Immediate Travel Quotes

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude…

…we can not love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings. We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.

The paradox of love is that to have it is to want to preserve it because it's perfect in the moment but that preservation is impossible because the perfection is only ever an instant passed through. Love like travel is a series of moments that we immediately leave behind. Still we try to hold on and embalm against all evidence and common sense proclaiming our promises and plans. The more I loved him the more I felt hope. But hope acknowledges uncertainty and so I also felt my first premonitions of loss.

Well, sir, do you mean to remain there, commending my father’s taste in wine, or do you mean to accompany me to Ashtead?” “Set off for Ashtead at this hour, when I have been traveling for two days?” said Sir Horace. “Now, do, my boy, have a little common sense! Why should I?” “I imagine that your parental feeling, sir, must provide you with the answer! If it does not, so be it! I am leaving immediately!” “What do you mean to do when you reach Lacy Manor?” asked Sir Horace, regarding him in some amusement. “Wring Sophy’s neck!” said Mr. Rivenhall savagely. “Well, you don’t need my help for that, my dear boy!” said Sir Horace, settling himself more comfortably in his chair.

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or at least the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology or in states of mind which allow us to travel to other worlds, to transcend our immediate surroundings. We need detachment of this sort as much as we need engagement in our lives.

what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveller's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveller finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful and pervasive is the belief that "falling in love" is love or at least one of the manifestations of love. It is a potent misconception, because falling in love is subjectively experienced in a very powerful fashion as an experience of love. When a person falls in love what he or she certainly feels is "I love him" or "I love her." But two problems are immediately apparent. The first is that the experience of falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. We do not fall in love with our children even though we may love them very deeply. We do not fall in love with our friends of the same sex-unless we are homosexually oriented-even though we may care for them greatly. We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated. The second problem is that the experience of falling in love is invariably temporary. No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say that we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterizes the experience of falling in love always passes. The honeymoon always ends. The bloom of romance always fades.

I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..." ~ Einstein

The four highest-impact things an individual can do to tackle climate change are eat a plant-based diet, avoid air travel, live car-free, and have fewer children. Of those four actions, only plant-based eating immediately addresses methane and nitrous oxide, the most urgently important greenhouse gases.

The category of Other is as original as consciousness itself. The duality between Self and Other can be found in the most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies; the division did not always fall into the category of the division of the sexes (...) No group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself. It only takes three travelers brought together by chance in the same train compartment for the rest of the travellers to become vaguely hostile 'others'. Village people view anyone not belonging to the village as suspicious 'others'. For the native of a country, inhabitants of other countries are viewed as 'foreigners'; Jews are the 'others' for anti-Semites, blacks for racist Americans, indigenous people for colonists, proletarians for the propertied classes.

It takes three or four years before the present day sinks in to you as a novelist. It has not just to be accepted in the mind but travel down your spine and fill your body and you can’t respond immediately to immediate events, there is this incubation period. Source: http://www.euronews.com/2013/06/25/ma...

Packing a bag doesn't make you aware of changes, rather it compels you to postpone the past, and the present is taken up with concerns about the immediate. Time slides over the travelers' skin.

The books we read help to shape who we are. Reading offers us, as children, our first independence- allowing us to travel far beyond the confines of our immediate world. Books introduce us to great figures in history, narratives that stir our spirit, fictions that tug us out of ourselves and into the lives of a thousand others, and visions of every era through which human beings have lived. And in the process of stretching who we are, books also connect us to all others- of our own or previous times- who have read what we've read. In the community of readers, we instantly become linked to those who share our love for specific characters or passages. A well-composed book,' says Caroline Gordon, 'is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

Libraries were her favorite places, and when she traveled, she would start out at the local library, thus immediately identifying herself as a total nerd.

There is nothing more exasperating than reading in contemporary guidebooks disparagements of places that are deemed to be "seedy." Do the writers not notice that such places are invariably crowded with people? When a neighborhood is described as "seedy" by some Lonely Planet prude, I immediately head there.

On a long flight, after periods of crisis and many hours of fatigue, mind and body may become disunited until at times they seem completely different elements, as though the body were only a home with which the mind has been associated but by no means bound. Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses. You see without assistance from the eyes, over distances beyond the visual horizon. There are moments when existence appears independent even of the mind. The importance of physical desire and immediate surroundings is submerged in the apprehension of universal values. For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It's not hungry. It's neither warm or cold. It's resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I've gone through make possible. Then what am I – the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation? There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light. While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.

The few times I said to myself anywhere: ‘Now that’s a nice spot for a permanent home,’ I would immediately hear in my mind the thunder of an avalanche carrying away the hundreds of far places which I would destroy by the very act of settling in one particular nook of the earth.

In the twentieth century, astrophysicists in the United States discovered galaxies, the expanding of the universe, the nature of supernovas, quasars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the origin of the elements, the cosmic microwave background, and most of the known planets in orbit around solar systems other than our own. Although the Russians reached one or two places before us, we sent space probes to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. American probes have also landed on Mars and on the asteroid Eros. And American astronauts have walked on the Moon. Nowadays most Americans take all this for granted, which is practically a working definition of culture: something everyone does or knows about, but no longer actively notices. While shopping at the supermarket, most Americans aren’t surprised to find an entire aisle filled with sugar-loaded, ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. But foreigners notice this kind of thing immediately, just as traveling Americans notice that supermarkets in Italy display vast selections of pasta and that markets in China and Japan offer an astonishing variety of rice. The flip side of not noticing your own culture is one of the great pleasures of foreign travel: realizing what you hadn’t noticed about your own country, and noticing what the people of other countries no longer realize about themselves.

There is a story that for me comes before all other stories and of which all the stories I read seem to carry an echo, immediately lost. In my readings I do nothing but seek that book read in my childhood, but what I remember of it is too little to enable me to find it again.

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance. Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way.

I'm pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed--which is to say, that we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.

... we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

To function successfully in our complex world it is necessary for us to possess the capacity not only to express our anger but also not to express it. Moreover, we must possess the capacity to express our anger in different ways. At times, for instance, it is necessary to express it only after much deliberation and self-evaluation. At other times it is more to our benefit to express it immediately and spontaneously. Sometimes it is best to express it coldly and calmly; at other times loudly and hotly.

by the lane that turns immediately into the woods, or the broad road that lies open before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low horizon.  In short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, without a pang

On the morning of our second day, we were strolling down the Champs-Elysées when a bird shit on his head. ‘Did you know a bird’s shit on your head?’ I asked a block or two later. Instinctively Katz put a hand to his head, looked at it in horror – he was always something of a sissy where excrement was concerned; I once saw him running through Greenwood Park in Des Moines like the figure in Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ just because he had inadvertently probed some dog shit with the tip of his finger – and with only a mumbled ‘Wait here’ walked with ramrod stiffness in the direction of our hotel. When he reappeared twenty minutes later he smelled overpoweringly of Brut aftershave and his hair was plastered down like a third-rate Spanish gigolo’s, but he appeared to have regained his composure. ‘I’m ready now,’ he announced. Almost immediately another bird shit on his head. Only this time it really shit. I don’t want to get too graphic, in case you’re snacking or anything, but if you can imagine a pot of yoghurt upended onto his scalp, I think you’ll get the picture. ‘Gosh, Steve, that was one sick bird,’ I observed helpfully. Katz was literally speechless. Without a word he turned and walked stiffly back to the hotel, ignoring the turning heads of passers-by. He was gone for nearly an hour. When at last he returned, he was wearing a windcheater with the hood up. ‘Just don’t say a word,’ he warned me and strode past. He never really warmed to Paris after that.

The narrator, a time traveler from 2011, scoffs at the despondency caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis -- especially the drug and alcohol use of a resident of 1962 he supposedly cares about. Then he finds his compassion because he remembers he is the exception in being able to see beyond the immediate -- and foreboding -- horizon.

From trains to automobiles to airplanes, each time the speed of connection quickens, travelers have expressed a sense of growing alienation from the land blurring past our windows. In the same vein, many people currently worry that digital technology is making us less connected to the people and things in our immediate environment.

Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can rediscover the continuity of time only in the novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded, a period that lasted no more than a hundred years.

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

Fortunately Stephen was a better navigator than he had been a driver – except on those occasions when he would spot an exit at the last minute and yell at me to cross four lanes immediately.

Should a traveler, returning from a far country, bring us an account of men wholly different from any with whom we were ever acquainted, men who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, or revenge, who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit, we should immediately, from these circumstances, detect the falsehood and prove him a liar with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies.

Claire: One of the hallmarks of a mother-daughter relationship is what I call the Zero to Sixty Factor. We can get instantly irritated at each other and just as instantly move on… Men don’t get this. Paul will say, “Girls, stop fussing,” and we’ll immediately turn and say in unison, “We’re not arguing.

felt great numbers of people on my left side relaxing the cords to such a degree, that I was able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself with making water; which I very plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people; who, conjecturing by my motion what I was going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent, which fell with such noise and violence from

I felt Nairobi's foreignness — or really, my own foreignness in relation to it — immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It's a sensation I've come to love as I've traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has a different weight from what you're used to; it carries smells you can't quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.

