Kite Day Quotes

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.

And I began to let him go. Hour by hour. Days into months. It was a physical sensation, like letting out the string of a kite. Except that the string was coming from my center.

We are all instruments pulling the bows across our own lungs. Windmills, still startling in every storm. Have you ever seen a newborn blinking at the light? I wanna do that every day. I wanna know what the kite called itself when it got away, when it escaped into the night...

Some days, I listen to that clock ticking in the hallway. Then I think of all the ticks, all the minutes, all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without you. And I can’t breathe then, like someone’s stepping on my heart. I get so weak. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.

I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around, like children love recess bells. I still hear the sound of you and think of playgrounds where outcasts who stutter beneath braces and bruises and acne are finally learning that their rich handsome bullies are never gonna grow up to be happy. I think of happy when I think of you. So wherever you are I hope you’re happy, I really do. I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking I hope your lungs are open and breathing this life I hope there’s a kite in your hand that’s flying all the way up to Orion and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out. I hope you’re smiling like God is pulling at the corners of your mouth, ‘cause I might be naked and lonely shaking branches for bones but I’m still time zones away from who I was the day before we met. You were the first mile where my heart broke a sweat, and I wish you were here; I wish you’d never left; but mostly I wish you well. I wish you my very, very best

For Jenn At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts. I fought with my knuckles white as stars, and left bruises the shape of Salem. There are things we know by heart, and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke. I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos, but I could never make dying beautiful. The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself veins are kite strings you can only cut free. I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist. I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree, and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers, and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe. But my lungs remember the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat. And I knew life would tremble like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek, like a prayer on a dying man's lips, like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone… just take me just take me Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday. You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess and hope she knows you can hit a baseball further than any boy in the whole third grade and I've been running for home through the windpipe of a man who sings while his hands playing washboard with a spoon on a street corner in New Orleans where every boarded up window is still painted with the words We're Coming Back like a promise to the ocean that we will always keep moving towards the music, the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain. Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open. The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks. Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert, then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun. I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun. I know the heartbeat of his mother. Don't cover your ears, Love. Don't cover your ears, Life. There is a boy writing poems in Central Park and as he writes he moves and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart, and there are men playing chess in the December cold who can't tell if the breath rising from the board is their opponents or their own, and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn, and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun with strip malls and traffic and vendors and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect. I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon. I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river that has to run through the center of our hearts to find its way home.

Always remember that love, much like our faith in God, is the kite we must fly, even on a windless day.

There's no monster...just a beautiful day.

I loved that kite, that cinnamon hound. We were old friends. I had soared and laughed with that kite. It got me out on the perimeter. I felt I had failed it somehow, and rune too, even though he would've offered the string to Leer, just as I had. Thinking it over I became a bit less angry, and more proud of the kite itself: it had refused to be flown by Leer one moment longer. It broke the line and caught the next gust out of town. A perilous beautiful move, choosing to throw yourself at the future, even if it means one day coming down in the sea.

We’re like two dogs in battle on their own; They fought all day but neither got the bone, There came a kite above them, nothing loth, And while they fought he took it from them both." From Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale

Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays.

When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise. Clare has turned the second bedroom into a wonder cabinet, full of small sculptures and drawings pinned up on every inch of wall space. There are coils of wire and rolls of paper tucked into shelves and drawers. The sculptures remind me of kites, or model airplanes. I say this to Clare one evening, standing in the doorway of her studio in my suit and tie, home from work, about to begin making dinner, and she throws one at me; it flies surprisingly well, and soon we are standing at opposite ends of the hall, tossing tiny sculptures at each other, testing their aerodynamics. The next day I come home to find that Clare has created a flock of paper and wire birds, which are hanging from the ceiling in the living room. A week later our bedroom windows are full of abstract blue translucent shapes that the sun throws across the room onto the walls, making a sky for the bird shapes Clare has painted there. It's beautiful. The next evening I'm standing in the doorway of Clare's studio, watching her finish drawing a thicket of black lines around a little red bird. Suddenly I see Clare, in her small room, closed in by all her stuff, and I realize that she's trying to say something, and I know what I have to do.

I like it here. I just want to walk the wind, watch you play rugby. Make kites for Agnes and do things, when I can—and come to bed with you at the end of the day. I’ve stopped running.” “You fell?” “I landed.

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir,” he said.

The morning sun reflected in the skyscrapers that circled us and a rainbow-patterned kite flashed above, glittering like fish scales.

Two small figures were beating against the rock; the girl had fainted and lay on the the boy's arm. With a last effort Peter pulled her up the rock and then lay down beside her. Even as he also fainted he saw that the water was raising, He knew that they would soon be drowned, but he could do no more. As they lay side by side a mermaid caught Wendy by the feet, and began pulling her softly into the water. Peter feeling her slip from him, woke with a start, and was just in time to draw her back. But he had to tell her the truth. "We are on the rock, Wendy," he said, "but it is growing smaller. Soon the water will be over it." She did not understand even now. "We must go," she said, almost brightly. "Yes," he answered faintly. "Shall we swim or fly, Peter?" He had to tell her. "Do you think you could swim or fly as far as the island, Wendy, without my help?" She had to admit she was too tired. He moaned. "What is it?" she asked, anxious about him at once. "I can't help you, Wendy. Hook wounded me. I can neither fly nor swim." "Do you mean we shall both be downed?" "Look how the water is raising." They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the sight. They thought they would soon be no more. As they sat thus something brushed against Peter as light as a kiss, and stayed there, as if to say timidly, "Can I be of any us?" It was the tail of a kite, which Michael had made some days before. It had torn itself out of his hand and floated away. "Michael's kite," Peter said without interest, but the next moment he had seized the tail, and was pulling the kite towards him. "It lifted Michael off the ground," he cried; "why should it not carry you?" "Both of us!" "It can't left two; Michael and Curly tried." "Let us draw lots," Wendy said bravely. "And you a lady; never." Already he had tied the tail round her. She clung to him; she refused to go without him; but with a "Good-bye, Wendy." he pushed her from the rock; and in a few minutes she was borne out of his sight. Peter was alone on the lagoon. The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.

When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze and touches with her hand the summer trees….’ That’s poetry. And ‘Like painted kites the days and nights went flying by. The world was new beneath a blue umbrella sky.

No one can tell me, Nobody knows, Where the wind comes from, Where the wind goes. It's flying from somewhere As fast as it can, I couldn't keep up with it, Not if I ran. But if I stopped holding The string of my kite, It would blow with the wind For a day and a night. And then when I found it, Wherever it blew, I should know that the wind Had been going there too. So then I could tell them Where the wind goes... But where the wind comes from Nobody knows.

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir,

To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.

It's a sad day for American Capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over central park.

The kite soars high in the sky. A myriad of colours gliding by … day swept. [Kite Day]

Always remember that love, much like our faith in God, is the kite we must fly even on a windless day.

We’re like two dogs in battle on their own; They fought all day but neither got the bone, There came a kite above them, nothing loth, And while they fought he took it from them both.

