Lake Reflection Quotes

Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.

Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same.

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: "I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.

A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

You’ve mistaken the stars reflected on the surface of the lake at night for the heavens.

And I saw my reflection in a lake and I waited for it to freeze a little bit so I could break it with my boot.

THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINS Laugh, I tell you And you will turn back The hands of time. Smile, I tell you And you will reflect The face of the divine. Sing, I tell you And all the angels will sing with you! Cry, I tell you And the reflections found in your pool of tears - Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterday To guide you through the fears of tomorrow.

The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus. The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. But this was not how the author of the book ended the story. He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. 'Why do you weep?' the goddesses asked. 'I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied. 'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,' they said, 'for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.' 'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked. 'Who better than you to know that?' the goddesses asked in wonder. 'After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!' The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: 'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.' 'What a lovely story,' the alchemist thought.

Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like grey clouds reflected in a calm lake.

Mirror I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful- The eye of the little god, four cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. --written 1960

Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry.

All the light of the day, fleeing the earth, seemed for one brief moment to take refuge in the sky; pink clouds spiralled round the full moon that was as green as pistachio sorbet and as clear as glass; it was reflected in the lake.

Nobody liked my plan. "You want us to split up?" Chase asked, his brow wrinkling in obvious bewilderment. Lake echoed the sentiment, her voice flat. "Why would we split up? There's four of us and one of him." After a brief moment's pause, she amended her head count to better reflect the real odds. "Three and a half of us, one of him." Three and a half, as in three werewolves, one human. I narrowed my eyes. "For your sake, Lake, I'm going to pretend that Devon is the half." Dev, unquestionably the strongest person in the room, just shrugged and let me keep my delusions. "It's because of my petite stature," he said. All 6'4" of him.

All the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.

In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves - this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch.

I am earth, earth My heart's love Bursts with hay and flowers. I am a lake of blue air In which my own appointed place Field and valley Stand reflected

If she were here I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off her. I would hold her so close she'd beg me to let her breathe. I'd kiss her so hard she'd plead for mercy. I'd unfasten her clothing and lie with her on that hard bed, and what was between us would be as far above the ordinary congress between man and woman as the stars are above their pale reflections in the lake below.

Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon?

At first I wasn’t all that tempted by him, but then he killed the spider. Which was a huge point in his favor.” “Absolutely. I love men who kill bugs.” “And then when I was freaking out and couldn’t breathe, he was so…gentle.” Zoe sighed and colored, remembering. “He was holding me, and talking to me in that voice…you know, sort of low and rough around the edges…” “All the Nolans sound like that,” Justine said reflectively. “Like they’ve got a mild case of bronchitis. Totally hot.

Just as the sun in the heaven is unchanged, but is mirrored as a thousand suns in ponds, lakes, rivers, and oceans, so do you know the Sun of the Spirit within you from the broken reflections that you find in the lower self.

If the work comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am, serve me,' then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, 'Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake'.

I am like a deep, still mountain lake. The surface is a mirror that reflects the sky above. I await in tranquility for the breath of God to move upon me.

After tiny has tried ballerina pose, swing-batter-batter pose, pump-up-the-jam pose, and top-of-the-mountain-sound-of-music pose in the reflection of the bean, he walks us to a bench overlooking lake shore drive.

The sky loves lakes rather than oceans because it finds the opportunity to watch itself in the crystal clear mirrors of the lakes!

I studied his eyes. They were nearly a color today, a frozen lake reflecting a clear blue...

Consider the fact that no matter how many planets and stars are reflected in a lake, these reflections are encompassed within the water itself; that no matter how many universes there are, they are encompassed within a single space; and that no matter how vast and how numerous the sensory appearances of samsara and nirvana may be, they are encompassed within the single nature of mind (sem-nyid).

Nothing could persuade me that "in the image of God" applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism -

We are each living in our own soap opera. We do not see things as they really are. We see only our interpretations. This is because our minds are always so busy...But when the mind calms down, it becomes clear. This mental clarity enables us to see things as they really are, instead of projecting our commentary on everything.

And in Life's noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ; And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulse's beat ; You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light, Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake. And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you.

Young Reverend Ayers looks at a lake and sees only his own reflection in it; that is what God is to him. He does not see the creatures that live down deep, the dragonflies that hover, the frog on the lily pad.” Auntie’s face was full of pity and scorn as she shook her head and spat tobacco juice again. “His heart and mind are closed to the true beauty of the lake, the place where all its magic lies.

Mountains clothed in snow Robed in white against blue skies Mirrored in the lake.

Being kind is like looking at your own reflection in the calm waters of a lake. Then the act of kindness ripples those waters, like a stone tossed upon the surface.

Her shining tresses, divided in two parts, encircle the harmonious contour of her white and delicate cheeks, brilliant in their glow and freshness. Her ebony brows have the form and charm of the bow of Kama, the god of love, and beneath her long silken lashes the purest reflections and a celestial light swim, as in the sacred lakes of Himalaya, in the black pupils of her great clear eyes. Her teeth, fine, equal, and white, glitter between her smiling lips like dewdrops in a passion-flower's half-enveloped breast. Her delicately formed ears, her vermilion hands, her little feet, curved and tender as the lotus-bud, glitter with the brilliancy of the loveliest pearls of Ceylon, the most dazzling diamonds of Golconda. Her narrow and supple waist, which a hand may clasp around, sets forth the outline of her rounded figure and the beauty of her bosom, where youth in its flower displays the wealth of its treasures; and beneath the silken folds of her tunic she seems to have been modelled in pure silver by the godlike hand of Vicvarcarma, the immortal sculptor.

