of course.” She laughed. “Benix.” Ronan made a fist and shook it at the sky. “Benix!” he shouted. “I challenge you to a duel! Where are you, you great oaf?” Ronan stormed from the laran trees with all the flair of a comic actor. Kestrel smiled, watching him go. Maybe his silly flirtations disguised something real. People’s feelings were hard to know for certain. A conversation with Ronan resembled a Bite and Sting game where Kestrel couldn’t tell if the truth looked like a lie, or a lie like the truth. If it was true, what then?

Look, I’m sorry, Jemma. It took me forever to get there, what with all the flooding and everything. And then I was trying to clean stuff up and…well, I guess the time just got away from me.” I try to pull away, but he tightens his grip. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. “Well, you did scare me.” I manage to pull one hand loose, and I use it to whack him in the chest. “Idiot!” “I’m fine, okay? I’m here.” “I wish you weren’t!” I yell, fired up now. “I wish you were lying in a ditch somewhere!” I stumble backward, my heel catching on the porch’s floorboards. “You don’t mean that,” Ryder says, sounding hurt. He’s right; I don’t. But I don’t care if I hurt his feelings. I’m too angry to care. Angry and relieved and pissed off and…and, God, I’m so glad he’s okay. I thump his chest one more time in frustration, and then somehow my lips are on his--hungry and demanding and punishing all at once. I hear him gasp in surprise. His mouth is hot, feverish even, as he kisses me back. The ground seems to tilt beneath my feet. I stagger back toward the door, dragging him with me without breaking the kiss. Ryder’s tongue slips between my lips, skimming over my teeth before plunging inside. And… Oh. My. God. No one’s ever kissed me like this. No one. His hands and his tongue and his scent and his body are pressed against mine…It’s making me light-headed, dizzy. Electricity seems to skitter across my skin, raising gooseflesh in its wake. I cling to him, grabbing fistfuls of his T-shirt as he kisses me harder, deeper. I was meant to do this, I realize. I was made to kiss Ryder Marsden. Everything about it is right, like the last piece of a puzzle falling into place. Somehow, we manage to open the front door and stumble blindly inside, past the mudroom, where we shed our boots and jackets. We pause right there in the front hall, our hands seemingly everywhere at once. I tug at his T-shirt, wanting it off, wanting to feel his skin against my fingertips. His hands skim up my sides beneath my tank top, to the edges of my bra. Shivers rack my entire body, making my knees go weak. Thank God for the wall behind me, because that’s pretty much all that’s holding me up right now. With a groan, he abandons my mouth to trail his lips down my neck, to my shoulders, across my collarbone to the hollow between my breasts. I tangle my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, clutching him to me--thinking that I should make him stop, terrified that he will. This is insane. I’m insane. But you know what? That’s just fine with me. Because right now, “sane” seems way overrated.

I know you regret the purchase, but there are worse places for him to be.” Kestrel realized that she no longer did regret the purchase and frowned. What kind of person had she become, to feel that way? “I gave him house privileges,” she said, knowing that her tone was defensive. “He also often serves as my escort into the city.” Enai swallowed some syrup and made a face. “Yes, I heard from the others. Does society talk about it?” “About what?” “About Smith. Does society talk about him appearing as your escort?” “Not to my knowledge. There was some gossip about the price I paid for him, but everyone’s forgotten that.” “That may be, but I would think he’d still draw attention.” Kestrel searched the woman’s face. “Enai, what are you trying to say? Why would people talk about him?” Enai studied the very plain syrup pot. Finally, she said, “Because of how he looks.” “Oh.” Kestrel was relieved. “Once he’s dressed in house attire he doesn’t appear so rough. He holds himself well.” This thought seemed ready to give rise to other thoughts, but she shook her head. “No, I don’t think he would give anyone cause to complain about his appearance.” Enai said, “I’m sure you’re right.” Kestrel had the sense that the woman’s words were less an agreement than a decision to let some unspoken matter drop.

Of course the no-government ethics will meet with at least as many objections as the no-capital economics. Our minds have been so nurtured in prejudices as to the providential functions of government that anarchist ideas must be received with distrust. Our whole education, from childhood to the grave, nurtures the belief in the necessity of a government and its beneficial effects. Systems of philosophy have been elaborated to support this view; history has been written from this standpoint; theories of law have been circulated and taught for the same purpose. All politics are based on the same principle, each politician saying to people he wants to support him: “Give me the governmental power; I will, I can, relieve you from the hardships of your present life.” All our education is permeated with the same teachings. We may open any book of sociology, history, law, or ethics: everywhere we find government, its organisation, its deeds, playing so prominent a part that we grow accustomed to suppose that the State and the political men are everything; that there is nothing behind the big statesmen. The same teachings are daily repeated in the Press. Whole columns are filled up with minutest records of parliamentary debates, of movements of political persons. And, while reading these columns, we too often forget that besides those few men whose importance has been so swollen up as to overshadow humanity, there is an immense body of men—mankind, in fact—growing and dying, living in happiness or sorrow, labouring and consuming, thinking and creating. And yet, if we revert from the printed matter to our real life, and cast a broad glance on society as it is, we are struck with the infinitesimal part played by government in our life. Millions of human beings live and die without having had anything to do with government. Every day millions of transactions are made without the slightest interference of government; and those who enter into agreements have not the slightest intention of breaking bargains. Nay, those agreements which are not protected by government (those of the exchange, or card debts) am perhaps better kept than any others. The simple habit of keeping one's word, the desire of not losing confidence, are quite sufficient in an overwhelming majority of cases to enforce the keeping of agreements. Of course it may be said that there is still the government which might enforce them if necessary. But without speaking of the numberless cases which could not even be brought before a court, everyone who has the slightest acquaintance with trade will undoubtedly confirm the assertion that, if there were not so strong a feeling of honour in keeping agreements, trade itself would become utterly impossible.