Thinking of those times as he passed the cemetery on his way to the evening’s festivities, Gabe recalled the day Matty’s body had been found and carried home. Gabe had been young then, only eight, a rambunctious resident of the Children’s House, happiest with solitary adventures and disinterested in schoolwork. But he had always admired Matty, who had tended and helped Seer with such devotion and undertaken village tasks with energy and good humor. It had been Matty who had taught Gabe to bait a hook and cast his line from the fishing rock, Matty who had shown him how to make a kite and catch the wind with it. The day of his death, Gabe had huddled, heartbroken, in the shadow of a thick stand of trees and watched as the villagers lined the path and bowed their heads in respect to watch the litter carrying the ravaged body move slowly through. Frightened by his own feelings, he had listened mutely to the wails of grief that permeated the community.

Gaslight Goods. Let us be your light in the midst of life's darkness, the sunlight in your foggy day, the candle in your wind. This is Kite. How can I help you today?" I grimaced. That was their opener?

Fanfare for the Makers A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what? To the small fire that never leaves the sky. To the great fire that boils the daily pot. To all the things we are not remembered by, Which we remember and bless. To all the things That will not notice when we die, Yet lend the passing moment words and wings. So fanfare for the Makers: who compose A book of words or deeds who runs may write As many who do run, as a family grows At times like sunflowers turning towards the light. As sometimes in the blackout and the raids One joke composed an island in the night. As sometimes one man’s kindness pervades A room or house or village, as sometimes Merely to tighten screws or sharpen blades Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes At midnight means to share them, as one man In old age plants an avenue of limes And before they bloom can smell them, before they span The road can walk beneath the perfected arch, The merest greenprint when the lives began Of those who walk there with him, as in default Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite Of all assaults conscripts counter assault, As mothers sit up late night after night Moulding a life, as miners day by day Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play Their fish, as workers work and can take pride In spending sweat before they draw their pay. As horsemen fashion horses while they ride, As climbers climb a peak because it is there, As life can be confirmed even in suicide: To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair. Louis Macneice

No doubt about it: numbers are the future. The world’s been learning to count since the days of chivalry ended and it’s only going to get worse. We’re about to witness the end of everything that isn’t quantifiable—honor, for example.

I buy an ice-cream sandwich at the Stop-N-Go on my way home. The taste takes me back to childhood. Back when life was dreaming about things to come and believing that if you really wanted something bad enough, it could and would be yours. I remember praying for a bike for Christmas, and there it was. We prayed for Minnie's gerbil to live and it did. Later, in high school, I asked God for guidance about where to go to college, and that very day, like a kite floating straight from heaven, the acceptance letter came from UNC-Charlotte.

I loved that kite, that cinnamon hound. We were old friends. I had soared and laughed with that kite. It got me out on the perimeter. I felt I had failed it somehow, and Rune too, even though he would’ve offered the string to Leer, just as I had. Thinking it over I became a bit less angry, and more proud of the kite itself: it had refused to be flown by Leer one moment longer. It broke the line and caught the next gust out of town. A perilous beautiful move, choosing to throw yourself at the future, even if it means one day coming down in the sea.

In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori Baskets of olives and lemons, Cobbles spattered with wine And the wreckage of flowers. Vendors cover the trestles With rose-pink fish; Armfuls of dark grapes Heaped on peach-down. On this same square They burned Giordano Bruno. Henchmen kindled the pyre Close-pressed by the mob. Before the flames had died The taverns were full again, Baskets of olives and lemons Again on the vendors' shoulders. I thought of the Campo dei Fiori In Warsaw by the sky-carousel One clear spring evening To the strains of a carnival tune. The bright melody drowned The salvos from the ghetto wall, And couples were flying High in the cloudless sky. At times wind from the burning Would drift dark kites along And riders on the carousel Caught petals in midair. That same hot wind Blew open the skirts of the girls And the crowds were laughing On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday. Someone will read as moral That the people of Rome or Warsaw Haggle, laugh, make love As they pass by martyrs' pyres. Someone else will read Of the passing of things human, Of the oblivion Born before the flames have died. But that day I thought only Of the loneliness of the dying, Of how, when Giordano Climbed to his burning There were no words In any human tongue To be left for mankind, Mankind who live on. Already they were back at their wine Or peddled their white starfish, Baskets of olives and lemons They had shouldered to the fair, And he already distanced As if centuries had passed While they paused just a moment For his flying in the fire. Those dying here, the lonely Forgotten by the world, Our tongue becomes for them The language of an ancient planet. Until, when all is legend And many years have passed, On a great Campo dei Fiori Rage will kindle at a poet's word.

Feathers glittering the color of amethyst against the dying light of the day, long tails trailing in the breeze like kites, wings shimmering with every beat. They looked so oblivious to their majesty, like flying and painting the sky with purple was just something they did, rather than something that made my knees shake.

There had been no crises of incident, or marked movements of experience such as in Felipe's imaginations of love were essential to the fulness of its growth. This is a common mistake on the part of those who have never felt love's true bonds. Once in those chains, one perceives that they are not of the sort full forged in a day. They are made as the great iron cables are made, on which bridges are swung across the widest water-channels,--not of single huge rods, or bars, which would be stronger, perhaps, to look at; but myriads of the finest wires, each one by itself so fine, so frail, it would barely hold a child's kite in the wind: by hundreds, hundreds of thousands of such, twisted, re-twisted together, are made the mighty cables, which do not any more swerve from their place in the air, under the weight and jar of the ceaseless traffic and tread of two cities, than the solid earth swerves under the same ceaseless weight and jar. Such cables do not break.

He lay with a pack of panting dogs on a hill overlooking plains where antelope grazed. He marched with ants, and labored in the rigors of the nest, filing eggs. He danced the mating dance of the bower bird, and slept on a warm rock with his lizard kin. He was a cloud. He was the shadow of a cloud. He was the moon that cast the shadow of a cloud. He was a blind fish; he was a shoal; he was a whale; he was the sea. He was the lord of all he surveyed. He was a worm in the dung of a kite. He did not grieve, knowing his life was a day long, or an hour. He did not wonder who made him. He did not wish to be other. He did not pray. He did not hope. He only was, and was, and was, and that was the joy of it.

She was the sweetheart queen, sorority president. Boys trailed her like a tail on a kite,

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime,

as a member of a zippier generation, with sparkle in its eyes and a snap in its stride, let me tell you what kept us as high as kites a lot of the time: hatred. All my life I’ve had people to hate—from Hitler to Nixon, not that those two are at all comparable in their villainy. It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate. If you want to feel ten feet tall and as though you could run a hundred miles without stopping, hate beats pure cocaine any day. Hitler resurrected a beaten, bankrupt, half-starved nation with hatred and nothing more. Imagine

What does our baby think of the cord sprouting into the whoosh whoosh of my wife’s heartbeat? And does Ramon imagine the lines of seaweed are kite strings stretching into a heaven of water? I see Ramon and our baby looking up, up where stretched-out skin, the roof of the world, lets in the light of day, up where the sun is a ballet of burning coins. The heart — a kite like a bucking bronc straining to break into sky.

