Love Is Like A Virus Quotes

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate. Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader. That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations. Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb Iron Dragon's Daughter gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies? Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge. The critic Gabe Chouinard has said that we're entering a new period, a renaissance in the creative radicalism of fantasy that hasn't been seen since the New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and in echo of which he has christened the Next Wave. I don't know if he's right, but I'm excited. This is a radical literature. It's the literature we most deserve.

Seems once was enough to infect me. From then on you've been lying dormant, like a virus. Or an incurable chronic condition that flares up from time to time.' A long pause, where life transforms from black-and-white to colour. 'I'm eczema?' Ben beams. 'Eczema of the heart. That's it. Psoriasis of the soul.

There is a lie that acts like a virus within the mind of humanity. And that lie is, ‘There’s not enough good to go around. There’s lack and there’s limitation and there’s just not enough.’ The truth is that there’s more than enough good to go around. There is more than enough creative ideas. There is more than enough power. There is more than enough love. There’s more than enough joy. All of this begins to come through a mind that is aware of its own infinite nature. There is enough for everyone. If you believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That's the truth.

I felt myself becoming undone. Unravelling like a ball of string rolling down a hillside. A hillside made up of the corpses of the humans I had killed since the virus came into my life.

Everyone on earth would never starve and forever find love and happiness, since we won, but if we’d lost, they would have gouged out our eyes and thrown us naked onto hot coals and poisonous snakes for all the cheering and hugging at the end, strangers hugging like the end of The Omega Virus when Steve Sturmine finds the antidote.

Mother Nature is a serial killer.No ones better. More creative. Like all serial killers, she can't help but the urge to get caught. What good are all those brilliant crimes if nobody takes the credit? So she leaves crumbs. Now, the hard part is, and why you spend decades in school, is seeing the crumbs for the clues they are. Sometimes the thing you thought to be the most brutal aspect of the virus, actually turns out to be the chink in its armor. She loves disguising her weaknesses as strengths. She's a b*tch.

Because when you are lonely, you are more online. You share more lies. You give more likes. You avoid others’ eyes.

Don't worry if you're having a hard time following this oversimplified explanation of physics' most challenging problem. For most of us, understanding special relativity is a little like true love: We should consider ourselves lucky if we can grasp hold of it for even one fleeting moment.

But the fevers are on me now, the virus mad to ravage my last fifty T cells. It's hard to keep the memory at full dazzle, with so much loss to mock it. Roger gone, Craig gone, Cesar gone, Stevie gone. And this feeling that I'm the last one left, in a world where only the ghosts still laugh. But at least they're the ghosts of full-grown men, proof that all of us got that far, free of the traps and the lies. And from that moment on the brink of summer's end, no one would ever tell me again that men like me couldn't love.

She saw the children. They have been given viruses to educate them. From three weeks old they could speak and do basic arithmetic. By ten, they had been made adult, forced like flowers to bloom early. But they were not flowers of love. They were flowers of work, to be put to work. There was no time.

It was like a disease, and these children whom I loved without caring about their skins or their backgrounds, they were tainted with the hateful virus which attacked their vision, distorting everything that was not white or English.

Around me the beautiful windows, connecting me to other lives and other times, to things done and also deliberately left undone, stood dark. Rose, I was sure, had acted out of love, yet for Iris her mother's absence had remained an unresolved sadness at the center of her life. I thought of what Rose had written about anger, about its power to corrupt, to make a space for evil. Maybe she was right. Maybe evil, that old-fashioned word, could be called other things, disharmony or dysfunction. Maybe Rose was right and evil wasn't attached top an individual as much as if was a force in the world, a seeing force, one that worked like a self-replicating virus, seeking to entangle, to ensnare, to undo beauty. [p.353]

Isn't it weird when that happens?' says Zazi. 'It's like the first time I heard the second Pete Ubu album and thought it just blew completely, I thought anyone who liked it must be stupid and full of shit--and then for about a year it was practically the only album I listened to. It was the only album that made any sense at all. So why does that happen? The music hasn't changed. The movie hasn't changed. It's still the same exact movie, but it's like it sets something in motion, some understanding you didn't know you could understand, it's like a virus that had to get inside you and take hold and maybe you shrug it off--but when you don't it kills you in a way, not necessarily in a bad way because maybe it kills something that's been holding you back because when you hear a really great record or see a really great movie, you feel alive in a way you didn't before, everything looks different, like what they say when you're in love or something--though I wouldn't know--but everything is new and it gets into your dreams.

Love is like nothing else. Without water, it will not wilt. Without food, it will not die. It will languor alone within, awaiting its chance to bloom. Sounds like a virus to me.

... authentic love. It’s some kind of empathy I haven’t experienced before, more like a verb than a noun, not an act of calculated wisdom, but nurtured long-term in a shared act of becoming one soul.

