Into The Badlands Quotes

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt’s eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven’t time to read.

Something like this will test you like nothing else," Mac said. "You're going to find out who you are, Harry. You're going to find out which principles you'll stand by to your death--and which lines you'll cross." He took my empty glass away and said, "You're heading into the badlands. It'll be easy to get lost.

One mile farther and I come to a second grave beside the road, nameless like the other, marked only with the dull blue-black stones of the badlands. I do not pause this time. The more often you stop the more difficult it is to continue. Stop too long and they cover you with rocks.

For the ones who had a notion, A notion deep inside, That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these badlands

DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.

It looks a bit like the inside of a cave that has been turned inside out and warmed by the sun.

Before she leaves, my new friend tells me to look out of the big picture window at the parking lot. "See that purple Harley out there—that big gorgeous one? That's mine. I used to ride behind my husband, and never took the road on my own. Then after the kids were grown, I put my foot down. It was hard, but we finally got to be partners. Now he says he likes it better this way. He doesn't have to worry about his bike breaking down or getting a heart attach and totaling us both. I even put 'Ms.' on my license plate—and you should see my grandkids' faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!" On my own again, I look out at the barren sand and tortured rocks of the Badlands, stretching for miles. I've walked there, and I know that, close up, the barren sand reveals layers of pale rose and beige and cream, and the rocks turn out to have intricate womblike openings. Even in the distant cliffs, caves of rescue appear. What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up. I tell you this story because it's the kind of lesson that can be learned only on the road. And also because I've come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle. We have only to discover it—and ride.

What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Scientific Man and the Bible'. By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? Such balderdash takes various forms, but it is at its worst when it is religious. Why should this be so? What is there in religion that completely flabbergasts the wits of those who believe in it? I see no logical necessity for that flabbergasting. Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. In other fields such hypotheses are common, and yet they do no apparent damage to those who incline to them. But in the religious field they quickly rush the believer to the intellectual Bad Lands. He not only becomes anaesthetic to objective fact; he becomes a violent enemy of objective fact. It annoys and irritates him. He sweeps it away as something somehow evil...

The headless trunk was discovered impaled on a metal fencepost on the edge of the town park.

You want to fling yourself forwards past the badlands of the war, this is where you end up. And I’ll be waiting for you. Nobody gets by me.

So, what happens next to a couple of outlaws like us, hopped up on caffeine and sugar, and on the lam?" "I figure it's a lot like Badlands," said Spyder. "We leaver here, get a ride and go straight to Hell.

Do you imagine at night someone going to bed the very moment you are going to bed? Turning out the light? And isn’t it so quiet you swear the heart is telepathic. Isn’t it– from “Eros in His Striped Shirt

Dang it, Chance. You been here one day and you killed a man and split another one's skull open. I got enough to do without you adding more work." Chance kept his tone level. "He drew on me." "Why were you over in the Badlands in the first place?" "You know why." Bowie glared, then lowered his voice. "Think you can get through a day without killing someone?" "Don't know. It's early yet.

Something like this will test you like nothing else,” Mac said. “You’re going to find out who you are, Harry. You’re going to find out which principles you’ll stand by to your death—and which lines you’ll cross.” He took my empty glass away and said, “You’re heading into the badlands. It’ll be easy to get lost.

For me, the badlands are entirely too naughty. The whole time I was in South Dakota I felt like I needed a spanking.

Badlands

When he first returned to the Badlands in the summer of 1884, the austere landscape seemed to mirror his melancholy.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.

Louise was an urbanite, she preferred the gut-thrilling sound of an emergency siren slicing through the night to the noise of country birds at dawn. Pub brawls, rackety roadworks, mugged tourists, the badlands on a Saturday night - they all made sense, they were all part of the huge, dirty, torn social fabric. There was a war raging out there in the city and she was part of the fight, but the countryside unsettled her because she didn't know who the enemy was. She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.

The Goblin Shark isn’t the first ship that Reznik has sailed on—far from it. Ever since he picked himself up out of the dirt of the Badlands and walked out to the Red Ocean near the island of Sudrabi, he never looked back. His life had been a constant procession of new ships ever since. Some he takes by force, like The Goblin Shark. Some of them take him on as crew, but all of these have discovered very quickly that they made a mistake

We didn't need a place to hide until the Internet came. And when it came, it gave us the badlands. It enabled what may become the most totalitarian police state humanity has ever seen and, at the same time, gave us a place to hide while we fight it for our freedom.

