Love And Rockets Quotes

I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn't have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I clung to people like human life preservers. I thought i'd die if someone left me. Its ironic because now I'm the one who's leaving.

When I fall in love I take my time There's no need to hurry when I'm making up my mind You can turn off the sun but I'm still gonna shine and I'll tell you why.

So you want to be a writer if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it. if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it. if you’re doing it because you want women in your bed, don’t do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don’t do it. if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it, don’t do it. if you’re trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you’re not ready. don’t be like so many writers, don’t be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don’t be dull and boring and pretentious, don’t be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don’t add to that. don’t do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

My hands are in his hair and his arms wrap around my waist tighter. I know what Henry does to me. I’m space bound. A rocket about to blast off. And I want Henry to send me to the moon.

I don't suppose you have a rocket powered helicopter hidden in your bra?

He grabbed my calves and yanked them apart, then pushed them up so my knees were bent. He put a knee to the bed and moved forward, releasing one of my calves, his hand wrapped around his cock and I felt his weight begin to hit me. “You come with me inside you, Ace,” he gritted and then he was inside me, filling me, beautiful. At the feel of him, so hard, making me so full, my back left the bed again. “Tate.” He moved, driving deep, fast, hard. Our mouths attached, our tongues clashed. His hand went between us and he touched me and that was it. It hit me like a rocket and I combusted, my world exploding, taking me with it and I loved every nanosecond.

Her feelings for Jeremy were like Schrodinger’s Crush. As long as she didn’t open the box, their relationship existed in a state of quantum superposition: both possible and impossible at the same time.

And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him. The same thing happened over and over: I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all. That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician. Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there. Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16. A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death. A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you. Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water. And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.

We ran like young wild furies, where angels feared to tread. The woods were dark and deep. Before us demons fled. We checked Coke bottle bottoms to see how far was far. Our worlds of magic wonder were never reached by car. We loved our dogs like brothers, our bikes like rocket ships. We were going to the stars, to Mars we'd make round trips. We swung on vines like Tarzan, and flashed Zorro's keen blade. We were James Bond in his Aston, we were Hercules unchained. We looked upon the future and we saw a distant land, where our folks were always ageless, and time was shifting sand. We filled up life with living, with grins, scabbed knees, and noise. In glass I see an older man, but this book's for the boys.

To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that comes in a million different configurations. You are unpredictable. You're inconstant. You take weeks to fix. The engineer must worry about the water and oxygen and food you'll need in space, about how much extra fuel it will take to launch your shrimp cocktail and irradiated beef tacos. A solar cell or a thruster nozzle is stable and undemanding. It does not excrete or panic or fall in love with the mission commander. It has no ego. Its structural elements don't start to break down without gravity, and it works just fine without sleep. To me, you are the best thing to happen to rocket science. The human being is the machine that makes the whole endeavor so endlessly intriguing.

In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.

Pondering all this down in Reva's black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn't bring them up in me. I couldn't even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best - a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system - a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love?

If you stop referring to my penis as a love truncheon.” “Love dart?” “No.” “Portable pocket rocket?” Sloane smiled. “Absolutely.” The smile vanished. “Not.” “How about moisture missile? Peacemaker? Heat seeking missile?

But if I had to choose between where I live and you, I'd rip up everything I own because the only landscape worth looking is the landscape of the human body. I kiss your Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I kiss your Missouri and Monongahela and Susquehanna and Shenandoah and Rio Grande. I kiss the confluence of all those rivers. I kiss your amber waves of grain. I kiss your spacious skies, your rocket's red glare, your hand I love, your purple mountain'd majesty. But most of all I kiss your head. I kiss the place where we make our decisions. I kiss the place where we keep our resolves. The place where we do our dreams. I kiss the place behind the eyes where we store up secrets and knowledge to save us if we're caught in a corridor on a dark, wintry evening.

As when astronaut Mike Mulhane was asked by a NASA psychiatrist what epitaph he'd like to have on his gravestone, Mulhane answered, "A loving husband and devoted father," though in reality, he jokes in "Riding Rockets," "I would have sold my wife and children into slavery for a ride into space.

He rolled his eyes and took my hand. His hand was hard and calloused, tough with muscle and old scars. The night settled around us like a blanket. I could hear the water lapping against the dock. We were totally alone. “You’re . . . ,” he began, and I waited, heart throbbing in my throat. “Such a pain,” he concluded. “What?” I asked, just as his head swooped in and his mouth touched mine. I tried to speak, but one of Fang’s hands held the back of my head, and he kept his lips pressed against me, kissing me softly but with a Fanglike determination. Oh, jeez, I thought distractedly. Jeez, this is Fang, and me, and . . . Fang tilted his head to kiss me more deeply, and I felt totally lightheaded. Then I remembered to breathe through my nose, and the fog cleared a tiny bit. Somehow we were pressed together, Fang’s arms around me now, sliding under my wings, his hands flat against my back. It was incredible. I loved it. I loved him. It was a total disaster. Gasping, I pulled back. “I, uh—,” I began oh so coherently, and then I jumped up, almost knocking him over, and raced down the dock. I took off, flying fast, like a rocket.

Babe Ruth rose like a rocket.” Through discipline. He also loved to practice.

Embrace the embarrassment,” he advises. “It’s never killed anyone.

Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years. “I think you’re crazy,” was the way Clevinger had responded to Dunbar’s discovery. “Who wants to know?” Dunbar answered. “I mean it,” Clevinger insisted. “Who cares?” Dunbar answered. “I really do. I’ll even go as far as to concede that life seems longer i—“ “—is longer i—“ “—is longer—IS longer? All right, is longer if it’s filled with periods of boredom and discomfort, b—“ “Guess how fast?” Dunbar said suddenly. “Huh?” “They go,” Dunbar explained. “Who?” “Years.” “Years?” “Years,” said Dunbar. “Years, years, years.” “Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?” Dunbar asked Clevinger. “This long.” He snapped his fingers. “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you’re an old man.” “Old?” asked Clevinger with surprise. “What are you talking about?” “Old.” “I’m not old.” “You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?” Dunbar was almost angry when he finished. “Well, maybe it is true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?” “I do,” Dunbar told him. “Why?” Clevinger asked. “What else is there?

Used as rocket fuel, sex energy can lift our consciousness to the stars to experience a state of being where love exists in and for itself and has no opposite. On a soul level, this is our natural state.

When I was a boy in the midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them. I guess every boy does that. When I wasn't looking at the stars, I was running in the my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or time machines. I guess every boy has done that, too. This is a book about those stars and those tennis shoes. Mainly about the stars, beacuse that is the way I grew up, getting more and more involved with rockets and space as I moved toward my twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years. Not that I have forgotten the tennis shoes and their powerful magic, as you will see in the last story here, which I have included not because it concerns the future, but because it gives you some sort of idea of the kind of boy I was when I was looking at the stars and thinking of the years ahead. Nor have I forgetten the dinosaurs that all boys love; they are here, too, along with a machine that travels back in time to step on a butterfly. This is a book then by a boy who grew up in a small illinois town and lived to see the space age arrive, as he hoped and dreamt it would. I dedicate these stories to all boys who wonder about the past, run swiftly in the present, and have high hopes for our future. The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

No man has to be a rocket surgeon to recognize love.

Clary,” Jace said, breaking her out of her reverie. He tightened his arms around her, and she raised her head; the crowd was cheering as the first of the rockets went up.

Winkie? Flesh flute? Tallywhacker? Baby maker? Quiver bone? Joystick? Fun stick? Lap rocket? Love muscle? Wedding tackle? One-eyed wonder weasel? Helmet head? Wang? Trouser snake? Giggle stick? Schlong? Mushroom head? Love rod? Pecker? Thundersw—” “Enough!” Lucian barked, and when Bricker paused and glanced to him questioningly, he said, “I do not know what alarms me more, that you have so many names for cock or what it means in regard to how much time you spend thinking about cock.

The doctrine of the Trinity means that relationship, that fellowship, that togetherness and sharing, that self-giving and other-centeredness are not afterthoughts with God, but the deepest truth about the being of God. The Father is not consumed with Himself; He loves the Son and the Spirit. And the Son is not riddled with narcissism; he loves his Father and the Spirit. And the Spirit is not preoccupied with himself and his own glory; the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. Giving, not taking; other-centeredness, not self-centeredness; sharing, not hoarding are what fire the rockets of God and lie at the very center of God’s existence as Father, Son and Spirit.

an old man with no destiny with our never knowing who he was, or what he was like, or even if he was only a figment of the imagination, a comic tyrant who never knew where the reverse side was and where the right of this life which we loved with an insatiable passion that you never dared even to imagine out of the fear of knowing what we knew only too well that it was arduous and ephemeral but there wasn't any other, general, because we knew who we were while he was left never knowing it forever with the soft whistle of his rupture of a dead old man cut off at the roots by the slash of death, flying through the dark sound of the last frozen leaves of his autumn toward the homeland of shadows of the truth of oblivion, clinging to his fear of the rotting cloth of death's hooded cassock and alien to the clamor of the frantic crowds who took to the streets singing hymns of joy at the jubilant news of his death and alien forevermore to the music of liberation and the rockets of jubilation and the bells of glory that announced to the world the good news that the uncountable time of eternity had come to an end.

I love you, too,” I whispered, feeling the familiar jolt of adrenaline rocket through my veins when those words spilled from her lips. Claire meant it when she told me that she loved me. That was the first of two things in life I was sure of, and I meant it right back. That was the second thing I was sure of. If I knew nothing else in this world, then I knew that I loved Claire Biggs.

Have you read this, Tim? It's my favorite book. Trinket Tocket and his Tin Rocket!' 'I am not familiar with it, Andy. But I can easily access the data network and download all the volumes if you'd like?' 'Nah. My mom still gets them for me in hard copy. I love reading them like this. The drawings look better.

I once told Amanda, my best friend in high school, that I could never be with someone who wasn’t excited by rainstorms. So when the first one came, it was a kind of test. It was one of those sudden storms, and when we left Radio City, we found hundreds of people skittishly sheltered under the overhang. “What should we do?” I asked. And you said, “Run!” So that's what we did - rocketing down Sixth Avenue, dashing around the rest of the post-concert crowd, splashing our tracks until our ankles were soaked. You took the lead, and I started to lose my sprint. But then you looked back, stopped, and waited for me to catch up, for me to take your hand, for us to continue to run in the rain, drenched and enchanted, my words to Amanda no longer feeling like a requirement, but a foretelling.

Rocketing fears for Grandfather aside, the whole music puzzle starts to make sense. “It’s more than a flash mob,” I insist. “Ask Professor Walker, this is Grandfather’s exit song. It’s like his portal of departure.” But Mom’s not listening. She’s preoccupied, apparently puzzled by Dad’s astonishment. Why isn’t anyone listening to me?

and like every guitar duo in metal, they were a little bit in love and a little bit in hate all at the same time. For Kris, Scottie was the brother she'd always wanted and the marriage she'd never had, and she suspected that if she ever did get married it would ba a shallow thing compared to what she'd shared for eleven years on the road with Scottie Rocket.

We had learned from the killing of a Reuters photographer on the balcony of the Palestine Hotel that a long lens could be mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade.

I love being talked down to, Rocket. It's my favorite thing." -Tony Stark

We are goddamn amazing. We're a rocket ship filled with potential. Either we die in a fiery blaze before we leave the Earth's atmosphere, or we make it through and orbit the moon." "If you're trying to seduce me with space stuff, it's totally working." His smile is divine. "Yeah?" "Yeah.

People love to watch viral videos in which one kindly fisherman saves one sea turtle from a snarl of trash; they are less passionate about electing politicians who will dismantle policies that entrench corporate power and allow companies to pump poison into the oceans and skies in order to shore up the immoral wealth of billionaires and further destabilize the lives of the poor who will remain locked in toil until the planet boils us all to death as Jeff Bezos waves good-bye from his private rocket. Strange!

My mother was awesome. I loved her dearly and respected her even more. She and my dad had been tough on us as kids, the good kind of tough, the kind of tough that came with high expectations. Her favorite thing to say to us had always been, “Why are you so anxious to build yourself a ceiling? Why don’t you build a rocket instead?

…I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn't bring them up in me. I couldn't even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best—a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system—a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love?

«“So, Sally, what’s new around here?” “Jeff Bezos just sold off two million shares.” “So, why would our sci-fi paperback bookseller need to sell that much Amazon stock?” “I think Jeff needs the cash for his private space rocket.”»

Still I return. Still I sit. Because something in me knows doors do open. Waiting isn’t weakness. It’s devotion with patience. It’s choosing to remain when leaving would be easier. You think I’m wasting time. I think I’m practicing love.

Open Letter to Neil Armstrong" Dear Neil Armstrong, I write this to you as she sleeps down the hall. I need answers I think only you might have. When you were a boy, and space was simple science fiction, when flying was merely a daydream between periods of History and Physics, when gifts of moon dust to the one you loved could only be wrapped in your imagination.. Before the world knew your name; before it was a destination in the sky.. What was the moon like from your back yard? Your arm, strong warm and wrapped under her hair both of you gazing up from your back porch summers before your distant journey. But upon landing on the moon, as the earth rose over the sea of tranquility, did you look for her? What was it like to see our planet, and know that everything, all you could be, all you could ever love and long for.. was just floating before you. Did you write her name in the dirt when the cameras weren't looking? Surrounding both your initials with a heart for alien life to study millions of years from now? What was it like to love something so distant? What words did you use to bring the moon back to her? And what did you promise in the moons ear, about that girl back home? Can you, teach me, how to fall from the sky? I ask you this, not because I doubt your feat, I just want to know what it's like to go somewhere no man had ever been, just to find that she wasn't there. To realize your moon walk could never compare to the steps that led to her. I now know that the flight home means more. Every July I think of you. I imagine the summer of 1969, how lonely she must have felt while you were gone.. You never went back to the moon. And I believe that's because it dosen't take rockets to get you where you belong. I see that in this woman down the hall, sometimes she seems so much further. But I'm ready for whatever steps I must take to get to her.I have seem SO MANY skies.. but the moon, well, it always looks the same. So I gotta say, Neil, that rock you landed on, has got NOTHING on the rock she's landed on. You walked around, took samples and left.. She's built a fire cleaned up the place and I hope she decides to stay.. because on this rock.. we can breath. Mr. Armstrong, I don't have much, many times have I been upside down with trauma, but with these empty hands, comes a heart that is often more full than the moon. She's becoming my world, pulling me into orbit, and I now know that I may never find life outside of hers. I want to give her EVERYTHING I don't have yet.. So YES, for her, I would go to the moon and back.... But not without her. We'd claim the moon for each other, with flags made from sheets down the hall. And I'd risk it ALL to kiss her under the light of the earth, the brightness of home... but I can do all of that and more right here, where she is..And when we gaze up, her arms around ME, I will NOT promise her gifts of moon dust, or flights of fancy. Instead I will gladly give her all the earth she wants, in return for all the earth she is. The sound of her heart beat and laughter, and all the time it takes to return to fall from the sky,down the hall, and right into love. God, I'd do it every day, if I could just land next to her. One small step for man, but she's one giant leap for my kind.