Slut Shaming Misogyny is like a malignant virus, the way it seeps into your life and puts you in a position of painful vulnerability. Where even the people who love you will judge you for your past. Where the act of sex degrades a woman and celebrates a man. The infuriating double standard where a man will admire a girl in a string bikini, and in the same breath, tell his partner that her skirt is too short

was like a disease, and these children whom I loved without caring about their skins or their backgrounds, they were tainted with the hateful virus which attacked their vision, distorting everything that was not white or English. I

And although better coverage of the outbreak’s evolution in the press couldn’t have stopped the influenza virus, a single newspaper headline in Philadelphia saying “Don’t Go to Any Parades; for the Love of God Cancel Your Stupid Parade” could have saved hundreds of lives. It would have done a lot more than those telling people, “Don’t Get Scared!” Telling people that things are fine is not the same as making them fine. This failure is in the past. Journalists and editors had their reasons. Risking jail time is no joke. But learning from this breakdown in truth-telling is important because the fourth estate can’t fail again. We are fortunate today to have organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that track how diseases are progressing and report these findings. In the event of an outbreak similar to the Spanish flu, they will be wonderful resources. I hope we’ll be similarly lucky to have journalists who will be able to share necessary information with the public. The public is at its strongest when it is well informed. Despite Lippmann’s claims to the contrary, we are smart, and we are good, and we are always stronger when we work together. If there is a next time, it would be very much to our benefit to remember that.

Jesus is dangerous to society, to the status quo, and to contemporary piety. This clarity of preaching cannot be allowed to continue. It is like a cold, a virus that infects all who suffer and who love under conditions that only worsen, in a world that blames those who are poor and do not live up to religious expectations.

Darkness seems to have prevailed and has taken the forefront. This country as in the 'cooperation' of The United States of America has never been about the true higher-good of the people. Know and remember this. Cling to your faith. Roll your spiritual sleeves up and get to work. Use your energy wisely. Transmute all anger, panic and fear into light and empowerment. Don't use what fuels them; all lower-energy. Mourn as you need to. Console who you need to—and then go get into the spiritual and energetic arena. There's plenty work for us to do; within and without. Let's each focus on becoming 'The President of Our Own Life. Cultivate your mind. Pursue your purpose. Shine your light. Elevate past—and reject—any culture of low vibrational energy and ratchetness. Don't take fear, defeat or anger—on or in. The system is doing what they've been created to do. Are you? Am I? Are we—collectively? Let's get to work. No more drifting through life without your higher-self in complete control of your mind. Awaken—fully. Activate—now. Put your frustrations or concerns into your work. Don't lose sight. There is still—a higher plan. Let's ride this 4 year energetic-wave like the spiritual gangsters that we are. This will all be the past soon. Let's get to work and stay dedicated, consistent and diligent. Again, this will all be the past soon. We have preparing and work to do. Toxic energy is so not a game. Toxic energy and low vibrations are being collectively acted out on the world stage. Covertly operating through the unconscious weak spots and blind spots in the human psyche; making people oblivious to their own madness, causing and influencing them to act against–their–own–best–interests and higher-good, as if under a spell and unconsciously possessed. This means that they are actually nourishing the lower vibrational energy with their lifestyle, choices, energy and habits, which is unconsciously giving the lower-energy the very power and fuel it needs—for repeating and recreating endless drama, suffering and destruction, in more and more amplified forms on a national and world stage. So what do we do? We take away its autonomy and power over us while at the same time empowering ourselves. By recognizing how this energetic/spiritual virus or parasite of the mind—operates through our unawareness is the beginning of the cure. Knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is—freedom. Our shared future will be decided primarily by the changes that take place in the psyche of humanity, starting with each of us— vibrationally. In closing and most importantly, the greatest protection against becoming affected or possessed by this lower-energy is to be in touch with our higher vibrational-self. We have to call our energy and power back. Being in touch with our higher-self and true nature acts as a sacred amulet, shielding and protecting us from the attempted effects. We defeat evil not by fighting against it (in which case, by playing its game, we’ve already lost) but by getting in touch with the part of us that is invulnerable to its effects— our higher vibrational-self. Will this defeat and destroy us? Or will it awaken us more and more? Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us and our stepping out of the unconscious influence of low vibrational/negative/toxic/evil/distraction energy (or whatever name you relate to it as) that is and has been seeking power over each of our lives energetically and/or spiritually, and step into our wholeness, our personal power, our higher self and vibrate higher and higher daily. Stay woke my friends—let's get to work.

virus, a single newspaper headline in Philadelphia saying “Don’t Go to Any Parades; for the Love of God Cancel Your Stupid Parade” could have saved hundreds of lives. It would have done a lot more than those telling people, “Don’t Get Scared!” Telling people that things are fine is not the same as making them fine. This failure is in the past. Journalists and editors had their reasons. Risking jail time is no joke. But learning from this breakdown in truth-telling is important because the fourth estate can’t fail again. We are fortunate today to have organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that track how diseases are progressing and report these findings. In the event of an outbreak similar to the Spanish flu, they will be wonderful resources. I hope we’ll be similarly lucky to have journalists who will be able to share necessary information with the public. The public is at its strongest when it is well informed. Despite Lippmann’s claims to the contrary, we are smart, and we are good, and we are always stronger when we work together. If there is a next time, it would be very much to our benefit to remember that.

