Lots Of Good Memories Quotes

I didn't want it to be one good memory that led to a lot of bad ones. I wanted it to stay what it was, one amazing moment, something that was strong and sweet enough to stand on its own. Something I could remember without any pain. - Kate

You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.

Simon," Isabelle interrupted, "you're talking like a nerd." She said it almost fondly, but it freaked Simon out more. "And I don't know how to be smooth, sexy vampire Simon for you, either!" Isabelle's perfect mouth curved, like a dark half-moon in her pale face. "You were never that smooth, Simon." "Oh," said Simon. "Oh, thank God. I know you've had a lot of boyfriends. I remember that was a faerie, and"--another flash of memory, this time most unwelcome--"a...Lord Montgomery? You dated a member of the nobility? How am I ever going to compete with that?" Isabelle still looked fond, but it was diluted with a good deal of impatience. "You're Lord Montgomery, Simon!

Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.

He didn‘t care what she said—happiness was a lot more than good health and a poor memory. Happiness was this. It was her, and him, and that moment. Fuck Albert Schweitzer. He could kiss his ass. Happiness wasreal.

A great love is a lot like a good memory. When it's there, and you know it's there, but its just out of your reach, it can be all that you think about. And you can focus on it, and try to force it. But the more that you do, the more you seem to push it away. But if you're patient, and hold still...Maybe. Just maybe, it'll come to you.

That might be the problem. A lot of the good stuff is from the past. The Jonas Brothers, High School Musical, our shared grief. Our friendship is based on memories. What do we have now?

I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people have loved those songs, And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs, I bed if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.

His being there was stirring up a lot of memories she'd have been happier to leave as sentimental sediment. Not that they weren't good memories. That was the trouble.

Far be in from me to dictate how you should assuage your guilt. Do you have a lot of it?" She bit his good shoulder. "You're about to find out." She toppled them both off the bench and onto the mat. "Well, ouch. I take it guilt doesn't bring out your gentler side.

Yes, such has been my lot since childhood. Everyone read signs of non-existent evil traits in my features. But since they were expected to be there, they did make their appearance. Because I was reserved, they said I was sly, so I grew reticent. I was keenly aware of good and evil, but instead of being indulged I was insulted and so I became spiteful. I was sulky while other children were merry and talkative, but though I felt superior to them I was considered inferior. So I grew envious. I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate. My cheerless youth passed in conflict with myself and society, and fearing ridicule I buried my finest feelings deep in my heart, and there they died. I spoke the truth, but nobody believed me, so I began to practice duplicity. Having come to know society and its mainsprings, I became versed in the art of living and saw how others were happy without that proficiency, enjoying for free the favors I had so painfully striven for. It was then that despair was born in my heart--not the despair that is cured with a pistol, but a cold, impotent desperation, concealed under a polite exterior and a good-natured smile. I became a moral cripple; I had lost one half of my soul, for it had shriveled, dried up and died, and I had cut it off and cast it away, while the other half stirred and lived, adapted to serve every comer. No one noticed this, because no one suspected there had been another half. Now, however, you have awakened memories of it in me, and what I have just done is to read its epitaph to you. Many regard all epitaphs as ridiculous, but I do not, particularly when I remember what rests beneath them.

A lot of it was just a really good time on our own terms – many of the memories revolve around me and one of the girls leaving a situation we were bored of or didn’t like, just to spend time with each other.

With lots of color and lots of plants, good smells, plenty of home cooking and loving memories, even a shack can become a wonderful and lovable home.

My dearest friend Abigail, These probably could be the last words I write to you and I may not live long enough to see your response but I truly have lived long enough to live forever in the hearts of my friends. I thought a lot about what I should write to you. I thought of giving you blessings and wishes for things of great value to happen to you in future; I thought of appreciating you for being the way you are; I thought to give sweet and lovely compliments for everything about you; I thought to write something in praise of your poems and prose; and I thought of extending my gratitude for being one of the very few sincerest friends I have ever had. But that is what all friends do and they only qualify to remain as a part of the bunch of our loosely connected memories and that's not what I can choose to be, I cannot choose to be lost somewhere in your memories. So I thought of something through which I hope you will remember me for a very long time. I decided to share some part of my story, of what led me here, the part we both have had in common. A past, which changed us and our perception of the world. A past, which shaped our future into an unknown yet exciting opportunity to revisit the lost thoughts and to break free from the libido of our lost dreams. A past, which questioned our whole past. My dear, when the moment of my past struck me, in its highest demonised form, I felt dead, like a dead-man walking in flesh without a soul, who had no reason to live any more. I no longer saw any meaning of life but then I saw no reason to die as well. I travelled to far away lands, running away from friends, family and everyone else and I confined myself to my thoughts, to my feelings and to myself. Hours, days, weeks and months passed and I waited for a moment of magic to happen, a turn of destiny, but nothing happened, nothing ever happens. I waited and I counted each moment of it, thinking about every moment of my life, the good and the bad ones. I then saw how powerful yet weak, bright yet dark, beautiful yet ugly, joyous yet grievous; is a one single moment. One moment makes the difference. Just a one moment. Such appears to be the extreme and undisputed power of a single moment. We live in a world of appearance, Abigail, where the reality lies beyond the appearances, and this is also only what appears to be such powerful when in actuality it is not. I realised that the power of the moment is not in the moment itself. The power, actually, is in us. Every single one of us has the power to make and shape our own moments. It is us who by feeling joyful, celebrate for a moment of success; and it is also us who by feeling saddened, cry and mourn over our losses. I, with all my heart and mind, now embrace this power which lies within us. I wish life offers you more time to make use of this power. Remember, we are our own griefs, my dear, we are our own happinesses and we are our own remedies. Take care! Love, Francis. Title: Letter to Abigail Scene: "Death-bed" Chapter: The Road To Awe

Look," she told me. "A good kreda is very hard to find. I invested a lot of time and memory in you. I had no intention of giving all that up, just because you were going to be in a bad mood for a decade or two.

Not all options will be good ones. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad lot and ride the storm.

I am not my uncle. I am not my father, but I do subscribe to the twenty rules he taught me from the cradle. One, if you’re afraid to fight, then you’ll never win. Two, in times of tragedy and turmoil, you’ll learn who your true friends are. Treasure them because they are few and far between. Three, know your enemies, and never become your own worst one. Four, be grateful for those enemies. They will keep you honest and ever striving to better yourself. Five, listen to all good advice, but never substitute someone else’s judgment for your own. Six, all men and women lie. But never lie to yourself. Seven, many will flatter you. Befriend the ones who don’t, for they will remind you that you’re human and not infallible. Eight, never fear the truth. It’s the lies that will destroy you. Nine, your worst decisions will always be those that are made out of fear. Think all matters through with a clear head. Ten, your mistakes won’t define you, but your memories, good and bad, will. Eleven, be grateful for your mistakes as they will tell you who and what you’re not. Twelve, don’t be afraid to examine the past, it’s how you learn what you don’t want to do again. Thirteen, there’s a lot to be said for not knowing better. Fourteen, all men die. Not everyone lives. Fifteen, on your deathbed, your greatest regrets will be what you didn’t do. Sixteen, don’t be afraid to love. Yes, it’s a weakness that can be used against you. But it’s also a source of the greatest strength you will ever know. Seventeen, the past is history written in stone that can’t be altered. The future is transitory and never guaranteed. Today is the only thing you can change for certain. Have the courage to do so and make the most of it because it could be all you’ll ever have. Eighteen, you can be in a crowd, surrounded by people, and still be lonely. Nineteen, love all, regardless of what they do. Trust only those you have to. Harm none until they harm you. And twenty… Never be afraid to kill or destroy your enemies. They won’t hesitate to kill or destroy you.” - Darling Cruel

Mental imbalance is about as acceptable as herpes. It’s never going to be accepted. But really, it’s a disease just like cancer. It just happens, and eats away all the good parts of your brain, like judgment and happiness and perception and memory and life. And you can die from depression just like any other disease. And it’s not as if people choose it. So why is it still a joke of medicine? “She died of cancer.” is a lot more socially acceptable to people than “She committed suicide.

It's true, Christmas can feel like a lot of work, particularly for mothers. But when you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you'll find you've created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul.

So let’s talk a little about April May’s theory of tiered fame. Tier 1: Popularity You are a big deal in your high school or neighborhood. You have a peculiar vehicle that people around town recognize, you are a pastor at a medium-to-large church, you were once the star of the high school football team. Tier 2: Notoriety You are recognized and/or well-known within certain circles. Maybe you’re a preeminent lepidopterist whom all the other lepidopterists idolize. Or you could be the mayor or meteorologist in a medium-sized city. You might be one of the 1.1 million living people who has a Wikipedia page. Tier 3: Working-Class Fame A lot of people know who you are and they are distributed around the world. There’s a good chance that a stranger will approach you to say hi at the grocery store. You are a professional sports player, musician, author, actor, television host, or internet personality. You might still have to hustle to make a living, but your fame is your job. You’ll probably trend on Twitter if you die. Tier 4: True Fame You get recognized by fans enough that it is a legitimate burden. People take pictures of you without your permission, and no one would scoff if you called yourself a celebrity. When you start dating someone, you wouldn’t be surprised to read about it in magazines. You are a performer, politician, host, or actor whom the majority of people in your country would recognize. Your humanity is so degraded that people are legitimately surprised when they find out that you’re “just like them” because, sometimes, you buy food. You never have to worry about money again, but you do need a gate with an intercom on your driveway. Tier 5: Divinity You are known by every person in your world, and you are such a big deal that they no longer consider you a person. Your story is much larger than can be contained within any human lifetime, and your memory will continue long after your earthly form wastes away. You are a founding father of a nation, a creator of a religion, an emperor, or an idea. You are not currently alive.

I should get rid of those boxes, full of all that junk. Burn them all – make a bonfire in the garden and burn the bloody lot of it. All the captured bits of me, the scraps and pictures and notes and letters, burn it all, burn the lot of it – every last trace of me. Every last bit of me – up in flames and gone for good. Forgotten and gone. Rid me of these memories... Yes, that’s something to do this afternoon. Get out into the garden, and burn the past... To ashes with.

We tend to spend a lot of energy focusing on resolving traumas in the hope that we will be free from the pain trauma brings. What we often miss or overlook is the power of building memories of God’s goodness that give us a sense of being loved.

I let go of him and remain standing. I promised myself I would do this, if I ever had the chance again.. I promised I would do this the first moment I could. 'I love you,' I say, the words coming out in an unintelligible rush. Cardan looks taken aback. Or possibly I spoke so fast he's not even sure what I said. 'You need not say it out of pity,' he says finally, with great deliberateness. 'Or because I was under a curse. I have asked you to lie to me in the past, in this very room, but I would beg you not to lie now.' My cheeks heat at the memory of those lies. 'I have not made myself easy to love,' he says, and I hear the echo of his mother's words in his. When I imagined telling him, I thought I would say the words, and it would be like pulling off a bandage- painful and swift. But I didn't think he would doubt me. 'I first started liking you when we went to talk to the rulers of the low Courts,' I say. 'You were funny, which was weird. And when we went to Hollow Hall, you were clever. I kept remembering how you'd been the one to get us out of the brugh after Dain's coronation, right before I put the knife to your throat.' He doesn't try to interrupt, so I have to choice but to barrel on. 'After I tricked you into being High King,' I say. 'I thought once you hated me, I could go back to hating you. But I didn't. And I felt so stupid. I thought I would get my heart broken. I thought it was a weakness that you would use against me. But then you saved me from the Undersea when it would have been much more convenient to just leave me to rot. After that, I started to hope my feelings were returned. But then there was the exile-' I take a ragged breath. 'I hid a lot, I guess. I thought if I didn't, if I let myself love you, I would burn up like a match. Like the whole matchbook.' 'But now you've explained it,' he says. 'And you do love me.' 'I love you,' I confirm. 'Because I am clever and funny,' he says, smiling. 'You didn't mention my handsomeness.' 'Or your deliciousness,' I say. 'Although those are both good qualities.' He pulls me to him, so that we're both lying on the couch. I look down at the blackness of his eyes and the softness of his mouth. I wipe a fleck of dried blood from the top of one pointed ear. 'What was it like?' I ask. 'Being a serpent.' He hesitates. 'It was like being trapped in the dark,' he says. 'I was alone, and my instinct was to lash out. I was perhaps not entirely an animal, but neither was I myself. I could not reason. There was only feelings- hatred and terror and the desire to destroy.' I start to speak, but he stops me with a gesture. 'And you.' He looks at me, his lips curving in something that's not quite a smile; it's more and less than that. 'I knew little else, but I always knew you.' And when he kisses me, I feel as though I can finally breathe again.