For you, a thousand times over." "Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors." "...attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun." "But even when he wasn't around, he was." "When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal a wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing." "...she had a voice that made me think of warm milk and honey." "My heart stuttered at the thought of her." "...and I would walk by, pretending not to know her, but dying to." "It turned out that, like satan, cancer had many names." "Every woman needed a husband, even if he did silence the song in her." "The first time I saw the Pacific, I almost cried." "Proud. His eyes gleamed when he said that and I liked being on the receiving end of that look." "Make morning into a key and throw it into the well, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly. Let the morning sun forget to rise in the East, Go slowly, lovely moon, go slowly." "Men are easy,... a man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand... well, God put a lot of thought into making you." "All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman." "And I could almost feel the emptiness in [her] womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd feel it rising from [her] and settling between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child." "America was a river, roaring along unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins. If for nothing else, for that I embraced America." "...and every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan." "...lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty." "...sometimes the dead are luckier." "He walked like he was afraid to leave behind footprints. He moved as if not to stir the air around him." "...and when she locked her arms around my neck, when I smelled apples in her hair, I realized how much I had missed her. 'You're still the morning sun to me...' I whispered." "...there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eys of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.

December 2001 I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.

Everybody needs somebody. Sorry. If you were thinking you could get through life completely on your own, you're wrong. It's a proven fact that people need people. Sure, there are those who try to stuff their lives full of cats in an effort to fill the void, but, for the most part, people thrive, live, and do better if their existences are full of interaction with other humans. Some people find people to interact with at school. Some people run with people they meet at church. Work is a half-decent place to find acquaintances. Or maybe one day last May you were flying a kite in Central Park and a couple of nice people commented on how high the kite was, and that sparked a conversation that led to the three of you having dinner together at a small restaurant in Times Square and then catching a Broadway show about friendly cats. That could have happened -- which just goes to show you that, either way, you are going to end up surround by cats. Let's hope you're not allergic.

Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me....It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high up in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in, and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so that I pitied him with all my heart.

Here is what I do on the first day of snowfall every year: I step out of the house early in the morning, still in my pajamas, hugging my arms against the chill. I find the driveway, my father’s car, the walls, the trees, the rooftops, and the hills buried under a foot of snow. I smile. The sky is seamless and blue, the snow so white my eyes burn. I shovel a handful of the fresh snow into my mouth, listen to the muffled stillness broken only by the cawing of crows. I walk down the front steps, barefoot, and call for Hassan to come out and see.

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. … That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past. … Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. —Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. … It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it. —Jessica Stern, Denial: A Memoir of Terror

Each of us hides our own private Delaware lost in the gray jungle-tangle of our brains. No one else can know its depths and byways. No one else can know the height of its towers, the secrets of its tides and pools. There will always be lost lagoons to find there, and ruins almost hidden by the sand. There will always be monsters of great beauty and good men with ugly frowns. The forests are dark but lights bob among the branches. You are at home there, more at home than anyplace else, and yet you will never go there in your life. Their legends are yours. The pirates sale around the cape, a crew of skeletons in the rigging. Milkmaids run down mountain passes, dragging kites behind them. Wizards crack their backs after long days of chalk and incantation while above the crowded bazaars, over the golden temples, against the setting sun, around the ruddy minarets, the pterodactyls call out a long farewell.

In 1954 the gulag at Kengir witnessed an uprising by Christian and Muslim prisoners. The guards were driven out, and for forty days worship was freely practiced in the camp. Solzhenitsyn later documented the atmosphere of elation and idealism which prevailed in this doomed island of faith: the Muslims put on turbans and robes again, and 'the grey-black camp was a blaze of color'. The Chechens made kites from which they showered the neighboring villages with messages about the evils of the atheist system. Many marriages were celebrated. Survivors recall the forty days as a testimony to a possible way of living which had been suffocated by dreary unbelief. Delight in the present, and the knowledge of heaven outweighed the awareness of Khrushchev's inevitable revenge. The rebels were crushed under the attacks of tanks, but in the long term, this same spiritual outweighing insured the atheist dystopia's downfall.

We watch the kites circling, and I imagine them setting fire to the way my life has been before this moment. I imagine the smoke reshaping me. I reimagine myself as my first work, the art that comes before all other art I might one day make, the work I fashion only for myself and for those who have the eyes to see it.

The summer wind came blowin' in From across the sea It lingered there so warm and fair To walk with me All summer long, we sang a song And then we strolled on golden sand Two amigos And the summer wind Like painted kites Those days and nights, they went flyin' by The world was new Beneath a bright blue umbrella sky Then softer than a piper man One day, it called to you And I lost you, I lost you To the summer wind The autumn wind and the winter winds They have come and they have gone And still the days, those lonely days They go on and on And guess who sighs his lullabies Through nights that never end My fickle friend, the summer wind The summer wind, the summer wind The summer wind

But gradually in her letters she tends to confuse me with her other friend, the Buddy who died in the 1880s; more and more, thirteenths are not the only days she stays in bed: a morning arrives in November, a leafless birdless coming of winter morning, when she cannot arouse herself to exclaim: "Oh my, it's fruitcake weather!" And when it happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.

On breezy days when the wind was not too light and not too strong, Will and Pamela and the children flew their homemade kites in Peaceful Park until they were specks in the blue sky. When the wind was just right, the kites felt so strong and safe up there that Honor imagined nothing could budge them. 'Ho bum," boasted Will, 'I could stand here all day and this kite would hold. It's like fishing.' 'Fishing in reverse,' said Pamela. 'Sky fishing.' 'What do you fish for in the air?' asked Honor. Pamela and Will started laughing. 'Oh, planets,' said Will. 'The occasional comet. An asteroid or two.' Honor held one kite string, and Will held the other. Pamela held Quintilian. On those afternoons, four did not seem like the wrong number for a family. Four seemed just right.

The boy was there too, stumbling through the living room horde and passing out magic mushrooms from a paper bag. His eyeballs sparkled inside gaping, play-dough sockets while his limbs hung gaunt and exhausted from eight straight days of self-medicating fear. Another boy in a black tee pinched some mushroom flakes from his bag, nodded his thanks, and mouthed the word “bro” like blowing a man kiss.

One of the first problems to be faced at Niagara was how to get a wire over the gorge and its violent river. Ellet solved that nicely by offering five dollars to the first American boy to fly a kite over to the Canadian side. The prize was won by young Homer Walsh, who would tell the story for the rest of his days. Once the kite string was across, a succession of heavier cords and ropes was pulled over, and in a short time the first length of wire went on its way. After that, when the initial cable had been completed, Ellet decided to demonstrate his faith in it in a fashion people would not forget. He had an iron basket made up big enough to hold him and attached it to the cable with pulleys. Then stepping inside, on a morning in March 1848, he pulled himself over the gorge and back again, all in no more than fifteen minutes’ time, and to the great excitement of crowds gathered along both rims.

