Light Dispersion Quotes

Already the dream was coming apart, its bright silk strands unwinding into nebulous emotions, little coloured clouds of feeling being dispersed by the movement of my waking-up mind. This is how it's always been with Light Bulb Fragment dreams; by the time I'm fully awake, they're gone.

There is nothing that we are enduring that Jesus does not understand, and He waits for us to go to our Heavenly Father in prayer. If we will be obedient and if we are diligent, our prayers will be answered, our problems will diminish, our fears will dissipate, light will come upon us, the darkness of despair will be dispersed, and we will be close to the Lord.

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew. It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. The the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dirt dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air. It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning.

Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really goes dark. You leave the gate of the fort or town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call 'le bapteme de solitude.' It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears...A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintergration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came. ...Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in time or money, for the absolute has no price.

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue. For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.

I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

THE ROBIN O Robin, sing! for the secret of eternity is in song. I wish I were as you, free from prisons and chains. I wish I were as you; a soul flying over the valleys, Sipping the light as wine is sipped from ethereal cups. I wish I were asyou, innocent, contented and happy Ignoring the future and forgetting the past. I wish I were as you in beauty, grace and elegance With the wind spreading my wings for adornment by the dew. I wish I were as you in beauty, a thought floating above the land Pouring out my songs between the forest and the sky. O Robin, sing! and disperse my anxiety. I listen to the voice within your voice that whispers in my inner ear;

Healing is to be in the light of our own consciousness. Healing is an inner light, which exist as a natural radiance around a person. This inner light is in itself a healing force beyond words. This inner light disperses darkness, like when you lit a candle in a dark room and the darkness disappears by itself. This inner light exudes a subtle influence through its mere presence. The more the light in our own consciousness is lit, the more it creates a subtle effect in the world.

I was on a par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again. Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but that half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here.

But what do I love, when I love You? Not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time. Not the brightness of the light, so welcome to our eyes, Nor sweet melodies of varied songs, Nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments and spices. Not manna and honey, nor the embrace of arms in fleshly pleasure. None of these I love when I love my God. Yet this love is a kind of light and melody and fragrance and meat and embrace. When I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, and embrace is experienced by my inner man. Love shines into my soul, where space cannot contain it. Love speaks with sound that does not fade into silence with time. Its smells are not dispersed in breath, and its tastes do not grow stale. Love clings, and its satisfaction does not break my connection to the experience. This is it which I love, when I love my God.

Hesperus, you herd homeward whatever Dawn's light dispersed

Once drowned in the depths of darkness, you lose sight of light. When that light has dispersed there is no return. My light has died out long ago and so there’s nothing back for me to go back, or look forward to I shall continue to indulge myself in this darkness until it completely consumes me, then I will be nothing but an empty course left on this cold & cruel world to rot.

Memory revises me. Even now a letter comes from a place I don’t know, from someone with my name and postmarked years ago, while I await injunctions from the light or the dark; I wait for shapeliness limned, or dissolution. Is paradise due or narrowly missed until another thousand years? I wait in a blue hour and faraway noise of hammering, and on a page a poem begun, something about to be dispersed, something about to come into being.

There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body bursts inwardly. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The norsemen who went berserk, the malay who runs amuck—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. but when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then? There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such overbrimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the life of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. instantly illumined, When the light is directed towards them, they are also speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn…

Jenny slowly awoke on the sacrificial altar to an Ethereal Light that flamed through the east wall, a radiant aura of love dispersing the frightful scene. A glow pulsating from Angeletta's body still burning in the fire pit slowly rose to join the Light. A Heavenly peace infused Jenny as she realized, "There's a man standing in the air straight above me!

In the morning and in the evening and at night in his dreams, this street was filled with constantly bustling traffic, which seen from above seemed like a continually self-replenishing mixture of distorted human figures and of the roofs of all sorts of vehicles, constantly scattered by new arrivals, out of which there arose a new, stronger, wilder mixture of noise, dust, and smells, and, catching and penetrating it all, a powerful light that was continually dispersed, carried away, and avidly refracted by the mass of objects that made such a physical impression on one's dazzled eye that it seemed as if a glass pane, hanging over the street and converging everything, were being smashed again and again with the utmost force.

As his hands fell upon the keyboard, it was still possible to believe a beautiful harmony had been formed at random, in spite of him. But a second later the music came surging out, the power of it sweeping away all doubts, voices, sounds, wiping away the fixed grins and exchanged glances, pushing back the walls, dispersing the light of the reception room out into the nocturnal immensity of the sky beyond the windows. He did not feel as if he were playing. He was advancing through a night, breathing in its delicate transparency, made up as it was of an infinite number of facets of ice, of leaves, of wind. He no longer felt any pain. No fear about what would happen. No anguish or remorse. The night through which he was advancing expressed this pain, this fear, and the irremediable shattering of the past, but this had all become music and now only existed through its beauty.

The cashier had long since left for home. By now she was probably bustling by an unmade bed that was waiting in her small room like a boat to carry her off to the black lagoons of sleep, into the complicated world of dreams. The person sitting in the box office was only a wraith, an illusory phantom looking with tired, heavily made-up eyes at the empyiness of light, fluttering her lashes thoughtlessly to disperse the golden dust of drowsiness scattered by the elctric bulbs.

Concentrate and disperse your energies according to the situation.

...Would you like to know the view I have out of my window, since you love snow? So here you are: the broad whiteness of the Moldau, and along that whiteness, little black silhouettes of people cross from one shore to the other, like musical notes. For example, the figure of some boy is dragging behind him a D-sharp: a sledge. Across the river there are snowy roofs in a distant, lightweight sky... I walked around the cathedral along a slippery path between snowdrifts. The snow was light, dry: grab a handful, throw it up, and it disperses in the air like dust, as if flying back up. The sky darkened. In it appeared a thin golden moon: half of a broken halo. I walked along the edge of the fortress wall. Old Prague lay below in the thickening mist. The snowy roofs clustered together, cumbrous and dim. The houses seemed to have been piled anyhow, in a moment of terrible and fantastic carelessness. In this frozen storm of outlines, in this snowy semi-darkness, the streetlamps and windows were burning with a warm and sweet lustre, like well-licked punch lollipops. In just one place you could also see a little scarlet light, a drop of pomegranate juice. And in the fog of crooked walls and smoky corners I divined an ancient ghetto, mystical ruins, the alley of Alchemists...

The idea of a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research. We find, then, that there is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress. Indeed, one of the most striking features of recent discussions in the history and philosophy of science is the realization that events and developments, such as the invention of atomism in antiquity, the Copernican Revolution, the rise of modern atomism (kinetic theory; dispersion theory; stereochemistry; quantum theory), the gradual emergence of the wave theory of light, occurred only because some thinkers either decided not to be bound be certain 'obvious' methodological rules, or because they unwittingly broke them.

Frank closed his troubled blue eyes and tipped his head back, but quickly regretted it. The moment he blocked out the light of the campfire, he was back on the smoke cover land. The ground beneath him seemed to be reaching up, eager to soak the life blood of the men around him. In every direction, the cries of the wounded screamed out. The constant sound of the drums echoed across the hills and through the valleys as the thundering cannons answered their call. With a gloved hand, he rubbed his eye lids as if the action might disperse the memories. It didn't.

A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house. I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

My Floating Sea" "Pastel colors reflect in my opening eyes and draw my gaze to a horizon where the waters both begin and end. This early in the day I can easily stare without blinking. The pale sea appears calm, but it is stormy just as often. I awe at the grandeur, how it expands beyond my sight to immeasurable depths. In every direction that I twist my neck, a beauteous blue is there to console me. Flowing, floating ribbons of mist form on these pale waters. In harmony they pirouette, creating a stretch of attractive, soft swirls. Swoosh! The wind, its strength in eddies and twisters, smears the art of dancing clouds, and the white disperses like startled fairies fleeing into the forest. Suddenly all is brilliant blue. The waters calm and clear. It warms me. Pleases me. Forces my eyes to close at such vast radiance. My day is spent surrounded by this ethereal sea, but soon enough the light in its belly subsides. Rich colors draw my gaze to the opposite horizon where the waters both begin and end. I watch the colors bleed and deepen. They fade into black. Yawning, I cast my eyes at tiny gleams of life that drift within the darkened waters. I extend my reach as if I could will my arm to stretch the expanse between me and eons. How I would love to brush a finger over a ray of living light, but I know I cannot. Distance deceives me. These little breathing lights floating in blackness would truly reduce me to the tiniest size, like a mountain stands majestic over a single wild flower. I am overwhelmed by it all and stare up, in love with the floating sea above my head.