Honestly, I'm relieved. Finally someone's calling Athena out on her bullshit, on her deliberately confusing sentence structures and cultural allusions. Athena likes to make her audience "work for it." On the topic of cultural exposition, she's written that she doesn't "see the need to move the text closer to the reader, when the reader has Google, and is perfectly capable of moving closer to the text." She drops in entire phrases in Chinese without adding any translations—her typewriter doesn't have Chinese characters, so she left spaces and wrote them out by hand. It took me hours of fiddling with an OCR to search them online, and even then I had to strike out about half of them. She refers to family members in Chinese terms instead of English, so you're left wondering if a given character is an uncle or a second cousin. (I've read dozens of guides to the Chinese kinship nomenclature system by now. It makes no goddamn sense.) She's done this in all her other novels. Her fans praise such tactics as brilliant and authentic—a diaspora writer's necessary intervention against the whiteness of English. But it's not good craft. It makes the prose frustrating and inaccessible. I am convinced it is all in service of making Athena, and her readers, feel smarter than they are. "Quirky, aloof, and erudite" is Athena's brand. "Commercial and compulsively readable yet still exquisitely literary," I've decided, will be mine.

Mrs. Harris’s coach should be here any minute. I trek toward the curb, but just as I reach it, the latch on my bag drops open again, and the contents spill into the snow. Cursing, I bend to retrieve my things, but a violent gale whips me backward into the slush, snatching petticoats, chemises, and knickers into the air. “No!” I cry, scrambling after my clothes and stuffing them one by one back into my bag, glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one has caught a glimpse of my underthings dancing across the street. A man snores on a stoop nearby, but no one else is out. Relieved, I scuttle through the snow, jamming skirts and books and socks into the bag and gritting my teeth as the wind burns my ears. A clatter of hooves breaks through the howling tempest, and I catch sight of a cab headed my way. My stomach clenches as I snap my bag closed once more. That must be Mrs. Harris’s coach. I’m really going to do this. But as I make my way toward it, a white ghost of fabric darts in front of me. My eyes widen. I missed a pair of knickers. Panic jolting through my every limb, I sprint after it, but the wind is too quick. My underclothes gust right into the carriage door, twisting against its handle as the cab eases to a stop. I’m almost to it, fingers reaching, when the door snaps open and a boy about my age steps out. “Miss Whitlock?” he asks, his voice so quiet I almost don’t hear it over the wind. Trying not to draw attention to the undergarments knotted on the door just inches from his hand, I give him a stiff nod. “Yes, sir, that’s me.” “Let me get your things,” he says, stepping into the snow and reaching for my handbag. “Uh—it’s broken, so I’d—I’d better keep it,” I mumble, praying he can’t feel the heat of my blush from where he is. “Very well, then.” He turns back toward the coach and stops. Artist, no. My heart drops to my shoes. “Oh…” He reaches toward the fabric knotted tightly in the latch. “Is…this yours?” Death would be a mercy right about now. I swallow hard. “Um, yes.” He glances at me, and blood floods my neck. “I mean, no! I’ve never seen those before in my life!” He stares at me a long moment. “I…” I lurch past him and yank at the knickers. The fabric tears, and the sound of it is so loud I’m certain everyone in the world must have heard it. “Here, why don’t I—” He reaches out to help detangle the fabric from the door. “No, no, no, I’ve got it just fine,” I say, leaping in front of him and tugging on the knot with shaking hands. Why. Why, why, why, why, why? Finally succeeding at freeing the knickers, I make to shove them back into my bag, but another gust of wind rips them from my grasp. The boy and I both stare after them as they dart into the sky, spreading out like a kite so that every damn stitch is visible. He clears his throat. “Should we—ah—go after them?” “No,” I say faintly. “I—I think I’ll manage without…

I don’t know…is it just me, or…” He leans in closer, now he’s listening. “What?” I take a deep breath. “Is it…a little weird? I mean, first we were fake, and then we weren’t, and then we had a fight, and now here we are and you’re eating fried chicken. It’s like we did everything in the wrong order, and it’s good, but it’s…still kind of upside down.” And also were you trying to feel me up during the movie? “I guess it’s a little weird,” he admits. I sip my sweet tea, relieved that he doesn’t think I’m the weird one for bringing up all the weirdness. He grins at me. “Maybe what we need is a new contract.” I can’t tell if he’s joking or if he’s serious, so I play along. “What would go in the contract?” “Off the top of my head…I guess I’d have to call you every night before I went to bed. You’d agree to come to all my lacrosse games. Some practices, too. I’d have to come to your house for dinner. You’d have to come to parties with me.” I make a face at the parties part. “Let’s just do the things we want to do. Like before.” Suddenly I hear Margot’s voice in my head. “Let’s…let’s have fun.” He nods, and now he’s the one who looks relieved. “Yeah!” I like that he doesn’t take things too seriously. In other people that could be annoying, but not him. It’s one of his best qualities, I think. That and his face. I could stare at his face all day long. I sip sweet tea out of my straw and look at him. A contract might actually be good for us. It could help us to head problems off at the pass and keep us accountable. I think Margot would be proud of me for this.