And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.... The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

The last few strokes filled me with searing heat, electric pulses surging through my body and my soul, as our orgasms burst forth together, a million nerve endings suddenly flashing like twin rockets exploding fireworks, the multitude of sparks joining with a billion stars in the heavens above.

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: ‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more! Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

In contradistinction to the underestimation in the field of rocket science and the aerospace industry, Parsons' accomplishments in the arcane sciences have been highly overrated and grossly exaggerated. As a magician he was essentially a failure. As a Thelemite he learned the hard way what was required. He loved Crowley's 'Law' but couldn't adhere to it—though he tried harder than most. He violated the rules, undertook unauthorized and unorthodox magical operations, and claimed the grade of Magister Templi without first completing all the grades below it. He couldn't handle working under authority—his ego was too big. His record of failure is valuable in that regard. He was a great promulgator of thelemic ideals in his essays, but as an idealist his elitism ruined his work. Indeed, some would say he was guilt of hubris, which the gods always punish.

But for a moment, standing there with Tariq in the sunlight, it was as though those years had never happened. Her parents deaths, her marriage to Rasheed, the killings, the rockets, the Taliban, the beatings, the hunger, even her children, all of it seemed like a dream, a bizarre detour, a mere interlude between that last afternoon together and this moment.

Much as in life, if you like someone, you’ll tend to overlook their flaws. You’ll find signals from a love interest—or a spacecraft—even when they’re not sending any.

Alma had been falling in love with a crazy terrier that thought “stay” mean to take off like a rocket. Gaby knew he’d already taken off with Alma’s heart.

Sign O' The Times Oh yeah In France a skinny man Died of a big disease with a little name By chance his girlfriend came across a needle And soon she did the same At home there are seventeen-year-old boys And their idea of fun Is being in a gang called The Disciples High on crack, totin' a machine gun Time, time Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling of a church And killed everyone inside U turn on the telly and every other story Is tellin' U somebody died Sister killed her baby cuz she could afford 2 feed it And we're sending people 2 the moon In September my cousin tried reefer 4 the very first time Now he's doing horse, it's June Times, times It's silly, no? When a rocket ship explodes And everybody still wants 2 fly Some say a man ain't happy Unless a man truly dies Oh why Time, time Baby make a speech, Star Wars fly Neighbors just shine it on But if a night falls and a bomb falls Will anybody see the dawn Time, times It's silly, no? When a rocket blows And everybody still wants 2 fly Some say a man ain't happy, truly Until a man truly dies Oh why, oh why, Sign O the Times Time, time Sign O the Times mess with your mind Hurry before it's 2 late Let's fall in love, get married, have a baby We'll call him Nate... if it's a boy Time, time Time, time

People would rather debate doctrine or beliefs or tradition or interpretation than actually do what Jesus said. It’s not rocket science. Just go do it. Practice loving a difficult person or try forgiving someone. Give away some money. Tell someone thank you. Encourage a friend. Bless an enemy. Say, “I’m sorry.” Worship God. You already know more than you need to know.

After the meal, Borman dropped me off at my hotel, then went to visit his wife at the nursing home where she lives. As he drove away, it seemed to me strange—I felt I’d come to know Susan as well as I had Frank, despite having met her for just a few minutes, despite the fact that she had been too ill to speak. When I returned home and transcribed the tapes of my interviews, I understood why. Borman spoke of Susan constantly; there didn’t seem an aspect of his life he could explain without discussing how much she meant to him or how much he loved her. I’d heard the same from Lovell and Anders about their wives. When I discovered that Apollo 8 was the only crew in which all the marriages survived (astronaut careers were notoriously hard on marriages) it didn’t surprise me. In a singularly beautiful story, it seemed only fitting that the first men to leave Earth considered home to be the most important place in the universe.

Are you ready to wander with me to take my hand to stumble, to dance to rocket to the moon? Are you ready to embrace the unknown and fly into ecstasy? Ready to get completely lost in love with me?

There is no good talking to him,” said a Dragon-fly, who was sitting on the top of a large brown bulrush; “no good at all, for he has gone away.” “Well, that is his loss, not mine,” answered the Rocket.  “I am not going to stop talking to him merely because he pays no attention.  I like hearing myself talk.  It is one of my greatest pleasures.  I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” “Then you should certainly lecture on Philosophy,” said the Dragon-fly; and he spread a pair of lovely gauze wings and soared away into the sky.

I found a room, both quiet and slow, a room where the walls are thick. Where pixie dust is kept in jars, and paper rockets soar to Mars, and battles leave no lasting scars as clocks forget to tick. I guard this room, both small and bare, this room in which stories live. Where Peter Pan and Alice play, and Sinbad sails at dawn of day, and wolves cry 'boy' to get their way when ogres won’t forgive. With you I’ll share my hiding place, this room under cloak and spell. We’ll snuggle up inside a nook, and read a venturous story book, that makes us question in a look what nonsense fairies tell. In fictive plots and fabled ends, Our happy-e’er-afters dwell!

I might be dumber than a fence post, darlin, but it don’t take a rocket scientist to understand the important things in life. Love and death and loyalty. Family above all else. These are things so simple a child can understand.

We ran like young wild furies, where angels feared to tread. The woods were dark and deep. Before us demons fled. We checked Coke bottle bottoms to see how far was far. Our worlds of magic wonder were never reached by car. We loved our dogs like brothers, our bikes like rocket ships. We were going to the stars, to Mars we’d make round trips. We swung on vines like Tarzan, and flashed Zorro’s keen blade. We were James Bond in his Aston, we were Hercules unchained. We looked upon the future and we saw a distant land, where our folks were always ageless, and time was shifting sand. We filled up life with living, with grins, scabbed knees, and noise. In glass I see an older man, but this book’s for the boys.

MR. BONES KNEW THAT WILLY WASN'T LONG FOR THIS WORLD. The cough had been inside him for over six months, and by now there wasn't a chance in hell that he would ever get rid of it. Slowly and inexorably, without once taking a turn for the better, the thing had assumed a life of its own, advancing from a faint, phlegm-filled rattle in the lungs on February third to the wheezy sputum-jigs and gobby convulsions of high summer. All that was bad enough, but in the past two weeks a new tonality had crept into the bronchial music - something tight and flinty and percussive - and the attacks came now so often as to be almost constant. Every time one of them started, Mr. Bones half expected Willy's body to explode from the rockets of pressure bursting agaisnt his rib cage. He figured that blood would be the next step and when that fatal moment finally occurred on Saturday afternoon, it was as if all the angels in heaven had opened their mouths and started to sing. Mr. Bones saw it happen with his own eyes, standing by the edge of the road between Washington and Baltimore as Willy hawked up a few miserable clots of red matter into his handkerchief, and right then and there he knew that every ounce of hope was gone. The smell of death had settled upon Willy G. Christmas, and as surely as the sun was a lamp in the clouds that went off and on everyday, the end was drawing near. What was a poor dog to do? Mr. Bones had been with Willy since his earliest days as a pup, and by now it was next to impossible to imagine a world that did not have his master in it. Every thought, every memory, every particle of the earth and air was saturated with Willy's presence. Habits die hard, and no doubt there's some truth to the adage about old dogs and new tricks, but it was more than just love or devotion that caused Mr. Bones to dread what was coming. It was pure ontological terror. Substract Willy from the world, and the odds were that the world itself would cease to exist.

A rocket or a bridge. That's the only way I can really describe it. If there is a river between our sleeping bodies, this is the bridge that crosses it. ... I can just fit my fist around the base without waking him. I love it so much I want to bite it.

I don't think you tell people you love them just so you can hear it back. I think you tell people you love them because it feels like a rocket in your soul. The love becomes so powerful that it shoots through you until you're finally forced to express it through words.

They have lied to us. They can't keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death. A cooperative structure of lies. What have they ever given us in return for the trust, the love--They actually say 'love'--we're supposed to owe Them? Can They keep us from even catching cold? from lice, from being alone? from anything? Before the Rocket we went on believing, because we wanted to. But the Rocket can penetrate, from the sky, at any given point. Nowhere is safe. We can't believe Them any more. Not if we are still sane, and love the truth.

I think about all the people I need to forgive. My mother for not saying she loves me? We're too often guilty of thinking that our parents arrived on this planet as fully functioning adults on the day that we were born. That they don't have pasts of their own prior to our birth. That the father is not also a son, that the mother is not also a child. My mother had a tough beginning, enduring things I know little about. And yet I more often discount her pain and overvalue mine. This is suddenly funny to me, ridiculously selfish, and I laugh and the outburst is startling. I lie still as the sound launches skyward like a rocket, reaches the stratosphere, then quietly falls back to earth in the form of a quote I once read: Yours is by far the harder lot, but mine is happening to me. In this moment, I miss my mother.

By speaking the truth, we learn the difference between our authentic self and our facade. If we put our little masked self out there, the horror is that other people might accept and end up making love to it, while we starve and die of neglect behind it. It’s much richer to interact genuinely with the world. When you speak the truth, it feeds and brightens your Spirit. When you don’t, it dims your Spirit. Don’t you want to live in a way that brightens your Spirit? To take a deep breath and feel what’s rocketing and roiling around in your core? What a delight!

The lovely paradox of willing compliance with what an ancient prophet called “the great plan of happiness,” is that conformity to law breeds both freedom and individualism. We may think a leaping child, in the euphoria of his imagination, enjoys unfettered freedom when he tells us he is going to land on the moon. But the rocket scientist hard at work in the laboratory, enmeshed in formulae and equations she has labored to master, and slaving away in perfect conformity with the laws of physics, is the one with true freedom: for she will land on the moon; the boy will not.

It was this philosophy that had Harvey taking the hovercraft Sagan had stolen, mounting it, and, after a few moments to glean the fundamentals of navigating it, rocketing on it toward the door of the Obin mess hall. As Harvey approached, the door to the mess hall opened inward; some Obin heading to duty after dinner. Harvey grinned a mad grin, gunned the hovercraft, and then braked it just enough (he hoped) to jam that fucking alien right back into the room. It worked perfectly. The Obin had enough time for a surprised squawk before the hovercraft’s gun struck it square in the chest, punching backward like it was a toy on a string, hurling down nearly the entire length of the hall. The other Obin in the room looked up while Harvey’s victim pinwheeled to the ground, then turned their multiple eyes toward the doorway, Harvey, and the hovercraft with its big gun poking right into the room. “Hello, boys!” Harvey said in a big, booming voice. “The 2nd Platoon sends its regards!” And with that, he jammed down the “fire” button on the gun and set to work. Things got messy real fast after that. It was just fucking beautiful. Harvey loved his job.

When they kissed, there wasn’t a millimetre between them; they were made for each other. His strengths were her weaknesses and vice versa, and like a dovetail joint, the strongest of all joints, they slotted together to form an attractive, neat fix that would hold together for a lifetime.

The last few strokes filled me with searing heat, and electric pulses traveled through my body and my soul, as our orgasms burst forth together, a million nerve endings suddenly flashing like twin rockets exploding fireworks, the multitude of sparks joining with a billion stars in the heavens above.

so you want to be a writer? if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it. if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it. if you’re doing it because you want women in your bed, don’t do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don’t do it. if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it, don’t do it. if you’re trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you’re not ready. don’t be like so many writers, don’t be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don’t be dull and boring and pretentious, don’t be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don’t add to that. don’t do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the base Only sentries were stirring--they guarded the place. At the foot of each bunk sat a helmet and boot For the Santa of Soldiers to fill up with loot. The soldiers were sleeping and snoring away As they dreamed of “back home” on good Christmas Day. One snoozed with his rifle--he seemed so content. I slept with the letters my family had sent. When outside the tent there arose such a clatter. I sprang from my rack to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash. Poked out my head, and yelled, “What was that crash?” When what to my thrill and relief should appear, But one of our Blackhawks to give the all clear. More rattles and rumbles! I heard a deep whine! Then up drove eight Humvees, a jeep close behind… Each vehicle painted a bright Christmas green. With more lights and gold tinsel than I’d ever seen. The convoy commander leaped down and he paused. I knew then and there it was Sergeant McClaus! More rapid than rockets, his drivers they came When he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: “Now, Cohen! Mendoza! Woslowski! McCord! Now, Li! Watts! Donetti! And Specialist Ford!” “Go fill up my sea bags with gifts large and small! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away, all!” In the blink of an eye, to their trucks the troops darted. As I drew in my head and was turning around, Through the tent flap the sergeant came in with a bound. He was dressed all in camo and looked quite a sight With a Santa had added for this special night. His eyes--sharp as lasers! He stood six feet six. His nose was quite crooked, his jaw hard as bricks! A stub of cigar he held clamped in his teeth. And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. A young driver walked in with a seabag in tow. McClaus took the bag, told the driver to go. Then the sarge went to work. And his mission today? Bring Christmas from home to the troops far away! Tasty gifts from old friends in the helmets he laid. There were candies, and cookies, and cakes, all homemade. Many parents sent phone cards so soldiers could hear Treasured voices and laughter of those they held dear. Loving husbands and wives had mailed photos galore Of weddings and birthdays and first steps and more. And for each soldier’s boot, like a warm, happy hug, There was art from the children at home sweet and snug. As he finished the job--did I see a twinkle? Was that a small smile or instead just a wrinkle? To the top of his brow he raised up his hand And gave a salute that made me feel grand. I gasped in surprise when, his face all aglow, He gave a huge grin and a big HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! from the barracks and then from the base. HO! HO! HO! as the convoy sped up into space. As the camp radar lost him, I heard this faint call: “HAPPY CHRISTMAS, BRAVE SOLDIERS! MAY PEACE COME TO ALL!