Hassan drafts a Magna Carta and asks that a taxman pass a Tax Act - a cash grab that can tax all farmland and grant a dastard at cards what hard cash Hassan lacks. Hassan asks that an apt draftsman map what ranchland a ranchhand can farm: all grasslands and pampas, all marshlands and swamps, flatlands and savannahs (standard badlands that spawn chaparral and crabgrass). Hassan asks that all farmhands at farms plant flax and award Hassan, as a tax, half what straw a landsman can stash at a barn. A ranchman at a ranch warns campagnards that a shah has spat at hard-and-fast laws that ban cadastral graft.

We’re a nonviolent collective working to undermine the Trust and free the Badlands. Once the Trust is exposed as lying and corrupt, we believe Edenites will do the right thing. Open the borders. Save the Badlands.” Ling lowers her voice with deliberate control. “Kudzu is going to destroy something called Aevum.

The brain is a frightening thing, capable of remembering so much of what we want it to forget and forgetting the one thing that we most want it to remember. And then, years later, it chooses to work, operating like an autonomous neural state, summoning a nightmare from beyond the city walls, the badlands of amnesia.

I seen the cold deeds of hunger. The world got a lot of people in it, and when it comes to slaughter and famine, whether we're to live or die, it don't care much either way. The world got so many it don't need to. We could have starved out there on the badlands, on that desert that wasn't a desert, on that journey that wasn't a journey so much as a fleeing eastward. Thousands die everywhere always. The world don't care much, it just don't mind much. That's what I notice about it. There is that great wailing and distress and then the pacifying waters close over everything, old Father Time washes his hands. On he plods to the next place. It suits us well to know these things, that you may exert yourself to survive. Just surviving is the victory.

What made the Badlands bad when you had food and water? Watching the sky turn first gold and then russet in the west; watching it turn purple and then starshot black in the east. She watched the days end with increasing dread: the thought of another endless night, the three of them huddled together while the wind whined and twined its way through the rocks and the stars glared down.

It’s a stupid question, really, as we’ve all got an expiration date. I guess the real question is not if, but when. As I was walking through the South Dakota Badlands—before I knew something was wrong with me—I had this thought: What if we all carried little timers that counted down the days of our lives? Maybe the timer’s a bit dramatic. Just the date would do. It could be tattooed on our foreheads like the expiration date on a milk bottle. It might be a good thing. Maybe we’d stop wasting our lives worrying about things that never happen, or collecting things that we can’t take with us. We’d probably treat people better. We certainly wouldn’t be screaming at someone who had a day left. Maybe people would finally stop living like they’re immortal. Maybe we would finally learn how to live. I’ve wondered

He ran from the terror of his own laughter. It snapped at his heels like a cur and simultaneously seemed a thing alive inside him; curdled in his belly, ready to come boiling out at any instant. He ran from the awful sadness of his wife's expression, in that last pathetic instant as she hammered at him uselessly; shattered wrists making empty mittens of her hands. And he ran from the voice at the base of his skull; new like shining steel yet ancient as a dagger, that smirking hiss that made the things it bade him do feel like their own reward. He ran from it, but he thought he knew its name.

But without those years in the badlands, I would never have become a pastor, at least not the pastor I’d earlier had a vision of being, a John of Patmos pastor, the pastor I had hoped I might be. Looking back now, I see myself in those prebadlands years as a Labrador puppy, full-grown but uncoordinated, romping and playful but not yet “under authority,” oblivious to its master’s command: “Sit.” The only verbal signal that the puppy was capable of responding to was “Fetch,” which sent him galloping across a field, catching a Frisbee in full flight, and returning it with wagging tail, ready for more. In the badlands I learned to sit.