Writers can be a lot of fun at parties, but word to the wise: Keep an eye on your good memories. They’ll strip them down for parts.

After that they browsed for a minute or two in a semi-detached fashion. Nick found a set of Trollope which had a relatively modest and approachable look among the rest, and took down The Way We Live Now, with an armorial bookplate, the pages uncut. “What have you found there?” said Lord Kessler, in a genially possessive tone. “Ah, you’re a Trollope man, are you?” “I’m not sure I am, really,” said Nick. “I always think he wrote too fast. What was it Henry James said, about Trollope and his ‘great heavy shovelfuls of testimony to constituted English matters’?” Lord Kessler paid a moment’s wry respect to this bit of showing off, but said, “Oh, Trollope’s good. He’s very good on money.” “Oh…yes…” said Nick, feeling doubly disqualified by his complete ignorance of money and by the aesthetic prejudice which had stopped him from ever reading Trollope. “To be honest, there’s a lot of him I haven’t yet read.” “No, this one is pretty good,” Nick said, gazing at the spine with an air of judicious concession. Sometimes his memory of books he pretended to have read became almost as vivid as that of books he had read and half forgotten, by some fertile process of auto-suggestion. He pressed the volume back into place and closed the gilded cage.

You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, that alone may serve some day for our salvation.

You mentioned how all marriages have Category 5 moments, and how you didn’t think your previous relationship would have made it through those moments. I think about that sometimes. About what could make one couple survive a Category 5 moment, but a different couple might not. I’ve thought about it enough to come up with a possible reason. Hurricanes aren’t a constant threat to coastal towns. There are more days with great weather and perfect beach days than there are hurricanes. Marriages are similar, in that there are a lot of great days with no arguments, when both people are filled with so much love for each other. But then you have the threatening-weather days. There might only be a few a year, but they can do enough damage that it takes years to repair. Some of the coastal towns will be prepared for the bad-weather days. They’ll save their best resources and most of their energy so that they’ll be stocked up and prepared for the aftermath. But some towns won’t be as prepared. They’ll put all their resources into the good weather days in hopes that the severe weather will never come. It’s the lazier choice and the choice with greater consequences. I think that’s the difference in the marriages that survive and the marriages that don’t. Some people think the focus in a marriage should be put on all the perfect days. They love as much and as hard as they can when everything is going right. But if a person gives all of themselves in the good times, hoping the bad times never come, there may not be enough resources or energy left to withstand those Category 5 moments. I know without a doubt that we’re going to have so many good moments. No matter what life throws at us, we’re going to make great memories together,

I learned that my new lover was hard, but always good. She did not tease. If you pursued her, she would reveal her sweetest secrets and uncover her hidden places. Yes, she would grant those who came to her by car a measured beauty. There were wonderful things to be seen from the road. Her lesser suitors would jump out of their autos, snapping pictures, trying to save memories before having them, and hurry on. But what can be seen from a road is more enticing than revealing – like a shapely woman whose fleshly mystery cannot be hidden by modest garments but is made more alluring. From the roadside her eyes would invite and challenge: “Will you pursue me?” I did. And though my pursuit cost me a lot – pain, humiliation, hunger and sleepless nights – she was good.

A few months into our relationship, we had a campout down at my dad’s place. There were a lot of people from church, and we played games and fished into the night. We all gathered around a huge campfire, ate dinner, and sang songs together. Missy was clinging all over me, mainly because she was scared of everything flying in the air or crawling on the ground. It was one of those nights when you feel closer to God and everyone else because of the setting and the ambience--despite the bug activity. That was the first time we said “I love you” to each other. Now, there is still an ongoing debate as to who said it first. I remember clearly that she whispered, “I love you,” and then I responded. She is convinced that I said it first, but she was under the influence of bug paranoia. I believe her condition affected her memory.

The lobby of the Fanny Briggs Memorial Building was almost finished when she arrived. As if to distract from the minuscule and cramped philosophy of what would transpire on the floors above, the city offered visitors the spacial bounty of the lobby. The ersatz marble was firm underfoot like real marble, sheer, and produced trembling echoes effortlessly. The circle of Doric columns braced the weight above without complaint. The mural, however, was not complete. It started out jauntily enough to Lila Mae’s left. Cheerless Indians holding up a deerskin in front of a fire. The original tenants, sure. A galleon negotiating the tricky channels around the island. Two beaming Indians trading beads to a gang of white men—the infamous sale of the Island. Big moment, have to include that, the first of many dubious transactions in the city’s history. (They didn’t have elevators yet. That’s why the scenes look so flat to Lila Mae: the city is dimensionless.) The mural jumped to the Revolution then, she noticed, skipped over a lot of stuff. The painter seemed to be making it up as he went along, like the men who shaped the city. The Revolution scene was a nice setpiece—the colonists pulling down the statue of King George III. They melted it down for ammunition, if she remembers correctly. It’s always nice when a good mob comes together. The painting ended there. (Someone knocks at the door of her room in 117 Second Avenue, but she doesn’t open her eyes.) Judging from the amount of wall space that remained to Lila Mae’s right, the mural would have to get even more brief in its chronicle of the city’s greatest hits. Either the painter had misjudged how much space he had or the intervening years weren’t that compelling to him. Just the broad strokes, please.

WhatsApp forwards about love and kindness. I wonder if on a Sunday morning all these enthusiastic do-gooders could send out truly helpful things like ‘11 cures for a hangover’ or ‘How to clean puke stains from your dress’. I have no such luck; all I get are strange messages like ‘Little memories can last for years’. Very useful when you are trying hard to forget all the embarrassing things you did the night before. Do I really need messages saying, ‘A little hug can wipe out a big tear’ or ‘Friendship is a rainbow’? There is also a message saying, ‘God blues you’, which I am trying to guess could mean that either God wants to bless me, rule me or make a blue movie with me. Has it ever happened that a murderer just before committing his crime gets a message stating, ‘Life is about loving’, and stops in his tracks, or a banker reads ‘No greater sin than cheating’, and quits his job? So, what do these messages really do? I think they allow lazy people to think that they are doing a good deed in the easiest possible manner by sending these daft bits of information out into the universe. Go out there! Sweep a pavement, plant a tree, feed a stray dog. Do something, anything; rather than just using your fingers to tap three keys and destroy 600 people’s brain cells in one shot. 11 a.m.: This is turning out to be a hectic day. The

I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean.

Much the same could be said of memory. We know a good deal about how memories are assembled and how and where they are stored, but not why we keep some and not others. It clearly has little to do with actual value or utility. I can remember the entire starting lineup of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals baseball team—something that has been of no importance to me since 1964 and wasn’t actually very useful then—and yet I cannot recollect the number of my own cell phone, or where I parked my car in any large parking lot, or what was the third of three things my wife told me to get at the supermarket, or any of a great many other things that are unquestionably more urgent and necessary than remembering the starting players for the 1964 Cardinals (who were, incidentally, Tim McCarver, Bill White, Julian Javier, Dick Groat, Ken Boyer, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and Mike Shannon). So there is a huge amount we have left to learn and many things we may never learn.

As awkward as our first night together was, our honeymoon was even worse. As soon as we arrived in Hawaii, I became ill with strep throat. I mostly slept and lay in the bathtub in our hotel room for a week shaking violently with a fever. Missy looked out the window at the beautiful beach and Pacific Ocean and cried. It was miserable. I was sweating profusely and thought I was going to die. We’d saved our money for months--about eight hundred dollars--to go to Hawaii, and it ended up being the worst trip of our lives. My getting sick actually saved us from the embarrassment of realizing that we couldn’t do much on eight hundred bucks anyway. We laugh now at being so naïve and young. When we went back to Hawaii for the season finale of Duck Dynasty last year, Missy was determined to make up for a lot of bad memories. I did everything she wanted to do. We went on helicopter rides, boat rides, romantic dinners, and everything else you could do in Hawaii. She got her money’s worth the second time!

As they say in the movies, if you want in, fine; if not, you may leave at this point, and nothing will ever be said. It is asking a lot to expect men to walk into a potentially dangerous assignment blindfolded.” Of course nobody left; the men who had been called here were not quitters. Besides, something would be said, and Davenport had a good memory. These were professional officers. One of the compensations for wearing a uniform and earning less money than an equally talented man can make in the real world is the off chance of being killed.

Leta walked to the door and opened it with a ready smile for Colby Lane. And found herself looking straight into the eye of a man she hadn’t seen face-to-face in thirty-six years. Matt Holden matched her face against his memories of a young, slight, beautiful woman whose eyes loved him every time they looked at him. His heart spun like a cartwheel in his chest. “Cecily said it was Colby,” Leta said unsteadily. “Strange. She phoned me and asked if I was free this evening.” His broad shoulders shrugged and he smiled faintly. “I’m free every evening.” “That doesn’t sound like the life of a playboy widower,” Leta said caustically. “My wife was a vampire,” he said. “She sucked me dry of life and hope. Her drinking wore me down. Her death was a relief for both of us. Do I get to come in?” he added, glancing down the hall. “I’m going to collect dust if I stand out here much longer, and I’m hungry. A sack of McDonald’s hamburgers and fries doesn’t do a lot for me.” “I hear it’s a presidential favorite,” Cecily mused, joining them. “Come in, Senator Holden.” “It was Matt before,” he pointed out. “Or are you trying to butter me up for a bigger donation to the museum?” She shrugged. “Pick a reason.” He looked at Leta, who was uncomfortable. “Well, at least you can’t hang up on me here. You’ll be glad to know that our son isn’t speaking to me. He isn’t speaking to you, either, or so he said,” he added. “I suppose he won’t talk to you?” he added to Cecily. “He said goodbye very finally, after telling me that I was an idiot to think he’d change his mind and want to marry me just because he turned out to have mixed blood,” she said, not relating the shocking intimacy that had prefaced his remarks. “I’ll punch him for that,” Matt said darkly. “Ex-special forces,” Leta spoke up with a faint attempt at humor, nodding toward Matt. “He was in uniform when we went on our first date.” “You wore a white cotton dress with a tiered skirt,” he recalled, “and let your hair down. Hair…” He turned back to Cecily and grimaced. “Good God, what did you do that for?” “Tate likes long hair, that’s what I did it for,” she said, venom in her whole look. “I can’t wait for him to see it, even if I have to settle for sending him a photo!” “I hope you never get mad at me,” Matt said. “Fat chance.

Three researchers at Stanford University noticed the same thing about the undergraduates they were teaching, and they decided to study it. First, they noticed that while all the students seemed to use digital devices incessantly, not all students did. True to stereotype, some kids were zombified, hyperdigital users. But some kids used their devices in a low-key fashion: not all the time, and not with two dozen windows open simultaneously. The researchers called the first category of students Heavy Media Multitaskers. Their less frantic colleagues were called Light Media Multitaskers. If you asked heavy users to concentrate on a problem while simultaneously giving them lots of distractions, the researchers wondered, how good was their ability to maintain focus? The hypothesis: Compared to light users, the heavy users would be faster and more accurate at switching from one task to another, because they were already so used to switching between browser windows and projects and media inputs. The hypothesis was wrong. In every attentional test the researchers threw at these students, the heavy users did consistently worse than the light users. Sometimes dramatically worse. They weren’t as good at filtering out irrelevant information. They couldn’t organize their memories as well. And they did worse on every task-switching experiment. Psychologist Eyal Ophir, an author of the study, said of the heavy users: “They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing. The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.” This is just the latest illustration of the fact that the brain cannot multitask. Even if you are a Stanford student in the heart of Silicon Valley.