For years, she'd mistaken habit and affection for true love. She had assumed that the love she gave her husband was a reflection of the love he felt for her, and now, because of her blindness, she was alone.

Japhy,' I said out loud, 'I don't know when we'll meet again or what'll happen in the future, but Desolation, Desolation, I owe so much to Desolation, thank you forever for guiding me to the place where I learned it all. Now comes the sadness of coming back to cities and I've grown two months older and there's all that humanity of bars and burlesque shows and gritty love, all upsidedown in the void God bless them, but Japhy you and me forever we know, O ever youthful, O ever weeping.' Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said 'God I love you' and looked up to the sky and really meant it. 'I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.' To the children and the innocent it's all the same. And in keeping with Japhy's habit of always getting down on one knee and delivering a little prayer to the camp we left, to the one in the Sierra, and the others in Marin, and the little prayer of gratitude he had delivered to Sean's shack the day he sailed away, as I was hiking down the mountain with my pack I turned and knelt on the trail and said 'Thank you, shack.' Then I hadded 'Blah,' with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.

In Washington, D. C., there was Loudermilk's, in Philadelphia Leary's, in Seattle Shorey's, in Portland Powell's, in Boston Goodspeed's Milk Street, In Cleveland Kay's, in Cincinnati and Long Beach Old Mr. Smith's two acres of books, and so on. In that time many large book barns in New England were stuffed with books. All the citites around the Great Lakes had large bookshops. Some of these old behmoths contained a million books or more.

From the tower battlements, Dustfinger looked down on a lake as black as night, where the reflection of the castle swam in a sea of stars. The wind passing over his unscarred face was cold from the snow of the surrounding mountains, and Dustfinger relished life as if he were tasting it for the first time. The longing it brought, and the desire. All the bitterness, all the sweetness, even if it was only for a while, never for more than a while, everything gained and lost, lost and found again.

In the lake there lies a reflection, if you love her, she will always love you back.

At night, you can’t see your reflection on the water. Centuries ago, before people knew any better, it was a common belief that reflective surfaces could trap the souls of the dead.

In the depth of my soul there are songs unwilling to take the garb of words, songs living as seed in my heart. They will not flow with ink onto paper. Like a translucent veil, they are wrapped about emotions that can never flow sweetly on my tongue. Yet how can I even whisper them when I fear what the particles of air may do to them? To whom shall I sing them when they have become accustomed to live in the house of my soul and fear the harshness of other ears? Were you to look into my eyes, you would see the image of their image. Were you to touch my fingertips, you would feel their quick movements. The works of my hands reveal them as the lake reflects the twinkling of the stars. My tears disclose them as the mystery of the rose petal is disclosed at the moment the heat dissolves the drops of dew when that rose withers. … Who can combine the roaring of the sea and the warbling of the nightingale? Who can link the crashing thunder with the baby’s sigh?

A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon–like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly–splashing paddles, trailing her strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music. Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, not far ahead, the rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula’s lanterns swaying softly cheek to cheek as Birkin rowed, and iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He was aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their softness behind him.

Consider the surface of a lake, above which the sun is shining. If the surface of the lake is peaceful and tranquil, the sun will be reflected in this lake; and the more peaceful the lake, the more perfectly will it be reflected. If, on the contrary, the surface of the lake is agitated, undulating, then the image of the sun can not be reflected in it. It is a little bit like this with regard to our soul in relationship to God. The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His image expresses itself in us, the more His grace acts through us.

It was a sumptuous, oh, truly sumptuous autumn day, all Byzantine coppers and golds under a Tiepolo sky of enamelled blue, the countryside all fixed and glassy, seeming not so much itself as its own reflection in the still surface of the lake. It was the kind of day on which, latterly, the sun for me is the world’s fat eye looking on in rich enjoyment as I writhe in misery.

We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self. These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even the stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and streams, and springs,—the mountains, woods and perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home of love; filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes, and gathered sheaves; and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt, like Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, though false, are beautiful, and have for many ages and in countless ways, enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught that all these things are true and all inspired of God, and that eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man.

Memory shimmers as a crystal lake that reflects all things invisible.

Emeralds of the lake sparkled luxuriously, dancing as beckoning figures of the night sky, as the sun began to descend, turning the ripples into opals of many hues.

I am like a deep, still mountain lake. The surface is a mirror that reflects the sky above. I await in tranquility for the breath of God to move across me.

Lake Insanity lay broad and strange before them, a still reflecting pool for the frightened, confused moon.

Those of us who are in tune with nature and animals know it is our way of life, Bram. There is a connection to all living things, a vibration of Life. Animals were not given a power of choice. A lion does not try and eat legumes, nor an elephant meat. We believe the best way to communicate with nature, God, is through a liaison: the animals..... Nature hears one voice and obeys it. That is why ten or ten thousand birds may rise from the surface of a lake at the same time and yet never touch one another. Man only hears his own voice. He constantly bumps into another. Even his voice mirrors his erratic walk, jealousy, hate, ego, pride, lying, cheating. He makes his own judgements and falls prey to his greed. Remember, the moon is reflected on one drop of water as is the entire ocean-- so it is with God. He is reflected ins each living thing-- in a grain of sand as the entire shore, one star as the whole universe. Each animal as in all creatures. -Jagrat

It reflects like an optical instrument and responds to changes in the weather so sensitively that it seems like a part of the sky rather than of the land. And along with all that, Baikal is distinctly Asiatic: if a camel caravan could somehow transport Baikal across Siberia to Europe, and curious buyers unwrapped it in a marketplace, none would mistake it for a lake from around there.