The Lord’s Prayer Expanded Our Father, Holy Father, Abba Father, in the heavens, Hallowed, holy, sacred be your name. From the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same, The name of the Lord is to be praised. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, The whole earth is full of your glory. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, Who was and is and is to come. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy government come, thy politics be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy reign and rule come, thy plans and purposes be done, On earth as it is in heaven. May we be an anticipation of the age to come. May we embody the reign of Christ here and now. Give us day by day our daily bread. Provide for the poor among us. As we seek first your kingdom and your justice, May all we need be provided for us. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Transform us by the Holy Spirit into a forgiving community of forgiven sinners. Lead us not into trouble, trial, tribulation or temptation. Be mindful of our frame, we are but dust, We can only take so much. Lead us out of the wilderness into the promised land that flows with milk and honey, Lead us out of the badlands into resurrection country. Deliver us from evil and the evil one. Save us from Satan, the accuser and adversary. So that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. So that every tongue that rises against us in accusation you will condemn. So that every fiery dart of the wicked one is extinguished by the shield of faith. So that as we submit to you and resist the devil, the devil flees. So that as we draw near to Jesus Christ lifted up, His cross becomes for us the axis of love expressed in forgiveness, That refounds the world; And the devil, who became the false ruler of the fallen world, Is driven out from among us. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen

Hi, Bruce,’ said Uzma. ‘Hello,’ Bruce replied. ‘Would it be possible to have a photo taken?’ she asked. ‘Sure, we can do that!’ he replied, smiling broadly. I took the photograph. Then it was my turn. He signed my book and bandanna and posed for another photograph. Just as I was about to let the next fan have their moment in the sun I turned to Springsteen and said, ‘Bruce. Three words: “Point Blank”, acoustic’ The following night I was sitting in the Sheffield Arena with Amolak and my sister. It was 16 April 1993 and we were in the front block ten or fifteen rows from the stage. Uzma was having the time of her life. It was her first Springsteen concert and it was so wonderful to see her having so much fun. Springsteen had just finished singing ‘Badlands’ when he requested an acoustic guitar and told the audience: ‘A fella came up to me and asked for this song. I don't know if he's out there tonight, but if he is, this is for you.’ He began slowly strumming the acoustic guitar before singing, ‘Do you still say your prayers darling, before you go to bed at night? Praying that tomorrow everything will be all right?’ He was singing ‘Point Blank’. I doubled up, buried my face in my hands and wept. Amolak hugged me. ‘Point Blank’ was one of my favourite songs. I never imagined I would hear it sung acoustically. The fact that Springsteen had remembered my request and then decided to actually listen to my suggestion was overwhelming. As I continued to cry uncontrollably and as Bruce Springsteen continued to sing ‘Point Blank’, Amolak said to me: ‘You see, buddy, dreams do come true.’ *

Little Nicky heads to the Badlands to see the show for himself. The Western Roads are outside his remit as a U.S. Treasury agent, but he knows the men he wants are its denizens. Standing on the corner of the Great Western and Edinburgh Roads, a sideshow, a carnival of the doped, the beaten, and the crazed. He walks round to the Avenue Haig strip and encounters the playground of Shanghai’s crackpots, cranks, gondoos, and lunatics. He’s accosted constantly: casino touts, hustling pimps, dope dealers; monkeys on chains, dancing dogs, kids turning tumbles, Chinese ‘look see’ boys offering to watch your car. Their numbers rise as the Japs turn the screws on Shanghai ever tighter. Half-crazy American missionaries try to sell him Bibles printed on rice paper—saving souls in the Badlands is one tough beat. The Chinese hawkers do no better with their porno cards of naked dyed blondes, Disney characters in lewd poses, and bare-arsed Chinese girls, all underage. Barkers for the strip shows and porno flicks up the alleyways guarantee genuine French celluloid of the filthiest kind. Beggars abound, near the dealers and bootleggers in the shadows, selling fake heroin pills and bootleg samogon Russian vodka, distilled in alleyways, that just might leave you blind. Off the Avenue Haig, Nicky, making sure of his gun in its shoulder holster, ventures up the side streets and narrow laneways that buzz with the purveyors of cure-all tonics, hawkers of appetite suppressants, male pick-me-ups promising endless virility. Everything is for sale—back-street abortions and unwanted baby girls alongside corn and callus removers, street barbers, and earwax pickers. The stalls of the letter writers for the illiterate are next to the sellers of pills to cure opium addiction. He sees desperate refugees offered spurious Nansen passports, dubious visas for neutral Macao, well-forged letters of transit for Brazil. He could have his fortune told twenty times over (gypsy tarot cards or Chinese bone chuckers? Your choice). He could eat his fill—grilled meat and rice stalls—or he could start a whole new life: end-of-the-worlders and Korean propagandists offer cheap land in Mongolia and Manchukuo.