It will be long before everyone is wiped out. People live in war time, they always have. There was terror down through history - and the men who saw the Spanish Armada sail over the rim of the world, who saw the Black death wipe out half of Europe, those men were frightened, terrified. But though they lived and died in fear, I am here; we have built again. And so I will belong to a dark age, and historians will say "We have few documents to show how the common people lived at this time. Records lead us to believe that a majority were killed. But there were glorious men." And school children will sigh and learn the names of Truman and Senator McCarthy. Oh, it is hard for me to reconcile myself to this. But maybe this is why I am a girl - - - so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill, because there isn't time, because there isn't time at all, but instead the quick desperate fear, the ticking clock, and the snow which comes too suddenly upon the summer. Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, into my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Perhaps that would help, to synthesize my ideas into a philosophy for me, now, at the age of eighteen, but the clock ticks, ah yes, "At my back I hear, time's winged chariot hovering near." And I have too much conscience, too much habit to sit and stare at snow, thick now, and evenly white and muffling on the ground. God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

The more we have of something, the less happiness we derive from it. We continuously raise the bar for what we want or feel we need in order to be happy—and the hedonic treadmill spins faster with ambition. In other words, the downside to being ambitious is a constant sense of dissatisfaction with our achievements. What works well in Denmark is that enjoying a good quality of life does not have to cost a lot of money. If I lost my job and my savings, I would still be able to enjoy most of the same things I enjoy today. It is not only about how much money we make, it is also about what we do with the money we have. See experiences as an investment in happy memories and in your personal story and development. Our happiness has an impact on our health. A greater level of happiness predicts better future physical health. The biggest obstacles to happiness are feeling inferior or excluded. Some of the best decisions we make come from that inner voice that says, ‘Why not?’ You are likely to be more efficient if you have less time. Meetings are employees talking about work that they have done or work that they are going to do, and managers are people whose job it is to interrupt people. Both are killing our productivity.

I remember Mrs. Brool, whose photograph is still in the tuckshop; she served there until an uncle in Australia left her a lot of money. In fact, I remember so much that I often think I ought to write a book. Now what should I call it? 'Memories of Rod and Lines'--eh? [Cheers and laughter. That was a good one, people thought--one of Chips's best.] Well, well, perhaps I shall write it, some day. But I'd rather tell you about it, really. I remember . . . I remember . . . but chiefly I remember all your faces. I never forget them. I have thousands of faces in my mind--the faces of boys. If you come and see me again in years to come--as I hope you all will--I shall try to remember those older faces of yours, but it's just possible I shan't be able to--and then some day you'll see me somewhere and I shan't recognize you and you'll say to yourself, 'The old boy doesn't remember me.' [Laughter] But I do remember you--as you are now. That's the point. In my mind you never grow up at all. Never. Sometimes, for instance, when people talk to me about our respected Chairman of the Governors, I think to myself, 'Ah, yes, a jolly little chap with hair that sticks up on top--and absolutely no idea whatever about the difference between a Gerund and a Gerundive.' [Loud laughter]

..though my grades weren't the kind you have to hide from people, I don't have any memory of being praised for getting a good grade or being the best in anything. I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society. If something interested me, and I could study it at my own pace and approach it the way I liked, I was pretty efficient at acquiring knowledge and skills. The art of translation is a good example. I learned it on my own, the pay-as-you-go method. It takes a lot of time to acquire a skill this way, and you go through a lot of trial and error, but what you learn sticks with you.

I struggle with words. Never could express myself the way I wanted. My mind fights my mouth, and thoughts get stuck in my throat. Sometimes they stay stuck for seconds or even minutes. Some thoughts stay for years; some have stayed hidden all my life. As a child, I stuttered. What was inside couldn't get out. I'm still not real fluent. I don't know a lot of good words. If I were wrongfully accused of a crime, I'd have a tough time explaining my innocence. I'd stammer and stumble and choke up until the judge would throw me in jail. Words aren't my friends. Music is. Sounds, notes, rhythms. I talk through music. Maybe that's why I became a loner, someone who loves privacy and doesn't reveal himself too easily. My friendliness might fool you. Come into my dressing room and I'll shake your hand, pose for a picture, make polite small talk. I'll be as nice as I can, hoping you'll be nice to me. I'm genuinely happy to meet you and exchange a little warmth. I have pleasant acquaintances with thousands of people the world over. But few, if any, really know me. And that includes my own family. It's not that they don't want to; it's because I keep my feelings to myself. If you hurt me, chances are I won't tell you. I'll just move on. Moving on is my method of healing my hurt and, man, I've been moving on all my life. Now it's time to stop. This book is a place for me to pause and look back at who I was and what I became. As I write, I'm seventy hears old, and all the joy and hurts, small and large, that I've stored up inside me...well, I want to pull 'em out and put 'em on the page. When I've been described on other people's pages, I don't recognize myself. In my mind, no one has painted the real me. Writers have done their best, but writers have missed the nitty-gritty. Maybe because I've hidden myself, maybe because I'm not an easy guy to understand. Either way, I want to open up and leave a true account of who I am. When it comes to my own life, others may know the cold facts better than me. Scholars have told me to my face that I'm mixed up. I smile but don't argue. Truth is, cold facts don't tell the whole story. Reading this, some may accuse me of remembering wrong. That's okay, because I'm not writing a cold-blooded history. I'm writing a memory of my heart. That's the truth I'm after - following my feelings, no matter where they lead. I want to try to understand myself, hoping that you - my family, my friends, my fans - will understand me as well. This is a blues story. The blues are a simple music, and I'm a simple man. But the blues aren't a science; the blues can't be broken down like mathematics. The blues are a mystery, and mysteries are never as simple as they look.

I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people have loved these songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope that they feel it’s enough. I really do because they’ve made me happy. And I’m only one person.

Diana came over to see us off the morning we left for the airport. The four of us stood in our lower hallway saying good-bye with lots of hugs and good wishes. Diana and I were both in tears, as she held Patrick close and said she would miss him “tremendously.” We promised to write to each other and keep up our friendship. Not until later would Diana realize that the past year of being on her own in London and caring for Patrick would be, as she was to say, “the happiest year of my life.” I hugged her and assured her, “We’ll think of you every day and pray for good news from London soon. But,” I continued, “we care very much for you and will help you in any way we can, whatever happens.

I had an amazing feeling when i finally held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them,I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.

I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape on my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope that they fell it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm the only one person.

It is said that when Martin Luther would slip into one of his darker places (which happened a lot, the dude was totally bipolar), he would comfort himself by saying, “Martin, be calm, you are baptized.” I suspect his comfort came not from recalling the moment of baptism itself, or in relying on baptism as a sort of magic charm, but in remembering what his baptism signified: his identity as a beloved child of God. Because ultimately, baptism is a naming. When Jesus emerged from the waters of the Jordan, a voice from heaven declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Jesus did not begin to be loved at the moment of his baptism, nor did he cease to be loved when his baptism became a memory. Baptism simply named the reality of his existing and unending belovedness. As my friend Nadia puts it, “Identity. It’s always God’s first move.”9 So, too, it is with us. In baptism, we are identified as beloved children of God, and our adoption into the sprawling, beautiful, dysfunctional family of the church is celebrated by whoever happens to be standing on the shoreline with a hair dryer and deviled eggs. This is why the baptism font is typically located near the entrance of a church. The central aisle represents the Christian’s journey through life toward God, a journey that begins with baptism. The good news is you are a beloved child of God; the bad news is you don’t get to choose your siblings.

I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.

I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I just thought to myself that in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand. And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope that they feel it’s enough. I really do because they’ve made me happy. And I’m only one person.

I started to stand, but I neeed to say more to Tracey. “Tracey, I apologize again for calling you ‘Arvey’ all that time.” Her whole body, already still, stiffened. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known your real name.” One hand slipped up under her hair, as if swiping a tear. “I hope you never do anything like the picture again because it caused a lot of trouble, but there’s something important I want you to know.” She slowly raised her head and faxed me with damp, red eyes. Memory took me back to that night Grandma explained why she was so happy in spite of the horrors she had survived. I wanted to do what Grandma had done – leave the bad times behind so I could enjoy the good times. I wanted to close the door on this whole drama. “Tracey, I forgive you.

I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she could say something more meaningful. “I’m not. If he’d been a good uncle, I’d have stayed in Boston. Never would have found my way to San Francisco,” he said. Camille knew where the rest of his story led and grinned. “And you never would have rescued my father from a pickpocket,” she added. He started to laugh, a quiet, almost personal chuckle, like he was thinking about some funny memory. Camille caught the bug of laughter and wanted to join in. “What is it?” she asked. “Your father didn’t need a rescuer. He caught the pickpocket himself,” Oscar answered, a hand on his abdomen from all his laughter. “And then he invited him inside for dinner.” Her smile fell flat. She stared at him, trying to comprehend what he’d just said. “You?” she asked, dumbfounded. “You were the pickpocket?” Oscar nodded, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah. I wasn’t very good at it.” Her father could have had him arrested or shooed him away without thinking twice. But he’d invited Oscar inside. He gave him work, food…a real chance. “Why didn’t he tell me?” she asked, feeling like she’d been duped once again. All the lies her father had woven to cover up his secrets had become so frayed, Camille wondered if she had truly known him at all. “To give me a clean slate with everyone. Even you.” Oscar moved toward her in cautious, deliberate steps. “We’re alone. We should talk.” The pantry was cramped and dismal despite the oil lamp, and Camille had a sudden urge to flee. “About what?” she asked, her ears burning. She still reeled with the knowledge that the pickpocket story hadn’t been real, just like her mother’s story hadn’t been real. Oscar stopped within a few inches from her and reached a hand around her waist. “About our night together, Camille,” he answered, his dimples forming. “There’s a lot to say.

..:Seek wisdom about the good life, yet, remain innocent when it comes to evil… Pursue a life that creates peace and builds up our brothers and sisters… Seek not your own rewards nor benefits by doing so… For what good would there be in doing this???\ Welcome all people, whether weak in faith or spirit without debaiting and disputing their opinions… Build them up… Get rid off umpleasant old memories and negative habits… It's time to clean up and renew your mind set… It's time to start flying high once again or for the very first time… The view at the top its a lot better, yet, the in between process is what makes it sweeter and a lot better if we truly learn while at it… Remember, what you are constantly thinking of, that, you will eventually will become… Have a great and awesome day… <> Preach and reach where no one else has before nor dares to go… Make the difference today… But most importantly, live what you preach and preach what you live:..

The King who owned this island,” said Caspian slowly, and his face flushed as he spoke, “would soon be the richest of all Kings of the world. I claim this land forever as a Narnian possession. It shall be called Goldwater Island. And I bind all of you to secrecy. No one must know of this. Not even Drinian--on pain of death, do you hear?” “Who are you talking to?” said Edmund. “I’m no subject of yours. If anything it’s the other way round. I am one of the four ancient sovereigns of Narnia and you are under allegiance to the High King my brother.” “So it has come to that, King Edmund, has it?” said Caspian, laying his hand on his sword-hilt. “Oh, stop it, both of you,” said Lucy. “That’s the worst of doing anything with boys. You’re all such swaggering, bullying idiots--oooh!--” Her voice died away into a gasp. And everyone else saw what she had seen. Across the gray hillside above them--gray, for the heather was not yet in bloom--without noise, and without looking at them, and shining as if he were in bright sunlight though the sun had in fact gone in, passed with slow pace the hugest lion that human eyes have ever seen. In describing the scene Lucy said afterward, “He was the size of an elephant,” though at another time she only said, “The size of a cart-horse.” But it was not the size that mattered. Nobody dared to ask what it was. They knew it was Aslan. And nobody ever saw how or where he went. They looked at one another like people waking from sleep. “What were we talking about?” said Caspian. “Have I been making rather an ass of myself?” “Sire,” said Reepicheep, “this is a place with a curse on it. Let us get back on board at once. And if I might have the honor of naming this island, I should call it Deathwater.” “That strikes me as a very good name, Reep,” said Caspian, “though now that I come to think of it, I don’t know why. But the weather seems to be settling and I dare say Drinian would like to be off. What a lot we shall have to tell him.” But in fact they had not much to tell for the memory of the last hour had all become confused.