Everyone and everything we know and love. Thanks to a virus. We all carry mutations. Genetic mutations can give you laser vision. Or cancer. Or color blindness. Sometimes a mutation is on a DNA strand that doesn't do anything at all. And sometimes-- almost never-- a genetic mutation will cause an entire species to make an evolutionary leap forward. Think about it... a virus with powers. Sounds like something a biologist would want to protect.

cafeteria, his heels clicking hollowly. Above, the fluorescents embedded in their long fixtures like inverted ice-cube trays threw a hard, shadowless light. There were more bodies. A man and a woman with their clothes off and holes in their heads. They screwed, Starkey thought, and then he shot her, and then he shot himself. Love among the viruses. The pistol, an army-issue .45, was still clutched in his hand. The tile floor was spotted with blood and gray stuff that looked like oatmeal.

[Today's high schoolers are required to read] a couple of Shakespeare plays...the couple of Shakespeare plays function as an inoculation – that is, you get exposed to 'half-dead Shakespeare virus', and it keeps you from ever loving Shakespeare again, your whole life long. It would be much better if they didn't do that at all! Because [the students] have no linguistic preparation for it, and no cultural or historical preparation for it. They've not been reading English poetry, so the language strikes them as completely bizarre […] and they have no historical place to put it, so they don't know what's going on. All they know is that they're 'supposed to like it'.

One day the world stopped because of the thing. We knew it was there and knew it was dangerous because, you know, it left bodies in the dirt. We all stayed in – couldn’t touch, shouldn’t meet, mustn’t dance. God forbid we kiss. Eventually, the thing got tired. Besides, it knew it wasn’t welcome, even though, the grass grew better, and the birds worried less, and the air breathed deeper as the humans breathed less. We all stayed in – couldn’t touch, shouldn’t meet, mustn’t dance. God forbid we kiss. I hope we remember what we once did; blocking airways, blocking enemies, blocking friends. Let things mend. One day, the world stopped. Another day, it started again and acted like it had never stopped. It does things like that. I do hope we remember that life is not long and love is not free, unless it is.

The entire idea of it was arrogant and defiant and grandiose. Anna loved it. As she walked across a wide empty plain of steel that should have been covered in topsoil and crops, she thought that this audaciousness was exactly what humanity had lost somewhere in the last couple of centuries. When ancient maritime explorers had climbed into their creaking wooden ships and tried to find ways to cross the great oceans of Earth, had their voyage been any less dangerous than the one the Mormons had been planning to attempt? The end point any less mysterious? But in both cases, they’d been driven to find out what was on the other side of the long trip. Driven by a need to see shores no one else had ever seen before. Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind it. A few people liked to paint this drive as a weakness. A failing of the species. Humanity as the virus. The creature that never stops filling up its available living space. Hector seemed to be moving over to that view, based on their last conversation. But Anna rejected that idea. If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they’d all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another’s fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She’d looked up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the swirls and eddies of a storm larger than her home world. She’d tasted water thawed from ice as old as the solar system itself. And it was that human dissatisfaction, that human audacity, that had put her there. Looking at the tiny world spinning around her, she knew one day it would give them the stars as well.

One has but to consider the phenomenon of fashion, which has never been satisfactorily explained. Fashion is the despair of sociology and aesthetics: a prodigious contagion of forms in which chain reactions struggle for supremacy over the logic of distinctions. The pleasure of fashion is undeniably cultural in origin, but does it not stem even more clearly from a flaring, unmediated consensus generated by the interplay of signs? Moreover, fashions fade away like epidemics once they have ravaged the imagination, once the virus has run its course. The price to be paid in terms of waste is always exorbitant, yet everyone consents. The marvellous in our societies resides in this ultra-rapid circulation of signs at a surface level (as opposed to the ultra-slow circulation of meanings). We love being contaminated by this process, and not having to think about it. This is a viral onslaught as noxious as the plague, yet no moral sociology, no philosophical reason, will ever extirpate it. Fashion is an irreducible phenomenon because it partakes of a crazy, viral, mediationless form of communication which operates so fast for the sole reason that it never passes via the mediation of meaning. Anything that bypasses mediation is a source of pleasure. In seduction there is a movement from the one to the other which does not pass via the same. (In cloning, it is the opposite: the movement is from the same to the same without passage via the other; and cloning holds great fascination for us.) In metamorphosis, the shift is from one form to another without passing via meaning. In poetry, from one sign to another without passing via the reference. The collapsing of distances, of intervening spaces, always produces a kind of intoxication. What does speed itself mean to us if not the fact of going from one place to another without traversing time, from one moment to another without passing via duration and movement? Speed is marvellous: time alone is wearisome.