A long time ago Ian had told her he was half in love with her, yet now that they were betrothed he’d never spoken a word of it, had not even pretended. She wasn’t certain of his motives or his feelings; she wasn’t certain of her own, either. All she really knew was that the sight of his hard, handsome face with its chiseled features, and hold amber eyes never failed to make her entire being feel tense and alive. She knew he liked to kis her, and that she very much liked being kissed by him. Added to his other attractions was something else that drew her inexorably to him: From their very first meeting, Elizabeth had sensed that beneath his bland sophistication and rugged virility Ian Thornton had a depth that most people lacked. “It’s so hard to know,” she whispered, “how I ought to feel or what I ought to think. And I have the worst feeling it’s not going to matter what I know or what I think,” she added almost sadly, “because I am going to love him.” She opened her eyes and looked at Alex. “It’s happening, and I cannot stop it. It was happening two years ago, and I couldn’t stop it then, either. So you see,” she added with a sad little smile, “it would be so much nicer for me if you could love him just a little, too.” Alex reached across the table and took Elizabeth’s hands in hers. “If you love him, then he must be the very best of men. I shall henceforth make it a point to see all his best qualities!” Alex hesitated, and then she hazarded the question: “Elizabeth, does he love you?” Elizabeth shook her head. “He wants me, he says, and he wants children.” Alex swallowed embarrassed laughter. “He what?” “He wants me, and he wants children.” A funny, knowing smile tugged at Alexandra’s lips. “You didn’t tell me he said the first part. I am much encouraged,” she teased while a rosy blush stole over her cheeks. “I think I am, too,” Elizabeth admitted, drawing a swift, searching look from Alex. “Elizabeth, this is scarcely the time to discuss this-in fact,” Alex added, her flush deepening. “I don’t think there is a really good time to discuss it-but has Lucinda explained to you how children are conceived?” “Yes, of course,” Elizabeth said without hesitation. “Good, because I would have been the logical one otherwise, and I still remember my reaction when I found out. It was not a pretty sight,” she laughed. “On the other hand, you were always much the wiser girl than I.” “I don’t think so at all,” Elizabeth said, but she couldn’t imagine what there was, really, to blush about. Children, Lucinda had told her when she’d asked, were conceived when a husband kissed his wife in be. And it hurt the first time. Ian’s kisses were sometimes almost bruising, but they never actually hurt, and she enjoyed them terribly. As if speaking her feelings aloud to Alexandra had somehow relieved her of the burden of trying to deal with them, Elizabeth was so joyously relaxed that she suspected Ian noticed it at once when the men joined them in the drawing room. Ian did notice it; in fact, as they sat down to play a game of cards in accordance with Elizabeth’s cheery suggestion, he noticed there was a subtle but distinct softening in the attitudes of both ladies toward him.

Back in the barracks, those of us still left were white-faced and very shaky, but we were so relieved that the ordeal was finally over. Trucker looked particularly bad, but had this huge grin. I sat on his bed and chatted as he pottered around sorting his kit out. He kept shaking his head and chuckling to himself. It was his way of processing everything. It made me smile. Special man, I thought to myself. We all changed into some of the spare kit we had left over from the final exercise and sat on our beds, waiting nervously. We might have all finished--but--had we all passed? “Parade in five minutes, lads, for the good and the bad news. Good news is that some of you have passed. Bad news…you can guess.” With that the DS left. I had this utter dread that I would be one of the ones to fail at this final hurdle. I tried to fight the feeling. Not at this stage. Not this close. The DS reappeared--he rapidly called out a short list of names and told them to follow him. I wasn’t in that group. The few of us remaining, including Trucker, looked at one another nervously and waited. The minutes went by agonizingly slowly. No one spoke a word. Then the door opened and the other guys reappeared, heads down, stern-faced, and walked past us to their kit. They started packing. I knew that look and I knew that feeling. Matt was among them. The guy who had helped me so much on that final Endurance march. He had been failed for cracking under duress. Switch off for a minute, and it is all too easy to fall for one of the DS’s many tricks and tactics. Rule 1: SAS soldiers have to be able to remain sharp and focused under duress. Matt turned, looked at me, smiled, and walked out. I never saw him again.

