Innocent Eyes Of A Child Quotes

It was queer how sometimes a child's innocent eyes can see things that grown men are blind to.

My child, I know you're not a child But I still see you running wild Between those flowering trees. Your sparkling dreams, your silver laugh Your wishes to the stars above Are just my memories. And in your eyes the ocean And in your eyes the sea The waters frozen over With your longing to be free. Yesterday you'd awoken To a world incredibly old. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You had to kill this child, I know. To break the arrows and the bow To shed your skin and change. The trees are flowering no more There's blood upon the tiles floor This place is dark and strange. I see you standing in the storm Holding the curse of youth Each of you with your story Each of you with your truth. Some words will never be spoken Some stories will never be told. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. I didn't say the world was good. I hoped by now you understood Why I could never lie. I didn't promise you a thing. Don't ask my wintervoice for spring Just spread your wings and fly. Though in the hidden garden Down by the green green lane The plant of love grows next to The tree of hate and pain. So take my tears as a token. They'll keep you warm in the cold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. You've lived too long among us To leave without a trace You've lived too short to understand A thing about this place. Some of you just sit there smoking And some are already sold. This is the age you are broken Or turned into gold. This is the age you are broken or turned into gold.

Mark whirled on them. His eyes were blind, unseeing. “You bring the twins in front of me and you kill them over and over. My Ty, he doesn’t understand why I can’t save him. You bring me Dru and when she laughs to see the fairytale castle, all ringed round with hedges, you throw her against the thorns until their pierce her small body. And you bid me wash in Octavian’s blood for the blood of an innocent child is magic under the Hill.

See the world through the eyes of your inner child. The eyes that sparkle in awe and amazement as they see love, magic and mystery in the most ordinary things.

I saw something I could never forget. I saw lifetimes of acknowledgement, fear, wisdom, questioning, and understanding in a child's eye. It was the worst thing I would ever witness.

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. . . . No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you. Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today—and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us—they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.

When a man possesses the innocence of a child, we call him a fool. When a child possesses the cunning of a man, we call him an abomination. As with love, knowledge has its seasons.

You're watching me, princess." His soft lips spread into an appreciative smile. "People might get the wrong idea." "What, that I actually like you now?" I tease. He shakes his head and leans toward me. "No, that you're trying to see past me to get an eyeful of Benson." ------------------------------------------- I shift my gaze to the board and fix an innocent look on my face. "What makes you think that's the WRONG idea?" Quince leans even closer and says, "Because you came back for me.

Lift up your eyes from your books, from your past, from your hurts and look upon all people with love, because when you look into another’s eyes and see innocence, you find it in yourself.

In a way he made me think of a child doll, with briliant faintly red-brown glass eyes - a doll that had been found in an attic. I wanted to polish him with kisses, clean him up, make him evevn more radiant than he was. "That's what you always want," he said softly... "When you found me under Les Innocents," he said, "you wanted to bathe me with perfume and dress me in velvevt with great embroidered sleeves." "Yes," I said, "and comb your hair, your beautiful russet hair." My tone was angry. "You look good to me, you damnable little devil, good to embrace and good to love.

Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality.

Nick felt a tear rise to his eye at the thought of the child's utter innocence of hangovers.

Along with the trust issues, one of the hardest parts to deal with is the feeling of not being believed or supported, especially by your own grandparents and extended family. When I have been through so much pain and hurt and have to live with the scars every day, I get angry knowing that others think it is all made up or they brush it off because my cousin was a teenager. I was ten when I was first sexually abused by my cousin, and a majority of my relatives have taken the perpetrator's side. I have cried many times about everything and how my relatives gave no support or love to me as a kid when this all came out. Not one relative ever came up to that innocent little girl I was and said "I am sorry for what you went through" or "I am here for you." Instead they said hurtful things: "Oh he was young." "That is what kids do." "It is not like he was some older man you didn't know." Why does age make a difference? It is a sick way of thinking. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. What is wrong with this picture? It brings tears to my eyes the way my relatives have reacted to this and cannot accept the truth. Denial is where they would rather stay.

I am a baby, I am a child, I am the innocent wonder in my eyes I am a glimpse, I am a sign, of someone I can be, someone I might I am not one, I am not two, but I am a million things entwined I am a piece, I am a slice, strung together by the yarns of time.

That was how his pen finally designed his sculpture; in the center the weak, confused, arrogant, soon to be destroyed young man holding cup a loft, behind him the idyllic child, clear-eyed, munching his grapes, symbol of joy ; between them the tiger skin. The Bacchus, hollow within himself, flabby, reeling, already old; the Satyr, eternally young and gay, symbol of man’s childhood and naughty innocence

It's easy to mistake being innocent for being simpleminded or naive. We all want to seem sophisticated; we all want to seem street-smart. To be innocent is to be "out of it." Yet there is a deep truth in innocence. A baby looks in his mother's eyes, and all he sees is love. As innocence fades away, more complicated things take its place. We think we need to outwit others and scheme to get what we want. We begin to spend a lot of energy protecting ourselves. Then life turns into a struggle. People have no choice but to be street-smart. How else can they survive? When you get right down to it, survival means seeing things the way they really are and responding. It means being open. And that's what innocence is. It's simple and trusting like a child, not judgmental and committed to one narrow point of view. If you are locked into a pattern of thinking and responding, your creativity gets blocked. You miss the freshness and magic of the moment. Learn to be innocent again, and that freshness never fades.

Let us also acknowledge that the hearts which suffer the most from our wars are those of mothers. Their vital voices have been left out of the political equation for too long. An Iraqi or American mother cries the same as an Israeli or Afghan mother. The eyes of a mother who has suffered the loss of a child can destroy the soul of anyone who gazes upon them. More souls become casualties of war than physical bodies. War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.

What do you call yourself?" the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had! "I wish I knew!" thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, "Nothing, just now." "Think again," it said: "that won't do." Alice thought, but nothing came of it. "Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?" she said timidly, "I think that might help a little." "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on," the Fawn said. "I can't remember here." So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arms. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me, you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.

Most of us hoped to be able to trust. When we were little we did not yet know the human invention of the lie - not only that of lying with words but that of lying with one's voice, one's gesture, one's eyes, one's facial expression. How should the child be prepared for this specifically human ingenuity: the lie? Most of us are awakened, some more and some less brutally, to the fact that people often do not mean what they say or say the opposite of what they mean. And not only "people," but the very people we trusted most - our parents, teachers, leaders.

Blimey, thought Kelvin, what an eye-to-face ratio. When you want to say something delicate, you don't want that eye-to-face ration staring up at you. Big eyes, like a child's or a baby seal's; the physiognomy of innocence--looking at Archie Jones is like looking at something that expects to be clubbed round the head any second.

When the fight ends you can afford to relax. That’s the worst part. Winner or loser you have again eyes to see around you. Blood, butchered bodies, bodies pierced by arrows. You stir inside, your heart tightens, the feeling of loss wells up. The sense of smell is the next thing to revive, adding a new dimension of pain. I closed the eyes of the last cadet, blue eyes, unseeing, his body, so small, almost a child, the youngest cadets were all gone, their faces surprised in death. Cold lips never able again to kiss a girl. It’s then that the emptiness swallows you and you mourn inside. Damn you, Scharon. No! Damn you, Travellers.

Despite her near delirium, she noticed Jared’s eyes flicking constantly to the rearview mirror, disappointment and anger warring in his expression. She sometimes thought that he shed a large part of his innocence that night, a child confronting his parent’s awful shortcomings.

Her eyes opened. It was as if the light had been switched on inside them. They were the eyes of a child, wide and innocent, free of scorn or suspicion. Color seemed to come into her face. Suddenly she seemed wonderfully alive.

Sometimes an uncontrollable feeling of sadness grips us, he said. We recognize that the magic moment of the day has passed and that we’ve done nothing about it. Life begins to conceal its magic and its art. We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice. The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. If we are not reborn – if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm of childhood – it makes no sense to go on living. There are many ways to commit suicide. hose who try to kill the body violate God's law. Those who try to kill the soul also violate God's law, even though their crime is less visible to others. We have to pay attention to what the child in our heart tells us. We should not be embarrassed by this child. We must not allow this child to be scared because the child is alone and almost never heard. We must allow the child to take the reins of our lives. The child knows that each day is different from every other day. We have to allow it to feel loved again. We must please this child – even if this means that we act in ways we are not used to, in ways that may seem foolish to others. Remember that human wisdom is madness in the eyes of God. But if we listen to the child who lives in our soul, our eyes will grow bright. If we do not lose contact with that child, we will not lose contact with life.

We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing - it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn't stand it, and wouldn't she please shut him up. The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this - 'Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad.' It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy's noise was not a trouble to me any more.

A dam inside my own heart opened up, and the feelings of heaviness and unease lifted like wind against the winter sky. I loved him. I loved his slow wit and his gruff demeanor and his tender disposition. I loved his endless empathy and his world-weary cynicism and his innocence. I loved that he was a walking, breathing paradox. I loved his lank hair and his iron earring and the tooth missing at the back of his mouth. I loved the way he laughed, music incomparable to any song, and the way he smiled, like you could see the child in him and the animal in him and the man in him all at once. I loved that he listened to crappy music, the kind that made me want to put my head through a wall, and I loved the charcoal stains on his knuckles and the pencils he tucked behind his ears. I loved that he told me to shut up as though I could actually say anything. I loved that he made me feel as though I could. I loved his short fingers and his rough palms and his long legs and his flat belly. I loved that he liked to read Kerouac but didn't know how to pronounce Kerouac. I loved his brown skin and his blue tattoos and his tempestuous blue eyes. I loved that he loved the land. I loved him. I loved him. Oh, God. I loved him.

I expected them (men) to see my drunken wordiness as a kind of coy gesture, as though I were saying, “I’m just a child, innocent to my own foolishness. Aren’t I cute? Love me and I’ll turn a blind eye to your faults.” With those other men, this tactic earned me brief sessions of affection until I became soured and saw that I had defiled myself by appealing to them in the first place.

He lives in a room above a courtyard behind a tavern and he comes down at night like some fairybook beast to fight with the sailors. He is not big but he has big wrists, big hands. His shoulders are set close. The child's face is curiously untouched behind the scars, the eyes oddly innocent. They fight with fists, with feet, with bottles or knives. All races, all breeds. Men whose speech sounds like the grunting of apes. Men from lands so far and queer that standing over them where they lie bleeding in the mud he feels mankind itself vindicated.

There are no dirty words in this book, except for 'hell' and 'God', in case someone is fearing that an innocent child might see 1...Perhaps the only precept taught me by Grandfather Wills that I have honoured all my adult life is that profanity and obsceny entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their eyes and ears to you.

We talk and tease and bargain with the main dish. Maniacal laughter echoes in the marble halls, sweet to my ears. There’s movement at the banquet hall’s entrance. A child with my eyes tumbles in—all wings and blue hair and giggling innocence. Holding his hand is Morpheus, wearing a ruby crown. The Red King. My king. The bubble bursts and takes the vision with it, leaving nothing but the sound of my gasp and wisps of gray smoke behind. “You see,” Ivory says, “once Morpheus knew that one day you would belong to him and he to you, that you would share a child, he was no longer willing to die to save Wonderland. But he’s insecure about your feelings for him. He feared you would refuse to help. So he made a new plan, however flawed it was.

The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the lookers-in from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table, absorbed in handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each that happy grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall capture--the natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of observation. Moving at will from one theatre to another, the two spectators, so far from home themselves, had something of wistfulness in their eyes as they watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of a smouldering log.

Later, long after my grandfather was dead, I would regret that I could never be the kind of man that he was. Though I adored him as a child and found myself attracted to the safe protectorate of his soft, uncritical maleness, I never wholly appreciated him. I did not know how to cherish sanctity, and I had no way of honoring, of giving small voice to the praise of such natural innocence, such a generous simplicity. Now I know that a part of me would like to have traveled the world as he traveled it, a jester of burning faith, a fool and a forest prince brimming with the love of God. I would like to walk his southern world, thanking God for oysters and porpoises, praising God for birdsongs and sheet lightning, and seeing God reflected in pools of creekwater and the eyes of stray cats. I would like to have talked to yard dogs and tanagers as if they were my friends and fellow travelers along the sun-tortured highways, intoxicated with a love of God, swollen with charity like a rainbow, in the thoughtless mingling of its hues, connecting two distant fields in its glorious arc. I would like to have seen the world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder, and a tongue fluent only in praise.

Unseen by either of us, Father had appeared in the doorway. “Give the child to me, Corrie,” he said. Father held the baby close, his white beard brushed its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby’s own. At last he looked up at the pastor. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.” The pastor turned sharply on his heels and walked out of the room.

Motherhood changed you from the second you looked into the big, innocent eyes of your child. Within an instant, you had an unlimited supply of love for that precious, tiny being. They would forever be yours, and you would forever be the one person who would always love them, protect them, cherish them, worry about them, and fight for them. Everything else felt minor in comparison.

As Reverend Deal moved into his sermon, the hands of the women unfolded like pairs of raven's wings and flew high above their hats in the air. They did not hear all of what he said;they heard the one word, or phrase, or inflection that was for them the connection between the event and themselves. For some it was the term "Sweet Jesus". And they saw the Lamb's eye and the truly innocent victim: themselves. They acknowledged the innocent child hiding in the corner of their hearts, holding a sugar-and-butter sandwich. That one. The one who lodged deep in their fat, thin, old, young skin, and was the one the world had hurt. Or they thought of their son newly killed and remembered his legs in short pants and wondered where the bullet went in. Or they remembered how dirty the room looked when their father left home and wondered if that is the way the slim, young Jew, he who for them was both son and lover and in whose downy face they could see the sugar-and-butter sandwiches and feel the oldest and most devastating pain there is : not the pain of childhood, but the remembrance of it.

She had his dark hair, his lashes, and from the glimpse he had, she bore his eyes, as well. But the shape of her face, a perfect oval, was her mother’s. She had Anais’s cheeks. Anais’s lovely mouth and proud chin. He kissed her chin, feeling the softest of fluttering against his cheek—baby’s breath. There was nothing sweeter than the feel of an innocent child’s breath against one’s cheek—nothing more wondrous than knowing that the baby was your own flesh and blood. Mina stretched against him, yawning widely and throwing her arms up wide alongside her head. He laughed through his tears and reached for her little fist and brought it to his mouth, kissing her with such love he thought he would die of it. “You will consume me, little Mina, just as your mother has.” -Linsay to his infant daughter.

His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat. After the terror, in the early days of the Directory, the aristos who’d escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound. And his grandmother, taken with the notion, had her ribbon made up in rubies; such a gesture of luxurious defiance! That night at the opera comes back to me even now… the white dress; the frail child within it; and the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood. I saw him watching me in the gilded mirrors with the assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh, or even of a housewife in the market, inspecting cuts on the slab. I’d never seen, or else had never acknowledged, that regard of his before, the sheer carnal avarice of it; and it was strangely magnified by the monocle lodged in his left eye. When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.

And then— "We have a bookshelf. Sirius built us a bookshelf, and you have the top shelves because you're taller, and I have the lower shelves because I keep all my journals on the very bottom." James feels a lump form in his throat. He can't help it, the rush of emotion that crashes through him. You know that other life? The one where we could have been happy together? Where we're not a great, big tragedy? James had said. Tell me something about it, James had said. Regulus did, Regulus told him about this, and so much more. All these things—all of them left to another life, not this one, because they didn't get it in this one. They were wrong. They were so fucking wrong. Regulus has drifted forward, eyes wide with child-like wonder, something so painfully innocent there in his expression. His fingers run across the wood tenderly, with care, and his voice is so soft when he whispers, "This is beautiful, Sirius. How long have you been working on this?

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

To quote Maslow again regarding his self-actualizing individuals: “One does not complain about water because it is wet, nor about rocks because they are hard. . . . As the child looks out upon the world with wide, uncritical and innocent eyes, simply noting and observing what is the case, without either arguing the matter or demanding that it be otherwise, so does the self-actualizing person look upon human nature both in himself and in others.” (4, p. 207) This acceptant attitude toward that which exists, I find developing in clients in therapy.