A man, perhaps an inch shorter than Andrei, sensing the height comparison, slowly passed him. The stranger still wore an N-95 mask. The pandemic ended three years ago, but Andrei identified why masks were still worn by others. While millions had died from COVID-19, others silently and ashamedly rejoiced in the virus’ demands. The requirement of face masks made it mandatory for everyone to cover more than half of their face. And for those who disliked their face, they, for nearly two years, had the chance to go out in the world and not be ugly for once. Suddenly, while they were not beautiful, they were not hideous. Neutrality can do so much for someone. This period was like a gift for those with horrid teeth, large features, cystic acne, injuries, scarring, and discoloration. Never before were so many people looked straight in the eyes. Masks were some people’s only chance to show who they were. And now, when the pandemic had ended, they were back in the shadows. Large groups of people, however, as Andrei had seen, still wore them, beneath the excuse that the virus could still return. "I would love to kiss one of you on the cheek, he thought.

I can't bear to look at the screen itself, the women in pastels, like so many Jordan almonds. The men in suits, wearing equally angelic expressions. Members just like men, ostensibly. Who have vowed to be obedient to God's laws, and to repent of their sins. They've promised to be honest, true, chaste, benevolent, and virtuous; they've promised to be hopeful, and to endure all things, to seek after what is lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy. Only then will God provide a lasting solution to their loneliness and frustration. I imagine they comfort themselves, like I do, with the game of "wouldn't it be worse." Wouldn't it be worse to have a sick child, ailing parents, or a flesh-eating virus? Wouldn't it be lonelier to be trapped in a dying marriage, scarier to have crippling financial problems or to spend one's retirement fund on failed in vitro treatments? Wouldn't it be worse to live a life absent of faith, absent of purpose, absent of the love of God? I imagine they tell themselves, like I do, that a soul-crushing loneliness is a small price to pay, given the big picture. Everyone suffers. Loneliness is the human condition. And after the tests of our faith, we will triumph.

In ballads, love is a disease, an affliction. You contract it as a mortal might contract one of their viruses. Perhaps a touch of hands or a brush of lips, and then it is as though your whole body is fevered and fighting it. But there’s no way to prevent it from running its course.” “That’s a remarkably poetic and profoundly awful view of love,” Oak says. Tiernan looks back at the sea. “I was never in love before, so all I had were ballads to go by.” Oak is silent, thinking of all the times he thought himself to be in love. “Never?” Tiernan gives a soft huff of breath. “I had lovers, but that’s not the same thing.” Oak thinks about how to name what he feels about Wren. He does not wish to write her ridiculous poems as he did for so many of the people with whom he thought he was in love, except that he does wish to make her laugh. He does not want to give her enormous speeches or to make grand, empty gestures; he does not want to give her the pantomime of love. He is starting to suspect, however, that pantomime is all he knows. “But…” Tiernan says, and hesitates again, running hand through his short blackberry hair. “What I feel is not like the ballads.” “Not an affliction, then?” Oak raises an eyebrow. “No fever?” Tiernan gives him an exasperated look—one with which the prince is very familiar. “It is more the feeling that there is a part of me I have left somewhere and am always looking for.” “So he’s like a missing phone?” “Someone ought to pitch you into the sea,” Tiernan says, but he has a small smile in the corner of his mouth.

CONFESSIONS OF A CLING-ON If a man is walking in a forest and makes a statement, but there is no woman around to hear it, is he still wrong? Or if a woman is walking in the forest and asks for something, and there is no man around to hear her, is she still needy? These Zen koans capture some of the frustrations people have with the opposite gender. And where is the dividing line between someone simply having a need, and someone being a needy person? Is it written in heaven somewhere what is too much need, too little need and just right amount of need for the “normal person?” Ask pop radio psychologists Dr. Laura, or Sally Jessie Rafael, or any number of experts who claim to know for sure, and you’ll get some very different answers. And isn’t it fun to see the new sophisticated ways our advanced culture is developing to make each other wrong? You better keep up with the latest technical terminology or you will be at the mercy of those who do. Whoever has read the latest most recent self-help book has the clear advantage. Example: Man: “Get real, would you! Your Venusian codependency has got you trapped in your learned helpless victim act, and indulging in your empowerment phobia again.” Woman: “When you call me codependent, I feel (notice the political correctness of the feeling word) that you are simply projecting your own disowned, unintegrated, emotionally unavailable Martian counterdependency to protect your inner ADD two year old from ever having to grow up. So there!” Speaking of diagnosis, remember the codependent. Worrying about codependency was like a virus that everyone had from about 1988 to 1994. Here’s a prayer to commemorate the codependent: The Codependent’s Prayer by Kelly Bryson Our Authority, which art in others, self-abandonment be thy name. Codependency comes when others’ will is done, At home, as it is in the workplace. give us this day our daily crumbs of love. And give us a sense of indebtedness, As we try to get others to feel indebted to us. And lead us not into freedom, but deliver us from awareness. For thine is the slavery and the weakness and the dependency, For ever and ever. Amen.