This is the work of a lifetime, here on earth: To invent the astral body, to create it. giving it our consciousness. Thus one will survive death. One could also die when one chooses… And on dying, not lose the awareness 'from here.' What has happened to you is a detachment of your astral body while your physical body sleeps. This occurs to vîras; it's an automatic unconscious process. Sometimes, by simple chance, a glimmer of consciousness reaches this fine body and then, on suddenly awakening or the next day, one gets the impression of experiencing something much more real than physical reality. The deja-vu of psychologists has its explanation in this phenomena of detachment. Have you seen those children who elevate a kite and send messages with little rolls of paper that go slowly up to the kite? So it is, more or less, with that other. The astral body breaks away, still attached to the physical body by a string which has been called a 'silver cord' that is only cut at death. Thanks to this cord we can go immeasurable distances without losing the connection with our physical bodies. It always returns. So it reaches consciousness, like those messages of children with their kite. Yes, we must become like children to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven… with our astral bodies. Pay attention to this other analogy: As a child finds itself joined to its mother by the umbilical cord, so the astral body is joined to its father, the physical body, by a silver cord. The child cries and despairs at birth, when the cord connecting him to his mother is cut. He thinks this is death, but it is a new life. The same befalls the vîra when he dies; when the silver cord is cut he enters into another life. Death is a new life. All this is archetypal. Only those events expressing archetypes have ontological reality.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

On the bus, I pull out my book. It's the best book I've ever read, even if I'm only halfway through. It's called Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, with two dots over the e. Jane Eyre lives in England in Queen Victoria's time. She's an orphan who's taken in by a horrid rich aunt who locks her in a haunted room to punish her for lying, even though she didn't lie. Then Jane is sent to a charity school, where all she gets to eat is burnt porridge and brown stew for many years. But she grows up to be clever, slender, and wise anyway. Then she finds work as a governess in a huge manor called Thornfield, because in England houses have names. At Thornfield, the stew is less brown and the people less simple. That's as far as I've gotten... Diving back into Jane Eyre... Because she grew up to be clever, slender and wise, no one calls Jane Eyre a liar, a thief or an ugly duckling again. She tutors a young girl, Adèle, who loves her, even though all she has to her name are three plain dresses. Adèle thinks Jane Eyre's smart and always tells her so. Even Mr. Rochester agrees. He's the master of the house, slightly older and mysterious with his feverish eyebrows. He's always asking Jane to come and talk to him in the evenings, by the fire. Because she grew up to be clever, slender, and wise, Jane Eyre isn't even all that taken aback to find out she isn't a monster after all... Jane Eyre soon realizes that she's in love with Mr. Rochester, the master of Thornfield. To stop loving him so much, she first forces herself to draw a self-portrait, then a portrait of Miss Ingram, a haughty young woman with loads of money who has set her sights on marrying Mr. Rochester. Miss Ingram's portrait is soft and pink and silky. Jane draws herself: no beauty, no money, no relatives, no future. She show no mercy. All in brown. Then, on purpose, she spends all night studying both portraits to burn the images into her brain for all time. Everyone needs a strategy, even Jane Eyre... Mr. Rochester loves Jane Eyre and asks her to marry him. Strange and serious, brown dress and all, he loves her. How wonderful, how impossible. Any boy who'd love a sailboat-patterned, swimsuited sausage who tames rabid foxes would be wonderful. And impossible. Just like in Jane Eyre, the story would end badly. Just like in Jane Eyre, she'd learn the boy already has a wife as crazy as a kite, shut up in the manor tower, and that even if he loves the swimsuited sausage, he can't marry her. Then the sausage would have to leave the manor in shame and travel to the ends of the earth, her heart in a thousand pieces... Oh right, I forgot. Jane Eyre returns to Thornfield one day and discovers the crazy-as-a-kite wife set the manor on fire and did Mr. Rochester some serious harm before dying herself. When Jane shows up at the manor, she discovers Mr. Rochester in the dark, surrounded by the ruins of his castle. He is maimed, blind, unkempt. And she still loves him. He can't believe it. Neither can I. Something like that would never happen in real life. Would it? ... You'll see, the story ends well.

It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth A huge travel in night’s darkness from the Ceylonese waters to the Malayan sea I have been there too: the fading world of Vimbisara and Asoka Even further—the forgotten city of Vidarva, Today I am a weary soul although the ocean of life around continues to foam, Except for a few soothing moments with Natore’s Banalata Sen. Her hair as if the dark night of long lost Vidisha, Her face reminiscent of the fine works of Sravasti, When I saw her in the shadow it seemed as if a ship-wrecked mariner in a far away sea has spotted a cinnamon island lined with greenish grass. “Where had you been lost all these days? ” yes, she demanded of me, Natore’s Banalata Sen raising her eyes of profound refuge. At the day’s end evening crawls in like the sound of dews, The kite flaps off the smell of sun from its wings. When all colours take leave from the world except for the flicker of the hovering fireflies The manuscript is ready with tales to be told All birds come home, rivers too, All transactions of the day being over Nothing remains but darkness to sit face to face with Banalata Sen.

Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then paused a moment to re-tie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters loomed and while she straightened her-self she noticed them and unconsciously loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of a broken toy lion that must one day have been the plaything of one of Fuchsia's ancestors, spread from every wall until only an avenue was left to the adjacent room. This high, narrow avenue wound down the centre of the first attic before suddenly turning at a sharp angle to the right. The fact that this room was filled with lumber did not mean that she ignored it and used it only as a place of transit. Oh no, for it was here that many long afternoons had been spent as she crawled deep into the recesses and found for herself many a strange cavern among the incongruous relics of the past. She knew of ways through the centre of what appeared to be hills of furniture, boxes, musical instruments and toys, kites, pictures, bamboo armour and helmets, flags and relics of every kind, as an Indian knows his green and secret trail. Within reach of her hand the hide and head of a skinned baboon hung dustily over a broken drum that rose above the dim ranges of this attic medley. Huge and impregnable they looked in the warm still half-light, but Fuchsia, had she wished to, could have disappeared awkwardly but very suddenly into these fantastic mountains, reached their centre and lain down upon an ancient couch with a picture book at her elbow and been entirely lost to view within a few moments.

My Chemical Romance, “I Don’t Love You” New Order, “Bizarre Love Triangle” Coheed and Cambria, “The Afterman” U2, “Ordinary Love” Coheed and Cambria, “Pearl of the Stars” Tears for Fears, “Woman in Chains” (with Oleta Adams) U2, “Every Breaking Wave” The Arcadian Project, “Hey There, Pretty Girl” Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” Everything But The Girl, “I Don’t Understand Anything” The Airborne Toxic Event, “The Fifth Day” Gnarls Barkley, “Smiley Faces” The Airborne Toxic Event, “This Is London” My Chemical Romance, “Planetary (GO!)” U2, “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own” The Airborne Toxic Event, “The Way Home” Coldplay, “Fix You” The Strokes, “Reptilia” Simple Minds, “When Two Worlds Collide” The Smashing Pumpkins, “1979” The Arcadian Project, “The Windmill” Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” My Chemical Romance, “The Only Hope for Me Is You” Heaven 17, “Let Me Go” (extended version) Our Last Night, “Skyfall” My Chemical Romance, “The Kids from Yesterday” The Airborne Toxic Event, “The Graveyard near the House” Green Day, “Troublemaker” James Taylor, “Carolina in My Mind” Simple Minds, “Waterfront” Muse, “Exogenesis: Symphony Part 3 (Redemption)” U2, “Kite” The Arcadian Project, “The Disappearance Symphony: One Last Question