Don’t be.” She changed gear with a crash and a groan. “You know the white population all around here is falling? You go out there, you find ghost towns. How you going to keep them down on the farm, after they seen the world on their television screens? And it’s not worth anyone’s while to farm the Badlands anyhow. They took our lands, they settled here, now they’re leaving. They go south. They go west. Maybe if we wait for enough of them to move to New York and Miami and L.A. we can take the whole of the middle back without a fight.

Luke picked up a piece of paper lying on the seat. "Camden Hills Avenue in the Badlands Golf Club." Luke chuckled. "Going to find a criminal in the Badlands. It kind of has an ironic ring to it.

on my right Baker Creek has cut a steep-banked gash into the badlands to the west.

She reminded me of an angel that had been stripped of its wings. It was a fitting description when I thought about the circumstances surrounding her, and I’d been doing that a fuck of a lot.

He saved me from the light by showing me the beautiful depravity that could be found in the dark. My beloved devil made every withering parcel of my being bloom and thrive by nurturing it with his sinister mind. He tattooed himself across my heart and took up permanent residence inside my head.

As I looked at her face, I knew. I knew someone had done something to her, just as I knew she would be mine. The beast inside me reared his fucking head and set a claim on her without my permission.

I don’t want to hurt you for pissing me off, Cali, not this early in our relationship.” Early in our... “We don’t have a relationship,” I objected. “We have whatever I want us to have.” “You can’t do that. You can’t just make decisions for me.” “I can do whatever the fuck I want. It’s you who no longer has choices.

If I was a shark, she was the blood in the water. I was the wolf and she was the rabbit. I wanted her so immersed in me that when she was faced with truth of my world, she would be immobilized.

...she looked at my man like he hung the stars and moon. Sadly for her, I was the stars and moon, so she was shit out of luck.

Our fashionable liberals may, with Nietzsche, curse the Christian civilization which gave rise to so much freedom and prosperity, but do they seriously expect to thrive in the badlands of the future? Have they not learned that the death knell of Christianity is their death knell too? "Origins of the Fourth World War

outside Eli Harris’ pokey office. The single room space he rents is upstairs above a very questionable Chinese takeaway,

But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life? I can’t help asking, because there’s a distressing little fact about the discomfort of vulnerability, which is that it’s pretty much a daily experience in the world, and every sentient being has to learn how to somehow negotiate the consequences and fallout, or go through life flummoxed at every turn.

MARTIN SHEEN: Terry called me one night, and he had done so after finally making a decision. His gut hunch was to hire me, but he had other considerations, or an obligation to sort through his casting agent’s suggestions. He asked me if I was still interested. I got up just before sunrise and started driving the Pacific Coast Highway to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Road.” It was one of the most profound moments of my life. Dylan, who was one of my personal heroes, had cracked something wide open inside of me. I was experiencing an epiphany. There was a realization of what just happened to me. I started to weep, and pulled the car over on the highway and reflected on this. My happiness. Before that phone call, I would have never thought that such a thing would happen to me. I realized that acting was no joke. You don’t show up on a set and just decide that you are going to throw yourself out there without preparation. Me being there was no accident. The stars had aligned and Badlands was a role of a lifetime. I have Terry Malick to thank for it.

I walked away in the manner that we always do from horror: believing that refusal to accept reality might just negate it, knowing that it walks one constant, smirking step behind us. I walked until the vast, black truth of what had happened overwhelmed me, becoming part of my existence, pivotal--" - Ian Cowley, Crossed: Badlands #1

He was born sick. I was fu*ked in the head. Together, we were Savages.

One dark, damaged soul fully recognized another, reaching out and beckoning to play with the other.

This would be about the time it was smart to run away from him as fast as I could, but like a suicidal moth to an eternal flame, I moved closer.

North Carolina Badlands

The rafiqi advised caution, advised return to the camp; but childhood in the Quadling badlands had made Elphaba not only bold, but curious. There were more ways to live than the ones given by one's superiors.