Something diseased and furry had crawled into her mouth and expired while she slept. That was the only possible explanation as to why Neve had a rancid taste in her mouth and a heavy, viscous paste coating her teeth and tongue. ‘I think I’m dying,’ she groaned. The wretched state of her mouth was the least of it. There was a pounding in her head, echoed in the roiling of her gut, and her bones ached, her vital organs ached, her throat ached, even her hair follicles ached. ‘You’re not dying,’ said a voice in her ear, which sounded like nails scraping down a blackboard, even though Max’s voice had barely risen above a whisper. ‘You’ve got a hangover.’ Neve had had hangovers before and they just made her feel a tiny bit nauseous and grouchy. This felt like the bastard child of bubonic plague and the ebola virus. ‘Dying,’ she reiterated, and now she realised that she was in bed, which had been a very comfy bed the last time she’d slept in it, but now it felt as if she was lying on a pile of rocks, and even though she had the quilt and Max’s arm tucked around her, she was still cold and clammy. Neve tried to raise her head but her gaze collided with the stripy wallpaper and as well as searing her retinas, it was making her stomach heave. ‘Sick. Going to be sick.’ ‘Sweetheart, I don’t think so,’ Max said, stroking the back of her neck with feather-soft fingers. ‘You’ve already thrown up just about everything you’ve eaten in the last week.’ ‘Urgh …’ Had she? The night before was a big gaping hole in her memory. ‘What happened?’ ‘I don’t know what happened but I got a phone call from the Head of Hotel Security at three in the morning asking me if I could identify a raving madwoman in a silver dress who couldn’t remember her room number but insisted that someone called Max Pancake was sleeping there. They thought you might be a hack from the Sunday Mirror pretending to be absolutely spannered as a way of getting into the hotel.’ ‘Oh, no …’ ‘Yeah, apparently Ronaldo’s staying in one of the penthouse suites and I saw Wayne and Coleen in the bar last night. Anyway, as you were staggering down the corridor, you told me very proudly that you’d lost your phone and you’d just eaten two pieces of KFC and a bag of chips.’ ‘KFC? Oh, God …’ ‘But I wouldn’t worry about that because after you’d tried to persuade me to have my wicked way with you, you started throwing up and you didn’t stop, not for hours. I thought you were going to sleep curled around the toilet at one point.’ ‘Goodness …

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

Now this is this, or seems to be. When you're haunted by any variety of effective nonsense, like love or guilt or poetry or memory, which are anyway at their root the same thing - the primary symptom is paralysis. You just can't move. Then, all too rarely, the virus is vanquished, the contagion concluded, the spell broken, the cold front snaps in prismatic splinters. Bright moment, that, and bright moment, next, and so on and so forth. What returns is a sense of the present tense as being not only available, but valid.

You have to tell him at some point. It’s like a Band-Aid—you should just rip it off. If you don’t, it’ll haunt you forever. Or he’ll find out from someone else, which is worse.” Mom comes in then with a tray of tea for all of us. “I couldn’t have put it any better myself, Beth.” “What?” I ask, almost spilling the hot tea onto my precious laptop. “Beth’s right. You need to just ’fess up and take things from there.” She blows on her tea, calm as a spring breeze. “I knew it had to have something to do with a boy. You never get sick. A broken leg or a concussion I would’ve believed, but not a virus. And I could tell by your demeanor that this was a sickness of the heart, not the body.” “There you go again with your romance novel logic.” I shake my head. She points a scolding finger at me. “Don’t discount romance novels. What do you think that stuff you write for your blog is? You call it ‘fanfic’ but it could absolutely be categorized as romance. Love, finding that other person who understands you, is a part of everyone’s life. Some of the most beautiful and poignant words I’ve ever read have been in romance novels.” “Okay, first off,” Beth says, “we’ll talk about your fanfiction another time. Secondly, your mom is totally right. ’Fess up already.