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy" What are you thinking about? I am thinking of an early summer. I am thinking of wet hills in the rain Pouring water. Shedding it Down empty acres of oak and manzanita Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana Driving the hills crazy, A fast wind with a bit of dust in it Bruising everything and making the seed sweet. Or down in the city where the peach trees Are awkward as young horses, And there are kites caught on the wires Up above the street lamps, And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches. What are you thinking? I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer As slow getting started As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza After a lot of unusual rain California seems long in the summer. I would like to write a poem as long as California And as slow as a summer. Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow As the very tip of summer. As slow as the summer seems On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road Between Bakersfield and Hell Waiting for Santa Claus. What are you thinking now? I’m thinking that she is very much like California. When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways Traveling up and down her skin Long empty highways With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them On hot summer nights. I am thinking that her body could be California And I a rich Eastern tourist Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California That I have never seen. Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady, Send them. One of each breast photographed looking Like curious national monuments, One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging In the world’s oldest hotel. What are you thinking? I am thinking of how many times this poem Will be repeated. How many summers Will torture California Until the damned maps burn Until the mad cartographer Falls to the ground and possesses The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding. What are you thinking now? I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

~We were here~ We were here years ago Dusk swept away the white day departing monotonous sun to sleep “You came out of abyss or on High?” The scent of her willingness breasts I breathe ! Eyes closed ! Naked bodies sailed in colour, sound and smell her swan-like arms coiled The shadowy light of lamp the flamboyant bits of dying coal sighed in air Blood depurated the tawny flesh of bodies Beside on a table words scattered like flock of birds grief, dejection and melancholy b r o k e n bones of free verse In contrivance of our sweetest submission words rupture; secret message deciphered unrhymed metamorphosed to rhymes they read our skins like first love poem besotted in warm delighted air flying high as kite You were coaxed to sing in flow; I danced wobbly Wary sky above the roof ceased in our devout brittle embrace.

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight 1 You scream, waking from a nightmare. When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you. 2 I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down, I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die. Little Maud, I would blow the flame out of your silver cup, I would suck the rot from your fingernail, I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light, I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones, I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body, I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood, I would let nothing of you go, ever, until washerwomen feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands, and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades, and rats walk away from the culture of the plague, and iron twists weapons toward truth north, and grease refuse to slide in the machinery of progress, and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men, and the widow still whispers to the presence no longer beside her in the dark. And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls. 3 In a restaurant once, everyone quietly eating, you clambered up on my lap: to all the mouthfuls rising toward all the mouths, at the top of your voice you cried your one word, caca! caca! caca! and each spoonful stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering steam. Yes, you cling because I, like you, only sooner than you, will go down the path of vanished alphabets, the roadlessness to the other side of the darkness, your arms like the shoes left behind, like the adjectives in the halting speech of old folk, which once could call up the lost nouns. 4 And you yourself, some impossible Tuesday in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out among the black stones of the field, in the rain, and the stones saying over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît, and the raindrops hitting you on the fontanel over and over, and you standing there unable to let them in. 5 If one day it happens you find yourself with someone you love in a café at one end of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar where wine takes the shapes of upward opening glasses, and if you commit then, as we did, the error of thinking, one day all this will only be memory, learn to reach deeper into the sorrows to come—to touch the almost imaginary bones under the face, to hear under the laughter the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss the mouth that tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones. The still undanced cadence of vanishing. 6 In the light the moon sends back, I can see in your eyes the hand that waved once in my father's eyes, a tiny kite wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look: and the angel of all mortal things lets go the string. 7 Back you go, into your crib. The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell. Your eyes close inside your head, in sleep. Already in your dreams the hours begin to sing. Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among the ten thousand things, each scratched in time with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

The following month, before word of the French success reached America, Franklin came up with his own ingenious way to conduct the experiment, according to accounts later written by himself and his friend the scientist Joseph Priestley. He had been waiting for the steeple of Philadelphia’s Christ Church to be finished, so he could use its high vantage point. Impatient, he struck on the idea of using instead a kite, a toy he had enjoyed flying and experimenting with since his boyhood days in Boston. To do the experiment in some secrecy, he enlisted his son, William, to help fly the silk kite. A sharp wire protruded from its top and a key was attached near the base of the wet string, so that a wire could be brought near it in an effort to draw sparks. Clouds passed over to no effect. Franklin began to despair when he suddenly saw some of the strands of the string stiffen. Putting his knuckle to the key, he was able to draw sparks (and, notably, to survive). He proceeded to collect some of the charge in a Leyden jar and found it had the same qualities as electricity produced in a lab. “Thereby the sameness of electrical matter with that of lightning,” he reported in a letter the following October, was “completely demonstrated.

… The most important contribution you can make now is taking pride in your treasured home state. Because nobody else is. Study and cherish her history, even if you have to do it on your own time. I did. Don’t know what they’re teaching today, but when I was a kid, American history was the exact same every year: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Sons of Liberty, tea party. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we have to start somewhere— we’ll get to Florida soon enough.’…Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, Paul Revere, the North Church, ‘Redcoats are coming,’ one if by land, two if by sea, three makes a crowd, and I’m sitting in a tiny desk, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. Hello! Did we order the wrong books? Were these supposed to go to Massachusetts?…Then things showed hope, moving south now: Washington crosses the Delaware, down through original colonies, Carolinas, Georgia. Finally! Here we go! Florida’s next! Wait. What’s this? No more pages in the book. School’s out? Then I had to wait all summer, and the first day back the next grade: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock…Know who the first modern Floridians were? Seminoles! Only unconquered group in the country! These are your peeps, the rugged stock you come from. Not genetically descended, but bound by geographical experience like a subtropical Ellis Island. Because who’s really from Florida? Not the flamingos, or even the Seminoles for that matter. They arrived when the government began rounding up tribes, but the Seminoles said, ‘Naw, we prefer waterfront,’ and the white man chased them but got freaked out in the Everglades and let ’em have slot machines…I see you glancing over at the cupcakes and ice cream, so I’ll limit my remaining remarks to distilled wisdom: “Respect your parents. And respect them even more after you find out they were wrong about a bunch of stuff. Their love and hard work got you to the point where you could realize this. “Don’t make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must. “If someone isn’t kind to animals, ignore anything they have to say. “Your best teachers are sacrificing their comfort to ensure yours; show gratitude. Your worst are jealous of your future; rub it in. “Don’t talk to strangers, don’t play with matches, don’t eat the yellow snow, don’t pull your uncle’s finger. “Skip down the street when you’re happy. It’s one of those carefree little things we lose as we get older. If you skip as an adult, people talk, but I don’t mind. “Don’t follow the leader. “Don’t try to be different—that will make you different. “Don’t try to be popular. If you’re already popular, you’ve peaked too soon. “Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush. “Read everything. Doubt everything. Appreciate everything. “When you’re feeling down, make a silly noise. “Go fly a kite—seriously. “Always say ‘thank you,’ don’t forget to floss, put the lime in the coconut. “Each new year of school, look for the kid nobody’s talking to— and talk to him. “Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work. “Cherish freedom of religion: Protect it from religion. “Remember that a smile is your umbrella. It’s also your sixteen-in-one reversible ratchet set. “ ‘I am rubber, you are glue’ carries no weight in a knife fight. “Hang on to your dreams with everything you’ve got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don’t but you never stop chasing them. So never let the authority jade your youthful enthusiasm. Stay excited about dinosaurs, keep looking up at the stars, become an archaeologist, classical pianist, police officer or veterinarian. And, above all else, question everything I’ve just said. Now get out there, class of 2020, and take back our state!