There are webs of complexity that tie everything together, and they are more numerous than the stars in the night sky. At the moment of self-organization of the bacterial membrane, complex feedback loops, both interoceptive and exteroceptive, immediately formed. Information from both locations began traveling in a huge, never-ending river composed of trillions upon trillions of bytes of data to the self-organized, more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts living system that had come into being. The system began, in that instant of self-organization, to modulate both its interior and exterior worlds in order to maintain its state. It began to modulate its environment.

Looking up as she did immediately, she saw immeasurable space, traveling past the locked hands of the trees, past the large nodding implacable heads, up and into the silence of the sky, where the stars remained, indifferent.

I did know some people who would receive me, but reluctantly, because I had nothing to offer company save a long face and a self-pitying heart, and I had no intention of changing either. Black Americans of my generation didn't look kindly on public mournings except during or immediately after funerals. We were expected by others and by ourselves to lighten the burden by smiling, to deflect possible new assaults by laughter. Hadn't it worked for us for centuries? Hadn't it?

Elsa decides they should begin by taking the bus, like normal knights on normal quests in more or less normal fairytales when there aren’t any horses or cloud animals available. But when all the other people at the bus stop starts eyeing The Monster and the wurse and nervously shuffling as far away from them as it’s possible to be without ending up at the next bus stop, she realises it’s not going to be quite so straightforward. On boarding the bus it becomes immediately clear that wurses are not at all partial to travelling on public transport. After it had snuffled about and stepped on people’s toes and overturned bags with its tail and accidently dribbled a bit on a seat a little too close to The Monster for The Monster to feel entirely comfortable, Elsa decides to forget the whole thing, and then all three of them get off. Exactly one stop later

The immediate thing that strikes you when you see the inside of the hand is its compactness. The ball of your thumb, the thenar eminence, contains four different muscles. Twiddle your thumb and tilt your hand: ten different muscles and at least six different bones work in unison. Inside the wrist are at least eight small bones bones that move against one another. Bend your wrist, and you are using a number of muscles that begin in your forearm, extending into tendons as they travel down your arm to end at your hand. Even the simplest motion involves a complex interplay among many parts packed in a small space.

[…] I began to see Algiers as one of the most fascinating and dramatic places on earth. In the small space of this beautiful but congested city intersected two great conflicts of the contemporary world. The first was the one between Christianity and Islam (expressed here in the clash between colonizing France and colonized Algeria). The second, which acquired a sharpness of focus immediately after the independence and departure of the French, was a conflict at the very heart of Islam, between its open, dialectical — I would even say “Mediterranean” — current and its other, inward-looking one, born of a sense of uncertainty and confusion vis-à-vis the contemporary world, guided by fundamentalists who take advantage of modern technology and organizational principles yet at the same time deem the defense of faith and custom against modernity as the condition of their own existence, their sole identity. […] In Algiers one speaks simply of the existence of two varieties of Islam — one, which is called the Islam of the desert, and a second, which is defined as the Islam of the river (or of the sea). The first is the religion practiced by warlike nomadic tribes struggling to survive in one of the world's most hostile environments, the Sahara. The second Islam is the faith of merchants, itinerant peddlers, people of the road and of the bazaar, for whom openness, compromise, and exchange are not only beneficial to trade, but necessary to life itself.

In fact, meta- and particle physicists have more in common than one might suppose: both tug, if in slightly different directions, at the knots which hold the cosmos together, both look beyond the immediate world of sense perception into one where cause can only be deduced from effect - a quark is as invisible as an angel; both are confronted by Manichaean polarities - miracles and black magic, cheap energy versus total destruction.

You will encounter resentful, sneering non-readers who will look at you from their beery, leery eyes, as they might some form of sub-hominid anomaly, bookimus maximus. You will encounter redditters, youtubers, blogspotters, wordpressers, twitterers, and facebookers with wired-open eyes who will shout at from you from their crazy hectoring mouths about the liberal poison of literature. You will encounter the gamers with their twitching fingers who will look upon you as a character to lock crosshairs on and blow to smithereens. You will encounter the stoners and pill-poppers who will ignore you, and ask you if you have read Jack Keroauc’s On the Road, and if you haven’t, will lecture you for two hours on that novel and refuse to acknowledge any other books written by anyone ever. You will encounter the provincial retirees, who have spent a year reading War & Peace, who strike the attitude that completing that novel is a greater achievement than the thousands of books you have read, even though they lost themselves constantly throughout the book and hated the whole experience. You will encounter the self-obsessed students whose radical interpretations of Agnes Grey and The Idiot are the most important utterance anyone anywhere has ever made with their mouths, while ignoring the thousands of novels you have read. You will encounter the parents and siblings who take every literary reference you make back to the several books they enjoyed reading as a child, and then redirect the conversation to what TV shows they have been watching. You will encounter the teachers and lecturers, for whom any text not on their syllabus is a waste of time, and look upon you as a wayward student in need of their salvation. You will encounter the travellers and backpackers who will take pity on you for wasting your life, then tell you about the Paulo Coelho they read while hostelling across Europe en route to their spiritual pilgrimage to New Delhi. You will encounter the hard-working moaners who will tell you they are too busy working for a living to sit and read all day, and when they come home from a hard day’s toil, they don’t want to sit and read pretentious rubbish. You will encounter the voracious readers who loathe competition, and who will challenge you to a literary duel, rather than engage you in friendly conversation about your latest reading. You will encounter the slack intellectuals who will immediately ask you if you have read Finnegans Wake, and when you say you have, will ask if you if you understood every line, and when you say of course not, will make some point that generally alludes to you being a halfwit. Fuck those fuckers.

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

According to a much-traveled analogy, if we put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately hop out. But put the frog in water that’s at room temperature and heat it slowly, and the creature will stay there until it boils to death. Put him in a lethal environment suddenly, and he will escape. But introduce the danger gradually, and he will never notice. The truth is that the dangers to which we are most vulnerable are generally not the sudden, dramatic, obvious ones. They are the ones that creep up on us, that are so much a part of our environment that we don’t even notice them.

Markos,” he cried. “Markos, from the Cauldron! Markos! The gods are kind! Surely you remember me?” Markos turned to regard the traveler who stood before him; he stared for a few seconds. Then, without warning, he drew a long-bladed fisherman’s knife from his belt and buried it, up to the hilt, in Gervain’s stomach. As Gervain stared downward in shock, Markos gave him a shove sideways, and the former handball Justice fell into the water of Camorr Bay, never to surface again. “Not across the line, my ass,” Markos spat. Verrari, Karthani, and Lashani nod knowingly when they hear this story. They assume it to be apocryphal, but it confirms something they claim to know in their hearts—that Camorri are all gods-damned crazy. Camorri, on the other hand, regard it as a valuable reminder against procrastinating in matters of revenge—or, if one cannot take satisfaction immediately, on the virtue of having a long memory.

While I was busy wondering if we were expecting anybody, it took me by surprise when an arm—which I was starting to get very well acquainted with at this rate—snaked around my waist and pulled me backward. My ass landed on something hard and hot, immediately molding into the space. Aaron’s lap. His breath caressed the shell of my ear. “You didn’t say good morning.” My back straightened as I remembered my lame runaway moment. “You almost made me drop my cookie, Mr. Robot.” It was so weird, so strange, calling him that, like I had done so many times in the past. As if that belonged to a whole different life. To two different people. Aaron chuckled, and it tickled my neck. “I wouldn’t dare. I know better than that.” His arm tightened around me, and I had to restrain myself from wrapping my hands around it. “What are you doing?” I whispered loudly. Charo would come back in at any second. “I was feeling lonely,” he admitted, lowering his voice and making my mind fly with everything he wasn’t saying. Stupid. I need to stop being stupid. “And if I’m going to sit through this one-sided interrogation, the least you can do is keep me company. Plus, you owe me a conversation.” “I was right there.” My voice came out strangled. “And Charo is not here now.” He hummed, and that noise traveled straight to my lower belly. “She will be back though. You know I like to be extra prepared.

voluntary work, grew fatter and spent more time at home. The house and the immediate family became central, to the detriment of public life.

Going back to school is like going back in time. Immediately, for better or for worse, you must give up a little piece of your autonomy in order to become part of the group. And every group, of course, has its hierarchies and rules- spoken and unspoken. It is like learning to live once again in a family- which, of course, is the setting where all learning begins.