THE END OF THE YEAR PRAYER This is the month of December, the last month of the year 2021 and I can’t be grateful enough to my Heavenly Father for His priceless mercy and grace throughout the twists and turns of the entire year in the name of Jesus. Father God thank you for being my unshakable pillar and the father that I could crawl to when I am drowning in the pool of trails and tribulations. Thank you Lord Jesus for your faithfulness and your unfailing love. Hold us with your gentle hand and walk us through the last lap of the year 2021, fill us with peace, joy and strength as we are plodding slowly towards the coming new year and help us to make the right decisions and help us to serve you like never before in the mighty name of Jesus. King of glory, remember those who are lying in the sickbeds and heal them with your blood in the mighty name of Jesus. Remember those who are feeling alone, scared, discouraged, abandoned, tortured, and disappointed. I ask you the God of hope to fill them with all joy and peace, again and again(Romans 15:13) in Jesus name. Heavenly Father remember those who are feeling misjudged, mistreated and labelled by others. I ask you Lord to bless them with love, peace, joy and favour in the name of Jesus. King Jesus, remember those who have no place to live, cushion them under your wings of protection. Remember those who have nothing to eat and those who have no clothes to wear. I ask you Jehovah Jireh to make a way where it seems to be no way and provide for every need. Put smiles on their faces and help them to keep their faith in you Jehovah. Remember those who have lost their loved ones and give them comfort, strength and joy. Thank you Lord for your mercies, your mercies are new every morning. Father God, we ask you to take control of our lives and help us to overcome this ugly monster(corona virus) which keeps raising its head up in different forms of evilness. Heal and deliver every single individual who is infected or affected by it in the mighty name of Jesus. You are our only hope and our lives depend on you Jehovah and our future is in your hands, help us to talk the talk and walk the walk and help us to finish this year stronger than ever before and help us to enter the year 2022 with clear minds and wise decision making. I thank you in advance King of glory and I will be forever grateful in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Everybody has room next to us. no one comes to resurrect us. we have room for brides for grooms in the tight places no one comes to say you’re too many. no one. complains of crowding. too understanding with the living we breed like field rabbits per square meter we breathe the same air. crowns of viruses. faraway emperors when we dreamed with a thousand eyes a thousand feet. given what we were no one thought we’d be used against ourselves only the ground bulges at its ends. all on top of each other we make love under pressure in all sorts of positions undiscovered by the kama sutra. we liquefy we ooze dandelion syrup through all our holes. sometimes we think we’re breaking into indian hemp flowers our faces melt down our mouths are parched. we laugh at ourselves from our diaphragms. (in english by Diana Manole)

In some miraculous fashion, the only things that were preserved were those capable of capturing the human imagination, setting the heart beating faster and engaging people's minds and feelings. The gripping story of a great hero and his love could outlive the story of an entire civilization, infecting the human brain like a virus that was transmitted from fathers to children over hundreds of generations.

Sin, by which we mean the human rejection of God’s sovereign love, has spread like a dreaded virus throughout humanity and all its relationships: from Eve to Adam, to their offspring Cain and Abel, down to the Tower of Babel.

Despite the absence of speech, the green area on the upper part of the gyrus was glowing. “If it’s lighting up, it means she’s talking to me at this very moment.” “Eugenie?” Sharko grunted. Leclerc felt a chill. To see his chief inspector’s meninges react to speech like this, when you couldn’t even hear a fly buzzing, made him feel like there was a ghost in the room. “What’s she saying?” “She wants me to buy a pint of cocktail sauce and some candied chestnuts next time I go shopping. She loves those miserable chestnuts. Excuse me a second…” Sharko closed his eyes, lips pressed tight. Eugenie was someone he might see and hear at any moment. On the passenger seat of his old Renault. At night when he went to bed. Sitting cross-legged, watching the mini-gauge trains run around the tracks. Two years earlier, Eugenie had often shown up with a black man, Willy, a huge smoker of Camels and pot. A real mean son of a bitch, much worse than the little girl because he talked loud and tended to gesticulate wildly. Thanks to the treatment, the Rasta had disappeared for good, but the other one, the girl, came and went as she pleased, resistant as a virus.

Little is known about the love lives of the undead. Really, past the brain-eating, reanimated corpse angle, not much is said for the zombie’s perspective. So they ate brains—big deal! Sure, they were corpses—so what? Indeed, there was the smell, but whose fault was that? At first glance they were brain-hungry cannibals, (Mmm, brains. Maybe with a little cilantro or a garlic rub—mashed potatoes and brainsloaf—brains pot pie—penne a la brains...) but in reality, zombies were not the mindless man-eaters or virus-addled lunatics jonesing for human flesh depicted in the movies. Just like everything in life—or rather, unlife—things were more complicated. Zombies were, until very recently, people. And with that came wants, desires, longings. Needs. Asher had been troubled by the zombie loneliness until Brenda, the attractive corpse he’d met in a less animated state earlier, pulled him into the cemetery, threw him down on a slab and shagged him silly.

What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is passed on by their parents’ egos and other social stimuli. It is born of negativity—of not being good enough thoughts of not having enough, of fear, and worry of failure. Because of its insecure nature, the ego loves to dominate and control others. It’s control or be controlled.

Great is His Faithfulness     “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).     At church on Sunday, they sang a song from the hymnbook called, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” The lyrics were by Thomas Obediah Chisholm and music by William Marion Runyan. Although I had difficulty singing along, I paid close attention to the words. My favourite line was, “All I needed Thy hand hath provided.”   This verse resonated with my soul that day. It didn’t say, “All that I wanted” but rather, “All that I needed.” I took a moment to reflect on the last five years of my life and I was taken to my knees in awe and appreciation.   I wish that I had kept a journal of answered prayer. I think this is a brilliant idea. I have kept notes here and there and I have various journals that I write in every day, but I’ve never dedicated one book to just answered prayer.   There are so many little things that I pray for every day. My husband was working on my income tax on the computer when all of a sudden the program kicked him out. Two hours of work – lost. But it was restored within ten minutes without as much as one number out of place – an answer to prayer.   One of my cats was coughing and sneezing. She looked as if she had trouble breathing and took to hiding under a desk. Would she survive the night? Is it just a cold or something much worse like cat leukemia? The vet announced it only a virus – an answer to prayer.   On a four-hour hike with my mother, two aunts and my brother’s mother-in-law, the average age was 65. The terrain was full of obstacles with fallen trees, raspberry bush thorns, and slippery logs. We made the entire trip without incidence – an answer to prayer.  