Flow is an extremely potent response to external events and requires an extraordinary set of signals. The process includes dopamine, which does more than tune signal-to-noise ratios. Emotionally, we feel dopamine as engagement, excitement, creativity, and a desire to investigate and make meaning out of the world. Evolutionarily, it serves a similar function. Human beings are hardwired for exploration, hardwired to push the envelope: dopamine is largely responsible for that wiring. This neurochemical is released whenever we take a risk or encounter something novel. It rewards exploratory behavior. It also helps us survive that behavior. By increasing attention, information flow, and pattern recognition in the brain, and heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle firing timing in the body, dopamine serves as a formidable skill-booster as well. Norepinephrine provides another boost. In the body, it speeds up heart rate, muscle tension, and respiration, and triggers glucose release so we have more energy. In the brain, norepinephrine increases arousal, attention, neural efficiency, and emotional control. In flow, it keeps us locked on target, holding distractions at bay. And as a pleasure-inducer, if dopamine’s drug analog is cocaine, norepinephrine’s is speed, which means this enhancement comes with a hell of a high. Endorphins, our third flow conspirator, also come with a hell of a high. These natural “endogenous” (meaning naturally internal to the body) opiates relieve pain and produce pleasure much like “exogenous” (externally added to the body) opiates like heroin. Potent too. The most commonly produced endorphin is 100 times more powerful than medical morphine. The next neurotransmitter is anandamide, which takes its name from the Sanskrit word for “bliss”—and for good reason. Anandamide is an endogenous cannabinoid, and similarly feels like the psychoactive effect found in marijuana. Known to show up in exercise-induced flow states (and suspected in other kinds), this chemical elevates mood, relieves pain, dilates blood vessels and bronchial tubes (aiding respiration), and amplifies lateral thinking (our ability to link disparate ideas together). More critically, anandamide also inhibits our ability to feel fear, even, possibly, according to research done at Duke, facilitates the extinction of long-term fear memories. Lastly, at the tail end of a flow state, it also appears (more research needs to be done) that the brain releases serotonin, the neurochemical now associated with SSRIs like Prozac. “It’s a molecule involved in helping people cope with adversity,” Oxford University’s Philip Cowen told the New York Times, “to not lose it, to keep going and try to sort everything out.” In flow, serotonin is partly responsible for the afterglow effect, and thus the cause of some confusion. “A lot of people associate serotonin directly with flow,” says high performance psychologist Michael Gervais, “but that’s backward. By the time the serotonin has arrived the state has already happened. It’s a signal things are coming to an end, not just beginning.” These five chemicals are flow’s mighty cocktail. Alone, each packs a punch, together a wallop.

Darling paused to let that seep into their collective minds before he spoke in a cold tone. “I am not my uncle. I am not my father, but I do subscribe to the twenty rules he taught me from the cradle. One, if you’re afraid to fight, then you’ll never win. Two, in times of tragedy and turmoil, you’ll learn who your true friends are. Treasure them because they are few and far between. Three, know your enemies, and never become your own worst one. Four, be grateful for those enemies. They will keep you honest and ever striving to better yourself. Five, listen to all good advice, but never substitute someone else’s judgment for your own. Six, all men and women lie. But never lie to yourself. Seven, many will flatter you. Befriend the ones who don’t, for they will remind you that you’re human and not infallible. Eight, never fear the truth. It’s the lies that will destroy you. Nine, your worst decisions will always be those that are made out of fear. Think all matters through with a clear head. Ten, your mistakes won’t define you, but your memories, good and bad, will. Eleven, be grateful for your mistakes as they will tell you who and what you’re not. Twelve, don’t be afraid to examine the past, it’s how you learn what you don’t want to do again. Thirteen, there’s a lot to be said for not knowing better. Fourteen, all men die. Not everyone lives. Fifteen, on your deathbed, your greatest regrets will be what you didn’t do. Sixteen, don’t be afraid to love. Yes, it’s a weakness that can be used against you. But it’s also a source of the greatest strength you will ever know. Seventeen, the past is history written in stone that can’t be altered. The future is transitory and never guaranteed. Today is the only thing you can change for certain. Have the courage to do so and make the most of it because it could be all you’ll ever have. Eighteen, you can be in a crowd, surrounded by people, and still be lonely. Nineteen, love all, regardless of what they do. Trust only those you have to. Harm none until they harm you. And twenty… Never be afraid to kill or destroy your enemies. They won’t hesitate to kill or destroy you.” The

I read a lot, but what I liked was almost always written by men, not women. It seemed to me that the voice of men came from the pages, and that voice preoccupied me, I tried in every way to imitate it. Even when I was around thirteen — just to hold on to a clear memory — and had the impression that my writing was good, I felt that someone was telling me what should be written and how. At times he was male but invisible. I didn't even know if he was my age or grown up, perhaps old. More generally, I have to confess, I imagined becoming male yet at the same time remaining female. This impression, luckily, disappeared almost completely with the end of adolescence. I say "almost" because, even if the male voice had departed, there was a residual stumbling block: the impression that my woman's brain held me back, limited me, like a congenital slowness. Not only was writing difficult in itself but I was a girl and so would never be able to write books like those of the great writers. The quality of the writing in those books, their power, fired me with ambitions, dictated intentions that seemed far beyond my possibilities.

What were we talking about?” said Caspian. “Have I been making rather an ass of myself?” “Sire,” said Reepicheep, “this is a place with a curse on it. Let us get back on board at once. And if I might have the honor of naming this island, I should call it Deathwater.” “That strikes me as a very good name, Reep,” said Caspian, “though now that I come to think of it, I don’t know why. But the weather seems to be settling and I dare say Drinian would like to be off. What a lot we shall have to tell him.” But in fact they had not much to tell for the memory of the last hour had all become confused. “Their Majesties all seemed a bit bewitched when they came aboard,” said Drinian to Rhince some hours later when the Dawn Treader was once more under sail and Deathwater Island already below the horizon. “Something happened to them in that place. The only thing I could get clear was that they think they’ve found the body of one of these lords we’re looking for.” “You don’t say so, Captain,” answered Rhince. “Well, that’s three. Only four more. At this rate we might be home soon after the New Year. And a good thing too. My baccy’s running a bit low. Good night, Sir.

Base your understanding of the world on data, rather than journalism. Journalism is a highly non random sample of the worst things that have happened in any given period. It is an availability machine, in the sense of Tversky and Kahneman's availability heuristic; namely - our sense of risk, danger and prevalence is driven by anecdotes, images and narratives that are available in memory. A lot of good things are either things that "don't happen" (like a country at peace, or a city that has not been attacked by terrorists, which almost by definition are not news), or things that build up incrementally, a few percentage points a year, and then compound (like the decline of extreme poverty). We can be unaware, out to lunch about what's happening in the world if we base our view on the news. If instead we base our view on data, then not only do we see that many (although not all) things have gone better (not linearly, not without setbacks and reversals, but in general a lot better... and that paradoxically, as I've cheekily put it, progressives hate progress), but also that the best possible case for progress - that is, for striving for more progress in the future, for being a true progressive - is not to have some kind of foolish hope, but to look at the fact that progress has taken place in the past; and that means: why should it stop now?

Walking back through the mall to the exit nearest our part of the parking lot, we passed one shop which sold computers, printers, software, and games. It was packed with teenagers, the kind who wear wire rims and know what the new world is about. The clerks were indulgent, letting them program the computers. Two hundred yards away, near the six movie houses, a different kind of teenager shoved quarters into the space-war games, tensing over the triggers, releasing the eerie sounds of extraterrestrial combat. Any kid back in the computer store could have told the combatants that because there is no atmosphere in space, there is absolutely no sound at all. Perfect distribution: the future managers and the future managed ones. Twenty in the computer store, two hundred in the arcade. The future managers have run on past us into the thickets of CP/M, M-Basic, Cobal, Fortran, Z-80, Apples, and Worms. Soon the bosses of the microcomputer revolution will sell us preprogrammed units for each household which will provide entertainment, print out news, purvey mail-order goods, pay bills, balance accounts, keep track of expenses, and compute taxes. But by then the future managers will be over on the far side of the thickets, dealing with bubble memories, machines that design machines, projects so esoteric our pedestrian minds cannot comprehend them. It will be the biggest revolution of all, bigger than the wheel, bigger than Franklin’s kite, bigger than paper towels.

As we walked back into the hallway, Patrick held on to Diana’s hand. He was reluctant to let her go and gazed up at her with open adoration. I wish I could have taken another picture of that touching moment. With the royal staff clustering around, that was impossible. Diana seemed equally hesitant to say good-bye and bent down to squeeze Patrick tightly as we left. To Patrick that afternoon, Diana was truly a fairy-tale princess. Is it possible to imagine how her own sons felt about her? I was tremendously proud of Patrick for being so poised and polite, so natural all afternoon. “God bless him,” I thought. “If he ever had to be on his best behavior, it was today, when it mattered so very much.” I was also feeling blissful, really floating on air, after our long and private visit with Diana and Charles. It was hard to believe that they had spent so much time with us that afternoon and later were heading to the White House to spend the evening with President and Mrs. Reagan and lots of celebrities. The often-seen photograph of Diana in a midnight blue evening gown dancing with John Travolta was taken that night. On the taxi ride back to our hotel, we saw Diana and Charles’s limousine and security escort crossing an intersection in the distance. Our taxi driver explained to us that many streets in Washington were blocked off that day due to the important state visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Patrick, Adrienne, and I didn’t say a word. We just smiled and kept our visit a secret among ourselves. We all flew home later that afternoon.

He had worked damn hard and prospered. Now it was time to live. He even thought he might get it up tonight and surprise his gorgeous Maggie; then it was Israel and the Pharaohs. Stopping at his front door he took a deep intake of the free English air and smiled contentedly; England was home and so was he, this time for good. He went in the front door and called out for her as he had done so many times before, 'Maggie . . . I'm home sweetheart!' He closed the door and hesitated for a moment, she was usually in his arms by now, planting a sweet little kiss on his expectant, eager lips. She had not been her best lately, complaining of headaches and spending a lot of time down at the library; but today was different, it was retirement day. Aha! This could be a surprise, he thought hanging up his coat. Calling out again, he rubbed his hands together and started to climb the stairs to wash up before tea. This is definitely a surprise . . . no smell of any grub! His whistling stopped abruptly half way up when he saw a darkened figure appear on the landing, pointing a gun at him. A finger tightened and the weapon jolted, sending screeching Belarusian memories echoing across his subconscious. The blast lifted him off his feet sending him to the floor below. The last image of Cedric Boban's life on earth was the flash of a sawn-off shotgun; which fired from a few feet, took his life and most of his upper torso away. The slate was clean, the screeching culled. His assailant moved halfway down before jumping over the banister to avoid the bloody mess on the stairs. Maggie walked steadily into the hall from the living room. She gave a little smile and took the small sawn-off shotgun from the gloved hands of the assassin,

The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.