Everything becomes a blur when you travel beyond a certain speed. Distant objects may still be clear in outline, but the blurred foreground makes it impossible to attend to them. This landscape is unreal and the passengers in the express train turn to their books, their thoughts or their private fantasies. The subjectivism of our age has a good deal to do with this imprisonment in a speeding vehicle, and the fact that we made this vehicle ourselves, with all the tireless care that children give to a contrivance of wood and wire, does not save us from the sense of being trapped without hope of escape. A further effect of such vertiginous speed is a kind of anaesthesia, entirely natural when the operation of the senses by which we normally make contact with our environment is suspended. With no opportunity to assimilate what is going on, our powers of assimilation are inevitably weakened and certain numbness sets in; nothing is fully savoured and nothing is properly understood. Even fear (which exists to forewarn us of danger) is suspended. This would be so even if speed of change were the only factor involved, but the kind of environment in which a large part of humanity lives today --- the environment created by technology at the service of immediate, short-term needs – does much to intensify this effect. Outside of works of art which embody something beyond our physical needs, our own constructions bore us. Those who, when they have built something and admired the finished product for a decent moment, are ready to pull it down and start on something new have good sense on their side.

When a person falls in love what he or she certainly feels is ‘I love him’ or ‘I love her.’ But two problems are immediately apparent. The first is that the experience of falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. We do not fall in love with our children even though we may love them very deeply. We do not fall in love with our friends of the same sex – unless we are homosexually oriented – even though we may care for them greatly. We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated. The second problem is that the experience of falling in love is invariably temporary. No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say that we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterizes the experience of falling in love always passes. The honeymoon always ends. The bloom of romance always fades. To

In Rome, either things can be done, or they cannot. When someone tells you that they cannot, there’s an end to it.’ ‘In Paris, it’s much more convenient: when something can’t be done, you pay double and immediately you get what you wanted.’ ‘I hear all Frenchmen say this,’ said Signor Pastrini, a trifle stung by it. ‘So I don’t understand how they manage to travel.’ ‘But, then,’ said Albert, unhurriedly blowing his smoke towards the ceiling and leaning backwards, balancing on the two rear legs of his chair, ‘it is only fools and innocents like ourselves who travel. Sensible men stay in their apartments in

Dogs in My Nose -- When I woke up that morning, it didn't take me long to realize there were dogs in my nose. I could hear their muffled barks; I could feel their playful vibrations. It's not dangerous to have dogs in your nose, in fact, it's quite all right to leave them in there for an hour or so. But in this case, because they got in there without permission, I decided to expel them immediately, coaxing them out with a piece of hamburger. The dogs popped out and landed on the floor. They shook their little floppy ears and bounded off, and I was amused at the prospect of some other weary traveler awakening to find he had dogs in his nose.

A man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offence. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing, and solicitous with one another. At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows. Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded rural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary! That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of the characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the midst of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unashamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to the accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own. The real hypocrisy, I came to realise, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where none had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that Didier had been right when he'd compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thought, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less. And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimetre of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads. The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose. Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn't a single display of grouchiness or bad temper

An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth’s atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn’t get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor’s path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame. One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth’s surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it. For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. Within minutes, over an area stretching from Denver to Detroit and encompassing what had once been Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, the Twin Cities—the whole of the Midwest, in short—nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to a thousand miles away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a thousand miles the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that’s just the initial shockwave. No one can do more than guess what the associated damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew. Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. The massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivors would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or where to turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean “selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort, since Earth’s ability to support life would be universally diminished.

On March 8 Danton mounted the tribune of the Convention. The patriots never forgot the shock of his sudden appearance, nor his face, harrowed by sleepless nights and the exhaustion of traveling, pallid with strain and suffering. Complex griefs caught sometimes at his voice, as he spoke of treason and humiliation; once he stopped and looked at his audience, self-conscious for a moment, and touched the scar on his cheek. With the armies, he has seen malice, incompetence, negligence. Reinforcements must be massive and immediate. The rich of France must pay for the liberation of Europe. A new tax must be voted today and collected tomorrow. To deal with conspirators against the Republic there must be a new court, a Revolutionary Tribunal: from that, no right of appeal.

…people do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

Few men enjoy prolonged travel; it disrupts all habit and endlessly jolts all prejudice. Any tolerance shown to fanatics is immediately mistaken by them for sympathy with their cause. Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one's self without thought of profit.

To convey the operation of electromagnetic fields, Feynman used the master metaphor of two corks floating in a pool of water. If you move one cork around in the water, you immediately notice that the other one moves, too. Looking only at the two corks, Feynman explained, a naive physicist might be forgiven for thinking there was some kind of interaction between the corks that caused one to move in response to the other. The second cork, however, is not moved directly by the first cork but by the movement of the water. "If we jiggle the cork...waves travel away," Feynman explained, "so that by jiggling, there is an influence very much farther out, an oscillatory influence. That cannot be understood by the direct interaction. Therefore the idea of direct interaction must be replaced with the existence of the water, or in the electrical case, with what we call the electromagnetic field.

He watched the desert slip under the airship's nose, and the land roughened into highlands over which he had traveled at great cost, in great pain - dreamlike, such speed, looking down on a world where time moved more slowly, where realities were different and immediate and he had learned for a time to live.

The northern public immediately assumed that Douglas was handing Kansas to the South as another slave state because proslavery emigrants from Missouri were certain to dominate its politics. In the ensuing uproar the disintegrating Whig Party disappeared altogether, and a new antislavery Republican Party was born.

Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English. The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake. So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate. Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question. Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it." For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com

Nothing sets a person up more than having something turn out just the way it’s supposed to be, like falling into a Swiss snowdrift and seeing a big dog come up with a little cask of brandy round its neck. The first time I traveled on the Orient Express I was accosted by a woman who was later arrested and turned out to be a quite well-known international spy. When I talked with Al Capone there was a submachine gun poking through the transom of the door behind him. Ernest Hemingway spoke out of the corner of his mouth. In an Irish castle a sow ran right across the baronial hall. The first Minister of Government I met told me a most horrible lie almost immediately. These things were delightful, and so was my first view of the Times office in London. In the Foreign Editorial Room a subeditor was translating a passage of Plato’s Phaedo into Chinese, for a bet. Another subeditor had declared it could not be done without losing a certain nuance of the original. He was dictating the Greek passage aloud from memory.

All this so that Marco Polo could explain or imagine explaining or be imagined explaining or succeed finally in explaining to himself that what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

Immediately across the road is a ruined abbey and cemetery. As I haven't visited one since late yesterday afternoon, I decide to take a look. On the whole, it's fair to say that, if you're travelling round the west of Ireland, an interest in ruined abbeys, however slight, will stand you in better stead than a passion for rollerblading, say or a penchant for showbiz gossip.

Yes, you are in your room, calm; you open the book to page one, no, to the last page, first you want to see how long it is. It's not too long, fortunately. Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

I come from the depths of infinity and from all directions of space-time. I traveled through dark tunnels, went through solar storms. I went straight, circled, parallel, rotated as a spiral. Cosmic clouds trapped me and escaped from them. Avoided collisions with meteories. I was helped by exotic particles, neutron stars and the love of gravity. Every leaf, every flower, every mountain and lake, every cloud and every star and every atom recognize me and greet me. I feel that i have live for million lifetimes. Who am i? What is my purpose? Last night i sent a question into universe, asking ”who am i or am i not? The universe responded immediately: ”You asked me the same thing billions of years ago. And then and now i answer: You’re the smile of no birth and no death, The Hidden Law!

The Future is an illusion because, at the most fundamental level, Choice is an illusion. I am a believer in the theory, popular among physicists, that every time there is a Choice, the universe splits: both choices come to pass, but in now-separate universes. And so on, and on, with every choice of every particle, every atom, every molecule, every cell, every being, coming into being. In this universe of universes, everything happens, and every combination of things happens. Our universe is a mote of dust in an ever-growing dust-storm of possibilities, but each mote of dust in that storm is generating its own dust-storm of possibilities every instant, the motes of which in turn... But you get the general impression. Indeed to think of ourselves as single selves, and our universe as a single universe, is to be blinded, by the limitations of our senses and our consciousness, to the infinite-faceted truth: that we are infinite in a universe of universes that are each infinitely infinite..." "An intriguingly intricate view of the world," I said (...) Pat Sheeran nodded. "And it is astonishing how little practical difference it makes," he said. "All my other lives are as inaccessible to me as if they did not exist at all. No doubt in other universes I am a beggar, a revolutionary thinker, an academic, an accountant; a drinker, a thinker, a writer of books; I lose a freckle, gain a mole, shade off into men nothing like me at all; I have sons, fire guns, live forever, die too young. Whenever any particle in this universe changes state, I am split and travel in both directions, multiplied. But here I am, suffering the illusion of unity in this endlessly bifurcating moment. Yet sometimes, I wave my arms for the joy of creating a spray of universes." I said startled at the implications, “Though it may make no practical difference, the implications are nonetheless startling." "Indeed," said Pat Sheeran. "I had immediately to file all the fiction on my shelves under Non-Fiction. For it is an unavoidable corollary of this theory, that Fiction is impossible. For all novels are true histories of worlds as real as ours, but which we cannot see. All stories are possible, all histories have happened. I, billion-bodied, live a trillion lives every quantum instant. Those trillion lives branch out, a quintillion times a second, as every particle in every atom in each mote of dust on land, in sea, and sky, and space, and star, flickering in and out of being in the void, hesitates and decides its next stage. All tragedies, all triumphs, are mine, are yours." "It is a curious and difficult thing, to think that all is possible. No, probable. No, certain," I said, attempting to grasp the largeness of the thought."That nothing is improbable." "It is a comforting thought, some nights, to this version of me, now," said Pat Sheeran, and we roared on.