There’s nothing to be scared of.” Instead of taking Charlie’s pulse – there was really no point – he took one of the old man’s hands in his. He saw Charlie’s wife pulling down a shade in the bedroom, wearing nothing but the slip of Belgian lace he’d bought her for their first anniversary; saw how the ponytail swung over one shoulder when she turned to look at him, her face lit in a smile that was all yes. He saw a Farmall tractor with a striped umbrella raised over the seat. He smelled bacon and heard Frank Sinatra singing ‘Come Fly with Me’ from a cracked Motorola radio sitting on a worktable littered with tools. He saw a hubcap full of rain reflecting a red barn. He tasted blueberries and gutted a deer and fished in some distant lake whose surface was dappled by steady autumn rain. He was sixty, dancing with his wife in the American Legion hall. He was thirty, splitting wood. He was five, wearing shorts and pulling a red wagon. Then the pictures blurred together, the way cards do when they’re shuffled in the hands of an expert, and the wind was blowing big snow down from the mountains, and in here was the silence and Azzie’s solemn watching eyes.

As the sun dipped beneath the horizon, the clouds overhead blushed cotton-candy pink. Their reflections gleamed on the crystalline waters of Lake Lyn. The horses whinnied, the birds chirped, and Simon and Isabelle crunched their peanut brittle and popcorn. This, Simon thought, was the sound of happiness.

And you are all my sunrises and sunsets, rain on green leaves, fireworks reflected in a smooth lake, and a wood fire on the coldest winter day. You are sex and sin and a guardian angel. You are every beat of my heart and every moment of peace and every hour of pandemonium. You are the sweetest torture I’ve ever known. And you . . . will never feel one tenth for me what I feel for you. And that, also, is perfect.

the lake a perfect mirror reflecting the sky and mountains with their stars and trees and wonderful sculpture, all their grandeur refined and doubled,—a marvelously impressive picture, that seemed to belong more to heaven than earth.

Books are mirrors for our souls. They force us to contemplate every small and grand aspect of life, and then they make us question how we fit into it. Reading is such a self-reflective practice that you both find and lose yourself at once.

I found myself, unbidden, thinking of the holy fools in the old story, the ones who went fishing in the lake for the moon, with nets, convinced that the reflection in the water was nearer and easier to catch than the globe that hung in the sky.

As the calm lake stems from the deep spring that no eye saw, so too a person's love has a still deeper ground, in God's love. If there were no gushing spring at the bottom, if Hod were not love, then neither would there be the little lake nor either a person's love. As the calm lake stems darkly from the deep spring, so a person's love originate mysteriously in God's. As the calm lake indeed invites you to contemplate it, yet with the darkness of the reflection prevents you from seeing through it, so does love's mysterious origin in God's love prevent you from seeing its ground. When you think you see it, it is a reflection that deceives you, as if what only hides the deeper ground were itself the ground.

The light of these candles is but the reflection of a greater light. It shines from the islands beyond the western sea. It glistens in the dew and on the lake, in the stars of the night sky, in every reflection of the spirit world. And should any of us lose the light, there will be brother or sister to guide him

The essence of meditation is to induce a mind which is totally relaxed and at the same time totally aware. If you get into a lovely, dreamy, peaceful state where you don't want to move and you feel you could just sit for hours, completely blissed out and peaceful, but in a vague fog, you have gone completely astray.

When you fall in love with a woman, watch, be alert—it may be nothing but narcissism. The woman’s face, and her eyes, and her words, may be simply functioning as a lake in which you are seeing your reflection. My own observation is this: Out of a hundred loves, ninety-nine are narcissistic. People don’t love the woman that is there. They love the appreciation that the woman is giving to them, the attention that the woman is giving to them, the flattery that the woman is showering on the man.

PRETENDING TO DROWN The only regret is that I waited longer than a breath to scatter the sun's reflection with my body. New stars burst upon the water when you pulled me in. On the shore, our clothes begged us to be good boys again. Every stick our feet touched a snapping turtle, every shadow a water moccasin. Excuses to swim closer to one another. I sank into the depths to see you as the lake saw you: cut in half by the surface, taut legs kicking, the rest of you sky. Suddenly still, a clear view of what you knew I wanted to see. When I resurfaced, slick grin, knowing glance; you pushed me back under. I pretended to drown, then swallowed you whole.

I took the brooch because I was too overcome with irresistible temptation. I was imagining I was Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald, and I just had to wear the brooch over the footbridge of the Lake of Shining Waters, with the wind blowing my auburn hair over to Camelot. I thought I could put it back before you came home, but as I leaned over to look at my reflection in the lake, it slipped from my fingers and sank beneath the rippling waves. That's the best I can do at confessing. Now may I go to the picnic?

How well we pull together, don't we?" said Amy, who objected to silence just then. "So well that I wish we might always pull in the same boat. Will you, Amy?" very tenderly. "Yes, Laurie," very low. Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake.

The dancer...knows it takes Ten sacred years to learn one gesture Of the wind’s caress on the skin of water. Tonight, in the shadows of our dance, I tell my soul to grow quiet, Become lake, reflect unbroken moon. On the deepest part of the lake, A solitary fisher paddles his oars. At the shore, a woman in red sarong Sings: their longing walks on water.

...like a swan and its reflection on the surface of a lake.

We were exact mirrors of each other, like this broken boy was staring into a bottomless lake and I was his reflection.