There’s a poetry to it, engineer’s poetry…it suggests Haverie—average, you know—certainly you have two lobes, don’t you, symmetrical about the rocket’s intended azimuth…hauen, too-smashing someone with a hoe or a club…” off on a voyage of his own here, smiling at no one in particular, bringing in the popular wartime expression ab-hauen, quarterstaff technique, peasant humor, phallic comedy dating back to the ancient Greeks…Slothrop’s first impulse is to get back to what that Plas is into, but something about the man, despite obvious membership in the plot, keeps him listening…an innocence, maybe a try at being friendly in the only way he has available, sharing what engages and runs him, a love for the Word.

Even now, Coalwood endures, and no one, nor careless industry or overzealous government, can ever completely destroy it--not while we who once lived there may recall our life among its places, or especially remember rockets that once leapt into the air propelled not by physics but by the vibrant love of an honorable people, and the instruction of a dear teacher, and the dreams of boys.

There are times when we need the rocket fuel of singing and dancing to power us through an act of blind faith. Falling in love is one of those times, when we need to move into a phase of enchantment with enough force so that when things cool and the air clears, we are locked into that person, that love. We fall in love and we sing as we walk down the street; we turn up the music and dance.

Arthur Less has, for the past decade and a half, remained a bachelor. This came after a long period of living with the older poet Robert Brownburn, a tunnel of love he entered at twenty-one and exited, blinking in the sunlight, in his thirties. Where was he? Somewhere in there he lost the first phase of youth, like the first phase of a rocket; it had fallen, depleted, behind him. And here was the second. And last.

Homewrecker" Every boyfriend is the one Until otherwise proven The good are never easy The easy never good And love it never happens like you think it really should Deception and perfection are wonderful traits One will breed love The other hate You'll find me in the lonely hearts Under 'I'm after a brand new start' And I don't belong to anyone They call me Homewrecker Homewrecker They call me Homewrecker Homewrecker Girls and their curls and their gourmet vomit Boys and their toys and their six inch rockets We're all very lovely 'til we get to know each other As we stop becoming friends and we start becoming lovers And I don't belong to anyone They call me Homewrecker Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run) They call me Homewrecker Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun) They call me Homewrecker Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run) They call me Homewrecker Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun) I'm only happy when I'm on the run I break a million hearts just for fun I don't belong to anyone I guess you could say that my life's a mess But I'm still looking pretty in this dress I'm the image of deception When everything is life and death You may feel like there's nothing left Instead of love and trust and laughter What you get is happy never after But deep down all you want is love The pure kind we all dream of But we cannot escape the past So you and I will never last 'Cause I'm a Homewrecker Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run) 'Cause I'm a Homewrecker Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun) 'Cause I'm a Homewrecker Homewrecker (I'm only happy when I'm on the run) 'Cause I'm a Homewrecker Homewrecker (I broke a million hearts just for fun) 'Cause I'm a Homewrecker Homewrecker

It all makes me think of how fragile we are. Which is good news. This means that everything that we've created can crumble. The police. The governments. The tanks and rockets. The systems, the hierarchies, the caste made upon sand, violence, the murders. In bedrooms and schoolrooms, on playgrounds, in grocery stores, in deserts, and alleyways, and homes, and offices. All of it can crumble. All of it can be reborn. It must. We must. This is another way of saying love.

Mestre. Say the word without hissing the conurbated villain, and pitying its citizens. As quickly as they can, two million tourists pass through, or by, Mestre each year, and each one will be struck by the same thought as they wonder at the aesthetic opposition that it represents. Mestre is an ugly town but ugly only in the same way that Michael Jackson might be desccribed as eccentric or a Tabasco Vindaloo flambéed in rocket fuel might be described as warm. Mestre is almost excremental in its hideousness: a fetid, fly-blown, festering, industrial urbanization, scarred with varicose motorways, flyovers, rusting railway sidings and the rubbish of a billion holidaymakers gradually burning, spewing thick black clouds into the Mediterranean sky. A town with apparently no centre, a utilitarian ever-expandable wasteland adapted to house the displaced poor, the shorebound, outpriced, domicile-deprived exiles from its neighbouring city. For, just beyond the condom- and polystyrene-washed, black-stained, mud shores of Marghera, Mestre's very own oil refinery, less than a mile away across the waters of the lagoon in full sight of its own dispossessed citizens, is the Jewel of Adriatic. Close enough for all to feel the magnetism, there stands the most beautiful icon of Renaissance glory and, like so much that can attract tourism, a place too lovely to be left in the hands of its natives, the Serenissima itself, Venice.

Just then, a telltale scent reached Trez’s nose and rocketed through his blood, the impact wrenching his head and his body around … Whereupon he lost all thought. All breath. And all of his soul. Selena stood at the head of the bloodred-carpeted steps, her lovely hand resting on the gold-leafed balustrade, her body held stiffly, as if she weren’t sure about her shoes, or her dress, or maybe even her hair. There was absolutely nothing to worry about. Unless she had a problem with being an H-bomb.

I love my kids, and I’m so proud of them for everything that they have accomplished. My oldest child, Elon, is making electric cars to save the environment and launching rockets. My middle child, Kimbal, opened farm-to-table restaurants and is teaching children across the country to build fruit and vegetable gardens in underserved schools. My youngest child, Tosca, runs her own entertainment company, producing and directing romance films from bestselling novels. They all have different interests.

Sam "Snowbow" Archambeau sat on his bunk and finally sharked his thumbnail through the sealed envelope marked, “Do not open until I blast off!” It had been inserted inside an outer envelope that had flown from Amsterdam to Cape Town to Christchurch to McMurdo Station to South Pole Station. As he unfolded the red construction paper inside, Snowbow smiled at the incongruity of a rocket girl using snail mail to communicate her last Earthly message to him. -- from the upcoming novel, MARS COLONY AGATHA: NIKKI RED by Jack Chaucer, 1-1-20

«All the Amazon guys around Seattle were also aware of the trend. They all knew that, someday, European haute couture would sell online. The problem was that feat couldn’t be done by anybody from Amazon. Because Amazon guys were hacker geeks and cheesy hicks. Amazon had been invented to sell sci-fi books. The least chic thing in the world. The European couture biz would never go anywhere near a dorky sci-fi geek like Jeff Bezos. As for Jeff himself, Jeff would much rather conquer outer space with his private rocket than ever dress the First Lady of France.»

Driving alone along the Northway, feeling more haunted than I really had the courage to be, I cried in the car the way one does when leaving someone in a bitter and unbearable way. I don't know why I should have picked that time to grieve, to summon everything before me--my own monsterousness, my two-bit affections, three-bit, four. It could have been sooner, it could have been later, it could have been one of the hot, awkward funerals (my grandmother's, LaRoue's, my father who one morning in Vero Beach clutched his fiery arm and fell dead off his chair mouthing to my mother, "Help. Heart. I love you" --how every death makes the world a lonelier place), it oculd have been some other time when the sun wasn't so bright, and there was no news on the raido, and my arms were not laced in a bird's nest on the steering wheel, my life going well, I believed, pretty well. It could have been any other time. But it was then: I cried for Sils and LaRoue, all that devotion and remorse, stars streaming light a million years after dying; I cried for the boyfriends I was no longer with, the people and places I no longer knew very well, for my parents and grandmother ailing and stuck in Florida, their rough, unchanging forms conjured only in memory; a jewel box kept in the medicine cabinet in the attic of a house on the moon; that's where their unchanging forms were kept. I cried for everyone and for all the scrabbly, funny love one sent out into the world like some hit song that enters space and bounds off to another galaxy, a tune so pretty you think the words are true, you do! There was never any containing a song like that, keeping it. It went off and out, speeding out of earshot or imagining or any reach at all, like a rocket invented in sleep.

I do not have reason to smile very often.” Ky’s fingers begin tracking down the back of my hand. “Then you make a reason, Li. Don’t make excuses for living a shit life. It ain’t rocket science. You don’t like something, find something you do. Don’t like being around someone, stay the fuck away. Wanna change your life, then get off your ass, bitch and fuckin’ change it.” … “Fuck, I don’t ever get down, love my damn life, but looking at you through that window every night, as miserable as shit and glaring at us like we’re demons, even makes me wanna slit my wrists. And I’ll tell you now, I’m too fuckin’ pretty to die.

The first step toward recovery is the choice to face reality. In many ways, the symptoms that survivors experience are the body and mind’s way of forcing you to look at what happened. Memories of sexual trauma seem to rocket around the brains of survivors, refusing to be at rest and constantly putting themselves at the forefront of the survivors‘ minds. The body also holds trauma that expresses itself in many ways. The body of mind work together to force survivors to relate directly to their past experiences. That is, to have a relationship to the past that is free of denial, repression, or distortion. This is a painful process, but it’s the only way forward.

The quick ticket to ecstasy is to catch yourself feeling in a very low state of mind--depressed, stupid, hateful--and to love yourself for feeling that way. When you do that you can experience a rocket ride right to the top. Love does not take time; it's possible to transform depression into ecstasy in a flash. But please do not accept my word for it. Try it as an experiment next time you are feeling low. Something else to consider is that we will always be in the process of remembering how to love ourselves, then forgetting, then remembering again. It does not seem to be our destiny to be any one way all the time. So let's get used to being pendulums and enjoy the ride.

Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light. Dante reserved a place in his Inferno for those who wilfully live in sadness - sullen in the sweet air, he says. Your 'honour' is all shame and timidity and compliance. Pure of stain! But the artist is the secret criminal in our midst. He is the agent of progress against authority. you are right to be a scholar. A scholar is all scruple, an artist is none. The artist must lie, cheat, deceive, be untrue to nature and contemptuous of history. I made my life into my art and it was an unqualified success. The blaze of my immolation threw its light into every corner of the land where uncounted young men sat each in his own darkness. What would I have done in Megara!? - think what I would have missed! I awoke the imagination of the century. I banged Ruskin's and Pater's heads together, and from the moral severity of one and the aesthetic soul of the other I made art a philosophy that can look the twentieth century in the eye. I had genius, brilliancy, daring, I took charge of my own myth. I dipped my staff into the comb of wild honey. I tasted forbidden sweetness and drank the stolen waters. I lived at the turning point of the world where everything was waking up new - the New Drama, the New Novel, New Journalism, New Hedonism, New Paganism, even the New Woman. Where were you when all this was happening?

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams.

And what’s with the finger? For God’s sake, Jasper, that’s just…” Awesome?” “No! It’s weird!” “So weird that you fucking explode every time I do it? … I can’t believe you’ve never done that before, darling.” “Why can’t you believe it? I’m a good girl. I don’t do anal.” That makes me laugh out loud and earns me another scowl. “You do now.” “No, I don’t.” She tries to get away from me, but I only tighten my arms around her. “Why do you deny you love it when it’s obvious that you do?” “It’s dirty.” “Mmm, that’s what makes it so bloody hot. Wait until you feel my cock there, darling. You’ll go off like a rocket ship.” “You’re not putting your cock there. We’re working on getting pregnant, not exploring new frontiers.” “Why can’t we do both?

Telegrams for the astronauts poured in by the thousands. One, however, stood out from the rest. It came not from a world leader or celebrity or other luminary, but from an anonymous stranger. It had traveled over whites-only lunch counters in the South, through jungles in Vietnam where young men fell, over the coffins of two of America’s great civil rights leaders. It had blown across the streets bloodied by protesters and police, past a segregationist presidential campaign, into radios playing songs of alienation and revolt. It had made its way through ten million American souls who didn’t have enough to eat, alongside generations that no longer trusted each other, into a White House where a no-longer-loved president slept. It read: THANKS. YOU SAVED 1968.

The house was squashed like a mushroom by a thatched roof that hung far out over the walls. A pair of windows sparkled on either side of a rounded, heavy wooden door. There was nothing particularly creepy or witch-ish about it at all, except for maybe some leeks that grew on the roof around the higgledy-piggledy chimney (out of which wafted a lovely, homey-smelling smoke). Next to the cottage was a small fenced-in kitchen garden, and even in the low light Rapunzel could see it wasn't given over just to herbs and vegetables. Tall rockets of flowers and pretty, feathery foliage shot colorfully out of the corners. There was even a neat flagstone path that led up to the front door. "Witch?" Flynn asked, skeptical. "Or, like... crunchy earth mother type who drinks herbal teas and pretends the goddess speaks to her?

The next day they went to pick fragole di bosco, wild strawberries, and made love in a deserted old barn above the pastures, their lips still smeared with the pulp of the fruit. The next day it was misticanza, wild leaves for salad. Benedetta was scrupulous that they must always pick first. If anyone saw them walking home with empty baskets, she warned, tongues would start wagging instantly. So they filled their baskets with rocket, wild fennel, dandelion, and lamb's lettuce before temptation overcame them and they collapsed into a quiet corner of a field, hidden only by the tall fronds of the finocchio stalks. Bruno made her close her eyes, teasing her naked body with a spray of fennel: when he kissed her between her legs, the aniseed mingled with the faint, faraway taste of the sea. We were all fish once, he thought, and this is the proof of it, this whisper of oceans in the deepest recesses of the body.

The talk then turned to the topic of risk. The dozen or so regulatory agencies that had to approve the flight test did not share Musk’s love of it. The engineers briefed him on all the safety reviews and requirements they had endured. “Getting the license was existentially soul-sucking,” Juncosa said. Shana Diez and Jake McKenzie provided details. “My fucking brain is hurting,” Musk said, holding his head. “I’m trying to figure out how we get humanity to Mars with all this bullshit.” He processed in silence for two minutes, and when he emerged from his trance, he was philosophical. “This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.” That’s why America could no longer build things like high-speed rail or rockets that go to the moon. “When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.

Della & I are drunk at the top of Mont-Royal. We have an open blue plastic thermos of red wine at our feet. It's the first day of spring & it's midnight & we've been peeling off layers of winter all day. We stand facing each other, as if to exchange vows, chests heaving from racing up & down the mountain to the sky. My face is hurting from smiling so much, aching at the edges of my words. She reaches out to hold my face in her hands, dirty palms form a bowl to rest my chin. I’m standing on a tree stump so we’re eye to eye. It’s hard to stay steady. I worry I may start to drool or laugh, I feel so unhinged from my body. It’s been one of those days I don’t want to end. Our goal was to shirk all responsibility merely to enjoy the lack of everyday obligations, to create fullness & purpose out of each other. Our knees are the colour of the ground-in grass. Our boots are caked in mud caskets. Under our nails is a mixture of minerals & organic matter, knuckles scraped by tree bark. We are the thaw embodied. She says, You have changed me, Eve, you are the single most important person in my life. If you were to leave me, I would die. At that moment, our breath circling from my lungs & into hers, I am changed. Perhaps before this I could describe our relationship as an experiment, a happy accident, but this was irrefutable. I was completely consumed & consuming. It was as though we created some sort of object between us that we could see & almost hold. I would risk everything I’ve ever known to know only this. I wanted to honour her in a way that was understandable to every part of me. It was as though I could distill the meaning of us into something I could pour into a porcelain cup. Our bodies on top of this city, rulers of love. Originally, we were celebrating the fact that I got into Concordia’s visual arts program. But the congratulatory brunch she took me to at Café Santropol had turned into wine, which had turned into a day for declarations. I had a sense of spring in my body, that this season would meld into summer like a running-jump movie kiss. There would be days & days like this. XXXX gone away on a sojurn I didn’t care to note the details of, she simply ceased to be. Summer in Montreal in love is almost too much emotion to hold in an open mouth, it spills over, it causes me to not need any sleep. I don’t think I will ever feel as awake as I did in the summer of 1995.