Her eyes bled from venomous anger... Her flower had been gruesomely deflowered... Her life had slowly turned into a blunder... There was no more thinking further.... She would rather become a Foetus murderer Than end up a "hopeless" mother.... Of course, she found peace in the former Until later years of emotional trauma Oh, the foetus hunt was forever! The only thing you should abort is the thought of aborting your baby. Stop the hate and violence against innocent children.

Such innocent confusions are like cognitive magic-eye posters. Most of the time it's impossible to go back to the jumbled mess once you've registered the picture. Sex is the exception. So natural and universal is a child's curiosity about sex and so long are we conscious of it before we do it, that our origical impressions of it leave an indelible mark.

The hand of Heaven is on me, be it far from me to struggle, if my secret sins have pull'd this curse upon me, lend me tears now to wash me white, that I may feel a child-like innocence within my breast; which once perform'd, O give me leave to stand as fix'd as constancy her self, my eyes set here unmov'd, regardless of the world though thousand miseries incompass me.

Sin rolled his eyes and sucked chocolate off his thumb, gesturing towards the unlit cigarette that had been sitting on the table for the better part of the last hour. "Cojelo suave, boss man, it's not even lit. We all know you're in charge, no need to start waving your dick around." The comment earned him a mildly startled look and the irritated expression cracked slightly. Carhart shook his head, hazel eyes moving to Boyd's face again. "Who told him how to speak that way?" "Not me," Boyd said, giving him an innocent look. "Likely he learned it at the night club." "I love how you people act like I never knew how to swear before going on that assignment," Sin said mildly, feeling rather insulted by the idea. What did Carhart think he was? An impressionable child? "I'll have you know I was quite fluent at it before.

The Azath will not be touched, for it is new, a child. Her eyes, soft brown, slowly regarded those of her companions. “The Queen of Darkness spoke thus of Light when it was first born: ‘It is new, and what is new is innocent, and what is innocent is precious. Observe this child of wonder, and know respect.’ ” Orfantal scowled. “Thus did Light survive, and so was Darkness destroyed, the purity vanquished—and now you would have us flawed as our Queen was flawed. Light became corrupted and destroyed our world, Korlat, or have you forgotten?” Korlat’s smile was a sad one. Cherish such flaws, dear brother, for our Queen’s was hope, and so is mine.

Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments'. which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory, or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the 'personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a range of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have 'executive control some substantial amount of time over the person's life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesia barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.' Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children.

The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome handcrafts, And the lives of women also are twisted into the strand. And we, the twelve who were later to die by his hand At his father's relentless command, Sailed as well, in the dark frail boats of ourselves Through the turbulent seas of our swollen and sore-footed mothers Who were not royal queens, but a motley and piebald collection, Bought, traded, captured, kidnapped from serfs and strangers. After the nine-month voyage we came to shore, Beached at the same time as he was, struck by the hostile air, Infants when he was an infant, wailing just as he wailed, Helpless as he was helpless, but ten times more helpless as well, For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not. His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered, Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch. We were animal young, to be disposed of at will, Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless. He was fathered; we simply appeared, Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows endangered in mud. Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children When he was a child, We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions. We grew as he grew, laughed also, ran as he ran, Though sandier, hungrier, sun-speckled, most days meatless. He saw us as rightfully his, for whatever purpose He chose, to tend him and feed him, to wash him, amuse him, Rock him to sleep in the dangerous boats of ourselves. We did not know as we played with him there in the sand On the beach of our rocky goat-island, close by the harbour, That he was foredoomed to swell to our cold-eyed teenaged killer. If we had known that, would we have drowned him back then? Young children are ruthless and selfish: everyone wants to live. Twelve against one, he wouldn't have stood a chance. Would we? In only a minute, when nobody else was looking? Pushed his still-innocent child's head under the water With our own still-innocent childish nursemaid hands, And blamed it on waves. Would we have had it in us? Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have had altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer.

I guess to their wide, innocent eyes it all seemed like normal family life because they had never known any different. In fact, I was the only one who had lived with anyone else, the only one that realized that life didn't have to be this terrifying and this painful all the time

Some readers may find it a curious or even unscientific endeavour to craft a criminological model of organised abuse based on the testimony of survivors. One of the standard objections to qualitative research is that participants may lie or fantasise in interview, it has been suggested that adults who report severe child sexual abuse are particularly prone to such confabulation. Whilst all forms of research, whether qualitative or quantitative, may be impacted upon by memory error or false reporting. there is no evidence that qualitative research is particularly vulnerable to this, nor is there any evidence that a fantasy— or lie—prone individual would be particularly likely to volunteer for research into child sexual abuse. Research has consistently found that child abuse histories, including severe and sadistic abuse, are accurate and can be corroborated (Ross 2009, Otnow et al. 1997, Chu et al. 1999). Survivors of child abuse may struggle with amnesia and other forms of memory disturbance but the notion that they are particularly prone to suggestion and confabulation has yet to find a scientific basis. It is interesting to note that questions about the veracity of eyewitness evidence appear to be asked far more frequently in relation to sexual abuse and rape than in relation to other crimes. The research on which this book is based has been conducted with an ethical commitment to taking the lives and voices of survivors of organised abuse seriously.

Book Excerpt: "What about your family, Abu Huwa? Are you an orphan?” the little girl very innocently asked the Sphinx. “My father and your father are one and the same. However, I do have a brother who has stood as my mirror throughout time on the opposite horizon. It is I who faces east, but it is he who faces west. I am the recorder of yesterday and he holds the records of tomorrow. I am the positive, and he is my negative. I carry the right eye of the sun and he carries the left eye of the moon. He keeps his eye on the underworld and I keep an eye on the world over. Together we have joined the sky and earth, and split fire and water.” Seham stood on all toes to peek over the Sphinx's shoulder for a sign of his brother. “Where is he?” she asked, her eyes still searching the open horizon. “He has yet to be uncovered, but as I stand above the sands of time, he still sleeps below. Before the descent of Adam, we have both stood as loyal Protectors of the Two Halls of Truth.” The girl asked in astonishment, “I've never heard of these halls, Abu Huwa. Where are they?” “At the end of each of our tails is a passage that will reveal to you the secrets of Time. One hall reflects a thousand truths, and the other hall reflects all that is untrue. One will speak to your heart, and the other will speak to your mind. This is why you need to use both your heart and mind to understand which one is real, and which is a distorted illusion created to misguide those that have neglected their conscience. Both passageways connect you to the Great Hall of Records.” “What is the Hall of Records?” “The Great Pyramid, my child. It is as multidimensional in its shape as it is in its purpose. Every layer and every brick marks the coming of a prophet, the ascension of evil, or another cycle of man. It contains the entire history and future of mankind. And, as is above, so is below. Above ground, it serves as the most powerful energy source to harmonize and power the world! The shape of the pyramid above ground is also the same image mirrored beneath it. Underground, it serves as a powerful well and drain. This is really why Egypt is called the Land of Two Lands. There exists a huge world of its own underneath the plateau, a world within worlds. Large amounts of gold, copper and mercury were once housed here, including the secrets of Time, the 100th name of He Who Is All, and a gift from Truth that still awaits to be discovered. It sleeps with Time in the Great Pyramid, hidden away in a lower shaft that leads to the stars.” Dialogue from 'The Little Girl and the Sphinx' by Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (Dar-El Shams, 2010)

Young children. Where are they looking when their eyes focus above our heads, or when they talk to “invisible friends”? The child senses things most adults have lost, and in the innocence of expression might describe what s/he perceives. More often than not, the parent or teacher of that child might pat him condescendingly on the head and tell him what a fun imagination he has, or things could become more severe and that child will be scolded for making things up. Soon the child will learn to ignore such nonsense, or at least not bother sharing it for fear of ridicule. And so we forget.

Every day time stopped and Sobran saw Xas, the sun reflecting off his raised wings, white chest watermarked by tears dried in fine dust; bare skin and colourless nipples, as innocent as a child's; the double signature, seagreen and vermilion, awake and vivid; a whitelipped white face and eyes, abysmal, inimical, like the sea seen through holes in an icefield. It was like being in love, this remembering, because Sobran couldn't put Xas out of his mind. And it was like shame. Because he grew so tired defending himself from the pain of this one recollection, Sobran forgot everything else he knew about the angel.

Reading these tales is like looking at a photograph of a child whom you only knew as an adult. In her eyes you can see the woman that you came to know much later—a face, not yet fully formed, that contains the promise of something that is now a part of you: the welcomed surprise of recognition in innocent eyes.

*I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy * The human race is but a monotonous affair *and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it! — you will understand this. *I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. * I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions *"As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." * I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. *We should deal with children as God deals with us, we are happiest under the influence of innocent delusions

Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children.

The girl was undeniably beautiful. She was tall, with a spectacular figure. Her white dress, shimmering with crystal beads, was cut low enough to prove the authenticity of her remarkable cleavage. Her long hair was almost white in its blondeness. But it was her face that held Anne’s attention, a face so naturally beautiful that it came as a startling contrast to the theatrical beauty of her hair and figure. It was a perfect face with a fine square jaw, high cheekbones and intelligent brow. The eyes seemed warm and friendly, and the short, straight nose belonged to a beautiful child, as did the even white teeth and little-girl dimples. It was an innocent face, a face that looked at everything with breathless excitement and trusting enthusiasm, seemingly unaware of the commotion the body was causing. A face that glowed with genuine interest in each person who demanded attention, rewarding each with a warm smile. The body and its accouterments continued to pose and undulate for the staring crowd and flashing cameras, but the face ignored the furor and greeted people with the intimacy of meeting a few new friends at a gathering.

I was never a child; I never had a childhood. I cannot count among my memories warm, golden days of childish intoxication, long joyous hours of innocence, or the thrill of discovering the universe anew each day. I learned of such things later on in life from books. Now I guess at their presence in the children I see. I was more than twenty when I first experienced something similar in my self, in chance moments of abandonment, when I was at peace with the world. Childhood is love; childhood is gaiety; childhood knows no cares. But I always remember myself, in the years that have gone by, as lonely, sad, and thoughtful. Ever since I was a little boy I have felt tremendously alone―and "peculiar". I don't know why. It may have been because my family was poor or because I was not born the way other children are born; I cannot tell. I remember only that when I was six or seven years old a young aunt of mind called me vecchio―"old man," and the nickname was adopted by all my family. Most of the time I wore a long, frowning face. I talked very little, even with other children; compliments bored me; baby-talk angered me. Instead of the noisy play of the companions of my boyhood I preferred the solitude of the most secluded corners of our dark, cramped, poverty-stricken home. I was, in short, what ladies in hats and fur coats call a "bashful" or a "stubborn" child; and what our women with bare heads and shawls, with more directness, call a rospo―a "toad." They were right. I must have been, and I was, utterly unattractive to everybody. I remember, too, that I was well aware of the antipathy I aroused. It made me more "bashful," more "stubborn," more of a "toad" than ever. I did not care to join in the games played by other boys, but preferred to stand apart, watching them with jealous eyes, judging them, hating them. It wasn't envy I felt at such times: it was contempt; it was scorn. My warfare with men had begun even then and even there. I avoided people, and they neglected me. I did not love them, and they hated me. At play in the parks some of the boys would chase me; others would laugh at me and call me names. At school they pulled my curls or told the teachers tales about me. Even on my grandfather's farm in the country peasant brats threw stones at me without provocation, as if they felt instinctively that I belonged to some other breed.

She looked at him bravely now for the first time, at his face, the face from which a child had fled, and drew breath. She rose. Her eyes filled. She knew. He took her in his arms and kissed her ardently. Men in their hosts, young and old, innocent and corrupt, had paid her for her favors, but she put her arms about him of her own free will as though to give him what she could in recompense for this, the last gift she guessed, of his manhood.

O Life: […] I fear you when you are near, I love you when you are far; your feeling allures me, your seeking secures me: I suffer, but for you what would I not gladly endure! For you whose coldness inflames, whose hatred seduces, whose flight constrains, whose mockery – induces: who would not hate you, great woman who binds us, enwinds us, seduces us, seeks us, finds us! Who would not love you, you innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!

I had never heard of an IED until Cleve's injury. He told me that day that they could be made with marbles. When the bomb goes off, the marbles explode, glass shards shooting in every direction toward their victims. As he spoke, I imagined the innocent balls of glass I played with as a child, white with blue cat's-eyes in the center, the same shade as my mother's and my eyes. The toys wait in darkness, forced to play in a war they weren't designed for.

My dad could go to work, he could get raises, he could be thanked for his contributions, he got a pay-check for his labor, but that didn't happen for moms. The best they could hope for would be a crayon valentine or a squashed, limp dandelion flower offered up from the damp hand of their wide-eyed and innocent child. Which wasn't nothing. In all my days I'd never considered anything to be more important than home. In a chaotic world, it was sanctuary; it was where love grew.

MOTHER. I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk, that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer time, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and makes her heart melt as fire melts wax.

Ink black hair, dark smoldering eyes with eyelashes so enviably long they cast shadows upon his cheekbones, a dimpled smile and broad shoulders and a height a little over six feet was all that comprised of Logan Jackson. Basically, he looked like he had just stepped out of the cover of GQ magazine and belonged in Milan and not Haven Falls. He looked the same but completely different all at once. His pretty boyish features had hardened. He was still handsome but in a rougher more masculine way. Gone was the slightly mischievous innocent child. Now there only remained a devilishly handsome young man

When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety. "What a scene you're making," Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. "What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam isn't going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now." As soon as she was in Mariam's arms, Aziza's thumb shot into her mouth and she buried her face in Mariam's neck. Mariam bounced her stiffly, a half-bewildered, half-grateful smile on her lips. Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly. Aziza made Mariam want to weep. "Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair. "Huh? I am nobody, don't you see? A dehati. What have I got to give you?" But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marvelled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.

we stared at each other, and I knew we were both thinking about the same exact thing: the night before. Not the long talk we’d had about our families—and that raw honesty we’d given each other—but about what happened after that. The movie. The damn movie. I didn’t know what the hell I’d been thinking, fully fucking aware I was already mopey, when I asked if he wanted to watch my favorite movie as a kid. I’d watched it hundreds of times. Hundreds of times. It felt like love and hope. And I was an idiot. And Aiden, being a nice person who apparently let me get away with most of the things I wanted, said, “Sure. I might fall asleep during it.” He hadn’t fallen asleep. If there was one thing I learned that night was that no one was impervious to Little Foot losing his mom. Nobody. He’d only slightly rolled his eyes when the cartoon started, but when I glanced over at him, he’d been watching faithfully. When that awful, terrible, why-would-you-do-that-to-children-and-to-humanity-in-general part came on The Land Before Time, my heart still hadn’t learned how to cope and I was feeling so low, the hiccups coming out were worse than usual. My vision got cloudy. I got choked up. Tears were coming out of my eyes like the powerful Mississippi. Time and dozens of viewings hadn’t toughened me up at all. And as I’d wiped at my face and tried to remind myself it was just a movie and a young dinosaur hadn’t lost his beloved mom, I heard a sniffle. A sniffle that wasn’t my own. I turned not-so-discreetly and saw him. I saw the starry eyes and the way his throat bobbed with a gulp. Then I saw the sideways look he shot me as I sat there dealing with my own emotions, and we stared at each other. In silence. The big guy wasn’t handling it, and if there were ever a time in any universe, watching any movie, this would be the cause of it. All I could do was nod at him, get up to my knees, and lean over so I could wrap my arms around his neck and tell him in as soothing of a voice as I could get together, “I know, big guy. I know,” even as another round of tears came out of my eyes and possibly some snot out of my nose. The miraculous part was that he let me. Aiden sat there and let me hug him, let me put my cheek over the top of his head and let him know it was okay. Maybe it happened because we’d just been talking about the faulty relationships we had with our families or maybe it was because a child losing its mother was just about the saddest thing in the world, especially when it was an innocent animal, I don’t know. But it was sad as shit. He sniffed—on any other person smaller than him it would have been considered a sniffle—and I squeezed my arms around him a little tighter before going back to my side of the bed where we finished watching the movie

Remus,” said Hermione tentatively, “is everything all right . . . you know . . . between you and—” “Everything is fine, thank you,” said Lupin pointedly. Hermione turned pink. There was another pause, an awkward and embarrassed one, and then Lupin said, with an air of forcing himself to admit something unpleasant, “Tonks is going to have a baby.” “Oh, how wonderful!” squealed Hermione. “Excellent!” said Ron enthusiastically. “Congratulations,” said Harry. Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then said, “So . . . do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined.” Ron and Hermione both looked at Harry. “Just—just to be clear,” he said. “You want to leave Tonks at her parents’ house and come away with us?” “She’ll be perfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indifference. “Harry, I’m sure James would have wanted me to stick with you.” “Well,” said Harry slowly, “I’m not. I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually.” Lupin’s face drained of color. The temperature in the kitchen might have dropped ten degrees. Ron stared around the room as though he had been bidden to memorize it, while Hermione’s eyes swiveled backward and forward from Harry to Lupin. “You don’t understand,” said Lupin at last. “Explain, then,” said Harry. Lupin swallowed. “I—I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.” “I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?” Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face. “Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!” Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned. “You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore’s protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see what I’ve done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child—the child—” Lupin actually seized handfuls of his own hair; he looked quite deranged. “My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it—how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!