When Diana returned to work on Monday, September 16, she came directly to my bedroom and announced, “Mrs. Robertson, I have something important to tell you.” I could see out of the corner of my eye that she had a slight, mischievous grin on her face. “Go right ahead,” I said as I continued to blow-dry my hair in front of the mirror above the dresser. “No, Mrs. Robertson, I’d like your full attention.” I switched off my hair dryer and faced her as she stood in the doorway. “When you leave for work this morning, you’ll notice a lot of reporters and photographers at the entrance to the mews.” I wondered aloud if the press were following either Lord Vestey, a notorious international financier, or John Browne, a bright young M.P. known as one of “Maggie’s boys,” both of whom lived on our small street. “No, actually, Mrs. Robertson, they’re waiting for me,” Diana said with a great deal of blushing, staring at the floor, and throat clearing. “Good heavens, Diana, why?” “Well . . . I spent last weekend at Balmoral.” “With Prince Andrew?” I asked, remembering my friend Lee’s comment on the way to Glyndebourne. “No, actually, I was there to see Prince Charles.” More blushes and throat clearing, quickly followed by her disclaimer, “But he didn’t invite me. His mother did.” Hearing Diana speak of Her Majesty the Queen as “his mother” certainly gave me a clear picture of the circles in which Diana moved. I gasped and asked, probably rather tactlessly, “Gosh, do you think there’s any chance of a romance developing?” “Not really,” she said with noticeable regret. “After all, he’s thirty-one and I’m only nineteen. He’d never look seriously at me.” So modest, so appealing. I couldn’t imagine him not learning to love her. We certainly had. “Well, Diana, I wouldn’t be so sure,” I replied, thinking of my prediction from July.

the absence of an ‘international standard burglar’, the nearest I know to a working classification is one developed by a U.S. Army expert [118]. Derek is a 19-year old addict. He's looking for a low-risk opportunity to steal something he can sell for his next fix. Charlie is a 40-year old inadequate with seven convictions for burglary. He's spent seventeen of the last twenty-five years in prison. Although not very intelligent he is cunning and experienced; he has picked up a lot of ‘lore’ during his spells inside. He steals from small shops and suburban houses, taking whatever he thinks he can sell to local fences. Bruno is a ‘gentleman criminal’. His business is mostly stealing art. As a cover, he runs a small art gallery. He has a (forged) university degree in art history on the wall, and one conviction for robbery eighteen years ago. After two years in jail, he changed his name and moved to a different part of the country. He has done occasional ‘black bag’ jobs for intelligence agencies who know his past. He'd like to get into computer crime, but the most he's done so far is stripping $100,000 worth of memory chips from a university's PCs back in the mid-1990s when there was a memory famine. Abdurrahman heads a cell of a dozen militants, most with military training. They have infantry weapons and explosives, with PhD-grade technical support provided by a disreputable country. Abdurrahman himself came third out of a class of 280 at the military academy of that country but was not promoted because he's from the wrong ethnic group. He thinks of himself as a good man rather than a bad man. His mission is to steal plutonium. So Derek is unskilled, Charlie is skilled, Bruno is highly skilled and may have the help of an unskilled insider such as a cleaner, while Abdurrahman is not only highly skilled but has substantial resources.

Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos. The most brutal yet beautiful truth about Life is that It is marked, marked with Time where every moment takes us closer to death, it doesn't have to sound or feel bad or scary because death is the most inevitable truth in this mortal world. While the knowledge of death jolts our mind with the uncertainty of Life, clutches us in the emotion of fear to think of pain or the loss of bonds, when we acknowledge that as a part of our souls' journey and take every moment as our precious gift, a blessing to experience this Life with its beautiful garden of emotions blossoming with wonderful smiles that we can paint on others, then we make our Life magnanimous, then we make even the very face of death as that of an angel coming to take us to a different voyage, soaked in a lot of memories and experiences beautifully binding our soul. I have realised that when we live each day as if it's the last day of our life, we become more loving and gentle to everyone around and especially to our own selves. We forgive and love more openly, we grace and embrace every opportunity we get to be kind, to stay in touch with everything that truly matters. I have realised that when we rise every morning with gratitude knowing that the breath of air still passes through our body, just in the mere understanding that we have one more day to experience Life once again, we stay more compassionate towards everything and everyone around and invest more of our selves into everything and everyone that truly connect and resonate with our soul. I have realised that when we consciously try to be good and kind, no matter however bad or suffocating a situation is we always end up taking everything at its best holding on to the firm grip of goodness, accepting everything as a part of our souls' lesson or just a turn of Time or Fate and that shapes into our strength and roots our core with the truest understanding of Life, the simple act of going on and letting go. Letting go of anything and everything that chains our Soul while going on with a Heart open to Love and a Soul ready to absorb all that falls along the pathway of this adventure called Life. I have realised that when we are kind and do anything good for another person, that gives us the most special happiness, something so pure that even our hearts don't know how deep that joy permeates inside our soul. I have realised that at the end of the day we do good not because of others but because of our own selves, for if tomorrow death comes to grace me I hope to smile and say I have Lived, loved unconditionally and embraced forgiveness, kindness and goodness and all the other colours of Love with every breath I caught, I have lived a Life magnanimous. So each time someone's unkind towards you, hold back and smile, and try to give your warmth to that person. Because Kindness is not a declaration of who deserves it, it's a statement of who you are. So each time some pieces of your heart lay scattered, hold them up and embrace everyone of them with Love. Because Love is not a magic potion that is spilled from a hollow space, it's a breath of eternity that flows through the tunnel of your soul. So each time Life puts up a question of your Happiness, answer back with a Smile of Peace. Because Happiness is not what you look for in others, it's what you create in every passing moment, with the power of Life, that is pretty short when we see how counted it stands in days but actually turns out absolutely incredibly magnanimous when loved and lived in moments.

She was floating, arms outspread, water lapping her body, breathing in a summery fragrance of salt and coconut. There was a pleasantly satisfied breakfast taste in her mouth of bacon and coffee and possibly croissants. She lifted her chin and the morning sun shone so brightly on the water, she had to squint through spangles of light to see her feet in front of her. Her toenails were each painted a different color. Red. Gold. Purple. Funny. The nail polish hadn’t been applied very well. Blobby and messy. Someone else was floating in the water right next to her. Someone she liked a lot, who made her laugh, with toenails painted the same way. The other person waggled multicolored toes at her companionably, and she was filled with sleepy contentment. Somewhere in the distance, a man’s voice shouted, “Marco?” and a chorus of children’s voices cried back, “Polo!” The man called out again, “Marco, Marco, Marco?” and the voices answered, “Polo, Polo, Polo!” A child laughed; a long, gurgling giggle, like a stream of soap bubbles. A voice said quietly and insistently in her ear, “Alice?” and she tipped back her head and let the cool water slide silently over her face. Tiny dots of light danced before her eyes. Was it a dream or a memory? “I don’t know!” said a frightened voice. “I didn’t see it happen!” No need to get your knickers in a knot. The dream or memory or whatever it was dissolved and vanished like a reflection on water, and instead fragments of thought began to drift through her head, as if she were waking up from a long, deep sleep, late on a Sunday morning. Is cream cheese considered a soft cheese? It’s not a hard cheese. It’s not . . . . . . hard at all. So, logically, you would think . . . . . . something. Something logical. Lavender is lovely. Logically lovely. Must prune back the lavender! I can smell lavender. No, I can’t. Yes, I can. That’s when she noticed the pain in her head for the first time. It hurt on one side, a lot, as if someone had given her a good solid thwack with a baseball bat. Her thoughts sharpened. What was this pain in the head all about?

While the following tragedy may be revolting to read, it must not be forgotten that the existence of it is far more revolting. In Devonshire Place, Lisson Grove, a short while back died an old woman of seventy-five years of age. At the inquest the coroner's officer stated that all he found in the room was a lot of old rags covered with vermin. He had got himself smothered with the vermin. The room was in a shocking condition, and he had never seen anything like it. Everything was absolutely covered with vermin.' The doctor said: 'He found deceased lying across the fender on her back. She had one garment and her stockings on. The body was quite alive with vermin, and all the clothes in the room were absolutely gray with insects. Deceased was very badly nourished and was very emaciated. She had extensive sores on her legs, and her stockings were adherent to those sores. The sores were the result of vermin. Over her bony chest leaped and rolled hundreds, thousands, myriads of vermin.' A man present at the inquest wrote; 'I had the evil fortune to see the body of the unfortunate woman as it lay in the mortuary; and even now the memory of that gruesome sight makes me shudder. There she lay in the mortuary shell, so starved and emaciated that she was a mere bundle of skin and bones. Her hair, which was matted with filth, was simply a nest of vermin. If it is not good for your mother and my mother so to die, then it is not good for this woman, whosoever's mother she might be, so to die. Bishop Wilkinson, who has lived in Zululand, recently said, 'No headman of an African village would allow such a promiscuous mixing of young men and women, boys and girls.' He had reference to the children of the overcrowded folk, who at five have nothing to learn and much to unlearn which they will never unlearn. It is notorious that here in the Ghetto the houses of the poor are greater profit earners than the mansions of the rich. Not only does the poor worker have to live like a beast, but he pays proportionately more for it than does the rich man for his spacious comfort. A class of house-sweaters has been made possible by the competition of the poor for houses. There are more people than there is room, and numbers are in the workhouse because they cannot find shelter elsewhere. Not only are houses let, but they are sublet, and sub-sublet down to the very rooms.

You mentioned how all marriages have Category 5 moments, and how you didn’t think your previous relationship would have made it through those moments. I think about that sometimes. About what could make one couple survive a Category 5 moment, but a different couple might not. I’ve thought about it enough to come up with a possible reason. Hurricanes aren’t a constant threat to coastal towns. There are more days with great weather and perfect beach days than there are hurricanes. Marriages are similar, in that there are a lot of great days with no arguments, when both people are filled with so much love for each other. But then you have the threatening-weather days. There might only be a few a year, but they can do enough damage that it takes years to repair. Some of the coastal towns will be prepared for the bad-weather days. They’ll save their best resources and most of their energy so that they’ll be stocked up and prepared for the aftermath. But some towns won’t be as prepared. They’ll put all their resources into the good weather days in hopes that the severe weather will never come. It’s the lazier choice and the choice with greater consequences. I think that’s the difference in the marriages that survive and the marriages that don’t. Some people think the focus in a marriage should be put on all the perfect days. They love as much and as hard as they can when everything is going right. But if a person gives all of themselves in the good times, hoping the bad times never come, there may not be enough resources or energy left to withstand those Category 5 moments. I know without a doubt that we’re going to have so many good moments. No matter what life throws at us, we're going to make great memories together, Quinn. That's a given. But there's also going to be bad days and sad days and days that test our resolve. Those are the days I want you to feel the absolute weight of my love for you. I promise I will love you more during the storms than I will love you during the perfect days. I promise to love you more when you're hurting then when you're happy. I promise to love you more when we're poor than when we're swimming in riches. I promise to love you more when you're crying than when you're laughing. I promise to love you more when you're sick than when you're healthy. I promise to love you more when you hate me than when you love me. And I promise . . . I swear . . . that I love you more as you read this letter than I did when I wrote it. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you. I can’t wait to shine light on all your perfects.

I am like God, Codi? Like GOD? Give me a break. If I get another letter that mentions SAVING THE WORLD, I am sending you, by return mail, a letter bomb. Codi, please. I've got things to do. You say you're not a moral person. What a copout. Sometime, when I wasn't looking, something happened to make you think you were bad. What, did Miss Colder give you a bad mark on your report card? You think you're no good, so you can't do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep limping around on that crutch? It's the other way around, it's what you do that makes you who you are. I'm sorry to be blunt. I've had a bad week. I am trying to explain, and I wish you were here so I could tell you this right now, I am trying to explain to you that I'm not here to save anybody or any thing. It's not some perfect ideal we're working toward that keeps us going. You ask, what if we lose this war? Well, we could. By invasion, or even in the next election. People are very tired. I don't expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven back in Tucson, after hearing the stories of some of those refugees. What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, "What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?" I didn't look down from some high rock and choose cotton fields in Nicaragua. These cotton fields chose me. The contras that were through here yesterday got sent to a prison farm where they'll plant vegetables, learn to read and write if they don't know how, learn to repair CB radios, and get a week-long vacation with their families every year. They'll probably get amnesty in five. There's hardly ever a repeat offender. That kid from San Manuel died. Your sister, Hallie "What's new with Hallie?" Loyd asked. "Nothing." I folded the pages back into the envelope as neatly as I could, trying to leave its creases undisturbed, but my fingers had gone numb and blind. With tears in my eyes I watched whatever lay to the south of us, the land we were driving down into, but I have no memory of it. I was getting a dim comprehension of the difference between Hallie and me. It wasn't a matter of courage or dreams, but something a whole lot simpler. A pilot would call it ground orientation. I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was living it.