As a little drop of water added to a quantity of wine is completely dispersed and takes on the color and taste of wine, as red-hot iron becomes like molten fire losing its original form, as air when it is inundated with the sun’s light is transformed into total splendor and clarity so that it no longer seems illuminated but, rather, seems to be light itself, so I felt myself die of tender liquefaction, and I had only the strength left to murmur the words of the psalm: “Behold my bosom is like new wine, sealed, which bursts new vessels,” and suddenly I saw a brilliant light and in it a saffron-colored form which flamed up in a sweet and shining fire, and that splendid light spread through all the shining fire, and this shining fire through that golden form and that brilliant light and that shining fire through the whole form.

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset, There must be one (which, I am not sure) That I by now have walked for the last time Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws, Sets up a secret and unwavering scale for all the shadows, dreams, and forms Woven into the texture of this life. If there is a limit to all things and a measure And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness, Who will tell us to whom in this house We without knowing it have said farewell? Through the dawning window night withdraws And among the stacked books which throw Irregular shadows on the dim table, There must be one which I will never read. There is in the South more than one worn gate, With its cement urns and planted cactus, Which is already forbidden to my entry, Inaccessible, as in a lithograph. There is a door you have closed forever And some mirror is expecting you in vain; To you the crossroads seem wide open, Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus. There is among all your memories one Which has now been lost beyond recall. You will not be seen going down to that fountain Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon. You will never recapture what the Persian Said in his language woven with birds and roses, When, in the sunset, before the light disperses, You wish to give words to unforgettable things. And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake, All that vast yesterday over which today I bend? They will be as lost as Carthage, Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt. At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent Murmur of crowds milling and fading away; They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by; Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

A bad idea, a wrong piece of information, a digital brain-altering virus can spread at the speed of light through the internet and quickly find a home among a dispersed but digitally interconnected group of true believers. This group acts as a reservoir for the bad idea, allowing it to gather strength and reinfect people; as the group grows, the belief, no matter how crazy, becomes more and more solidly established among the faithful.

You know what I found today...that our feelings are just like DISPERSION OF THE WHITE LIGHT INTO IT'S CONSTITUENT COLOURS . It is up to you be the VIBGYOR and feel transparent or else...choose any one of them and stick to it.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe. At present I have to make the new settler Lydgate better known to any one interested in him than he could possibly be even to those who had seen the most of him since his arrival in Middlemarch.

— If love wants you; if you’ve been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills, with warm blood and cold. With feathers and scales. Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy you’ll want to breathe with the spiral calls of birds, while your lashing tail still gropes for the waes. You’ll try to haul your weight from simple sea to gravity of land. Caught by the tide, in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments suffocating in both water and air. If love wants you, suddently your past is obsolete science. Old maps, disproved theories, a diorama. The moment our bodies are set to spring open. The immanence that reassembles matter passes through us then disperses into time and place: the spasm of fur stroked upright; shocked electrons. The mother who hears her child crying upstairs and suddenly feels her dress wet with milk. Among black branches, oyster-coloured fog tongues every corner of loneliness we never knew before we were loved there, the places left fallow when we’re born, waiting for experience to find its way into us. The night crossing, on deck in the dark car. On the beach wehre night reshaped your face. In the lava fields, carbon turned to carpet, moss like velvet spread over splintered forms. The instant spray freezes in air above the falls, a gasp of ice. We rise, hearing our names called home through salmon-blue dusk, the royal moon an escutcheon on the shield of sky. The current that passes through us, radio waves, electric lick. The billions of photons that pass through film emulsion every second, the single submicroscopic crystal struck that becomes the phograph. We look and suddenly the world looks back. A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky. — But if, like starlings, we continue to navigate by the rear-view mirror of the moon; if we continue to reach both for salt and for the sweet white nibs of grass growing closest to earth; if, in the autumn bog red with sedge we’re also driving through the canyon at night, all around us the hidden glow of limestone erased by darkness; if still we sish we’d waited for morning, we will know ourselves nowhere. Not in the mirrors of waves or in the corrading stream, not in the wavering glass of an apartment building, not in the looming light of night lobbies or on the rainy deck. Not in the autumn kitchen or in the motel where we watched meteors from our bed while your slow film, the shutter open, turned stars to rain. We will become indigestible. Afraid of choking on fur and armour, animals will refuse the divided longings in our foreing blue flesh. — In your hands, all you’ve lost, all you’ve touched. In the angle of your head, every vow and broken vow. In your skin, every time you were disregarded, every time you were received. Sundered, drowsed. A seeded field, mossy cleft, tidal pool, milky stem. The branch that’s released when the bird lifts or lands. In a summer kitchen. On a white winter morning, sunlight across the bed.

What might you not have done, had you been free?’ ‘Perhaps nothing: the overflowing of my brain might have evaporated in mere futilities. Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men; pressure is needed to explode the charge. My captivity concentrated all my faculties on a single point. They had previously been dispersed, now they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, the clash of clouds produces electricity, electricity produces lightning and lightning gives light.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl, When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep Was aerie-light, from pure digestion bred, And temperate vapors bland, which the only sound Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan, Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song Of birds on every bough; so much the more His wonder was to find unwakened Eve With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek, As through unquiet rest: He, on his side Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love Hung over her enamored, and beheld Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, Her hand soft touching, whispered thus. Awake, My fairest, my espoused, my latest found, Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight! Awake: The morning shines, and the fresh field Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove, What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed, How nature paints her colors, how the bee Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.

Sant Mat (the path and teachings as taught and practiced by saints) delineates the path of union of soul with the Divine. The teachings of the saints explain the re-uniting as follows: The individual soul has descended from the higher worlds [the Realm of the Divine] to this city of illusion, bodily existence. It has descended from the Soundless state to the essence of Sound, from that Sound to Light, and finally from the realm of Light to the realm of Darkness. The qualities (dharmas, natural tendencies) of the sense organs draw us downward and away from our true nature. The nature of the soul (atman) draws us upwards and inwards and establishes us in our own true nature. Returning to our origins involves turning inward: withdrawal of consciousness from the senses and the sense objects in order to go upward from the darkness to the realms of Light and Sound. [We experience this phenomenon of withdrawal as we pass from waking consciousness to deep sleep.] Another way to express this is to go inward from the external sense organs to the depth of the inner self. (Both of these expressions are the metaphors that signify the same movement). The natural tendencies of the soul (atman) are to move from outward to inward. The current of consciousness which is dispersed in the nine gates of the body and the senses, must be collected at the tenth gate. The tenth gate is the gathering point of consciousness. Therein lies the path for our return. The tenth gate is also known as the sixth chakra, the third eye, bindu, the center located between the two eyebrows. This is the gateway through which we leave the gates of the sense organs and enter in the divine realms and finally become established in the soul. We travel back from the Realm of Darkness to the Realm of Light, from the Light to the Divine Sound, and from the Realm of Sound to the Soundless State. This is called turning back to the Source. This is what dharma or religion really intends to teach us. This is the essence of dharma.

And I did long for it, to say one true sentence of my own, to leap into the subject, that sturdy vessel travelling upstream through the axonal predicate into what is possible; into the object, which is all possibility; into what little we know of the future, of eternity--the light of which, incidentally, was streaming in on us just then through the high windows. Above Stasselova's head the storm clouds were dispersing, as if frightened by some impending goodwill, and I could see tht the birds were out again, forming into that familiar pointy hieroglyph, as they're told to do from deep within.

Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men; pressure is needed to explode the charge. My captivity concentrated all my faculties on a single point. They had previously been dispersed, now they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, the clash of clouds produces electricity, electricity produces lightning and lightning gives light.

I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish—we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut,Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome. It never occurred to me that if one word word from him could make me so happy, another could just as easily crush me, that if I didn’t want to be unhappy, I should learn to beware of such small joys as well.

And all my ethical reasoning crumbles to ash in the sheer fact of his presence. Because together, even in darkness, we light up a room; because the clotted guilt inside me breaks up and disperses before a surge of stupid happiness; because I love him, and I know I cannot leave him, am incapable of leaving him, unless he asks me to go. And he has not asked me. And that is the miracle which I live with, every day.

The whole of life but labours in the dark. For just as children tremble and fear all In the viewless dark, so even we at times Dread in the light so many things that be No whit more fearsome than what children feign, Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark. This terror then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only nature's aspect and her law.

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.

[...] ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the chearful waies of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledg fair Presented with a Universal blanc Of Natures works to mee expung’d and ras’d, And wisdome at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou Celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.

On Easter Monday there was a great display of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an opposite house, and made our way, to our places, in good time, through a dense mob of people choking up the square in front, and all the avenues leading to it; and so loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on this bridge (execrable works), and, among them, great vessels full of burning tow were placed: glaring strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the stone counterfeits above them. The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and then, for twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colour, size, and speed: while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. The concluding burst - the Girandola - was like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive castle, without smoke or dust. In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed; the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the river; and half - a - dozen men and boys with bits of lighted candle in their hands: moving here and there, in search of anything worth having, that might have been dropped in the press: had the whole scene to themselves.