I did not of course realize it then, but I know now that there was a disarming frankness in her manner that put one at one’s ease. She talked with a kind of eagerness, like a child bubbling over with the zest of life, and her eyes were lit all the time by her engaging smile. I did not know why I liked it. I should say it was a little sly, if slyness were not a displeasing quality; it was too innocent to be sly. It was mischievous rather, like that of a child who has done something that he thinks funny, but is quite well aware that you will think rather naughty; he knows all the same that you won’t be really cross and if you don’t find out about it quickly he’ll come and tell you himself. But of course then I only knew that her smile made me feel at home.

Now, as they pressured perfect footprints into the snow that had been accumulating all day, his father took Harry's hand. "Heshele, how are you?" "OK, I guess." "Are you very sad?" "I don't know. I know I should be. But what does it mean to be sad?" His father stopped. He cupped his free hand to let the snow gather. It quickly turned from an inviting white coating to black-specked gray water. "Sadness is in my hand. In a second, a thing of beauty becomes dirty water; innocence leaves a child's eyes; he who strived for immortality lies forgotten under weeds. Sad is missing the love that death has sealed in the ground or that life has denied life to." "Then I'm sad. When you took my hand, I remembered how he took my hand when we went to the pier to fish. And I thought: That will never happen again. And then I thought: Up until now I never understood the word never, and there was a lump in my throat.

You had her looking after Evie,” she spits. “Were you screwing her while she was working here? While she was looking after our child?” He removes his hand, his face a picture of contrition, of deep shame. “That was terrible. I thought . . . I thought it would be . . . Honestly, I don’t know what I thought. I’m not sure I was thinking at all. It was wrong. It was terribly wrong of me.” And the mask changes again—now he’s wide-eyed innocence, pleading with her: “I didn’t know then, Anna. You have to believe that I didn’t know what she was. I didn’t know about the baby she killed. I would never have let her look after Evie if I’d known that. You have to believe me.” Without warning, Anna jumps to her feet, pushing her chair back—it clatters onto the kitchen floor, startling their daughter. “Give her to me,” Anna says, holding her arms out. Tom backs away a little. “Now, Tom, give her to me. Give her to me.

CRADLE SONG Sweet dreams, form a shade O'er my lovely infant's head! Sweet dreams of pleasant streams By happy, silent, moony beams! Sweet Sleep, with soft down Weave thy brows an infant crown Sweet Sleep, angel mild, Hover o'er my happy child! Sweet smiles, in the night Hover over my delight! Sweet smiles, mother's smile, All the livelong night beguile. Sweet moans, dovelike sighs, Chase not slumber from thine eyes! Sweet moan, sweeter smile, All the dovelike moans beguile. Sleep, sleep, happy child! All creation slept and smiled. Sleep, sleep, happy sleep, While o'er thee doth mother weep. Sweet babe, in thy face Holy image I can trace; Sweet babe, once like thee Thy Maker lay, and wept for me: Wept for me, for thee, for all, When He was an infant small. Thou His image ever see, Heavenly face that smiles on thee! Smiles on thee, on me, on all, Who became an infant small; Infant smiles are his own smiles; Heaven and earth to peace beguiles.

Allegations of multi-perpetrator and multi-victim sexual abuse emerged to public awareness in the early 1980s contemporaneously with the denials of the accused and their supporters. Multi-perpetrator sexual offences are typically more sadistic than solo offences and organised sexual abuse is no exception. Adults and children with histories of organised abuse have described lives marked by torturous and sometimes ritualistic sexual abuse arranged by family members and other care-givers and authority figures. It is widely acknowledged, at least in theory, that sexual abuse can take severe forms, but when disclosures of such abuse occur, they are routinely subject to contestation and challenge. People accused of organised, sadistic or ritualistic abuse have protested that their accusers are liars and fantasists, or else innocents led astray by overly zealous investigators. This was an argument that many journalists and academics have found more convincing than the testimony of alleged victims.

When I'm dressed like this, people will say I don't look like a doctor." Garrett paused before continuing wryly. "On the other hand, they already say that, even when I'm wearing a surgeon's cap and gown." Carys, who was playing with the left-over glass beads on the vanity table, volunteered innocently, "You've always looked like a doctor to me." Helen smiled at her little sister. "Did you know, Carys, that Dr. Gibson is the only lady doctor in England?" Carys shook her head, regarding Garrett with round-eyed interest. "Why aren't there others?" Garrett smiled. "Many people believe women aren't suited to work in the medical profession." "But women can be nurses," Carys said with a child's clear-eyed logic. "Why can't they be doctors?" "There are many female doctors, as a matter of fact, in countries such as America and France. Unfortunately, women aren't allowed to earn a medical degree here. Yet." "But that's not fair." Garrett smiled down into the girl's upturned face. "There will always be people who say your dreams are impossible. But they can't stop you unless you agree with them.

I am thirty. I made two girls within my own body, felt the rush of bringing them into the world, and when I saw their bodies, I saw a miracle. Their skin and eye lashes perfect. Tiny lips, tiny fingernails, eyes embodying innocence and awe. They grow and run around my house naked and scream wildly without self-awareness or social concern. I teach them about our culture and what is and isn’t acceptable. But what I will not teach them is shame of their body. It was beautiful from moment one, and that will not change - not with age, not with anything. One daughter looks at her body in the mirror, we talk about the organs and skin, how her body will change. She is beautiful on every count. I remember when I was six, and I know I have to warn her. Not shame her, but tell her how some people were not taught to love, but take for themselves and she must be brave and aware. It pains me as I tell her, her innocent mind not know why one person would hurt another in such a way. “Do not be afraid,” I tell her. “But this is our culture, so be smart and be aware my brave girl.” Shame teaches us, but I will not teach my daughters in this way. I will empower them to be proud of their bodies, respectful of their bodies, in awe of how miraculous it is and what it is capable of. I will tell my daughter that to be a woman is not to be lesser, not object, not the bed in the red light district, nor the “bitch” in the hotel. She is not the body to exploit or product to consume. “She” is not shame. “She” is beautiful woman with beautiful body, capable of cosmic realities. Holding someone close, experiencing love, making love, creating life, accepting another human life as her own, feeling pain, joy, giving strength, healing with a kiss, wholeness with a touch; giving physical and mental nourishment with her own body. “She” is grounded enough to follow, still capable to lead from a child to a nation. The woman’s body is made in the image of Love, from Love herself, Life herself, so she herself is of God. For my Grandmother, for my Mother, for my daughters, my friends, and as a reminder to myself: be proud, beautiful woman, your body is intrinsically good, perfectly good. Perfect from moment one.

not despise the wisdom of childhood.” The words of the Book of Bédard flashed unbidden through his mind. “Childhood is a canvas, pure in its innocence, awaiting the brush of experience. In time, that canvas will become the portrait of a life and the growth of a living soul. But that portrait may be rich with color, filled with the texture of joy, or gray and ugly, shrouded in the bleakness of despair. It is your responsibility to guide that brush as God would have it guided. Nor will the guiding leave your life, your faith, unchanged, for a child’s eyes see what adults do not. A child’s gaze is unblinkered by preconception, and children have not learned to look willfully away from truth. Do not be deceived! That searching gaze, those fearless questions, are God’s gift to you. A child’s questions require answer; answer requires explanation; explanation requires thought; and thought requires understanding, and so even as they ask, they teach. Learn from them, treasure the opportunity God has given you, and remember always that whenever one teaches, two learn, and there is no greater joy than to learn together.” His

If we could present an attainable ideal of love it would resemble the relationship described by Maslow as existing between self-realizing personalities. It is probably a fairly perilous equilibrium: certainly the forces of order and civilization react fairly directly to limit the possibilities of self-realization. Maslow describes his ideal personalities as having a better perception of reality—what Herbert Read called an innocent eye, like the eye of the child who does not seek to reject reality. Their relationship to the world of phenomena is not governed by their personal necessity to exploit it or be exploited by it, but a desire to observe it and to understand it. They have no disgust; the unknown does not frighten them. They are without defensiveness or affectation. The only causes of regret are laziness, outbursts of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy and envy. Their behaviour is spontaneous but it corresponds to an autonomous moral code. Their thinking is problem-centred, not egocentred and therefore they most often have a sense of commitment to a cause beyond their daily concerns. Their responses are geared to the present

Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World! A moment’s pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look once more! I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled; from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow’s Son; and God is good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O may I, with a grey head, turn a child’s heart to that figure yet, and a child’s trustfulness and confidence! Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves. “This, in commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!

There’s this girl…this woman I can’t get out of my mind.” He spilled the story of his seduction of sweet, innocent Amanda McCormick for Rufus’s examination. When he finished talking, there was another silence. “You did that?” Rufus’s voice was as deep and gravelly as a quarry. “Fucked some poor virgin while posing as her fiancé?” “Yeah.” “You got some balls. How’d you know you’d be a close enough match to this Baxter?” “Brown hair, blue eyes, that’s all she seemed to know about him.” Spence couldn’t explain his need for the rush of tempting fate. “I took a chance. It was a gamble.” “Jesus, you’re a mean son of a bitch.” “I didn’t want to hurt her. I was just having fun.” He sounded like a spoiled child even to himself. “And now you want to go see this woman and try to make it right?” Rufus said. “Just how the hell did you think you were going to fix it? By showing up and wrecking her marriage, if you haven’t done that already?” It was Spence’s turn to pause. “Haven’t you done enough to this lady? Where’s your head, boy? Leave her alone.” “I can’t. I have to see her again.” He didn’t want to share his dreams of the little girl. He’d sound crazy. Rufus laughed harshly. “So you can try and get another piece of tail?” “No. It’s not like that.” “What? You think you’re in love. Son, you don’t know the first thing about it. If you did, you’d be putting this woman’s needs above your own.” He thought of the little girl telling him to go to Amanda. “Maybe what she needs is me.” Rufus made a scoffing noise. “A woman needs a man who’ll stand by her, be there through hard times and good. From what you’ve told me these past months, this is the longest you’ve stayed put in one place in your life and that’s only ‘cause they won’t let you out.” “I just want to do the right thing.” “Then do like I say. Leave her be. You think she’s going to be happy to see you again?” Spence pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders and watched a gray cloud puff from his mouth. “You still there, boy?” “Where else?” “Don’t take it too hard. Everybody does things they’re sorry for. Sometimes there’s just no way to make it right.” He leaned back against the wall and reviewed the stupid chain of events that had landed him in jail. Maybe Rufus was right and there was no way he could ever apologize for what he’d done to Amanda. He should let the whole thing slide and leave the woman in peace.

Mind control survivors have identified doctors used by the CIA under Project MKULTRA as having used different aliases. I have personally spoken and corresponded with many of these child Cold War survivors. It seems colors were one of the most commonly used themes. Many survivors have identified Josef Mengele as using the aliases Dr. Green, Dr. Black, Dr. Swartz (black in German), Father Joseph, or Vaterchen (daddy) when he did their programming. The experiments and programming he used on us were of such a heinous nature, that they were not unlike some of those performed at Auschwitz. In 1937, Mengele was appointed research assistant at the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity. Mengele provided "experimental materials" to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology from twins including eyes, blood, and other body parts from Auschwitz. Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945 before the Russians liberated the camp. French government documents state that the Americans captured Mengele in 1946. According to the French, Mengele "was released without explanation by the Americans on November 19, 1946." The French claimed that American authorities confirmed the Mengele arrest and release on Feb. 29, 1947. 

Around the glade this pair of woodland nymphs danced. He swept her in a waltz to a duet that was sometimes off tune, sometimes rent with giggling and laughter as they made their own music. A breathless Erienne fell to a sun-dappled hummock of deep, soft moss, and laughing for the pure thrill of the day, she spread her arms, creating a comely yellow-hued flower on the dark green sward while seeming every bit as fragile as a blossom to the man who watched her. With bliss-bedazzled eyes, she gazed through the treetops overhead where swaying branches, bedecked in the first bright green of spring, caressed the underbellies of the freshlet zephyrs, and the fleecy white clouds raced like frolicking sheep across an azure lea. Small birds played courting games, and the earlier ones tended nests with single-minded perseverance. A sprightly squirrel leapt across the spaces, and a larger one followed, bemused at the sudden coyness of his mate. Christopher came to Erienne and sank to his knees on the thick, soft carpet, then bracing his hands on either side of her, slowly lowered himself until his chest touched her bosom. For a long moment he kissed those blushing lips that opened to him and welcomed him with an eagerness that belied the once-cool maid. Then he lifted her arm and lay beside her, keeping her hand in his as he shared her viewpoint of the day. They whispered sweet inanities, talked of dreams, hopes, and other things, as lovers are wont to do. Erienne turned on her side and taking care to keep her hand in the warm nest, ran her other fingers through his tousled hair. “You need a shearing, milord,” she teased. He rolled his head until he could look up into those amethyst eyes. “And does my lady see me as an innocent lamb ready to be clipped?” At her doubtful gaze, he questioned further. “Or rather a lusting, long-maned beast? A zealous suitor come to seduce you?” Erienne’s eyes brightened, and she nodded quickly to his inquiry. “A love-smitten swain? A silver-armored knight upon a white horse charging down to rescue you?” “Aye, all of that,” she agreed through a giggle. She came to her knees and grasped his shirt front with both hands. “All of that and more.” She bent to place a honeyed kiss upon his lips, then sitting back, spoke huskily. “I see you as my husband, as the father of my child, as my succor against the storm, protector of my home, and lord of yonder manse. But most of all, I see you as the love of my life.” -Erienne & Christopher

There beside me sat the flail, seemingly harmless if you discounted the weapon itself. “You can just stay there in the snow, you fucking piece of shit weapon!” Let someone else use it, die on its point . . . I pushed slowly back to my feet, but I’d only taken a few stumbling, exhausted steps before I slowed. I couldn’t leave the stupid thing behind. It was too damn dangerous. What if a child found it and played with it? Could the innocent one die from such evil? Groaning, I turned, but it wasn’t there in the snow anymore. Fear flickered through me and I reached up to find the handle of the flail sticking above my shoulder, ready once more. It belongs to you now, my mother’s voice whispered. “Awesome, just fucking awesome that a psychotic weapon that wants to kill me likes me enough to just attach itself to my back like a damn cactus.” I clenched my hands at my sides in part because I wanted to grab the flail and chuck it off my shoulder, but I also did not want to touch it. Which meant it was just going to have to stay there. Forever. I stumbled through the snow, following Balder’s hoof prints through the trees. It wasn’t long before hoof beats reached my ears. Only it wasn’t Balder, but the other horse, Batman. He snorted and danced as he got close to me, his eyes rolling as his nostrils flared. “I know, I stink like blood and wolf. But the big bad wolf is gone.” I held a hand out to him and he slowly drew close enough to where I could grab hold of his reins.