Hey, doll face…” “Haidyn?” I yank the phone from Kashton’s hands and look at the screen to see it’s a video. He’s sitting on my couch, dressed in nothing but a pair of jeans. The phone is propped up against something on the coffee table. I place my hand over my mouth to hold in my sob at the sight of him. This was last night…when I saw my phone on the coffee table when he stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my living room. “This isn’t how I wanted to tell you goodbye. But in our life, we rarely get what we want.” A soft smile tugs at his lips. “You were my exception.” He bows his head, his right hand twirling his wedding ring around his finger as he looks at it. “I knew that you were too good for me the moment I first saw you. That I’d never live up to the man you’d deserve. So I let you go…but when you were placed back in my life, I couldn’t stop myself.” He looks back at the phone and gives a soft smile. Back in his life? “I’ve done a lot of unforgivable shit in my life, but the best thing I ever did was make you my wife. I wish I could have done it differently. You deserved so much more than what I gave you. I should have gotten down on one knee and begged you to spend the rest of your life with me. I should have told you how much you changed me. That you showed me what being alive truly felt like. I always felt like I was missing something…my life was boring. Same thing over and over. And then you walked into my life with that amazing smile and when I looked into your eyes—I saw a future that I never thought existed…not for a man like me, anyway.” A lump forms in my throat, and I blink to clear the tears from my eyes so I can see him on the screen. “I knew you’d never give a man like me the chance at forever. So I forced your hand. I had to have Adam help me.” I look up at Adam, and his green eyes are already on mine. Blinking the fresh tears away, I drop mine back to the phone. “Because I knew that’d be the only way I’d ever get you. And I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be your husband.” He looks away from the camera as if he can’t look at me, and my chest tightens. How dare he leave me this memory? Why break my heart twice? When I found him in the living room and asked if he regretted marrying me…he had just left me this video. He knew then exactly what he was going to do. His blue eyes come back to the screen, meeting mine once again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the forever you deserved, doll face. But I promise I gave you all I had left to offer.” The knot grows in my throat, and I can’t hold back the sob anymore as I remember what he said when I told him I chose to be with him forever. To some, forever is only a matter of seconds. “Please know that I loved you more than anything in this world…and when I walk out this door, I’m leaving a piece of myself behind with you because nothing short of forever would have been enough." He smiles, and I try to catch my breath. "You'll be safe at Carnage and my brothers will protect you." He leans forward and picks up the phone before speaking. "I love you, Charlotte.

The Aftermath A lot of time has passed since that fateful day in August of 1965. I visited Oak Island a few months ago. Surprisingly, it felt really good to be there. Parts of the island, untouched by the lust for gold, are still beautiful. As I walked, I thought to myself, This is a good place. More than good. It is a wonderful place. But at the far end of the island--the Money Pit end--everything is different. The beaches have been scraped bare. The clearing, no longer a high, flat expanse, has been gouged out and re-formed into lopsided, jagged terrain. The Money Pit, once part of a 32-foot-high plateau, now sits on misshapen, uneven land, almost down to sea level. That end of the island is ugly, ruined. At home I pull out old photographs and letters and journals. I want to remember a time before the accident, before the deaths, a time when all of Oak Island was a beautiful and happy place; the time when my father, mother, and brothers first came to the island. They had been brimming with enthusiasm. They were embarking on a wonderful adventure, and the Restalls just might be the ones to solve this baffling, centuries-old puzzle. Here was a shot at fortune and fame. They lived in a bubble of good wishes, good cheer, and boundless expectations. It was an extraordinary time, when anything seemed possible. Of course, there was also the back-breaking labour and the endless frustration, but after all, what’s an adventure without adversity? I try to hang on to the good memories of Oak Island, but darker images keep creeping in--the disappointments and obstacles, one-by-one, year after year, that gradually wore the family down. In time, the hunt for treasure crowded out all else in their lives. Nothing mattered but Oak Island and its treasure--at least for my dad. Oak Island does that. Men go there seeking riches and fame, and forget who they are. During my family’s final year, only my father was still steadfast in his belief in the Restall hunt for treasure. By that time, conversations among the four of them were strained. Doubts, disagreements, and long silences had settled in. The hunt for treasure was like a job that took every thought, every bit of energy, every cent. Day after day, nothing but drab, drone-like hark work--no glamour here. It seemed to my mother and brothers that this job was one that would never be finished. Until it was finished--but with such a horrible ending.

takes twenty-one days to develop a new habit. In my experience it takes a lot longer. Some people think that once the twenty-one days are up the brain will then take over. Then after twenty-one days they give up, waiting for their brain to do the rest. Self-discipline requires you to make a decision daily. Self-discipline requires you to start fresh every day. Every day is a new day. You don’t have to practise this skill for the rest of your life. Just for today. I believe that life does not reward idleness. If you put your arm in a sling for a week you start to lose the use of many of your major muscles. Your brain is made of flesh and blood like the rest of your body, so if you use it, it will improve and if you don’t you will lose it. The only way you get good at anything is through self-discipline; remember life only rewards action!

Times we are just sitting and living in our own dreamland with what not thoughts the people we have came Across,food we had ,business plan and at times blank. I tried observing my mind tonight and realised we spend a lot of time thinking things which doesn't even matter. Which in long run make our memory poor and leave our brain in sleeping mode. We should read good , think good ,create good. And than experience the feeling nothing can beat that feeling. We are the creators , let's create.

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

think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be excited about these things. That they’re defining moments we cannot miss out on because they’re once in a lifetime. While I think memories are good to have, the buildup is usually better than the actual event. Maybe if we stopped trying to achieve movie standards of greatness, we’d be happy with what we have.

out and started again? Well, she hated cold tea, so she tipped it onto the grass, holding her breath. No complaint, so she began again. ‘Milk?’ Hannah studied him from under her hair. ‘Yes, please, just a small amount. Lapsang is a very delicate tea and too much milk kills the flavour.’ ‘I’ll need lots of milk then.’ Balancing the cup, saucer and spoon carefully, she offered it. ‘Thank you, Miss Hollis.’ ‘Hannah.’ She poured her own tea, wondering if it would taste like the ashtray it smelled like. With cup only in hand, she leaned against the back of the wooden chair then threw a leg over the side arm. ‘So, Miss Hollis, what brings you to Cornwall?’ ‘Call me Hannah. Miss Hollis makes me sound like some old school marm.’ ‘Is that a problem? Most old school marms, as you call them, of my acquaintance are delightful people.’ ‘Sure, but boring I bet.’ ‘Not at all.’ ‘Right. Not to you, maybe.’ Hannah braved a sip and winced. ‘Back to the question: what has brought you to Cornwall?’ ‘Bloody bad luck,’ she said, frowning at her tea. ‘No need to swear,’ he said. ‘I didn’t swear.’ ‘You did,’ he said. ‘What? Are you talking about bloody?’ she asked. ‘Yes. It is a curse.’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, maybe in the dark ages it was, but it isn’t now.’ She began to wonder if she’d walked through a time machine when she’d come through the gate earlier. It was a nice one, though. The orchard was beautifully laid out and the table and chairs were a lovely weathered blue. ‘Who advised you of this?’ he asked. Hannah sat up and put her empty cup on the table, not quite sure when she had drunk it. ‘Look, it’s a word that’s used every day.’ ‘Yes, but does that change its meaning?’ he asked. ‘No, but no one takes it like that any more.’ ‘Who is no one?’ he asked. ‘I mean no one who hasn’t lived in the dark ages.’ She looked at his wrinkled skin and tried to guess his age. ‘You mean anyone over the age of, say, sixty?’ he suggested. ‘Yeah, sort of.’ ‘Well, as I fit that category, could you refrain from using it?’ ‘Yeah, I guess. If it bothers you that much.’ ‘Thank you. Would you be kind enough to pour more tea?’ Old Tom leaned back into his chair. The sun wasn’t coming through the east window when Maddie opened her eyes for the second time that day; instead, she found Mark standing at the end of the bed with a tray. She blinked. When she last peered at the bedside clock, it had been eight a.m. and she’d thought that if she slept for another hour, she would begin to feel human. What a wasted day. What had Hannah been up to? Had she come into the room and seen her like this? Well, it was a lesson in what not to do in life. The end of last night, no, this morning, was more than fuzzy; in fact, she didn’t remember coming up to her room. The last clear memory was saying goodbye to Tamsin and Anthony. She and Mark had gone back into the kitchen and had another glass of wine or two. ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘It’s not that late?’ ‘Almost time for a drink.’ He smiled. She winced. ‘Oh, don’t.’ ‘Would a bit of tea and toast help?’ ‘It might.’ Maddie eased herself onto her elbows and then slipped back down again. She was only wearing knickers. Mark’s eyes widened. ‘Could you hand me that shirt on the end of the bed?’ she asked. ‘Certainly.’ She wrestled with it under the duvet. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t find your pyjamas last night.’ ‘What?’ Maddie

A good part of the state’s assets were privatized, including electric power distribution, banks, and telecommunications. The country lacks a national currency, having shifted from the colón to the U.S. dollar in 2001. The country’s main export is people, who travel to and remain in the United States and other countries and send back remittances, which constitute one of the largest contributions to the nation’s GDP; drug money-laundering may bring in more than remittances, but nobody knows for sure. A sizable proportion of economically viable enterprises are now owned wholly or partially by multinational corporations, including the important banks, all communications (mobile phones and internet), beer, petroleum derivatives, and airlines. The country imports a lot of what it consumes, especially foodstuffs, energy, and health products, which is reflected in a chronic trade deficit that would be unsustainable were it not for remittances.

Black Bean Burgers My husband and I have been married for many years, and I’d say as marriages go, ours is pretty darn good. We have four kids, work pretty hard, and spend a lot of time together, which is just fine with us since we really like each other and all that. Now, I will confess that there has been one steady source of marital conflict through the years, and that is the fact that I gosh darn love a good meatless burger. I can’t really explain it. It must be a throwback to my vegetarian days. I don’t know…I just love them. I’ll never, ever forget the time, very early in our marriage, that Ladd and I went out to eat and I ordered--gasp--a veggie burger from the menu. The look on his face--it is etched in my memory. From where he stood, he didn’t even know burgers without meat existed. In his experience, a burger was meat, much like rain was water. It sent shockwaves through his being, and rattled the very foundation of our marriage. Over the years, I’ve tried to help my beloved cattle rancher husband understand my position: that my love of meatless burgers has no hidden meaning. It doesn’t mean I don’t also love big, beefy burgers. It doesn’t mean I’m going to start making the family drink shots of wheatgrass juice every morning. I just like the taste of weird, mushy concoctions meant to resemble hamburger patties. Call me wacky! I love you, Ladd. But I also love meatless burgers. And I know in my heart that those two things can coexist.

Everyone has a deck of cards for each person they love. You’ve got your regret cards, your good memory cards, bad memory cards. When one of your people dies, the deck of cards gets thrown up into the air and the cards scatter everywhere. Wakes and funerals are about putting them into a new order. You have to. One half of every memory you had with them is gone. You have to figure out how to live with only your half. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.

Eva, my love, It’s over. One way or another, everything comes to an end. It’s all over some day. That’s perhaps one of the most fascinating truths we know about the entire universe. The stars die, the galaxies die, the planets die. And people die too. I’ve never been a believer, but the day I became interested in astronomy, I think I put aside all that was left of my fear of death. I’d realized that in comparison to the universe, a human being, a single human being, me … is infinitely small. Well, I’m not writing this letter to deliver a profound religious or philosophical lecture. I’m writing to tell you “farewell.” I was just talking to you on the phone. I can still hear the sound of your voice. I imagine you, before my eyes … a beautiful image, a lovely memory I will keep until the end. At this very moment, reading this letter, you know that I am dead. There are things that I want you to know. As I leave for Africa, I’m aware of what’s waiting for me. I even have the feeling that this trip could bring about my death, but it’s something that I have to experience, in spite of everything. I wasn’t born to sit in an armchair. I’m not like that. Correction: I wasn’t like that … I’m not going to Africa just as a journalist, I’m going above all on a political mission, and that’s why I think this trip might lead to my death. This is the first time I’ve written to you knowing exactly what to say: I love you, I love you, love you, love you. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I want you to know I mean that seriously. I want you to remember me but not grieve for me. If I truly mean something to you, and I know that I do, you will probably suffer when you learn I am dead. But if I really mean something to you, don’t suffer, I don’t want that. Don’t forget me, but go on living. Live your life. Pain will fade with time, even if that’s hard to imagine right now. Live in peace, my dearest love; live, love, hate, and keep fighting. … I had a lot of faults, I know, but some good qualities as well, I hope. But you, Eva, you inspired such love in me that I was never able to express it to you. … Straighten up, square your shoulders, hold your head high. Okay? Take care of yourself, Eva. Go have a cup of coffee. It’s over. Thank you for the beautiful times we had. You made me very happy. Adieu. I kiss you goodbye, Eva. From Stieg, with love.