The little green Ford had regular front-hinged doors, like most cars, and the doors had a restraint about two-thirds of the way through their travel, so stepping out meant stepping back too, which improved Reacher’s angle. It put the engine block between him and the two guys. If they drew down immediately and started shooting from the get-go, he could hit the deck behind a bulletproof shield. If they had guns. Which was not proven.

As it was a time of war between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and as he saw the Catholics exterminate the Huguenots and the Huguenots exterminate the Catholics--all in the name of religion--he adopted a mixed belief which permitted him to be sometimes Catholic, sometimes a Huguenot. Now, he was accustomed to walk with his fowling piece on his shoulder, behind the hedges which border the roads, and when he saw a Catholic coming alone, the Protestant religion immediately prevailed in his mind. He lowered his gun in the direction of the traveler; then, when he was within ten paces of him, he commenced a conversation which almost always ended by the traveler's abandoning his purse to save his life. It goes without saying that when he saw a Huguenot coming, he felt himself filled with such ardent Catholic zeal that he could not understand how, a quarter of an hour before, he had been able to have any doubts upon the superiority of our holy religion.

The Hobo One day while strolling through the great park in Kansas City, he and his mother saw a young woman get her foot caught in the tracks at a railroad crossing. The woman’s husband was desperately trying to free her because a train was bearing down on them. The train was travelling far too quickly to stop before the crossing. As Heinlein and his mother watched the terrifying situation unfold, a hobo suddenly appeared and immediately joined the husband’s futile effort to pull the woman free. But tug and twist as they might, they could not get her foot unstuck. The train killed all three of them. In his description of the vagabond’s effort Heinlein observed that the hobo did not so much as look up to consider his own escape. Clearly, it was his intention either to save the woman or to die trying. Heinlein concluded his account of the nameless hero’s action with this comment: “This is the way a man dies,” but he then added, “And this is the way a man lives.

He borrowed $28,000 and founded a software company that produced an online city guide for the newspaper publishing industry. He sold it to Compaq for $341 million four years later. He netted $22 million from that sale and immediately plowed the profits into a new company called X.com, which would evolve into PayPal. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, from which Musk received $165 million. Flush with cash, he harnessed these funds to fulfill his dreams, creating SpaceX and Tesla Motors.

A good question is like the one Albert Einstein asked himself as a small boy—“What would you see if you were traveling on a beam of light?” That question launched the theory of relativity, E=MC2, and the atomic age. A good question is not concerned with a correct answer. A good question cannot be answered immediately. A good question challenges existing answers. A good question is one you badly want answered once you hear it, but had no inkling you cared before it was asked. A good question creates new territory of thinking. A good question reframes its own answers. A good question is the seed of innovation in science, technology, art, politics, and business. A good question is a probe, a what-if scenario. A good question skirts on the edge of what is known and not known, neither silly nor obvious. A good question cannot be predicted. A good question will be the sign of an educated mind. A good question is one that generates many other good questions. A good question may be the last job a machine will learn to do. A good question is what humans are for.

This mix of coldness and warmth produced in Einstein a wry detachment as he floated through the human aspects of his world. “My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and communities,” he reflected. “I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.

A hero is devoured by a water-monster in the West (devouring). The animal travels with him to the East (sea journey). Meanwhile, the hero lights a fire in the belly of the monster (fire-lighting), and feeling hungry, cuts himself a piece of the heart (cutting off of heart). Soon afterwards, he notices that the fish has glided on to dry land (landing); he immediately begins to cut open the animal from within (opening); then he slips out (slipping out). It was so hot in the fish’s belly that all his hair has fallen out (heat and hair). The hero may at the same time free all those who were previously devoured by the monster, and who now slip out too.6

This is textbook Bad Idea. We're driving with a stranger, no one knows where we are, and we have no way of getting in touch with anyone. This is exactly how people become statistics." "Exactly?" I asked, thinking of all the bizarre twists and turns that had led us to this place. Ben ceded the point with a sideways shrug. "Maybe not exactly. But still..." He let it go, and the cab eventually stopped at the edge of a remote, forested area. Sage got out and paid. "Everybody out!" Ben looked at me, one eyebrow raised. He was leaving the choice to me. I gave his knee a quick squeeze before I opened the door and we piled out of the car. Sage waited for the cab to drive away, then ducked onto a forest path, clearly assuming we'd follow. The path through the thick foliage was stunning in the moonlight, and I automatically released my camera from its bag. "I wish you wouldn't," Sage said without turning around. "You know I'm not one for visitors." "I'll refrain from selling the pictures to Travel and Leisure, then," I said, already snapping away. "Besides, I need something to take my mind off my feet." My shoes were still on the beach, where I'd kicked them off to dance. "Hey, I offered to carry you," Sage offered. "No, thank you." I suppose I should have been able to move swiftly and silently without my shoes, but I only managed to stab myself on something with every other footfall, giving me a sideways, hopping gait. Every few minutes Sage would hold out his arms, offering to carry me again. I grimaced and denied him each time. After what felt like about ten miles, even the photos weren't distracting enough. "How much farther?" I asked. "We're here." There was nothing in front of us but more trees. "Wow," Ben said, and I followed his eyes upward to see that several of the tree trunks were actually stilts supporting a beautifully hidden wood-and-glass cabin, set high among the branches. I was immediately charmed. "You live in a tree house," I said. I aimed my camera the façade, answering Sage's objection before he even said it. "For me, not for Architectural Digest." "Thank you," Sage said.

Now tell me. What do you remember?’ ‘What do I remember?’ I asked, confused. ‘Yes.’ ‘As a question it lacks specificity,’ I said. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said. ‘Try to answer it.’ ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose the answer is everything. I remember everything.’ ‘Really?’ he said. ‘That’s rather a large claim. Are you sure?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Give me some examples of the things you remember.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘suppose you were to name a Hall many days journey from here. Providing that I had visited it before, I could immediately tell you how to get there. I could name every Hall you would need to travel through. I could describe the notable Statues you would see on the Walls, and, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, I could tell you their positions

There is an inherent, humbling cruelty to learning how to run white water. In most other so-called "adrenaline" sports—skiing, surfing and rock climbing come to mind—one attains mastery, or the illusion of it, only after long apprenticeship, after enduring falls and tumbles, the fatigue of training previously unused muscles, the discipline of developing a new and initially awkward set of skills. Running white water is fundamentally different. With a little luck one is immediately able to travel long distances, often at great speeds, with only a rudimentary command of the sport's essential skills and about as much physical stamina as it takes to ride a bicycle downhill. At the beginning, at least, white-water adrenaline comes cheap. It's the river doing the work, of course, but like a teenager with a hot car, one forgets what the true power source is. Arrogance reigns. The river seems all smoke and mirrors, lots of bark (you hear it chortling away beneath you, crunching boulders), but not much bite. You think: Let's get on with it! Let's run this damn river! And then maybe the raft hits a drop in the river— say, a short, hidden waterfall. Or maybe a wave reaches up and flicks the boat on its side as easily as a horse swatting flies with its tail. Maybe you're thrown suddenly into the center of the raft, and the floor bounces back and punts you overboard. Maybe you just fall right off the side of the raft so fast you don't realize what's happening. It doesn't matter. The results are the same. The world goes dark. The river— the word hardly does justice to the churning mess enveloping you— the river tumbles you like so much laundry. It punches the air from your lungs. You're helpless. Swimming is a joke. You know for a fact that you are drowning. For the first time you understand the strength of the insouciant monster that has swallowed you. Maybe you travel a hundred feet before you surface (the current is moving that fast). And another hundred feet—just short of a truly fearsome plunge, one that will surely kill you— before you see the rescue lines. You're hauled to shore wearing a sheepish grin and a look in your eye that is equal parts confusion, respect, and raw fear. That is River Lesson Number One. Everyone suffers it. And every time you get the least bit cocky, every time you think you have finally figured out what the river is all about, you suffer it all over again.

