Keep Everything Private Quotes

Our parents don't know us... They can't know us. We hide ourselves from them. Once they knew everything about us and in order to escape them we keep out secrets, our private selves.

A man worth being with is one… That never lies to you Is kind to people that have hurt him A person that respects another’s life That has manners and shows people respect That goes out of his way to help people That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met Who brags about your accomplishments with pride Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less That is a peacemaker That will see you through illness Who keeps his promises Who doesn’t blame others, but finds the good in them That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars That doesn’t need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy That is gentle and patient with children Who won’t let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow Who lives what he says he believes in Who doesn’t hold a grudge or hold onto the past Who doesn’t ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him Who will run with your dreams That makes you laugh at the world and yourself Who forgives and is quick to apologize Who doesn’t betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women Who doesn’t react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn’t plan to keep Who takes his children’s spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down Who communicates to solve problems Who doesn’t play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them Who is real and doesn’t pretend to be something he is not Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God Who doesn’t have an ego or believes he is better than anyone Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met Who works hard to provide for the family Who doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family Who is morally free from sin Who sees your potential to be great Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you Who is a gentleman Who is honest and lives with integrity Who never discusses your private business with anyone Who will protect his family Who forgives, forgets, repairs and restores When you find a man that possesses these traits then all the little things you don’t have in common don’t matter. This is the type of man worth being grateful for.

Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything had changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not stay there. Not after the other people entered into it.

I had a dream about you. It's been a while since I could remember any of my dreams, and still, this one has left me with such strong impression. Even now, when I am fully awake, your face flashes before my eyes. It's a face I can totally relate to, as if it wasn't any more yours than it is mine. Terrifying thing, you know? I can't say I've felt that sort of intimacy with anyone. For a moment you knew all my secrets, without me even having to tell them. For a moment I even knew them myself… While I was looking into your eyes, I suddenly started to realize things about myself that were unspoken for years, like fragments of my inner life that were deeply repressed. It’s hard to distinguish if they were buried inside because dealing with them was such a dirty work, or if leaving them unnamed meant that it was not possible to define them precisely enough, so they would keep their true meaning. Perhaps, all this life that I've known so far was in fact no more but a dream about living. The only thing that has kept me in touch with reality was you… I know it comes as a surprise, and you may be wondering why it took me so long to come clean. You also may be wondering how come you've never noticed before. I've tricked you on purpose, yes, and you must realize it really has nothing to do with you. It’s always been me. This is why, seeing you in my dream like that, came out as a shock. You also must forgive me. You must forgive me because I know how it looks like, that everything we ever shared was a lie, and it wasn't… I am more of an illusionist that a deceiver, but it all comes from being in fact, a very private person. Even if it was true that you knew me better than anyone, I’d never admit it. I’d rather dig my own heart out, with a rotten spoon, than admitting it. I may let people in my own little world occasionally, but I would never let them be aware of it. I don’t throw my intimacy in front of others, especially when I care. The more I care, the less I give away, and this is something for you to understand, and grant me your forgiveness. I didn't play my tricks on you in order to deceive you, but rather to save myself, and maybe even deceive myself as well. I’ve had hidden my feelings for you so deeply that I've learned to live with them, as if any other casualty. I have done wrong to myself as much as I did to you, and I don’t know if I can forgive myself. So now I wonder, could you forgive me without feeling sorry for me? I certainly don’t deserve your pity. Especially not now that I am awake.

Listen to everything that is said, and see everything that is done. Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than from what they say. But then keep all those observations to yourself, for your own private use, and rarely communicate them to others. Observe, without being thought an observer, for otherwise people will be upon their guard before you.

but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?

There is so much deep contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God - so deep that it is painful - a suffering continual - and yet not wanted by God - repulsed - empty - no faith - no love - no zeal. Souls hold no attraction - Heaven means nothing - to me it looks like an empty place - the thought of it means nothing to me and yet this torturing longing for God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His - so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God. . . . Your devoted child in J.C. M. Teresa

Everything has turned sour, I’ll never be carried away with joy again. There’s a terrible clarity dominating everything. As though the world were made of crystal so that you only have to flick part of it with your fingernail for a tiny shudder to run through it all.… And then the loneliness—it’s something that burns. Like hot thick soup you can’t bear inside your mouth unless you blow on it again and again. And there it is, always in front of me. In its heavy white bowl of thick china, dirty and dull as an old pillow. Who is it that keeps forcing it on me? “I’ve been left all alone. I’m burning with desire. I hate what’s happened to me. I’m lost and I don’t know where I’m going. What my heart wants it can’t have … my little private joys, rationalizations, self-deceptions—all gone! All I have left is a flame of longing for times gone by, for what I’ve lost. Growing old for nothing. I’m left with a terrible emptiness. What can life offer me but bitterness? Alone in my room … alone all through the nights … cut off from the world and from everyone in it by my own despair. And if I cry out, who is there to hear me?

Difficult. Everything is difficult at the moment. Sleeping is difficult because I keep having horrible dreams. Waking up is difficult because I can't sleep. Looking in the mirror is difficult because I hate the person I see.

Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my own tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine – I didn’t hear mine – only hears, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove … - which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in her throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come. Too bad dark languages rarely survive.

For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies. Sabina despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up on his own free will is a monster. That is why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love a secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live the truth.

The trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine, and you have yours; and our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he does not lose - that is, he ends up holding the same opinions he started with.

What a man touched upon, he should take with him. If he forgot it, he should be reminded. What gives a man worth is that he incorporates everything he has experienced. This includes the countries where he has lived, the people whose voices he has heard. It also takes in his origins, if he can find out something about them... not only one’s private experience but everything concerning the time and place of one’s beginnings. The words of a language one may have spoken and heard only as a child imply the literature in which it flowered. The story of a banishment must include everything that happened before it as well as the rights subsequently claimed by the victims. Others had fallen before and in different ways; they too are part of the story. It is hard to evaluate the justice of such a claim to history... We should know not only what happened to our fellow men in the past but also what they were capable of. We should know what we ourselves are capable of. For that, much knowledge is needed; from whatever direction, at whatever distance knowledge offers itself, one should reach out for it, keep it fresh, water it and fertilize it with new knowledge.

Although my understanding of exactly how much trouble I was in grew more specific over time, as a child I surely understood enough about my condition to know it was something I'd better keep private. By intuition I was certain that the thing I knew to be true was something others would find both impossible and hilarious. My conviction, by the way, had nothing to do with a desire to be feminine, but it had everything to do with being female. Which is an odd believe for a person born male. It certainly had nothing to do with whether I was attracted to girls or boys. This last point was the one that, years later, would most frequently elude people, including the overeducated smarty-pants who constituted much of my inner circle. But being gay or lesbian is about sexual orientation. Being transgedered is about identity.

You see, Monsieur, it's worth everything, isn't it, to keep one's intellectual liberty, not to enslave one's powers of appreciation, one's critical independence? It was because of that that I abandoned journalism, and took to so much duller work: tutoring and private secretaryship. There is a good deal of drudgery, of course; but one preserves one's moral freedom, what we call in French one's quant a soi. And when one hears good talk one can join in it without compromising any opinions but one's own; or one can listen, and answer it inwardly. Ah, good conversation--there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing. And so I have never regretted giving up either diplomacy or journalism--two different forms of the same self-abdication." He fixed his vivid eyes on Archer as he lit another cigarette. "Voyez-vous, Monsieur, to be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it? But, after all, one must earn enough to pay for the garret; and I confess that to grow old as a private tutor--or a `private' anything--is almost as chilling to the imagination as a second secretaryship at Bucharest. Sometimes I feel I must make a plunge: an immense plunge. Do you suppose, for instance, there would be any opening for me in America-- in New York?

It is a mistake to think of the expatriate as someone who abdicates, who withdraws and humbles himself, resigned to his miseries, his outcast state. On a closer look, he turns out to be ambitious, aggressive in his disappointments, his very acrimony qualified by his belligerence. The more we are dispossessed, the more intense our appetites and illusions become. I even discern some relation between misfortune and megalomania. The man who has lost everything preserves as a last resort the hope of glory, or of literary scandal. He consents to abandon everything, except his name. [ . . . ] Let us say a man writes a novel which makes him, overnight, a celebrity. In it he recounts his sufferings. His compatriots in exile envy him: they too have suffered, perhaps more. And the man without a country becomes—or aspires to become—a novelist. The consequence: an accumulation of confusions, an inflation of horrors, of frissons that date. One cannot keep renewing Hell, whose very characteristic is monotony, or the face of exile either. Nothing in literature exasperates a reader so much as The Terrible; in life, it too is tainted with the obvious to rouse our interest. But our author persists; for the time being he buries his novel in a drawer and awaits his hour. The illusion of surprise, of a renown which eludes his grasp but on which he reckons, sustains him; he lives on unreality. Such, however, is the power of this illusion that if, for instance, he works in some factory, it is with the notion of being freed from it one day or another by a fame as sudden as it is inconceivable. * Equally tragic is the case of the poet. Walled up in his own language, he writes for his friends—for ten, for twenty persons at the most. His longing to be read is no less imperious than that of the impoverished novelist. At least he has the advantage over the latter of being able to get his verses published in the little émigré reviews which appear at the cost of almost indecent sacrifices and renunciations. Let us say such a man becomes—transforms himself—into an editor of such a review; to keep his publication alive he risks hunger, abstains from women, buries himself in a windowless room, imposes privations which confound and appall. Tuberculosis and masturbation, that is his fate. No matter how scanty the number of émigrés, they form groups, not to protect their interests but to get up subscriptions, to bleed each other white in order to publish their regrets, their cries, their echoless appeals. One cannot conceive of a more heart rending form of the gratuitous. That they are as good poets as they are bad prose writers is to be accounted for readily enough. Consider the literary production of any "minor" nation which has not been so childish as to make up a past for itself: the abundance of poetry is its most striking characteristic. Prose requires, for its development, a certain rigor, a differentiated social status, and a tradition: it is deliberate, constructed; poetry wells up: it is direct or else totally fabricated; the prerogative of cave men or aesthetes, it flourishes only on the near or far side of civilization, never at the center. Whereas prose demands a premeditated genius and a crystallized language, poetry is perfectly compatible with a barbarous genius and a formless language. To create a literature is to create a prose.

The coming of Caesarism breaks the dictature of money and its political weapon, democracy. After a long triumph of world-city economy and its interests over political creative force, the political side of life manifests itself after all as the stronger of the two. The sword is victorious over the money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will. If we call these money-powers 'Capitalism,' then we may designate as Socialism the will to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty-sense that keeps the whole in fine condition for the decisive battle of its history, and this battle is also the battle of money and law. The private powers of the economy want free paths for their acquisition of great resources. No legislation must stand in their way. They want to make the laws themselves, in their interests, and to that end they make use of the tool they have made for themselves, democracy, the subsidized party. Law needs, in order to resist this onslaught, a high tradition and an ambition of strong families that finds its satisfaction not in the heaping-up of riches, but in the tasks of true rulership, above and beyond all money-advantage. A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and no power that can confront money is left but this one. Money is overthrown and abolished only by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form. It is the fact of facts within the world-as-history. Before the irresistible rhythm of the generation-sequence, everything built up by the waking-consciousness in its intellectual world vanishes at the last. Ever in History it is life and life only race-quality, the triumph of the will-to-power and not the victory of truths, discoveries, or money that signifies. World-history is the world court, and it has ever decided in favour of the stronger, fuller, and more self-assured life decreed to it, namely, the right to exist, regardless of whether its right would hold before a tribunal of waking-consciousness.

but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and chreerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?