Aa – pronounced as ah, as in father Bb – pronounced as bay Cc – Generally, its French pronunciation is say. However, its pronunciation will change depending on the situation. If this letter comes before I and E, it must be pronounced as the English S (similar to how C in the word center is pronounced). If it comes before A, O, and U, its pronunciation must be the same as c in cat. Dd – pronounced as day, or similar to D in the word dog Ee – must sound like euh, similar to the emphasis of U in the word burp Ff – sounds like eff, similar to how F is pronounced in the word fog Gg – As a general rule, this letter is pronounced as jhay. However, its pronunciation will change depending on the word. If this letter is found before the vowels A, O, and U, it must sound like the g in the word get. On the other hand, if it’s placed before I and E, the pronunciation must be similar to the S in the word measure. Hh – While this letter generally sounds as ash and is found in French written words, it is ALWAYS silent, even if the word begins with this letter. However, H has two kinds in the French language that are useful in writing. In non-aspirated H (or H muet), the letter H is treated as a vowel and the word requires either liaisons or contractions (other rules will be discussed in a later section). On the other hand, in an aspirated H (or H aspiré), the word is treated is a consonant and will not require liaisons or contractions. To determine which words are aspirated or not so that words can be spelled and pronounced correctly, French dictionaries place an asterisk (or any other symbol) on words starting with an H to indicate that they are aspirated. Ii – sounds like ee, or similar to how the letters ea in the word team is pronounced Jj – pronounced as ghee, and sounds like the S in the word measure Kk – sounds like kah, and is pronounced like the K in the word kite Ll – a straightforward el pronunciation, similar to L in the word lemon Mm – simply pronounced as emm, from M in the word minute Nn – similar to N in the word note, as it sounds like enn Oo – This letter can be pronounced as the O in the word nose, or can also sound similar to the U in nut. Pp – pronounced as pay, or similar to the letter P in the word pen Qq – sounds like ku, or how the K in kite is pronounced Rr – must sound like you’re saying air. To do this correctly in French, you must try to force air as if it’s going to the back of your throat. Your tongue must be near the position where you gargle, but the letter must sound softly. Ss – Generally, it must sound like ess. However, the pronunciation might change depending on the word. If the word begins with an S or has 2 S’s, it must sound like the S in sister. However, if the word only has one S, it must sound like the Z in the word amazing. Tt – pronounced as tay, just like t in the word top Uu – To pronounce this properly, you must say the letter E as how it is said in English while making sure that your lips follow the position like you’re saying “oo”. Vv – pronounced as vay, and sounds like the V in violin. Ww – pronounced as dubla-vay as the general rule. However, this may be changed depending on the word. It can sound like V in the word violin, or as W in the word water. Xx – sounds like eeks, and can be pronounced either like gz (as how the word exit is said) or as ks (when the word socks is said). Yy – pronounced as ee-grehk, or similar to ea in leak. Zz – sounds as zed, or like the letter Z in zebra

It was time to update Jerry, even though I had made no progress on the story. I dialed his number and it didn’t even ring. “This is Jerry.” “I have a problem.” “Well, hello to you, too.” “I’m serious.” “Congratulations. You haven’t been serious about anything in a very long time.” I often had these ridiculous back-and-forths with Jerry in which he would intentionally mock me or try to ruffle my feathers because he thought it inspired my writing. I was also ninety-nine percent sure that Jerry had undiagnosed ADD. Many days we ate lunch in the park together, sometimes Lincoln, sometimes Stanton. We’d eat our deli sandwiches and talk about life stuff. We would be having the most profound conversation about mortality or world hunger and Jerry would suddenly jerk his head around and say, “Oh man, look at that kite, it’s shaped like a giant squid!” I would never even attempt to take him to Millennium Park—forget about it. I know he’d just sit there and stare, mesmerized at those giant sculptures. His brain would go into overload and he would probably chant, “Big metal object, big metal object,” over and over. He did everything fast—he thought, ate, wrote, talked, even walked faster than the average person. His attention span didn’t last longer than a few seconds. His deadlines were sometimes unreasonable, and his brain rarely allowed for small talk in conversations, which made him a straight shooter. “Jerry, stop.

You’ll fly like a stone kite,” said Encyclopedia. “Nope, it’s going to work,” said Casper. “Buck Barkdull has flown—” “Nobody can fly!” screamed Encyclopedia. “Jump off the roof and you’ll find out what an anchor does.

I’d had no real understanding of the scope of her alleged crimes. She was being accused of stealing approximately $275,000 through a variety of scams, and of attempting to steal millions more. One of her most successful tactics was “check kiting,” a fraudulent practice that takes advantage of the several days banks need for deposited checks to officially clear.

Our watan is now known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. These are the laws that we will enforce and you will obey: All citizens must pray five times a day. If it is prayer time and you are caught doing something other, you will be beaten. All men will grow their beards. The correct length is at least one clenched fist beneath the chin. If you do not abide by this, you will be beaten. All boys will wear turbans. Boys in grade one through six will wear black turbans, higher grades will wear white. All boys will wear Islamic clothes. Shirt collars will be buttoned. Singing is forbidden. Dancing is forbidden. Playing cards, playing chess, gambling, and kite flying are forbidden. Writing books, watching films, and painting pictures are forbidden. If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will be killed. If you steal, your hand will be cut off at the wrist. If you steal again, your foot will be cut off. If you are not Muslim, do not worship where you can be seen by Muslims. If you do, you will be beaten and imprisoned. If you are caught trying to convert a Muslim to your faith, you will be executed. Attention women: You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets. If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram, a male relative.

A kite can fly in amongst our dreams.