One young fellow pointed to another steamer in the distance, and said it was the Lady of the Lake, a United States vessel which until recently was thought to be the fastest boat on the Lake; but she had just lost a trial-of-speed race to the new Royal Mail Standard boat, the Eclipse, which outran her by four minutes and a half. And I said didn't that make him proud, and he said no, because he had bet a dollar on the Lady. And all present laughed. Then something came clear to me which I used to wonder about. There is a quilt pattern called Lady of the Lake, which I thought was named for the poem; but I could never find any lady in the pattern, nor any lake. But now I saw the boat was named for the poem, and the quilt was named for the boat; because it was a pinwheel design, which must have stood for the paddle going around. And I thought that things did make sense, and did have a design to them, if only you pondered them long enough. And so perhaps might be with recent events, which at the moment seemed to me entirely senseless; and finding out the reason for the quilt pattern was a lesson to me, to have faith.

Reflection is a good reminder of the truth! You may turn your eyes away from the truths, but the reflections will remind them to you! And anything which describes a truth well is a reflection of that truth! Turn your eyes away from the Moon, then the lake will remind the Moon to you, the shadows of the wolves howling against the Moon will remind the truth to you, even in the eyes of a frog, you shall see the Moon! Thus, if you turn your face away from the truth, it will never work! Because the reminders of truth are everywhere and they are as strong as the truth itself!

English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included—breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. … Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? ... I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild. ... The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce.

Nature is medicinal; the sun, large bodies of water, and deep breaths of fresh air. Healing is found in the mountains, amidst a forest, by fire, and water. I still recall how healing it was to be home, my parents' island, waking up to tropical sounds of morning; monkeys, tropical birds, and tropical animals discussing their days, feet in sand, and the glorious sound of tropical rain. Visuals of lush greens and vibrant flowers, nature calls us into ourselves, nature calls us home

To those who may have wisely kept their fancies within the boundary of the fields we know it is difficult for me to tell of the land to which Alveric had come, so that in their minds they can see that plain with its scattered trees and far off the dark wood out of which the palace of Elfland lifted those glittering spires, and above them and beyond them that serene range of mountains whose pinnacles took no colour from any light we see. Yet it is for this very purpose that our fancies travel far, and if my reader through fault of mine fail to picture the peaks of Elfland my fancy had better have stayed in the fields we know. Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June reflected in water. And the colour of Elfland, of which I despaired to tell, may yet be told, for we have hints of it here; the deep blue of the night in Summer just as the gloaming has gone, the pale blue of Venus flooding the evening with light, the deeps of lakes in the twilight, all these are hints of that colour. And while our sunflowers carefully turned to the sun, some forefather of the rhododendrons must have turned a little towards Elfland, so that some of that glory dwells with them to this day.

The curtain rises. A vista opens across the lake. The moon hangs low above the horizon and is reflected in the water. NINA, dressed in white, is seen seated on a great rock. NINA. All men and beasts, lions, eagles, and quails, horned stags, geese, spiders, silent fish that inhabit the waves, starfish from the sea, and creatures invisible to the eye—in one word, life—all, all life, completing the dreary round imposed upon it, has died out at last. A thousand years have passed since the earth last bore a living creature on her breast, and the unhappy moon now lights her lamp in vain. No longer are the cries of storks heard in the meadows, or the drone of beetles in the groves of limes. All is cold, cold. All is void, void, void. All is terrible, terrible—[A pause] The bodies of all living creatures have dropped to dust, and eternal matter has transformed them into stones and water and clouds; but their spirits have flowed together into one, and that great world-soul am I! In me is the spirit of the great Alexander, the spirit of Napoleon, of Caesar, of Shakespeare, and of the tiniest leech that swims. In me the consciousness of man has joined hands with the instinct of the animal; I understand all, all, all, and each life lives again in me.

How well we pull together, don’t we?” said Amy, who objected to silence just then. “So well that I wish we might always pull in the same boat. Will you, Amy?” very tenderly. “Yes, Laurie,” very low. Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake.

Her shining tresses, divided in two parts, encircle the harmonious contour of her white and delicate cheeks, brilliant in their glow and freshness. Her ebony brows have the form and charm of the bow of Kama, the god of love, and beneath her long silken lashes the purest reflections and a celestial light swim, as in the sacred lakes of Himalaya, in the black pupils of her great clear eyes. Her teeth, fine, equal, and white, glitter between her smiling lips like dewdrops in a passion-flower’s half-enveloped breast. Her delicately formed ears, her vermilion hands, her little feet, curved and tender as the lotus-bud, glitter with the brilliancy of the loveliest pearls of Ceylon, the most dazzling diamonds of Golconda. Her narrow and supple waist, which a hand may clasp around, sets forth the outline of her rounded figure and the beauty of her bosom, where youth in its flower displays the wealth of its treasures; and beneath the silken folds of her tunic she seems to have been modelled in pure silver by the godlike hand of Vicvarcarma, the immortal sculptor.

You will dance to the tune they play. Or you will take leave of the dance-floor. Because the orchestra's podium is too high for you to climb up there and tell the musicians to play some other tune. Realise that at last. If you think another solution is possible, you are making a mistake. You mistake the stars reflected in the surface of the lake at night for the heavens

The people around you are mirrors, I think to myself. The dog is paddling in the lake, I watch her lap at the water. You see yourself reflected in their eyes. If the mirror is true and smooth, you see your true self. That's how you learn who you are. And you might be a different person to different people, but it's all feedback that you need, in order to know yourself. But if the mirror is broken or cracked or warped, I continue, taking another drag, then the reflection is not true, and you start to believe that you are this bad reflection. When I look in Courtney's eyes, I see a crazy, overbearing woman, with unbearable good fortune, who is trying to ruin him. I pause. I love him, but he hates me, that is what I see. I will have to tell Courtney to leave. I can't live with him anymore.