The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasonings, is, that the objects, of which we have no experience, resemble those, of which we have; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable; and that where there is an opposition of arguments, we ought to give the preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations. But though, in proceeding by this rule, we readily reject any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary degree; yet in advancing farther, the mind observes not always the same rule; but when anything is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous, it rather the more readily admits of such a fact, upon account of that very circumstance, which ought to destroy all its authority. The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events, from which it is derived. And this goes so far, that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately, nor can believe those miraculous events, of which they are informed, yet love to partake of the satisfaction at secondhand or by rebound, and place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others. 17 With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travelers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; and human testimony, in these circumstances, loses all pretensions to authority. A religionist may be an enthusiast, and imagine he sees what has no reality: He may know his narrative to be false, and yet persevere in it, with the best intentions in the world, for the sake of promoting so holy a cause: Or even where this delusion has not place, vanity, excited by so strong a temptation, operates on him more powerfully than on the rest of mankind in any other circumstances; and self-interest with equal force. His auditors may not have, and commonly have not, sufficient judgment to canvass his evidence: What judgment they have, they renounce by principle, in these sublime and mysterious subjects: Or if they were ever so willing to employ it, passion and a heated imagination disturb the regularity of its operations. Their credulity increases his impudence: And his impudence overpowers their credulity.

By human standards, I know far more than the dogs do. But Luke and June can do what I cannot. In a millisecond, forty feet from just encountered range Rambouillets the dogs see, big as a Wall Drug bill board, which sheep is the leader. They immediately understand the complex social order in this particular miniflock. they know whether the sheep are ready to fight, split up, or break for the tall timber, because the sheep tell them what they mean to do. For the sake of that instant, for that millisecond, that's why the Mister and Missus have put so many miles beneath their paws. Luke and June have developed an all-sheep, all-breed, all-terrain method that doesn't give them an edge over dogs who've been working these sheep on this terrain all their lives, but does help them transmute the novel into the manageable

Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show— Fantoccini, Marionette Circus, and Your Plain Meadow Carnival. Arriving Immediately! Here on Display, one of our many attractions: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD! Halloway’s eyes leaped to the poster on the inside of the window. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD! And back to the cold long block of ice. It was such a block of ice as he remembered from traveling magician’s shows when he was a boy, when the local ice company contributed a chunk of winter in which, for 12 hours on end, frost maidens lay embedded, on display while people watched and comedies toppled down the raw white screen and coming attractions came and went and at last the pale ladies slid forth all rimed, chipped free by perspiring sorcerers to be led off smiling into the dark behind the curtains

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a “lone traveler” and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude—feelings which increase with the years. One becomes sharply aware, but without regret, of the limits of mutual understanding and consonance with other people. No doubt, such a person loses some of his innocence and unconcern; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations.

A man who is awake in the open field at night or who wanders over silent paths experiences the world differently than by day. Nighness vanishes, and with it distance; everything is equally far and near, close by us and yet mysteriously remote. Space loses its measures. There are whispers and sounds, and we do not know where or what they are. Our feelings too are peculiarly ambiguous. There is a strangeness about what is intimate and dear, and a seductive charm about the frightening. There is no longer a distinction between the lifeless and the living, everything is animate and soulless, vigilant and asleep at once. What the day brings on and makes recognizable gradually, emerges out of the dark with no intermediary stages. The encounter suddenly confronts us, as if by a miracle: What is the thing we suddenly see - an enchanted bride, a monster, or merely a log? Everything teases the traveller, puts on a familiar face and the next moment is utterly strange, suddenly terrifies with awful gestures and immediately resumes a familiar and harmless posture. Danger lurks everywhere. Out of the dark jaws of the night which gape beside the traveller, any moment a robber may emerge without warning, or some eerie terror, or the uneasy ghost of a dead man - who knows what may once have happened at that very spot? Perhaps mischievous apparitions of the fog seek to entice him from the right path into the desert where horror dwells, where wanton witches dance their rounds which no man ever leaves alive. Who can protect him, guide him aright, give him good counsel? The spirit of Night itself, the genius of its kindliness, its enchantment, its resourcefulness, and its profound wisdom. She is indeed the mother of all mystery. The weary she wraps in slumber, delivers from care, and she causes dreams to play about their souls. Her protection is enjoyed by the un-happy and persecuted as well as by the cunning, whom her ambivalent shadows offer a thousand devices and contrivances. With her veil she also shields lovers, and her darkness keeps ward over all caresses, all charms hidden and revealed. Music is the true language of her mystery - the enchanting voice which sounds for eyes that are closed and in which heaven and earth, the near and the far, man and nature, present and past, appear to make themselves understood. But the darkness of night which so sweetly invites to slumber also bestows new vigilance and illumination upon the spirit. It makes it more perceptive, more acute, more enterprising. Knowledge flares up, or descends like a shooting star - rare, precious, even magical knowledge. And so night, which can terrify the solitary man and lead him astray, can also be his friend, his helper, his counsellor.

Of all the plants, trees have the largest surface area covered in leaves. For every square yard of forest, 27 square yards of leaves and needles blanket the crowns. Part of every rainfall is intercepted in the canopy and immediately evaporates again. In addition, each summer, trees use up to 8,500 cubic yards of water per square mile, which they release into the air through transpiration. This water vapor creates new clouds that travel farther inland to release their rain. As the cycle continues, water reaches even the most remote areas. This water pump works so well that the downpours in some large areas of the world, such as the Amazon basin, are almost as heavy thousands of miles inland as they are on the coast. There are a few requirements for the pump to work: from the ocean to the farthest corner, there must be forest. And, most importantly, the coastal forests are the foundations for this system. If they do not exist, the system falls apart. Scientists credit Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia for the discovery of these unbelievably important connections. They studied different forests around the world and everywhere the results were the same. It didn't matter if they were studying a rain forest or the Siberian taiga, it was always the trees that were transferring life-giving moisture into land-locked interiors. Researchers also discovered that the whole process breaks down if coastal forests are cleared. It's a bit like if you were using an electrical pump to distribute water and you pulled the intake pipe out of the pond. The fallout is already apparent in Brazil, where the Amazonian rain forest is steadily drying out. Central Europe is within the 400-mile zone and, therefore, close enough to the intake area. Thankfully, there are still forests here, even if they are greatly diminished.

A while back a young woman from another state came to live with some of her relatives in the Salt Lake City area for a few weeks. On her first Sunday she came to church dressed in a simple, nice blouse and knee-length skirt set off with a light, button-up sweater. She wore hose and dress shoes, and her hair was combed simply but with care. Her overall appearance created an impression of youthful grace. Unfortunately, she immediately felt out of place. It seemed like all the other young women her age or near her age were dressed in casual skirts, some rather distant from the knee; tight T-shirt-like tops that barely met the top of their skirts at the waist (some bare instead of barely); no socks or stockings; and clunky sneakers or flip-flops. One would have hoped that seeing the new girl, the other girls would have realized how inappropriate their manner of dress was for a chapel and for the Sabbath day and immediately changed for the better. Sad to say, however, they did not, and it was the visitor who, in order to fit in, adopted the fashion (if you can call it that) of her host ward. It is troubling to see this growing trend that is not limited to young women but extends to older women, to men, and to young men as well. . . . I was shocked to see what the people of this other congregation wore to church. There was not a suit or tie among the men. They appeared to have come from or to be on their way to the golf course. It was hard to spot a woman wearing a dress or anything other than very casual pants or even shorts. Had I not known that they were coming to the school for church meetings, I would have assumed that there was some kind of sporting event taking place. The dress of our ward members compared very favorably to this bad example, but I am beginning to think that we are no longer quite so different as more and more we seem to slide toward that lower standard. We used to use the phrase “Sunday best.” People understood that to mean the nicest clothes they had. The specific clothing would vary according to different cultures and economic circumstances, but it would be their best. It is an affront to God to come into His house, especially on His holy day, not groomed and dressed in the most careful and modest manner that our circumstances permit. Where a poor member from the hills of Peru must ford a river to get to church, the Lord surely will not be offended by the stain of muddy water on his white shirt. But how can God not be pained at the sight of one who, with all the clothes he needs and more and with easy access to the chapel, nevertheless appears in church in rumpled cargo pants and a T-shirt? Ironically, it has been my experience as I travel around the world that members of the Church with the least means somehow find a way to arrive at Sabbath meetings neatly dressed in clean, nice clothes, the best they have, while those who have more than enough are the ones who may appear in casual, even slovenly clothing. Some say dress and hair don’t matter—it’s what’s inside that counts. I believe that truly it is what’s inside a person that counts, but that’s what worries me. Casual dress at holy places and events is a message about what is inside a person. It may be pride or rebellion or something else, but at a minimum it says, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the difference between the sacred and the profane.” In that condition they are easily drawn away from the Lord. They do not appreciate the value of what they have. I worry about them. Unless they can gain some understanding and capture some feeling for sacred things, they are at risk of eventually losing all that matters most. You are Saints of the great latter-day dispensation—look the part.