New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private, for-profit health care "soulless vampire bastards making money off human pain." Now, I know what you're thinking: "But, Bill, the profit motive is what sustains capitalism." Yes, and our sex drive is what sustains the human species, but we don't try to fuck everything. It wasn't that long ago when a kid in America broke his leg, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun stuck a thermometer in his ass, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle, and you were done. The bill was $1.50; plus, you got to keep the thermometer. But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some bean counter decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. The more people who get sick, and stay sick, the higher their profit margins, which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O. Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries were they live longer than us? Oh, it's hardly worth it, they may live longer, but they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you're not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you're coughing up freedom. The problem with President Obama's health-care plan isn't socialism. It's capitalism. When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross Blue Shield. And it's not just medicine--prisons also used to be a nonprofit business, and for good reason--who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition, you're going to have trouble with the tenants. It's not a coincidence that we outsourced running prisons to private corporations and then the number of prisoners in America skyrocketed. There used to be some things we just didn't do for money. Did you know, for example, there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? FDR said he didn't want World War II to create one millionaire, but I'm guessing Iraq has made more than a few executives at Halliburton into millionaires. Halliburton sold soldiers soda for $7.50 a can. They were honoring 9/11 by charging like 7-Eleven. Which is wrong. We're Americans; we don't fight wars for money. We fight them for oil. And my final example of the profit motive screwing something up that used to be good when it was nonprofit: TV news. I heard all the news anchors this week talk about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. And I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.

capitalism too began as a very open-minded scientific theory but gradually solidified into a dogma. Many capitalists keep repeating the mantra “free markets and economic growth” irrespective of realities on the ground. No matter what awful consequences occasionally result from modernization, industrialization, or privatization, capitalist true believers dismiss them as mere “growing pains” and promise that everything will be made good through a bit more growth.

As they say in the Sikh religion—Once you realize God knows everything, you're free. I had been through many years of psychoanalysis and still I had managed to keep private places in my head—I wouldn't say they were big, labeled categories, but they were certain attitudes or feelings that were still very private. And suddenly I realized that he knew everything that was going on in my head, all the time, and that he still loved me. Because who we are is behind all that.

CHAPTER XXVI.—A new Prince in a City or Province of which he has taken Possession, ought to make Everything new. Whosoever becomes prince of a city or State, more especially if his position be so insecure that he cannot resort to constitutional government either in the form of a republic or a monarchy, will find that the best way to preserve his princedom is to renew the whole institutions of that State; that is to say, to create new magistracies with new names, confer new powers, and employ new men, and like David when he became king, exalt the humble and depress the great, "filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich empty away." Moreover, he must pull down existing towns and rebuild them, removing their inhabitants from one place to another; and, in short, leave nothing in the country as he found it; so that there shall be neither rank, nor condition, nor honour, nor wealth which its possessor can refer to any but to him. And he must take example from Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander, who by means such as these, from being a petty prince became monarch of all Greece; and of whom it was written that he shifted men from province to province as a shepherd moves his flocks from one pasture to another. These indeed are most cruel expedients, contrary not merely to every Christian, but to every civilized rule of conduct, and such as every man should shun, choosing rather to lead a private life than to be a king on terms so hurtful to mankind. But he who will not keep to the fair path of virtue, must to maintain himself enter this path of evil. Men, however, not knowing how to be wholly good or wholly bad, choose for themselves certain middle ways, which of all others are the most pernicious, as shall be shown by an instance in the following Chapter.

Don’t be afraid of aging. As the saying goes, don’t be afraid of anything but fear itself. Find “your” perfume before you turn thirty. Wear it for the next thirty years. No one should ever see your gums when you talk or laugh. If you own only one sweater, make sure it’s cashmere. Wear a black bra under your white blouse, like two notes on a sheet of music. One must live with the opposite sex, not against them. Except when making love. Be unfaithful: cheat on your perfume, but only on cold days. Go to the theater, to museums, and to concerts as often as possible: it gives you a healthy glow. Be aware of your qualities and your faults. Cultivate them in private but don’t obsess. Make it look easy. Everything you do should seem effortless and graceful. Not too much makeup, too many colors, too many accessories …  Take a deep breath and keep it simple. Your look should always have one thing left undone—the devil is in the details. Be your own knight in shining armor. Cut your own hair or ask your sister to do it for you. Of course you know celebrity hairdressers, but only as friends. Always be fuckable: when standing in line at the bakery on a Sunday morning, buying champagne in the middle of the night, or even picking the kids up from school. You never know. Either go all gray or no gray hair. Salt and pepper is for the table.

Your skin feels hot to the touch, yeah. Like a … a heated, weighted blanket.” I turned, watching him frown. “I say it as a compliment. I mean it in a I’d love to get under you and snuggle right now way.” That frown disappeared. “I can live with that.” His head dipped, and he placed a kiss on top of my hair. “What else?” “You are loyal.” He hummed in agreement. “Also private. You keep to yourself. And even if people think that you are cold and unfriendly, it’s just that you have a stoic approach to most things. You watch everything so that you can anticipate every single thing that comes your way, which, honestly, it’s really impressive but very annoying too.” I peeked at him over my shoulder, finding him looking at me strangely. “What?” “Nothing.” He shook his head, getting rid of whatever it had been that was making him look all dazed. I watched him compose himself. “You are forgetting something.” My eyebrows rose. “And what’s that?” “I bite,” he said before grazing his teeth over my shoulder. Then, he nibbled on the sensitive skin where my shoulder met my neck. Giggling like a madwoman, I let my body burrow into his embrace.

Whenever I ask my Russian bosses, the older TV producers and media types who run the system, what it was like growing up in the late Soviet Union, whether they believed in the Communist ideology that surrounded them, they always laugh at me. “Don’t be silly,” most answer. “But you sang the songs? Were good members of the Komsomol?” “Of course we did, and we felt good when we sang them. And then straight after we would listen to ‘Deep Purple’ and the BBC.” “So you were dissidents? You believed in finishing the USSR?” “No. It’s not like that. You just speak several languages at the same time, all the time. There’s like several ‘you’s.” Seen from this perspective, the great drama of Russia is not the “transition” between communism and capitalism, between one fervently held set of beliefs and another, but that during the final decades of the USSR no one believed in communism and yet carried on living as if they did, and now they can only create a society of simulations. For this remains the common, everyday psychology: the Ostankino producers who make news worshiping the President in the day and then switch on an opposition radio as soon as they get off work; the political technologists who morph from role to role with liquid ease—a nationalist autocrat one moment and a liberal aesthete the next; the “orthodox” oligarchs who sing hymns to Russian religious conservatism—and keep their money and families in London. All cultures have differences between “public” and “private” selves, but in Russia the contradiction can be quite extreme.

Ultimately, I believe that the far right in America, at least the incarnation I spent years covering, is destined to fail. Not because America is inherently good and that the forces of justice and progress are always stronger than those of intolerance and hatred, but because white supremacy is doing just fine without the far right. The country has spent decades perfecting an ostensibly nonracial form of white supremacy, and it is serving with remarkable efficiency. Private prisons, mandatory sentencing, seemingly unchecked police power, gerrymandering, increasingly limited access to healthcare and abortion—these are all tendrils in an ingenious web designed to keep people poor and powerless. Yes, white people were caught in that web too, but when it comes to those experiencing poverty, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos vastly outnumber whites. The people Matthew was ostensibly fighting for—the broken, beaten, and forgotten whites of Appalachia and the Rust Belt—weren’t victims in a war against white people but rather collateral damage in a war against poor people and minorities. I believe Matthew was right when he said that the elites and politicians hate his people, but they don’t hate them because they’re white; they hate them because they’re poor.

We are told that we are sinning (by emitting CO2), that we have original sin (human greed), which has banished us from Eden (the pre-industrial world), for which we must confess (by condemning irresponsible consumerism), atone (by paying carbon taxes), repent (insisting that politicians pay lip service to climate-change alarm), and seek salvation (sustainability). The wealthy can buy indulgences (carbon offsets) so as to keep flying their private jets, but none must depart from faith (in carbon dioxide) as set out in scripture (the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). It is the duty of all to condemn heretics (the ‘deniers’), venerate saints (Al Gore), heed the prophets (of the IPCC). If we do not, then surely Judgement Day will find us out (with irreversible tipping points), when we will feel the fires of hell (future heatwaves) and experience divine wrath (worsening storms). Fortunately, God has sent us a sign of the sacrifice we must make – I have sometimes been struck by the way a wind farm looks like Golgotha.

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges, Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies. I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet, Because I think that is sort of sweet; No, I object to one kind of apology alone, Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own. You go to their house for a meal, And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal; They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests, And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests; If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott, And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot; They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can, But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American. I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them, I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them, Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious, And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious, And what particularly bores me with them, Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them, So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

The world I grew up in was a brutal one. The murder rate was once seven people for every hundred thousand. The average American on minimum wage could barely afford to keep themselves alive on canned food. Millions died over private oil fortunes. Wealthy men and women ran the world for profit. Fools and charlatans got into our Parliaments and set the world on fire. We had everything on paper - checks, balances, freedom, democracy - and yet to live was to be a slave.

In a democracy, the government is the people," Milo explained. "We're people, aren't we?" So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. If we pay the government everything we owe it, we'll only be encouraging governmental control and discouraging other individuals from bombing their own men and planes. We'll be taking away their incentive.

With a raw ache in his voice he said, “If you would take one step forward, darling, you could cry in my arms. And while you do, I’ll tell you how sorry I am for everything I’ve done-“ Unable to wait, Ian caught her, pulling her tightly against him. “And when I’m finished,” he whispered hoarsely as she wrapped her arms around him and wept brokenly, “you can help me find a way to forgive myself.” Tortured by her tears, he clasped her tighter and rubbed his jaw against her temple, his voice a ravaged whisper: “I’m sorry,” he told her. He cupped her face between his palms, tipping it up and gazing into her eyes, his thumbs moving over her wet cheeks. “I’m sorry.” Slowly, he bent his head, covering her mouth with his. “I’m so damned sorry.” She kissed him back, holding him fiercely to her while shattered sobs racked her slender body and tears poured from her eyes. Tormented by her anguish, Ian dragged his mouth from hers, kissing her wet cheeks, running his hands over her shaking back and shoulders, trying to comfort her. “Please darling, don’t cry anymore,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Please don’t.” She held him tighter, weeping, her cheek pressed to his chest, her tears soaking his heavy woolen shirt and tearing at his heart. “Don’t,” Ian whispered, his voice raw with his own unshed tears. “You’re tearing me apart.” An instant after he said those words, he realized that she’d stop crying to keep from hurting him, and he felt her shudder, trying valiantly to get control. He cupped the back of her head, crumpling the silk of her hair, holding her face pressed to his chest, imagining the nights he’d made her weep like this, despising himself with a virulence that was almost past bearing. He’d driven her here, to hide from the vengeance of his divorce petition, and still she had been waiting for him. In all the endless weeks since she’d confronted him in his study and warned him she wouldn’t let him put her out of his life, Ian had never imagined that she would be hurting like this. She was twenty years old and she had loved him. In return, he had tried to divorce her, publicly scorned her, privately humiliated her, and then he had driven her here to weep in solitude and wait for him. Self-loathing and shame poured through him like hot acid, almost doubling him over. Humbly, he whispered, “Will you come upstairs with me?” She nodded, her cheek rubbing his chest, and he swung her into his arms, cradling her tenderly against him, brushing his lips against her forehead. He carried her upstairs, intending to take her to bed and give her so much pleasure that-at least for tonight-she’d be able to forget the misery he’d caused her.