I seem to remember carrying him that evening to the window with uncommon tenderness (following the setting sun that was to take him away), and telling him with not unnatural bitterness that he had got to leave me because another child was in need of all his pretty things; and as the sun, his true father, lapt him in its dancing arms, he sent his love to a lady of long ago whom he called by the sweetest of names, not knowing in his innocence that the little white birds are the birds that never have a mother. I wished (so had the phantasy of Timothy taken possession of me) that before he went he could have played once in the Kensington Gardens, and have ridden on the fallen trees, calling gloriously to me to look; that he could have sailed on paper-galleon on the Round Pond; fain would I have had him chase one hoop a little way down the laughing avenues of childhood, where memory tells us we run but once, on a long summer-day, emerging at the other end as men and women with all the fun to pay for; and I think (thus fancy wantons with me in these desolate champers) he knew my longings, and said with a boy-like flush that the reason he never did these things was not that he was afraid, for he would have loved to do them all, but because he was not quite like other boys; and, so saying, he let go my finger and faded from before my eyes into another and olden ether; but I shall ever hold that had he been quite like the other boys there would have been none braver than my Timothy

Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, “I am what I am, nothing more.” “I have failed,” I said, “I have lost myself — would it had been my shadow.” I looked round: the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record. Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?

I AM LOVE I am the fountain of peace, lake of tranquility, I am the lips of blooming youth, I am the wine of soul and rose of nature’s bosom, I am the glimpse of beloved through amorous eyes. I am the elation, the sacred shrine in the heart of An innocent child; The chalice of my love overflows with divine grace, I am the rose whom lover’s lips have touched. The dawn breaks with the echo of my heart song, And whispers in the twilight; I am the beating heart inside of you, The twinkling star in the night sky, the ardent desire in the swell of passion, I am the tremulous lips parted in delight, an expression of love’s rhapsody. I breathe fragrance into your heart’s essence, tearing away the veil Of your sorrowful sigh, I am the flute which plays music to your ears, I am the nature’s call, the echo of mountains, the wild dance of a swelling ocean. I am the blazing fire of love arousing your soul to an eternal call; I flow towards the beloved like a dancing stream; I am the sweetness of your soul, Who fondles the book of caressing memories, beckoning you to be lost in my heart call. I am the lost gem of love that your hungry soul has been searching for years; I am the loving wreath of moments of happiness, Your name, engraved on my heart shines as a rarest treasure; That sparkles, illuminates on my desolate soul. From thee I arise, and to Thee I surrender; You are the gushing spring of my ecstasy, As the wine of my life rests in the chalice of your heart, Your lips press it to mine, sipping a sap of it, I die to rebirth in that soul wine. Beyond all language, beyond all words, wherein lies the land Of enchanting silence; a paradise where lovers yearn to dissolve, And clasp the timeless love to their bare bosom.  

I’ll find out who’s inside. Wait here and keep alert!’ Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building’s eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside. There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn’t see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back. Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled. The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol’s cold muzzle pressed against his forehead. Hallam watched the man’s eyes narrow and then widen, before his mouth opened. Whatever he intended to shout was never heard, because the ball smashed through his skull to erupt in a bloody spray as it exited the back of the Frenchman’s head. There was a brief moment of silence. ‘28th!’ Hallam shouted, as he stepped back against the wall. ‘Make ready!

In the seven weeks that it took for Longwood to be refurbished and extended, Napoleon stayed at a pretty bungalow called The Briars, closer to Jamestown, with the family of the East India Company superintendent William Balcombe, where he had one room and a pavilion in their garden.66 This period was his happiest on St Helena, not least because he struck up an unlikely, charming and innocent friendship with the second of the Balcombes’ four surviving children, Betsy, a spirited fourteen-year-old girl who spoke intelligible if ungrammatical French and to whom Napoleon behaved with avuncular indulgence. She had originally been brought up to view Napoleon, in her words, as ‘a huge ogre or giant, with one large flaming eye in the centre of his forehead, and long teeth protruding from his mouth, with which he tore to pieces and devoured little girls’, but she very soon came to adore him.67 ‘His smile, and the expression of his eye, could not be transmitted to canvas, and these constituted Napoleon’s chief charm,’ she later wrote. ‘His hair was dark brown, and as fine and silky as a child’s, rather too much so indeed for a man as its very softness caused it to look thin.’68 The friendship began when Napoleon tested Betsy on the capitals of Europe. When he asked her the capital of Russia she replied, ‘Petersburg now; Moscow formerly’, upon which ‘He turned abruptly round, and, fixing his piercing eyes full in my face, he demanded sternly, “Who burnt it?” ’ She was dumbstruck, until he laughed and said: ‘Oui, oui. You know very well that it was I who burnt it!’ Upon which the teenager corrected him: ‘I believe, sir, the Russians burnt it to get rid of the French.’69 Whereupon Napoleon laughed and friendship with ‘Mademoiselle Betsee’, ‘lettle monkee’, ‘bambina’ and ‘little scatterbrain’ was born.

My God. How can people be so cruel and thoughtless? They should be thanking you for your service!” “That’s even worse! What the fuck do they think they’re thanking me for? They don’t know what I did over there! They don’t understand that I’ve got seconds to make a judgment call that will either save my guys or end someone’s life—and that someone could be an enemy combatant or it could be a civilian. A farmer. A woman. A child. Or it could be both! That’s the real fucked-up part of it. It could be both a child and the enemy. That kid you’ve been giving candy and comic books to? The one that brought you fresh bread and knows your name and taught you a few words in his language? Is he the one reporting your position? Did he pull the trigger wire on the IED that killed your friend and wounded every single guy in your squad? Has he been the enemy all along? Is it your fault for talking to him?” I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to say. Tears burned my eyes, and my chest ached as I raced along beside him. “Oh, Ryan, no. Of course it isn’t.” “It is. I should have known. I let them down.” “You didn’t,” I said, trying to touch his arm, but he shrugged me off, refusing to be comforted. “And how about the time Taliban fighters lined up women and children as shields behind a compound wall while they fired at you, only you didn’t realize what they’d done until after you’d fired back, killing dozens of innocents?” The tears dripped down my cheeks, but I silently wiped them away in the dark. This wasn’t about me, and I didn’t want him to stop if he needed to get these things out. “Or how about the farmer I killed that didn’t respond to warning shots, the one whose son later told us was deaf and mute? Should I be thanked for that?” I could see how furious and heartsick he was, and I hated that I’d brought this on. “Yes,” I said firmly, although I continued to cry. “Because you’re brave and strong and you did what you were trained to do, what you had to do.

She looks to the sky watching the rain as it falls through space and there is nothing to see in the ruined yard but the world insisting on itself, the cement’s sedate crumbling giving way to the rising sap beneath, and when the yard is past there will remain the world’s insistence, the world insisting it is not a dream and yet to the looker there is no escaping the dream and the price of life that is suffering, and she sees her children delivered into a world of devotion and love and sees them damned to a world of terror, wishing for such a world to end, wishing for the world its destruction, and she looks at her infant son, this child who remains an innocent and she sees how she has fallen afoul of herself and grows aghast, seeing that out of terror comes pity and out of pity comes love and out of love the world can be redeemed again, and she can see that the world does not end, that it is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event, that what ends is your life and only your life, that what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time, the coming of the sword, the world devoured by fire, the sun gone down into the earth at noon and the world cast in darkness, the fury of some god incarnate in the mouth of the prophet raging at the wickedness that will be cast out of sight, and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore, Ben’s laughter behind her and she turns and sees Molly tickling him on her lap and she watches her son and sees in his eyes a radiant intensity that speaks of the world before the fall, and she is on her knees crying, taking hold of Molly’s hand.

It is seventeen years since she sailed slowly up the Mekong, in a slow boat with canvas awning, to Savannakhet, a large clearing in the virgin forest-land, surrounded by grey rice fields. At night, clusters of mosquitoes on mosquito nets. He cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, picture her at twenty-two, sailing up the Mekong. He cannot picture that face as a young face. He cannot imagine the eyes of an innocent girl seeing what she can see now. He is walking more slowly now. It is already too hot. Gardens everywhere on this side of the town. The funeral scent of oleanders. The land of oleanders. He never wants to see those flowers again. Never. Not anywhere. He had too much to drink last night. He drinks too much. There is a dull ache in the back of his neck. His stomach is queasy. The pink oleanders melt into the pink sky at dawn. The piled-up heaps of lepers scatter and spread. He thinks of her. He tries to think of her, nothing but her: a girlish figure seated on a couch, overlooking a river. She is gazing in front of her, no, he cannot see her, she is lost in the shadows. He can only see her surroundings: the forest, the Mekong river. A crowd of about twenty people has gathered in the metalled road. She is ill. At night she weeps, and it is thought that the best thing would be to send her back to France. Her family are alarmed. They never stop talking. They talk too much, too loudly. Wrought-iron gates in the distance, sentries in khaki uniform. Already they are guarding her, as she will be guarded for the rest of her life. It would be a relief to everyone if she would give vent to her boredom in an angry outburst. It would not surprise them if she were to collapse before their eyes, but no, she is still sitting silently on her couch when Monsieur Stretter arrives, and carries her away in his official launch. He told her: 'I shall leave you in peace. You are free to return to France whenever you wish. You have nothing to fear.' And all this, when he, he, Charles Rossett–he stops in his tracks–oh! he, at this period of Anne-Marie Stretter's life, was no more than a child.

In a dear little village Remote and obscure A beautiful maiden resided As to whether or not Her intentions were pure Opinions were sharply divided She loved to lie Out 'neath the darkening sky And allow the night breeze To entrance her She whispered her dreams To the birds flying by But seldom received any answer Over the field and along the lane Gentle Alice would love to stray When it came to the end of the day She would wander away Unheeding Dreaming her innocent dreams she strode Quite unaffected by heat or cold Frequently freckled or soaked with rain Alice was out in the lane Who she met there Every day Was a question Answered by none But she'd get there And she'd stay there 'Til whatever she did Was undoubtedly done You might also like Mad Dogs And Englishmen Noël Coward You’re Losing Me (From The Vault) Taylor Swift Cupid (Twin Version) FIFTY FIFTY (피프티피프티) Over the field and along the lane Both her parents would call in vain Sadly, sorrowfully, they'd complain 'Alice is at it again.' Although that dear little village Surrounded by trees Had neither a school, nor a college Gentle Alice acquired From the birds and the bees Some exceedingly practical knowledge The curious secrets that nature revealed She refused to allow to upset her But she thought When observing the beasts of the field That things might have been organised better Over the field and along the lane Gentle Alice would make up And take up Her stand The road was not exactly arterial But it led to a town nearby Where quite a lot of masculine material Caught her rolling eye She was ready to hitchhike Cadillac or motorbike She wasn't proud or choosy All she Was aiming to be Was a pinked-up Minked-up Fly-by-night floozy When old Rogers Gave her pearls as large as Nuts on a chestnut tree All she'd say was 'Fiddle-di-dee! The wages of sin will be the death of me!' Over the field and along the lane Gentle Alice's parents Would wait Hand in hand Her dear old white-headed mother Wistfully sipping champagne Said 'We've spoiled our child Spared the rod Open up the caviar and say "Thank God!" We've got no cause to complain! Alice is at it again!

There was talk in the fields about the witch in the woods, but go see her? No one would dare. So I thought to myself I’d sneak out one night to see what I could find there.   I slipped from my straw, jumped over the gate, a candle alight in my hand. I went to the woods at the edge of the park as the moon fell down on this land.   I walked through the trees, so scared and alone, though with hope in the back of my mind. As I saw a small light and smoke rising high I wondered what I would find.   I walked up to a door but before I could knock, it opened with a creak and a squeak. There stood a woman all dressed in white; I felt completely unable to speak.   I sat on a chair by the side of a fire whilst she looked fondly at me. ‘Are you a witch?’ I asked her at last. And she said ‘I may possibly be.   But don’t be afraid I just prefer it out here Away from experienced minds. I live with my innocent, simple, sweet thoughts That are pure and gentle and kind.’   I was a little confused So I said to her now, ‘How do you even survive?’ She said to me softly ‘Just love, my young man, It is only on love that I thrive.’   ‘What can I do?’ I said to her now ‘So I can be just like you?’ ‘What, wearing a dress? Clad only in white? I’m sure you’d look better in blue!’   ‘No,’ I said, laughing, ‘To feel just like you Where everything seems so right.’ She thought for a while, And closed her deep eyes As the full moon shed its fair light.   ‘All I can say Is open your mind, The world is more than you know. Look deeper than deep, Be a dreamer, my boy, And give love wherever you go.   When others hurt you, Accept that it hurts, Have faith in the bad and the good. Walk with the soul And the eyes of a child You will always be safe in these woods.   As for the world That lies there outside, Remember the words that I’ve said. Keep them inside Your heart and your mind And by them may you be led.   Soon others will see There is no such thing As being too nice or too kind. And then one fine day, When more are like you, I can leave this sweet glory behind.’   So when I got home I thought of the woman That had entered my life that dark night. I will walk tall forever With the eyes of a child, To the blackness of life I’ll bring light.

I was never a child; I never had a childhood. I cannot count among my memories warm, golden days of childish intoxication, long joyous hours of innocence, or the thrill of discovering the universe anew each day. I learned of such things later on in life from books. Now I guess at their presence in the children I see. I was more than twenty when I first experienced something similar in my self, in chance moments of abandonment, when I was at peace with the world. Childhood is love; childhood is gaiety; childhood knows no cares. But I always remember myself, in the years that have gone by, as lonely, sad, and thoughtful. Ever since I was a little boy I have felt tremendously alone―and "peculiar". I don't know why. It may have been because my family was poor or because I was not born the way other children are born; I cannot tell. I remember only that when I was six or seven years old a young aunt of mind called me [i]vecchio[/i]―"old man," and the nickname was adopted by all my family. Most of the time I wore a long, frowning face. I talked very little, even with other children; compliments bored me; baby-talk angered me. Instead of the noisy play of the companions of my boyhood I preferred the solitude of the most secluded corners of our dark, cramped, poverty-stricken home. I was, in short, what ladies in hats and fur coats call a "bashful" or a "stubborn" child; and what our women with bare heads and shawls, with more directness, call a [i]rospo[/i]―a "toad." They were right. I must have been, and I was, utterly unattractive to everybody. I remember, too, that I was well aware of the antipathy I aroused. It made me more "bashful," more "stubborn," more of a "toad" than ever. I did not care to join in the games played by other boys, but preferred to stand apart, watching them with jealous eyes, judging them, hating them. It wasn't envy I felt at such times: it was contempt; it was scorn. My warfare with men had begun even then and even there. I avoided people, and they neglected me. I did not love them, and they hated me. At play in the parks some of the boys would chase me; others would laugh at me and call me names. At school they pulled my curls or told the teachers tales about me. Even on my grandfather's farm in the country peasant brats threw stones at me without provocation, as if they felt instinctively that I belonged to some other breed.