For as medical men sometimes,   although they could quickly cover over the scars of wounds, keep back   and delay the cure for the present, in the expectation of a better and   more perfect recovery, knowing that it is more salutary to retard the   treatment in the cases of swellings caused by wounds, and to allow the   malignant humours to flow off for a while, rather than to hasten a   superficial cure, by shutting up in the veins the poison of a morbid   humour, which, excluded from its customary outlets, will undoubtedly   creep into the inner parts of the limbs, and penetrate to the very   vitals of the viscera, producing no longer mere disease in the body,   but causing destruction to life; so, in like manner, God also, who   knows the secret things of the heart, and foreknows the future, in much   forbearance allows certain events to happen, which, coming from without   upon men, cause to come forth into the light the passions and vices   which are concealed within, that by their means those may be cleansed   and cured who, through great negligence and carelessness, have admitted   within themselves the roots and seeds of sins, so that, when driven   outwards and brought to the surface, they may in a certain degree be   cast forth and dispersed. [2342]   And thus, although a man may appear   to be afflicted with evils of a serious kind, suffering convulsions in   all his limbs, he may nevertheless, at some future time, obtain relief   and a cessation from his trouble; and, after enduring his afflictions   to satiety, may, after many sufferings, be restored again to his   (proper) condition.  For God deals with souls not merely with a view to   the short space of our present life, included within sixty years [2343]   or more, but with reference to a perpetual and never-ending period,   exercising His providential care over souls that are immortal, even as   He Himself is eternal and immortal. 

By Jove!” exclaimed Pencroft, “all our plants will be frozen!” And the sailor was about to descend, when he was preceded by the nimble Jup, who slid down to the sand. But the orang had not touched the ground, when the snowy sheet arose and dispersed in the air in such innumerable flakes that the light of the sun was obscured for some minutes. “Birds!” cried Herbert. They were indeed swarms of sea-birds, with dazzling white plumage. They had perched by thousands on the islet and on the shore, and they disappeared in the distance, leaving the colonists amazed as if they had been present at some transformation scene, in which summer succeeded winter at

Lucy Gray Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray, And when I cross'd the Wild, I chanc'd to see at break of day The solitary Child. No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wild Moor, The sweetest Thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the Fawn at play, The Hare upon the Green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. "To-night will be a stormy night, You to the Town must go, And take a lantern, Child, to light Your Mother thro' the snow." "That, Father! will I gladly do; 'Tis scarcely afternoon— The Minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the Moon." At this the Father rais'd his hook And snapp'd a faggot-band; He plied his work, and Lucy took The lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe, With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse, the powd'ry snow That rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time, She wander'd up and down, And many a hill did Lucy climb But never reach'd the Town. The wretched Parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide. At day-break on a hill they stood That overlook'd the Moor; And thence they saw the Bridge of Wood A furlong from their door. And now they homeward turn'd, and cry'd "In Heaven we all shall meet!" When in the snow the Mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downward from the steep hill's edge They track'd the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn-hedge, And by the long stone-wall; And then an open field they cross'd, The marks were still the same; They track'd them on, nor ever lost, And to the Bridge they came. They follow'd from the snowy bank The footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank, And further there were none. Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living Child, That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome Wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.

The splendor of light was a central metaphor (in the mystic) Hildegard of Bingen’s thought, a divine luminescence filling the earth…She heard God say, “I, the highest and fiery power, have kindled every spark of light…I flame above the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars… for all life lights up out of me.” The same idea was also emerging in Jewish mystical thought (Kabbalistic)…the vessels containing God’s Shekinah glory were said to have shattered at creation, dispersing divine sparks that lie hidden within all things. The healing of the world (tikkun olam) requires the recovery of these shards of light.

Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of Ev’n or Morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud in stead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the chearful waies of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledg fair Presented with a Universal blanc Of Natures works to mee expung’d and ras’d, And wisdome at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou Celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. Now

Viola Bai knew how to tell a story. She knew that all the violence is contained in the precision of a detail. She knew how to work the timing so that the bell rang just as the bartender was busy with the fly of his name-brand jeans. At that moment her devoted audience slowly dispersed, their cheeks red with envy and indignation. Viola was made to promise that she would go on with her story at the next bell, but she was too intelligent to actually do it. She always ended up dismissing the whole thing with a pout of her perfect mouth, as if what had happened to her was of no importance. It was just one more detail in her extraordinary life, and she was already light-years ahead of everyone else.

afreight with the past, dreams dispersed in the water someway, nothing ever lost. Houseboats ride at their hawsers. The neap mud along the shore lies ribbed and slick like the cavernous flitch of some beast hugely foundered and beyond the country rolls away to the south and the mountains. Where hunters and woodcutters once slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, old teutonic forebears with eyes incandesced by the visionary light of a massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, their brains stoked with spoorless analogues of all that was, lean aryans with their abrogate semitic chapbook reenacting the dramas and parables therein and mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark’s total restitution could appease.

You are a three-part being - body, mind and spirit - and you never, ever are anything less or anything else. As you move from the metaphysical to the physical and back again, you simply disintegrate and reintegrate these aspects of Who You Are. To help you understand how such a thing is possible, think of what you call "white light". This is actually a combination of lights of different wave-lenghts in the electromagnetic spectrum. If you send white light through a dispersive prism, you will see its spectral colors, which are its constituent parts. Now think of physicality as the "prism" of Ultimate Reality. When the soul passes through the prism into physicality, it breaks into its constituent parts: body, mind and spirit. When it passes back through the prism the other way - or as humans put it, when you "pass away" - the soul becomes one element again. That one element is You.

Beauty and the Illiterate" Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from                   the mountains across, although the day was harsh and                   tomorrow foreign. But, when it darkened well and out came the priest’s hand over                   the little garden of the dead, She Alone, Standing, with the few domestics of the night—the blowing                   rosemary and the murmur of smoke from the kilns—                   at sea’s entry, wakeful Otherly beauty! Only the waves’ words half-guessed or in a rustle, and others                   resembling the dead’s that startle in the cypress, strange                   zodiacs that lit up her magnetic moon-turned head.                   And one Unbelievable cleanliness allowed, to great depth in her, the real                   landscape to be seen, Where, near the river, the dark ones fought against the Angel,                   exactly showing how she’s born, Beauty Or what we otherwise call tear. And long as her thinking lasted, you could feel it overflow the                   glowing sight bitterly in the eyes and the huge, like an                   ancient prostitute’s, cheekbones Stretched to the extreme points of the Large Dog and of the Virgin. “Far from the pestilential city I dreamed of her deserted place                   where a tear may have no meaning and the only light be                   from the flame that ravishes all that for me exists. “Shoulder-to-shoulder under what will be, sworn to extreme silence                   and the co-ruling of the stars, “As if I didn’t know yet, the illiterate, that there exactly, in extreme                   silence are the most repellent thuds “And that, since it became unbearable inside a man’s chest, solitude                   dispersed and seeded stars!

She went back to the kitchen, for the kitchen of the Hand of God was so large that Miss Joliffe and Anastasia used part of it for their sitting-room, took the pencil out of “Northanger Abbey,” and tried to transport herself to Bath. Five minutes ago she had been in the Grand Pump Room herself, and knew exactly where Mrs Allen and Isabella Thorpe and Edward Morland were sitting; where Catherine was standing, and what John Thorpe was saying to her when Tilney walked up. But alas! Anastasia found no re-admission; the lights were put out, the Pump Room was in darkness. A sad change to have happened in five minutes; but no doubt the charmed circle had dispersed in a huff on finding that they no longer occupied the first place in Miss Anastasia Joliffe’s interest. And, indeed, she missed them the less because she had discovered that she herself possessed a wonderful talent for romance, and had already begun the first chapter of a thrilling story.

I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish—we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut, the Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.

Oft had I heard of Lucy Gray, And when I crossed the Wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary Child. No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide Moor, The sweetest Thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the Fawn at play, The Hare upon the Green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. 'To-night will be a stormy night, You to the Town must go, And take a lantern, Child, to light Your Mother thro' the snow.' 'That, Father! will I gladly do; 'Tis scarcely afternoon -- The Minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the Moon.' At this the Father raised his hook And snapped a faggot-band; He plied his work, and Lucy took The lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe, With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powd'ry snow That rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time, She wandered up and down, And many a hill did Lucy climb But never reached the Town. The wretched Parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide. At day-break on a hill they stood That overlooked the Moor; And thence they saw the Bridge of Wood A furlong from their door. And now they homeward turned, and cried 'In Heaven we all shall meet!' When in the snow the Mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downward from the steep hill's edge They tracked the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn-hedge, And by the long stone-wall; And then an open field they crossed, The marks were still the same; They tracked them on, nor ever lost, And to the Bridge they came. They followed from the snowy bank The footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank, And further there were none. Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living Child, That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome Wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.