The leftist is always a statist. He has all sorts of grievances and animosities against personal initiative and private enterprise. The notion of the state doing everything (until, finally, it replaces all private existence) is the Great Leftist Dream. Thus it is a leftist tendency to have city or state schools—or to have a ministry of education controlling all aspects of education. For example, there is the famous story of the French Minister of Education who pulls out his watch and, glancing at its face, says to his visitor, “At this moment in 5,431 public elementary schools they are writing an essay on the joys of winter.” Church schools, parochial schools, private schools, or personal tutors are not at all in keeping with leftist sentiments. The reasons for this attitude are manifold. Here not only is the delight in statism involved, but the idea of uniformity and equality is also decisive; i.e., the notion that social differences in education should be eliminated and all pupils should be given a chance to acquire the same knowledge, the same type of information in the same fashion and to the same degree. This should help them to think in identical or at least in similar ways. It is only natural that this should be especially true of countries where “democratism” as an ism is being pushed. There efforts will be made to ignore the differences in IQs and in personal efforts. Sometimes marks and report cards will be eliminated and promotion from one grade to the next be made automatic. It is obvious that from a scholastic viewpoint this has disastrous results, but to a true ideologist this hardly matters. When informed that the facts did not tally with his ideas, Hegel once severely replied, “Um so schlimmer für die Tatsachen”—all the worse for the facts. Leftism does not like religion for a variety of causes. Its ideologies, its omnipotent, all-permeating state wants undivided allegiance. With religion at least one other allegiance (to God), if not also allegiance to a Church, is interposed. In dealing with organized religion, leftism knows of two widely divergent procedures. One is a form of separation of Church and State which eliminates religion from the marketplace and tries to atrophy it by not permitting it to exist anywhere outside the sacred precincts. The other is the transformation of the Church into a fully state-controlled establishment. Under these circumstances the Church is asphyxiated, not starved to death. The Nazis and the Soviets used the former method; Czechoslovakia still employs the latter.

Kiss me already, god. I can’t take the hungry looks any longer.” She told him with boldness. Her breath fanning his face and her eyes … fuck, her eyes could seduce any man and they trained on him. Then he kissed her. A growl gurgling at the back of his throat, he took her lips like he’d been starving for his whole life waiting for a kiss like this one. Her mouth offered him everything Butcher didn’t know he’d needed and now was dying for. She was a breath. A yearning. Her mouth parted so inviting and he dove in with his tongue. When her taste filled his mouth, the ticking bomb inside his head intensified. It only grew louder as her fingers speared into his hair and kissed him back like she was meant to kiss only him. Like she needed his flavor drenching her mouth in the same way. She moaned. Butcher grunted his arousal, holding the back of her head to keep her right there. And when her mouth opened again, he pushed in to chase her tongue. His free hand sloped down the curve of her back until he had a grip of her ass, helping her to move on him. Fuck, she was like a serpent curling her hips, driving him crazy and then crazier still, he lifted his pelvis from the chair in hopes of getting closer to that heaven but that would only happen if she let Butcher take her somewhere private. One more taste. Another bite and suck. One more bruising kiss. Not a kiss. It was a possession.

classic work like The Tale of Genji, as one recent translator has it, “The more intense the emotion, the more regular the meter.” As in the old-fashioned England in which I grew up—though more unforgivingly so—the individual’s job in public Japan is to keep his private concerns and feelings to himself and to present a surface that gives little away. That the relation of surface to depth is uncertain is part of the point; it offers a degree of protection and makes for absolute consistency. The fewer words spoken, the easier it is to believe you’re standing on common ground. One effect of this careful evenness—a maintenance of the larger harmony, whatever is happening within—is that to live in Japan, to walk through its complex nets of unstatedness, is to receive a rigorous training in attention. You learn to read the small print of life—to notice how the flowers placed in front of the tokonoma scroll have just been changed, in response to a shift in the season, or to register how your visitor is talking about everything except the husband who’s just run out on her. It’s what’s not expressed that sits at the heart of a haiku; a classic sumi-e brush-and-ink drawing leaves as much open space as possible at its center so that it becomes not a statement but a suggestion, an invitation to a collaboration. The reader or viewer is asked to complete a composition, and so the no-color surfaces make

[On Thornton Wilder's Our Town] "I can't look at everything hard enough": The tragedy is that, while we're alive, we don't view our days in the knowledge that all things must pass. We don't--we can't--value our lives, our loved ones, with the urgent knowledge that they'll one day be gone forever. Emily notices with despair that she and her mother barely look at one another, and she laments our self-possession, our distractedness, the million things that keep us from each other. "Oh, Mama," she cries, "just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. . . . Let's look at one another." But other and daughter remain self-absorbed, each in a private sea of her own thoughts, and that moment of recognition, of connection, never comes. Eventually, Emily has to turn away.

Where were you yesterday?" "Yesterday? Where was I-let me see...." "I thought you took a powder." "Me? How could that be?" "You mean, you wouldn't run out on me?" Run out on fragrant, sexual, high-minded Ramona? Never in a million years. Ramona had passed through the hell of profligacy and attained the seriousness of pleasure. For when will we civilized beings become really serious? said Kierkegaard. Only when we have known hell through and through. Without this, hedonism and frivolity will diffuse hell through all our days. Ramona, however, does not believe in any sin but the sin against the body, for her the true and only temple of the spirit. "But you did leave town yesterday," said Ramona. "How do you know-are you having me tailed by a private eye?" "Miss Schwartz saw you in Grand Central with a valise in your hand." "Who? Ramona said, "Perhaps some lovely woman scared you on the train, and you turned back to your Ramona." "Oh..." said Herzog. Her theme was her power to make him happy. Thinking of Ramona with her intoxicating eyes and robust breasts, her short but gentle legs, her Carmen airs, thievishly seductive, her skill in the sack (defeating invisible rivals), he felt she did not exaggerate. The facts supported her claim. "Well, were you running away?" she said. "Why should I? You're a marvelous woman, Ramona." "In that case you're being very odd, Moses." "Well, I suppose I am one of the odder beasts." "But I know better than to be proud and demanding.” “Life has taught me to be humble." Moses shut his eyes and raised his brows. Here we go. "Perhaps you feel a natural superiority because of your education." "Education! But I don't know anything..." "Your accomplishments. You're in Who's Who. I'm only a merchant-a petit-bourgeois type." "You don't really believe this. Ramona." "Then why do you keep aloof, and make me chase you? I realize you want to play the field. After great disappointments, I've done it myself, for ego-reinforcement." "A high-minded intellectual ninny, square ..." "Who?" "Myself, I mean." She went on. "But as one recovers self-confidence, one learns the simple strength of simple desires.” “Please, Ramona, Moses wanted to say-you're lovely, fragrant, sexual, good to touch-everything. Ramona paused, and Herzog said, "It's true-I have a lot to learn.” Excerpt From: Bellow, Saul. “Herzog.” iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

This is how it works. The exomemory stores data – all data – that the Oubliette gathers, the environment, senses, thoughts, everything. The gevulot keeps track of who can access what, in real time. It’s not just one public/private key pair, it’s a crazy nested hierarchy, a tree of nodes where each branch can only be unlocked by the root node. You meet someone and agree what you can share, what they can know about you, what you can remember afterwards.’ ‘Sounds complicated.’ ‘It is. The Martians have a dedicated organ for it.’ I tap my head. ‘A privacy sense. They feel what they are sharing, what is private and what isn’t. They also do something called co-remembering, sharing memories with others just by sharing the appropriate key with them. We just have the baby version. They give the visitors a bit of exomemory and an interface to it, reasonably well-defined. But there is no way we can appreciate the subtleties.

This new religion has had a decisive influence on the development of modern science, too. Scientific research is usually funded by either governments or private businesses. When capitalist governments and businesses consider investing in a particular scientific project, the first questions are usually, ‘Will this project enable us to increase production and profits? Will it produce economic growth?’ A project that can’t clear these hurdles has little chance of finding a sponsor. No history of modern science can leave capitalism out of the picture. Conversely, the history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. Capitalism’s belief in perpetual economic growth flies in the face of almost everything we know about the universe. A society of wolves would be extremely foolish to believe that the supply of sheep would keep on growing indefinitely. The human economy has nevertheless managed to keep on growing throughout the modern era, thanks only to the fact that scientists come up with another discovery or gadget every few years – such as the continent of America, the internal combustion engine, or genetically engineered sheep. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill.

He opened his eyes then, white fire flaring hotly within them. “Send me home, Legna,” he commanded her, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion. She moved her head in affirmation even as she leaned toward him to catch his mouth once more in a brief, territorial kiss, her teeth scoring his bottom lip as she broke away. It was an incidental wound, one he could heal in the blink of an eye. But he wouldn’t erase her mark on him, and they both knew it. Finally, she stepped back, closed her eyes, and concentrated on picturing his home in her thoughts. She had been in his parlor dozens of times as a guest, always accompanied by Noah. His library, his kitchen, even the grounds of the isolated estate were well known to her. She could have sent him to any of those locations. But as she began to focus, her mind’s eye was filled with the image of a dark, elegant room she had never seen before. Hand-carved ebony-paneled walls soared up into a vast ceiling, enormous windows of intricate stained glass spilled colored light over the entire room as if a multitude of rainbows had taken up residence. It all centered around an enormous bed, the coverlet’s color indistinguishable under the blanket of colorful dawn sunlight that streamed into the room. She could feel the sun’s warmth, ready and waiting to cocoon any weary occupant who thrived on sleeping in the heat of the muted daylight sun. It was a beautiful room, and she knew without a doubt that it was Gideon’s bedroom and that he had shared the image of it with her. If she sent him there, it would be the first time she had ever teleported someone to a place she had not first seen for herself. The ability to take images of places from others’ minds for teleporting purposes was an advanced Elder ability. “You can do it,” he encouraged her softly, all of his thoughts and his will completely full of his belief in that statement. Legna kept his gaze for one last long moment, and with a flick of a wrist sent him from the room with a soft pop of moving air. She exhaled in wonder, everything inside of her knowing without a doubt that he had appeared in his bedroom, safe and sound, that very next second. Legna turned to look at her own bed and wondered how she would ever be able to sleep. Nelissuna . . . go to bed. I will help you sleep. Gideon’s voice washed through her, warming her, comforting her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. This was the connection that Jacob and Isabella shared. For the rest of the time both of them lived, each would be privy to the other’s innermost thoughts. She realized that because he was the more powerful, it was quite possible he would be able to master parts of himself, probably even hide things from her awareness and keep them private—at least, until she learned how to work her new ability with better skill. After all, she was a Demon of the Mind. It was part of her innate state of being to figure the workings of their complex minds. She removed her slippers and pushed the sleeves of her dress from her shoulders so that it sheeted off her in one smooth whisper of fabric. She closed her eyes, avoiding looking in the mirror or at herself, very aware of Gideon’s eyes behind her own. His masculine laughter vibrated through her, setting her skin to tingle. So, you are both shy and bold . . . he said with amusement as she quickly slid beneath her covers. You are a source of contradictions and surprises, Legna. My world has begun anew. As if living for over a millennium is not long enough? she asked him. On the contrary. Without you, it was far, far too long. Go to sleep, Nelissuna. And a moment after she received the thought, her eyes slid closed with a weight she could not have contradicted even if she had wanted to. Her last thought, as she drifted off, was that she had to make a point of telling Isabella that she might have been wrong about what it meant to have another to share one’s mind with.

Colonel Melchett silently marvelled at the amount of aids to beauty that women could use. Rows of jars of face cream, cleansing cream, vanishing cream, skin-feeding cream! Boxes of different shades of powder. An untidy heap of every variety of lipstick. Hair lotions and “brightening” applications. Eyelash black, mascara, blue stain for under the eyes, at least twelve different shades of nail varnish, face tissues, bits of cotton wool, dirty powder-puffs. Bottles of lotions—astringent, tonic, soothing, etc. “Do you mean to say,” he murmured feebly, “that women use all these things?” Inspector Slack, who always knew everything, kindly enlightened him. “In private life, sir, so to speak, a lady keeps to one or two distinct shades, one for evening, one for day. They know what suits them and they keep to it. But these professional girls, they have to ring a change, so to speak. They do exhibition dances, and one night it’s a tango and the next a crinoline Victorian dance and then a kind of Apache dance and then just ordinary ballroom, and, of course, the makeup varies a good bit.” “Good lord!” said the Colonel. “No wonder the people who turn out these creams and messes make a fortune.” “Easy money, that’s what it is,” said Slack. “Easy money. Got to spend a bit in advertisement, of course.” Colonel

I had a room to myself as a kid, but my mother was always quick to point out that it wasn’t my room, it was her room and I was merely permitted to occupy it. Her point, of course, was that my parents had earned everything and I was merely borrowing the space, and while this is technically true I cannot help but marvel at the singular damage of this dark idea: That my existence as a child was a kind of debt and nothing, no matter how small, was mine. That no space was truly private; anything of mine could be forfeited at someone else’s whim. Once, wanting space from my parents after a fight, I closed and locked my bedroom door. My mother made my father take the doorknob out. And while I’m sure they remember this horrifying moment very differently, all I remember is the cold sensation in my body as the doorknob—a perfect little machine that did its job with unbiased faithfulness—shifted from its home as the screws fell away. The corona of daylight as the knob listed to one side. How, when it fell, I realized that it was two pieces, such a small thing keeping my bedroom door closed. I was lucky in that moment that the deconstruction of my door was a violation of privacy and autonomy but not a risk to my safety. When the door was opened, nothing happened. It was just a reminder: nothing, not even the four walls around my body, was mine.