The badlands have no positive meaning or place within our culture’s romantic narrative. In this romantic paradigm, we are tempted as modern Christians to irrigate the wilderness out of season with an endless conveyor belt of best-selling Christian books promising a “Better You” or “Your Best Life Now.” Yet the waste places in our lives play a legitimate role in our spiritual, moral, and sexual formation. It is in the badlands where our fantasies die, where our vision is clarified, and where we come to rely on God.

... Meanwhile the Wizard's men began draining the badlands to get at the ruby deposits. It never worked, of course. They managed to chase the Qadlings out and kill them, round them up in settlement camps for their own protection and starve them. They despoiled the badlands, raked up the rubies, and left. My father went barmy over it. There never were enough rubies to make it worth the effort; we still have canal system to run that legendary water from the Vinkus all the way cross-country to Munchkinland. And the drought, after a few promising reprieves, continues unabated. The Animals are recalled to the lands of their ancestors, a ploy to give the farmers a sense of control over something anyway. It's a systematic marginalizing of populations, Glinda, that's what the Wizard's all about." "We were talking about your childhood," said Glinda. "Well that's it, that's all part of it. You can't divorce your particulars from politics," said Elphaba.

Don’t fucking apologize. You haven’t done anything wrong.” He pulled his hands free and his arms wrapped around my waist. “I don’t believe in any of that love at first sight bullshit—I don’t know what the fuck love is, either—but ever since you looked at me with those big blue eyes, I’ve been fucking positive you’re my soul mate. “You’re mine, I’m yours. It’s that fucking simple, baby. We can figure everything else out together.” “Together.” I confirmed, trying to contain the ridiculous grin ready to explode across my face. “Ugh, this is over the top cheesy. I feel like you should call me a slut, bend me over the desk and then fuck me so we’re normal again.” He let out one of his rare laughs and it warmed my entire being. I could sit and stare at him for hours on end but when he laughed or truly smiled, I was completely captivated. “You and I will never be normal, but if you want to be a slut, get down on your knees and wrap your lips around my dick.” I smirked and did just that, sinking down to the carpet. It took me a full minute to free him from his jeans with no assistance. I gripped his dick in my hand and stroked with my thumb. It was soft and smooth, encased in a patch of dark hair. With the tip of my finger, I traced a circle around his barbell and then down a vein. He twitched against my palm.

Don’t hit the siren or lights,” she said. “I don’t want to scare him.” “Just calm down,” Davis said, sliding into a sharp left turn. The Tahoe fishtailed again on the slick road and when Davis recovered they clipped off the side mirror of a parked oil field utility truck. “Shit,” Davis muttered. “Don’t ever tell a woman to calm down,” Cassie said with heat.

Maxi groaned. "Historical settings. Always makes the paperwork so much harder. All our computers vanish. Can't wait to thumb through dusty textbooks for the next few hours.

We're inviting you to be the hero you've always been. We're also inviting you to be... a little bad." ... There was almost zero chance she could trust a single rotten one of them. But she'd been curious about Fester for a long time now. And the idea of going on a new adventure... A grin spread over her face too. "What do I do?

It's always a canyon of fire," Indira muttered. "So cliché.

An ellipsis bomb?" she muttered to herself. "Maybe I should have been an Editor. That was awesome.

Spoilers are allowed in emergencies.

Indira smiled as she spoke. "We're good guys with a dark side." "Bad guys with a soft spot," Peeve added. "Not all dark. Not all light." "We're something in the middle.

No way! Indira Story is like six feet tall and can shoot lightning bolts with her eyes.

I saw the Badlands of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore.

If a man cowered in front of Daddy and couldn't handle my brand of crazy, then he wasn't for me.

If a place can hold the memory of death, surely the badlands of Montana retained it. Labienus peered from the window the Silverbolt as it bounced over bare rusty earth and rock, trying to imagine what it had been like on that hellacious Cretaceous day when the end had come for them all: the maiasaur with its touching maternal concern, the vicious tyrannosaur no less a good mother, the little sneaking egg thieves with no shred of moral respectability whatsoever, all the rumbling honking thundering life that had held sway since forever. Even if they'd had the brains to see it coming, how could any of them have understood the End? What, for us? Rulers of the earth for the last hundred and sixty million years? But the earth had understood, and remembered still, and offered up white bones still bedded in clay red as fresh meat for the edification of its present rulers, who utterly failed to take the hint.