Their Graces bought me, you know. They’d acquired my brother Devlin the year before, and my mother, inspired by this development, threatened to publish all manner of lurid memoirs regarding His Grace.” Acquired her brother? As if he were a promising yearling colt or an attractive patch of ground? “You are going to burden me with the details of your family past, I take it?” “You are the man who glories in details.” Without the least rude inflection, she made it sound like a failing. “My point is that my mother sold me. She could just as easily have sold me to a brothel. It’s done all the time. Unlike your sisters, Mr. Hazlit, I do not take for granted the propriety with which I was raised. You may ignore it if you please; I will not.” She had such a lovely voice. Light, soft, lilting with a hint of something Gaelic or Celtic… exotic. The sound of her voice was so pretty, it almost disguised the ugliness of her words. “How old were you?” “Five, possibly six. It depends on whether I am truly Moreland’s by-blow or just a result of my mother’s schemes in his direction.” Six years old and sold to a brothel? The food he’d eaten threatened to rebel. “I’m… sorry.” For calling her a dollymop, for making her repeat this miserable tale, for what he was about to suggest. She turned her head to regard him, the slight sheen in her eyes making him sorrier still. Sorrier than he could recall being about anything in a long, long time. Not just guilty and ashamed, but full of regret—for her. The way he’d been full of regret for his sisters and powerless to do anything but support them in their solitary struggles. He shoved that thought aside, along with the odd notion that he should take Magdalene Windham’s hand in some laughable gesture of comfort. He passed her his handkerchief instead. “This makes the stated purpose of my call somewhat awkward.” “It makes just about everything somewhat awkward,” she said quietly. “Try a few years at finishing school when you’re the daughter of not just a courtesan—there are some of those, after all—but a courtesan who sells her offspring. I realized fairly early that my mother’s great failing was not a lack of virtue, but rather that she was greedy in her fall from grace.” “She exploited a child,” Hazlit said. “That is an order of magnitude different from parlaying with an adult male in a transaction of mutual benefit.” “Do you think so?” She laid his handkerchief out in her lap, her fingers running over his monogrammed initials. “Some might say she was protecting me, providing for me and holding the duke accountable for his youthful indiscretions.” Despite her mild tone, Hazlit didn’t think Miss Windham would reach those conclusions. She might long to, but she wouldn’t. By the age of six a child usually had the measure of her caretakers. And to think of Maggie Windham at six… big innocent green eyes, masses of red hair, perfect skin… in a brothel. “I

DEAR CHILD Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter, from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can seem to yourself to hear wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a happy Easter. Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window – when, lying lazily with eyes half-shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or water rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one’s eyes like a beautiful picture or poem. And is not that a Mother’s gentle hand that undraws your curtains, and a Mother’s sweet voice that summons you to rise? To rise and forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams that frightened you so when all was dark – to rise and enjoy another happy day, first kneeling to thank that unseen Friend, who sends you the beautiful sun? Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as ‘Alice’? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all, except in church and on Sunday: but I think – nay, I am sure – that some children will read this gently and lovingly, and in the spirit of which I have written it. For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into two halves – to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as mention Him on a week-day. Do you think He cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer – and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children, as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the ‘dim religious light’ of some solemn cathedral? And if I have written anything to add to those stories of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows. This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, feeling your ‘life in every limb’, and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air – and many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and gray-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight – but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning when the ‘Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings’. Surely your gladness need not be less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this – when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters – when angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day – and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past! Your affectionate friend, LEWIS CARROLL Easter, 1876

As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other conceI1l8 with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth. But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has. In its religious subject-matter the portrayal of this love has a wide series of events, including, for example, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth, the Flight into Egypt, etc. And then there are, added to this, other subjects from the later life of Christ, i.e. the Disciples and the women who follow him and in whom the love of God becomes more or less a personal relation of love for a living and present Saviour who walks amongst them as an actual man; there is also the love of the angels who hover over the birth of Christ and many other scenes in his life, in serious worship or innocent joy. In all these subjects it is painting especially which presents the peace and full satisfaction of love. But nevertheless this peace is followed by the deepest suffering. Mary sees Christ carry his cross, she sees him suffer and die on the cross, taken down from the cross and buried, and no grief of others is so profound as hers. Mary’s grief is of a totally different kind. She is emotional, she feels the thrust of the dagger into the centre of her soul, her heart breaks, but she does not turn into stone.

How sad if we pass through life and never see it with the eyes of a child. This doesn’t mean you should drop your concepts totally; they’re very precious. Though we begin without them, concepts have a very positive function. Thanks to them we develop our intelligence. We’re invited, not to become children, but to become like children. We do have to fall from a stage of innocence and be thrown out of paradise; we do have to develop an “I” and a “me” through these concepts. But then we need to return to paradise. We need to be redeemed again. We need to put off the old man, the old nature, the conditioned self, and return to the state of the child but without being a child. When we start off in life, we look at reality with wonder, but it isn’t the intelligent wonder of the mystics; it’s the formless wonder of the child. Then wonder dies and is replaced by boredom, as we develop language and words and concepts. Then hopefully, if we’re lucky, we’ll return to wonder again.

Yasser Arafat and his PLO held the records for the largest hijacking,6 the greatest number of hostages held at one time,7 the greatest number of people shot at an airport, the largest ransom collected,8 and the greatest variety of targets.9 Yasser Arafat was the man who ordered the murder of the schoolchildren in Avivim, Ma’alot, and Antwerp; the murder of eleven Jewish Olympic athletes in Munich; the murder of synagogue worshipers in Istanbul; the murder of a child and his pregnant mother in Alfeh Menashe; and the murder of a mother and her children on a bus in Jericho. This was the man who ordered innocent Arabs in Nablus to be hanged by their chins on butchers’ hooks until they died; by whose orders the bellies of pregnant Arab women were split open before the eyes of their husbands and the hands of Arab children were chopped off while their parents looked on.10 And he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and celebrated on the White House lawn in a forced handshake with both the leaders of the very people he had sworn to destroy.

How can it be so, this hovering sense of being both victim and perpetrator, both us and them, both me and him? Have we been expelled from an arcadia of fun where nature provided us with innocent automata, lowing and braying machines for our amusement? I doubt it. I doubt it very much. I tell you what I think, since you ask, since you dare to push your repulsive face at me, from out of the smooth paintwork of my heavily mortgaged heart. I think there was only so much fun to go round, only so much and no more available. We've used it all up country dancing in the gloaming, kissing by moonlight, eating shellfish while the sun shatters on our upturned fork and we make the bon point. And of course, the think about fun is that it exists solely in retrospect, in retroscendence; when you're having fun you are perforce abandoned, unthinking. Didn't we have fun, well, didn't we? You know we did. You're with me now, aren't you? We're leaving the party together. We pause on the stairs and although we left of our own accord, pulled our coat from under the couple entwined on the bed, we already sense that it was the wrong decision, that there was a hidden hand pushing us out, wanting to exclude us. We pause on the stairs and we hear the party going on without us, a shrill of laughter, a skirl of music. Is it too late to go back? Will we feel silly if we go back up and announce to no one in particular, 'Look, the cab hasn't arrived. We thought we'd just come back up and wait for it, have a little more fun.' Well, yes, yes, we will feel silly, bloody silly, because it isn't true. The cab has arrived, we can see it at the bottom of the stairs, grunting in anticipation, straining to be clutched and directed, to take us away. Away from fun and home, home to the suburbs of maturity. One last thing. You never thought that being grown up would mean having to be quite so - how can I put it? Quite so - grown up. Now did you? You didn't think that you'd have to work at it quite so hard. It's so relentless, this being grown up, this having to be considered, poised, at home with a shifting four-dimensional matrix of Entirely Valid Considerations. You'd like to get a little tiddly, wouldn't you? You'd like to fiddle with the buttons of reality as he does, feel it up without remorse, without the sense that you have betrayed some shadowy commitment. Don't bother. I've bothered. I've gone looking for the child inside myself. Ian, the Startrite kid. I've pursued him down the disappearing paths of my own psyche. I am he as he is me, as we are all . . . His back, broad as a standing stone . . . My footsteps, ringing eerily inside my own head. I'm turning in to face myself, and face myself, and face myself. I'm looking deep into my own eyes. Ian, is that you, my significant other? I can see you now for what you are, Ian Wharton. You're standing on a high cliff, chopped off and adumbrated by the heaving green of the sea. You're standing hunched up with the dull awareness of the hard graft. The heavy workload that is life, that is death, that is life again, everlasting, world without end. And now, Ian Wharton, now that you are no longer the subject of this cautionary tale, merely its object, now that you are just another unproductive atom staring out from the windows of a branded monad, now that I've got you where I want you, let the wild rumpus begin.

In love then and in love now In love then and in love now, The mind never protested, And I fell in love, Because the heart too never resisted, Time grew on us together, Both of us, she and I as well, Almost like two different people bearing the same feather, And thus, in love we fell, She became the sun that only shone for me, While I always believed I was something similar for her, And we became eternal lovers, and that is how it was meant to be, She loving me and I loving her, Her skin, her lips, her eyes were the only beauty’s icons I wanted to feel and see, And in moments of love I spilled over her like a wave of joy, And I loved her with every part of me, Like a child, like a man and at times like a youthful innocent boy, So, I continue to love her everyday and today, With the clarity of my mind, Because my heart beats for her everyday, And wherever I may see, it is her eyes, her lips and her, that I find, And it shall be so today and tomorrow too, because it is a feeling pleasuresome, To love her now as I loved her then, And when I think of you Irma, time does not become burdensome, Because somehow it feels now, as it felt then!

There was a great change in Barbayat, though visible only for a moment before the veneer of mossy stone swathed her again. She was taller, straighter; she had a pride of carriage and an elegance of bearing; her skin was creamy and unlined, her eyes bright black-green and clear as a child’s, yet with such a store of accumulated powers and strengths in them that they were essentially old for all that. Her hair poured down her back, black as Shaina’s own; indeed she had an appearance of Shaina altogether, Shaina’s striking good looks, her vitality, her goodness, her iron endurance; if not the innocence that could only exist in a young girl.

Innocent teary eyes Grief stricken face You look everywhere with fear And with feelings of helpless pain! When you should be playing with Dolls and dancing in the rain! Neither do you like to wear new dresses, Nor sing, laugh, and play with the toy train! Oh my dearest sweet child! Please forgive us all we men, For we have made this world Fit for only guns, bombs and Acid rain!

Our first chakra is called the Mooladhara which is found under the spinal cord. This core also known as the root chakra is ruled by Mars, who is also the creator of the sign Aries. The chakra of mooladhara stands for innocence, honesty, pure childlike happiness, knowledge, sense of direction and a strong connection with earth and creation. This brings us strength and decisiveness in our action if this chakra is high within us, the ability to find the best direction in life to make the right decisions. Mars represents physical strength and behavior amicable and kind among planets. Mars ' strength is strong, ordinary and sometimes instinctive. With positive Mars energy our action carries physical dynamism and courage. Thanks to this energy, we live each day with a child's enthusiasm and a fresh desire to discover life. In astrology, Mars rules the sexual energy of a person. Mars that has been badly affected takes a person to extremes. Likewise, the Mooladhara chakra controls the reproductive organs, but due to hardships and things not harmless, its responsiveness is weakened. We will sense the goodness inside us and want to live as our first chakra is stronger accordingly. •       Our second chakra, the Swadisthan, is located in the area of our abdomen and is governed by Mercury. Mercury governs in astrology the signs of Gemini and Virgo. This chakra's most important function is to break down fat cells in the stomach and provide the energy needed to renew white and gray cells within the brain. It also reinforces our capacity to think. This chakra supports all areas of our sense of esthetics and creativity. The ability to easily comprehend, and come up with practical solutions to our life and knowledge issues all come from this chakra. Mercury is an astrological representation of intelligence, mind and creativity. With this chakra pure knowledge flows into our being out of the Greater Consciousness. Mercury acts as a bridge between mind, spirit and matter. It rules science and the fine arts. Strong Mercury energy can connect even the most complex thoughts and difficult concepts in the birth chart. People who are under this planet's influence experience constant mental activity. This could produce an easily angry and impatient nature. The result is the same when we make too much use of the energy of our second chakra. A balanced Swadisthan provides a person with clear attention to making healthy decisions.

An Infant Maestro by Stewart Stafford Baby as a bag of cats, Grunting like an Everest climber, Then screaming as if tortured, Followed by innocent, cooing smiles. Drinking milk from a rocket bottle, Tiny hands move with satisfaction, Conducting an invisible orchestra, Sighing in rhythm to his gulps. Bored stares at the ceiling, As Baby Mama changes him, Then eye-rolling slumber, Floating away in the bassinet. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Every Farmer Understands Every Tear from Every Eye Becomes a Babe in Eternity This is caught by Females bright And returnd to its own delight The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath Writes Revenge in realms of Death The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air Does to Rags the Heavens tear The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun Palsied strikes the Summers Sun The poor Mans Farthing is worth more Than all the Gold on Africs Shore One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands Or if protected from on high Does that whole Nation sell & buy He who mocks the Infants Faith Shall be mockd in Age & Death He who shall teach the Child to Doubt The rotting Grave shall neer get out He who respects the Infants faith Triumphs over Hell & Death —William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence” (lines 67–90)

You grieve, my child.” I could not tell if it was sympathy I heard in her voice. I didn’t answer aloud, but she heard my response anyway. “I know grief,” she said, voice soft. “I know what it is to lose half of one’s soul.” “To have such a thing stolen from you is a great loss indeed.” Lightning faded as her eyes turned back to me. “But perhaps, too, it is a blessing, my child. Such a pure love, distilled forever in its innocence. A flower frozen in bloom.” Her fingers caressed my throat, drifted down to my chest, lingering there—as if feeling for my human pulse. “A dead lover can never break your heart.

Haddam has always sheltered oddments like Paul, strangies you get used to seeing hanging around the Post Office or the newspaper kiosk, or at back tables in the library, reading China Today or Lancet and laughing about things only they know. These people wear the same clothes day-in, day-out, always appear fiercely involved in something, though in fact they’re doing nothing, since in an hour you see them involved in the same thing a block away. They are (or were) the love-child son or moody eldest daughter of some ex–New Jersey governor, long deceased, or the sallow, hollow-eyed offspring of some Swiss seminarian, who’s moved on. These aren’t the people who buy bump stocks or take up positions in a bell tower and rain terror upon an innocent world. They’re the watery presences at the periphery of yours and everyone else’s sight line, awaiting nothing, seemingly friendless (though not always), harming nothing and no one, growing old as you grow old, and who repair somewhere at night to sleep. It’s possible to think people like this don’t have lives full of expectancy and small triumphs. But they do.

Like the wide hollows of eyes marked in cathedrals of stone that left me half-perplexed as a child. A self-portrait of an innocent in this organic of ephemeral societies. Then I know I will be able to flourish viciously. That's the trouble with remembering. You begin to wish.

Well, come along then.” St. Just held out a hand. “We will feed you and then see what’s to be done with you.” The child stared at his hand, frowned, and looked up at his face, then back down at his hand. The earl merely kept his hand outstretched, his expression calm. “Meat pies,” he mused aloud. “Cheese toast, cold cider, apple tarts, strawberry cobbler, sausage and eggs, treacle pudding, clean sheets smelling of sunshine and lavender, beeswax candles…” He felt a tentative touch of little fingers against his palm, so he closed his hand around those fingers and let his voice lead the child along. “Berry tarts, scones in the morning, ham, bacon, nice hot tea with plenty of cream and sugar, kippers, beefsteak, buttered rolls and muffins…” “Muffins?” the child piped up wistfully. St. Just almost smiled at the angelic expression on the urchin’s face. Great blue eyes peered out of a smudged, beguiling little puss, a mop of wheat blond curls completing a childish image of innocence. “Muffins.” The earl reiterated as they gained the side terrace of the manor and passed indoors. “With butter and jam, if you prefer. Or chocolate, or juice squeezed from oranges.” “Oranges?” “Had them all the time in Spain.” “You were in Spain?” the child asked, eyes round. “Did you fight old Boney?” “I was in Spain,” the earl said, his tone grave, “and Portugal, and France, and I fought old Boney. Nasty business, not at all as pleasant as the thought of tea cakes or clean linen or even some decent bread and butter.” “Bread

The door to the little dining parlor banged open, the apologetic footman rushing in behind a young woman St. Just had not seen before. She was trussed up in a shapeless black bombazine dress covering her from ankles to wrist to neck, an equally hideous black bonnet on her head. “That is not my tart,” the earl observed to no one in particular. “Bronwyn!” The woman leapt across the room and wrapped her arms around Winnie, the bonnet tumbling off in her haste. “Oh, Winnie, you naughty, naughty child, I’ve been searching all over for you.” “Hullo, Miss Emmie.” Winnie beamed a grin, hugging the lady back. “Rosecroft says we’re going to have apple tarts.” “Madam?” The earl rose and bowed. “Rosecroft, at your service.” “My lord.” She bobbed a nervous curtsy then swiveled back to the child. “Winnie, are you all right?” “I had to take a bath.” Winnie frowned at the memory. “But I ate and ate and ate. I am not a gentleman, though.” “You took a bath?” Miss Farnum’s eyes went round. “My lord? Did I hear her aright?” “With lavender bubbles,” the earl replied gravely. “And you would be?” “Miss Emmaline Farnum,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Just how did you get her to take a bath?” The earl narrowed his eyes, as well. “Perhaps that is a discussion we adults might reserve for later. And as I wouldn’t want to be guilty of breaking my word to a child, may I invite you to join us for apple tarts, Miss Farnum?” The footman withdrew at the earl’s lifted eyebrow while the child’s gaze bounced back and forth between the adults. Winnie sat, all innocence in an old nightshirt somebody had dragged out of a trunk. Her golden curls gleamed, and on her feet were wool socks many sizes too big. “Apple tarts sound delicious,” Miss Farnum said.