But now I speculate re the ants' invisible organ of aggregate thought... if, in a city park of broad reaches, winding paths, roadways, and lakes, you can imagine seeing on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon the random and unpredictable movement of great numbers of human beings in the same way... if you watch one person, one couple, one family, a child, you can assure yourself of the integrity of the individual will and not be able to divine what the next moment will bring. But when the masses are celebrating a beautiful day in the park in a prescribed circulation of activities, the wider lens of thought reveals nothing errant, nothing inconstant or unnatural to the occasion. And if someone acts in a mutant un-park manner, alarms go off, the unpredictable element, a purse snatcher, a gun wielder, is isolated, surrounded, ejected, carried off as waste. So that while we are individually and privately dyssynchronous, moving in different ways, for different purposes, in different directions, we may at the same time comprise, however blindly, the pulsing communicating cells of an urban over-brain. The intent of this organ is to enjoy an afternoon in the park, as each of us street-grimy urbanites loves to do. In the backs of our minds when we gather for such days, do we know this? How much of our desire to use the park depends on the desires of others to do the same? How much of the idea of a park is in the genetic invitation on nice days to reflect our massive neuromorphology? There is no central control mechanism telling us when and how to use the park. That is up to us. But when we do, our behavior there is reflective, we can see more of who we are because of the open space accorded to us, and it is possible that it takes such open space to realize in simple form the ordinary identity we have as one multicellular culture of thought that is always there, even when, in the comparative blindness of our personal selfhood, we are flowing through the streets at night or riding under them, simultaneously, as synaptic impulses in the metropolitan brain. Is this a stretch? But think of the contingent human mind, how fast it snaps onto the given subject, how easily it is introduced to an idea, an image that it had not dreamt of thinking of a millisecond before... Think of how the first line of a story yokes the mind into a place, a time, in the time it takes to read it. How you can turn on the radio and suddenly be in the news, and hear it and know it as your own mind's possession in the moment's firing of a neuron. How when you hear a familiar song your mind adopts its attitudinal response to life before the end of the first bar. How the opening credits of a movie provide the parameters of your emotional life for its ensuing two hours... How all experience is instantaneous and instantaneously felt, in the nature of ordinary mind-filling revelation. The permeable mind, contingently disposed for invasion, can be totally overrun and occupied by all the characteristics of the world, by everything that is the case, and by the thoughts and propositions of all other minds considering everything that is the case... as instantly and involuntarily as the eye fills with the objects that pass into its line of vision.

Today's water arguments reflect a growing unease about how to proceed when old certainties are being pushed aside and new options seem limited or unappealing. But the stark warnings implicit in Wisconsin's poisoned wells, the intersex and dying fish of Chesapeake Bay, Lake Mead's recored-low waterline, the decay of levees across the country, and the resource war in Alaska's Bristol Bay, cannot be ignored.

It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last line of the last page, in a summer house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my 'History', the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

She stepped onto the Devil’s Bridge arching over the deadly crater lake—a round pool of water beaming with bioluminescent light; the light of the dead. Like many other namesakes, the semi-circular metal structure connected the diameter of the small lake, reflecting in the water beneath it. Together, the bridge and its mirror became an immense sphere of sky and water. Blue and green combining into turquoise—always turquoise, the bane of her life.

It remained dark. Outside the window, the balcony was grey. Suddenly, on its sullen stone, I did not indeed see a less negative colour, but I felt as it were an effort towards a less negative colour, the pulsation of a hesitating ray that struggled to discharge its light. A moment later the balcony was as pale and luminous as a standing water at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the iron-work of its balustrade had come to rest on it. A breath of wind dispersed them; the stone grew dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they returned; they began, imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those continuous crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry a single note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through all the intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable gold of fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought iron of the balustrade were outlined in black like a capricious vegetation, with a fineness in the delineation of their smallest details which seemed to indicate a deliberate application, an artist’s satisfaction, and which so much relief, so velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their somber and happy mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay reflected on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they were pledges of happiness and peace of mind.

The Jealous Sun The sunlight whispers in my ear, his breath a warm, sultry tease. I shrink and duck beneath a tree. My eyes squint to scan the horizon for a glimpse of the wind, but there are no ashen ribbons or golden waves in sight. He is missing. Trickling, tinkling notes reflect loudly off a chandelier of glimmering droplets. The rain sings to me, and I shield my eyes, admiring the song. Far off in my western view I expect to see snow, but the sun grows hot with jealousy, knowing this. He refuses my snowman a place to set. My sight drops to search for the man in the moon. Normally he rises dripping wet from out of the lake, often pale and naked, supple and soft to my caressing gaze. On rare occasions he dons a pumpkin robe as luminous as fire. Today he is draped in silks of the saddest blue. My heart weeps as he steals up and away. An army of stars in shining armor come to my aid, and they force the sun into the ground—a temporary grave. I am fed with a billion bubbles of laughter until I feel I will burst. But the stars will not stop giving, and I will not stop taking. A kiss brands my cheek, and I turn abruptly to find my snowman. He landed safely in the dark. We hide from the man in the moon behind a curtain of flurries to dance on polished rainbows and feast on stars until I hear a fire-red growl. The sun claws its way out of the soil, and everyone scatters.

Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh flowers on Matthew’s grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place, with its poplars whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike afterlight— ‘a haunt of ancient peace.’ There was a freshness in the air as of a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Anne’s heart, and she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.