Yeah, Jennifer, when you explain the joke, it kind of ruins the magic.” “So long as you think I’m magic,” she said with a wink,

The badlands, the place where the earth itself was misshapen, where the gods had destroyed the ancient animals and hurled their bones into the earth.

Step 4 is about beginning to find your heart. Creator, protect me from my worst enemy––myself.  I ask that you guide me into the badlands of self, that I may know you better.  Please protect my spirit as I relive the past in order to recover. Great Spirit, guide me as I face the self-examination of the South. Our

Intelligence reports and local folklore together perpetuated tales of his bloody adventures across the rim worlds and badlands of Terran space. It was his trademark and often over the last two decades, history proclaimed in large bloody letters that ‘Kilroy woz ‘ere.

But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life?

Somehow he knew it, knew the beast and whatever commanded it had tracked them from the Firejack to the Badlands and back again. And, although it was just a small speck, he could have sworn he saw the swaddled man perched on the drake’s back before it angled its wings and disappeared from view. —

Glow Worm With miles to drive On a cerebral highway Where it leads our hearts to That empire where all unfolds We drag our knees Through these badlands And we hurt ourselves Just to feel anything In the mecca of us We all glow forever With cobwebbed eyes An affair with the puppets You've seemed to have forgotten And now you sleep with the rats all alone I held you so warm Like a brother A part of you in a part of me so spoiled I cut you off like a cancer In the mecca of us We all glow forever It's simple How you complete my core So potent in your eyes To move mountains To burn skies We've broken Our arms and throats For our portraits Demons or not It doesn't make a difference to me I'm so tired of screaming In the mecca of us We all glow forever

The tug of the lodestar slowly grew stronger until, with an abrupt quantum jump, it was a physical force prying at her mind. She felt everything else fall away, felt the same out-of-body swoon she’d experienced on First Foot when she’d stared too long at the star at the edge of the Badlands. Felt as if she was expanding beyond her body the room the ship into everywhere …

(from chapter 26, "Emmaus Walks") "[our Quaker retreat leader} warned us against shortcuts [to solve the "badlands"]. he encouraged us to submit ourselves to the boredom, the refining fire of nonperformance, not to be in a hurry. 'A lot is going on when you don't think anything is going on.' ...He went on to suggest that we deepen our understanding of what we were already doing into an intentional Sabbath. A day off, he said is a 'bastard Sabbath'. He affirmed our commitment to a day of not-doing, a day of not-working. 'That's a start. You've gotten yourselves out of the way. Why not go all the way: keep the day as a Sabbath, embrace silence, embrace prayer - silence and prayer. Hallow the name.' ...We quit taking a "day off" and began keeping a "Sabbath", a day in which we deliberately separated ourselves from the work week - in our case being pastor and pastor's wife - and gave ourselves to being present to what God has done and is doing, this creation in which we have been set down and this salvation in which we have been invited to be participants in a God-revealed life of resurrection. We kept Monday as our Sabbath. For us Sunday was a workday. But we had already found that Monday could serve quite well as a day to get out of the way and be present to whatever...It was a day of nonnecessities: we prayed and we played.

I look up into the starless sky. My heart pounds. This silent badlands scares me more than nighttime in the city, with its noise and light.

I faced her. "You're too aggressive. I'm the man. I want to take the lead.

They managed to chase the Quadlings out and kill them, round them up in settlement camps for their own protection and starve them. They despoiled the badlands, raked up the rubies, and left. My father went barmy over it. There never were enough rubies to make it worth the effort; we still have no canal system to run that legendary water from the Vinkus all the way cross-country to Munchkinland. And the drought, after a few promising reprieves, continues unabated. The Animals are recalled to the lands of their ancestors, a ploy to give the farmers a sense of control over something anyway. It’s a systematic marginalizing of populations, Glinda, that’s what the Wizard’s all about.” “We were talking about your childhood,” said Glinda. “Well that’s it, that’s all part of it. You can’t divorce your particulars from politics,” Elphaba said. “You want to know what we ate? How we played?

Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands.