Space Rockets as Power Symbols The moon rocket is the climactic expression of the power system: the maximum utilization of the resources of science and technics for the achievement of a relatively miniscule result: the hasty exploration of a barren satellite. Space exploration by manned rockets enlarges and intensifies all the main components of the power system: increased energy, accelerated motion, automation, cyber-nation, instant communication, remote control. Though it has been promoted mainly under military pressure, the most vital result of moon visitation so far turns out to be an unsought and unplanned one-a full view of the beautiful planet we live on, an inviting home for man and for all forms of life. This distant view on television evoked for the first time an active, loving response from many people who had hitherto supposed that modern technics would soon replace Mother Earth with a more perfect, scientifically organized, electronically controlled habitat, and who took for granted that this would be an improvement. Note that the moon rocket is itself necessarily a megastructure: so it naturally calls forth such vulgar imitations as the accompanying bureaucratic obelisk (office building) of similar dimensions, shown here (left). Both forms exhibit the essentially archaic and regressive nature of the science-fiction mind.

Letter to the tech giants: When fame and abundance kiss somebody’s feet before that person is wise enough, he or she is very likely to lose track of what’s necessity and what’s luxury. And modern society is filled with examples of such intelligent stupidity – stupidity that is carried out by apparently smart humans. Because being smart is not the same as being wise. The world has enough smartness, but not enough wisdom to bring that smartness into proper productive practice – and I mean productive practice not sophisticated practice – there is a difference. A person smart enough to visualize a Falcon rocket engine can easily pinpoint the locations of various organizations that spread terrorism, yet the person chooses to explore the space further instead of prioritizing the technological advantages to first fix real issues of the human society that inflict harm to the humans every walk of the way. The world is a miserable place not because we have lack of resources, but because those who have an abundance of resources do not have the slightest idea of true human need. The resources needed for colonizing Mars if put to proper practice can fix the world’s global warming issues – it can fix the world’s climate change issues – it can fix the world’s terrorism issues, yet people are more interested in the pompous idea of living in Mars for whatever reason, instead of paying attention to improving human condition on earth. I am not against technological advancement, for I am a scientist, but my soul aches when I see smart people are dumb enough to chase after illusory glory of doing something different and innovative instead of focusing the powers of their soul on cleaning up the misery business on earth. You can, yet you don’t. Why? Smartness without wisdom is stupidity. You are smart – yes indeed – but I am sorry – you are stupid at the same time. How can you dream of having a cheese burger on Mars when your own kind on Earth is suffering! How can you think of taking rich kids into the orbit just so they can admire the beauty of earth from the heavens, when that very earth is infested with the primordial evils of human character! Awaken the human within you my friend, and pay attention. Awaken the human within and let it consume all the miseries from the world that you live in. Say a member of your family falls ill, would you ignore his or her misery completely just because you want to make life more comfortable for others than it already is, or would you first try everything in your capacity in order to heal your loved one! Be wise my friend, for it is not enough to be smart. You are smart – there is no doubt about that – so utilize that smartness for humanity and heal your own kind. Heal your kind with your capacity my friend. It is wailing for healers – not some delusional faith healers, but real tangible healers. Would you not do anything! Would you not give your soul to fix the broken soul of this world! Arise my friend, Awake my friend and work for humanity, not to make it sophisticated, but to make it peaceful first. Remember, humanity first, then everything else. Peace first, sophistication later. Harmony first, luxury later.

It is the story of God.” God’s real name is Charlie, he told us. He was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1776, in the summer of the signing, when temperatures were high as rockets and humid as seas. Charlie was the son of a poor miller, a mean man with a gammy leg and a spray of powder burns over his right temple from the war. When Charlie was just becoming something more than a boy, he went out into the creaking, old-growth forest to collect firewood. He came upon a stream that fell away, suddenly, into the earth. Charlie wanted to see where the water went. He leaned down and peered in. A spark. An alien pulse of light. He stared, transfixed, as every star, every galaxy in the universe flicked across his vision. The rings of Jupiter. The broken, sunburned back of Mars. Sights no human had ever captured with their eyes. And, just as suddenly, the feeling of every cell of every living organism hovering just beneath his fingertips, like piano keys. He could touch each one, if he wanted. He could control them. There are some who insist Charlie was simply lucky. That anyone who happened to walk by that stream on that morning, curious enough to lean over the odd water gushing into the ground, would be made God. They are wrong. Charlie was God before he was even born. It was only a matter of him finding out. Charlie lives in every generation. When he dies, he is reborn nine months later, a baby God. At any moment, you might meet him. He has been a Confederate soldier. He has been a bank teller. He has sat behind an oak desk in wire-rimmed glasses and a day’s growth of beard graying his cheeks. He has cooked dinner for his mother. He has driven to the ocean. He has fallen in love.

Now, straight to the Word. Before let's just give a little word of thanks to the Lord Jesus. Our heavenly Father, we're just so grateful today for the--for You down here in this modern age, in the age of automobiles, airplanes, jets, the rockets, and--and all kind of science: telephone, television, and a modern atomic weapons, and so forth. You are still the supreme, almighty, omnipotent, omniscient God that created the heavens and earth and patterned out the sky. God, we can't explain it. We can't explain it. Neither can we explain why the sky doesn't have an end, how the world can revolve around, and so perfect till twenty years before, they can tell when the eclipse of the sun is coming; because Your machinery works exact. We can't produce a piece of machinery to be that exact. Oh, but great Jehovah, Who holds this earth here in space, it's perfect. And we love You, and all Your doings are just and right. And we submit ourselves to Thee this morning, the beginning of this new year, and ask that You fill us all with the Holy Spirit, Lord, and draw us close to Thee; and may Thy everlasting arms be around us and hold us, Lord, for the days are shaking and dark, but the Morning Star is leading the way. We shall follow, Lord. Where He leads me, I will follow. If it be some through the waters, some through the flood, some through deep trials, but all through the Blood. 8-1 O God, lead us by Thy everlasting hand until the victory finally is won, and Jesus returns to the earth. Sin, sickness, and sorrow will be ended, and we'll live this glorious millennium with Thee. We're longing for that great day. Come, Lord Jesus, to Thy Word today. Get into It. Circumcise the lips that speak, and the hearts that hear. And may the seed fall into the heart where the Holy Spirit will sow it, and bring forth a hundredfold. We ask in Jesus' Name. Amen. { See Message "Why are people so tossed about " - Preached on Sunday, 1st January 1956 at the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, U.S.A - See Paragraph 7-7 to 8:1 ).

Elephanta caves, Mumbai-- I entered a world made of shadows and sudden brightness. The play of the light, the vastness of the space and its irregular form, the figures carved on the walls: all of it gave the place a sacred character, sacred in the deepest meaning of the word. In the shadows were the powerful reliefs and statues, many of them mutilated by the fanaticism of the Portuguese and the Muslims, but all of them majestic, solid, made of a solar material. Corporeal beauty, turned into living stone. Divinities of the earth, sexual incarnations of the most abstract thought, gods that were simultaneously intellectual and carnal, terrible and peaceful. ............................................................................ Gothic architecture is the music turned to stone; one could say that Hindu architecture is sculpted dance. The Absolute, the principle in whose matrix all contradictions dissolve (Brahma), is “neither this nor this nor this.” It is the way in which the great temples at Ellora, Ajanta, Karli, and other sites were built, carved out of mountains. In Islamic architecture, nothing is sculptural—exactly the opposite of the Hindu. The Red Fort, on the bank of the wide Jamuna River, is as powerful as a fort and as graceful as a palace. It is difficult to think of another tower that combines the height, solidity, and slender elegance of the Qutab Minar. The reddish stone, contrasting with the transparency of the air and the blue of the sky, gives the monument a vertical dynamism, like a huge rocket aimed at the stars. The mausoleum is like a poem made not of words but of trees, pools, avenues of sand and flowers: strict meters that cross and recross in angles that are obvious but no less surprising rhymes. Everything has been transformed into a construction made of cubes, hemispheres, and arcs: the universe reduced to its essential geometric elements. The abolition of time turned into space, space turned into a collection of shapes that are simultaneously solid and light, creations of another space, made of air. There is nothing terrifying in these tombs: they give the sensation of infinity and pacify the soul. The simplicity and harmony of their forms satisfy one of the most profound necessities of the spirit: the longing for order, the love of proportion. At the same time they arouse our fantasies. These monuments and gardens incite us to dream and to fly. They are magic carpets. Compare Ellora with the Taj Mahal, or the frescoes of Ajanta with Mughal miniatures. These are not distinct artistic styles, but rather two different visions of the world.

Through the window we saw them, all three arm in arm, going toward the café. Rockets were going up in the square. "I'm going to sit here," Brett said. "I'll stay with you," Cohn said. "Oh, don't!" Brett said. "For God's sake, go off somewhere. Can't you see Jake and I want to talk?" "I didn't," Cohn said. "I thought I'd sit here because I felt a little tight." "What a hell of a reason for sitting with any one. If you're tight, go to bed. Go on to bed." "Was I rude enough to him?" Brett asked. Cohn was gone. "My God! I'm so sick of him!" "He doesn't add much to the gayety." "He depresses me so." "He's behaved very badly." "Damned badly. He had a chance to behave so well." "He's probably waiting just outside the door now." "Yes. He would. You know I do know how he feels. He can't believe it didn't mean anything." "I know." "Nobody else would behave as badly. Oh, I'm so sick of the whole thing. And Michael. Michael's been lovely, too." "It's been damned hard on Mike." "Yes. But he didn't need to be a swine." "Everybody behaves badly," I said. "Give them the proper chance." "You wouldn't behave badly." Brett looked at me. "I'd be as big an ass as Cohn," I said. "Darling, don't let's talk a lot of rot." "All right. Talk about anything you like." "Don't be difficult. You're the only person I've got, and I feel rather awful to-night." "You've got Mike." "Yes, Mike. Hasn't he been pretty?" "Well," I said, "it's been damned hard on Mike, having Cohn around and seeing him with you." “Don't I know it, darling? Please don't make me feel any worse than I do." Brett was nervous as I had never seen her before. She kept looking away from me and looking ahead at the wall. "Want to go for a walk?" "Yes. Come on." I corked up the Fundador bottle and gave it to the bartender. "Let's have one more drink of that," Brett said. "My nerves are rotten." We each drank a glass of the smooth amontillado brandy. "Come on," said Brett. As we came out the door I saw Cohn walk out from under the arcade. "He _was_ there," Brett said. "He can't be away from you." "Poor devil!" "I'm not sorry for him. I hate him, myself." "I hate him, too," she shivered. "I hate his damned suffering." We walked arm in arm down the side Street away from the crowd and the lights of the square. The street was dark and wet, and we walked along it to the fortifications at the edge of town. We passed wine-shops with light coming out from their doors onto the black, wet street, and sudden bursts of music. "Want to go in?" "No." We walked out across the wet grass and onto the stone wall of the fortifications. I spread a newspaper on the stone and Brett sat down.

When your crow’s-feet begin to creep over your cheekbones, you are too old to be out after midnight more than twice a week. Also: If you love one man, don’t flirt and drink with another. It’s not rocket science,

For the love of Nyx, can’t anyone be a proper introvert these days? At this rate, I’ll need to escape to Jupiter for quiet. Too bad we’re more focused on retweets than rockets.

Not today, we don't. " Final panel, final page, 'Not Today, You Don't' by Xaime, Love And Rockets, Volume IV, #14.

You aren’t conventionally attractive or even, as you say, “normal-looking,” and as you know already, a lot of people will immediately X you out as a romantic partner for this reason. That’s okay. You don’t need those people. By stepping aside, they’ve done you a favor. Because what you’ve got left after the fools have departed are the old souls and the true hearts. Those are the über-cool sparkle rocket mind-blowers we’re after. Those are the people worthy of your love.

There’s few things I love more than scoring a bag of fireworks and spending an evening, alone or with company, lighting them. It feels exciting and fun and dangerous and youthful and awesome. I love the smell. I love watching a bottle rocket soar up into the sky and explode. And I love being the one who lit the fuse.

Of course, it’s very ironic that we in Gaza and Palestine read and appreciate and value American literature, and English literature, we study it, we just love it. And we try to imitate it, just as we imitate Arabic literature. But then all of a sudden, a rocket, or a heavy bomb that was paid for and manufactured in America, is killing, not only me, but the books that we read and studied in classes. That was very ironic to me. I

I love you as I love breath—" His heart rocketed. "But I can't be your annex." And crashed. "I don't understand." "I don't know how to put it plainer. You'd swallow me up the way an ocean swallows a bucket of water. I'd disappear in you. I love you, but I'm terrified of you, and of your future.

Yes,” Rensselaer said. “You’re always at war. No safe place.” “That’s true,” Rechtman added. “In the full light,” he pointed out the window, “you can see Lebanon. Nasr’allah has two hundred thousand rockets, and the only thing between them and this room is air.