Little Brother, an aspiring painter, saved up all his money and went to France, to surround himself with beauty and inspiration. He lived on the cheap, painted every day, visited museums, traveled to picturesque locations, bravely spoke to everyone he met, and showed his work to anyone who would look at it. One afternoon, Little Brother struck up a conversation in a café with a group of charming young people, who turned out to be some species of fancy aristocrats. The charming young aristocrats took a liking to Little Brother and invited him to a party that weekend in a castle in the Loire Valley. They promised Little Brother that this was going to be the most fabulous party of the year. It would be attended by the rich, by the famous, and by several crowned heads of Europe. Best of all, it was to be a masquerade ball, where nobody skimped on the costumes. It was not to be missed. Dress up, they said, and join us! Excited, Little Brother worked all week on a costume that he was certain would be a showstopper. He scoured Paris for materials and held back neither on the details nor the audacity of his creation. Then he rented a car and drove to the castle, three hours from Paris. He changed into his costume in the car and ascended the castle steps. He gave his name to the butler, who found him on the guest list and politely welcomed him in. Little Brother entered the ballroom, head held high. Upon which he immediately realized his mistake. This was indeed a costume party—his new friends had not misled him there—but he had missed one detail in translation: This was a themed costume party. The theme was “a medieval court.” And Little Brother was dressed as a lobster. All around him, the wealthiest and most beautiful people of Europe were attired in gilded finery and elaborate period gowns, draped in heirloom jewels, sparkling with elegance as they waltzed to a fine orchestra. Little Brother, on the other hand, was wearing a red leotard, red tights, red ballet slippers, and giant red foam claws. Also, his face was painted red. This is the part of the story where I must tell you that Little Brother was over six feet tall and quite skinny—but with the long waving antennae on his head, he appeared even taller. He was also, of course, the only American in the room. He stood at the top of the steps for one long, ghastly moment. He almost ran away in shame. Running away in shame seemed like the most dignified response to the situation. But he didn’t run. Somehow, he found his resolve. He’d come this far, after all. He’d worked tremendously hard to make this costume, and he was proud of it. He took a deep breath and walked onto the dance floor. He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium. This is how you must do it, people.

Don't listen to Hassan i Sabbah," they will tell you. "He wants to take your body and all pleasures of the body away from you. Listen to us. We are serving The Garden of Delights Immortality Cosmic Consciousness The Best Ever In Drug Kicks. And love love love in slop buckets. How does that sound to you boys? Better than Hassan i Sabbah and his cold windy bodiless rock? Right?" At the immediate risk of finding myself the most unpopular character of all fiction—and history is fiction—I must say this: "Bring together state of news—Inquire onward from state to doer—Who monopolized Immortality? Who monopolized Cosmic Consciousness? Who monopolized Love Sex and Dream? Who monopolized Life Time and Fortune? Who took from you what is yours? Now they will give it all back? Did they ever give anything away for nothing? Did they ever give any more than they had to give? Did they not always take back what they gave when possible and it always was? Listen: Their Garden Of Delights is a terminal sewer—I have been at some pains to map this area of terminal sewage in the so called pornographic sections of Naked Lunch and Soft Machine—Their Immortality Cosmic Consciousness and Love is second-run grade-B shit—Their drugs are poison designed to beam in Orgasm Death and Nova Ovens—Stay out of the Garden of Delights—It is a man-eating trap that ends in green goo—Throw back their ersatz Immortality—It will fall apart before you can get out of The Big Store—Flush their drug kicks down the drain—They are poisoning and monopolizing the hallucinogen drugs—learn to make it without any chemical corn—All that they offer is a screen to cover retreat from the colony they have so disgracefully mismanaged. To cover travel arrangements so they will never have to pay the constituents they have betrayed and sold out. Once these arrangements are complete they will blow the place up behind them.

In England, it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving school, and without sending them to any university. Our young people, it is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. A young man, who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at one-and-twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went abroad; and at that age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in three or four years. In the course of his travels, he generally acquires some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of my serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most previous years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control of his parents and relations, every useful habit, which the earlier parts of his education might have had some tendency to form in him, instead of being riveted and confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or effaced. Nothing but the discredit into which the universities are allowing themselves to fall, could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a practice as that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending his son abroad, a father delivers himself, at least for some time, from so disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed, neglected, and going to ruin before his eyes. Such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for education. Different plans and different institutions for education seem to have taken place in other ages and nations.

Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds. More than $4 million of government largesse flows each year into the Colorado City public school district—which, according to the Phoenix New Times, “is operated primarily for the financial benefit of the FLDS Church and for the personal enrichment of FLDS school district leaders.” Reporter John Dougherty determined that school administrators have “plundered the district’s treasury by running up thousands of dollars in personal expenses on district credit cards, purchasing expensive vehicles for their personal use and engaging in extensive travel. The spending spree culminated in December [2000], when the district purchased a $220,000 Cessna 210 airplane to facilitate trips by district personnel to cities across Arizona.” Colorado City has received $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave its streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. Immediately south of the city limits, the federal government built a $2.8 million airport that serves almost no one beyond the fundamentalist community. Thirty-three percent of the town’s residents receive food stamps—compared to the state average of 4.7 percent. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid. “Uncle Rulon justifies all that assistance from the wicked government by explaining that really the money is coming from the Lord,” says DeLoy Bateman. “We’re taught that it’s the Lord’s way of manipulating the system to take care of his chosen people.” Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act.

The extraordinary value of the I Ching is that it reveals the secrets of dynamic natural law. Working with its changes opens up access to the middle level of the Positive Paradigm Wheel, the “e” energy layer of Einstein's Unified Theory. This middle level serves as mediating, two-directional gate-keeper between the ever-changing surface rim and the universal, timeless center. You can't get from here to there, except through the middle layer which, in Western thinking, is effectively taboo, buried in the inaccessible "unconscious." To the extent that natural law is a blind spot in the prevailing, linear and exclusively empirical paradigm, we are left powerless to move beyond the surface level of experience. The realm of light and conscience which rests beyond, on the far side of the dynamic energy level, remains functionally inaccessible. Moral codes promoted by religionists or politicians are sometimes equated with conscience. But they're no substitute for direct experience. Only by becoming intelligently competent in managing the subtle energies of the middle level is it possible to travel further inwards for the immediate, personal experience of inner light. When the middle level becomes clogged with painful memories, negative emotions and socially taboo urges, it becomes a barrier to deeper knowing. The Book of Change is indispensable as a tool for restoring the unnecessarily "unconscious" to conscious awareness, so that the levels of human potential can be linked and unified. In Positive Paradigm context, survivors who prevail in dangerous times aren't those with the most material wealth, possessions or political power. They're the ones who've successfully navigated the middle realm, reached the far shore of enlightenment and returned to the surface with their new information intact. Those who succeed in linking the levels of experience are genius-leaders in whatever fields they choose to engage. They're the fortunate ones who've acquired the inner wealth necessary to both hear the inner voice of conscience and act on the guidance they receive.

Snake,” Wyatt announced. “A big black one.” “There’s dozens of them,” Royce explained. “Where?” Alric asked. “Mostly behind you on the walls.” “What?” the king said, aghast. “Why didn’t you say something?” “Knowing would only make traveling slower.” “Are they poisonous?” Mauvin asked. They could all see the silhouetted shoulders of Royce’s shadow on the far wall shrug. “I demand you inform me of such things in future!” Alric declared. “Do you want to know about the giant millipedes, then too?” “Are you joking?” “Royce doesn’t make jokes,” Arista told him as she looked around, anxiously hugging herself. Immediately her robe brightened and she spotted two snakes on the walls, but they were a safe distance away. “He must be joking,” Alric muttered quietly. “I don’t see any.” “You aren’t looking up,” the thief said. Arista did not want to. Some instinct, a tiny voice, warned her to fight the impulse, but in the end she just could not help herself. On the low ceiling, illuminated brightly by the robe, slithered a mass of wormlike bugs with an uncountable number of hairlike feet. Each was nearly five inches in length and close to the width of a man’s finger. There were so many that they swarmed over each other until it was hard to tell if the ceiling was rock at all. Arista felt a chill run down her back. She clenched her teeth, forced her eyes to the floor, and focused on walking forward as quickly as possible. She promptly passed Alric and Mauvin, both moving quicker than normal. She reached Royce, who stood outside the corridor on a boulder at the entrance to a larger passage. “I guess I was wrong. Looks like I should have told you earlier,” Royce said, watching them race forward. “Are there…?” she asked, pointing upward without looking. Royce glanced up and shook his head. “Good,” she replied. “And please, if Alric wants to know these things, fine, but don’t tell me. I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing they were there.” She shivered. Everyone scurried out of the corridor except Myron, who lingered, staring up at the ceiling and smiling in fascination. “There are millions.