Say you want me.” His mouth moved over her throat, closed over her aching breast. Every strong pull sent an answering rush of liquid heat. “You know I do.” She pressed him to her, wound a leg around his. She could barely breathe with her need, clawing at him to get closer, to crawl inside the shelter of his body, his mind, to feel his body in hers, taking possession as he was meant to, to feel his mouth at her breast, dragging her further into his world. “All of it,” he said hoarsely, his fingers probing the nest of tiny curls, stroking, caressing. “Mate with me my way.” She moved in a kind of anguish against his hand. “Yes, Mikhail.” She was frantic for release, frantic to relieve him. She was consumed with the same red haze, not separating love from lust or hunger from need. She was on fire, hurting, aching, body and mind, even her soul in torment, not knowing where his wild, uninhibited emotions left off and hers began. Mikhail lifted her easily with his enormous strength, slid her slowly, erotically down his clenching belly until she was pressed against the broad head of his raging erection. Her heat seared him, beckoned. Raven’s arms slid around his neck, her legs around his hips, opening for him. Slowly he lowered her body over his, impaled her on the thick length of fire so that she surrounded him with such a moist, tight sheath he shuddered, somewhere beyond mere pleasure, a kind of erotic heaven and hell. Her nails dug into his shoulders. “Stop, Mikhail. You’re too big this way.” Alarm spread across her face. “Relax, little one. We belong together, our bodies were made for one another.” He slid in farther, began to move in a long, slow rhythm, his hands caressing, soothing. He shifted his shoulders so that he could see her face, his body claiming hers with deep, sure, possessive strokes. Without conscious thought, the words formed in his mind. Te avio päläfertiilam--You are my lifemate.

When the Unconscious has us fully at its mercy we talk not as we should voluntarily choose to talk if we could see all the consequences of our speech, but from a need to relieve some half-perceived pressure. So we grumble humorously about our difficulties, and make ourselves self-conscious by doing so. Or we excuse ourselves defiantly. Or we complain of a trifling injustice, and are sometimes startled to see how much more pity we invoke than the occasion warrants. Once we have found a well-spring of pity and indulgence in another, we are seldom mature enough not to take advantage of it, thus reinforcing our infantilism and defeating our growth. One of the worst wiles of the Will to Fail is that it forces its victim to ask for unnecessary advice. Here again, the universal deep motive for asking for advice (unnecessarily, it should be emphasized once more) is that by so doing we can go on feeling protected and cherished even though we are no longer children. But that again means that we are being provided with advance excuses for failure. If we act on the advice of another and are unsuccessful, obviously the failure is not ours but our counsellor’s; isn’t that plain? So we can continue to day-dream of successful action, to believe that if only we had followed our first impulse we could not have failed. Since such motives can be present, it is wise to scrutinize every impulse to ask for advice. If the origin of the desire is above suspicion, then there is only one further question to ask before seeking help with a clear conscience: “If I worked this out for myself, would I consume only my own time?” If the answer to that is “Yes,” then it is generally better to work out the problem independently, unless the amount of time so expended would be grossly disproportionate to the importance of the result. If you are a creative worker, remember that time spent in finding an independent technique is seldom wasted.

What’s sacred to me? thought Fate. The vague pain I feel at the passing of my mother? An understanding of what can’t be fixed? Or the kind of pang in the stomach I feel when I look at this woman? And why do I feel a pang, if that’s what it is, when she looks at me and not when her friend looks at me? Because her friend is nowhere near as beautiful, thought Fate. Which seems to suggest that what’s sacred to me is beauty, a pretty girl with perfect features. And what if all of a sudden the most beautiful actress in Hollywood appeared in the middle of this big, repulsive restaurant, would I still feel a pang each time my eyes surreptitiously met this girl’s or would the sudden appearance of a superior beauty, a beauty enhanced by recognition, relieve the pang, diminish her beauty to ordinary levels, the beauty of a slightly odd girl out to have a good time on a weekend night with three slightly peculiar men and a woman who basically seems like a hooker? And who am I to think that Rosita Méndez seems like a hooker? thought Fate. Do I really know enough about Mexican hookers to be able to recognize them at a glance? Do I know anything about innocence or pain? Do I know anything about women? I like to watch videos, thought Fate. I also like to go to the movies. I like to sleep with women. Right now I don’t have a steady girlfriend, but I know what it’s like to have one. Do I see the sacred anywhere? All I register is practical experiences, thought Fate. An emptiness to be filled, a hunger to be satisfied, people to talk to so I can finish my article and get paid. And why do I think the men Rosa Amalfitano is out with are peculiar? What’s peculiar about them? And why am I so sure that if a Hollywood actress appeared all of a sudden Rosa Amalfitano’s beauty would fade? What if it didn’t? What if it sped up? And what if everything began to accelerate from the instant a Hollywood actress crossed the threshold of El Rey del Taco?

There are twelve unique nerves that sprout from the brain, exit the skull into the face, and mediate smell, sight, hearing, taste. These are called cranial nerves, and the tenth one is nicknamed the “wandering nerve” because it’s the only one out of the twelve that ventures well beyond your face and around your heart and lungs. After its exit from a tiny hole in the base of the skull, it descends in the neck tucked between the carotid artery and jugular vein. If you were to slice it and look at its cut end head-on, you’d see fibers called efferents, because they carry outbound signals to your chest cavity. These are half of the nerve fibers that your brain uses to control your heart rate in times of stress or rest; specifically, these are the fibers which are activated in rest. They are also, unsurprisingly, the pathway that Buddhist monks and others, through years of training, use to lower their heart rate with thought alone. Less well known is that the wandering nerve is a two-way street. It also carries signals (via afferent fibers) back into the skull from your heart and lungs to shower the brain with ascending information signaling the brain to enter a more calm and restful state. And these fibers can be manipulated or even hijacked. How? You can do it yourself through the intense practice of mindful breathing. Meditative breathing can calm the electrical oscillations and stress responses in your mind by resetting your vagal tone. The neuroscience term is “network reset.” So, despite the increasing popularity of inserting catheters and wires into brains, the basic ability to modify your thoughts and feelings is actually already a built-in technology in each of us. I’m not saying that mindful, meditative breathing alone would have necessarily relieved Raymond’s compulsive use of eyedrops; certainly, it would not have helped Nathan Copeland regain feeling in his fingers. But I do say this: never underestimate the power of the human brain.