Kandiaronk: I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one’s soul is like imagining one could preserve one’s life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, – of all the world’s worst behaviour. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?

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.

Memory deludes me. I have just remembered something that I completely forgot after it happened. I remembered it again when I was about sixteen, and then I forgot it again. And this morning I remembered not the event itself but the previous recollection, which itself was more than forty years ago, as though an old moon were reflected in a windowpane from which it was reflected in a lake, from where memory draws not the reflection itself, which no longer exists, but only its whitened bones.

The breath had become as much a trick as breathing. Things were not dual merely, but multiple. I had become a cage of mirrors reflecting vacuity. But vacuity once stoutly posited I was at home and what is called creation was merely a job of filling up holes. The trolley conveniently carried me about from place to place and in each little side pocket of the great vacuum I dropped a ton of poems to wipe out the idea of annihilation. I had ever before me boundless vistas. I began to live in the vista, like a microscopic speck on the lens of a giant telescope. There was no night in which to rest. It was perpetual starlight on the arid surface of dead planets. Now and then a lake black as marble in which I saw myself walking amidst brilliant orbs of lights. So low hung the stars and so dazzling was the light they shed, that it seemed as if the universe were only about to be born. What rendered the impression stronger was that I was alone; not only were there no animals, no trees, no other beings, but there was not even a blade of grass, not even a dead root. In that violet incandescent light witihout even the suggestion of a shadow motion itself seemed to be absent. It was like a blaze of pure consciousness, thought become God. And God, for the first time in my knowledge, was dean-shaven. I was also clean-shaven, flawless, deadly accurate. I saw my image in the marble black lakes and it was diapered with stars. Stars, stars... like a clout between the eyes and all remembrance fast run out. I was Samson and I was Lackawanna and I was dying as one being in the ecstasy of full consciousness.

At her feet, a luminous path lit the way through the grassy field. It was made entirely from glow sticks; each of the radiant lights had been painstakingly set into the ground at perfect intervals, tracing a curved trail that shone through the darkness. Apparently, Jay had been busy. Near the water’s edge, at the end of the iridescent pathway and beneath a stand of trees, Jay had set up more than just a picnic. He had created a retreat, an oasis for the two of them. Violet shook her head, unable to find the words to speak. He led her closer, and Violet followed, amazed. Jay had hung more of the luminous glow sticks from the low-hanging branches, so they dangled overhead. They drifted and swayed in the breeze that blew up from the lake. Beneath the natural canopy of limbs, he had set up two folding lounge chairs and covered them with pillows and blankets. “I’d planned to use candles, but the wind would’ve blown ‘em out, so I had to improvise.” “Seriously, Jay? This is amazing.” Violet felt awed. She couldn’t imagine how long it must have taken him. “I’m glad you like it.” He led her to one of the chairs and drew her down until she was sitting before he started unpacking the cooler. She half-expected him to pull out a jar of Beluga caviar, some fancy French cheeses, and Dom Perignon champagne. Maybe even a cluster of grapes to feed to her…one at a time. So when he started laying out their picnic, Violet laughed. Instead of expensive fish eggs and stinky cheeses, Jay had packed Daritos and chicken soft tacos-Violet’s favorites. And instead of grapes, he brought Oreos. He knew her way too well. Violet grinned as he pulled out two clear plastic cups and a bottle of sparkling cider. She giggled. “What? No champagne?” He shrugged, pouring a little of the bubbling apple juice into each of the flimsy cups. “I sorta thought that a DUI might ruin the mood.” He lifted his cup and clinked-or rather, tapped-it against hers. “Cheers.” He watched her closely as she took a sip. For several moments, they were silent. The lights swayed above them, creating shadows that danced over them. The park was peaceful, asleep, as the lake’s waters lapped the shore. Across from them, lights from the houses along the water’s edge cast rippling reflections on the shuddering surface. All of these things transformed the ordinary park into a romantic winter rendezvous.

Not only are we drawn to beauty, we are the only creatures who engage in certain behaviors purely for the sake of encountering beauty. We use vacation days to drive to places where we can see the sun come up over the ocean. We visit art museums, theaters, and symphonies. We look at the moon and the stars. We climb to high mountain lakes to put our feet in the frigid water to feel the rush and see the reflection of the summit in the ripples we have made. No other creature stops to behold something beautiful for no other reason than that it has stirred something in their souls. When we do these things, are we not like Moses and David, hungering to see the glory of God?