Stars, Sam. We mucked it. I mean, I mucked it. And not just for us. Yet I recall pure joy: your bike hot between my legs, your arms locked ’round my waist. I recall poor Second’s chiding before I blinked it off. I recall laughter and all of those soldiers from someone else’s war standing on that terrace singing yet another Terran victory rag. You told me later that you didn’t know I’d make a run at the canyon wall ’til I torqued it, thumbing your bike’s twin throttles hard enough to singe our legs as the acceleration turned into an increasing roar. By the time we hit fifty, I couldn’t even hear you yelling at me to stop over the wind. I didn’t think you were serious. We’d climbed that mesa in daylight when we were younger, smaller, bendier. We’d done it with safety rails and belts, with hoverbikes that floated back down like carnival balloons when we failed; we’d done it with our parents cheering and a Grass Priest standing watch in case we needed healing. That run should’ve been a lark, Sam. But the night was dark as space, and our planet has no moon. You grabbed hard as I pulled the yoke. The engines screamed. I meant to pull up, climb that mesa vertically—see if we could rocket to the top before I gunned again like we’d done a hundred times as kids. But I timed it too late. I saw the mesa wall in our headlamps, and then everything went black. The next thing I recall is waking up on the Unity ship Ascendant with Ken’ri Mureen of Glos smiling down at me. Those big round eyes in her lovely, lying face. I thought I’d surely killed you, Sam, but Mureen swore you were fine. Mureen swore removing my Second was only temporary—swore surgery would fix the soup the crash had made of my brain. She made me sign forms, and then Ma came in with pastries. I still didn’t believe you’d made it out, but Ma swore it too. You know the gist after that—mostly—but there’s a lot I never told—

How about donuts?” “Donuts?” “Donuts will be our thing. You love donuts.” I said nothing. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I know?” She grinned. “Hmm, no. I’m alive, therefore I love donuts. Not exactly rocket science, dude. Carbs and sugar equal oral orgasms.

So you want to be a writer? if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it. if you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it. if you’re doing it because you want women in your bed, don’t do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don’t do it. if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it, don’t do it. if you’re trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you’re not ready. don’t be like so many writers, don’t be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don’t be dull and boring and pretentious, don’t be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don’t add to that. don’t do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was. – Charles Bukowski

He was awake; it seemed like a long time, all dressed, sitting deep in the armchair, small with a grey face. I stopped ast the room entrance in silence, swallowed my words, and thought that maybe he didn’t even go to sleep that night. His facial colour reminded me of a teacher, dying from cancer. ‘Grandpa, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you? Mother is coming home, did you hear?’ I came closer and touched his hand. It was colder than usual, and the frost went down my back. ‘Do you hear me? What’s wrong with you?’ I asked, and he was silent. Suddenly, I understood everything.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 5: University of Life) “‘Let me tell you this way. In the academy, we were told to marry early, before we go on the first shift. My first shift starts in a few months in July. I shall be half a year under the water in the submarine, carrying nuclear weapons. They advise us to marry and to make children as soon as possible because who knows what will be on that shift. Also, I told you about the radiation. I know submariners’ who cannot make children because of the radiation on the ship,’ said Prohor. ‘How to explain to you, my girl? To make children, a man needs an erection but the radiation kills it. I am afraid until I reach the rank of admiral, I shall be impotent … unable to make children …,’ Prohor told sadly from his bed.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 6: Fiance from Submarine) “So, it happened there; between the two biggest islands of two big enemies, Japan and the USSR. ‘Now I recall that Prohor praised that they can attack unexpectedly from a submarine, from under the water, with nuclear rockets.’ I was astonished that I knew all these things, which earlier had never interested me.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 7: Between Two Men) “‘Do you remember what I told you before I died? You promised me to think big! My little star, if you think big, you will become big! Use my diamonds and the wall clock to become big! Dream big, Anfisa—and you will be more than just a wife to a man. ‘But remember, you have to take diamonds and the clock outside the USSR, where they value these things.’ I heard my grandfather’s voice live, close, but I didn’t see him.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 8: Earner Marriage No. 1)

All forms of passive defense, however, were irrelevant to wire-guided missiles or aimed ballistic projectiles, whether anti-tank missiles or rocket-propelled grenades.

Childhood is the period when we are full of dreams. We jump, we fly and we soar. It is almost as if wings have been implanted on us and we are rocketing and gliding in the sky. Sometimes, we reach the stars, sometimes we talk to the moon and at other times we swing on the rainbow. And these dreams are unidirectional, that is, we learn only to aspire and hope; without even wondering there could be any stop to our flights of fantasy.

He would be forty-five now, a grown man, if he had not died that fall. His final pneumonia took him quickly: a fever that rocketed skyward, the tiny, bottlelike lungs filling, coma, death within hours. After all he’d been through, it seemed a mercy, though of course that was an illusion, something to say to fill the silence of his missing life: the bicycle he would not ride, the books he would not read, the friends he would not have and the girl he would not kiss. The thousand pains and pleasures of his life, shelved in a tomb that the door of early death had sealed. No, there was no mercy in what happened to my boy at all. When he died, he weighed just eleven pounds. It’s said that many marriages do not survive the loss of a child, that such grief is a room parents enter together but depart alone. I have no cause to argue the point, having sat in just that room. From that day forward we loved each other, Meredith and I, but we loved with broken hearts. And when, on a morning not long after we had buried Sam, I came into the kitchen to find Meredith standing at the window, cupping the curve of her stomach in a secret way that I alone understood, I knew we would go on.

Author Britton Taylor lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his sweet Labrador, Daisy May. Besides spending time with her, he enjoys snowboarding, watching documentaries, and rooting for his beloved sports teams—Go Cowboys, Rockets, Astros, and Runnin’ Rebels! Mr. Taylor wanted to share what a beautiful and loving soul Daisy May is and felt a children’s book would be the best way to convey that. Daisy May is an exceptionally special dog, and Mr. Taylor is certain that the world will love her just as much as he does.

Author Britton Taylor lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his sweet Labrador, Daisy May. Besides spending time with her, he enjoys snowboarding, watching documentaries, and rooting for his beloved sports teams—Go Cowboys, Rockets, Astros, VGK and Runnin’ Rebels! Mr. Taylor wanted to share what a beautiful and loving soul Daisy May is and felt a children’s book would be the best way to convey that. Daisy May is an exceptionally special dog, and Mr. Taylor is certain that the world will love her just as much as he does.

The rapid, but uniform motions of the heavenly bodies, serve well enough to typify the grand and continuous motions of the Miltonic mind. But the wild, giddy, fantastic, capricious, incalculable, springing, vaulting, tumbling, dancing, waltzing, caprioling, pirouetting, sky-rocketing of the chamois, the harlequin, the Vestris, the storm-loving raven — the raven? no, the lark (for often he ascends " singing up to heaven's gates," but like the lark he dwells upon the earth), in short, of the Proteus, the Ariel, the Mercury, the monster — John Paul, can be compared to nothing in heaven or earth, or the waters under the earth, except to the motions of the same faculty as existing in Shakspere.

There’s no recipe for making a relationship work. You just make a life together however it fits, with whoever you love. That’s all. It’s not rocket science. You don’t have to solve equations or anything. You just start taking the other person into your life, you make them important, let them grow roots in your soil—” She lifts a brow. “Notice I said grow roots, not wings. You’ve always talked about your boys growing wings. Not this time.

Stepsister.” “What?” “Cinderella is my stepsister.”  The words were too harsh, but Scarlett couldn’t stop them.  Nothing pissed her off faster than a mention of the sainted Cindy.  She could see the disapproval on Ramona’s face and it set her temper off like a rocket. “You think it would be wonderful to be her sister, I know.  Everyone does.  That’s because you have no idea what she’s really like.” “But, everyone in the Four Kingdoms knows!  She had a terrible life of subjugation, but kept her good heart and charitable…” “She’s the crazy one.”  Scarlett interrupted, leaning forward in her plastic chair.  “You know, Cindy sang constantly just to annoy me.  The noise would get into my head until I thought I’d snap if she didn’t shut-up.  Only she never did.  She couldn’t have been that mistreated, if she had time to memorize so many brain-crushingly annoying little ditties about love and rainbows.  She likes subjugation, so I actually tried not to give it to her.  It makes her sickly happy.

childlike love of rockets, sci-fi, and A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? To his bemused friends at the time, and consistently in conversations

Likewise, in the eleventh-hour simulations atop the rocket at the Cape. Al showed only one sign of stress: the cycles—Smilin’ Al/Icy Commander—now came one on top of the other, in the same place, and alternated so suddenly that the people around him couldn’t keep track. They learned a little more about the mysterious Al Shepard here in the eleventh hour. Smilin’ Al was a man who wanted very much to be liked, even loved, by those around him. He wanted not just their respect but also their affection. Now, in April, on the eve of the great adventure, Smilin’ Al was more jovial and convivial than ever. He did his José Jiménez routine. His great grin spread wider and his great beer-call eyes beamed brighter than ever before. Smilin’ Al was crazy about a comedy routine that had been developed by a comedian named Bill Dana. It concerned the Cowardly Astronaut and was a great hit. Dana portrayed the Cowardly Astronaut as a stupid immigrant Mexican named José Jiménez, whose tongue wrapped around the English language like a taco. The idea was to interview Astronaut Jiménez like a news broadcaster. You’d say things like: “What has been the most difficult part of astronaut training, José?” “Obtaining de maw-ney, señor.” “The money? What for?” “For de bus back to Mejico, you betcha, reel queeck, señor.” “I see. Well, now, José, what do you plan to do once you’re in space?” “Gonna cry a lot, I theeeenk.” Smilin’ Al used to crack up over this routine. He liked to do the José Jiménez part; and if he could get someone to feed him the straight lines, he was in Seventh Heaven, Smilin’ Al version. Feed him the lines for his José Jiménez knock-off, and he’d treat you like the best beer-call good buddy you ever had. Of course, the Cowardly Astronaut routine was also a perfectly acceptable way for bringing up, on the oblique, as it were, the subject of the righteous stuff that the first flight into space would require. But that was probably unconscious on Al’s part. The main thing seemed to be the good fun, the camaraderie, the closeness and blustery affection of the squadron on the eve of battle. In these moments you saw Smilin’ Al supreme. And in the next moment— —some poor Air Force lieutenant, thinking this was the same Smilin’ Al he had been joking and carrying on with last night, would sing out, “Hey, Al! Somebody wants you on the phone!”—and all at once there would be Al, seething with an icy white fury, hissing out: “If you have something to tell me, Lieutenant … you will call me ‘Sir’!” And the poor devil wouldn’t know what hit him. Where the hell did that freaking arctic avalanche come from? And then he would realize that … all at once the Icy Commander was back in town.

(And while I’m on the subject, why don’t those folks at Crayola either add some vitamins and minerals to their product, or make them taste bad? My kids love eating them and I’m tired of telling them no and having to buy more. Put up or shut up, Crayola. Fortify them or make them taste bad. This isn't rocket science.)

Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk is becoming a household name. He cofounded Paypal. He now runs two companies simultaneously. The first, Tesla Motors, builds electric cars. The second, SpaceX, builds rocket ships. Many people think of Elon Musk as a real-world Iron Man—a superhero. He’s a living legend. He works extremely hard, and he’s brilliant. Did you know that Elon Musk never worked at Netscape? This is interesting because he actually wanted to work there very badly. He applied to Netscape while he was in grad school at Stanford, but never received a response. He even went to Netscape’s lobby with resume in hand, hoping to talk to someone about getting a job. No one in the lobby ever spoke to Elon that day. After getting nervous and feeling ashamed of himself, he walked out. That’s right. Elon Musk failed to get hired at Netscape. The recruiting managers didn’t see a need for him, and he was too ashamed to keep badgering them. So what happened next? Well, we know what happened from there. Musk went on to become one of the most successful and respected visionaries of our time.[30] Take a deep breath and realize that there are no life-ending failures, only experiments and results. It’s also important to realize that you are not the failure—the experiment is the failure. It is impossible for a person to be a failure. A person’s life is just a collection of experiments. We’re meant to enjoy them and grow from them. If you learn to love the process of experimentation, the prospect of failure isn’t so scary anymore.

The final magic ingredient has been a willingness to risk it all. All in. No questions asked. The program started, and grew, from a determination to push the boundaries. Do the impossible. Climb the impassable--eat the inedible. Of course, there was often a safer, easier way down the waterfall or cliff face. But I rarely took it. That wasn’t my aim. I wanted to show you how to survive when you have no safe options. And I loved it. I had learned a while back that whenever I had succeeded, it had always come about because of total commitment. Heart and soul. No holds barred. I realized, early on, that this would also be the key to this show. It’s not rocket science. It’s a lesson as old as the hills: Hold back from the tackle and that’s when you get nailed. This commitment built the show. But I nearly paid for it with my life. Many times. There have been a multitude of near-death moments. None of which I am proud of. The list, though, is long. For old times’ sake, I used to write them down. Then I gave up when I passed the fiftieth. Anyway, I don’t like to think about those--they are in the past. Part of the learning process. Part of what made me stronger. Nowadays, the show is still crazy, but I manage the risk way better. I use ropes much more, off-camera. I think twice, not once, before I leap. I never did that before. It is called being aware. Aware of being a husband. Aware of being a dad. I am proud that I am learning; you only ever get it wrong once.