A god of war is also the god of those who are caught in the wheel of eternal struggle, who fight on despite knowledge of certain defeat, who stand with their companions against spear and catapult and gleaming metal, armed with only their pride, who strive and assay and press and toil, all the while knowing that they cannot win.’ ‘You are not only the god of the strong, but also the god of the weak. Courage is better displayed when it seems all is lost, when despair appears the only rational course.’ ‘True courage is to insist on seeing when all around you is darkness.’ And Fithowéo stood up and ululated. As his voice filled the cave walls and bounced back to his ears, he seemed to see the stalactites hanging overhead like bejeweled curtains, the stalagmites growing out of the ground like bamboo shoots, the bats careening through the air like battle kites, the night-blooming orchids and cave roses blooming like living treasure—the cave was filled with light. The god of war laughed and bowed down to the orchid and kissed her. ‘Thank you for showing me how to see.’ ‘I am but the lowest of the Hundred Flowers,’ said the orchid. ‘But the tapestry of Dara is woven not only from the proud chrysanthemum or the arrogant winter plum, the bamboo who holds up great houses or the coconut who provides sweet nectar and pleasing music. Chicory, dandelion, butter-and-eggs, ten thousand species of orchids, and countless other flowers—we have no claim to the crests of the great noble families, and we are not cultivated in gardens and not gently caressed by the fingers of great ladies and eager courtiers. But we also fight our war against hail and storm, against drought and deprivation, against the sharp blade of the weeding hoe and the poisonous emanations of the herbicide-sprayer. We also have a claim on time, and we deserve a god who understands that every day in the life of the common flower is a day of battle.’ And Fithowéo continued to ululate, letting his throat and ears be his eyes, until he strode out of the cave, emerged into the sunlight, and picked up two pieces of darkest obsidian and placed them in his eye sockets so that he had eyes again. Though they were blind to light, they sowed fear into all who gazed into them.

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. . . . That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past. . . . Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. —Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter

I loved Cooper with every fiber of my being, and I wouldn’t trade her for anything, but there was nothing harder in the world than being a single parent. There were no weekends, no days off or holidays. You were the sole provider for every single need that tiny human had, and every time you felt you’d reached your limit, fate walked up and pushed your sorry ass over with a laugh.

When we first left home, my little brother asked me, "Where are we going?" I told him, "Just a short trip." However, it turned out to be more than just a short trip, it was a big pain. It seems that I ruined the excitement of the trip for my little brother because after having to leave five or six times, he stopped asking and just got used to leaving without arguing. Do you remember our last trip? That day, my uncle gathered all the boys and girls, relatives and friends, made us sandwiches, borrowed his friend's big car, and took us to the beach. I wonder everyday if my kites will reach my uncle. His phone is still off. Or is he waiting for us under the fig tree at our old house? If you ever meet him, please tell him that my little brother needs someone to show him the true meaning of a trip. Maybe he can make him laugh again. - letters in wartime

Don’t you think about all you lost though? Isn’t it thrown in your face here?” “Of course. Every day. But after absolute loss, it still continues.” “What?” “You. Consciousness. There is life after hope, you know.” The fire popped. “And what does that life look like?” “Not what you’d expect?” “No?” “You realize something,” Matthew said. “What’s that?” “That you go on. That you can take so much more pain than you think. We’re built for it. It’s almost like that’s our purpose. We’re vessels that exist to be filled with pain.

We’re like two dogs in battle on their own; They fought all day but neither got the bone, There came a kite above them, nothing loth, And while they fought he took it from them both." --Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.

Today was the first day of summer, she realized, her spirits lifting like a kite. She loved milestones of any sort: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, checks on the calendar, notches on a growth chart. Today would be special, brand new. She felt it deep inside. Summer was here with sunny days and balmy nights, the informality of barbecues and dips in the swimming pool. She was so relieved to have the grind of the school year finished. She missed playing with her children.

Remember Amir agha. "There's no monster, just a beautiful day,

Greetings. There is a body buried on your property, covered in your blood. The unfortunate young lady’s name is Rita Jones. You’ve seen this missing school-teacher’s face on the news, I’m sure. In her jeans pocket you’ll find a slip of paper with a phone number on it. You have one day to call that number. If I have not heard from you by 8:00 P.M. tomorrow (5/17), the Charlotte Police Department will receive an anonymous phone call. I’ll tell them where Rita Jones is buried on Andrew Thomas’s lakefront property, how he killed her, and where the murder weapon can be found in his house. (I do believe a paring knife is missing from your kitchen.) I hope for your sake I don’t have to make that call. I’ve placed a property marker on the grave site. Just walk along the shoreline toward the southern boundary of your property and you’ll find it. I strongly advise against going to the police, as I am always watching you.

get it, but I hoped he would be all afternoon on the job. “Hurry, Cap!” was all I said. Ordinarily Dan is the swiftest of boatmen. To-day he was slower than molasses and all he did went wrong. What he said about the luck was more than melancholy. I had no way to gauge my own feelings because I had never had such an experience before. Nor had I ever heard or read of any one having it. We got a bait on and the kite out just in time to reach the first and larger school. I was so excited that I did not see we were heading right into it. My intent gaze was riveted upon my bait as it skimmed the surface. The swells were long, low, smooth mounds. My bait went out of sight behind one. It was then I saw water fly high and I felt a tug. I jerked so hard I nearly fell over. My bait shot over the top of the swell. Then that swell opened and burst—a bronze back appeared. He missed the hook. Another tuna, also missing, leaped into the air—a fish of one hundred and fifty pounds, glittering green and silver and blue, jaws open, fins stiff, tail

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.

The muezzin’s call to prayer punctuated the days, weddings and funerals followed the faith’s prescribed rituals, activities slowed down during fasting months, and pork might be hard to find on a restaurant’s menu. Otherwise, people lived their lives, with women riding Vespas in short skirts and high heels on their way to office jobs, boys and girls chasing kites, and long-haired youths dancing to the Beatles and the Jackson 5 at the local disco. Muslims were largely indistinguishable from the Christians, Hindus, or college-educated nonbelievers, like my stepfather, as they crammed onto Jakarta’s overcrowded buses, filled theater seats at the latest kung-fu movie, smoked outside roadside taverns, or strolled down the cacophonous streets. The overtly pious were scarce in those days, if not the object of derision then at least set apart, like Jehovah’s Witnesses handing out pamphlets in a Chicago neighborhood.

These long northern summer days stretched out forever and ever, turning into a short gray night for just a few hours before rolling right into another bright day. The trees were every color of green: the warm ashes, the blue pines. Birds were everywhere. Since they'd left the castle, they'd encountered dramatic capercaillies with their high-spread tails, V-tailed kites, long-legged corncrakes, dire-faced rooks, and cheery little swallows.

POSITIVE WAYS TO TALK TO KIDS ABOUT THE WEATHER By Josée Bergeron9 If it’s COLD try saying . . . Come and look out the front door! Can you see your breath? That means we need to wear our warm clothing today. If it’s WINDY try saying . . . Can you see the trees swaying in the wind? Today would be a great day to fly a kite. If it’s SNOWING try saying . . . Wow! Look at all those beautiful snowflakes. Let’s go outside and see if we can catch some on our tongues. If it’s RAINING try saying . . . Rain is wonderful for plants and animals. It’s a perfect day to jump in some puddles. If it’s CLOUDY try saying . . . The clouds are hiding the sun. Today would be a great day to look for shapes in the clouds.

Who knew what lay ahead when children were cut free? They could become like loose kites on a windy day.