Roan studied the photo in his hand. Shiloh Gallagher had to be twenty-nine years old according to what Maud had told him. Damned if she didn’t look twenty-five or so, her features unlined. She wasn’t model pretty, but she had an arresting face, with huge intelligent-looking green eyes. His gaze dropped to her mouth and he felt himself stir. Her mouth would make any man go crazy. Her upper lip was full, but thinner than her lower one. The shape of her mouth made him feel heat in his lower body. “Is she married?” “No,” Maud said. She’s single. Never did marry. I don’t know why. Shiloh’s a beautiful girl.” She was hardly a girl, but Roan said nothing because he was fully reacting to her as a woman. He wondered if she was curvy or rail thin. He was disgruntled over his avid curiosity. “I have no problem with it. You know I get up early and come in late. She’s going to have to fend for herself. I’m not cooking for her.” “Right,” Maud agreed. “She’s pretty shaken up, Roan. You might find that stressful until, hopefully, Shiloh will start to relax.” Shrugging, he slid the photo onto the desk. “Maud, I just hope I don’t stress her out with my award-winning personality,” he said, and he cracked a small, sour grin. Maud cackled. “I think you’ll like her, Roan. She’s a very kind person. An introvert like you. Just remember, she’s trying to write. Because of the stalking, she’s suffering from writer’s block and she’s got a book due to her editor in six months. So, she’s under a lot of other stress.” “I’ll handle it, Maud. No problem.” “Good,” Maud said, relieved. She sat up in the chair. “I’ll call Shiloh back, let her know she can come, and I’ll find out what time she’s arriving tomorrow. I’d like you to pick her up at the Jackson Hole Airport. So take that photo with you.” He stood, settling the cowboy hat on his head. “Don’t need the photo.” Because her face was already stamped across his heart. Whatever that meant. “I’ll find her after she deplanes, don’t worry. Just get back to me on the time.

I run out onto the front porch, trying to slow my racing heart as I peer out into the night. The light gets closer and closer, causing hope to blossom in my chest. “Hey!” a familiar voice calls out, and I nearly weep with relief. He’s back. Thank God. But the relief is immediately replaced with anger. “Where the hell have you been?” I ask, my voice shaking. He clicks off the flashlight and makes his way up the porch steps. “Didn’t you see my note?” “Are you kidding me?” I sputter. “Do you have any idea how many hours you’ve been gone?” “Yeah, sorry about that. The house was fine, but the pool was a mess. A tree fell through the screen, and the roof was ripped off the pool house.” “You’re sorry? That’s all you have to say?” I take two steps toward him, fury thrumming through my veins. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? God, Ryder! I thought you were lying in a ditch somewhere. I thought you were hurt, or…or…” I trail off, shaking my head. “I was about to go looking for you, out in the pitch-dark!” He reaches for my hand, but I slap him away. “Don’t touch me! I swear, I can’t even look at you right now.” I turn and reach for the door. But before I can fling it open, Ryder pulls me toward him, his hands circling my wrists. “Look, I’m sorry, Jemma. It took me forever to get there, what with all the flooding and everything. And then I was trying to clean stuff up and…well, I guess the time just got away from me.” I try to pull away, but he tightens his grip. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. “Well, you did scare me.” I manage to pull one hand loose, and I use it to whack him in the chest. “Idiot!” “I’m fine, okay? I’m here.” “I wish you weren’t!” I yell, fired up now. “I wish you were lying in a ditch somewhere!” I stumble backward, my heel catching on the porch’s floorboards. “You don’t mean that,” Ryder says, sounding hurt. He’s right; I don’t. But I don’t care if I hurt his feelings. I’m too angry to care. Angry and relieved and pissed off and…and, God, I’m so glad he’s okay. I thump his chest one more time in frustration, and then somehow my lips are on his--hungry and demanding and punishing all at once.