To be quite frank, I don't know nor understand how one can stand up and say I'm a 'perfect father'! I reckon myself to be a great dad in my children's eyes and maybe the kids I interact with just by passing by and cracking a few jokes that eventually put a smile on their faces. I call myself a 'great dad' cause my CREATOR chose me to bring an innocent and beautiful life to this world because the Heavens above believed that: 1. I'd never compromise my child's happiness over anything or anyone! 2. I'd do whatever possible, within reason of course to ensure that my son sees LOVE, HOPE, FAITH, HAPPINESS, LAUGHTER, OPULENCE, THE HEAVENS and definitely a FATHER whenever he looks at me or through my eyes! 3. I'm a GREAT-DAD until my children say otherwise.

Lark’s Song That child who from Diana’s thought is born A huntress swift, who doth the world adorn With strength and passion worthy of the Green May wax, and one day rise to be a queen. That child who in the eye of Phoebus grows Of visage fair, that none would dare oppose May in her hand hold light and glory too, And to the Light hold sternly staunch and true. That child who with the face of Venus smiles, Will bear a heart of mischief and of wiles, And may in time love’s faithful bonds fulfil While bending lesser hearts unto her will. That child who with Athena’s grace doth move May to all eyes her worldly wisdom prove And make right wise and fulsome use thereof To measure all who seek to win her love. That child who with grim Circe’s tongue foretells Enmeshing faithful hearts within her spells By dint of sly mendacity and guile, All innocence and virtue may defile. That child who by her cunning doth connive May by fair Tyche’s fortune wax and thrive And come in time to sit upon a throne; Or fail and fall, forsaken and alone. That child may choose to hark to glory’s call And shine in splendour, loved by one and all; Or cleave to darkness, hated and reviled: Chance crafts the fate of every fate-touched child.

Do you feel well enough to travel back to the Keep today?” “We need to,” she answered, but despite her tired tone, she was smiling. “We can postpone the trip if you’re not feeling up to it. You and our child’s health are more important than indulging Nacola.” Or Syfka, I thought. She could speak to the rest of the Royal Flight when Danica was ready. “Don’t worry; I feel fine,” Danica assured me. With wide-eyed innocence, she added, “I know how much it would disappoint you not to see my mother.

The little boy touched his dust-streaked hand to Loretta’s hair and made a breathless “ooh” sound. He smelled like any little boy who had been hard at play, a bit sweaty yet somehow sweet, with the definite odor of dog and horse clinging to him. Blackbird concentrated on Loretta’s blue eyes, staring into them with unflinching intensity. The younger girl ran reverent fingertips over the flounces on Loretta’s bloomers, saying, “Tosi wannup,” over and over again. Loretta couldn’t help but smile. She was as strange to them as they were to her. She longed to gather them close and never let go. Friendly faces and human warmth. Their giggles made her long for home. With a throat that responded none too well to the messages from her brain, Loretta murmured, “Hello.” The sound of her own voice seemed unreal--an echo from the past. “Hi, hites.” Blackbird linked her chubby forefingers in an unmistakable sign of friendship. “Hah-ich-ka sooe ein conic?” Loretta had no idea what the child had asked until Blackbird steepled her fingers. “Oh--my house?” Loretta cupped a hand over her brow as if she were squinting into the distance. “Very far away.” Blackbird’s eyes sparkled with delight, and she burst into a long chain of gibberish, chortling and waving her hands. Loretta watched her, fascinated by the glow of happiness in her eyes, the innocence in her small face. She had always imagined Comanches, young and old, with blood dripping from their fingers. A deep voice came from behind her. “She asks how long you will eat and keep warm with us.” Startled, Loretta glanced over her shoulder to find Hunter reclining on a pallet of furs. Because he lay so low to the floor, she hadn’t seen him the first time she’d looked. Propping himself up on one elbow, he listened to his niece chatter for a moment. His eyes caught the light coming through the lodge door, glistening, fathomless. “You will tell her, ‘Pihet tabbe.’” Trust didn’t come easily to Loretta. “What does that mean?” A smile teased the corners of his mouth. “Pihet, three. Tabbe, the sun. Three suns. It was our bargain.” Relieved that she hadn’t dreamed his promise to take her home, Loretta repeated “pihet tabbe” to Blackbird. The little girl looked crestfallen and took Loretta’s hand. “Ka,” she cried. “Ein mea mon-ach.” “Ka, no. You are going a long way,” Hunter translated, pushing to his feet as he spoke. “I think she likes you.” He came to the bed and, with an indulgent smile, shooed the children away as Aunt Rachel shooed chickens. “Poke Wy-ar-pee-cha, Pony Girl,” he said as he scooped the unintimidated toddler off the furs and set her on the floor. His hand lingered a moment on her hair, a loving gesture that struck Loretta as totally out of character for a Comanche warrior. The fragile child, his rugged strength. The two formed a fascinating contrast. “She is from my sister who is dead.” Nodding toward the boy, he added, “Wakare-ee, Turtle, from Warrior.” Loretta didn’t want the children to leave her alone with their uncle. She gazed after them as they ran out the lodge door.

His eyes. Unclouded by cynicism, questioning but with a certainty that there were answers, warmly innocent in some strange way. A child’s eyes, she thought. Even more irresistible when set in a man’s face.

It was some time before Hero came downstairs, but after about half an hour she put in an appearance, still wearing her silk and gauze ball-dress, but with her jewels discarded and her curls a little ruffled. She came quickly into the room, a look of great distress in her face, and went towards Sherry with her hands held out, and saying impetuously: 'Oh, Sherry, it is so shocking! She has told me the whole, and I never thought anyone could be so wicked! It is all too true! That dear little baby is indeed Sir Montagu's own child, but he will not give poor Ruth a penny for its maintenance, no, nor even see Ruth! Oh, Sherry, how can such things be?' 'Yes, I know, Kitten. It's devilish bad, but- but we have only the girl's word for it, and I dare say, if we only knew-' 'Might be a mistake,' explained Ferdy, anxious to be helpful. She turned her large eyes towards him. 'Oh no, Ferdy, there can be none indeed! You see, she told me everything! She is not a wicked girl- I am sure she is not! She is quite simple, and she did not know what she was doing!' 'They all say that,' said Mr Ringwood gloomily. 'How can you, Gil? I had not thought "you" would be so unjust!' Hero cried. 'She is nothing but a country maid, and I can tell that her father is a very good sort of a man- respectable, I mean, for no sooner did he discover the dreadful truth than he cast her out of his home, and will not have anything to say to her, which always seems to me shockingly cruel, though Cousin Jane says it is to be expected, because of the wages of sin, which comes in the Bible! Indeed, she is quite an innocent girl, for how could it be otherwise when she believed in Sir Montagu's promise to marry her? Why, even I know better than that!

Mr. Bronson,” the little girl chirped innocently, “why did you sleep with two women at your party?” Stunned, Holly realized that Rose had overheard her earlier conversation with Maude. Maude paused in the act of filling the child's plate, the fine china slipping from her hands and clattering on the sideboard. Elizabeth choked on a mouthful of food, somehow managed to swallow and concealed her crimson face with a napkin. When she was able, she glanced at Holly with eyes brimming with equal parts of dismay and mirth, and spoke in a strangled murmur. “Excuse me—my right shoe is pinching—I believe I'll change into another pair.” She fled the scene hastily, leaving the rest of them to stare at Bronson. Of all of them, Bronson was the only one who showed no visible reaction, save for a thoughtful quirk of his mouth. He must have been a very, very good card player, Holly thought. “At times the guests become very tired at my parties,” Bronson said to the child, his tone matter-of-fact. “I was merely helping them to rest.” “Oh, I see,” Rose said brightly. Holly managed to find her voice. “I believe my daughter is finished with her breakfast, Maude.” “Yes, milady.” The maid rushed forward in a panic to gather up the child and quit the mortifying scene. “But Mama,” Rose protested, “I haven't even—” “You may take your plate to the nursery,” Holly said firmly, seating herself as if nothing untoward had occurred. “Right this minute, Rose. I want to discuss something with Mr. Bronson.” “Why don't I ever get to eat with the big people?” the child asked sullenly, accompanying Maude from the room.

I am not a terrorist. The death of the innocent is not something I take pleasure in—unlike you people. But hard choices must be made, and this is necessary. . .it is a sacrifice which must needs be made. For the greater good. For a better world.” “A world in which my people have been ‘cleansed’ from your soil,” Tarik spat, his lip curling up in contempt. “Yes,” Colville returned, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward, knuckles pressed against the hard English walnut of the writing desk only inches away from a snifter of brandy. “In a hundred years, I want a British boy to grow to manhood without ever hearing the name of your child-molesting prophet spoken in the streets of England. That is what I want.

Crossing the threshold of faith means that we keep our eyes filled with wonder and do not let our hearts grow accustomed to laziness. It means that we are able to recognize that each time a woman gives birth to a child it is yet another bet placed for life and for the future; that, when we show concern for the innocence of children, we guarantee the truth of tomorrow; and that, when we esteem an unselfish elderly person, we are performing an act of justice and embracing our own roots.

They will wonder at and feel a superstitious admiration for us, and feel proud to be led by men so powerful and wise that a handful of them can subject a flock a thousand millions strong. Gradually men will begin to fear us. They will nervously dread our slightest anger, their intellects will weaken, their eyes become as easily accessible to tears as those of children and women; but we will teach them an easy transition from grief and tears to laughter, childish joy and mirthful song. Yes; we will make them work like slaves, but during their recreation hours they shall have an innocent child-like life, full of play and merry laughter. We will even permit them sin, for, weak and helpless, they will feel the more love for us for permitting them to indulge in it. We will tell them that every kind of sin will be remitted to them, so long as it is done with our permission; that we take all these sins upon ourselves, for we so love the world, that we are even willing to sacrifice our souls for its satisfaction.

Vanessa,” he whispered. She moved in her bed. She sniffed. “Cameron?” she asked. “What is it?” he whispered. “Nothing, it’s nothing,” she whispered back. He went to her bed and sat on the edge. He looked down at eyes that, even in the darkness of her room, were filled and overflowing, her nose pink. “God, Vanessa, if I made you cry, I’ll hate myself.” “It’s not your fault. You’re completely innocent. You’ve been wonderful. I think too much sometimes. I have to learn to let some things go.” “Oh, honey,” he said, pulling her close. “It’s all right. These things take time.” “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t have to be sorry. I knew—we both knew—you’ve had so much to deal with, to try to put into perspective. It’s okay.” He crawled onto the bed and, on top of the coverlet, slipped an arm under her head to hold her. “You take your time, Vanni. There’s lots of time.” She turned in his arms and cried against his bare chest, and he held her, understanding the pain. He ached for her. The woman had buried the husband of her heart right before delivering his child. Moving on to the next part of her life wasn’t going to be that easy. He didn’t care. He was willing to go through this with her, because this was exactly the kind of woman he wanted in his life. A woman who could show commitment this powerful, emotion this deep, love this enduring. When

We cain’t harm him, Minnie … I cain’t. Folks talkin’ badly ’bout Nat Turner and ’fraid to admit they wanted him to succeed. The child innocent, Minnie, and after all Nat attempted to do … I must do this. You go on now, and speak to no one ’bout it. Let Mae know if she speaks ’bout this night, it will be the last thang she ever speaks ’bout,” Ellen said calmly, looking up from the robust baby to make eye contact. Seeing

Gareth strode straight up to Lucien, seized his shoulder and spun him roughly around on his heel. The pistol went flying from the dummy's wooden hand. "I beg your pardon," Lucien said, raising his brows at Gareth's open display of hostility. "Where is she?" The duke turned back to his target and calmly reloaded his pistol. "Probably halfway to Newbury by now, I should think," he said, mildly. "Do go away, dear boy. This is no sport for children like yourself, and I wouldn't want you to get hurt." The condescending remark cut deep. Gareth marched around to face his brother. They were of equal height, equal build, and almost of equal weight, and his blue eyes blazed into Lucien's black ones as he seized the duke's perfect white cravat and yanked him close. Lucien's eyes went cold, and he reached up and caught Gareth's wrist in an iron grip of his own. All civility vanished. "Don't push me," the duke warned, menacingly. "I've had all I can take of your childish pranks and degenerate friends." "You dare call me a child?" "Yes, and I will continue to do so as long as you continue to act like one. You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless. You are an embarrassment to this family — especially to me. When you grow up and learn the meaning of responsibility, Gareth, perhaps I shall treat you with the respect I did your brother." "How dare you talk to me of responsibility when you banish an innocent young woman to fend for herself, and she with a six-month-old baby who happens to be your niece!  You're a cold-hearted, callous, unfeeling bastard!" The duke pushed him away, lifting his chin as he repaired the damage to his cravat. "She was handsomely paid. She has more than enough money to get back to those godforsaken colonies from which she came, more than enough to see herself and her bastard babe in comfort for the rest of her life. She is no concern of yours." Bastard babe. Gareth pulled back and sent his fist crashing into Lucien's jaw with a force that nearly took his brother's head off. The duke staggered backward, his hand going to his bloodied mouth, but he did not fall. Lucien never fell. And in that moment Gareth had never hated him more. "I'm going to find her," Gareth vowed, as Lucien, coldly watching him, took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his mouth. "And when I do, I'm going to marry her, take care of her and that baby as Charles should have done — as it's our duty to do. Then I dare you to call me a child and her little baby a bastard!" He spun on his heel and marched back across the lawn. "Gareth!" He kept walking. "Gareth!" He swung up on Crusader and thundered away.   ~~~~

Children who are ill, in their innocence and plight, teach adults many lessons, and one of those lessons is that ‘Life must go on. Face it. Live it. Enjoy it. Despite all the odds.’ That is bravery, in the eyes of a sick child.

With all due respect, Alex, you seem slightly more than befuddled. You seem…” Vivi paused, searching for the word. “Furious,” Ella supplied frankly. “I’m not furious,” Alex said in frustration, “but besides not understanding what he sees in her…I simply find it unbelievable that he would think he could speak to me as if I were a child! It makes me…” She stopped, at a loss for words. “Furious?” Ella offered. Alex threw her a glare. “Irritated.” “Blackmoor seems just as chivalrous as always to me,” said Vivi. “Although, considering his prior warnings to you about Stanhope, it wouldn’t surprise me if he were slightly unnerved by the portrait the two of you were making.” “It would serve him right!” Then, forgetting her ire momentarily, Alex turned to Vivi. “What portrait? We were simply enjoying our afternoon. Stanhope has been a perfect gentleman.” “That may well be the case, Alex, but the two of you did appear rather…” Vivi let her sentence trail off. “Cozy.” This, again, from Ella. “Must you finish all her sentences?” Alex gave Ella an exasperated look. Ella smiled brightly. “It’s a particular skill.” “Stanhope and I were not ‘cozy.’ We were having a perfectly harmless conversation until Blackmoor appeared with that awful…” “Penelope.” In the pause that followed her addition, Ella looked innocently at Alex, a twinkle in her cornflower-blue eyes. Unable to be angry with her friend, Alex chuckled and wagged a finger in warning. “Ella. You tread on thin ice.” “Ah, but you must admit, my ability to exasperate is part of my charm.” “You have charm?” Vivi answered with laughter in her voice, “A very small amount. If you blink, you might miss it.” “Oh!” Ella cried out in mock offense, and the three laughed together. Alex

You are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with offspring. Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if you do not overcome the temptation of the devil, enticing you to infidelity?" he said, with gentle reproachfulness. "If you love your child as a good father, you will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor for your infant; you will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make him when the innocent babe asks you: ‘Papa! who made all that enchants me in this world—the earth, the waters, the sun, the flowers, the grass?’ Can you say to him: ‘I don’t know’? You cannot but know, since the Lord God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child will ask you: ‘What awaits me in the life beyond the tomb?’ What will you say to him when you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you leave him to the allurements of the world and the devil? That’s not right," he said, and he stopped, putting his head on one side and looking at Levin with his kindly, gentle eyes.