Come back into the here and now, opening your eyes. Use the pens and paper to draw your experience of releasing your cares and worries into the sky using your kite. Objectives This simple yet effective visualisation can help clients to anchor a way to release their cares and troubles. By bringing to mind the picture of the kite flying high in the sky, the client has a concrete way to let go of difficulties, that are then figuratively, and hopefully in reality, ‘carried away’.

Even at that hour, London was awake and there would be cutpurses and pickpockets and maunderers about. Each week he saw more and more of them, lurking on street corners and huddled in doorways – vagrants and paupers pouring in from the countryside where they could not eke out a living on land being enclosed for animals, and could no longer turn to the charity of the old religious houses. For all their extravagance and corruption, the ancient monasteries had provided food and shelter to the poor and sick of their counties. Now London grew larger, dirtier and more overcrowded with each day while Londoners grumbled and cursed and demanded an end to the river of vagrants and harsher penalties for their crimes. But to no avail. A man had only to walk along Fleet Street to see that the problem was getting worse by the week. On the corner of Pilgrim Street, butchers and bakers were already setting out their stalls and aiming kicks at the half-naked urchins who scrabbled about in the dirt, squabbling over a stale crust or a scrap of offal. The urchins had to be quick. Hungry dogs sniffed about while kites watched hopefully from the rooftops. Christopher saw a bird swoop from its perch, take a morsel in its beak and flap away before it could be frightened off. A filthy child saw him and dashed across the street to demand a coin. She grabbed his gown and held on like a terrier with a rat until he gave up trying to free himself and tossed

I was autographing books at one of those little rattan tables in the bookstore when I found myself looking into the saddest eyes I had ever seen. “The doctor wanted me to buy something that would make me laugh,” she said. I hesitated about signing the book. It would have taken corrective surgery to make that woman laugh. “Is it a big problem?” I asked. The whole line of people was eavesdropping. “Yes. My daughter is getting married.” The line cheered. “Is she twelve or something?” “She’s twenty-four,” said the woman, biting her lip. “And he’s a wonderful man. It’s just that she could have stayed home a few more years.” The woman behind her looked wistful. “We’ve moved three times, and our son keeps finding us. Some women have all the luck.” Isn’t it curious how some mothers don’t know when they’ve done a good job or when it’s basically finished? They figure the longer the kids hang around, the better parents they are. I guess it all depends on how you regard children in the first place. How do you regard yours? Are they like an appliance? The more you have, the more status you command? They’re under warranty to perform at your whim for the first 18 years; then, when they start costing money, you get rid of them? Are they like a used car? You maintain it for years, and when you’re ready to sell it to someone else, you feel a great responsibility to keep it running or it reflects on you? (That’s why some parents never let their children marry good friends.) Are they like an endowment policy? You invest in them for 18 or 20 years, and then for the next 20 years they return dividends that support you in your declining years or they suffer from terminal guilt? Are they like a finely gilded mirror that reflects the image of its owner in every way? On the day the owner looks in and sees a flaw, a crack, a distortion, one tiny idea or attitude that is different from his own, he casts it aside and declares himself a failure? I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breathless...they crash...you add a longer tail...they hit the rooftop...you pluck them out of the spout. You patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly. Finally they are airborne, but they need more string so you keep letting it out. With each twist of the ball of twine there is a sadness that goes with the joy, because the kite becomes more distant, and somehow you know it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that bound you together and soar as it was meant to soar—free and alone. Only then do you know that you did your job.

Fred Layman, (AKA The Club Doctor) is a veteran golf course and clubs in transition operations director/consultant. The Way I See It The Height of a Kite One sunny day, a mother and her son were outside flying a kite. The son loved watching the kite glide through the sky and cheered as it flew higher and higher. Eventually, the kite reached the end of its string and could not go any higher. After pleading with his mom to break the string, she finally agreed and cut the string to release the kite. Shortly after, a gust of wind made the kite spiral uncontrollably, and it crashed to the ground. As the son looked very sad and disappointed, the mother explained, “Just like the kite, we may reach a certain level in life and feel like things may be holding us back, such as friends, family, or rules. We feel the desire to become free from those strings, but it’s important to remember that those strings will help us remain stable and fly higher than we can without them.” Here’s the way I see it: Dan Pearce once said it best, “Who do you want to surround yourself with? People who can pull you up to their level of greatness? Or people who will happily pull you down to theirs?” Fred W. Layman III, USPTA Elite, Director of Operations The Windermere Club, is the president of an Augusta, GA based Club Consulting Company, Fred Layman Ventures.

Lennon was – whether by luck, accident or perceptive foresight – at the forefront of the psychedelic era’s passion for rose-tinted introspection, which channelled the likes of children’s literature, Victorian fairgrounds and circuses, and an innocent sense of wonder. McCartney, too, moved with the times when writing his children’s singalong Yellow Submarine. Among the hippie era’s other moments of nostalgia were Pink Floyd’s Bike and The Gnome from their debut album Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, recorded at EMI Studios as the Beatles worked on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, laid down in 1966 but released in the same month as Sgt Pepper, and which drew from Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories just as Lennon did; and many more, from Tiny Tim’s Tiptoe Through The Tulips to Traffic’s psychedelic fantasy Hole In My Shoe. The Beatles continued writing songs evoking childhood to the end of their days. Sgt Pepper – itself a loose concept album harking back to earlier, more innocent times – referenced Lewis Carroll (Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds), youthful anticipation of old age (When I’m Sixty-Four), a stroll down memory lane (Good Morning Good Morning), and the sensory barrage of a circus big top extravaganza (Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!). It was followed by Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine, two films firmly pitched at the widest possible audience. A splendid time was, indeed, guaranteed for all.

but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir,” he said.

I have days where I’d like the wind to take me up like that. Some days it’s wanting to escape, I think, but on others, I’d just like to be a kite.

But as waves of memory long buried wash over me, I find myself coming back, again and again, to one particular day. A great day. Perhaps my best day.

Every gray day swells in around you, gold bird. Sinister as the copperhead in thick russet pinestraw, that held-back surge of piled up desire. I think my hands were born to touch and weave with air your intricate dips, veers, blinks always take.

Each of us hides our own private Delaware lost in the gray jungle-tangle of our brains. No one else can know its depths and byways. No one else can know the height of its towers, the secrets of its tides and pools. There will always be lost lagoons to find there, and ruins almost hidden by the sand. There will always be monsters of great beauty and good men with ugly frowns. The forests are dark but lights bob among the branches. You are at home there, more at home than anyplace else, and yet you will never go there in your life. Their legends are yours. The pirates sale around the cape, a crew of skeletons in the rigging. Milkmaids run down mountain passes, dragging kites behind them. Wizards crack their backs after long days of chalk and incantation while above the crowded bazaars, over the golden temples, against the setting sun, around the ruddy minarets, the pterodactyls call out a long farewell.

The last time Dean Heyward-Di Laurentis was sober at a party was never. Dude drinks like a fish or gets higher than a kite every time he leaves the house, and if you think that affects his performance on the ice in any way, then think again. He’s one of those rare creatures who can party like past-day Robert Downey Jr. and somehow be as successful and revered as present-day Robert Downey Jr.

You don’t order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them ‘sister’ the next.