Part 1 - The reason behind my unstoppable anger has very and highly complicated reasons. 1) There are certain people that takes life as easiest way - for example Norway, Iceland and Scandinavian people, but they also have problems in life yet they prefer to be happy whatever happens and their life style and law made in order to keep them happy. 2) There are people with high diplomacy and prestige - UK people - They are not good but they are very intelligent enough to keep their traditions protected. 3) There are people that are good by heart but bad by attitude - Hitler, even Putin too, 4) There are people that do not even have proper static law but only dynamic law only intention of protecting their own country alone - USA, 5) There are people that were affected by geopolitics and turned against it because of lack of education and morality - Whomever does terrorism 6) There are people that are deeply hurt because of ignorance and untouchability in ancient times ( They adopted unique food and life style - because of evolutionary, pandemic and many other ecological and spiritual reasons) 0 - Asiatic 7) There are people that were only been slaves for heavy work, slaves for sex, slaves for all dirty and isolated works (African black people and all remaining indigenous people) 8) And finally Bharat (India) with lots of hopes, lots of colors, lots of history, lots of memory, India is a land of discrimination yes - But if you have good qualities - even if you are poor, you will be respected here, so even if you are so called Dalit or Scheduled groups you need not worry much about it, you have all your rights to live in your way but if you choose good path, you will be respected else not and even you can be punished easily. All religions are given equal importance here but due to this is the time to strengthen indias cultural values, it is important to protect the factors that represents India.

excessive stress is almost like an explosion, causing the hippocampus to lose cells and shrink. This affects the communication between the hippocampus and the central circuits of the brain, keeping it from building new good thoughts (memories) as well as causing memory loss. This is seen a lot in depression, Alzheimer’s, dementias, and other neuropsychiatric disorders.

You really don’t like him, do you?” Xavier asked in surprise. “Who?” I asked innocently. “Darius,” he said, his gaze moving over my shoulder. “This is the part where I insult him and he’s right behind me, isn’t it?” Xavier’s eyes sparked with amusement and he nodded. Well far be it from me to disappoint. “In that case, I happen to think he’s a vindictive, pretentious twat-waffle who really needs to pull the stick out of his ass and let loose more often,” I said. “I thought we were being nice this evening?” Darius murmured behind me and I stifled a flinch at just how close he was. “You said you’d be nice. I made no such promises,” I pointed out, turning to look up at him as he moved to my side. Although now that I thought about it, maybe I had... the champagne tequila cocktail taking place in my digestive system was wreaking havoc with my memory as well as my manners. Now that he and Xavier were so close to each other it was obvious they were brothers, though Xavier didn’t seem as intense as Darius. But they shared the same jaw, the same colouring, even though Xavier’s build was a lot less stacked. “Well you’re making Xavier smile so I’ll forgive you this once,” Darius said. “Poor Tory is starving to death,” Xavier said, though his smile fell a little in response to his brother’s words. “Maybe you can find her something good to eat while I take my leave of this party.” I followed his gaze and noticed Lionel looking our way. He didn’t seem pleased about something and Xavier got to his feet hastily. “It was nice to meet you,” I said. “You too, Tory. See you later, Darius.” Xavier tucked his chair back into place and quickly left the room. (Tory)

Let me kiss you Irma! There in the middle, in the space between the light and dark, Let me love you in the corners bright, Where your heart beat is the mark, To guide me through the mist of time with all my might, Because my love it is you that spreads like brightness in my world, Where your memories cast everlasting light, On the darkest and desolate corners of my world, And then fills me with the spirit to fight, All my demons and my fears, Your simple look offers me endless joy, As my existence the drapery of your brightness wears, And I begin to foil life’s every ploy, To oust me from my dominion, that is mine, But little does it know one can never steal the scent from the rose, And your memories that enrich me, become my goldmine, Granting me courage that before the brightest flash of life, I may put up my best pose, So come let me bear you in my arms, Let me kiss you like the night kisses everything beyond those shadows, And as my heart with these beautiful feelings warms, Let me offer smiles to the life’s marooned widows, Who have moaned enough and grieved a lot, Let me kiss you and then wage the war, Between the right and the evil in the reality’s merciless plot, It may happen that then stars that seem too far, Would tumble from the skies, To bury the evil in the star dust, But let us tread with caution for haste is only good when catching flies, For lovers always do what they must, It is the destiny of love and maybe the price of the kiss, That we all pay for with our heart beats, So let me hold you in my arms and feel my real bliss, Before my fate confronts the destiny and my courage both of them meets, In the open playground of life and chance, Where the truthful and the valiant always wins, Because it is a well coordinated dance, Where one always has to win though it is a competition between the twins, So kiss me and wish for my victory, Because through me you shall win too, As we are cast in the life’s endless trajectory, Where there shall always be one constant Irma, that, I love you, So, let the stars bear witness to valour of love, And as you kiss me, let the stars tumble from the skies, Then let no one seek the Heavens above, Because for our love, our passions and joys, here is where a lover dies, And this is where Christ died, This is where crusades were waged, This is where goodness was promoted and this is where Judas lied, And this is where lovers are caged, So let our battles of love be fought here, For a kiss, for a warm embrace, for a sweet memory’s sake, Then as I see you and your beauty everywhere, Let me love you forever for love’s and my own sake, Tonight when the sky shall be lit with many a twinkling star, I shall wait under the open sky and the moonlight, And as my eyes behold their darling most star, We shall then be the shadows in the darkness secretly kissing our heart beats in the cover of the night. To cast particles of darkness and cover the moonlight, And make it a part of our own shadows, Then we shall create a romantic night, As we freely fleet across the night’s endless love meadows.

your short-term sacrifice has been going on for years, and your happiness and health are a thing of the past. Accumulate experiences, not stuff. The great times you have become a part of you; the great things you own gather dust or become trash. That said, if your memory for your lived experiences is as bad as mine, you might struggle to recall many of the great times you’ve had, and then find yourself at risk of owning nothing and remembering little. A simple solution to this problem is to take pictures, and even purchase the occasional doodad from your travels or adventures. By scattering these reminders around your home or office, you can relive your great times and laugh at the adventures that went awry. Prioritize food, friends, and sexual relationships. These three things are the basis of day-to-day happiness. Note that there is no mention here of money or freedom. There’s nothing wrong with having lots of cash and autonomy, but their pursuit shouldn’t interfere with opportunities to enjoy good food, sex, and friends. These three things are most likely to provide the happy experiences that accumulate into a life worth living.

Was that their lot in life, something women like them had to accept? To try to be content as violence and cruelty touched their lives? Yet God had not created them for this. Daisy chose to believe that. They said that God was good and yet there was so much evil. He did not wipe it out, and the evildoers seemed to prosper when the poor and abused simply... vanished from memory. Daisy noted the church at the far end of the street. Its steeple with a cross perched on top. There was more to God than she understood, but there was hope in her heart too. She had read a Psalm once in which the author pled for vengeance against wrongdoers, and later he praised God for providing a way of escape. A refuge. Resolved, Daisy straightened her shoulders. She must find a refuge. Answers for Elsie, for Hester May--- even for Lincoln. Perhaps this was why God didn't wipe the earth clean of the wicked. He chose instead to use the weak ones, such as her, to rise up in His strength and become warriors.

First, you must generate the idea, usually from memory or experience or activity. Then you have to retain it—that is, hold it steady in your mind and keep it from disappearing. Then you have to inspect it—study it and make inferences about it. Finally, you have to be able to transform it—alter it in some way to suit your higher purposes. Some people are good at some of these but not all four. They can generate an idea, but they can’t hold on to it or transform it. My problem was that I was generating a lot of ideas, but generating was at odds with my need to retain, inspect, and transform.

Helen and I made it a point to take the whole family out and spend time traveling or camping together. Sometimes the kids thought of these trips as forced marches, but I think that time we spent together has had a lot to do with our close relationship as a family today. We have a lot of good memories of traveling all over the country, especially in this one fine old DeSoto station wagon.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about what a person has a right to tell other people. As a therapist, it’s simple: everything you’re told is confidential. Outside the clinic, however, there are unfortunately no rules. There are those who believe the truth must come out at any cost, that the truth is always a force of good, and that in any given situation, you should insist on what you perceive as ‘true.’ But people construct their own narratives, for protection, to keep life in check. And if you disrupt a narrative, you have to be prepared for chaos to follow. If your narrative deviates too far from reality, if it’s built on fundamental misconceptions and grave misinterpretations, then the narrative can be a problem in itself, of course. And yet, it may be that that particular construct is what makes life possible in that moment. Most of us reinterpret and censor things now and then. Human memory is deceptive that way. We’re good at forgetting what’s painful and hard. Instead, we pick out some little episode that we buff and polish and tinker with until it has become emblematic of our history.

Abraham, dwelling in peace in the oak groves at Mamre, learned from one of the fugitives the story of the battle and the calamity that had befallen his nephew. He had cherished no unkind memory of Lot’s ingratitude. All his affection for him was awakened, and he determined that he should be rescued. Seeking, first of all, divine counsel, Abraham prepared for war. From his own encampment he summoned three hundred and eighteen trained servants, men trained in the fear of God, in the service of their master, and in the practice of arms. His confederates, Mamre, Eschol, and Aner, joined him with their bands, and together they started in pursuit of the invaders. The Elamites and their allies had encamped at Dan, on the northern border of Canaan. Flushed with victory, and having no fear of an assault from their vanquished foes, they had given themselves up to reveling. The patriarch divided his force so as to approach from different directions, and came upon the encampment by night. His attack, so vigorous and unexpected, resulted in speedy victory. The king of Elam was slain and his panic-stricken forces were utterly routed. Lot and his family, with all the prisoners and their goods, were recovered, and a rich booty fell into the hands of the victors. To Abraham, under God, the triumph was due. The worshiper of Jehovah had not only rendered a great service to the country, but had proved himself a man of valor. It was seen that righteousness is not cowardice, and that Abraham’s religion made him courageous in maintaining the right and defending the oppressed. His heroic act gave him a widespread influence among the surrounding tribes. On his return, the king of Sodom came out with his retinue to honor the conqueror. He bade him take the goods, begging only that the prisoners should be restored. By the usage of war, the spoils belonged to the conquerors; but Abraham had undertaken this expedition with no purpose of gain, and he refused to take advantage of the unfortunate, only stipulating that his confederates should receive the portion to which they were entitled.

Nothing shows weakness as clearly as weak memories of God’s presence combined with strong memories of trauma” (Wilder, 2010). We tend to spend a lot of energy focusing on resolving traumas in the hope that we will be free from the pain trauma brings. What we often miss or overlook is the power of building memories of God’s goodness that give us a sense of being loved.

I can never make the same painting twice, not that I want to, I guess. Still, it would be nice to make a better version of something, or try it in different colors, but I never remember how I did it, or when I fiddled with it, or what went down first. A lot depends on how long you let the paint set before interfering. I drip and fling and pour color onto the glass. Then I push the paint around. You have to have some faith. If it looks like nothing, if you think you’ve destroyed what might have been a good painting, keep at it. If you’ve scraped all but a few streaks away, chances are those streaks will suggest something else. Don’t give up. Don’t be afraid of the mess. The process is a lot like writing. You start with a wisp of memory, or some detail that won’t let you be. You write, you cross out. You write again, revise, feel like giving up. What pulls you through? Curiosity.

Those who saw me were amazed, because I was persecuted. And they thought that I had been swallowed up, because I seemed to them as one of the lost. But my injustice became my salvation. And I became their abomination, because there was no jealousy in me. Because I continually did good to every man I was hated. And they surrounded me like mad dogs, those who in stupidity attack their masters. Because their thought is depraved, and their mind is perverted. But I was carrying water in my right hand, and their bitterness I endured by my sweetness. And I did not perish, because I was not their brother, nor was my birth like theirs. And they sought my death but did not find it possible, because I was older than their memory; and in vain did they cast lots against me. And those who were after me sought in vain to destroy the memorial of Him who was before them. Because the thought of the Most High cannot be prepossessed; and His heart is superior to all wisdom. Hallelujah.