Tonight she'll be with Jeremy, her lieutenant, but she wants to be with Roger. Except that, really, she doesn't. Does she? She can't remember being so confused. When she is with Roger it's all love, but at any distance- any at all, Jack- she finds that he depresses and even frightens her. Why? On top of him in the wild nights riding up and down his cock her axis, trying herself to stay rigid enough not to turn to cream taper-wax and fall away melting to the coverlet coming there's only room for Roger, Roger, oh love to the end of breath. But out of bed, walking talking, his bitterness, his darkness, run deeper than the War, the winter: he hates England so, hates "the System," gripes endlessly, says he'll emigrate when the War's over, stays inside his paper cynic's cave hating himself... and does she want to bring him out, really? Isn't it safer with Jeremy? She tried not to allow this question to often, but it's there. Three years with Jeremy. They might as well be married. Three years ought to count for something. Daily, small stitches and easings. She's worn old Beaver's bathrobes, brewed his tea and coffee, sought his eye across lorry-parks, day rooms and rainy mud fields when all the day's mean, dismal losses could be rescued in the one look- familiar, full of trust, in a season where the word is invoked for quaintness or a minor laugh. And to rip it all out? three years? for this erratic, self-centered- boy, really. Weepers, he supposed to be pas thirty, he's years older than she. He ought to've learned something, surely? A man of experience? /// If the rockets don't get her there's still her lieutenant. Damned Beaver/Jeremy IS the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made- that we are meant work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the sense and the second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day... Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane. Jeremy will take her like the Angel itself, in his joyless weasel-worded come-along, and Roger will be forgotten, an amusing maniac, but with no place in the rationalized power-ritual that will be the coming peace. She will take her husband's orders, she will become a domestic bureaucrat, a junior partner, and remember Roger, if at all, as a mistake thank God she did not make... Oh, he feels a raving fit coming on- how the bloody hell can he survive without her? She is the British warm that protects his stooping shoulders, and the wintering sparrow he holds inside his hands. She is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn they might not come true, and his lithe Parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, forswearing perfumes, capeskins to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love. /// Jessica steps away from Roger to blow her nose. The sound is as familiar to him as a bird's song, ip-ip-ip-ip NGUNNGG as the hankerchief comes away..."Oh sooper dooper," she says, "think I'm catching a cold." You're catching the War. It's infecting you and I don't know how to keep it away. Oh, Jess. Jessica. Don't leave me,,,,

Tonight she'll be with Jeremy, her lieutenant, but she wants to be with Roger. Except that, really, she doesn't. Does she? She can't remember being so confused. When she is with Roger it's all love, but at any distance- any at all, Jack- she finds that he depresses and even frightens her. Why? On top of him in the wild nights riding up and down his cock her axis, trying herself to stay rigid enough not to turn to cream taper-wax and fall away melting to the coverlet coming there's only room for Roger, Roger, oh love to the end of breath. But out of bed, walking talking, his bitterness, his darkness, run deeper than the War, the winter: he hates England so, hates "the System," gripes endlessly, says he'll emigrate when the War's over, stays inside his paper cynic's cave hating himself... and does she want to bring him out, really? Isn't it safer with Jeremy? She tried not to allow this question to often, but it's there. Three years with Jeremy. They might as well be married. Three years ought to count for something. Daily, small stitches and easings. She's worn old Beaver's bathrobes, brewed his tea and coffee, sought his eye across lorry-parks, day rooms and rainy mud fields when all the day's mean, dismal losses could be rescued in the one look- familiar, full of trust, in a season where the word is invoked for quaintness or a minor laugh. And to rip it all out? three years? for this erratic, self-centered- boy, really. Weepers, he supposed to be past thirty, he's years older than she. He ought to've learned something, surely? A man of experience? /// If the rockets don't get her there's still her lieutenant. Damned Beaver/Jeremy IS the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made- that we are meant work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day... Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane. Jeremy will take her like the Angel itself, in his joyless weasel-worded come-along, and Roger will be forgotten, an amusing maniac, but with no place in the rationalized power-ritual that will be the coming peace. She will take her husband's orders, she will become a domestic bureaucrat, a junior partner, and remember Roger, if at all, as a mistake thank God she did not make... Oh, he feels a raving fit coming on- how the bloody hell can he survive without her? She is the British warm that protects his stooping shoulders, and the wintering sparrow he holds inside his hands. She is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn they might not come true, and his lithe Parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, forswearing perfumes, capeskins to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love. /// Jessica steps away from Roger to blow her nose. The sound is as familiar to him as a bird's song, ip-ip-ip-ip NGUNNGG as the hankerchief comes away..."Oh sooper dooper," she says, "think I'm catching a cold." You're catching the War. It's infecting you and I don't know how to keep it away. Oh, Jess. Jessica. Don't leave me....

If you stop referring to my penis as a love truncheon.” “Love dart?” “No.” “Portable pocket rocket?” Sloane smiled. “Absolutely.

pilot announced the problem and added, “There are four of us but only three parachutes. It’s my plane, my parachutes—I have to take one of them.” The others agreed. He strapped the parachute on and jumped to safety. Left on the aircraft were a brilliant professor (a rocket scientist, no less), a minister of religion and a backpacker. The professor jumped to his feet insisting, “I am one of the greatest minds in the country. I must survive. I must take one of the remaining parachutes.” The others agreed. He prepared himself and launched out. The elderly clergyman started to explain to the young traveler, “I’ve lived a long life. I do not fear death. You take the last parachute.” She stopped him mid-sentence with, “No, it’s fine. That brilliant professor just jumped out with my backpack strapped on!

And then I see that the old vampyre is charred like Wile E. Coyote after a bad rocket shoes test.

He shifted over her, redistributing his weight. He was so hard all over, pressing against her soft flesh. His muscled chest flattened her breasts. His knee wedged her thighs apart. And then that hard, eagerly thrusting organ she'd brazenly observed and admired last night... he pressed it against her sex. Pleasure rocketed through her. Intense. Consuming. Like nothing she'd ever known. She moaned, deeply and lustily. Because she wanted more. More of his hardness, his heat. More of this enticing friction rubbing her through that cool, smooth linen. He gave her just what she craved. He set a rhythm, slow and steady, rocking against her as he kissed her throat and nuzzled her linen-sheathed breasts. "Yes?" he prompted, sucking her earlobe into his mouth. "Yes." "More?" "More." "Tell me with your hands now. Hold fast to me. Move with me." She clung to him, shameless, sliding her hands around his shoulders. Her arousal only climbed as she felt the flex and strain of his muscles beneath her palms. He was laboring so hard, and for her. All for her. She loved feeling the strength in his body as he moved over her, rubbed against her. Again and again and again. Soon, he had her moaning with every delicious stroke. The louder she called to him, the more resounding his response. The mattress joined the erotic symphony, creaking in time with his strong, rhythmic thrusts.

Seeds of greatness My question for you is this: Are you really alive? Are you passionate about your life or are you stuck in a rut, letting the pressures of life weigh you down, or taking for granted what you have? You weren’t created to simply exist, to endure, or to go through the motions; you were created to be really alive. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. There’s something more for you to accomplish. The day you quit being excited about your future is the day you quit living. When you quit being passionate about your future, you go from living to merely existing. In the natural there may not be anything for you to be excited about. When you look into the future, all you see is more of the same. You have to be strong and say, “I refuse to drag through this day with no passion. I am grateful that I’m alive. I’m grateful that I can breathe without pain. I’m grateful that I can hear my children playing. I am grateful that I was not hurt in that accident. I’m grateful that I have opportunity. I’m not just alive--I’m really alive.” This is what Paul told Timothy in the Bible: “Stir up the gift, fan the flame.” When you stir up the passion, your faith will allow God to do amazing things. If you want to remain passionate, you cannot let what once was a miracle become ordinary. When you stared that new job you were so excited. You told all your friends. You knew it was God’s favor. Don’t lose the excitement just because you’ve had it for five years. When you fell in love after meeting the person of your dreams, you were on cloud nine. You knew this match was the result of God’s goodness. Don’t take it for granted. Remember what God has done. When your children were born, you cried for joy. Their births were miracles. You were so excited. Now you have teenagers and you’re saying, “God, why did you do this to me?” Don’t let what was once a miracle become so common that it’s ordinary. Every time you see your children you should say, “Thank you, Lord, for the gift you’ve given me.” We worked for three years to acquire the former Houston Rockets basketball arena for our church. During that time, it was still for sports and music events. When there wasn’t a ball game or concert, Victoria and I would come up late at night and walk around it. We’d pray and ask God for His favor. When the city leaders approved our purchase, we celebrated. It was a dream come true. Nearly ten years later, it’s easy to get used to. Holding services in such a huge building could become common, ordinary, and routine because we’ve been doing it so long now. But I have to admit that every time I walk in the building, I can’t help but say, “God, thank you. You have done more than I can ask or think.

Enzian has grown cold: not so much a fire dying away as a positive coming on of cold, a bitter taste growing across the palate of love's first hopes... It began when Weissmann brought him to Europe: a discovery that love, among these men, once past the simple feel and orgasming of it, had to do with masculine technologies, with contracts, with winning and losing. Demanded, in his own case, that he enter the service of the Rocket... Beyond simple steel erection, the Rocket was an entire system won, away from the feminine darkness, held against the entropies of lovable but scatterbrained Mother Nature: that was the first thing he was obliged by Weissmann to learn, his first step toward citizenship in the Zone. He was led to believe that by understanding the Rocket, he would come to understand truly his manhood...

amount to a fart in a cyclone. His parents and their parson had tried to sell him the same message, binding him to a hardscrabble farm and a church built on strict “thou shalt nots.” Ridgway had kicked over the traces, gone out on his own and proved them wrong. In spades. Once he was rich as Croesus—no, scratch that; richer than Croesus or the Lord Himself—small minds kept after him in other ways. They told him that he should concentrate on oil and gas, stick with the things he knew, where he had proven his ability. Don’t branch out into other fields and least of all space exploration. What did any Texas oil man with a sixth-grade education know about the friggin’ moon and stars beyond it? Next to nothing, granted. But he had money to burn, enough to buy the brains that did know all about the universe and rockets, astrophysics, interplanetary travel—name your poison. And he knew some other things, as well. Ridgway knew that his country had been losing ground for decades—hell, for generations. Ever since the last world war, when Roosevelt and Truman let Joe Stalin gobble up half of the world without a fight. The great U.S. of A. had been declining ever since, with racial integration and affirmative action, gay rights and abortion, losing wars all over Asia and the Middle East. He’d done his best to save America, bankrolling groups that stood against the long slide into socialism’s Sodom and Gomorrah, but he’d finally admitted to himself that they were beaten. His United States, the one he loved, was circling the drain. And it was time to start from scratch. He’d be goddamned if some inept redneck would spoil it now. You want a job done right, a small voice in his head reminded him, do it yourself. San Antonio CONGRESS HAD CREATED the National Nuclear Security Administration in 2000, following the scandal that had enveloped Dr. Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lee had been accused of passing secrets about America’s nuclear arsenal to the People’s Republic of China, pleading guilty on one of fifty-nine charges, then turned around

While there, I was somewhat surprised to learn that our next foray into space would include an orbiter with wings and with wheels that could land on a runway, as well as a booster, also with wings and wheels to land on a runway. The program had generated great interest. At the meeting, at least seven aerospace manufacturers touted their rockets and boosters on which they were already working. They had models built in 1970 regarding the seven configurations and stages of the program to follow Apollo. Today, we would be delighted to have a fully reusable orbiter to take the crew only, a booster to get them there, and then a return to Earth for both of them. We’d love to have that. Why don’t we have that? Because of a grave design flaw. When I studied the models, I observed that the boosters in the models had windows. That was a surprise to me. After all, why would you want windows in a booster with nobody in it? I was informed that a crew of two astronauts would travel inside the booster to the space station, and then return in the booster to land back on Earth. I worried about the crew in the booster during launch and said so. I thought it was unwise because of the expense, but even more so because of the danger to the astronauts.

My Dearest Bev, For the last week we have been waiting for an attack, and last night it came in full force. Honey, I was never so scared in my life. We got hit by 12 mortars and rockets, and some even hit our ammo dumps, which really hurt the battery. A mortar landed about 30 feet from me and I was lucky enough to have my head down, but the sergeant next to me didn’t, and we think he lost an eye. We got three men seriously hurt and four others shaken up by the blast. This was my first real look at war, and it sure was an ugly sight. I helped carry some of the wounded away, and boy, I sure hope I don’t have to do that again. It was an experience you can never explain in a million words. The noise from shooting is enough to drive a person crazy. Even after the attack last night, we had to stay up and wait for a ground attack which, lucky for us, never came. We expect to catch a lot of hell through May because it seems that the VC are really putting a big push on. Bev, I was so surprised last night to see that the men here were willing to risk their own lives to save a buddy’s. It really makes you have faith in people again, but I hope I don’t have to go through what we did last night in a long time (like never!) I take your picture out quite often and just look at it, because it’s such a relief from this pitiful place to see such a beautiful being. I am thinking of you always. All my love, Al Allen Paul was a sergeant with Company D, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). His unit operated in Both I and III Corps during his tour, April 1968 to April 1969. He is now information coordinator for Indiana Technical College, Richmond, Indiana.

All we need to be happy is love, fulfilling work, self-acceptance, and freedom from fear. That’s it. It ain’t rocket science. Once you realise these goals are the only ones worth pursuing, life is a lot easier.

For me, there are five main desires which relate to why I wished to be with my Twin Soul / Soul Mate, and what these desires are now revealing in living with my Twin. 1. To accelerate my At-One-ment with God by feeling, expressing and humbly releasing all emotions that are not loving. By coming more into our One Soul, I feel more of how much God loves us, and wishes us to enjoy and be Truly happy in life, which will only be fulfilled when we are At-One with Him. 2. To accelerate my and our At-One-ment by feeling the purest, most innocent, core joy and human love it is possible to experience. All within me that is not of love arises in this meeting. And, just by having this experience and living it more, something is released and relieved from Our Soul. Sharing and playing with my soul mate, the other side of me, allows us to eventually merge with each other into One Soul, after first becoming At-One with God. 3. In feeling, accepting and understanding my soul mate and how she acts, lives and moves through life, her qualities and how she understands and feels about everything, her emotional movements and expressions, her desires, I have come to a deeper, more intimate understanding of my soul, our Soul, and the very nature of love itself. We are the same but in polarity, yet these polarities lie within me too. In being with her, I discover these polarities within me, for it to all come into balance. This is a rocket ship to God and to love. 4. In experiencing making love with my soul mate, I have experienced the ultimate soul-sexual experience I have always desired to have. And there is more, including the ultimate transmutation of the sexual force into light, into transcendental sexual electricity that is a fuel for our Union with God. Soulful sexual union with my soul mate activates latent soul codes and gifts, helping to bring each of us into Soul Realization. It may bring sadness to feel you can only ever be fulfilled in your soul’s sexuality with your soul mate, but also inspiration, joy and desire to heal yourself fast to attract this other. 5. To share and assist others into coming closer to God.

Nevertheless, it strikes me more and more that America’s reputation for materialism is unfounded—that is, if a materialist is a person who thoroughly enjoys the physical world and loves material things. In this sense, we are superb materialists when it comes to the construction of jet aircraft, but when we decorate the inside of these magnificent monsters for the comfort of passengers it is nothing but frippery. High-heeled, narrow-hipped, doll-type girls serving imitation, warmed-over meals. For our pleasures are not material pleasures but symbols of pleasure—attractively packaged but inferior in content. The explanation is simple: most of our products are being made by people who do not enjoy making them, whether as owners or workers. Their aim in the enterprise is not the product but money, and therefore every trick is used to cut the cost of production and hoodwink the buyer, by coloring and packaging chicanery, into the belief that the product is well and truly made. The only exceptions are those products which simply must be excellent for reasons of safety or high cost of purchase—aircraft, computers, space-rockets, scientific instruments, and so forth. But the whole scheme is a vicious circle, for when you have made the money what will you buy with it? Other pretentious fakes made by other money-mad manufacturers. The

We weren’t together, but it didn’t  take a rocket scientist for him to realize I had feelings for him. He could have taken that bitch to her house, motel, hotel  or some fucking where.  Bringing her here was disrespectful. “Yo,

IN 1930, JOSEPH ROSSMAN, who had served for decades as an examiner in the U.S. Patent Office, polled more than seven hundred patentees, producing a remarkable picture of the mind of the inventor. Some of the results were predictable;6 the three biggest motivators were “love of inventing,” “desire to improve,” and “financial gain,” the ranking for each of which was statistically identical, and each at least twice as important as those appearing down the list, such as “desire to achieve,” “prestige,” or “altruism” (and certainly not the old saw, “laziness,” which was named roughly one-thirtieth as frequently as “financial gain”). A century after Rocket, the world of technology had changed immensely: electric power, automobiles, telephones. But the motivations of individual inventors were indistinguishable from those inaugurated by the Industrial Revolution.