The offensive bloke hit the floor with a thud, and nearby couples hastily retreated from the arena of a threatened punch-up. Whatever ideas the bloke had about fighting his corner disappeared when he took in James’s tall, firm-bodied figure and the look on his face. He scrambled to his feet, mouthed the kind of language he hadn’t known during his brief time as an innocent child and lost himself in the crowd. Cathy’s eyes shone like those of a maiden delivered from evil by a white knight. Even in this day and age, many centuries distant from the heroics of King Arthur’s gallant band, a girl delivered from a lout could experience a moment of dreamlike fantasy. ‘James, oh, thanks,’ she said as he took her arm and led her to the refreshment bar where coffee and soft drinks could be bought. ‘Well, I couldn’t take you back to your Aunt Marie looking as if you’d lost a fight for the honour of your bodice,’ said James. ‘My what?’ said Cathy. ‘It happens a lot in modern novels,’ said James. ‘Old Aunt Victoria devours them, but says they shouldn’t be allowed.’ Cathy laughed, gave him an impulsive hug of gratitude for his act of delivery, and said, ‘Yes, they’re called bodice-rippers. Aunt Marie also enjoys them.’ ‘Good reading on a wet day, I should think,’ said James as the band swung into a new number and the dancing feet of a few hundred teenagers gave the floor another drumming. ‘Have a banana.’ ‘Banana?’ ‘I meant coffee or Coke.’ ‘Coffee,

Alice of course used the camera to document anything the remotest bit mysterious. She spent her days on what she called "photo walks": looking for objects and people that hinted at a hidden, fey, or wild side, which she would try to coax out with her camera. Once she found a potential subject she worked long and hard composing the shot, sometimes with additional mirrors or a lantern if it was in a dimly lit alley. She developed these images in her aunt's darkroom and then laid them out around her own room, studying them and trying to conjure a world out of what she saw there. Sparkling dew on spiderwebs, gloomy attics, a pile of bright refuse that might have hidden a monster or poem. The elfin qualities of a child, her eyes innocent and old at the same time.

At such a proposal, the indignation of the friar, which had hitherto been restrained with difficulty, loudly burst forth. All his prudence and patience forsook him: 'Your protection!' exclaimed he, stepping back, and stretching forth both his hands towards Don Roderick, while he sternly fixed his eyes upon him, 'your protection! You have filled the measure of your guilt by this wicked proposal, and I fear you no longer.' 'Dare you speak thus to me?' 'I dare; I fear you no longer; God has abandoned you, and you are no longer an object of fear! Your protection! this innocent child is under the protection of God; you have, by your infamous offer, increased my assurance of her safety. Lucy, I say; see with what boldness I pronounce her name before you; Lucy—' 'How! in this house—' "I compassionate this house; the wrath of God is upon it! You have acted in open defiance of the great God of heaven and earth; you have set at naught his counsel; you have oppressed the innocent; you have trampled on the rights of those whom you should have been the first to protect and defend. The wrath of God is upon you! A day will come!

She robs me of my imagination, The symptoms are clear when she is near, My eyes won’t allow me to speak, Its even hard to describe her sins, Oh the August child and her innocence…

Yes, you are right. You would make a good sovereign, undoubtedly a better one than my brother. But is there anything strange in this that a father wishes his child to experience the greatest glory the world may offer?”“But have you ever considered that happiness may be the thing that I desire the most?”The question came with such gravity of tone that immediately the prince looked up in astonishment and observed his slender, adolescent son now calmly contemplating his father with eyes suddenly stripped of their usual carefree innocence. “From the very first day that I saw you, tiny as you were, a wet nurse giving you suck, I have been thinking of your happiness. And today, you have spoken to the point yourself. Tell me what you mean by it, for what greater happiness is there than to become the sovereign of a vast and powerful empire and the lord of countless cities and ships?”Perilavos shook his head. “Maybe you are right, father, but I would never regard this as happiness...”And quickly, as though afraid the infuriated prince would interrupt him and forbid him to finish, he said: “My uncle longs to see us perish, and for this reason, we have sailed from Crete. But believe me, if he were to know how jubilantly I received his command, he would undoubtedly reconsider it. For if ever I am compelled to defy him to become Minos, there is no doubt in my mind that as an experienced seafarer and warrior, toughened by many hardships and with a deeper knowledge of the world, I will appear to him as a terrifying enemy. And if he is no longer among the living when we return, I shall become sovereign at once and restore our kingdom to its former magnificence. You yourself have always maintained that Crete is falling as a result of our effeminate ways. I wish to be a man, father, and that I shall be.

An insect hovers nearby. She can't remember what it's called: smaller than a dragonfly, with delicate mother-of-pearl wings. It skims the surface of the beck. She stays like that for a long time, listening to the birds, the water, the insects. She shuts her eyes, opening them again when she feels something brush her hand. The dragonfly-like creature with the iridescent wings. The word swims up from the depths of her brain: a damselfly. Tears well in her eyes, surprising her. She was fascinated by insects as a child. She remembers begging her mother to spare the moths that fluttered out from wardrobes, the gauzy spider's webs that clung to the ceiling. She'd collected vividly illustrated books about them. About birds, too. She would hide under the covers reading, in the small, silent hours of the morning while her parents slept in the next room. It hurts now, to think of that little girl, her innocent wonder: flashlight in hand, turning the glossy pages and marveling at the wild and wonderful creatures. Butterflies with eyes on their wings, parrots in candy-colored plumage.

1 am green. A lotus flower in full-bloom residing in the lushness of the heart. Reaching, embracing, nourishing all in need. Fragile as the morning dew, as expansive as the depth offragrant forests. Ultimate unconditional acceptance, like the Mother Earth's love for her children. I am blue. Calm and cool, a reflection in a mirrored pond. Diamond stars married to the nighttime sky. The ocean waves curling back to their source. Kind, compassionate words serving as our guide, teacher, and mentor. Father Sky carries truth in the celestial music of his voice. I am purple. The richness of velvet and the elegance of silk. Diamonds of intuition embedded in the space of all-knowingness. Imagination running through the vastness of the dreamscape, playing in afield of swaying lavender, swirling in the energy of dimensions. Insight radiates softly into the mind's eye. I am white. Living within us like the innocence of a child. Sitting quietly, still with peace and patience, ready to serve. Every sparkling, dazzling particle on our planet shining forth universal light. The phenomenal beauty of pure Spirit. I am many colors. NOTE TO READERS This book is intended as an informational guide and is not meant to treat, diagnose, or prescribe. For any medical condition, physical conditions, or symptoms, always consult with a qualified physician or appropriate health care professional. Neither the author nor the publisher accepts any responsibility for your health or how you choose to use the information contained in this book. Names and identifying details have

Telling a child that what her eyes tell her is not what’s really there is an invitation for subsequent psychological complication. But what could Elvinia do? It was all very well for people to insist that one always told children the truth—that by doing so one allowed them to come to terms with the hard face of the world—but, she wondered, did that make children any happier? Or did it simply destroy the hope, the innocence, that should be the background music of childhood? Did she want Bim to grow up thinking that her father did not love her, that he had wilfully deserted her, or should she be encouraged to believe that only the demands of being a naval officer kept him from showing the love and affection he undoubtedly felt for his family? To Elvinia, the answer was obvious: Bim should be encouraged to respect her absent father, because having a father, even one who was not there, was better than having no father at all. That was what she thought, and she believed—or persuaded herself to believe—that she had read somewhere, in a magazine perhaps, that this was the right thing to do in such circumstances. There were risks, of course, and these might have consequences later on. But everyone knew that, just as everyone knew that all our behaviour has roots in what people have done to us: the lies they have told as much as the truths.

In front of him is an innocent, sleeping face. Wang Shuyu appears to be sleeping as soundly as any child could be, and to think that this man is now a father of two. With this beautiful scenery playing, Xiao Sheng's lips curl into a smile while his eyes warm

The face Isaac made when bonding with his aluminum toy would have made you smile. The innocence of it. It was one of those mind-lending activities that make us like people—like spying on someone playing the piano or solving a puzzle. Every person looks like a child when de-seeding a pomegranate. If you watch someone open a juice box, however old, you’ll see them young again—their soft, wondering face. It’s one of the most ephemeral beauties for the eyes to partake in.

I know I will never see that smile the same way again, it will never bring me instant comfort nor warm my soul the same again. I know I will miss the flood of emotions that released for your touch to point of dehydration. I will miss the small, pulsating, vibrations running through my body as your voice ricochet in my ear. I will miss the beauty I saw in your pain as you took me on a journey through your soul, thu conversations I will miss our inner child's spontaneous and planned play dates. I will miss the silence in my mind commanded by you taking the lead. I will miss daydreaming about loving you forever, because I still had an ounce of hope leftover after a lifetime of searching for you. I will miss you forgiving me after, I recovered from a trigger, never appreciated the punishment that came with it tho. I will miss not being able to protect your heart from the pain I recognize, that your ego guards from your souls innocents that your mind can't tolerate yet. I will miss the feeling I felt knowing you could really be here with me forever because the exchange of laughter, wisdom and moments never ended. I will miss loving the man you are now in life, because even without the potential I see, you are worthy just as you are . I will miss things about you that you will never know, it was never about status or statuses I didn't want the spotlight, I wanted to be behind the scenes. I just wanted to support and love you. I wanted to guide you through parts of life that almost broke me, that I see you encountering. I will miss having somewhere to pour almost all of me. I will miss the possibility of being loved forever, I know I felt it though the roughness of your sore hands as I caressed trying to alleviate yhe pain. I will miss your grumpy days and I still regret not knowing how to comfort you on the hardest ones. I will miss who I sometimes selfishly dreamed I could be if you could just love me in the way I could feel. I'd dream of waiting for u to get home, (its the one we talked about getting after winning the lottery) . In that moment I swear it was the first time my soul wanted another day voluntarily. I will miss you not understanding my text, but we would see eye to eye when they physically met. I will miss you teaching me, and correcting me softly. I will miss you being gentle, when I didn't even know I needed it. I know it was hard sometimes. I will miss loving you beyond myself. I will miss all those moments I wanted to pull u into me and just feel you and kiss you. I wanted you all the time, it took so much to hold back from showing you, it was out of fear. I SHOULD of done it, would of got to this point faster. I regret not loving you with all me authenticly. I will miss what never was a friend, but everything I never had In one.

I know I will never see that smile the same way again, it will never bring me instant comfort nor warm my soul the same again. I know I will miss the flood of emotions that released for your touch to point of dehydration. I will miss the small, pulsating, vibrations running through my body as your voice ricochet in my ear. I will miss the beauty I saw in your pain as you took me on a journey through your soul, thu conversations I will miss our inner child's spontaneous and planned play dates. I will miss the silence in my mind commanded by you taking the lead. I will miss daydreaming about loving you forever, because I still had an ounce of hope leftover after a lifetime of searching for you. I will miss you forgiving me after, I recovered from a trigger, never appreciated the punishment that came with it tho. I will miss not being able to protect your heart from the pain I recognize, that your ego guards from your souls innocents that your mind can't tolerate yet. I will miss the feeling I felt knowing you could really be here with me forever because the exchange of laughter, wisdom and moments never ended. I will miss loving the man you are now in life, because even without the potential I see, you are worthy just as you are . I will miss things about you that you will never know, it was never about status or statuses I didn't want the spotlight, I wanted to be behind the scenes. I just wanted to support and love you. I wanted to guide you through parts of life that almost broke me, that I see you encountering. I will miss having somewhere to pour almost all of me. I will miss the possibility of being loved forever, I know I felt it though the roughness of your sore hands as I caressed trying to alleviate the pain. I will miss your grumpy days and I still regret not knowing how to comfort you on the hardest ones. I will miss who I sometimes selfishly dreamed I could be if you could just love me in the way I could feel. I'd dream of waiting for u to get home, (its the one we talked about getting after winning the lottery) . In that moment I swear it was the first time my soul wanted another day voluntarily. I will miss you not understanding my text, but we would see eye to eye when they physically met. I will miss you teaching me, and correcting me softly. I will miss you being gentle, when I didn't even know I needed it. I know it was hard sometimes. I will miss how you kept things together, always calm and steady, I was the complete opposite, clumsy and messy. You were everything I wasn't, and I loved you for that the most. I will miss thinking of you as my sun, and I will miss you calling me Starr I will miss loving you beyond myself. I will miss all those moments I wanted to pull u into me and just feel you and kiss you. I wanted you all the time, it took so much to hold back from showing you, it was out of fear of rejection of not being enough. I SHOULD of done it, would of got to this point faster. I regret not loving you with all me authenticly. I will miss what never was a friend, but everything I never had In one

In me a child is born again, a child that looks with innocent eyes on a new world with glad surprise.

The albino, Josiah, walks into the living room with the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I finally get to see a female angel up close. Her features are so fine and delicate that it’s impossible not to stare. She looks like she was the mold for Venus, Goddess of Love. Her waist-length hair shimmers in the light as she moves, matching the golden plumage of her wings. Her cornflower blue eyes would be the perfect reflection of innocence and all that is wholesome, except that there’s something sliding behind them. Something that hints that she should be the poster child for the master race. Those eyes assess me from the top of my wet and stringy hair to the tips of my bare toes. I become acutely aware that I was overenthusiastic when I shoveled the rib meat into my mouth. My cheeks bulge and I can barely keep my lips closed as I chew as fast as I can. Rib meat is not something I can swallow in one lump. I hadn’t bothered to brush my hair, or even dry it before diving into the feast after my shower, so it hangs limp and dripping onto my red dress. Her Aryan eyes see it all and judge me. Raffe gives me a look and rubs his finger on his cheek. I swipe my hand across my face. It comes away smeared with meat sauce. Great. The woman turns her eyes to Raffe. I have been dismissed. She gives him a long appraising look as well, drinking in his near-nakedness, his muscular shoulders, his wet hair. Her eyes slide over to me in a quick accusation. She steps close to Raffe and runs her fingers down his glistening chest.

Jasmine Evans. I’m trying to see anyone in the audience who might have been more enamored than anyone else, since the unsub is using this night to terrorize the town.” He looks back at the screen, presses play, and I watch my mother sing to the young, innocent child I used to be. I’m smiling up at her on the screen now, no longer aware of all the eyes from the audience. She could do that—soothe me with just her eyes. A tear trickles down my cheek when she bends, kissing my forehead in the old film. She was the best at this role. It was the same play every year, and my mother spent three of those years on that stage because people were entranced by her voice and emotion. She should have been an actress and spread the same love and joy throughout the world with just her smile. I used to want to be just like her. Until them. Until they ruined me and turned me into this.

That’s where I tied him to a table and carved those letters into his skin. That’s where I removed his eyes with a melon baller, all while he was still alive. He would die with that child’s brand on his skin, and he would never look at another innocent babe with lust again.