Finding herself on the way to the village center again, she pulled over, intending to negotiate a three-point turn. The cottage was slightly out of the village, so she needed to get back onto the opposite side of the road and go back up the hill. Glancing over Hannah’s instructions again, she swung the car to the right—straight into the path of a motorcyclist. What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. The rider tried to stop but couldn’t do so in time, although he did manage to avoid hitting her car. As he turned his handlebars hard to the right, his tires lost grip on the wet road and he flew off, sliding some way before coming to a halt. Layla sat motionless in her car, paralyzed temporarily by the shock. At last she managed to galvanize herself into action and fumbled for the door handle, her shaking hands making it hard to get a grip. When the door finally opened, another dilemma hit. What if she couldn’t stand? Her legs felt like jelly, surely they wouldn’t support her. Forcing herself upward, she was relieved to discover they held firm. Once she was sure they would continue to do so, she bolted over to where the biker lay, placed one hand on his soaking leather-clad shoulder and said, “Are you okay?” “No, I’m not bloody okay!” he replied, a pair of bright blue eyes meeting hers as he lifted his visor. “I’m a bit bruised and battered as it goes.” Despite his belligerent words, relief flooded through her: he wasn’t dead! “Oh, I’m so glad,” she said, letting out a huge sigh. “Glad?” he said, sitting up now and brushing the mud and leaves off his left arm. “Charming.” “Oh, no, no,” she stuttered, realizing what she’d just said. “I’m not glad that I knocked you over. I’m glad you’re alive.” “Only just, I think,” he replied, needing a helping hand to stand up. “Can I give you a lift somewhere, take you to the nearest hospital?” “The nearest hospital? That would be in Bodmin, I think, about fifteen miles from here. I don’t fancy driving fifteen miles with you behind the wheel.” Feeling a little indignant now, Layla replied, “I’m actually a very good driver, thank you. You’re the first accident I’ve ever had.” “Lucky me,” he replied sarcastically.

The story really is short. Nine pages, about a boy who was born with a pair of wings. All his life, people tell him that this means he should try to fly. He’s afraid to. When he finally does, jumps off a two-story roof, he falls. He breaks his legs and wings. He never gets them reset. As he recovers, the bone heals in its misshapen form. Finally, people stop telling him that he must’ve been born to fly. Finally, he’s happy. When Alex comes back out, I’m crying. He asks me what’s wrong. I say, “I don’t know. It just speaks to me.” He thinks I’m making a joke and chuckles along, but for once, I wasn’t referencing the gallery girl who tried to sell us a twenty-one-thousand-dollar bear sculpture. I was thinking about what Julian used to say about art. How it either makes you feel something or it doesn’t. When I read his story, I started crying for a reason I can’t totally explain, not even to Alex. When I was a kid, I used to have these panic attacks thinking about how I could never be anyone else. I couldn’t be my mom or my dad, and for my whole life, I’d have to walk around inside a body that kept me from ever truly knowing anyone else. It made me feel lonely, desolate, almost hopeless. When I told my parents about this, I expected them to know the feeling I was talking about, but they didn’t. “That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with feeling that way, though, sweetie!” Mom insisted. “Who else do you think about being?” my dad said with his particular blunt fascination. The fear lessened, but the feeling never went away. Every once in a while, I’d roll it back out, poke at it. Wonder how I could ever stop feeling lonely when no one could ever know me all the way. When I could never peer into someone else’s brain and see it all. And now I’m crying because reading this story makes me feel for the first time that I’m not in my body. Like there’s some bubble that stretches around me and Alex and makes it so we’re just two different colored globs in a lava lamp, mixing freely, dancing around each other, unhindered. I’m crying because I’m relieved. Because I will never again feel as alone as I did during those long nights as a kid. As long as I have him, I will never be alone again.

23 When He Carries a Heavy Burden Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. GALATIANS 6:2 SOCIETY PUTS A LOT OF WEIGHT on a man’s shoulders. It is his burden to earn the finances to support his family. He is expected to do well at his work and on his job. There are so many expectations of him in that regard that he feels the pressure of it constantly. That’s why you read about so many men committing suicide when they are in serious financial trouble. The burden is too great. Few women commit suicide for financial failure. If you or I fell into financial ruin, we would just sell everything, pay off all the debts we could, get a job, and start over. Men can feel the burden of failure in life-threatening ways. That’s why your husband needs your prayers to keep his burdens lifted. One of the best ways to bear your husband’s burden is to pray for him about whatever heavy load he is carrying. Every time you do, pray especially for what burdens him the most. One of the most effective things you can do is let him know you are praying for him and ask him to tell you what his burdens are. He may reveal something you didn’t even know was bothering him. God’s Word says that sometimes our burden comes from the oppressor. The children of Israel had an oppressor, and they were overtaken by this oppressor because of their own disobedience. But God promised that the burden the oppressor put on them would eventually be broken by the power of His Spirit. “It shall come to pass in that day that his burden will be taken away from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be destroyed because of the anointing oil” (Isaiah 10:27). The anointing oil refers to a work of the Holy Spirit. Your prayers can invite the Holy Spirit to break any burden of the oppressor off of your husband’s shoulders. You will be fulfilling the “law of Christ” every time you pray like that, not to mention how it will secure your husband’s devotion. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray my husband will be able to fully release his burdens to You. I know that when we cast our burdens on You, You will sustain us and not allow us to be shaken (Psalm 55:22 NASB). Help me to bear his burdens in prayer and in any other way You reveal to me. Show me what his greatest burden is and what I can do to lighten it. I ask that You would relieve him of his heavy load by Your presence in his life. Enable him to understand that when he yokes up with You, You will carry the burden for him. I pray that when he is oppressed by the enemy, whatever prayer or supplication is made by him—when he acknowledges his own burdens before You and turns to You for help—that You will hear him (2 Chronicles 6:29-30). I also pray that as You take his burden from him, he will know it’s You doing the heavy lifting. In Jesus’ name I pray.