Love is like a virus. It's totally debilitating and it takes a hell of a long time to recover from. And when you're low it'll hit you again?

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time

The self-destruction of a group always follows the same patterns. You only need to introduce some viruses to the group and poof, it’s all gone. These viruses come in the form of very ignorant narcissists that nobody has the courage to kick off of the group. Quite often, the group even promotes itself as being against the personalities that are in front of their eyes every day, people they praise and even lead them. And well, that’s how you know a group is truly finished. Scientology is a very interesting example of this, because of how clear their books are. For example, they claim to love artists but end up insulting real artists. Scientologists are so obsessed with being perceived as artists, that they downgrade real art in the process. You have many scientologists, for example, that think splashing a random amount of ink into a white board is art. They all want to be artists, and that’s fine, but they are too lazy to see how real art is made, and so, they downgrade the value of art. And in doing this, they actually distort the meaning of art and decrease the value of the real artists. And so, a group that promotes itself as being uplifting and positive, ends up being offensive and destructive. They have all these books on moral codes and moral behavior, and dozens of courses on the same topic, and if you report a scientologist for criminal behavior, they ignore you and deem you an attacker of the group. And there goes the level of sanity of this group down the scale, while they themselves invert the scale and tell you the opposite story. It would be like looking at your mental health through someone suffering with poor mental health. They are as aware of what I am saying as any mentally ill person is aware of his mental illnesses. If anyone confronts them with the facts, they themselves get offended, and then proceed to attack, because that’s what they think their founder told them to do. Except that the founder was talking about attacking insanity and not people. In other words, they should use these facts to look further into their books and their own misinterpretations, and which they don’t. Those people that splash random colors into a white board, will then tell you, the one who has been using techniques, and winning awards, and creating something unique, that you don’t understand art. They remind me of the writers with one book that doesn't sell, trying to tell me how they are better than me, with more than 100 books in best selling charts. How delusional, arrogant and stupid has one to be to not see this? The level of awareness of such individual is comparable to a drunk person going to a Jujitsu dojo, asking the instructor to fight him because he is convinced he can beat anyone with all that alcohol in his head. That, however, is not the cherry on top of the cake. The cherry on top of the cake, is when a religious group listens to a psychopath talking against psychopaths. You can write many academic papers on this topic and never reach a conclusion, because it's really hard to make conclusions on stupidity. So what’s wrong with religion? Why are some religious groups persecuted and attacked? The answer to these questions isn’t as relevant as what we can observe people doing, when denying the most obvious writings, inverting them and distorting the meanings. Christians have already mastered this art.

As a speaker on stress and trauma I'm often asked what lessons we may derive from the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief among them, surely, is the indispensability of connection — a quality globalized materialism has increasingly drained from modern culture, long before the isolation imposed by the virus reminded us of life's spiritual impoverishment without it. It is now de rigueur for observers of all political hues and philosophical persuasions to bewail the glaring, growing absence of social feeling. "The basic sense of peoplehood, of belonging to a common enterprise with a shared destiny, is exactly what's lacking today," the oft-insightful conservative David Brooks wrote recently in the New York Times. Lacking, we might say, by design: qualities like love, trust, caring, social conscience, and engagement are inevitable casualties — "sunk costs," in capitalist argot — of a culture that prizes acquisition above all else.

EIGHT PRAYER WATCHES THIRD PRAYER WATCH (MIDNIGHT—3AM) Father in the name of Jesus cover us with your blood in this most darkest hour and the most demonic time of the night. Help us to stand firm against all the influence of the demonic activities in the name of Jesus. We come against witchcraft, curses, ‘So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I your servant asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast (1King 3:20). We come against the destiny theft and the destiny hi jacking in the mighty name of Jesus. We erase every single negative word that was spoken over South Africa and her people. We come against fear mongering in the name of Jesus. Your word says, ‘You have not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love and sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Father God we ask you to deliver us from the prison of all diseases, viruses (corona virus), poverty, killings and all plagues like you freed Paul and Silas at this time of the night (Act 16:24). Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus release your power, your mercies, your grace and your favour over South Africa and her people. Cleanse our beautiful land from the bloodshed and help us to unite and love one another in the mighty name of Jesus, we pray. And South Africa shall be called blessed. Thank you Lord Jesus.