The thing is, I used to dream about someone who would always choose me above everything else. There was romance in that dream, sure. I wanted someone who would see all my flaws and still lean in and tell me I’m beautiful. I wanted someone who would hold my hand in public and hold the rest of me in private, a warm body in my bed, a constant presence in my life. I wanted someone who would see the whole mess of me—all the feelings and the perfectionism and the desire for control and the shape of my heart and the ache of my dreams, the wild, imperfect hunger of me, and the fear that keeps me from ever feeling full—and wouldn’t get freaked out or turned off. Someone who would kiss me anyway. So yes. It was a romantic delusion. But beneath the desire to be cherished was the ever-present thrum of my desire to be chosen. I wanted someone who would pick me to be their family. I believed that somewhere out there was the person who would want to spend every holiday with me. The person who would pick me as their partner for every duet, the person who would always care about what I had to say, who would get me off the couch and into the world. The person patient enough to build trust and connection with me first; the person who would notice when I’m hurting and still never calculate the cost of loving me. Despite all my cynicism, I had to believe that person existed.

Who might these actors offend if they behaved like regular people, angry and riddled with contradictions? But being an actor involves turning into a blank, hollowing yourself out so you can replace whatever was there with the character you’re playing next. What does it mean to be real as an actor? What does transparency mean if you’re essentially a vessel waiting to be filled again and again and again? Part of the actor’s immediate charm stems from an upbeat attitude they keep selling, one that masks their true selves. If you get to know an actor intimately you might or might not have access to that true self in private, but rarely will you see it in public, where the actor always continues to play a part. But most of us now lead lives on social media that are more performance based than we ever could have imagined even a decade ago, and thanks to this burgeoning cult of likability, in a sense, we’ve all become actors. We’ve had to rethink the means with which to express our feelings and thoughts and ideas and opinions in the void created by a corporate culture that is forever trying to silence us by sucking up everything human and contradictory and real with its assigned rule book on how to behave. We seem to have entered precariously into a kind of totalitarianism that actually abhors free speech and punishes people for revealing their true selves. In other words: the actor’s dream.

But if her idiot suitors were staying at Halstead Hall with her, then by thunder, he'd be here, too. They wouldn't take advantage of her on his watch. "We're agreed that you won't do any of that foolish nonsense you mentioned, like spying on them, right?" "Of course not. That's what I have you for." Her private lackey to jump at her commands. He was already regretting this. "Surely the gentlemen will accept the invitation," she went on, blithely ignoring his disgruntlement. "It's hunting season, and the estate has some excellent coveys." "I wouldn't know." She cast him an easy smile. "Because you generally hunt men, not grouse. And apparently you do it very well." A compliment? From her "No need to flatter me, my lady," he said dryly. "I've already agreed to your scheme." Her smile vanished. "Really, Mr. Pinter, sometimes you can be so..." "Honest?" he prodded. "Irritating." She tipped up her chin. "It will be easier to work together if you're not always so prickly." He felt more than prickly, and for the most foolish reasons imaginable. Because he didn't like her trawling for suitors. Or using him to do it. And because he hated her "lady of the manor" role. It reminded him too forcibly of the difference in their stations. "I am who I am, madam," he bit out, as much a reminder for himself as for her. "You knew what you were purchasing when you set out to do this." She frowned. "Must you make it sound so sordid?" He stepped as close as he dared. "You want me to gather information you can use in playing a false role to catch s husband. I am not the one making it sordid." "Tell me, sir, will I have to endure your moralizing at every turn?" she said in a voice dripping with sugar. "Because I'd happily pay extra to have you keep your opinions to yourself." "There isn't enough money in all the world for that." Her eyes blazed up at him. Good. He much preferred her in a temper. At least then she was herself, not putting on some show. She seemed to catch herself, pasting an utterly false smile to her lips. "I see. Well then, can you manage to be civil for the house party? It does me no good to bring suitors here if you'll be skulking about, making them uncomfortable." He tamped down the urge to provoke her further. If he did she'd strike off on her own, and that would be disastrous. "I shall try to keep my 'skulking' to a minimum." "Thank you." She thrust out her hand. "Shall we shake on it?" The minute his fingers closed about hers, he wished he'd refused. Because having her soft hand in his roused everything he'd been trying to suppress during this interview. He couldn't seem to let go. For such a small-boned female, she had a surprisingly firm grip. Her hand was like her-fragility and strength all wrapped in beauty. He had a mad impulse to lift it to his lips and press a kiss to her creamy skin. But he was no Lancelot to her Guinevere. Only in legend did lowly knights dare to court queens. Releasing her hand before he could do something stupid, he sketched a bow. "Good day, my lady. I'll begin my investigation at once and report to you as soon as I learn something." He left her standing there, a goddess surrounded by the aging glories of an aristocrat's mansion. God save him-this had to be the worst mission he'd ever undertaken, one he was sure to regret.

Cultivation of a Religious Mind As an example, we ought to have Christian minds. Our difficulty is that we have a secular mind and a religious mind. With the secular mind, we do most everything that we do, and then we have a little private party for what we call the religious minds. With our religious mind we try to serve the Lord the best we can. It does not work that way. The Christian should not have any secular mind at all. If you are a Christian, you should “seek the things that are above”—there should be no worldly mind in you. Some might ask, “How can I pursue my studies? How can I do my housework? How can I carry on my business?” You carry on your business, do your housework and pursue your studies by making them a part of an offering to God as certainly as the money you put in the offering plate or anything else you give openly and publicly to God. Living the crucified life precludes this divided life. A life that is partly secular, partly spiritual, partly of this world and partly of the world above is not what the New Testament teaches at all. As Christians, we can turn some of the most hopeless jobs into wonderful spiritual prayer meetings, if we will simply turn them over to God. Nicolas Herman, who was commonly known as Brother Lawrence, was a simple dishwasher in the institution where he lived. He said he did those dishes for the glory of God. When he was through with his humble work, he would fall down flat on the floor and worship God. Whatever he was told to do, he did it for [35] the crucified life: how to live out a deeper christian life the glory of God. He testified, “I wouldn’t as much as pick up a straw from the floor, but I did it for the glory of God.” One saint praised God every time he drank a glass of water. He did not make a production out of it, but in his heart, he thanked God. Every time I leave my house, I look to God, expecting Him to bless me and keep me on my way. Every time I am flying in the air, I expect Him to keep me there, land me safely and bring me back. If He wants me in heaven more than He wants me on earth, then He will answer no to that prayer and it will be all over—but I will be with Him over there. In the meantime, while He wants me here, I will thank Him every hour and every day for everything. Let us do away with our secular and worldly minds and cultivate sanctified minds. We have to do worldly jobs, but if we do them with sanctified minds, they no longer are worldly but are as much a part of our offering to God as anything else we give to Him.

She would never kill what she desired most- not when she wanted Tamlin as much as I did. But if I killed him... she either knew I couldn't do it, or she was playing a very, very dangerous game. Conversation after conversation echoed in my memory, until I heard Lucien's words, and everything froze. And that was when I knew. I couldn't breathe, not as I replayed the memory, not as I recalled the conversation I'd overheard one day. Lucien and Tamlin in the dining room, the door wide open for all to hear- for me to hear. 'For someone with a heart of stone, yours is certainly soft these days.' I looked at Tamlin, my eyes flicking to his chest as another memory flashed. The Attor in the garden, laughing. 'Though you have a heart of stone, Tamlin,' the Attor said, 'you certainly keep a host of fear inside it.' Amarantha would never risk me killing him- because she knew I couldn't kill him. Not if his heart couldn't be pierced by a blade. Not if his heart had been turned to stone. I scanned his face, searching for any glimmer of truth. There was only that bold rebellion within his gaze. Perhaps I was wrong- perhaps it was just a faerie turn of phrase. But all those times I'd held Tamlin... I'd never felt his heartbeat. I'd been blind to everything until it came back to smack me in the face, but not this time. That was how she controlled him and his magic. How she controlled all the High Lords, dominating and leashing them just as she kept Jurian's soul tethered to that eye and bone. Trust no one, Alis had told me. But I trusted Tamlin- and more than that, I trusted myself. I trusted that I had heard correctly- I trusted that Tamlin had been smarter than Amarantha, I trusted that all I had sacrificed was not in vain. The entire room was silent, but my attention was upon only Tamlin. The revelation must have been clear on my face, for his breathing became a bit quicker, and he lifted his chin. I took a step toward him, then another. I was right. I had to be. I sucked in a breath as I grabbed the dagger off the outstretched pillow. I could be wrong- I could be painfully, tragically wrong. But there was a faint smile on Tamlin's lips as I stood over him, ash dagger in hand. There was such a thing as Fate- because Fate had made sure I was there to eavesdrop when they'd spoken in private, because Fate had whispered to Tamlin that the cold, contrary girl he'd dragged to his home would be the one to break his spell, because Fate had kept me alive just to get to this point, just to see if I had been listening. And there he was- my High Lord, my beloved, kneeling before me. 'I love you,' I said, and stabbed him.

Perhaps the hardest part of the job was simply being attached to and dependent on people who didn’t think much of you. Virginia Woolf’s diaries are almost obsessively preoccupied with her servants and the challenge of maintaining patience with them. Of one, she writes: “She is in a state of nature: untrained; uneducated … so that one sees a human mind wriggling undressed.” As a class they were as irritating as “kitchen flies.” Woolf’s contemporary Edna St. Vincent Millay was rather more blunt: “The only people I really hate are servants. They are not really human beings at all.” It was unquestionably a strange world. Servants constituted a class of humans whose existences were fundamentally devoted to making certain that another class of humans would find everything they desired within arm’s reach more or less the moment it occurred to them to desire it. The recipients of this attention became spoiled almost beyond imagining. Visiting his daughter in the 1920s, in a house too small to keep his servants with him, the tenth Duke of Marlborough emerged from the bathroom in a state of helpless bewilderment because his toothbrush wasn’t foaming properly. It turned out that his valet had always put the toothpaste on the brush for him, and the Duke was unaware that toothbrushes didn’t recharge automatically. The servants’ payoff for all this was often to be treated appallingly. It was common for mistresses to test the honesty of servants by leaving some temptation where they were bound to find it—a coin on the floor, say—and then punishing them if they pocketed it. The effect was to instill in servants a slightly paranoid sense that they were in the presence of a superior omniscience. Servants were also suspected of abetting burglars by providing inside information and leaving doors unlocked. It was a perfect recipe for unhappiness on both sides. Servants, especially in smaller households, tended to think of their masters as unreasonable and demanding. Masters saw servants as slothful and untrustworthy. Casual humiliation was a regular feature of life in service. Servants were sometimes required to adopt a new name, so that the second footman in a household would always be called “Johnson,” say, thus sparing the family the tedium of having to learn a new name each time a footman retired or fell under the wheels of a carriage. Butlers were an especially delicate issue. They were expected to have the bearing and comportment of a gentleman, and to dress accordingly, but often the butler was required to engage in some intentional sartorial gaucherie—wearing trousers that didn’t match his jacket, for instance—to ensure that his inferiority was instantly manifest.* One handbook actually gave instructions—in fact, provided a working script—for how to humiliate a servant in front of a child, for the good of both child and servant.