I have another good memory of Jase, riding around with him in his truck one day when I was about ten or so. He had his string of duck calls, and he would pick a call and blow it. “What is that?” he’d ask. It was a whole lot of fun, but he was serious too. He made me close my eyes and not look at him while I listened and then made a guess. Gadwall?” A gadwall call uses both a whistle and a reed. “No.” Jase blew the call again. “Mallard?” I guessed. “Drake or hen?” he asked. Female ducks, even if they’re the same species, always sounds different from the male. “Hen.” “Right!” Jase said, blowing it again to help me remember for next time. Besides the different breeds of ducks, such as mallard, teal, pintails, and wood ducks, there were drake and hen, and flying or sitting on the water. There was a lot to learn, and the cab of his truck was duck-call school.

In light of the well’s legendary status,” Swift said, “I’d hate to overlook a good opportunity.” He reached into a pocket, rummaged briefly and pulled out a large silver coin. It had been forever since Daisy had seen American money. “You’re supposed to throw in a pin,” she said. “I don’t have a pin.” “That’s a five-dollar piece,” Daisy said in disbelief. “You’re not going to throw that away, are you?” “I’m not throwing it away. I’m making an investment. You’d better tell me the proper procedure for making wishes—it’s a lot of money to waste.” “You’re mocking me.” “I’m in deadly earnest. And since I’ve never done this before, some advice would be welcome.” He waited for her reply, and when it became evident that none was forthcoming, a touch of humor lurked in one corner of his mouth. “I’m going to toss the coin in regardless.” Daisy cursed herself. Even though it was obvious he was mocking her, she could not resist. A wish was not something that should be wasted, especially a five-dollar wish. Drat! She approached the well and said curtly, “First hold the coin in your palm until it’s warm from your hand.” Swift came to stand beside her. “And then?” “Close your eyes and concentrate on the thing you want most.” She let a scornful note enter her voice. “And it has to be a personal wish. It can’t be about something like mergers or banking trusts.” “I do think about things other than business affairs.” Daisy gave him a skeptical glance, and he astonished her with a brief smile. Had she ever seen him smile before? Perhaps once or twice. She had a vague past memory of such an occasion, when his face had been so gaunt that all she had received was an impression of white teeth fixed in a grimace that owed little to any feeling of good cheer. But this smile was just a bit off-center, which made it disarming and tantalizing…a flash of warmth that made her wonder exactly what kind of man lurked behind his sober exterior. Daisy was profoundly relieved when the smile disappeared and he was back to his usual stone-faced self. “Close your eyes,” she reminded him. “Put everything out of your mind except the wish.” His heavy lashes fell shut, giving her the chance to stare at him without having him stare back. It was not the sort of face a boy could wear comfortably…the features were too strong-boned, the nose too long, the jaw obstinate. But Swift had finally grown into his looks. The austere angles of his face had been softened by extravagant sweeps of black lashes and a wide mouth that hinted of sensuality. “What now?” he murmured, his eyes still closed. Staring at him, Daisy was horrified by the impulse that surged through her…to step nearer and explore the tanned skin of his cheeks with her fingertips. “When an image is fixed in your mind,” she managed to say, “open your eyes and toss the coin into the well.” His lashes lifted to reveal eyes as bright as fire trapped in blue glass. Without glancing at the well, he threw the coin right into the center of it.

I’m not leaving the bathroom. Nothing out there is as sexy as in here.” “Hell yeah,” he groaned. “Don’t tease though. I’m this close to turning the water to cold.” “Or you could fix your problem.” Cooper squinted at me. “Really?” Pulling off my shirt, I lowered my bra. Standing closer to the shower door, I stretched. “Here’s your visual inspiration. I could lick my lips a lot if you think it’d help?” “Fucking A,” he said, stroking himself. “Say my name.” “Cooper,” I moaned softly, rolling my nipples between my thumbs and index fingers like he always did. “Oh, Cooper, I’m yours. I need you. I wish you were inside me, Cooper.” His gaze held mine as I teased myself and he stroked his cock. I eventually just looked at where he worked himself closer to relief. Soon, I licked my lips while thinking about making him feel good using my hand. While I didn’t know how long Cooper had been in a state of heat, it didn’t take him long to find relief. I doubted it would take him long to need more relief. To prolong his comfort, I immediately dressed and left the bathroom. Cooper appeared buck naked a few minutes later and I wondered if lunch should wait. Somehow, I’d gotten myself into a state of heat. “Some of it’s genetics,” he teased, retrieving boxers from his dresser. “The rest is hard work.” “I have a response, but I don’t want you getting worked up again.” “Give it five minutes and the memory of you touching yourself and… Fuck it, I didn’t need five minutes.

But we left camp after a while and we was driving in a real spooky place cause all the roads up near camp are dark and in the woods and we had to drive for a while to get to a highway cause there was no street lights or anything and nothing but woods and my dad asked me if I had a good time and I told him I did, but that’s really a lie and I felt like telling him what it was like at that mean old camp, but I thought he’d get mad and tell me I’m making it up and I thought I’d tell him some other time like Febuary and cause I didn’t think he’d believe me anyway, but so I changed my mind and then I thought I should tell him now cause he’ll wonder howcome I never told him sooner, so when he said that’s a nasty gash and when he said what did I do, stumble on the trail and hit a big rock or something? I told him no and I told him that lots of bad things happened to me at camp and that I never want to go there again cause I hate it and I almost cried. But he said I always had a bibid emigination cause he’s sure it wasn’t that bad! And I don’t know about those big words either, but what he said made me kind of mad cause grownups always think they know what happened to you better than you do yourself.

I’m having a hard time concentrating at work. Why in the world did I give the task force members offices on my floor? It seemed like a good idea at the time . . . to evict the old guard and move in the staff that represented the company’s one hope for the future. I regret it now, though, because I can’t go an hour without seeing Kathleen Burke. I can’t remember when I’ve felt this frustrated, and that’s saying a lot because I have two preschoolers at home. I noticed Kathleen’s attractiveness the day we met. I noticed it the same way that I might notice that a woman’s hair is gray. It was just a fact. It didn’t matter to me or affect me. A month and a half has passed since then. A month and a half of me sitting in the board room during task force meetings, watching Kathleen give presentations on newfound information she feels passionately about. She always feels passionately about the information she presents. A month and a half of looking up from my desk and seeing her slender body pass by my office in tailored skirts and silky shirts. A month and a half of disagreeing with her over new computer software. When she thinks I’m being pig-headed, her nose scrunches and her brown eyes blaze. My mom told me that her family is Irish. It’s obviously true. Kathleen has the fiery will and the red glint in her hair to prove it. She can’t seem to understand that I’m not being pig-headed about new computer software. I’m just being right. A month and a half of running into her in the break room. She tilts her head when she refills her coffee mug, which causes her long hair to slide over her shoulder and upper arm. A month and a half of hearing her laughter from a distance. A month and a half of receiving correspondence from her signed “Respectfully, Kathleen E. Burke.” Why the E? There are no Kathleen R. or B. or K. Burkes who work at Bradford Shipping. The E is pretentious. A month and a half of looking back every evening when I leave and seeing her office light on. Kathleen’s attractiveness is more than a fact to me now. She’s annoyingly pretty, she’s persistent, and she’s impossible to ignore. For more than two years, I’ve been loyal to Robin’s memory. That’s how I want things to continue. That’s how I like it. Willow and Nora are my life. I spend every hour outside of work with them, and I’m exhausted at the end of each day. There’s no room in my schedule or in my emotions for a relationship. I’m even more certain that I’m not meant to be a boyfriend or a husband now than I was when Robin died. So the distraction of Kathleen makes me feel like I’m betraying a commitment I made to myself. Which, in turn, makes me angry. I’ve been asking God to take away this stupid pull I feel toward Kathleen. Or better yet, to give her a new job in another city or state. My

Have you been crying?” She glanced away. “I’m sorry. I had one of those days.” He put his thumb and forefinger on her chin and pulled her eyes back to his. “What’s up?” he asked softly. “Need to talk about it?” “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I know you don’t want to—” “It’s okay. What made you cry? Homesick? Lonesome?” She took a deep breath. “It was a year ago today. Snuck up on me, I guess.” “Ah,” he said. He put his big arms around her. “That would make some tears, I guess. I’m sorry, Marcie. I’m sure it still hurts sometimes.” “That’s just it—it doesn’t exactly hurt. It’s just that I feel so useless.” She leaned against him. “Sometimes I feel all alone. I have lots of people in my life and can still feel so alone without Bobby.” She laughed softly. “And God knows, he wasn’t much company.” He tightened his embrace. “I think I understand.” Yeah, she thought, he might. Here was a guy who was around people regularly, yet completely unconnected to them. She pulled away and asked, “Why did you do this?” “I thought I could clean up a little and take you somewhere.” “Wait. You didn’t think I needed you to do this for me, did you? Because of Erin?” He laughed, and she could actually see the emotion on his face, given the absence of wild beard. “Actually, if you’d asked me to, I probably wouldn’t have. You really think you can match me for stubborn? Probably not. I kept the beard because of the scar,” he said, leaning his left cheek toward her. “That, and maybe a bit of attitude of who cares?” She gently fingered the beard apart to reveal a barely noticeable scar. “It’s hardly there at all. Ian, it’s only a thin line. You don’t have to cover it. You’re not disfigured.” She smiled at him. “You’re handsome.” “Memories from the scar, probably. Anyway, tonight is the truckers’ Christmas parade. A bunch of eighteen-wheelers in the area dress up their rigs and parade down the freeway. I see it every year—fantastic. You think you’re up to it? With it being that anniversary?” “Maybe it’s a good idea,” she said. “Getting out, changing the mood.” “We’ll eat out and—” “What’s all this?” she asked, looking at the bags and boxes. “Snow’s forecast. It’s just what you do up here. Be ready. But this time I got some different things, in case you’re sick of stew. And I never do this—but you’re a girl, so I bought some fresh greens. And fresh eggs. Just enough to last a couple of days. No fridge; and they’ll freeze if we leave ’em in the shed.” “Ian, what about the bathroom? What will we do about the bathroom if there’s a heavy snow?” He laughed at her. “No problem. We’ll tromp out there fine—but I’ll shovel a path. And I’ll plow out to the road, but it’s slow going and if the snow keeps coming, it’s going to be even slower.” “Wow. Is it safe to leave tonight? For the parade? Will we get back in?” “We don’t have blizzards, Marcie. Snow falls slow, but steady. Now, I’m thinking bath day. How about you?” She put her hands on her hips and looked up at him with a glare. “All right, be very careful here. I’ve had my bath. And a hair wash. I’m wearing makeup, Ian. Jesus. You wanna try to clean me up?” His eyes grew large for a moment. Then he said. “Bath day for me, I meant. I knew. You look great.” His thumb ran along her cheek under one eye. “Just a couple of tear marks, but you can take care of that. Let me put this stuff away and get my water ready. You have something to read? Or are you looking for the thrill of your life?” “I have something to read,” she said. And, she thought, at the end of the day, they all turn out to be just men. *

Rakesh Roshan Rakesh Roshan is a producer, director, and actor in Bollywood films. A member of the successful Roshan film family, Mr. Roshan opened his own production company in 1982 and has been producing Hindi movies ever since. His film Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai won nine Filmfare awards, including those for best movie and best director. I didn’t have the privilege of meeting Diana personally, but as a keen observer I learned a lot about her through the media and television coverage of her various activities and her visits to various countries, including India. I vividly remember when she came to my country and visited places that interested her, such as Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, various homes of the destitute, orphanages, hospitals, and so on. On all of these occasions, her kind looks, kind words, and kind actions, such as holding the poor orphan children in her lap, caring for them with love, and wiping their tears, were sufficient indications to convey the passion that Diana had in her heart for the service of the poor and underprivileged. Wherever she went, she went with such noble mission. She derived a sort of divine pleasure through her visits to charitable institutions, orphanages, and homes of the destitute. By minutely looking at her, one could see a deity in Diana--dedicated to love and kindness--devoted to charity and goodness and the darling of all she met. For such human virtues, love for the poor and concern for the suffering of humanity, Diana commands the immense respect, admiration, and affection of the whole world. Wherever she went, she was received with genuine affection and warmth, unlike politically staged receptions.