A Prayer for Grace and Illumination Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You. Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life, and without You, I am without fervor. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light, and without You, I am in darkness. Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will. Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You. Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much, and always be in Your company. Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You. Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is, I wish it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of Love. Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes, death, judgment, eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You. It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile! Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers, I need You. Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion be the light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart. Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by Communion, at least by grace and love. Stay with me, Jesus, I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not merit it, but, the gift of Your Presence, oh yes, I ask this of You! Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for. Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more. With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity. Amen. —Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

And still I had not admitted to myself that I should have stopped seeing Albertine long before, for she had entered, in relation to me, that wretched period when a being, dispersed in space and time, is no longer a woman in our eyes, but a series of events on which we cannot shed light, a series of insoluble problems, a sea which, like Xerxes, we absurdly try to beat, to punish it for all that it has swallowed up. Once this period has begun, one is inevitably defeated. Happy are those who see it in time not to be drawn into a useless, exhausting battle, surrounded on all sides by the limits of our imagination, where jealousy struggles so humiliatingly that the same man who once, if the eyes of his constant companion fell for a moment on another man, imagined a conspiracy, suffered who knows what torments, may later allow her to go out alone, sometimes with the man he knows is her lover, choosing this torture which is at least familiar in preference to the terrible unknown. It is a question of finding a rhythm which one afterward follows from habit.

Sensuality is for you, not about you. It’s for you in a sense that you are allowed to indulge all of your senses and taste the goodness of this world and beyond. It’s also for you in a sense that you’re allowed to curate and express yourself in an authentic way (i.e. in the way you dress, communicate, live, love, play, etc.). However, sensuality is not ABOUT you, it’s about those to whom you were brought here to touch and inspire. It’s about the joy and pleasure you’re here to bring. You didn’t come here for yourself nor empty-handed, but you came here bearing special gifts. You were brought here to be a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures. Your passion is an indication of the sensual gift(s) you were endowed with before you made your grand entry into this world. Your divine mandate now is to exploit every sensual gift you have to the fullest whether it’s music, photography, boudoir or fashion modeling, etc. If you have a love for fashion, always dress impeccably well like my friend Kefilwe Mabote. If you have a love for good food and wine, create culinary experiences the world has never seen before like chef Heston Blumenthal whom I consider as one of the most eminent sensual innovators in the culinary field. Chef Heston has crafted the most sensually innovative culinary experience where each sense has been considered with unparalleled rigour. He believes that eating is a truly multi-sensory experience. This approach has not only led to innovative dishes like the famous bacon and egg ice cream, but also to playing sounds to diners through headphones, and dispersing evocative aromas with dry ice. Chef Heston is indeed a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures in his own right and field. So, what sensual gift(s) are you here to use? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. For instance, you may be a great home maker. That may be an area where you’re endowed with the most sensual innovative abilities than any other area in your life. You need to occupy and shine your light in that space, no matter how small it seems.

In the face of the threats of a total weightlessness, an unbearable lightness of being, a universal promiscuity and a linearity of processes liable to plunge us into the void, the sudden whirlpools that we dub catastrophes are really the thing that saves us from catastrophe. Anomalies and aberrations of this kind re-create zones of gravity and density that counter dispersion. It may be hazarded that this is how our societies secrete their own peculiar version of an accursed share, much after the fashion of those tribal peoples who used to dispose of their surplus population by means of an oceanic suicide: the homeopathic suicide of a few serving to maintain the homeostatic balance of the group. So the actual catastrophe may turn out to be a carefully modulated strategy of our species - or, more precisely, our viruses, our extreme phenomena, which are most definitively real, albeit localized, may be what allow us to preserve the energy of that virtual catastrophe which is the motor of all our processes, whether economic or political, artistic or historical.

The Magician climbed the stairs. Midnight found him in his study, poring through leather-bound tomes and untidy portfolios … At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam — Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East — swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated — though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Pontecilla the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others.

The bast, dispersing in shreds in the sunset whispered "Time has begun." The son, Adam, stripped naked, descended into the Old Testament of his native land and arrayed himself in bast; a wreath of roadside field grass he placed upon his brow, a staff, not a switch, he pulled from the ground, flourishing the birch branch like a sacred palm. On the road he stood like a guard. The dust-gray road ran into the sunset. And a crow perched there, perched and croaked, there where the celestial fire consumed the earth. There were blind men along the dust-gray road running into the twilight. Antique, crooken, they trailed along, lonely and sinister silhouettes, holding to one another and to their leader's cane. They were raising dust. One was beard-less, he kept squinting. Another, a little old man with a protruding lip, was whispering and praying. A third, covered with red hair, frowned. Their backs were bent, their heads bowed low, their arms extended to the staff. Strange it was to see this mute procession in the terrible twilight. They made their way immutable, primordial, blind. Oh, if only they could open their eyes, oh if only they were not blind! Russian Land, awake! And Adam, rude image of the returned king, lowered the birch branch to their white pupils. And on them he laid his hands, as, groaning and moaning they seated themselves in the dust and with trembling hands pushed chunks of black bread into their mouths. Their faces were ashen and menacing, lit with the pale light of deadly clouds. Lightning blazed, their blinded faces blazed. Oh, if only they opened their eyes, oh, if only they saw the light! Adam, Adam, you stand illumined by lightnings. Now you lay the gentle branch upon their faces. Adam, Adam, say, see, see! And he restores their sight. But the blind men turning their ashen faces and opening their white eyes did not see. And the wind whispered "Thou art behind the hill." From the clouds a fiery veil began to shimmer and died out. A little birch murmured, beseeching, and fell asleep. The dusk dispersed at the horizon and a bloody stump of the sunset stuck up. And spotted with brilliant coals glowing red, the bast streamed out from the sunset like a striped cloak. On the waxen image of Adam the field grass wreaths sighed fearfully giving a soft whistle and the green dewy clusters sprinkled forth fiery tears on the blind faces of the blind. He knew what he was doing, he was restoring their sight. ("Adam")

My mint chocolate is delicious----and not at all leafy. Benny has made a mixed-berries-and-cream concoction that is, I hate to admit upon tasting it, next level. Nia, Seb, and Lily are brought in as the blind taste testers, and while they stress that both ice creams were excellent, two out of three prefer Benny's. He takes an obnoxious bow as the whole group---including me, grudgingly---gives him a round of applause. I try not to let my annoyance show until filming wraps up and most people disperse from the kitchen, at which point I take it out on a sticky spot on the counter where some batter spilled. "I think you got it all." Benny's voice is so close behind me that I nearly jump out of my shoes. "Keep scrubbing that hard and you'll wear a hole through the counter." "Keep minding your own business if you don't want me to wear a hole through your head, mister." He laughs as he leans against the counter beside me, one muscular forearm making its way into my line of sight. "I'm not even sure what that means, but you're cute when you're grumpy. Relax, Reese's Pieces. It's still early in the season and we're only oh-and-one. Not that anyone's keeping score." I grit my teeth but say no more, and soon enough he gets the picture and makes himself scarce. He's joking around, but I'm already all too aware of the score, picturing it in bold letters and neon lights: Benny---1, Reese---0.

It is difficult to return to the places of one's early happiness. The young girls in the flower of their youth still laugh and chatter on the seashore, but he who watches them gradually loses his right to love them, just as those he has loved lose the power to be loved. This melancholy is the melancholy of Proust. It was powerful enough in him to cause a violent rejection of all existence. But his passion for faces and for the light attached him at the same time to life. He never admitted that the happy days of his youth were lost forever. He undertook the task of re-creating them and of demonstrating, in the face of death, that the past could be regained at the end of time in the form of an imperishable present, both truer and richer than it was at the beginning. The psychological analysis of Remembrance of Things Past is nothing but a potent means to an end. The real greatness of Proust lies in having written Time Regained, which resembles the world of dispersion and which gives it a meaning on the very level of integration. His difficult victory, on the eve of his death, is to have been able to extract from the incessant flight of forms, by means of memory and intelligence alone, the tentative trembling symbols of human unity. The most definite challenge that a work of this kind can give to creation is to present itself as an entirety, as a closed and unified world. This defines an unrepentant work of art.