She hadn’t made it far when a whoop drew her attention from rehearsing her excuses to Fallon about where she’d been.   She turned to find herself lifted off her feet in a back-breaking hug, a hulk of a man grinning down at her.   “Eamon!” she cried in surprised delight.   “Lass, you have no idea how happy I am to see you,” he said.   Shea wrapped him in a hug and held tight.   Buck popped up next to them. “Is this a group hug?” He didn’t wait for a response, wrapping his arms around them both.   “You know, if the warlord sees this, he’s going to kill you both,” Trenton drawled.   Buck leaped back, a cocky grin on his face.   “What? You don’t think he’d make an exception for one of the Badlands’ heroes?” Buck asked, referencing how he and the other’s who’d gone on the mission were now called.   Trenton gave him a wry look. “Considering he’s threatened to kill me at least twice a day since we’ve been back, I’m not sure how much weight your new title will carry with him.

Ode, Aubade" And the morning, too, falters, struggles to assert itself, burn through the errant fog, the pines, scorch the whole grove of trees and crooked streetlamps. Your body’s turning, turning beside me in my bed’s— sprawl? Badlands? You sigh on my neck. Startled, the crick and sob buried inside it like a pulsar behind dust, like a larva in a bean, want out. Greg Wrenn, Poem-A-Day, March 25, 2013

A few blocks from the house, Lily realized that she should have asked to use Danson’s phone to call Detective Milliard.

slid down her neck with the thick, heavy texture of turkey gravy rewarmed the day after Thanksgiving.

If I’d had you before me at Richmond, I’d have put the ball in yer eye, God help you, I killed twenty like you when I was younger,” his voice piped over the flats. “Let the sun drop you in the badlands and let you not die before the shit of prairie dogs is in yer mouth and the buzzard’s claw is on yer belly. May yer pizzle fry in Hell and your eggs wither to peas, may the marrow boil in yer bones and yer eyes melt in their holes for what you done here, God damn you, God damn you …

slant

Once you began to expose a fossil, you had to continue, or risk losing it. Visitors imagined the landscape of the badlands to be unchanging, but in fact it was continuously eroding, literally right before your eyes; all day long you could hear the clatter of pebbles rolling down the crumbling hillside. And there was always the risk of a rainstorm; even a brief shower would wash away a delicate fossil.

What if each American landowner made it a goal to convert half of his or her lawn to productive native plant communities? Even moderate success could collectively restore some semblance of ecosystem function to more than twenty million acres of what is now ecological wasteland. How big is twenty million acres? It’s bigger than the combined areas of the Everglades, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Badlands, Olympic, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Denali, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. If we restore the ecosystem function of these twenty million acres, we can create this country’s largest park system. It gives me the shivers just to write about it. Because so much of this park will be created at our homes, I suggest we call it Homegrown National Park.

I am the monster they created. I’m the whore they’re ashamed of. They took my heaven away. Now, I would bring them hell.

She reminded me of an angel that had been stripped of its wings.

She reminded me of a lioness, stunning and fierce as fuck.

The devil asked me how I knew my way around the halls of hell. I told him I did not need a map for the darkness I know so well. -T.M.T

A king wasn’t shit without his queen.

I was well acquainted with the demon that lived inside my head, and if I stopped waging war against her, that sick b*tch would ensure I got everything I wanted, and everything I deserved.

I did need him. I needed him to feed the addict in me. I needed him to fill the bottomless void inside me so I could feel whole again. We were tied together from the second we met.

I didn’t bother trying to play therapist with myself and rationalize my crazy. I was out of my f*cking head and perfectly fine with it.

Sometimes I wanted to warn her away, tell her to run as far from me as she could. A good man would have. Lucky for me, I wasn’t classified as one of those and had no fu*king desire to be.

All the men in her life had failed to protect her. They never realized they had something as rare as gold in the palms of their hands. Instead, they shoved her in a bottomless sinkhole to wither away. Now, I got to watch her rise from the ashes like a godd*mn phoenix.

She was a dark rose finally learning how to wield the wicked thorns she’d been forced to grow.

I was worse than fabled demons, the sickest kind of monster. I wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Soon enough, she’d learn that I was more f*cked up than even she could imagine.

And she was perfect for me in every sense of the word. Her dark soul was always meant to be mine. It was something to possess and to cherish. A newfound madness.

F*ck Prince Charming and knights in shining armor; I had a beautiful dark king.