In the middle of the night, Alexander—with the moist towel still on his face—was startled out of sleep by the cheerful drunken whisper of Ouspensky, who was shaking him awake, while taking his hand and placing into it something soft and warm. It took Alexander a moment to recognize the softness and warmness as a large human breast, a breast still attached to a human female, albeit a not entirely sober human female, who breathed fire on him, kneeled near his bed and said something in Polish that sounded like, “Wake up, cowboy, paradise is here.” “Lieutenant,” said Alexander in Russian, “you’re going on the rack tomorrow.” “You will pray to me as if I’m your god tomorrow. She is bought and paid for. Have a good one.” Ouspensky lowered the flaps on the tent and disappeared. Sitting up and turning on his kerosene lamp, Alexander was faced with a young, boozy, not unattractive Polish face. For a minute as he sat up, they watched each other, he with weariness, she with drunken friendliness. “I speak Russian,” she said in Russian. “I’m going to get into trouble being here?” “Yes,” said Alexander. “You better go back.” “Oh, but your friend…” “He is not my friend. He is my sworn enemy. He has brought you here to poison you. You need to go back quickly.” He helped her sit up. Her swinging breasts were exposed through her open dress. Alexander was naked except for his BVDs. He watched her appraise him. “Captain,” she said, “you’re not telling me you are poison? You don’t look like poison.” She reached out for him. “You don’t feel like poison.” She paused, whispering, “At ease, soldier.” Moving away from her slightly—only slightly—Alexander started to put on his trousers. She stopped him by rubbing him. He sighed, moving her hand away. “You left a sweetheart behind? I can tell. You’re missing her. I see many men like you.” “I bet you do.” “They always feel better after they’re with me. So relieved. Come on. What’s the worst that can happen? You will enjoy yourself?” “Yes,” said Alexander. “That’s the worst that can happen.” She stuck out her hand holding a French letter. “Come on. Nothing to be afraid of.” “I’m not afraid,” said Alexander. “Oh, come on.” He buckled his belt. “Let’s go. I’ll walk you back.” “You have some chocolate?” she said, smiling. “I’ll suck you off for some chocolate.” Alexander wavered, lingering on her bare breasts. “As it turns out, I do have some chocolate,” he said, throbbing everywhere, including his heart. “You can have it all.” He paused. “And you don’t even have to suck me off.” The Polish girl’s eyes cleared for a moment. “Really?” “Really.” He reached into his bag and handed her some small pieces of chocolate wrapped in foil. Hungrily she shoved the bars into her mouth and swallowed them whole. Alexander raised his eyebrows. “Better the chocolate than me,” he said. The girl laughed. “Will you really walk me back?” she said. “Because the streets are not safe for a girl like me.” Alexander took his machine gun. “Let’s go.

Sunday, May 7, 1944 I should be deeply ashamed of myself, and I am. What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again...I'm not all that ugly, or that stupid, I have a sunny disposition, and I want to develop a good character! Monday, May 22, 1944 ...Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it's practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? Thursday, May 25, 1944 The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor...Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next. ...We're going to be hungry, but nothing's worse than being caught. Friday, May 26, 1944 ...That gap, that enormous gap, is always there. One day we're laughing at the comical side of life in hiding, and the next day (there are many such days), we're frightened, and the fear, tension and despair can be read on our faces. ...But they also have their outings, their visits with friends, their everyday lives as ordinary people, so that the tension is sometimes relieved, if only for a short while, while ours never is, never has been, not once in the two years we've been here. How much longer will this increasingly oppressive, unbearable weight press down on us? ... ...What will we do if we're ever...no, I mustn't write that down. But the question won't let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I've ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. ... I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we'll know whether we are to be victors or the vanquished. Tuesday, June 13, 1944 Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become so smitten with nature? ... Many people think nature is beautiful, many people sleep from time to time under the starry sky, and many people in hospitals and prisons long for the day when they'll be free to enjoy what nature has to offer. But few are as isolated and cut off as we are from the joys of nature, which can be shared by rich and poor alike. It's not just my imagination - looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It's much better medicine than Valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage! ...Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute.