She was especially taken with Matt. Until he said, “It’s time to fess up, hon. Tell Trace how much you care. You’ll feel better when you do.” Climbing up the ladder, Chris said, “Better sooner than later.” He nodded at the hillside behind them. “Because here comes Trace, and he doesn’t look happy.” Both Priss and Matt turned, Priss with anticipation, Matt with tempered dread. Dressed in jeans and a snowy-white T-shirt, Trace stalked down the hill. Priss shielded her eyes to better see him. When he’d left, being so guarded about his mission, she’d half wondered if he’d return before dinner. Trace wore reflective sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but his entire demeanor—heavy stride, rigid shoulders, tight jaw—bespoke annoyance. As soon as he was close enough, Priss called out, “What’s wrong?” Without answering her, Trace continued onto the dock. He didn’t stop until he stood right in front of . . . Matt. Backing up to the edge of the dock, Matt said, “Uh . . . Hello?” Trace didn’t say a thing; he just pushed Matt into the water. Arms and legs flailing out, Matt hit the surface with a cannonball effect. Stunned, Priss shoved his shoulder. “What the hell, Trace! Why did you do that?” Trace took off his sunglasses and looked at her, all of her, from her hair to her body and down to her bare toes. After working his jaw a second, he said, “If you need sunscreen, ask me.” Her mouth fell open. Of all the nerve! He left her at Dare’s, took off without telling her a damn thing and then had the audacity to complain when a friend tried to keep her from getting sunburned. “Maybe I would have, if you’d been here!” “I’m here now.” Emotions bubbled over. “So you are.” With a slow smile, Priss put both hands on his chest. The shirt was damp with sweat, the cotton so soft that she could feel every muscle beneath. “And you look a little . . . heated.” Trace’s beautiful eyes darkened, and he reached for her. “A dip will cool you down.” Priss shoved him as hard as she could. Taken by surprise, fully dressed, Trace went floundering backward off the end of the dock. Priss caught a glimpse of the priceless expression of disbelief on Trace’s face before he went under the water. Excited by the activity, the dogs leaped in after him. Liger roused himself enough to move out of the line of splashing. Chris climbed up the ladder. “So that’s the new game, huh?” He laughed as he scooped Priss up into his arms. “Chris!” She made a grab for his shoulders. “Put me down!” “Afraid not, doll.” Just as Trace resurfaced, Chris jumped in with her. They landed between the swimming dogs. Sputtering, her hair in her face and her skin chilled from the shock of the cold water, Priss cursed. Trace had already waded toward the shallower water off the side of the dock. His fair hair was flattened to his head and his T-shirt stuck to his body. “Wait!” Priss shouted at him. He was still waist-deep as he turned to glare at her. Kicking and splashing, Priss doggy-paddled over to him, grabbed his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Startled, Trace scooped her bottom in his hands and struggled for balance on the squishy mud bottom of the lake. “What the hell?” And then lower, “You look naked in this damn suit.” Matt and Chris found that hilarious. Priss looked at Trace’s handsome face, a face she loved, and kissed him. Hard. For only a second, he allowed the sensual assault. He even kissed her back. Then he levered away from her. “You ruined my clothes, damn it.” “Only because you were being a jealous jerk.” His expression dark, he glared toward Matt. Christ started humming, but poor Matt said, “Yeah,” and shrugged. “If you think about it, you’ll agree that you sort of were—and we both know there’s no reason.

My hands were shaking and I thought it was from the cold so I dug through my bag to find my mittens. A spectacular orange light reflected off the windows of the building in front of me that made the glass look like beaten sheets of copper. A man in coveralls was raking leaves while another man bagged them up and put them on the back of a John Deere Gator nearby. I wanted to go and open up every bag and dump them out because didn’t they know the leaves were the nice part? I stood there, taking in the sharp air and waiting until the feeling passed so I could walk by them without speaking. Another man sat on a park bench on the other side of the open lawn and watched me watch them. Maybe he had special privileges. Then he stood and I remember thinking how tall he was.

The Montreux Palace Hotel was built in an age when it was thought that things would last. It is on the very shores of Switzerland's Lake Geneva, its balconies and iron railings look across the water, its yellow-ocher awnings are a touch of color in the winter light. It is like a great sanitarium or museum. There are Bechstein pianos in the public rooms, a private silver collection, a Salon de Bridge. This is the hotel where the novelist Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov and his wife, Véra, live. They have been here for 14 years. One imagines his large and brooding reflection in the polished glass of bookcases near the reception desk where there are bound volumes of the Illustrated London News from the year 1849 to 1887, copies of Great Expectations, The Chess Games of Greco and a book called Things Past, by the Duchess of Sermoneta. Though old, the hotel is marvelously kept up and, in certain portions, even modernized. Its business now is mainly conventions and, in the summer, tours, but there is still a thin migration of old clients, ancient couples and remnants of families who ask for certain rooms when they come and sometimes certain maids. For Nabokov, a man who rode as a child on the great European express trains, who had private tutors, estates, and inherited millions which disappeared in the Russian revolution, this is a return to his sources. It is a place to retire to, with Visconti's Mahler and the long-dead figures of La Belle Epoque, Edward VII, d'Annunzio, the munitions kings, where all stroll by the lake and play miniature golf, home at last.

The woods, and lakes, and mountains which I have loved, have for me a thousand associations; and thou, oh, Sun! hast smiled upon, and borne your part in many imaginations that sprung to life in my soul alone, and which will die with me. Your solitudes, sweet land, your trees and waters will still exist, moved by your winds, or still beneath the eye of noon, though what I have felt about ye, and all my dreams which have often strangely deformed thee, will die with me. You will exist to reflect other images in other minds, and ever will remain the same, although your reflected semblance vary in a thousand ways, changeable as the hearts of those who view thee. One of these fragile mirrors, that ever doted on thine image, is about to be broken, crumbled to dust. But everteeming Nature will create another and another, and thou wilt loose nought by my destruction.

This is a story about a pregnant lioness who gave birth to a baby lion before suddenly dying while attacking a flock of sheep. Taking pity on the cub, the sheep brought the young lion up. The lion ate grass and not meat, and bleated like a sheep. In time, it became a big, full-grown lion, but the lion still thought it was a sheep.   One day another lion came in search of prey, and was astonished to find that in the midst of this flock of sheep was a lion, fleeing like the sheep at the approach of danger. He tried to get near the sheep-lion to tell it that it was not a sheep but a lion but the poor animal fled at his approach. However, he watched his opportunity, and one day found the sheep-lion sleeping.   He approached it and said, "You’re a lion."   "I’m a sheep," bleated the other lion.   The lion dragged him towards a lake and said, "Look! There is my reflection and yours."   Then came the comparison. The sheep-lion looked at both reflections, and realized he was indeed a lion. He let out a mighty roar. The bleating was gone, never to return.