Not On Drugs" Shiny, happy, see my world in new colours? Higher fire, fly my rocket through universe? I'm up with the kites in a dream so blue I live in the sky, you come here too I'm queen of the clouds, make my wish come true I sing to the night, let me sing to you Baby, listen please I'm not on drugs, I'm not on drugs, I'm just in love Baby, don't you see? I'm not on drugs, I'm not on drugs, I'm just in love You're high enough for me Lighter, brighter, pick the biggest stars I find And I'm trip, trip, tripping in my empire state of mind I'm up with the kites in a dream so blue I live in the sky, you can live here too I'm queen of the clouds, make my wish come true I sing to the night, let me sing to you Baby, listen please I'm not on drugs, I'm not on drugs, I'm just in love Baby, don't you see? I'm not on drugs, I'm not on drugs, I'm just in love You're high enough for me HIIIIGH! HIIIIGH! HIIIIGH! High HIIIIGH! You're high enough for me... Baby, listen please I'm not on drugs, I'm not on drugs, I'm just in love Baby, don't you see? I'm not on drugs, I'm not on drugs, I'm just in love You're high enough for me You're high enough for me You're high enough for me

Be true to yourself, be positive, always keep a clear mind and don’t stress. Be goal driven and with a strong will power, your career will surely kick off. Relationship wise – be faithful and love your man, and the rest is self explanatory because it’s not rocket science.

Like I always say: This is not rocket science. We know what these kids need. Just to be seen. And loved. And told they matter. For some kids it takes just one adult to care about them, take an interest in them. Once you get activated by that idea, it makes it damn near impossible to turn your back on any single one of them.

We never came to Oxford Street as kids,’ Bryant continued. ‘My brother and I used to head to Holborn with our mother to visit the Father Christmas at Gamages department store. I loved that place. You would get into a rocket ship or a paddle steamer and step off in Santa’s grotto. That building was a palace of childhood magic. I still can’t believe they pulled it down.

I cried for everyone and for all the scrabbly, funny love one sent out into the world like some hit song that enters space and bounds off to another galaxy, a tune so pretty you think the words are true, you do! There was never any containing a song like that, keeping it. It went off and out, speeding out of earshot or imagining or any reach at all, like a rocket invented in sleep.

To protect the world from devastation! To unite all peoples within our nations! To denounce the evils of truth and love! To extend our reach to the stars above!” ​“Jessie!” ​“James!” ​“Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of light!” ​“Surrender now, or prepare to fight!” ​“Meowth…that’s right!

Those loves have gone beyond now, rocketed off to Antares while you were buffing your table with beeswax polish to get some glow back to your life, make it mean something because that’s the fear, isn’t it, all this time on the cloud-swathed earth that you haven’t done what you were meant to, some large and noble design you’ve occasionally caught glimpses of, and lost.

The human body is like a stock car. We may look different on the outside, but under the hood we all have huge reservoirs of potential and a governor impeding us from reaching our maximum velocity. In a car, the governor limits the flow of fuel and air so it doesn't burn too hot, which places a ceiling on performance. It's a hardware issue; the governor can easily be removed and if you disable yours, watch your car rocket beyond 130mph. It's a subtler process in the human animal. Our governor is buried deep in our minds, intertwined with our very identity. It knows what and who we love and hate; it's read our whole life story and forms the way we see ourselves and how we'd like to be seen. It's the software that delivers personalized feedback- in the form of pain and exhaustion, but also fear and insecurity, and it uses all of that to encourage us to stop before we risk it all. But, here's the thing, it doesn't have absolute control. Unlike the governor in an engine, ours can't stop us unless we buy into its bullshit and agree to quit. Sadly, most of us give up when we've only given around 40 percent of our maximum effort. Even when we feel like we've reached our absolute limit, we still have 60 percent more to give! That's the governor in action! Once you know that to be true, it's simply a matter of stretching your pain tolerance, letting go of your identity and all your self-limiting stories, so you can get to 60 percent, then 80 percent and beyond without giving up. I call this the 40% Rule, and the reason it's so powerful is that if you follow it, you will unlock your mind to new levels of performance and excellence in sports and in life, and your rewards will run far deeper than mere material success. p211

I could feel him fall in love with me. And I was ahead of him by a full few seconds, like a rocket looking back just to make sure the second had launched.

Try This: Forgive Yourself Step 1: Go somewhere where you won’t be interrupted. The less distraction for anything you apply in this manual, the better. My favorite place for this is in nature. At the very least, choose someplace that makes you feel good. Step 2: When you are ready, write down all that you hold against yourself. Every single thing. Please don’t hold anything back. This is your healing. It is sacred. Whatever emotions rise, feel fully and let them pass. You are worth the magic you will experience afterward. Step 3: Once the emotions have passed, remember that you are a human being. Therefore, it’s your nature to make mistakes. It’s the contract of existing on this planet. Sit with that for a moment. Step 4: Write down that you forgive yourself. Read the whole thing out loud. Again and again and again until you feel something inside shift. You might need to write it down multiple times to feel the shift. If so, then write it, read it out loud, and repeat until you’re ready to let go. Remember, you are worth this. Step 5: Take the paper you wrote on and destroy it. You can tear it up. You can throw it in the ocean or lake or river. You can chuck it in the garbage or set it on fire or flush it down the toilet. You can put it on a rocket and launch it into outer space. It really doesn’t matter how you destroy it. You’re throwing away everything you held against yourself. The act itself is symbolic. It’s the purity of intention that matters. Let this action take the paper—and all that it represents—away from you. Let life take it from you. Let love take it from you. Let it go. You are forgiven by the one person you need it from most—yourself.

The astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell said of his experience of viewing Earth from the moon: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’ ” I love this quote for many reasons. One, because it illustrates that all the well-meaning talk of oneness, such as you have found in this book, is built upon an empirical reality. We’re all one, the human family; when you pull back to outer space or dive within to inner space, that becomes clear. I like that traveling to the moon was such an emotional and spiritual experience for Edgar, as I have always thought that astronauts would be tough military types that wouldn’t be given to such profound pronouncements. Mostly, though, I love his violent conclusion that he’d like to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and take him to the moon. Firstly because to grab anyone by the scruff of the neck is an animal and implausible thing to do. I just felt the back of my neck and there’s barely any scruff to grab. Unless this politician had a particularly fat neck, Edgar would have to be content with an inch of skin between his thumb and forefinger, like he was holding a teacup; he might as well have his pinkie finger extended. Then he’d have to kidnap the bloke, presumably from Washington, drag him all the way to Cape Canaveral, Florida, into the NASA HQ, presumably give him some basic space training, put him in a suit, a rocket, strap him in, spend a few days getting to the moon, then finally march him out and admonish him for his lack of perspective. I don’t think he could sustain his indignation for that long. I reckon he’d start to feel a connection to the terrified politician at some point during that journey, possibly in the training section, where they’d have to acclimatize to zero gravity in a swimming pool. Also, surely once Edgar got back to the moon and he looked back to Earth, his love of all the members of the human family would kick back in and he might feel too guilty to lay into the sobbing and vertiginous, undisclosed politician. Among the small number of people who have seen our planet from space this sense of enlightenment is seemingly common. There are loads of comparable quotes that illustrate this strong sense of connection and fraternity. I chose Edgar D. Mitchell’s one because he’s the only astronaut who saw his epiphany as an impetus to snatch a senator and beat him up on the moon like an intergalactic Vito Corleone.

Tell me the rest of the story. I can't wait. I just can't." And hadn't he known this was coming? Yes. If someone had delivered all twenty reels of the new Rocket Man chapter-play to Annie's house, would she have waited, parcelling out only one a week, or even one a day? He looked at the half-demolished avalanche of her sundae, one cherry almost buried in whipped cream, another floating in chocolate syrup. He remembered the way the living room had looked, with sugar-glazed dishes everywhere. No. Annie was not the waiting type. Annie would have watched all twenty episodes in one night, even if they gave her eyestrain and a splitting headache. Because Annie loved sweet things.

What I do know, and what science hasn’t seen yet, is that what we call ‘outer space,’ with its population of planets and stars and perhaps other life, doesn’t really exist. Not even in the way we think tables and chairs exist. Outer space is more ‘inner space.’ It’s inner space turned inside out. Planets and stars don’t have a physical reality or quality; they aren’t places that we can travel to, except in a highly superficial way. They are configurations of intensely concentrated energy, like thoughts and beliefs are. Our romantic notions of stars—we wish upon them, and sing about them in songs, write about them in poetry, we connect them with our dreams and magic and showing us the way in our own lives through astrology—these are closer to the reality of what they are. There will be no successful space missions to other planets because they don’t exist that way. Why? Because other planets are really more like those other dimensions I talk about. That’s the thing. They aren’t light years, galaxies away. They aren’t ‘away’ at all. We will only travel in outer space when we learn to travel in our inner space. And we don’t need to build rockets for that.

Once upon a time at my university dorm, They used to gather around to hear me mumble. So I had to put my coding assignment aside, I loved machines, more I loved workings mental. Through a rollercoaster ride of uncharted ocean, Engineer became monk, monk emerged scientist. Despite the thrill of building cars and rockets, I feel more alive in being the human bridge. Thus goes the odyssey of the bulldozer on duty. Before we innovate tech, we gotta renovate humanity.

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

They come down here for their own benefit. It’s as clear as day that they love it. The great irony and perfect joke is that the wretches on the bottom of the barrel get these self-serving scum as champions. Some champions! They feed off the poor—first materially, and then in spirit. But they deserve each other in a way, because vice and stupidity were made to go together. “I know that, you see, because I was poor. But I rose like a rocket, and I know how the whole thing works. The ones who are always on your side, or so they think, are the ones who keep you down. Everything they do keeps you down. They’ll forgive you for anything. Rob, rape, pillage, and kill, and they’ll defend you to yourself. They understand all outrages, and all your failings and faults, too. Perfect! You can go on that way forever. What do they care? Excuse me: they do care. They want it that way.

tossed the mask and snorkel aboard and with surprising ease, pulled his upper body quickly out of the water, allowing his legs to find the rungs.  He reached back and unbuckled each fin, tossing them up and grabbing his towel in the same motion. He retrieved a bottle of orange juice from the small refrigerator and went forward to relax on the trampoline.  Peering at the larger island, he could make out the faint image of a jet ski skirting across the water.  It amazed him how many people loved noise.  Insistent that they need a break from the grind, they travel to a remote area to unwind, only to shop with a thousand other tourists, or zip across the bay on a rocket running at 80 decibels.  He smiled to himself and tipped his orange juice in their direction.  To each his own, he thought.  He should, in fact, be thankful.  If they were not over there, they would probably be here next to him.  With that, he stood up and squinted at the glimmering horizon.  Having to decide what to do every day was just the type of problem he wanted. His body suddenly stiffened.  The sound was extremely faint but unmistakable, and he felt a flutter of grim acceptance before reaching for the binoculars.  He wiped the water from his

Giant gabbro stone balls called petrospheres are scattered all over the southwestern states of Costa Rica. Nobody knows who made them, but the consensus is that they were signs of tribal power, wealth and male fertility. It’s not hard to figure out. If Costa Rica was covered with almond-shaped pits filled with the remains of men who’d accidentally wandered into them because men love holes, you’d think a matriarchal society once ruled the region and men were dumbasses. You see giant spheres all over the Diquís Delta and you think, well, those are testicles. And men are dumbasses. It’s not rocket science.

You cannot go against nature Because when you do Go against nature It's part of nature, too

For the love of sanitary sausages, please tell me you aren’t bringing your depraved hobbies in here where we all eat our meals!” she cried. “It’s bad enough you paid a griffin to take a dump on your chest without bringing your randy rocket out with you for breakfast!

There was another guy in my barracks named Jack, a wonderful guy. He introduced me to a lot of the Vietnamese people. I fell in love with these people. They were great people. Jack was due to come home the next day and that was going to complete his four years in the Air Force. His plan was to return to Ohio and work through immigration to bring his bride over to the States. Well, before that could happen, a rocket came through and he was the only one killed.

China is indeed favored by the gods to have such a lovely blossom grace its throne.” Out of the corner of her eye, Mulan saw Shang’s expression darken. She too heard the insult in those words. Flowers were beautiful and delicate. Ornamental. She bared her teeth in a thin smile. “I’m quite fond of flowers myself. After your’e settled in the state guesthouses, you must tour the imperial gardens. There’s a particular variety called snow lace, a white blossom with rose-tinged petals. I collected it myself from the Tung-Shao Pass. Are you familiar with that region?” The ambassador’s smirk froze on his face. The Tung-Shao Pass was where Mulan’s regiment had defeated Shan Yu’s men. There were already multiple ballads commemorating how Mulan used a rocket to trigger the avalanche that buried his entire army. “Yes, I am familiar with that pass.” “I’m glad,” said Mulan. “It’s the mark of a good ambassador to know his host nation’s land and history, and I’m sure you are one of the very best.

me the finger, I give him the finger and wish I had a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher on the passenger seat. Oh, humans. Or maybe it’s just the Irish …” I looked out over the faces, at Tuan, at Leo. At Jen. What came out next wasn’t on the page. “People can break you,” I said. “Through pain. But also … also … through love. The feelings so strong, the loss so great …” I faltered, never the good ad-libber. But I kept going. “I was broken two years ago. And Tim … he showed me grace and dignity and kindness when I had none, wasn’t able to see it, kind of gave up. Tim saved my life because he showed me how to live.” I looked at Tuan. He was blinking quickly and gave me just a bit of a smile.

I felt like I was losing some imaginary battle over the forces of fate and love.

Topping is like the Sky Rocket of roller-coasters, but bottoming is like a wild ride on the Screamin’ Demon Express. I promise, you’ll love it.