When the victor, in a fight of the cities, according to the law of warfare, executes the whole male population and sells all the women and children into slavery, we see, in the sanction of such a law, that the Greek deemed it a positive necessity to allow his hatred to break forth unimpeded; in such moments the compressed and swollen feeling relieved itself; the tiger bounded forth, a voluptuous cruelty shone out of his fearful eye. Why had the Greek sculptor to represent again and again war and fights in innumerable repetitions, extended human bodies whose sinews are tightened through hatred or through the recklessness of triumph, fighters wounded and writhing with pain, or the dying with the last rattle in their throat? Why did the whole Greek world exult in the fighting scenes of the "Iliad"? I am afraid, we do not understand them enough in "Greek fashion," and that we should even shudder, if for once we did understand them thus. But what lies, as the mother-womb of the Hellenic, behind the Homeric world? In the latter, by the extremely artistic definiteness, and the calm and purity of the lines we are already lifted far above the purely material amalgamation: its colours, by an artistic deception, appear lighter, milder, warmer; its men, in this coloured, warm illumination, appear better and more sympathetic — but where do we look, if, no longer guided and protected by Homer's hand, we step backwards into the pre-Homeric world? Only into night and horror, into the products of a fancy accustomed to the horrible. What earthly existence is reflected in the loathsome-awful theogonian lore: a life swayed only by the children of the night, strife, amorous desires, deception, age and death. Let us imagine the suffocating atmosphere of Hesiod's poem, still thickened and darkened and without all the mitigations and purifications, which poured over Hellas from Delphi and the numerous seats of the gods! If we mix this thickened Boeotian air with the grim voluptuousness of the Etruscans, then such a reality would extort from us a world of myths within which Uranos, Kronos and Zeus and the struggles of the Titans would appear as a relief. Combat in this brooding atmosphere is salvation and safety; the cruelty of victory is the summit of life's glories. And just as in truth the idea of Greek law has developed from murder and expiation of murder, so also nobler Civilisation takes her first wreath of victory from the altar of the expiation of murder. Behind that bloody age stretches a wave-furrow deep into Hellenic history. The names of Orpheus, of Musaeus, and their cults indicate to what consequences the uninterrupted sight of a world of warfare and cruelty led — to the loathing of existence, to the conception of this existence as a punishment to be borne to the end, to the belief in the identity of existence and indebtedness. But these particular conclusions are not specifically Hellenic; through them Greece comes into contact with India and the Orient generally. The Hellenic genius had ready yet another answer to the question: what does a life of fighting and of victory mean? and gives this answer in the whole breadth of Greek history.

The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this, when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:— "I am going away to the Great House Farm! O, yea! O, yea! O!" This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

Forgive me I hope you are feeling better. I am, thank you. Will you not sit down? In vain I have struggled. It will not do! My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. In declaring myself thus I'm fully aware that I will be going expressly against the wishes of my family, my friends, and, I hardly need add, my own better judgement. The relative situation of our families is such that any alliance between us must be regarded as a highly reprehensible connection. Indeed as a rational man I cannot but regard it as such myself, but it cannot be helped. Almost from the earliest moments of our acquaintance I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard, which despite of my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. And I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife. In such cases as these, I believe the established mode is to express a sense of obligation. But I cannot. I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I'm sorry to cause pain to anyone, but it was most unconsciously done, and, I hope, will be of short duration. And this is all the reply I am to expect? I might wonder why, with so little effort at civility, I am rejected. And I might wonder why, with so evident a desire to offend and insult me you chose to tell me that you like me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character! Was this not some excuse for incivility if I was uncivil? I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. Do you think any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining the happiness of a most beloved sister? Can you deny that you have done it? I have no wish to deny it. I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, and I rejoice in my success. Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself. But it's not merely that on which my dislike of you is founded. Long before it had taken place, my dislike of you was decided when I heard Mr Wickham's story of your dealings with him. How can you defend yourself on that subject? You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns! And of your infliction! You have reduced him to his present state of poverty, and yet you can treat his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule! And this is your opinion of me? My faults by this calculation are heavy indeed, but perhaps these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by the honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design on you, had I concealed my struggles and flattered you. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly below my own? You are mistaken, Mr Darcy. The mode of your declaration merely spared me any concern I might have felt in refusing you had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner. You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it. From the very beginning, your manners impressed me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others. I had known you a month before I felt you were the last man in the world whom I could ever marry! You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings and now have only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Please forgive me for having taken up your time and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness. Forgive me. I hope you are feeling better. I am, thank you. Will you no

Not liking to think of him so, and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why he suddenly became irritable when they talked about fame and books lasting, wondering if the children were laughing at that, she twitched the stockings out, and all the fine gravings came drawn with steel instruments about her lips and forehead, and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing and quivering and now, when the breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet. It didn't matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book, fame—who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his way with him, his truthfulness—for instance at dinner she had been thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had complete trust in him. And dismissing all this, as one passes in diving now a weed, now a straw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper, as she had felt in the hall when the others were talking, There is something I want—something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed. And she waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly rose those words they had said at dinner, "the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee," began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving their perches up there to fly across and across, or to cry out and to be echoed; so she turned and felt on the table beside her for a book. And all the lives we ever lived And all the lives to be, Are full of trees and changing leaves, she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking. And she opened the book and began reading here and there at random, and as she did so, she felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards, shoving her way up under petals that curved over her, so that she only knew this is white, or this is red. She did not know at first what the words meant at all. Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners she read and turned the page, swinging herself, zigzagging this way and that, from one line to another as from one branch to another, from one red and white flower to another, until a little sound roused her—her husband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they did not want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made him slap his thighs. Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be saying, don't say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading. His lips twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs of the evening, and how it bored him unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all. But now, he felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an alphabet from A to Z). Somebody would reach it—if not he, then another. This man's strength and sanity, his feeling for straight forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in Mucklebackit's cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face, he let them fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely (but not one or two reflections about morality and French novels and English novels and Scott's hands being tied but his view perhaps being as true as the other view), forgot his own bothers and failures completely in poor Steenie's drowning and Mucklebackit's sorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.