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

When the service began, I was not surprised to hear the angelic hosts join with the worship team. In fact, several people in the church testified to hearing the angels. After the service, we traveled to Tim Horton’s for a late dinner. We returned to Botwood to find Margaret waiting for us, and she kindly directed us to our separate rooms for the night. The Holy Spirit was still hovering very close to me, and as soon as the door closed behind my host, the Lord began to speak to me. I immediately began to pray and worship the Lord. Once again, the Lord had me begin reading from Revelation 4. It was about 3:30 A.M. when I fell into a peaceful sleep praying in the Spirit. I awoke to the sound of the Lord’s voice speaking to me. “Kevin, get up; it’s time to go to work.” I opened my eyes and looked around the room. My mind began to race. I looked at the clock, and it was just 5:00 A.M. I had only been asleep for a short while. I sleepily said, “Lord, what could you possibly want me to do at this hour?” “Walk downstairs and prophesy to Margaret,” He said. I protested, “Lord, I don’t even know Margaret.” He said, “Don’t worry. I know her. Just say what I tell you to say.” “But Lord, It’s only 5 A.M., and nobody is awake at 5 A.M.” He answered, “Margaret is awake. She is in the kitchen. She is praying and having tea and a scone. Go to her now.” In my natural mind this seemed totally insane! Me? Prophesy? Suddenly the anointing and presence of the Lord intensified, and I found myself dressed. The next thing I knew I was walking down the hallway toward the stairs. All at once, there was a still, small voice speaking into my left ear. I was being told many things about Margaret. I was hearing the secrets of her heart. When I walked into the kitchen, she was there. She was having tea and a scone. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me that she was praying. PROPHESYING ABOUT ANGELS I said, “Margaret, I think God wants me to tell you something!” Her eyes grew as big as saucers as I launched into a litany of words about angels. I was as shocked as she was! I was able to speak in great detail about angels to her. “Your angel is very precious to you, and it has a name; your angel’s name is Charity. Your very nature is much like your angel. You are full of the love of God. The Lord is going to open your eyes to see your angel again. It is going to happen soon.” Somewhere in the middle of this heavenly utterance Margaret burst into tears! Then something else rather extraordinary began to happen. Gold dust began to rain down into the kitchen! Gold started to cover the kitchen table and our faces. After a few minutes, Margaret regained her composure, and I took a seat at the table with her. She shared with me her journey and how God had always ministered to her using the realm of angels as confirmation of everything that I had just spoken to her. We continued to fellowship together while enjoying tea and scones for the next hour and a half. Margaret gave me a copy of the book, Good Morning, Holy Spirit. Later, I took this Benny Hinn book along with me into the wilderness of Newfoundland where I had a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit in a tiny cabin. Margaret and I were joined by two friends for breakfast, and the Lord continued to move. Jennifer received the revelation that she was supposed to give an angel’s feather she had found to our hostess.

THE PAYOFF IS EXTRAORDINARY I was giving a seminar in Detroit a couple of years ago when a young man, about thirty years old, came up to me at the break. He told me that he had first come to my seminar and heard my “3 Percent Rule” about ten years ago. At that time, he had dropped out of college, was living at home, driving an old car, and earning about $20,000 a year as an office-to-office salesman. He decided after the seminar that he was going to apply the 3 Percent Rule to himself, and he did so immediately. He calculated 3 percent of his income of $20,000 would be $600. He began to buy sales books and read them every day. He invested in two audio-learning programs on sales and time management. He took one sales seminar. He invested the entire $600 in himself, in learning to become better. That year, his income went from $20,000 to $30,000, an increase of 50 percent. He said he could trace the increase with great accuracy to the things he had learned and applied from the books he had read and the audio programs he had listened to. So the following year, he invested 3 percent of $30,000, a total of $900, back into himself. That year, his income jumped from $30,000 to $50,000. He began to think, “If my income goes up at 50 percent per year by investing 3 percent back into myself, what would happen if I invested 5 percent? KEEP RAISING THE BAR The next year, he invested 5 percent of his income, $2,500, into his learning program. He took more seminars, traveled cross-country to a conference, bought more audio- and video-learning programs, and even hired a part-time coach. And that year, his income doubled to $100,000. After that, like playing Texas Hold-Em, he decided to go “all in” and raise his investment into himself to 10 percent per year. He told me that he had been doing this every since. I asked him, “How has investing 10 percent of your income back into yourself affected your income?” He smiled and said, “I passed a million dollars in personal income last year. And I still invest 10 percent of my income in myself every single year.” I said, “That’s a lot of money. How do you manage to spend that much money on personal development?” He said, “It’s hard! I have to start spending money on myself in January in order to invest it all by the end of the year. I have an image coach, a sales coach, and a speaking coach. I have a large library in my home with every book, audio program, and video program on sales and personal success I can find. I attend conferences, both nationally and internationally in my field. And my income keeps going up and up every year.

Dr. Hobson (with Dr. Robert McCarley) made history by proposing the first serious challenge to Freud’s theory of dreams, called the “activation synthesis theory.” In 1977, they proposed the idea that dreams originate from random neural firings in the brain stem, which travel up to the cortex, which then tries to make sense of these random signals. The key to dreams lies in nodes found in the brain stem, the oldest part of the brain, which squirts out special chemicals, called adrenergics, that keep us alert. As we go to sleep, the brain stem activates another system, the cholinergic, which emits chemicals that put us in a dream state. As we dream, cholinergic neurons in the brain stem begin to fire, setting off erratic pulses of electrical energy called PGO (pontine-geniculate-occipital) waves. These waves travel up the brain stem into the visual cortex, stimulating it to create dreams. Cells in the visual cortex begin to resonate hundreds of times per second in an irregular fashion, which is perhaps responsible for the sometimes incoherent nature of dreams. This system also emits chemicals that decouple parts of the brain involved with reason and logic. The lack of checks coming from the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices, along with the brain becoming extremely sensitive to stray thoughts, may account for the bizarre, erratic nature of dreams. Studies have shown that it is possible to enter the cholinergic state without sleep. Dr. Edgar Garcia-Rill of the University of Arkansas claims that meditation, worrying, or being placed in an isolation tank can induce this cholinergic state. Pilots and drivers facing the monotony of a blank windshield for many hours may also enter this state. In his research, he has found that schizophrenics have an unusually large number of cholinergic neurons in their brain stem, which may explain some of their hallucinations. To make his studies more efficient, Dr. Allan Hobson had his subjects put on a special nightcap that can automatically record data during a dream. One sensor connected to the nightcap registers the movements of a person’s head (because head movements usually occur when dreams end). Another sensor measures movements of the eyelids (because REM sleep causes eyelids to move). When his subjects wake up, they immediately record what they dreamed about, and the information from the nightcap is fed into a computer. In this way, Dr. Hobson has accumulated a vast amount of information about dreams. So what is the meaning of dreams? I asked him. He dismisses what he calls the “mystique of fortune-cookie dream interpretation.” He does not see any hidden message from the cosmos in dreams. Instead, he believes that after the PGO waves surge from the brain stem into the cortical areas, the cortex is trying to make sense of these erratic signals and winds up creating a narrative out of them: a dream.

Marcus released the countess as if he had been burned. His first reaction was a piercing relief that Lillian was still alive. However, the relief was followed immediately by the awareness that she was far from safe. In light of St. Vincent’s need of a fortune, it made perfect sense for him to abduct Lillian. Marcus turned from his mother, never wanting to look at her again, unable to bring himself to speak to her. His gaze locked with Simon Hunt’s. Predictably, Hunt was already making rapid calculations. “He’ll take her to Gretna Green, of course,” Hunt murmured, “and they’ll have to travel east to the main road in Hertfordshire. He won’t risk traveling the back ways and getting mired in mud, or having the wheels damaged from broken road. From Hertfordshire it will be approximately forty-five hours to Scotland… and at a speed of ten miles per hour, with occasional stops for fresh relay horses…” “You’ll never overtake them,” the countess cried with a cackling laugh. “I told you I would have my way, Westcliff!” “Oh, shut up, you evil hag!” cried Daisy Bowman impatiently from the doorway, her eyes huge in her pale face. “Lord Westcliff, shall I run to the stables and tell them to saddle a horse?” “Two horses,” Simon Hunt said resolutely. “I’m going with him.” “Which ones—” “Ebony and Yasmin,” Marcus replied. They were his best Arabians, bred for speed over long distance. They were not as lightning-fast as thoroughbreds, but they would endure a punishing pace for hours, traveling at least three times as fast as St. Vincent’s coach. Daisy disappeared in a flash, and Marcus turned to his sister. “See that the countess is gone by the time I return,” he said curtly. “Pack whatever she needs, and get her off the estate.” “Where do you wish me to send her?” Livia asked, pale but composed. “I don’t give a damn, so long as she knows not to return.” Realizing that she was being banished, and most likely exiled, the countess rose from her chair. “I will not be disposed of in this manner! I won’t have it, my lord!” “And tell the countess,” Marcus said to Livia, “that if the slightest harm comes to Miss Bowman, she had better pray that I never find her.” Marcus strode from the room, shoving through a small crowd that had gathered in the hallway. Simon Hunt followed, pausing only to murmur briefly to Annabelle and press a kiss to her forehead. She stared after him with an anxious frown, biting her lip to keep from calling after him. After a lengthy pause, the countess was heard to mutter, “It matters not what becomes of me. I am content in the knowledge that I have prevented him from befouling the family lineage.” Livia turned to give her mother a half-pitying, half-contemptuous glance. “Marcus never fails,” she said softly. “Most of his childhood was spent learning to overcome impossible odds. And now that Marcus has finally found someone worth fighting for… do you really think he would let anything stop him?