Jean-Marc watched the sand-yachts, and when he saw one heading at racing-car speed for Chantal, he frowned. An old man lay in the thing like an astro­naut in a rocket. Flat on his back like that, the man can’t see anything ahead of him! Is Chantal vigilant enough to keep clear? He railed against her, against her overly offhand nature, and quickened his pace. She turned half-way around. But she cannot have seen Jean-Marc, for her demeanour was still slow, the demeanour of a woman deep in thought and walking without looking about her. He would like to shout to her to stop being so distracted, to pay attention to those idiotic vehicles running all over the beach. Suddenly he imagines her body crushed by the sand-yacht, sprawled on the sand, she is bleeding, the sand-yacht is disappearing down the beach and he sees himself dash towards her. He is so upset by the image that he really does start shouting Chantal’s name; the wind is strong, the beach enormous, and no one can hear his voice, so he can give over to that sort of sentimental theatrics and, with tears in his eyes, shout out his anguish for her; his face clenched in a grimace of weeping, for a few seconds he is living through the horror of her death. Then, himself astounded by that curious spasm of hysteria, he saw her, in the distance, still strolling nonchalantly, peaceable, calm, pretty, infinitely touch­ing, and he grinned at the comedy of bereavement he’d just played out, smiled about it without self-reproach, because Chantal’s death has been with him ever since he began to love her.

Cards on the table, girls? Karl has served a sentence at Exeter prison for assault; Antony for theft. Karl was merely sticking up for a friend, you understand, and – hand on heart – would do the same again. His friend was being picked on in a bar and he hates bullying. Me, I am struggling with the paradox – bullying versus assault, and do we really lock people up for minor altercations? – but the girls seem fascinated, and in their sweet and liberal naivety are saying that loyalty is a good thing and they had a bloke from prison who came into their school once and told them how he had completely turned his life around after serving time over drugs. Covered in tattoos, he was. Covered. ‘Wow. Jail. So what was that really like?’ It is at this point I consider my role. Privately I am picturing Anna’s mother toasting her bottom by her Aga, worrying with her husband if their little girl will be all right, and he is telling her not to fuss so. They are growing up fast. Sensible girls. They will be fine, love. And I am thinking that they are not fine at all. For Karl is now thinking that the safest thing for the girls would be to have someone who knows London well chaperoning them during their visit. Karl and Antony are going to stay with friends in Vauxhall and fancy a big night to celebrate their release. How about they meet the girls after the theatre and try the club together? This is when I decide that I need to phone the girls’ parents. They have named their hamlet. Anna lives on a farm. It’s not rocket science. I can phone the post office or local pub; how many farms can there be? But now Anna isn’t sure at all. No. They should probably have an early night so they can hit the shops tomorrow morning. They have this plan, see, to go to Liberty’s first thing because Sarah is determined to try on something by Stella McCartney and get a picture on her phone. Good girl, I am thinking. Sensible girl. Spare me the intervention, Anna. But there is a complication, for Sarah seems suddenly to have taken a shine to Antony. There is a second trip to the buffet and they swap seats on their return – Anna now sitting with Karl and Sarah with Antony, who is telling her about his regrets at stuffing up his life. He only turned to crime out of desperation, he says, because he couldn’t get a job. Couldn’t support his son. Son? It sweeps over me, then. The shadow from the thatched canopy of my chocolate-box life –

So, putting aside the yucky ones, the positive smells of a dog for me are the next-day cold-stew smell of his meaty food, and the aroma of a roasted chicken right out of the oven, which will have him running to the kitchen like a rocket. The dry seed and hay hum of a pet shop, and the sickly rotting meat of his treats. Grassy fresh air and mud on long winter walks. The rubbery tang of the toys he likes to brutalize. The worn-in leather of his collar and lead. The sweet, musty smell of his velvety ears, which I love to stroke, and yes, I admit it, I kiss them. My scents for a dog are (a bit of a challenge in all honesty, but it's fun to stretch yourself sometimes!): Barbour For Him by Barbour Grass by The Library of Fragrance Dirt by The Library of Fragrance Cuir de Russie by Chanel Piper Leather by Illuminum Mûre et Musc by L'Artisan Parfumeur

Truth: my mom does not look dumpy. She and I wear the same size jeans. She is a tiny rocket ship that runs on love and worry. But I can’t convince her of this, so we compromise on black pants. “My friend told me men like boots. But I think boots are workin’ it too much, right?” I was immediately reminded of when I was eleven and my best friend told me that boys like it when you drink from a straw at the far corner of your mouth. For years, any visit to the mall food court was a chance for my soda-straw act. I don’t know what look I was going for—maybe “sexy dental patient”—or who my target audience was—Dr Pepper?—but it failed. Trying to be seductive with a cheap plastic straw is workin’ it too much. Anyway, I said, “Boots are fine. You’re supposed to work it a little, it’s a date!

He’d had a lot of people in his cab over the years and had become quite adept at spotting the “good souls” as he like to call them. With every good soul, it wasn’t necessarily about the way they looked, although their eyes were always bright, it was more to do with the way they made you feel. Comfortable, confident and genuinely happier for having been in their company. It wasn’t about conversation either; it was about connection which went beyond words. Good souls were not always seen to be good people, but whatever their beliefs, grievances or prejudice they would turn in a heartbeat for anyone in need and although they didn’t know it, they subconsciously projected it. At the very heart of every good soul, there was only love and decency, guiding principles that would see them safely back to shore in the rockiest of storms. There was no question in the driver’s mind that the fella in the back of his cab was one of life’s good souls and the world was a better place because he was in it.

It was the worst picture she had seen in her life. It was worse than the crying baby in Shanghai. ‘Sometimes we need to see why we fight,’ said the burglar vicar gently. ’We need to see what God sees. Then we can understand just a little better His wrath, and His justice, and His love.’ He slipped the photograph from her hand, put it in the folder, slipped the folder from her. She pulled the pillow over her face and wept. She’d not forget that image, not for the rest of her life. She cried herself deaf for the child and for Arthur Vance; for Murray whose Rocket Kid could not save this child, and for William, because she finally understood what it felt like to be eviscerated. She wept that she could not go and die for this boy. ‘I’m utterly useless!’ she screamed into the pillow, and finally came to her defeated senses. A good cry, and she did not feel better. ‘You are hardly useless,’ said the Burglar Vicar. ‘Oh really? I can’t even sit up.’ ‘You can pray.’ ‘How do you know it does any good?’ ‘It’s better than moping, which does no good at all.” She supposed it would be better to pray than to mope. The Shrew said prayer held them to their tasks. She said she saw before her eyes that it worked. ‘Yes, yes — I can pray!

Encore The first swallows Of the season Looped the pines Rocketed upward Dare-deviled madly In a carnival sky Shot from a cannon To the roar of applause Contrails mapped On flapping clouds She traced her finger Along their path The way she had traced The lines of veins On her mother’s hand As they waited for death No applause Just softly hummed Lullabies that one Once sang To the other In a petal pink room With blanket and bed A flapping curtain In softer spring breeze Now offered back gently From one to the other To soothe once more The fear of the night The closing of curtains And the end of the show

Some of my friends told me I was wasting my genius on matters of my dick, but I honestly can’t think of a better use for my brain than this.

what we don’t know and can’t do far exceeds what we do know and can do. A little humility, then, is hardly rocket science. It is common sense.

With skills falling out of demand in less time than it takes to acquire and master them, with educational credentials losing value against their cost of purchase by the year or even turning into ‘negative equity’ long before their allegedly lifelong ‘sell-by’ date, with places of work disappearing with little or no warning, and with the course of life sliced into a series of ever shorter one-off projects, life prospects look increasingly like the haphazard convolutions of smart rockets in search of elusive, ephemeral and restless targets, rather than a predesigned and predetermined, predictable trajectory of a ballistic missile.

It still amazes me how little we really knew. We had rockets and satellites and nanotechnology. We had robot arms and robot hands, robots for roving the surface of Mars. Our unmanned planes, controlled remotely, could hear human voices from three miles away. We could manufacture skin, clone sheep. We could make a dead man’s heart pump blood through the body of a stranger. We were making great strides in the realms of love and sadness—we had drugs to spur desire, drugs for melting pain. We performed all sorts of miracles: We could make the blind see and the deaf hear, and doctors daily conjured babies from the wombs of infertile women. At the time of the slowing, stem cell researchers were on the verge of healing paralysis—surely the lame soon would have walked. And yet, the unknown still outweighed the known.

Get your hands dirty!

In every path we choose, there will be obstacles and uncertainties. But remember, it is during these moments of uncertainty that we are given the opportunity to truly grow. Embrace what lies ahead, for even if the road is foggy, your determination will light the way.

Here is the difference between Roger Clemens and 99 percent of other humans. Last wishes be damned, other humans do not pitch on the day their mother dies. They see a match-up against the Marlins as a game-one of 162 to be played in the course of a very long season. They take the time to cry and hurt and remember, to reflect on their own mortality and how they can best honor their loved one. They plan a funeral, call friends, and family members. But that's not the way Clemens was wired. His life was baseball, and baseball was his life.

Suraj solar and allied industries, Wework galaxy, 43, Residency Road, Bangalore-560025. Mobile number : +91 808 850 7979 Introduction to Solar Rooftop in Bangalore Solar rooftop systems have emerged as a game-changing innovation in Bangalore's energy consumption, providing a green and sustainable alternative to conventional sources of power. Solar rooftops are gaining a lot of traction among residential, commercial, and industrial users in the city as it deals with rising energy demands and environmental concerns. This article examines the advantages, drawbacks, government initiatives, case studies, and prospects for the future of solar rooftops, which have had a profound effect on Bangalore's energy landscape. 1. Introduction to Bangalore's Solar Rooftops An Overview of Bangalore's Solar Rooftop Systems Ah, Bangalore! Home to tech whiz kids, filter coffee connoisseurs, and now the progressive pioneers who are embracing solar rooftops! The eco-friendly Batman of the energy industry, solar rooftop systems are perched atop buildings and convert sunlight into clean, renewable power. Installed on rooftops, these systems use solar panels to generate electricity, assisting in the reduction of reliance on conventional grid power. 2. Economic Benefits of Solar Rooftops for Energy Consumption Who doesn't love saving money while protecting the environment? The economic benefits of solar rooftops in Bangalore are significant. By producing your own power, you can slice those heavy energy bills and even bring in an additional money by selling overabundance influence back to the matrix. It's like having a solar side business on your roof! Impact on the Environment Let's be honest: Bangalore's air quality could use a break. When it comes to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution, solar rooftops emerge as the cloaked crusaders. You are reducing your carbon footprint and contributing to a cleaner and greener Bangalore by using solar power. When the sun shines on your rooftop panels, it's like giving Mother Nature a high five. 3. Impact of Solar Rooftop in Bangalore Energy Landscape Reduction of Carbon Footprint Bangalore, with its vibrant culture and bustling IT hubs, can also be a hotbed for emissions. Sun powered roofs go about as the eco-heroes, checking carbon impressions and advancing manageability. The city has the potential to make a significant leap toward a more healthy environment and a brighter future for future generations by utilizing solar energy. Integration with Existing Energy Infrastructure The beauty of solar rooftops in Bangalore is that they seamlessly combine solar power with traditional grid energy. These frameworks can undoubtedly incorporate with the current energy foundation, making a more strong and dependable energy organization. It's like combining the best of both worlds to guarantee the city's bustling energy supply's stability and sustainability. 4. Adopting Solar Rooftops: Obstacles and Solutions Initial Cost and Return on Investment We understand that the initial cost of installing solar rooftops may appear to be the bad guy in this sustainability tale. However, rest assured! The return on investment for solar rooftops in Bangalore is brighter than a sunny day thanks to government subsidies, tax incentives, and lower panel prices. Consider it a long-term investment in the environment and your savings. Technical Considerations and Maintenance Although the process of maintaining solar rooftops may appear intimidating, it is not rocket science—rather, it is solar science! To keep your solar panels in top condition, all you need to do is clean them on a regular basis, keep an eye on how well the system is working, and do occasional maintenance checks. Navigating the technical aspects of solar rooftops has never been easier thanks to technological advancements and the assistance of local experts.

They took the long way. Around the lake. Through the park where he’d hunted as a young crow. Where the trees still knew him by name. They lit a few bottle rockets from the back of the wagon. Told the old stories. And Calvin listened like it was the first time and the last time all at once.

The Golden Gate Bridge was built when Franklin Roosevelt was in his first term. It was built in the era of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. It was built at the time of the Berlin Olympics. Built at the time of the abdication of the King of England for “the woman I love.” Built during the Great Depression. And built during a period when two of the most important events of the twentieth century took place, foretelling everything that has so changed in our world. Two events that took place not much more than one hundred miles apart. One, in Copenhagen, where Niels Bohr and his colleagues at the Institute for Theoretical Physics determined that if the uranium atom were split, it would release a power beyond any previous understanding or example. And just across the way at a small German fishing village, the Nazi government had instituted the first rocket experimental station under the young, brilliant physicist Wernher von Braun.

I find myself seated. I feel time to the millionth part of a second. It is like boarding a rocket only to be lost in space, not knowing when I would return. Every second, I see flashes of my past life, here and there

But in truth, and to state the obvious, nothing renders me killable. Before I threw the rock, they stole my land. Before I picked up the rifle, they shot my loved ones. Before I made the makeshift rocket, they put me in a cage. What I read cannot be used as a pretext to kill me, even if I filled my library with books written by psychopaths, interchangeably stacking copies of Mein Kampf and Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices.

There was a life Chris hadn't been able to take in his grasp. Families, driveways, trampolines, friends around for dinner. All the stuff you'd see on adverts. Was this forever now? The lonely flat with the neutral walls and the Sky Sports. Maybe there was a way out, but Chris couldn't immediately spot it. Treading water, getting fatter, laughing less. Chris was out of rocket fuel. It was lucky that Chris loved his job, was good at his job. Chris always found it easy to get up in the morning; he just found it hard to go to sleep at night.

Alasdair probably shouldn’t torment himself further, but he needed to know. “Did she call for me?” His friend ran his fingers through the thick strands of his dark hair and grimaced. “Yes, for days.” Alasdair flinched. “It was stories of you that kept her sane and allowed her to fight for life.” “Why did you never tell me?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why? We are friends, Quinton. You knew how I felt about Willow.” He would never have been in any doubt. Alasdair had professed years ago with a simple declaration of ‘I love your sister, and I’m going to marry her. I will endeavor to provide for her so that she will never want for anything. I swear to you.’ It had been Alasdair’s way of declaring his intention to the one person whose opinion truly mattered to him. “She was blinded Al…blinded and broken.” The depth of fury that rocketed through Alasdair’s heart shocked him. “This is your opinion of me? You think me so shallow I would stay away from the woman I love more than life because of blindness? That I would have stayed away because she could not see?” he snarled.