She floated in the midst of a living shadow. There was nothing but herself, surrounded by an unimaginable blackness. She could not think, not properly. She could only wait, while time or perhaps some incompetent impostor did its work. The emptiness was aeons long. Even imagination died. Aeons long. Then at last she felt something-a fluttering in the void, Oh God, it was real, it was! Something distant, but actually separate from herself. No, many somethings, small and alive, tiny blessed warm things where before there had been nothing but cold. She reached out eagerly, but the fluttering things darted away, frightened of her. She reached again and the presences retreated even farther. Her sorrow grew so large and painful that she was certain all that kept her coherent would burst and she would spill inside out into the darkness, disperse, collapse. She lay in cold misery. The things returned. This time she was careful, as careful as she could be, reaching out to them slowly, gently, feeling them in their terrible fragility. After a while they came to her without coaxing. She handled them with almost infinite caution, enfolded each one as gently as she could, a century between thoughts, a millennium betweeen excruciatingly restrained movements. Even so, some proved too vulnerable, and with tiny cries they were no more, bursting in her grasp like bubbles as they gave up their essences. It tore at her heart. The others flitted away, alarmed, and she was terrified, certain they would leave her forever. She called to them. Some came back. Oh, but they were delicate. Oh but they were beautiful. She wept, and the universe slowly convulsed.

Television* means ‘to see from a distance’. The desire in man to do so has been there for ages. In the early years of the twentieth century many scientists experimented with the idea of using selenium photosensitive cells for converting light from pictures into electrical signals and transmitting them through wires. The first demonstration of actual television was given by J.L. Baird in UK and C.F. Jenkins in USA around 1927 by using the technique of mechanical scanning employing rotating discs.However, the real breakthrough occurred with the invention of the cathode ray tube and the success of V.K. Zworykin of the USA in perfecting the first camera tube (the iconoscope) based on the storage principle. By 1930 electromagnetic scanning of both camera and picture tubes and other ancillary circuits such as for beam deflection, video amplification, etc. were developed. Though television broadcast started in 1935, world political developments and the second world war slowed down the progress of television. With the end of the war, television rapidly grew into a popular medium for dispersion of news and mass entertainment. Television Systems At the outset, in the absence of any international standards, three monochrome (i.e. black and white) systems grew independently. These are the 525 line American, the 625 line European and the 819 line French systems. This naturally prevents direct exchange of programme between countries using different television standards.Later, efforts by the all world committee on radio and television (CCIR) for changing to a common 625 line system by all concerned proved ineffective and thus all the three systems have apparently come to stay. The inability to change over to a common system is mainly due to the high cost of replacing both the transmitting equipment and the millions of receivers already in use. However the UK, where initially a 415 line monochrome system was in use, has changed to the 625 line system with some modification in the channel bandwidth. In India, where television transmission started in 1959, the 625-B monochrome system has been adopted.

The unhappy priest was breathing hard; sincere horror at the foreseen dispersal of Church property was linked with regret at his having lost control of himself again, with fear of offending the Prince, whom he genuinely liked and whose blustering rages as well as disinterested kindness he knew well. So he sat down warily, glancing every now and again at Don Fabrizio, who had taken up a little brush and was cleaning the knobs of a telescope, apparently absorbed. A little later he got up and cleaned his hands thoroughly with a rag; his face was quite expressionless, his light eyes seemed intent only on finding any remaining stain of oil in the cuticles of his nails. Down below, around the villa, all was luminous and grandiose silence, emphasised rather than disturbed by the distant barking of Bendicò baiting the gardener’s dog at the far end of the lemon-grove, and by the dull rhythmic beat from the kitchen of a cook’s knife chopping meat for the approaching meal. The sun had absorbed the turbulence of men as well as the harshness of earth. The Prince moved towards the priest’s table, sat down and began drawing pointed little Bourbon lilies with a carefully sharpened pencil which the Jesuit had left behind in his anger. He looked serious but so serene that Father Pirrone no longer felt on tenterhooks. “We’re not blind, my dear Father, we’re just human beings. We live in a changing reality to which we try to adapt ourselves like seaweed bending under the pressure of water. Holy Church has been granted an explicit promise of immortality; we, as a social class, have not. Any palliative which may give us another hundred years of life is like eternity to us. We may worry about our children and perhaps our grandchildren; but beyond what we can hope to stroke with these hands of ours we have no obligations. I cannot worry myself about what will happen to any possible descendants in the year 1960. The Church, yes, She must worry for She is destined not to die. Solace is implicit in Her desperation. Don’t you think that if now or in the future She could save herself by sacrificing us She wouldn’t do so? Of course She would, and rightly.

On the second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky. Her skin was blue, her blood was red. She broke over an iron gate, crimping it on impact, and there she hung, impossibly arched, graceful as a temple dancer swooning on a lover’s arm. One slick finial anchored her in place. Its point, protruding from her sternum, glittered like a brooch. She fluttered briefly as her ghost shook loose, and torch ginger buds rained out of her long hair. Later, they would say these had been hummingbird hearts and not blossoms at all. They would say she hadn’t shed blood but wept it. That she was lewd, tonguing her teeth at them, upside down and dying, that she vomited a serpent that turned to smoke when it hit the ground. They would say a flock of moths came, frantic, and tried to lift her away. That was true. Only that. They hadn’t a prayer, though. The moths were no bigger than the startled mouths of children, and even dozens together could only pluck at the strands of her darkening hair until their wings sagged, sodden with her blood. They were purled away with the blossoms as a grit-choked gust came blasting down the street. The earth heaved underfoot. The sky spun on its axis. A queer brilliance lanced through billowing smoke, and the people of Weep had to squint against it. Blowing grit and hot light and the stink of saltpeter. There had been an explosion. They might have died, all and easily, but only this girl had, shaken from some pocket of the sky. Her feet were bare, her mouth stained damson. Her pockets were all full of plums. She was young and lovely and surprised and dead. She was also blue. Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring—not summer—sky. Someone screamed. The scream drew others. The others screamed, too, not because a girl was dead, but because the girl was blue, and this meant something in the city of Weep. Even after the sky stopped reeling, and the earth settled, and the last fume spluttered from the blast site and dispersed, the screams went on, feeding themselves from voice to voice, a virus of the air. The blue girl’s ghost gathered itself and perched, bereft, upon the spearpoint-tip of the projecting finial, just an inch above her own still chest. Gasping in shock, she tilted back her invisible head and gazed, mournfully, up. The screams went on and on. And across the city, atop a monolithic wedge of seamless, mirror-smooth metal, a statue stirred, as though awakened by the tumult, and slowly lifted its great horned head.

Meanwhile, Matthew took the empty place beside Daisy’s. “Miss Bowman,” he said softly. Daisy couldn’t manage a word. Her gaze lifted to his smiling eyes, and it seemed that emotions sprang from her in a fountain of warmth. She had to look away from him before she did something foolish. But she remained intensely aware of his body next to hers. Westcliff and Matthew entertained the group with an account of how their carriage had gotten stuck in mire. Luckily they had been helped by a passing farmer with an ox-drawn wagon, but in the process of freeing the vehicle, all participants had been covered with mud from head to toe. And apparently the episode had left the ox in quite an objectionable temper. By the time the story was finished, everyone at the table was chuckling. The conversation turned to the subject of the Shakespeare festival, and Thomas Bowman launched into an account of the visit to Stratford-on-Avon. Matthew asked a question or two, seeming fully engaged in the conversation. Suddenly Daisy was startled to feel his hand slide into her lap beneath the table. His fingers closed over hers in a gentle clasp. And all the while he took part in the conversation, talking and smiling easily. Daisy reached for her wine with her free hand and brought it to her lips. She took one sip, and then another, and nearly choked as Matthew played lightly with her fingers beneath the table. Sensations that had lain quiescent for a week kindled into vibrant life. Still not looking at her, Matthew gently slid something over her ring finger, past the knuckle, until it fit neatly at the base. Her hand was returned to her lap as a footman came to replenish the wine in their glasses. Daisy looked down at her hand, blinking at the sight of the glittering yellow sapphire surrounded by small round diamonds. It looked like a white-petaled flower. Her fingers closed tightly, and she averted her face to hide a betraying flush of pleasure. “Does it please you?” Matthew whispered. “Oh, yes.” That was the extent of their communication at dinner. It was just as well. There was too much to be said, all of it highly private. Daisy steeled herself for the usual long rituals of port and tea after dinner, but she was gratified when it seemed that everyone, even her father, was inclined to retire early. As it appeared the elderly vicar and his wife were ready to return home, the group dispersed without much fanfare. Walking with Daisy from the dining hall, Matthew murmured, “Will I have to scale the outside wall tonight, or are you going to leave your door unlocked?” “The door,” Daisy replied succinctly. “Thank God.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

Authority was dispersed; the world unshackled; the weak became the strong; the sheltered became the aggressive; the contrast between victors and vanquished tended continually to diminish. A vast fatigue dominated collective action. Though every subversive element endeavoured to assert itself, revolutionary rage like every other form of psychic energy burnt low. Through all its five acts the drama has run its course; the light of history is switched off, the world stage dims, the actors shrivel, the chorus sinks. The war of the giants has ended; the quarrels of the pygmies have begun.