Jane waited until she had her sons’ full attention once again and gestured for Avery to speak. “Now, let’s get down to specifics, Mother. What do you expect us to do that will make him jealous?” Avery looked up at his mother with false wide-eyed innocence, the rogue wanted her to say it! He didn’t think she would be capable of laying out her scheme in explicit detail. He was quite mistaken. “Don’t give me that sweet-as-a-lamb look, child,” Jane warned. “The three of you have sinned enough to fill the second circle of hell all on your own, and leave no room for others. You will do what you do with any gentle born lady. Compliment her. Seduce her. Fuel the fire deep within her. Lure her into passion. But do nothing to worry me in a month’s time. Understood?” Had she been in a better mood she would have laughed at the flush of embarrassment on their faces. “What? You expect me to play ignorant of such things? I gave birth to five children, and I assure you that I did not do that all on my own. Your father played a significant role in bringing your miserable existences about. There’s that little book from India I believe you all own? The one with all the illustrations. Don’t pretend you don’t know it, because I’ve read it as well.” “Mother! For God’s sake!” Lawrence begged, cutting his mother off. Jane allowed a smile to curve her lips. “It isn’t as much fun when you are on the other end of unpleasant thoughts now, is it?” She clapped her hands together. “Now then, off to the ballroom. And remember, do what I charged you or you will beg for mercy, and I shall have none to give. I brought you into this world, and should you displease me, I shall happily remove you from it.” She made the threat in such a sweet tone that all three of her sons shuddered. -Lady Rochester, Avery, Lawrence, & Linus

The Christmas Key The key hangs untouched For 364 days For the day after Christmas Is the day I put it away It’s getting on to the Yule Tide The one that comes every year Where smiling eyes are all around And hearts that count are here Each year is more of a struggle Still we reach the journeys end To find that we’re not just family We are also the best of friends The holiday gift is not a package No price tag to cut and hide It’s a celebration of a birthday Shared with loved ones by your side We remember the unforgettable Give thanks to all that’s new Once again, savor the innocence Of a child’s dream come true One more memory to add to the last Of love, warmth, and joy One more feeling of what was That still touches this little boy When the day is over The memories are locked away And the key put back in its place

marriage.” “Aye.” “I thought you were dead.” He stared ahead, silent, not turning toward her. His long, thick hair curled, hiding his face from her. “It’s for the best.” She wanted to tell him it wasn’t even close to the best. It was a tragic mistake, and she feared her growing hate for her husband would poison the child inside her. As if the baby read her thoughts, it just then kicked hard in her belly. But shame more than loyalty kept her silent. She didn’t want him to know how much she despised and feared her husband. “Won’t you even look at me?” she asked. “No.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Am I such a horrible person, Jimmy, that you can’t even look at me?” “Go away, Claire.” All that they’d shared. She’d given him her innocence. She’d protected secrets for him. Even when Robert pressed, even when he hit her, she’d not betrayed Jimmy. Frustration crowded its way past the sadness and guilt. She crossed the room toward him and laid her hand on his shoulder. He flinched and stepped away. “I won’t let you just toss me aside as if I were nothing. We

Motherhood changed you from the second you looked into the big, innocent eyes of your child. Within an instant, you had an unlimited supply of love for that precious, tiny being. They would forever be yours, and you would forever be the one person who would always love them, protect them, cherish them, worry about them, and fight for them.

What is at stake at the present great turning point? An individualistic worldview is being replaced by a socialistic one! A thousand-year-old attitude toward life is being thrust aside by completely new concepts. “Such a change cannot be decreed by legislation! Nor can it be brought about by a ministry, no matter how homogeneously it is put together and how saturated and filled it is with the new ideas. “Such a transformation requires an inner conversion! A mental, a spiritual, an ethical, even a religious one! … “It is such a far-reaching and complete conversion that the adult is no longer capable of it. Only youth can be converted, newly aligned and adjusted to the socialist sense of obligation toward the community… “…when you observe the enthusiasm of youth, when the cheerful hands of an innocent child reach for you, then you will sense the inner conversion; then you will realize that a new faith is awakening out of the lethargy of a corrupt epoch and taking to the march — the faith in divine justice, in heavenly truth; the faith in an unworldly, paradisiacal future, where the lust for power, force, and enmity gives way to equality and fraternity, the spirit of sacrifice, love and loyalty, and the will to stand before the throne of the Almighty with the open heart of one ready to believe in God. And they [the youth] will have sufficient greatness to stammer out the prayer for their brothers and fathers, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they knew not what they did.’ “It is on this basis alone that the new world can be built! To lay this groundwork is our task. Our own hopes can aim no further. We must leave some things to be done by those who come after us. Your work will be a signpost for the future, a witness to our great intention, but in our time it will not be crowned with realization.” He fell silent. His inner enthusiasm had driven the blood into his cheeks. His eyes glowed like bright lights. I thought of Strasser, of our plans. And I felt: Our thinking is so puny.

ourselves with is an opportunity to create the cultural climate that we want. We can create a climate of compassion or one of fear, depending on what we do with our mistakes and our judgments of ourselves and others. Because I wanted to create a climate of compassion in the microcosm of my couplehood, I hunted in my memory for the tools with which to accomplish this. I remembered what Dr. Marshall Rosenberg said: “All judgments are the tragic expressions of pain and unmet needs.” Perhaps this might even apply to my oh so right, sophisticated, clinical judgments? So I started to look for the pain in my body. Oh, there it is! Outrage! And what is the universal human need underneath the outrage? The need for respect, gentleness and safety. What else is in there?—because I know that anger never comes alone. There is always hurt or fear or something under it. Now I can feel it: Devastating hurt. A need for reassurance that I am valued. -§ I may be the detonator but I am never the dynamite. I may be the trigger for another’s pain but the cause is their unmet needs. -§ As I lay there giving myself empathy, (i.e. paying attention to, and feeling into, what my reaction was all about) I start to feel a relieving shift in my body. The shift came as I allowed my awareness of my feelings to lead me into a reconnection with the life force within me. As soon as I am fully in touch with my true need, like the need to feel valued, I immediately feel the beautiful strength of it. (This is much different than staying up in my head meditating on images of the ‘lack’ or the hunger to feel valued. This only produces more fear and pain.) I began to wonder if my friend was experiencing the same thing—hurt, and the need for reassurance that she is valued. I know that if I had tried to play lifeguard earlier, attempting to save her from drowning in her distress, it would have been a double drowning. I know that the undertow of my own unconscious reactions from my unhealed past would have prevented me from really being present. I had been drowning and needed to get myself to shore first before trying to throw her a line. Or as a wise man from the Middle East once said, -§ When I am in pain I want to wait till I am clear what I want back from you before I speak. -§ “Get the dirt out of your eye first, so you can see clearly to help someone else do the same.” After giving myself empathy, I was moved by compassion to go to my friend and see if I could offer her the understanding that would restore our connection. I am glad that I waited until my desire to connect with her came from my need to understand and reconnect, instead of from fear of abandonment, or guilt about abandoning her. I am glad I remembered the first commandment of nurturing relationships: Me first and only. I waited until my giving came simply from my heart, without any fear, shame, or guilt. Once this shift happens, the energy I give from is the same joy and innocence a child has when it feeds bread to a hungry duck. “When I heard you call me a jackass a while ago, were you feeling angry and hurt because you were needing reassurance that your need to be heard mattered?” Her eyes started to fill with tears and a faint outline of a smile started to creep across her lips as she said “It’s about time, jackass.” “Yes, I’m guessing that was painful for you, and you would have liked this quality of listening earlier.” I said. “Yes” she said, the tears now flowing freely. “But I am also relieved that you waited till you were really in a position to do so instead of trying to give me empathy

Smiling, Emma framed McKenna’s face in her little hands and planted a big, wet kiss right smack on her lips. “I love you, Aunt Kenny.” Taken aback by the show of affection, McKenna searched Emma’s eyes so blue and innocent. “I love you too, Emma.” She had been nine years old when she first held Robert in her arms. She’d been a child herself. Maybe it was because she was twenty-three now—certainly that had something to do with it—but the love she felt for this child was different from the love she felt for Robert. It felt as if part of her own heart were nestled within the tiny chest of this child. This precious part of Janie that was left to her.

What he had just seen was no longer the ingenuous and simple eye of a child; it was a mysterious gulf which had half opened, then abruptly closed again. There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to him who chances to be there! That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and strange. Nothing can give any idea of the Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1199 dangerous charm of that unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the innocence of the present, and of all the passion of the future. It is a sort of undecided tenderness which reveals itself by chance, and which waits. It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets unknown to herself, and in which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a virgin looking like a woman. It is rare that a profound revery does not spring from that glance, where it falls. All purities and all candors meet in that celestial and fatal gleam which, more than all the bestplanned tender glances of coquettes, possesses the magic power of causing the sudden blossoming, in the depths of the soul, of that sombre flower, impregnated with perfume and with poison, which is called love.

Christopher contemplated Beatrix, who was sitting a few places away from him. Those eyes... midnight blue, innocent and wise, alarmingly perceptive. What a curious mixture of qualities she possessed. She was capable of extraordinary composure and yet she was willing to play like a child. She was intellectual, instinctive, droll. Talking with her was like opening a treasure box to sort through unexpected delights. As a man not yet thirty, Christopher was only six years older than Beatrix, and yet he felt the difference between them as a hundred. He wanted, needed, to be close to her, while at the same time he had to close away the worst of what he had seen and done, so that it would never touch her.

Am I considered a virtuous young lady?" He surveyed her thoughtfully. The stark black of her dress molded to her lush form, and the neckline, though demure by Lady Barbara's standards, was scandalously low for a proper young lady. Her gorgeous hair hung down her back, and her mouth was soft, damp, abominably kissable. There were also her eyes. Honey-brown, staring up at him with an unassailable innocence that only a complete fool would miss. But then, how many people would their time looking in her eyes when there were so many other delectable attributes to gaze upon? "Not likely," he said. "Anyone who spends time in my presence is tainted." He advanced on her slowly, giving her time to run. She didn't, but she wanted to. He could see the faint startled reflex in her eyes, the momentary flash of panic. But she held firm, tilting her chin up with just a trace of defiance. Poor child. Little did she know that her defiance enchanted him as much as her panic. He fastened the pearls around her neck, their rich luster luminous against her skin. He resisted the temptation to stroke her bruised flesh, the need to touch his mouth to that abrasion. He resisted the impulse to turn away from her, lock himself in his study, and immerse himself in brandy. He stepped back, a deceptive half smile on his face. "Lovely," he said.

And then Rosie moved quickly to tears. 'I love them, Rex. I love them [our kids] so much.' All Rosie's anguish, and sorrow, and hopelessness was pouring our of her eyes and straight through the phone. Her suffering coursed through his veins and clung to his heart. And then his ex-wife asked so simply, so innocently, so naively, 'Isn't that enough?" And then Rosie fell into full sobs. ... And then Rex, invoking all the love he still had for Rosie, said something so plan, and so true. But so difficult. 'No, baby. It's not enough..

My chest tightens. Their parents died to expose the truth while mine sacrificed my brother to keep this heinous secret. “Agreed.” Imogen nods. They all do. One by one, everyone agrees, until there’s only me. Xaden captures my gaze. If you think you’ll ever convince a Sorrengail to risk their neck for anyone outside their own borders, then you’re a fool. Isn’t that what the flier said at the lake? Fuck that. “Tairn?” It’s not just me going to war. “We will feast on their bones, Silver One.” Graphic, but point made. I will not leave innocent people to die, no matter what side of the border they live on. I will not let my squadmates risk their lives while I run, despite the plea I see in Xaden’s eyes. At least Rhiannon, Sawyer, and Ridoc aren’t here. They’ll live to be second-years. Mira will understand. I have no doubt that she would do the same. And as for Mom… The dagger on her desk means she knows and has done nothing to stop it. Guess I’ll be the second child she sacrifices to keep the existence of venin a secret. “I’ve been defenseless,” I tell Xaden, lifting my chin. “And now I’m a rider. Riders fight.” The others shout in agreement. A thousand emotions cross his

Do you understand the heartbreak of realizing you've lost the ability to respond to things you've seen with your very own eyes with genuine suprise? How it feels when rationality, and hard-won experience, and your career all suddenly seem pointless? How far I've strayed from the carefree, innocent child I was. All that youth, and the potential that I must have once had, wasted. When I look at you, I'm confronted by the fact that I've turned into a totally uninteresting person. Don't you dare make me remember who I used to be.

Children are not quite the same as we remember being. They are less likely to take their cues from adults, less afraid of getting into trouble. They also seem less innocent and naive—lacking, it seems, the wide-eyed wonder that leads a child to have excitement for the world, for exploring the wonders of nature or of human creativity.

It’s a room shrouded in American Girl dolls, accessories, scenes . . . and they’re all staring at me. All begging to be touched. To be rotated. To have their arms and legs lubricated with innocent child play. But instead of fulfilling their fates as toys, they’ve been set up for a life of boredom as decorations. And I can see the anger in their eyes. They were destined for so much more when they were manufactured, only to be brought to a home where they were to be looked at, not touched. Treated just the same as a wall sconce, stared at for its beauty, but never truly, properly used, these dolls have pent-up energy, deep-rooted depression, and I know for a fact they come alive at night.

The American Jewish swine are even worse than the ones we have here. I’ve heard that anyway.” Johnathan did not argue. He just sat quietly, waiting, hoping the officer would tire of toying with him and just give him the papers he needed. Once he had these documents, he and his family would all be set to leave. This was the last and hardest part. It was as if the policeman had heard Johnathan’s inner thoughts. He looked directly into Johnathan’s eyes and said, “So, are you all ready to go? Do you have everything else you need? Can you afford passage?” “Yes, this document is all I have left to acquire.” The policeman looked down at the documents again. There was a long silence as the officer slowly studied each of the papers. Then he looked directly at Herr Weisman and smiled. After he did, he picked up a small pile of the documents and tore them in two. A scream escaped Johnathan’s throat. “What’s the matter, Jew?” Johnathan was stunned. That pile of papers that now lay torn on the floor represented months of work. Not only had it been difficult to acquire all those documents, but that pile represented all the hopes and dreams he had for a future for his son and wife.

It is often said that Vietnam, with its quotidian cruelties and pointlessness broadcast on the nightly news, caused Americans to lose their innocence about war. I don’t deny that this is true. The immediate power of the moving image is well attested to. It does, however, call to mind a quip I once heard: “The Americans have lost their innocence, but don’t worry, they’ll find it soon.” The power of the written word has the capacity to counteract this tendency, a value of which broadcast television is at best less capable. It provides every reader with a permanent opportunity for a private encounter with the reality of experience. So perhaps someone reading this book, now or many years in the future, will encounter a passage about a wounded Marine with “the hurt, dumb eyes of a child who has been severely beaten and does not know why.” Or they will read about an experienced NCO’s assessment that “one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.

Little did she understand that the end of childhood comes not when a child's body changes with puberty, but when her mind is finally able to see her life through the eyes of an outsider.

In a Vietnamese village, as reported in a recent TV program, gas bombs had been thrown into holes and huts to drive out of hiding any remaining Viet Cong. Only women and children came out of the holes. One child, about two, routed out with his mother, sat on her lap looking up at a large Negro marine. The side of the child's face was dirty with the smoke and soot from the smoke bomb; he had been crying. He looked up with an expression of bewilderment, now beyond crying, not knowing what to make of such a world. But the camera shifted immediately to the black American marine looking down at the child, commanding and somewhat hideous in his battle uniform. He had exactly the same expression: bewilderment, his eyes wide as he stared down at the child, his mouth slightly ajar; but his stare did not move, remaining fixed on that child. What should he make of a world in which he does this? While the announcer of the program rattled on about how the gas is harmful for only ten minutes and then leaves no deleterious effects, the cameraman kept his camera focused on the face of the marine. Was the marine recalling that he too had once been a child in some Southern state, driven from caves and huts where he had been playing, recognizing that he too was of a race held to be 'inferior'? That he too was once a child in a world at which he could only look out and up, a world causing pain for reasons no child can begin to fathom? Does he see himself in this child, see his bewilderment as a black child?