to stay! It was another answer to prayer, and I graciously accepted her offer. When the service began, I was not surprised to hear the angelic hosts join with the worship team. In fact, several people in the church testified to hearing the angels. After the service, we traveled to Tim Horton’s for a late dinner. We returned to Botwood to find Margaret waiting for us, and she kindly directed us to our separate rooms for the night. The Holy Spirit was still hovering very close to me, and as soon as the door closed behind my host, the Lord began to speak to me. I immediately began to pray and worship the Lord. Once again, the Lord had me begin reading from Revelation 4. It was about 3:30 A.M. when I fell into a peaceful sleep praying in the Spirit. I awoke to the sound of the Lord’s voice speaking to me. “Kevin, get up; it’s time to go to work.” I opened my eyes and looked around the room. My mind began to race. I looked at the clock, and it was just 5:00 A.M. I had only been asleep for a short while. I sleepily said, “Lord, what could you possibly want me to do at this hour?” “Walk downstairs and prophesy to Margaret,” He said. I protested, “Lord, I don’t even know Margaret.” He said, “Don’t worry. I know her. Just say what I tell you to say.” “But Lord, It’s only 5 A.M., and nobody is awake at 5 A.M.” He answered, “Margaret is awake. She is in the kitchen. She is praying and having tea and a scone. Go to her now.” In my natural mind this seemed totally insane! Me? Prophesy? Suddenly the anointing and presence of the Lord intensified, and I found myself dressed. The next thing I knew I was walking down the hallway toward the stairs. All at once, there was a still, small voice speaking into my left ear. I was being told many things about Margaret. I was hearing the secrets of her heart. When I walked into the kitchen, she was there. She was having tea and a scone. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me that she was praying. PROPHESYING ABOUT ANGELS I said, “Margaret, I think God wants me to tell you something!” Her eyes grew as big as saucers as I launched into a litany of words about angels. I was as shocked as she was! I was able to speak in great detail about angels to her. “Your angel is very precious to you, and it has a name; your angel’s name is Charity. Your very nature is much like your angel. You are full of the love of God. The Lord is going to open your eyes to see your angel again. It is going to happen soon.” Somewhere in the middle of this heavenly utterance Margaret burst into tears! Then something else rather extraordinary began to happen. Gold dust began to rain down into the kitchen! Gold started to cover the kitchen table and our faces. After a few minutes, Margaret regained her composure, and I took a seat at the table with her. She shared with me her journey and how God had always ministered to her using the realm of angels as confirmation of everything that I had just spoken to her. We continued to fellowship together while enjoying tea and scones for the next hour and a half. Margaret gave me a copy of the book, Good Morning, Holy Spirit. Later, I took this Benny Hinn book along with me into the wilderness of Newfoundland where I had a life-changing encounter with the Holy Spirit in a tiny cabin. Margaret and I were joined by two friends for breakfast, and the Lord continued to move. Jennifer received the revelation that she was supposed to give an angel’s feather she had found to our hostess.

Remarkably, we still have a ‘wild’ Indian’s account of his capture and incarceration. In 1878, when he was an old man, a Kamia called Janitin told an interviewer: I and two of my relatives went down ... to the beach ... we did no harm to anyone on the road, and ... we thought of nothing more than catching and drying clams in order to carry them to our village. While we were doing this, we saw two men on horseback coming rapidly towards us; my relatives were immediately afraid and they fled with all speed, hiding themselves in a very dense willow grove ... As soon as I saw myself alone, I also became afraid ... and ran to the forest ... but already it was too late, because in a moment they overtook me and lassoed and dragged me for a long distance, wounding me much with the branches over which they dragged me, pulling me lassoed as I was with their horses running; after this they roped me with my arms behind and carried me off to the Mission of San Miguel, making me travel almost at a run in order to keep up with their horses, and when I stopped a little to catch my wind, they lashed me with the lariats that they carried, making me understand by signs that I should hurry; after much travelling in this manner, they diminished the pace and lashed me in order that I would always travel at the pace of the horses. When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week; the father [a Dominican priest] made me go to his habitation and he talked to me by means of an interpreter, telling me that he would make me a Christian, and he told me many things that I did not understand, and Cunnur, the interpreter, told me that I should do as the father told me, because now I was not going to be set free, and it would go very bad with me if I did not consent in it. They gave me atole de mayz[corn gruel] to eat which I did not like because I was not accustomed to that food; but there was nothing else to eat. One day they threw water on my head and gave me salt to eat, and with this the interpreter told me that I was now Christian and that I was called Jesús: I knew nothing of this, and I tolerated it all because in the end I was a poor Indian and did not have recourse but to conform myself and tolerate the things they did with me. The following day after my baptism, they took me to work with the other Indians, and they put me to cleaning a milpa [cornfield] of maize; since I did not know how to manage the hoe that they gave me, after hoeing a little, I cut my foot and could not continue working with it, but I was put to pulling out the weeds by hand, and in this manner I did not finish the task that they gave me. In the afternoon they lashed me for not finishing the job, and the following day the same thing happened as on the previous day. Every day they lashed me unjustly because I did not finish what I did not know how to do, and thus I existed for many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox; there they seized me by lasso as on the first occasion, and they carried me off to the mission torturing me on the road. After we arrived, the father passed along the corridor of the house, and he ordered that they fasten me to the stake and castigate me; they lashed me until I lost consciousness, and I did not regain consciousness for many hours afterwards. For several days I could not raise myself from the floor where they had laid me, and I still have on my shoulders the marks of the lashes which they gave me then.

For abolitionists, who advocated the immediate emancipation of all slaves, and free-soilers, who simply opposed the spread of slavery into the western territories, the existence of such a group proved the destructive effect of slavery on social morals and human industry and the inordinate economic power of the planter elite. It also served as an implicit warning of the disastrous consequences of the spread of slavery into nonslaveholding regions and its debilitating effect on the work ethic of otherwise stalwart white farmers. For slave-holders, particularly those at the apex of southern society, the idleness of rural working-class whites justified the “peculiar institution” and made clear the need for a planter-led economic and social hierarchy. Planter D. R. Hundley wrote, for example, that “poor whites” were “the laziest two-legged animals that walk erect on the face of the earth . . . [and exhibited] a natural stupidity or dullness of intellect that almost surpasses belief.” To abolitionists and proslavery ideologues alike, therefore, southern poor whites utterly lacked industry, intelligence, social propriety, and honor, the essential ingredients for political and social equality and thus should not be trusted with political decision-making.7 Northern and southern middle- to upper-class commentators perceived this class of people as so utterly degraded that they challenged their assertion of “whiteness,” the one claim southern working-class whites had to political equality, “normative” status, and social superiority to free and enslaved blacks. Like Byrd and the author of “The Carolina Sand-Hillers,” journalists and travel writers repeatedly compared “poor whites” unfavorably to other supposedly inferior people of color, be they enslaved blacks, Indians, or even Mexican peasants. Through a variety of arguments, including genetic inferiority, excessive interbreeding with “nonwhites,” and environmental factors, such as the destructive influences of the southern climate, rampant disease, and a woefully inadequate diet, these writers asserted that “poor whites” were neither truly “white” nor clearly “nonwhite” but instead, a separate “‘Cracker’ race” in all ways so debased that they had no capacity for social advancement. This attitude is clear in an 1866 article from the Boston Daily Advertiser that proclaimed that this social class had reached depths of “[s]uch filthy poverty, such foul ignorance, such idiotic imbecility” that they could never be truly civilized. “[T]ime and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood,” the author concluded, “but I almost doubt if it will be possible to ever lift this ‘white trash’ into respectability.”8 Contempt for working-class whites was almost as strong among African Americans as among middle-class and elite whites. Enslaved African Americans invented derogatory terms containing explicit versions of “whiteness” such as “(poor) white trash” and “poor buckra” (a derivative form of the West African word for “white man”). Although relations between slaves and non-elite southern whites were complex, many slaves deeply resented the role of poor whites as overseers and patrol riders and adopted their owners’ view that elite southern planters were socially and morally superior. Many also believed that blacks, enslaved and free, formed a middle layer of social respectability between the planter aristocracy at the top of the social system and the “poor whites” at the bottom. The construction of a “poor white” and “white trash” social and cultural category thus allowed black slaves to carve out a space of social superiority, as well as permitted the white planter elite to justify enormous economic and social inequality among whites in a supposedly democratic society.9