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? 3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. 4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. 5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— 7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels[a] shouted for joy? 8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, 9 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, 10 when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, 11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’? 12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, 13 that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? 14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment. 15 The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken. 16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? 17 Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? 18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. 19 “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? 20 Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? 21 Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years! 22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, 23 which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? 24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? 25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, 26 to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, 27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? 28 Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? 29 From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens 30 when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen? 31 “Can you bind the chains[b] of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? 32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons[c] or lead out the Bear[d] with its cubs? 33 Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s[e] dominion over the earth? 34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? 35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who gives the ibis wisdom[f] or gives the rooster understanding?[g] 37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens 38 when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together? 39 “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions 40 when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? 41 Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

was almost to the train station when I noticed a series of bright lights moving fast in the sky overhead. I stopped, trying to figure out what it was. It wasn't a plane or a flare or any kind of reflection. More like a blur of shooting stars. Except that shooting stars were usually higher in the sky, I thought. This thing was heading downward and breaking apart as it traveled, almost like fireworks, but dispersing in a more random way. It looked a little bit like photos I’ve seen of an aurora borealis, but I was sure if something like that was going to happen I’d have heard about it.

Chewy Chocolate Chip M&M Cookies.39 2 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch 3/4 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, melted 3/4 cup light brown sugar, loosely packed 1/2 cup granulated sugar40 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk (preferably at room temperature) 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 cup chocolate chips 1/2 cup M&Ms for tops of cookies Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside. Toss together flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. Set aside. In a medium size bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the egg, then the egg yolk. Finally, whisk in the vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula. The dough will be very soft, yet thick. Fold41 in the chocolate chips. They may not stick to the dough because of the melted butter, but do your best to have them evenly dispersed among the dough. Cover the dough and chill for 2 hours, or up to 3 days. Chilling is mandatory.42 Take the dough out of the refrigerator and allow to slightly soften at room temperature for 10 minutes. Roll the dough into balls, about 3 tablespoons of dough each and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheets, or use a cookie scooper. Bake the cookies for 11-14 minutes. They will look very soft and underbaked. They will continue to bake on the cookie sheet. Allow cooling on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack43 to cool completely.

Furthermore, the church is set apart by the way they live, called to be holy even as God is holy (1 Peter 1:15–16). In his first epistle, Peter described the church as “elect exiles of the Dispersion” (1:1). This is such an important word for us. The church’s exile status in the world is exactly what will bring glory to God and is exactly what God intends to be the experience of the church in this age. Witness is the central role of the church, and the elect exiles are secure in the purposes of God, “in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood” (v. 2). The exile church, like a light shining in the darkness, is a bright witness in a dark world.

It is not just that yoga is causing all of this pain; the pain is already there. It is hidden. We just live with it or have learned not to be aware of it. It is as if your body is in a coma. When you begin yoga, the unrecognized pains come to the surface. When we are able to use out intelligence to purify our bodies, then the hidden pains are dispersed.

We have to remind ourselves that the multitude who heard Peter's sermon on Pentecost was Jewish. It included Jews from Palestine, proselytes, and dispersed Jews from other parts of the Roman Empire and beyond. The Old Testament was all they had of the Holy Scriptures. As they listened to Peter preaching from those Scriptures (twelve of the twenty-two verses of Peter's sermon in Acts 2 contain quotations from the Old Testament), they could have understood his words in only one way-as a reference to the promise in God's covenant and the fact that that promise extended not only to believers but to their children as well. To interpret Acts 2:39 in light of the New Testament Scriptures, which did not yet exist, as do many Baptists," is to engage in hermeneutical error and can only lead to a serious misrepresentation of the mind of the Spirit. The Jewish multitude had Jewish expectations-not just about the Messiah, but also about the way in which God works with people.

We cannot gather the Good. The Good force always disperses, like light. When you spread Good vibrations, it benefits to all of mankind.

As beings in perpetual motion, ever-changing, consciously or not, in death we change yet again, morphing into something else: as pure energy, soul and spirit dispersed into the Cosmos. Metamorphosis is not an event but is instead an ongoing co-creative process which we remain actively involved in during each moment of existence. We are; always have been, always will be, in some form or another. Best we come to terms with Infinity and our own immortality. Accept it and move on across the Universe…at light speed.

Since scientists have no answer to dark matter (except dark matter filament), the most logical explanation is that it is invisible. Some questions remain: 1. Can matter be invisible (or imperceptible by our senses and instruments)? 2. Even if matter could be theoretically invisible, is it possible that such a vast amount of matter, like dark matter, would escape all our knowledge and existing laws of physics and be unidentified until recently but wholly invisible and beyond our reach? 3. If dark matter is imperceptible, what makes it imperceptible? 4. Is it potentially perceptible but not perceptible to us as human beings? 5. Is there anything that would still avoid perception even if we possessed the absolute perceptive ability or technology with these abilities? 6. Or, is dark matter our way of explaining the unexplainable and offering a linguistic form to unknown phenomena? 7. Or, is it our inability to go beyond the spectrum, outside the existing frames, and try to decipher the unknown beyond the known frame of reality or what we see and understand as reality and the Universe? The answer to the first question is known; even atoms are invisible not only to the eyes but to microscopes. It is, therefore, theoretically possible that matter can be hidden and imperceptible. Still, it is hard to imagine that vast amounts of the mass of the Universe would stay unaccounted for within the realm of already advanced understanding of the laws of physics, instruments, and experiments. It would be possible to prove mathematically, based on what we already know about the Universe, the mass, the dispersion of energy and mass, and by these comparisons to conclude, without the CERN accelerator, that this is, most likely, impossible. This was a short answer to the second question. The third question is important because it would lead scientists in the right direction by avoiding the possible net of perplexed ideas. If we have already established that something exists, it would be better to define it as precisely as possible to avoid guessing only. In addition, how do we guess? We do not know anything about its nature, origin, or how it came into existence except that we came to this discovery almost accidentally by pure and relatively simple measurements and experiments. But what about us? How do we think? What methods do we use in experiments and the way we think? The answer to these questions could lead to better discoveries than only focusing on something we do not know and, even worse if we do not know where to look for it. Based on an accidental discovery, it is a good start to conclude that there is more mass in the Universe than can be detected. Still, it would be better and more productive to go beyond the Universe as we see it, beyond our existing knowledge and perception, not toward the stars we already know but toward another bottomless sky of darkness and the unknown. Although light is the source of life, darkness is also the source of light and life. Maybe the brightest “star” sleeps in the darkness and feeds the world from darkness. Is there only one Universe? If we start from the premise of the Big Bang theory, it would be logical to ask why there is only one Big Bang. It is easy to conclude that if there is a Big Bang at one point in “space” (nothingness), there can be another one at another “point,” past or future, although this may sound strange.

When, at the speed of light, the mass becomes “infinite,” that is the moment of absolute, infinite density when space disappears. “Infinite” density is the “point” of disappearance. The spaceless point of zero is the channel between the Being and Nonbeing, between existence and nothingness. Through this zero point, the Universal Mind “materializes” itself by creating “matter” and the existing universe. That is the “point” before the Big Bang, the point of absolute density and no space or time. Absolute density is the “point” before the dispersion of Oneness (Singularity) into materialized plurality. Infinite mass is impossible. The state of absolute mass would be when everything would transform into mass, and the void would disappear. That is impossible. Reaching the state of infinite mass is the same state the “mass” or “energy” was in before the Big Bang. That state is the state of no mass and no energy. Absolute “density” is the state beyond matter and energy. This state is immaterial. The effect of the infinite kinetic energy would be equivalent to the infinite mass if possible.

What we do not understand about the world or the things “beyond” the world is not proof that they do not exist but proof of our ignorance. Our ignorance cannot be a measure of anything and should not be a measure of anything, not to mention that it cannot be a measure of the unknown in this world or about what we think is beyond our world. Is something within or beyond only a matter of our understanding and perception rather than necessarily a matter of fact? The world is physics and metaphysics at the same time. Although it sounds paradoxical, we are what we are and are not. The world is more what we do not understand than we know. We seek what is seeking us. The Source is singing the song through all of us. The song of the universe celebrates the existence, the voyage, and the plurality dispersed through almost “eternity” to seek and reach the light that is the reflection of itself because the light of the source is in every one of us. To find the light within is to find the light out. Finding the source is identifying with the source on the way back to the source itself. The world is one organism. Existence needs separations to create and maintain life.

Light infantry operations often follow a cycle that can be divided into four steps: Dispersion, Orientation, Concentration, and Action (DOCA).