He’d parted reluctantly from Amily, thinking again with envy of Lena and Bear. One thing that they hadn’t been forced to deal with during their courtship was other people . . . “keeping an eye on them.” He and Amily must have a hundred “eyes” on them at all times. Amily, after all, was the daughter of the King’s Own. Practically every Companion on the Hill was “keeping an eye on her.” Literally nothing they did was really private, and if he and Amily got beyond a little kissing and cuddling, it was absolutely guaranteed that within a candlemark her father would know about it. Mags wasn’t entirely sure what Nikolas’s reaction to that would be. He had shown himself to be a reasonable man. His objections to Bear and Lena getting married on the sly had all been rational ones that had everything to do with political situations. Everyone knew that Mags and Amily were a couple. No one objected to that. There would be no political repercussions. . . . But the difference was that Nikolas was not dealing with a couple of younglings in the abstract, he was dealing with his “apprentice” and his daughter. From what Mags could tell, based on what his friends here said, things he’d read, and things Dallen had dropped, a man could be perfectly rational about a pair of younglings coupling, even give tacit approval (at least to the young man) right up until that coupling involved his daughter. Then rational thought went flying right out the window. So . . . for now, kissing and cuddling was all he was going to get. And, oh, how he envied Bear.

At the end of 1996, the five most valuable companies in the world were General Electric, Royal Dutch Shell, the Coca-Cola Company, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone), and ExxonMobil—traditional industrial and consumer companies that relied on massive economies of scale and decades of branding to drive their value. Just twenty-one years later, in the fourth quarter of 2017, the list looked very different: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. That’s a remarkable shift. Indeed, while Apple and Microsoft were already prominent companies at the end of 1996, Amazon was still a privately held start-up, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still a pair of graduate students at Stanford who were two years away from founding Google, and Mark Zuckerberg was still looking forward to his bar mitzvah. So what happened? The Networked Age happened, that’s what. Technology now connects all of us in ways that were unthinkable to our ancestors. Over two billion people now carry smartphones (many of them made by Apple, or using Google’s Android operating system) that keep them constantly connected to the global network of everything. At any time, those people can find almost any information in the world (Google), buy almost any product in the world (Amazon/ Alibaba), or communicate with almost any other human in the world (Facebook/ WhatsApp/ Instagram/ WeChat). In this highly connected world, more companies than ever are able to tap into network effects to generate outsize growth and profits.

Calvin, can I speak to my brother in private?" The Admiral looked at Steven, who nodded. He stood and bowed to them before exiting the room. "You need to show a little more respect, Mitch," Steven said. "He's an Admiral in-" "Frig that, Steve. And frig you, too. The Alliance set me up and sold me out, and yet I'm the one still desperately fighting to save our people? Me and a crew of incarcerated soldiers? Grab your crotch and make sure your balls are still there." "Mitch-" "Shut up, Steve. Look, I left out part of my story. When I was on Hell, I entered this virtual world the Tetron call a Construct. Origin left something for me in there. I don't know what it is, but according to it the other Tetron don't know it exists, and it's important enough that it can help us with the war effort." "You don't know what it is?" "No. But I know where it is. They etched the coordinates into my memory." "It altered your memory? Why didn't it implant the memory of what it was?" "Come on, Steve. This is advanced alien tech, how the frig do I know why it works the way it does? The point is, it's out there, and it will help. If Goliath doesn't show, that should be our next move." "Instead of trying to save what's left?" "Yes. If it makes you feel better, you can send a ship out into unexplored space with a few Adam and Eves on it. Let them find a nice planet to land on and frig like bunnies for a few thousand years. We're soldiers. We need to keep fighting. Your wife and daughter are out there." Steven's face twisted. "Don't you think I know that, Mitch? That they're out there, sitting on Earth wondering where I am and thinking that everything is going to be okay? This is bigger than both of us." "It's bigger than you. Not me. I have to be big enough to stop it. That's my fate, or destiny, or bad luck, or whatever the frig you want to call it. And I've never done it! I've never won this war. Humankind dies because of me, over and over again. No pressure, Mitch." Mitchell reached out and grabbed Steven by the shoulders. "I could use a lot of support in this. Especially from my big brother." Steven stared at Mitchell, his lip quivering. "Don't get all emotional on me," Mitchell said. "You're right. I know you're right. We'll fight, even if we die trying. You have my fleet, what little of it is left. We're beat up and out of ammo, but we make good targets." Mitchell laughed. "Thank you."  He gave Steven a short hug and backed away, turning his head to look out the viewport again. There was still no sign of the Goliath. Steven walked over to stand next to Mitchell. The two of them stared out into space. "How long do we wait?" Steven asked. "I don't know. A day?" "A day sounds good." Steven's eyes reached into the darkness.

Capitalism began as a theory about how the economy functions. It was both descriptive and prescriptive – it offered an account of how money worked and promoted the idea that reinvesting profits in production leads to fast economic growth. But capitalism gradually became far more than just an economic doctrine. It now encompasses an ethic – a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children and even think. Its principal tenet is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for the supreme good, because justice, freedom and even happiness all depend on economic growth. Ask a capitalist how to bring justice and political freedom to a place like Zimbabwe or Afghanistan, and you are likely to get a lecture on how economic affluence and a thriving middle class are essential for stable democratic institutions, and about the need therefore to inculcate Afghan tribesmen in the values of free enterprise, thrift and self-reliance. This new religion has had a decisive influence on the development of modern science, too. Scientific research is usually funded by either governments or private businesses. When capitalist governments and businesses consider investing in a particular scientific project, the first questions are usually ‘Will this project enable us to increase production and profits? Will it produce economic growth?’ A project that can’t clear these hurdles has little chance of finding a sponsor. No history of modern science can leave capitalism out of the picture. Conversely, the history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. Capitalism’s belief in perpetual economic growth flies in the face of almost everything we know about the universe. A society of wolves would be extremely foolish to believe that the supply of sheep would keep on growing indefinitely. The human economy has nevertheless managed to keep on growing throughout the modern era, thanks only to the fact that scientists come up with another discovery or gadget every few years – such as the continent of America, the internal combustion engine, or genetically engineered sheep. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill. Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything depends on the people in the labs. New discoveries in fields such as biotechnology and nanotechnology could create entire new industries, whose profits could back the trillions of make-believe money that the banks and governments have created since 2008. If the labs do not fulfil these expectations before the bubble bursts, we are heading towards very rough times.

Castro’s revolution, with all of its supposedly good intentions, put a stop to the growth of Havana. Of course it put an end to the Mafia controlling the casinos and entertainment, but for them it was a minor setback. They just packed their bags and went to Las Vegas where they expanded and developed “The Strip!” Batista and his followers fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic, Europe and South Florida. Many Cubans lost everything they had but others fled taking their wealth with them. The upheaval in 1959 marked the beginning of austerity for this former freewheeling city. The communistic de-privatization of all businesses, along with the embargo imposed by the United States, created a serious decline in Havana’s economy. The constant pressure to nationalize, as well as the severe crackdown by the régime to keep people in line, curtailed growth and placed an enormous hardship on the Cuban people. Since the Castro Revolution, the people of Havana have been severely affected, because of the absence of commerce with its former trading partner, the United States, located only 90 miles to the north. In all Havana has taken a severe toll economically, with its dilapidated houses, and the pre-1959 cars on the streets of the city being a testimony to the bygone era. It is only now that with the hope of normalization between the governments of Cuba and the United States that perhaps the people will benefit. For the greatest part, the Port of Havana has also been bypassed, chiefly due to the restrictions placed on them by the United States. However, the Cuban government is now attempting a comeback by attracting tourism from Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Latin America, Asia and Europe. The city of Havana has renovated the Sierra Maestra Cruise Port, but only very few cruise companies consider Havana a port of call. Slowly, German and British ships started to arrive, including the Fred Olsen Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line. Technically Real Estate Brokers and Automobile Dealers are illegal in Cuba, although real-estate offices and car dealerships are blatantly open for business. The buying and selling of real estate and cars, which was forbidden for many years, can now be done because of some changes brought about by Raúl Castro, but only by full-time residents of Cuba. However, gray market sales are thriving through the use of friends and family as proxies.

Suddenly, a rush of adrenaline ran through me. Had she figured it out? Had she somehow gotten access to my medical records? Could she possibly know about my diagnosis? No. That’s impossible. I’d done everything in my power to keep all that information private. But this was Charlotte Darling we were talking about. Anything was possible.

This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. My personal experience with Nazi monkey business was limited. There were some vile and lively native American Fascists in my home town of Indianapolis during the thirties, and somebody slipped me a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I remember, which was supposed to be the Jews' secret plan for taking over the world. And I remember some laughs about my aunt, too, who married a German German, and who had to write to Indianapolis for proofs that she had no Jewish blood. The Indianapolis mayor knew her from high school and dancing school, so he had fun putting ribbons and official seals all over the documents the Germans required, which made them look like eighteenth-century peace treaties. After a while the war came, and I was in it, and I was captured, so I got to see a little of Germany from the inside while the war was still going on. I was a private, a battalion scout, and, under the terms of the Geneva Convention, I had to work for my keep, which was good, not bad. I didn't have to stay in prison all the time, somewhere out in the countryside. I got to go to a city, which was Dresden, and to see the people and the things they did. There were about a hundred of us in our particular work group, and we were put out as contract labor to a factory that was making a vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. It tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke. It was good. I wish I had some right now. And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an 'open' city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there. But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground. And then hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, and became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. And so what? We didn't get to see the fire storm. We were in a cool meat-locker under a slaughterhouse with our six guards and ranks and ranks of dressed cadavers of cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep. We heard the bombs walking around up there. Now and then there would be a gentle shower of calcimine. If we had gone above to take a look, we would have been turned into artefacts characteristic of fire storms: seeming pieces of charred firewood two or three feet long - ridiculously small human beings, or jumbo fried grasshoppers, if you will. The malt syrup factory was gone. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out. And I got to see many German types of all ages as death had found them, usually with valuables in their laps. Sometimes relatives would come to watch us dig. They were interesting, too. So much for Nazis and me. If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes. There's another clear moral to this tale, now that I think about it: When you're dead you're dead. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.

Cadillac it was, then. A chassis was ordered and all the protective paraphernalia. Coachcraft, the auto bodybuilder over on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, were engaged to make it bulletproof. One of the Coachcraft partners, Burt Chalmers, set up a private area to keep the engineering work under wraps. ‘It was the goddamnedest thing you’d ever seen,’ reported Cohen. ‘The bottom of the car was flat – bombproof. It felt like a tank. The glass was made so you could shoot out, but killers could be standing by the windscreen blasting you and nothing would come in.’ Coachcraft ran endless tests on the car’s protective shield, including having it fired on by California Highway Patrol high-powered rifles. They didn’t penetrate. The Cadillac went on to be ‘test driven’ by everything but a bazooka and survived intact. Cohen spent the equivalent of $250,000 on his personal tank.

When we reached the street that branched off into the western section of the city, I expected Saadi to conintue north, but he did not. We dismounted and walked side by side, leading our horses, until my house came into view. “You should leave,” I said to him, hoping I didn’t sound rude. “Let me help you take King to your stable.” I hesitated, unsure of the idea, then motioned for him to follow me as I cut across the property to approach the barn from the rear. After putting King in his private stall at the back of the building, sectioned off from the mares, I lit a lantern and grabbed a bucket. While Saadi watched me from the open door of the building, I went to the well to fill it. “You should really go now,” I murmured upon my return, not wanting anyone to see us or the light. He nodded and hung the lantern on its hook, but he did not leave. Instead, he took the bucket from me, placing it in King’s stall, and I noticed he had tossed in some hay. Brushing off his hands, he approached me. “Tell your family I returned the horse to your care, that our stable master found him too unruly and disruptive to serve us other than to sire an occasional foal.” “Yes, I will,” I mumbled, grateful for the lie he had provided. I had been so focused on recovering the stallion that explaining his reappearance had not yet entered my mind. Then an image of Rava, standing outside the barn tapping the scroll against her palm, surfaced. What was to prevent her return? “And your sister? What will you tell her?” He smirked. “You seem to think Rava is in charge of everything. Well, she’s not in charge of our stables. And our stable master will be content as long as we can still use the stallion for breeding. As for Rava, keep the horse out of sight and she’ll likely never know he’s back in your hands.” “But what if you’re wrong and she does find out?” “Then I’ll tell her that I have been currying a friendship with you. That you have unwittingly become an informant. That the return of the stallion, while retaining Cokyrian breeding rights, furthered that goal.” I gaped at him, for his words flowed so easily, I wondered if there was truth behind them. “And is that what this is really all about?” I studied his blue eyes, almost afraid of what they might reveal. But they were remarkably sincere when he addressed the question. “In a way, I suppose, for I am learning much from you.” He smiled and reached out to push my hair back from my face. “But it is not the sort of information that would be of interest to Rava.” His hand caressed my cheek, and he slowly leaned toward me until his lips met mine. I moved my mouth against his, following his lead, and a tingle went down my spine. With my knees threatening to buckle, I put my hands on his chest for balance, feeling his heart beating beneath my palms. Then he was gone. I stood dumbfounded, not knowing what to do, then traced my still-moist lips, the taste of him lingering. This was the first time I’d been kissed, and the experience, I could not deny, had been a good one. I no longer cared that Saadi was Cokyrian, for my feelings on the matter were clear. I’d kiss him again if given the chance.