The Bad-Moon Girls appear on days when Dad doesn't know what he is thinking, or even if he is thinking. Those days can weigh less than air or more than an ocean. He has blank thoughts without feelings, followed by heavy feelings without thoughts. Time means nothing. A minute ticks by in the same rhythm as an entire day. He can look at one thing for an hour without moving. He can see me or Victor without knowing we are in the room, peering at us as if we are underwater, moving in warped slow motion. After the nothingness, he wades through a stagnant lake with the moon reflected in it, waiting for the daylight to rinse it away. He almost drowns while time ticks on. The sky is filled with black milk. No stars. Two days can pass before he surfaces. Dad's brain-switch, the focusing thing the rest of us switch on to make things look better, is a bit buggered. Those are his words, not mine. The Bad-Moon Girls whisper evil in Dad's ear, the sort of women who would set their own mother on fire if there were no other way to light their cigarettes. The trouble is, they can follow. Just as we were setting off to Clacton last autumn, they hunted him down.

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man’s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height and depth of his character. Perhaps we only need to know how his shores trend, and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth to him. But a low and smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclination; each is a harbor for a season, in which we are detained and partially landlocked. These inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of waters…It becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own conditions, changes, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a marsh.

One morning, a young Taoist priest named Silent Thunder Ghost ran up mount Mianshan to see a Taoist Immortal. The trail was long and arduous, and along the way many perilous paths were obscured by the morning mists. Arriving at the mountain peak he found the one called He Who Hides in Clouds, trying to balance a twisted, gnarly wooden staff on top of his finger. 'Dry me a wooden mountain…' said the Immortal who then threw his staff at least a mile high into the sky, whereupon the sun seemingly appeared from nowhere sending golden beams of sunlight onto his face. 'If it was me, and that was my go at life, I don’t think I’d want to do it again,' he said laughing, then he looked at his visitor. 'You are here to tell me you are making progress no doubt, have you found the Tao?' Unable to conceal his excitement Silent Thunder Ghost replied, 'I am no longer blind. I know the Tao and its ten thousand gifts. I live, I breathe, I see, I am life, I am the mountains, the morning dew on the trees, the moonlight reflecting in the lake, the starlight in my eyes, all these things are mine. My awareness is within me but reaches out to the furthest reaches of space.' As soon as he said this the gnarly old staff fell back to Earth, whereupon He Who Hides in Clouds caught it deftly with one hand and went on to press the tip against Silent Thunder Ghost’s chest. The Immortal said, 'All things are yours except your heart… the Tao keeps that part all to itself.' And then he vanished quite slowly and as he disappeared Silent Thunder Ghost was left holding the gnarly old staff, wondering if the conversation had ever really happened at all.

Eventually the term ended and I was on the windy mountain road to camp, still slightly worried that I’d made a wrong turn in life. My doubt, however, was short-lived. The camp delivered on its promise, concentrating all the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.

Thoughtless is the man who buries his ideals, surrendering to the common fate. Can he seem other than impotent, wooden, ignominious? The body is literally manufactured and sustained by mind. Through pressure of instincts from past lives, strengths or weaknesses percolate gradually into human consciousness. They express as habits, which in turn ossify into a desirable or an undesirable body. Outward frailty has mental origin. As all things can be reflected in water, so the whole universe is mirrored in the lake of the cosmic mind. The dual scales of maya ( delusion ) that balance every joy with a grief! Look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you. Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire. Be comfortable within your purse. Extravagance will buy you discomfort. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until anchored in the Divine. everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee! Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge. The ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India's unique and deathless contribution to the world's treasury of knowledge. Fixity of attention depends on slow breathing; quick or uneven breaths are an inevitable accompaniment of harmful emotional states: fear, lust, anger. Imposters and hypocrites, there are indeed, but India respects all for the sake of the few who illumine the whole land with supernal blessings.

In the last years of the Republic there were films such as Robert Siodmark's Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930)) and Gerhard Lamprecht's Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1931), which embraced the airy streets, light-dappled forests, and lakes surrounding Berlin. Billie Wilder, a brash young journalist and dance-hall enthusiast, worked on the scripts for both these films. While Kracauer and Eisner saw malevolence in the frequent trope of doubling (one being possessed by another and thus becoming two conflicting psychological presences), Wilder witnessed another form of doubling during the Weimer era: transvestitism, a staple of cabaret. Men dressing as women (as do Reinhold Schünzel in der Himmel auf Erden [Heaven on earth]) and Curti Bois in Der Fürst von Pappenheim [The Masked Mannequin][both 1927]) or women as men (as does Dolly Haas in Liebeskommando [Love's Command, 1931]), in order to either escape detection or get closer to the object of their affection, is an inherently comic situation, especially when much to his or her surprise the cross-dresser begins to enjoy the disguise. Billie left Germany before he directed a film of his own; as Billy he brought to Hollywood a vigorous appreciation of such absurdities of human behavior, along with the dry cynicism that distinguished Berlin humor and an enthusiasm for the syncopations of American jazz, a musical phenomenon welcomed in the German capital. Wilder, informed by his years in Berlin (to which he returned to make A Foreign Affair in 1948 and One, Two, Three in 1961), wrote and directed many dark and sophisticated American films, including The Apartment (1969) and Some Like it Hot (1959), a comedy, set during Prohibition, about the gender confusion on a tonal par with Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria, released in December 1933, eleven months into the Third Reich and the last musical to reflect the insouciance of the late Republic.