Narian was once more making preparations for a journey to Cokyri; as official liaison, he frequently traveled between the mother empire and the province. Knowing that the trip was long and arduous I didn’t expect him to come to me that night, and I didn’t bother to light a lantern when I adjourned to my bedroom. Instead, I relied on memory and moonlight to guide me to my dressing table. I unpinned my dark brown hair--it was not yet long enough to tie back, but letting it merely hang was impractical--and reached behind to tug at the laces of my dress. They were difficult to loosen without the aid of my personal maid, Sahdienne, who had been among those servants rehired for the sake of the economy. I sighed in frustration and stood, about to send for her when I felt warm hands rest on my waist from behind. My irritation dispersed as I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against a sturdy chest, breathing in his presence. Narian had come. He swept my hair off my neck, his fingers giving me pleasant chills, then took over what I had been attempting. My dress rustled to the floor, leaving me standing in my chemise, and he sweetly and tenderly kissed my neck and shoulders. He pushed my shift down my arms, his mouth following, and I leaned against him, my legs weak, keenly attuned to every brush of his lips against my flushed skin. My heart beat faster, and I twisted to face him, kissing him deeply, hardly aware that he had begun to walk backward, leading me toward the bed. We fell together upon the mattress, not entirely gracefully, but neither of us thinking about form. He rolled on top of me, his breath quickening along with mine, and it was only when he took hold of my bunched up chemise that my brain snapped into action. I placed my hands on his shoulders and shook my head, and he flopped flat on his back beside me with a groan. After a moment to regain his composure, he propped himself up on his elbow to look down at me, desire still lurking in his mesmerizing eyes. “Alera? Are you…all right?” “Narian, we can’t do this.” I was more than a little shocked at the both of us. His brow furrowed, and he ran a hand through his disheveled hair. He took a breath and opened his mouth, then stopped, apparently unable to decide exactly what he wanted to say. “Why not?” “Because,” I said, pushing myself upright. “We’re not married!

I used to think grief was grey and spacious and insubstantial, like a damp fog that surrounds you on every side, one that you can't get away from because it colours the air, and you breathe it in and out, and it has its own earthy smell that seeps into your ores. I thought of grief as a fleeting thing like fog, like a damp that eventually disperses. One day the greyness is slightly lighter; after a few weeks the damp no longer collects on your skin, the musty smell diminishes, somewhere in the distance a pale sun flashes from between tatters of mist, and the grief dissolves into melancholy and then memory. Never, not for a moment, did I think that grief could be as hard as a dagger, sharp and unrelenting. That it could strike again and again, always unexpected, hard, straight between my ribs, bright lights in my eyes, black and violet and pain so big that I gasp and stagger. I forget the dagger sometimes for a few moments, perhaps an hour, and that's the very worst--the stroke of the blade takes me by surprise, still just as hard, cruel, painful.

awake you glide upward through glimmering light your clothes fall like feathers from your shoulders with them the worries of day fade you are invited by mystic sounds in strange comforting tongues awake they call eyes open languid before you tiny creatures dance tickling greens and blues from the aura around you chef mischief their only game you smile warmth across your gaze again you float to new shores where you are clothed in the sirens song you relax deeper aphrodites nymphs send pleasure like golden knives into your chest you rise up stepping foot to sand walking to forest land tribal drumming moving with you the very beat of your own heart beaded threads drape you again in deep red the sound ringing in your ears move forth again childlike curiosity it leads you further across desert sands where the cherokee flute paints tiny circles in the palms of your hands the min mins call yet you cannot hear for what was you is no longer here again you float upward gravity pulls you back and forth until deep within a vibrating thunder sounds its clapping hands the fibers of your being all the tendrils of love come apart and dissipate you are dispersed across all these worlds unseen and unknown yet you will assemble again forget not the way you have grown pupps.

The Lord held to this orderly plan in administering the covenant of his mercy: as the day of full revelation approached with the passing of time, the more he increased each day the brightness of its manifestation. Accordingly, at the beginning when the first promise of salvation was given to Adam it glowed like a feeble spark. Then, as it was added to, the light grew in fullness, breaking forth increasingly and shedding its radiance more widely. At last—when all the clouds were dispersed—Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, fully illumined the whole earth.

Deep Chocolate Pound Cake Mixing boiling water into the cocoa powder is the key to creating a deep chocolate flavor: This melts the cocoa butter and disperses the cocoa through-out the batter. Adding mini chocolate chips that melt into the cake intensifies the flavor even more. Cut any leftover cake into cubes and layer it in glasses with sweetened whipped cream, fresh raspberries, and a touch of chocolate sauce for pretty individual trifles. 8 servings 2¼ cups unbleached all purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder ¾ teaspoon coarse kosher salt ¼ teaspoon baking soda ½ cup sour cream ½ cup whole milk ¼ cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder ¼ cup honey 2 tablespoons boiling water ¾ cup sugar ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ½ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 350°F. Butter and flour 9×5×3-inch metal loaf pan; tap out excess flour. Whisk flour, baking powder, coarse salt, and baking soda in medium bowl. Whisk sour cream and milk in small bowl. Sift cocoa into another small bowl. Whisk in honey and 2 tablespoons boiling water until smooth. Cool completely. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in another medium bowl until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Beat in vanilla. Add cooled cocoa mixture; stir until smooth, occasionally scraping down bowl. Beat in flour mixture alternately with sour cream mixture in 2 additions each until just blended. Stir in chocolate chips. Transfer batter to prepared pan; smooth top. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 8 minutes. Remove cake from pan and cool.

The force of the blast did not scatter the crystals, as Bridget’s common sense told her it absolutely should have. Instead it just seemed to disperse, spreading out like a wave. Where the wave spread, the little crystals burst into hot, angry light. And abruptly and all at once, they rose into the air in a cloud of glowing motes. Folly appeared among them, striding forward, flickers of light dancing along her candy-stripe hair, her mismatched eyes blazing. Sark loosed several more blasts, all of which dispersed into the crystals, making them glow with even brighter light. Folly’s voice rang out, cold and hard. “We don’t like it when people try to hurt our friends.” And the entire cloud of crystals flew at Sark like bullets loosed from a gun. Sark

1) We draw power for appliances, lights, and computers from the electric grid. The physical world of appearance draws its power, in general, from the Grid. 2) A great, developing project, driven in part by the needs of physics, is the technology to integrate many dispersed computers into functional units, whose total power can be accessed as needed from any point. That technology is known as Grid technology. It's hot, and it's cool. 3) Grid is short. 4) Grid is not Matrix. I'm sorry, but the sequels tarnished that candidate. And Grid is not Borg.

Back in very ancient times, when the marble columns of the Halls of Orithena still rose from the black rock of Ecba, all the world’s theors would gather beneath the great dome just before noon. Their leader (at first, Adrakhones himself; later, Diax or one of his other fids) would stand on the analemma, waiting for the shaft of light from the oculus to pass over him at midday: a climax celebrated by the singing of the Anathem to our mother Hylaea who had brought us the light of her father Cnoüs. The aut had fallen into disuse when Orithena had been destroyed and the surviving theors had embarked on the Peregrination. But much later, when the theors retreated to the maths, Saunt Cartas drew on it to anchor the liturgy that was then practiced all through the Old Mathic Age. Again it fell into disuse during the Dispersal to the New Periklynes and the Praxic Age that followed, but then, after the Terrible Events and the Reconstitution, it was revived again, in a new form, centered on the winding of a clock. The

Spring had come to Santiago as it did every year, but this one arrived with splashes of violent graffiti in vibrant colors on the walls, anarchist slogans, the mobilization of the unions, and student protests dispersed by police water cannons. University students stood up to the blasts of filthy water with barrages of rocks and returned again and again, taking to the streets with their tender Molotovs ignited by rage. A sudden explosion and the lights would go out; then everybody would rush out to buy candles, hoard candles and more candles to light up the streets and the sidewalks, to stoke the coals of memory, to stamp out the sparks of forgetfulness. As if a comet had descended, its tail brushing against the earth in homage to so many disappeared.

The traditional spirit is already tending as it were to withdraw into itself, and the centers where it is preserved in its entirety are becoming more and more closed and difficult of access; this generalization of confusion corresponds exactly to what must occur in the final phase of the Kali-Yuga. [...] it would be quite logical for the ideas spread by Westerners to turn against them, since they are of a kind that can never beget anything but division and ruin. It is through these ideas that the modern world will perish in one way or another; it is of small importance whether this be by way of quarrels among Westerners themselves, quarrels between nations, between social classes, or, as some people assert, through the attacks of 'Westernized' Easterners-or, another possibility, as the result of a cataclysm brought about by the 'progress of science'; in any case, the dangers facing the Western world are entirely of its own making and proceed from itself. [...] but the spiritual power inherent in tradition, of which its adversaries know nothing, may triumph over the material power when this has played its part, and disperse it as light disperses the shadows; we may even say that it must triumph sooner or later, but it is possible that there will be a period of complete darkness before this happens. The traditional spirit cannot die, being in its essence above death and change; but it can withdraw completely from the outward world, and then there would really be the 'end of a world'.