Prayer is one great secret of spiritual prosperity. When there is much private communion with God, your soul will grow like the grass after rain; when there is little, all will be at a standstill, you will barely keep your soul alive. Show me a growing Christian, a going forward Christian, a strong Christian, a flourishing Christian, and sure am I, he is one that speaks often with his Lord. He asks much, and he has much. He tells Jesus everything, and so he always knows how to act. Prayer is the mightiest engine God has placed in our hands. It is the best weapon to use in every difficulty, and the surest remedy in every trouble. It is the key that unlocks the treasury of promises, and the hand that draws forth grace and help in time of need. It is the silver trumpet God commands us to sound in all our necessity, and it is the cry He has promised always to attend to, even as a loving mother to the voice of her child. Prayer is the simplest means that man can use in coming to God. It is within reach of all, — the sick, the aged, the infirm, the paralytic, the blind, the poor, the unlearned, — all can pray. It avails you nothing to plead want of memory, and want of learning, and want of books, and want of scholarship in this matter. So long as you have a tongue to tell your soul’s state, you may and ought to pray. Those words, “Ye have not, because ye ask not” (Jas. 4:2), will be a fearful condemnation to many in the day of judgment.

Tailing someone is like maintaining a relationship: you keep at it until they give you the slip, or until they confirm everything you suspect them of.

His eyes never leave me. He’s tall enough to see over the heads of most of the other guys in the room, and as we twist and twirl and bob and bow, he never stops watching me. And instead of feeling gawky and clumsy, it gives me the strangest boost of confidence. I am flooded with adrenaline and energy. It runs up and down my arms and legs, and I want to grab his hand, gather my skirts in my free hand, and run away from the crowds so I can be with him. But I know it wouldn’t be proper, and so we simply dance. With every twist and dip, my smile grows. This must have been how Emily felt at the last dance. The reason she was glowing. And yet my brain keeps battling with my emotions, willing me to tell him who I am, to unload the truth. I know the clock is ticking. I know at any moment I can have everything yanked from me--yet another way I’m like Cinderella. Every time we stand closely, every time he’s looking at me, I try to tell him. I try to say I’m not Rebecca, try to say that I need to talk to him in private, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth. The song changes. The dance changes. But we don’t leave the floor. We dance through three songs. It must be at least an hour’s worth of dancing. I give up on the idea of telling him anything tonight. It can wait. It has waited thirty days; it can wait another. I’ll find him in the morning, before Rebecca arrives. I’ll explain it all. It’s not until I’m entirely too short of breath and dizzy--I blame it on the corset--that I have to bow out. Alex tries to follow me, but he is quickly swarmed by girls in fancy dresses and thick gemstones, and I can’t help but smirk at the look on his face. I’m starting to think he doesn’t want to be a duke at all, even if he doesn’t say it out loud. There are whispers as I leave the floor. All eyes are on me. I need fresh air, so I leave the room and find the courtyard, where several ladies are milling about. Emily is one of them. “I was beginning to think you’d simply keep dancing until the guests had all gone home.” I laugh. “I was a bit short of breath.” “I’m sure the young ladies in attendance thank you.” “Was it that obvious?” “His Grace would not have noticed if the ceiling had fallen in.” I know I should be embarrassed, but I just keep grinning. “I’m sure he was just being polite.” “A single dance would have sufficed. Three means he’s taken an interest. Tongues will wag. You, my dear, have just become the belle of the ball.” “Oh, I didn’t mean to steal your--” Emily laughs. “Not at all. I owe my engagement to you. You may take all the attention you want.” I smile at her and try not to notice that what she’s saying is true. People are watching us. She’s so sweet not to care that I’m stealing her limelight. She’s just that kind of person.

I see ye’ve told her what it means for a Keith to claim a woman,” he said to Darcy. Looking at her across the desk, he said, “Dinna be hard on the lad. If he hadna done it, I would have, and me with three daughters for you to become second mother to. I would ha’ been good to ye, lass, but Darcy, he will worship you.” He winked at Darcy, then spread some papers on the desk and reached for the black-feathered quill. “I have the contract ready, Steafan. Begin when ye wish.” Steafan smirked at her. “What’ll it be, lass, the stocks tonight, or a wedding?” “The stocks,” she said without hesitation, relieved she seemed to have some choice in the matter. What was a night of discomfort compared to the stripping away of one’s choice? Darcy surged around the desk and shook her by the shoulders. His eyes blazed with desperation. “Dinna do this,” he said close by her ear, his voice urgent and low, private from all but perhaps Aodhan, who stood near the desk. “A person in the stocks must be stripped to their skin and placed in the courtyard for the entire clan to laugh at and spit on. I’d sooner defy my uncle and be banished from Ackergill than see you dishonored so. Dinna make me do that, I beg you.” Fear kicked her heart into her throat at Darcy’s manhandling. But as his words penetrated, she stopped fighting his hold. He was serious. He’d abandon his home, his mill, Edmund and Fran, everything he had, all to keep her from a night’s humiliation. He might be a manipulative, lying brute, but he seemed to care for her on some level. She looked hard in his eyes and saw vulnerability glowing behind a glaze of very real fear. Fear for her and for what her actions might cause him to suffer. She shoved away the sympathy he didn’t deserve. He projected an air of absolute honor, but honorable men didn’t trick women into marrying them. “You lied to me,” she seethed. “You told me you’d help me get home.” “And I will,” he said. “Do ye nay remember what I told you before Steafan came in?” She remembered the words verbatim. “Whatever happens tonight, Malina, ye need no’ fash that I’ll keep my word to you.” Malina. The mere memory of her name spoken that way softened her, damn her romantic heart. “Trust me,” he urged.

You told your brother and some guy I don’t even know the things I told you in confidence.” “Yes.” She dropped her gaze to the floor. “I’m not sure this helps, but Charlie knows Logan.” “You talked to Charlie?” “Yes, he helped us with the details I didn’t know.” “So you went behind my back, talked to my friends, and told your brothers and some guy everything.” She pressed her lips together. “Yes.” “And you told them things about the blackmail that’s not public knowledge.” Maddie swallowed hard as her throat constricted. “I did.” “I trusted you with information about my family that nobody knows.” “Mitch, I’d never jeopardize you or your family. I’d never tell them if I didn’t trust them implicitly. You know that.” She had to make him understand. He leaned forward, putting elbows on his knees. “I want you to leave.” “What? No. Let me explain.” The blood rushed in her ears as a wave of hot dizziness engulfed her. Fear and desperation warred inside her. “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t listen.” “You didn’t ask.” Flat. She wrung her hands. “You would have said no.” “I see,” he said, so coldly that it was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. “So that makes it right? You didn’t think I’d agree, so you went behind my back, talked to my friends, your family, and some black-ops guy, revealing the things I’ve told you in private, because you know best?” She bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes, the same way you went behind my back and stalled the repairs on my car so I wouldn’t leave.” His head snapped back. “That’s not the same thing, Maddie.” “You lied, just like me. You went behind my back. Just like me.” She hoped he could see reason, but his expression said otherwise. “I told you those things,” he said through gritted teeth, “because I thought I could trust you.” “You can.” Her stomach clenched. “The evidence says otherwise, now doesn’t it?” Cold, cold words. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Please understand, I did it for you.” “No, you didn’t. You did it for you,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Tell me something. Why are you so interested in meddling in my life when you have your own to worry about?” She reared back, stepping toward the door, unable to figure out how to handle this dead, cold Mitch who treated her like a stranger. “I wanted to help you.” “You know how you could have helped me?” There was a cruel twist to his lips. “By being the one fucking person who didn’t betray me.” “I didn’t. That’s not what . . .” She trailed off, feeling helpless. She hung her head and said softly, “I’d never betray you.” “Bullshit. If you thought what you were doing was right, you would have talked to me. ” This ice. She’d prepared for fire, for burning anger, not this. She had no defense. No plan. She walked over to him and fell to her knees, taking his hands in hers. He didn’t even flinch. It was like he was made of stone, and she met his eyes. Hard chips of gold. “Mitch, I’m sorry, I wanted to help.” He studied her as though she was a stranger. “You need to leave now.” The words were a crushing blow, threatening to break her. She did the only thing she could think of and confessed the truth. “I love you.” His mouth firmed. Eyes flashing, he pulled away and stood, moving around her and going over to the window that overlooked the nearly deserted parking lot. “I need you to leave.” Her heart shattered into a million pieces and desolation swept over her. She hadn’t felt anything like this since her father had died and she’d woken in a hospital bed. That same heavy weight crushed her chest, numbing her limbs. Tears spilled onto her cheeks and she wiped them away. Her voice trembled as she spoke, already knowing the answer but unable to keep from asking the question. “Is there anything I can do?” “Yes.” His tone was distant and unreachable. “Leave.” There

Dearest Prudence, I have the robin’s feather in my pocket. How did you know I needed token to carry into battle? For the past two weeks I’ve been in a rifle pit, sniping back and forth with the Russians. It’s no longer a cavalry war, it’s all engineers and artillery. Albert stayed in the trench with me, only going out to carry messages up and down the line. During the lulls, I try to imagine being in some other place. I imagine you with your feet propped near the hearth, and your breath sweet with mint tea. I imagine walking through the Stony Cross forests with you. I would love to see some commonplace miracles, but I don’t think I could find them without you. I need your help, Pru. I think you might be my only chance of becoming part of the world again. I feel as if I have more memories of you than I actually do. I was with you on only a handful of occasions. A dance. A conversation. A kiss. I wish I could relive those moments. I would appreciate them more. I would appreciate everything more. Last night I dreamed of you again. I couldn’t see your face, but I felt you near me. You were whispering to me. The last time I held you, I didn’t know who you truly were. Or who I was, for that matter. We never looked beneath the surface. Perhaps it’s better we didn’t--I don’t think I could have left you, had I felt for you then what I do now. I’ll tell you what I’m fighting for. Not for England, nor her allies, nor any patriotic cause. It’s all come down to the hope of being with you. Dear Christopher, You’ve made me realize that words are the most important things in the world. And never so much as now. The moment Audrey gave me your last letter, my heart started beating faster, and I had to run to my secret house to read it in private. I haven’t yet told you…last spring on one of my rambles, I found the oddest structure in the forest, a lone tower of brick and stonework, all covered with ivy and moss. It was on a distant portion of the Stony Cross estate that belongs to Lord Westcliff. Later when I asked Lady Westcliff about it, she said that keeping a secret house was a local custom in medieval times. The lord of the manor might have used it as a place to keep his mistress. Once a Westcliff ancestor actually hid there from his own bloodthirsty retainers. Lady Westcliff said I could visit the secret house whenever I wanted, since it has long been abandoned. I go there often. It’s my hiding place, my sanctuary…and now that you know about it, it’s yours as well. I’ve just lit a candle and set it in a window. A very tiny lodestar, for you to follow home.