What's Not to Love about a broken bowl, now two half-bowls, still ready to hold what they can, even if that’s nothing What’s not to love about weeds and weeds and weeds that crowd the yard, and thrive amazingly on the same nothing What’s not to love about a virus crowding the blood, putting a doll of itself in each cell and sailing it away to find fortune in the heart What’s not to love about the dying heart with its four dark rooms full of grass and broken china, a sheeted piano about to play What’s not to love about a sonata played by a lonely child who would rather do anything else, sleep in a garden or pull up the flowers, who would rather be sick What’s not to love about reading aloud to someone fast asleep, about not stopping, not even when a bowl slides from the bed and crashes like a bell in water

Sure,” he says. “And how about we wait in here for a while, see if we piss off Brett enough that he’ll ditch us for Ryke or Rose?” “I like that idea.” “Yeah?” I nod. “And maybe a virus will infect everyone, turning them into zombies, and when we leave the bathroom, the bookstore will be completely deserted.” “Nice,” he says, “but I’d rather not be inserted into the plot of 28 Days Later.” Damn. He’s good. “I love you,” I suddenly say. I mean it. Because who else would stay in a bookstore bathroom with me, just to hide out for a little while. Definitely not Rose. Maybe Daisy. Ryke would rather die, I’m sure. And Connor can never be added into any equation without hurting my head. So that leaves Lo. Just Lo.

From a higher perspective of love, the mind is like an innocent child and simply doesn’t know any better, and it is ultimately doing what it believes will help it survive. It genuinely thinks it is doing what is best for you, even if it seems atrocious or horrific. It may be helpful to view the mind as an innocent machine or hardware going along with whatever inherited programs and software were installed into it. It literally does not have the ability to tell if a program is good or bad for it, just like a computer accepting a programmed virus without question.

So please... put down your smartphones, turn off your TVs... Spend time with your family. Call a loved one. Just take a break. Focus on the good things that you have in your life---the blessings...A threat like this can break us down, or it can make us truly appreciate the many blessings that we do have... It's okay to be uncertain, but at the same time, we can also pour ourselves into our families, into our neighbors, and into our communities. People are afraid, and they're worried. And some may be losing hope. But my message to you is hang in there. We will get through this, and we will persevere...If there's anything that we all can rally around today, it's that we all have a common enemy---and that's this virus.

The people with this virus deserve love and understanding and care—not discrimination. They don’t mean you harm. They’re just like any of us.

That an obscure Filipino computer-user can spread confusion through the global computer networks by launching the 'I love you' virus is possible only because the computer loves us and, feeling abandoned, like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, takes its revenge by suiciding the network.

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You go around for a long time carrying the minutiae of yourself in your own two hands, and it's not so bad, not even that heavy. It's just a thing you have to do. And then every so often a person shows up and opens their arms like the clean empty surface of a table, and suddenly your hands feel unbearably full, and you know what was true isn't true anymore, you couldn't for another instant continue bearing so many stories on your own.

It's nice having someone by your side in difficult times like this ones. Someone who always check upon you, if you are doing well and you are still alive. Someone who gives you hope that beyond this pandemic. There is still love and life. Even if you can lose everything. They will always be there with you .

The only thing that ever gets us through anything like this, and ever has whether it's war, hurricanes or typhoons, epidemics, or anything else - love. Everything comes down to love. Find all the love that you can. Express it. Feel it. Be it. In every possible way. If you have COVID, love the COVID. You may not understand why this had to happen - why this virus came into existence. You don't have too. Just trust that there's something much greater than you. You don't have to believe in a god as such to recognize that there's this huge unfolding taking place that we're all a part of. When you look at the history of it -- out of nothing but pure energy came galaxies, and suns, and planets. Planets that life could develop on. And life is developed - the whole totality of everything is moving in a particular direction. If you examine what is the most common underlying feature of all of that - it's going to come down to something as simple as love. When the first particles formed after the big bang, they fell in love with each other and electrons and protons joined together, and we had hydrogen atoms! And they were doing the dance of love. And the hydrogen atoms got together with oxygen atoms and you had water molecules, doing the dance of love. This has lead to absolutely everything else. Just find the love, and live in the space of love, die in the space of love. That is the one single thing that is the essence of absolutely everything. That's what fifty years of spiritual practice has taught me.

believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. (I’m talking about all ideas here—artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.) When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration. You might miss the signal because you’re watching TV, or shopping, or brooding over how angry you are at somebody, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just generally really busy. The idea will try to wave you down (perhaps for a few moments; perhaps for a few months; perhaps even for a few years), but when it finally realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else. But sometimes—rarely, but magnificently—there comes a day when you’re open and relaxed enough to actually receive something. Your defenses might slacken and your anxieties might ease, and then magic can slip through. The idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you. It will send the universal physical and emotional signals of inspiration (the chills up the arms, the hair standing up on the back of the neck, the nervous stomach, the buzzy thoughts, that feeling of falling into love or obsession). The idea will organize coincidences and portents to tumble across your path, to keep your interest keen. You will start to notice all sorts of signs pointing you toward the idea. Everything you see and touch and do will remind you of the idea. The idea will wake you up in the middle of the night and distract you from your everyday routine. The idea will not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention. And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, “Do you want to work with me?” At this point, you have two options for how to respond. What

One smile heals the planet because it spreads like a virus from one to the next without care for the perfect environment.