The crowd dispersed in disappointment, but the experiment wasn't over. Originally, it was thought that the one-dimensional proton would stay in synchronous orbit around Trisolaris forever, but due to friction from solar winds, pieces of the string fell back into the atmosphere. Six Trisolaran hours later, everyone outside noticed the strange lights in the air, gossamer threads that flickered in and out of existence. They soon learned from the news that this was the one-dimensional proton drifting to the ground under the influence of gravity. Even though the string was infinitely thin, it produced a field that could still reflect visible light. It was the first time people had ever seen matter not made out of atoms—the silky strands were merely small portions of a proton. […] But the threads that fell from the sky grew more numerous and denser. Closer to ground, tiny sparkling lights filled the air. The sun and the stars all appeared inside silvery halos. The strings clung to those who went outside, and as they walked, they dragged the lights behind them. When people returned indoors, the lines glimmered under the lamps. As soon as they moved, the reflection from the strings revealed the patterns in the air currents they disturbed. Although the one-dimensional string could only be seen under light and couldn't be felt, people became upset. The torrent of one-dimensional strings continued for more than twenty Trisolaran hours before finally ending, though not because the strings had all fallen to the ground. Although their mass was unimaginably minuscule, they still had some, and so their acceleration under gravity was the same as normal matter. However, once inside the atmosphere, they were completely dominated by the air currents and would never fall to the ground. After being unfolded into one dimension, the strong nuclear force within the proton became far more attenuated, weakening the string. Gradually, it broke into tiny pieces, and the light they reflected was no longer visible. People thought they had disappeared, but pieces of the one-dimensional string would drift in the air of Trisolaris forever.

God, my God, God Whom I meet in darkness, with You it is always the same thing! Always the same question that nobody knows how to answer! I have prayed to You in the daytime with thoughts and reasons, and in the nighttime You have confronted me, scattering thought and reason. I have come to You in the morning with light and with desire, and You have descended upon me, with great gentleness, with most forbearing silence, in this inexplicable night, dispersing light, defeating all desire. I have explained to You a hundred times my motives for entering the monastery and You have listened and said nothing, and I have turned away and wept with shame. Is it true that all my motives have meant nothing? Is it true that all my desires were an illusion? While I am asking questions which You do not answer, You ask me a question which is so simple that I cannot answer. I do not even understand the question. This night, and every night, it is the same question.

He wakes to blinding light and a shockingly verdant landscape: flooded paddy fields with narrow mud bunds snaking between them, barely containing the water whose still surface mirrors the sky; coconut palms that are as abundant as leaves of grass; tangled cucumber vines on the side of a canal; a lake crowded with canoes; and a stately barge parting the smaller vessels like a processional down a church aisle. His nostrils register jackfruit, dried fish, mango, and water. Even before his brain digests these sights, his body—skin, nerve endings, lungs, heart—recognizes the geography of his birth. He never understood how much it mattered. Every bit of this lush landscape is his; its every atom contains him. On this blessed strip of coast where Malayalam is spoken, the flesh and bones of his ancestors have leached into the soil, made their way into the trees, into the iridescent plumage of the parrots on swaying branches, and dispersed themselves into the breeze. He knows the names of the forty-two rivers running down from the mountains, one thousand two hundred miles of waterways, feeding the rich soil in between, and he is one with every atom of it. I’m the seedling in your hand, he thinks, as he gazes on Muslim women in colorful long-sleeved blouses and mundus, with cloths loosely covering their hair, bent over at the waist like paper creased down the middle, moving as one line through the paddy fields, poking new life into the soil. Whatever is next for me, whatever the story of my life, the roots that must nourish it are here. He feels transformed as though by a religious experience, but it has nothing to do with religion.

Her father's books were not read in a normal way. Some of them were read with the hands. Some were read by placing them at the centre of the forehead. One of the books could only be read with eyes closed. Another one could only be read in dreams, while the reader was asleep, with the book under the pillow. There was a very special book of her father's which could only be read by the dead. It was placed in their coffins, over the heart. There was one book that was only read by drinking. Water was poured on its waterproof pages and the water was drunk. The words filled out in the blood and heart and brains, till the reader became the words. There was another special book that was read in the wind. The book was left dangling, the wind blew its pages, and the reader, with the light on their face, read the words which the wind dispersed.

At the time of Mary's birth the whole world was plunged in darkness. The heathen nations were steeped in vice and pride. The Jews, too, had corrupted their ways and departed from God. Everywhere there was sin and gloom, no bright spot on the face of the earth. But when Mary was born a light arose amid the darkness; the dawn of the glorious day that was to usher in the Redeemer. So, too, the darkness of the sinner's soul is dispersed by Mary's holy influence. Where the love of her is born in the soul, all becomes full of light, and Jesus comes to make His habitation there. Mary, in the first hour of her life, brought more glory to God then all the Saints of the Old Testament. In her were made perfect the obedience of Abraham, the chastity of Joseph, the patience of Job, the meekness of Moses, the prudence of Josue. It is because she is the model and pattern of these and all other virtues that she can communicate them to us. (September 8 The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

The morning of the next day opened drearily, the sun appearing only after protracted periods of half-light, and then only as a pale paper disc, more like the moon than itself, as, for a few moments at a time it floated across some corridor of cloud. Slow, lack-lustre veils descended with almost imperceptible motion over Gormenghast, blurring its countless windows, as with a dripping smoke. The mountain appeared and disappeared a score of times during the morning as the drifts obscured it or lifted from its sides. As the day advanced the gauzes thinned, and it was in the late afternoon that the clouds finally dispersed to leave in their place an expanse of translucence, that stain, chill and secret, in the throat of a lily, a sky so peerless, that as Fuchsia stared into its glacid depths she began unwittingly to break and re-break the flower-stem in her hands.

What I want, in short, is that my (mobile) image, buffeted among a thousand shifting photographs, altering with situation and age, should always coincide with my (profound) "self"; but it is the contrary that must be said: "myself" never coincides with my image; for it is the image which is heavy, motionless, stubborn (which is why society sustains it) , and "myself" which is light, divided, dispersed; like a bottle-imp, "myself" doesn't hold still, giggling in my jar: if only Photography could give me a neutral, anatomic body, a body which signifies nothing! Alas, I am doomed by (well meaning) Photography always to have an expression: my body never finds its zero degree, no one can give it to me (perhaps only my mother? For it is not indifference which erases the weight of the image-the Photomat always turns you into a criminal type, wanted by the police-but love, extreme love).

The parliamentarian represented a bottleneck in the process. She would need to scrutinize each provision, judging whether it fell within the acceptable bounds of the rule governing reconciliation, an audit known as a Byrd Bath—in honor of the West Virginia senator Robert Byrd, who created the arcane rules back in the seventies. Every provision in a reconciliation bill needed to have a “fiscal implication.” Otherwise, the parliamentarian would rule it out of bounds and excise it from the bill. If she rejected a provision, Schumer would be sent scrambling for a last-minute fix. The fragile structure that Schumer and Manchin had concocted might collapse. Before the Senate dispersed, Schumer summoned Manchin to his office. He felt as if he needed to light a fire under Manchin, to convince him that it was time to rush. —

She felt her body disperse, her structure release into elemental and shifting from fire to air, to water to earth. And then there was no Earth, and it was far beyond the Sun’s keeping of years. And all was a matrix of sound. Lahana lost hold of time and became as a song lilting upon breath. Then a great longing, a longing to transfigure. The song became a dance, and touch was like a celebration of life. And life opened to a richer song. A longing for the intensification of elemental division. For the beauty of division in symphonic harmony. Lahana felt pulled with the others in her dance, gathering matter and weight and solidity. She felt time catch hold of her and an emergent cosmos. Time awakening her as she submerged into the fabric of this still young cosmos. Becoming fire shifting to air, to water to earth. Her spirit dancing with the Earthlight that began to reach through the tumult of the elements. Earthlight pouring into the spinning particles of matter and seeking harmony of flesh with spirit – with as much longing as Lahana felt. Lahana saw time awaken the evolving awareness of the Earth Spirit – embraced within the evolving awareness of the Universe. And both these, Earth and Cosmos, embracing Lahana’s own journey, offering her the garments of their flesh, offering her the sustenance of their bodies. Then a deep breath ran through her, slow and complete. And she woke, to the day and Sun, and the stones of the Wheel of Light before her.