March 17 The Worker’s Ruling Passion Wherefore we labour, that . . . we may be accepted of Him. 2 Corinthians 5:9 “Wherefore we labour. . . .” It is arduous work to keep the master ambition in front. It means holding one’s self to the high ideal year in and year out, not being ambitious to win souls or to establish churches or to have revivals, but being ambitious only to be “accepted of Him.” It is not lack of spiritual experience that leads to failure, but lack of labouring to keep the ideal right. Once a week at least take stock before God, and see whether you are keeping your life up to the standard He wishes. Paul is like a musician who does not heed the approval of the audience if he can catch the look of approval from his Master. Any ambition which is in the tiniest degree away from this central one of being “approved unto God” may end in our being castaways. Learn to discern where the ambition leads, and you will see why it is so necessary to live facing the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says—Lest my body should make me take another line, I am constantly watching so that I may bring it into subjection and keep it under (see 1 Corinthians 9:27). I have to learn to relate everything to the master ambition, and to maintain it without any cessation. My worth to God in public is what I am in private. Is my master ambition to please Him and be acceptable to Him, or is it something less, no matter how noble?

You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you've climbed a mountain”. 

With each post or tweet, we choose what to keep private and what to make public, what face to show the world and what to keep buried. It is a kind of deception, and we have become reality stars, every one of us.

I'm worried about who's gossiping about what to whom. I'm constantly worried if any petty, stubborn redneck hicks are "listening" to our very special, very private "conversations" for use as ammunition during any potential conflicts in the future. I'm terrified that I am somehow jeopardizing what you've been striving for for so long. I just wanted to check to be sure. Sorry for the confusion. Being even more out of touch with you, my LOVE, is the very last thing I want and need at this juncture. Please know that. I was so upset and saddened and angered to hear your latest news. I think it fucking stinks and I feel so ineffectual not being able to provide you with at least a teensy bit of solace. I am here for you. Always. I hope you know that despite everything, despite every roadblock life seems to want to throw in front of us, my love for you grows every single day, hour, minute, and second. When oh when, my dearest? That's the question that gnaws. Not if, but when. So much more to say, but it will have to keep until "when." I love you. I love you. I love you.

Everything that you wish to manifest emerges from Spirit, from the silence. You don’t use your ego to manifest. In fact, ego can inhibit the creative process. For this reason, I urge you not to divulge your private insights, what you intend to create. As St. Paul said, “That which is seen, hath not come from that which doth appear.” When you talk about your emerging manifesting ideas and relate your insights to others, you often feel the need to explain and defend them. What happens is that ego has entered. Once the ego is present, the manifesting stops. Silence is where manifesting occurs, so keep your potential miracles in the treasured silence that you embrace as often as possible. You can rely upon it and enjoy basking in the serenity and inner peace that silence and meditation always bring.

So, what was it Ravenswood wanted to discuss with you privately, anyway? Or are you allowed to say?” They walked a short distance in silence before Tristan answered. “Actually, he wanted to talk about you.” “Me?” Dom said, surprised. “What about me?” “He’s worried about you. About how you’ll react if Nancy ends up bearing George’s son, and you lose the estate and have to go back to running the agency again.” Tristan slanted a glance at him. “He’s not the only one.” “I’ll be fine.” To his shock, he realized it was true. He wouldn’t be happy about it, of course, but he had learned how to cope. Compared to the first time, this was nothing. “I lost everything once and survived it well enough. I can do it again. Besides, I have a business concern that I can return to now, so it’ll be easier.” “Not if this nonsense with Nancy means you lose Jane again, too.” He sucked in a harsh breath. “I am not losing Jane.” The words were a vow, to himself and to her. He would do whatever it took to keep her this time.

She was every bit of everything he remembered about her, all at once and all at the same time. That was Kerry McCrae in a nutshell, he thought. All at once, full on, 100 percent real. No bullshit. She froze on seeing him, and while the wariness in her beautiful green eyes wasn’t a surprise, the vulnerability sure was. “Starfish--” “Don’t call me that,” she said, then immediately, and less stridently, added, “Not here.” She ducked around him before he could react and was down the set of wooden steps leading off the narrow cement loading dock that ran along the back of the pub, heading across the gravel lot. He started after her. He might not have handled any of this even close to how he’d planned, but he wasn’t flying all the way back home without at least a conversation. A private conversation. You might have wanted to lead with that, you yobbo. “Kerry, wait.” “Not here,” she repeated, then opened the driver’s side door to a beat-up old navy blue truck that looked like it was more rust than actual metal. “Get in.” “I’ve got a rental. I’ll be happy to--” She swung her laser green gaze to his. “Get in.” She slammed the door without waiting for a reply, then slammed it a second time to get the handle to catch. He climbed in the passenger side, not all that surprised to find the inside of the cab surprisingly clean and as well maintained as possible, given the thing had one tire, if not two, in the grave. Kerry McCrae had never fussed about how she looked or what she wore, but when it came to property or equipment, whether it be her own or simply entrusted to her care, no matter how old or worn out, she had a dab hand at keeping it clean and neat, all systems go. Her concern was never about appearance, just functionality and getting the job done. It was sexy as hell then, and it was sexy as hell now.

Despite the implicit warning from one of WeWork’s investors, Adam and Miguel were still dreaming up ways to keep their company private. “We have a lot of fun, and from everything I heard about being a public company, it’s not fun at all,” Miguel said. Perhaps WeWork’s members could own stakes in the company, like a collective, they wondered. Adam continued to believe that the only requirement for WeWork to achieve its ambitions was faith from the investor community. Talking to a reporter from Fast Company, he said that WeNeighborhoods and WeCities were “a when, not an if.” He was far from the first charismatic leader to imagine himself bringing about a better world, and the Fast Company reporter pointed out that pretty much every utopian project in the history of humanity had failed. The kibbutz movement, for one, had shrunk from hundreds of outposts to a few dozen. Adam conceded the point but said that the reporter was missing the crucial difference that made him uniquely situated to lead this particular revolution: “The reason most people did not succeed in this idea before, is that nobody was ever able to write the check.

Prayer is the peculiarity of all real Christians now. They pray, for they tell God their wants, their feelings, their desires, and their fears; and they mean what they say. The nominal Christian may repeat prayers, and good prayers too, but he goes no further. Prayer is the turning point in a man’s soul. Our ministry is unprofitable, and our labor is vain, until you are brought to your knees. Until then, we have no hope for you. Prayer is one great secret of spiritual prosperity. When there is much private communion with God, your soul will grow like the grass after rain. When there is little, all will be at a standstill, and you will barely keep your soul alive. Show me a growing Christian, a going-forward Christian, a strong Christian, and a flourishing Christian, and I am sure he is one that speaks often with his Lord. He asks much, and he has much. He tells Jesus everything, so he always knows how to act. Prayer is the mightiest engine God has placed in our hands. It is the best weapon to use in every difficulty and the surest remedy in every trouble. Prayer is the key that unlocks the treasury of promises and the hand that draws forth grace and help in time of need. It is the silver trumpet that God commands us to sound in our time of need, and it is the cry He has promised always to attend to, even as a loving mother attends to the voice of her child. Prayer is the simplest means that man can use in coming to God. It is within reach of all – the sick, the aged, the infirm, the paralytic, the blind, the poor, and the unlearned. All can pray. It avails you nothing to plead lack of memory, lack of learning, lack of books, or lack of scholarship in this matter. As long as you have a tongue to tell your soul’s state, you may and ought to pray. Those words, ye have not, because ye ask not (James 4:2), will be a fearful condemnation to many in the day of judgment.

These used to make me feel lonely, but they don’t anymore. They are all places of temporary existence – of waiting, coming and going – where you aren’t meant to stand still. In this city you’re supposed to keep moving, but I let myself be still. I go for long walks in the evening and watch other people in their private solitude. Everything around me is disappearing and reappearing at the same time and I will never be able to keep up, and for the moment I know that’s okay. I can’t stop the city from changing shape, but by writing things down – recipes, names, colours, Chinese characters – I can hold it still for a moment

Resting her head on her bent arm, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on something else. Like getting the hell out of here. I’m not going to urinate in my canteen. I have to drink out of that. She smiled when Jak’ri’s disgruntled voice came to her. She was too tired to block other people’s thoughts. And the Gathendiens all dosed themselves with some herb to keep their minds private. So Jak’ri’s and Ziv’ri’s were the ones she inadvertently found herself immersed in. For once, she didn’t mind. I don’t know why that would bother you, his brother responded dryly. After you drank that liquor from Promeii 7, I would think urine would be a vast improvement. Though they spoke aloud, their thoughts mirrored their words, enabling her to listen in. Jak’ri laughed. It probably would. That bura was revolting. Yet you still drank it. And won the wager. Ziv’ri made a grumbly sound. I never should’ve wagered my hovercycle. Best cycle I ever owned, Jak’ri crowed. His brother grunted. Did you tell Ava about that? She raised her eyebrows, surprised to hear Ziv’ri mention her. No. I think I’ll spare her that one. Why? Don’t want to tarnish your virile image by describing the week afterward that you spent hanging your head in the lav and regurgitating everything you ate? Jak’ri laughed. I already tarnished my image when I showed her what I look like now. Not a wise move. Even Shek’ra wouldn’t want you if she could see you now. You’re far too scrawny to attract a female. Drek you. Low masculine laughter accompanied the siblings’ teasing. What does she look like? Ziv’ri asked. Ava? Yes. All you’ve told me is she looks Lasaran. A moment passed, and Ava found herself holding her breath as she awaited his answer. She’s beautiful, Jak’ri said, something like affection tingeing his voice. Warmth filled her. Small and delicate like the Lasaran princess. She was actually three inches taller than Ami. But Jak’ri had been a head taller than her or more, so she supposed anyone a foot shorter would seem small and delicate to him. She isn’t built like our women, he continued. Her shoulders aren’t as broad. And her chest and back aren’t as muscled. What about her breasts? You don’t need to know about her breasts, Jak’ri chastised him. But they’re perfect, plump and round. She didn’t think he said that last part out loud, thankfully. Ava glanced down at her modest bosom. She’d always considered her breasts small by society’s standards. Certainly nothing that would stop traffic. But it seemed as though they were actually larger than most Purveli women’s. And Jak’ri liked them, judging by the way his thoughts drifted to memories of her lacy bra cupping her breasts while they swam and played together in the ocean. You’re thinking about her breasts now, aren’t you? Ziv’ri asked. She grinned. Yes, he is, she answered telepathically. Jak’ri gasped. Oh ho! Ziv’ri crowed on a laugh. You’ve made my brother blush, Ava. I haven’t seen his face this red since Mother caught him— Do not finish that sentence! Jak’ri ordered. Ava laughed.

I thought of my mother, and how some day, in the future, I would go with my sister to her apartment, the one I had never seen, with the single task of sorting through a lifetime of possessions, packing everything away. I thought of all the things I would find there—private things like jewelry, photo albums and letters, but also signs of a careful and well-organized life: bills and receipts, phone numbers, an address book, the manual for the washing machine and dryer. In the bathroom, there would be half-used glass vials and jars of creams, signs of her daily rituals that she did not like anyone else to see. My sister, I knew, ever methodical, would suggest we sort things into piles: things to keep, things to donate, things to put in the trash. I would agree but, in the end, I knew I would keep nothing, whether out of too much, or too little sentiment, I did not know.

Seen from this perspective, the great drama of Russia is not the ‘transition’ between communism and capitalism, between one fervently held set of beliefs and another, but that during the final decades of the USSR no one believed in communism and yet carried on living as if they did, and now they can only create a society of simulations. For this remains the common, everyday psychology: the Ostankino producers who make news worshipping the President in the day and then switch on an opposition radio as soon as they get off work; the political technologists who morph from role to role with liquid ease – a nationalist autocrat one moment and a liberal aesthete the next; the ‘Orthodox’ oligarchs who sing hymns to Russian religious conservatism – and keep their money and families in London. All cultures have differences between ‘public’ and ‘private’ selves, but in Russia the contradiction can be quite extreme.

Why did you fight as you did? Why did you risk death so often? Did you do it for the good of the country? ..The war wasn't for the good of the country. It was for the benefit of private mercantile interests, fueled by by the conceit of politicians. You fought for the glory and medals then? Hardly. Then why? ...Everything I did was for my men. For the noncommissioned ones who had joined the army to avoid starvation or the workhouse. And for the junior officers who were experienced and long-serving but hadn't the means to buy a commission. I had the command only because I had money to purchase it, not for reason of merit. Absurd. And the men in my company, the poor bastards, were supposed to follow me , whether I proved to be incompetent, an imbecile or a coward. They had no choice but to depend on me. And therefore I had no choice but to try and be the leader they needed. I needed to keep them alive... I failed far too often. And now I would love for someone to tell me how to live with their deaths on my conscience.

Raymond Chandler said, “There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

There is no definitive acquisition from which history can rise without losing an inch of the height it has attained: the bourgeoisie which was the revolution became the ancien regime, and, when reflecting on the French Revolution, it identifies itself with the old ruling class. At the same time that there is historical progress, there is, therefore, a consolidation, a destruction, a trampling of history; and at the same time as a permanent revolution, there is a permanent decadence which overtakes the ruling class in proportion as it rules and endures, for by ruling it abdicates what had made it "progressive," loses its rallying power, and is reduced to the protection of private interests. Throughout history, revolutions meet one another and institutions resemble one another; every revolution is the first revolution, and every institution, even a revolutionary institution, is tempted by historical precedents. This does not mean that everything is in vain and that nothing can be done: each time the struggle is different, the minimum of demandable justice rises, and, besides, according to these very principles, conservatism is utopian. But this means that the revolution which would recreate history is infinitely distant, that there is a similarity among ruling classes insofar as they are ruling and among ruled classes insofar as they are ruled, and that, for this reason, historical advances cannot be added like steps in a staircase. The Marxists know this very well when they say that the dictatorship of the proletariat turns the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie. But then a proletarian philosophy of history holds to the miracle that the dictatorship may use the bourgeoisie's weapons without becoming something like a bourgeoisie; that a class may rule without becoming decadent when in point of fact any class which rules the whole proves to be particular by that very action; that a historical formation, the proletariat, may be established as a ruling class without taking upon itself the liabilities of the historical role; that it may accumulate and keep intact in itself all the energy of all past revolution and unfailingly give life to its institutional apparatus and progressively annul its degeneration. It is to act as if everything that historically exists were not at the same time movement and inertia, it is to place in history, as contents, on the one hand the principle of resistance (called the bourgeoisie) and on the other the principle of movement (called the proletariat), when these are the very structure of history as a passage to generality and to the institution of relationships among persons...To believe in proletarian revolution is to arbitrarily assert that history's sliding back on itself and the resurrection of past ghosts are bad dreams, that history carries within itself its own cure and will surprise us with it...One does not kill for relative progress. The very nature of revolution is to believe itself absolute and to not be absolute precisely because it believes itself to be so.

I keep using the term “anticapitalist” as opposed to socialist or communist to include the people who publicly or privately question or loathe capitalism but do not identify as socialist or communist. I use “anticapitalist” because conservative defenders of capitalism regularly say their liberal and socialist opponents are against capitalism. They say efforts to provide a safety net for all people are “anticapitalist.” They say attempts to prevent monopolies are “anticapitalist.” They say efforts that strengthen weak unions and weaken exploitative owners are “anticapitalist.” They say plans to normalize worker ownership and regulations protecting consumers, workers, and environments from big business are “anticapitalist.” They say laws taxing the richest more than the middle class, redistributing pilfered wealth, and guaranteeing basic incomes are “anticapitalist.” They say wars to end poverty are “anticapitalist.” They say campaigns to remove the profit motive from essential life sectors like education, healthcare, utilities, mass media, and incarceration are “anticapitalist.” In doing so, these conservative defenders are defining capitalism. They define capitalism as the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin; the freedom to assassinate unions; the freedom to prey on unprotected consumers, workers, and environments; the freedom to value quarterly profits over climate change; the freedom to undermine small businesses and cushion corporations; the freedom from competition; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to heave the tax burden onto the middle and lower classes; the freedom to commodify everything and everyone; the freedom to keep poor people poor and middle-income people struggling to stay middle income, and make rich people richer. The history of capitalism—of world warring, classing, slave trading, enslaving, colonizing, depressing wages, and dispossessing land and labor and resources and rights—bears out the conservative definition of capitalism.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, was watching everything in real-time. Information didn't spread from one place to another. It was put online, and then it was everywhere. One day, a rumor spread that grocery store up the street might close. The next evening, when Tom drove by, he found the building completely empty. Every ounce of food had been taken, and every window had been smashed. And he realized the feedback loop was complete. It no longer mattered what the truth was. It only mattered what people thought it was. The media fought disinformation the only way it knew how: with ideology. When the president launched a plan to suspend habeas corpus and began requisitioning private property, the media began its push to pass it. When that failed, academics and psychologists took to the airwaves to explain how, under duress, people become overcome by cognitive bias and bigotry. Studies emerged noting the correlation between obsession over keeping one's property and authoritarian political thought. When the government began confiscating weapons, other studies appeared showing the scientific link between private gun ownership and racist fear of minorities. Then a report came out that federal employees has been seizing food from packaging centers in New York and Pennsylvania. They were shipping it out of starving communities. Everyone realized something then. Despite its claims otherwise, their government wasn't saving them. It was competing with them.

Poultry workers are paid very little: in the United States, two cents for every dollar spent on a fast-food chicken goes to workers, and some chicken operators use prison labor, paid twenty-five cents per hour. Think of this as Cheap Work. In the US poultry industry, 86 percent of workers who cut wings are in pain because of the repetitive hacking and twisting on the line. Some employers mock their workers for reporting injury, and the denial of injury claims is common. The result for workers is a 15 percent decline in income for the ten years after injury. While recovering, workers will depend on their families and support networks, a factor outside the circuits of production but central to their continued participation in the workforce. Think of this as Cheap Care. The food produced by this industry ends up keeping bellies full and discontent down through low prices at the checkout and drive-through. That's a strategy of Cheap Food....You can't have low-cost chicken without abundant propane: Cheap Energy. There is some risk in the commercial sale of these processed birds, but through franchising and subsidies, everything from easy financial and physical access to the land on which the soy feed for chickens is grown to small business loans, that risk is mitigated through public expense for private profit. This is one aspect of Cheap Money. Finally, persistent and frequent acts of chauvinism against categories of animal and human life -- such as women, the colonized, the poor, people of color, and immigrants -- have made each of these six cheap things possible. Fixing this ecology in place requires a final element -- the rule of Cheap Lives. Yet at every step of this process, humans resist....

The sword is victorious over the money, the masterwill subdues again the plunderer-will. If we call these money-powers 'Capitalism,' then we may designate as Socialism the will to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty-sense that keeps the whole in fine condition for the decisive battle of its history, and this battle is also the battle of money and law. The private powers of the economy want free paths for their acquisition of great resources. No legislation must stand in their way. They want to make the laws themselves, in their interests, and to that end they make use of the tool they have made for themselves, democracy, the subsidized party. Law needs, in order to resist this onslaught, a high tradition and an ambition of strong families that finds its satisfaction not in the heaping-up of riches, but in the tasks of true rulership, above and beyond all money-advantage. A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and no power that can confront money is left but this one. Money is overthrown and abolished only by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic onflow in microcosmic form. It is the fact of facts within the world-as-history. Before the irresistible rhythm of the generation-sequence, everything built up by the waking-consciousness in its intellectual world vanishes at the last.

After a long triumph of world-city economy and its interests over political creative force, the political side of life man ifests itself after all as the stronger of the two. The sword is victorious over the money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will. If we call these money-powers "Capitalism," then we may designate as Socialism the will to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty-sense that keeps the whole in fine condition for the decisive battle of its history, and this battle is also the battle of money and law. The private powers of the economy want free paths for their acquisition of great resources. No legislation must stand in their way. They want to make the laws themselves, in their interests, and to that end they make use of the tool they have made for themselves, democracy, the subsidized party. Law needs, in order to resist this onslaught, a high tradition and an ambition of strong families that finds its satisfaction not in the heaping-up of riches, but in the tasks of true rulership, above and beyond all money-advantage. A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and no power that can confront money is left but this one. Money is overthrown and abolished only by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form. It is the fact of facts within the world-as-history. Before the irresistible rhythm of the generation-sequence, everything built up by the waking-consciousness in its intellectual world vanishes at the last. Ever in History it is life and life only race-quality, the triumph of the will-to-power and not the victory of truths, discoveries, or money that signifies. World-history is the world court, and it has ever decided in favour of the stronger, fuller, and more self-assured life decreed to it, namely, the right to exist, regardless of whether its right would hold before a tribunal of waking-consciousness.

Thanks to “The Trial”, Kafka bequeathed to us at least two concept words that have become indispensable for understanding the modern world: tribunal and trial. He bequeathed them to us: meaning that he put them at our disposal, for us to use, consider, and reconsider in terms of our own experiences. Tribunal: this does not signify the juridical institution intended for punishing people who have violated the laws of a state; the tribunal (or court) in Kafka's sense is a power that judges, that judges because it is a power; its power and nothing but its power is what confers legitimacy on the tribunal; when the two intruders enter his room, K. immediately recognizes that power, and he submits. The trial brought by the tribunal is always absolute; meaning that it does not concern an isolated act, a specific crime (theft, fraud, rape), but rather concerns the character of the accused in its entirety: K. searches for his offense in "the most minute events" of his whole life; in our century, by this standard, Bezukhov would have been indicted for both his love and his hatred of Napoleon. And also for his drunkennness, since, being absolute, the trial concerns private life as well as public; Brod condemned K. to death for seeing in women only the "lowest sexuality”;… The trial is absolute as well in that it does not keep within the limits of the defendant's life; thus K.s uncle says: "Do you want to lose this trial? ... It means that you will be absolutely ruined. And all your relatives along with you." The guilt of one Jew contains within it that of the Jews of all times; the Communist doctrine on the influence of class origin includes within the offense of the accused the offense of his parents and grandparents; in the trial of Europe for the crime of colonialism, Sartre accused not the colonists but Europe, all of Europe, the Europe of all times; because "there is a colonist in each of us," because "being a man here means being an accomplice since we have all profited from colonial exploitation." The spirit of the trial recognizes no statute of limitations; the distant past is as alive as today's event; and even in death you will not escape: there are informers in the cemetery. The trial's memory is colossal, but it is a very specific memory, which could be defined as the forgetting of everything not a crime.

The trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine, and you have yours; and our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he does not lose—that is, he ends up holding the same opinions he started with. (P. 147)

I have seen people with smiling faces and feeling lonely desolate inside their hearts. I have seen people with public success and private failures in their life. I have seen most of us chasing small highs in their life rather than trying to achieve something concrete. I have seen big giants losing basic moral values for small profits in their materialistic pursuit. I have seen people dancing whole day to the tunes of life and crying alone at midnight. I have seen best of relationships breaking off with the test of time. I have seen young teenagers with broken hearts and old ones with cracked minds. And you know what this is not the end of the list. To put it simple, I just wish to say that, life is short. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself trying to overdo everything. Don’t hanker after all the things you see others doing or achieving. Have some good moral values in your life. Be with friends who possess golden hearts rather than gold in their pockets or lockers. Keep few but good relationships. Have absolute faith in God and yourself. And try to be simple yet Happy. In the end what matters is not the number of cars you drive or money you possess in your bank account but what matters most is how well you sail through the winds of life against all the storms and hurricanes past over you. Think what makes you – YOU.

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All that remained was to hear the final death knell. It came in 1974 in the form of a devastating autoimmune disease called myasthenia gravis. It’s so rare an illness, when Ari received the diagnosis, he viewed it as punishment from the gods for his hubris, boastfulness, and extravagant lifestyle. “How can I lose?” he’d often asked when he was in good health. “The rules don’t even apply to me.” Now, he felt he was paying the price for his massive success by losing everything—his son, his money, even his health. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes open, the neuromuscular disorder weakening his face so much. It seemed like a cruel, horrible way to go out. “I may as well be dead now,” he told Jackie. “I can’t live like this.

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