Marrow Book Quotes

This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentences build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point barricade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close.

Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart -- it is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that benefits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice -- it does not so much nibble at our shoe leather as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from the bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our small-minded questions, but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask.

A story is alive, as you and I are. It is rounded by muscle and sinew. Rushed with blood. Layered with skin, both rough and smooth. At its core lies soft marrow of hard, white bone. A story beats with the heart of every person who has ever strained ears to listen. On the breath of the storyteller, it soars. Until its images and deeds become so real you can see them in the air, shimmering like oases on the horizon line. A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.

All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom. I devoured those books by C.S. Lewis and William Dunthorn, Ellen Wentworth, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. When I could get them from the library, I read them out of order as I found them, and then in order, and then reread them all again, many times over. Because even when I was a child I knew it wasn't simply escape that lay on the far side of the borders of fairyland. Instinctively I knew crossing over would mean more than fleeing the constant terror and shame that was mine at that time of my life. There was a knowledge – an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can access ― telling me that by crossing over, I'd be coming home. That's the reason I’ve yearned so desperately to experience the wonder, the mystery, the beauty of that world beyond the World As It Is. It's because I know that somewhere across the border there's a place for me. A place of safety and strength and learning, where I can become who I'm supposed to be. I've tried forever to be that person here, but whatever I manage to accomplish in the World As It Is only seems to be an echo of what I could be in that other place that lies hidden somewhere beyond the borders.

Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

Edward breathed in the sweet fragrance of the dogwood blossoms. The delicious air came into his lungs and passed into his blood, coursing through his veins with euphoric energy that he’d never experienced. He felt as strong as a hundred men as they passed out of the dogwood coppice and began the ascent up the hill. Their pace was leisurely. Edward could have run all the way to the top if he wanted, but no urge to do so imposed itself on him. For the first time in his life, Edward felt peace, down to the marrow of his bones.

...and this morning I am without fire, my marrow is ash, I am very sad.

it behoves you to develop a sagacious flair for sniffing and smelling out and appreciating such fair and fatted books, to be swiff: in pursuit and bold in the attack, and then, by careful reading and frequent meditation, to crack open the bone and seek out the substantificial marrow – that is to say, what I mean by such Pythagorean symbols – sure in the hope that you will be made witty and wise by that reading; for you will discover therein a very different savour and a more hidden instruction which will reveal to you the highest hidden truths and the most awesome mysteries

What a hypocrite I am; I spend my whole life reading books that allude to happiness, when I refuse to experience it. Sadness is an emotion you can trust. It is stronger than all of the other emotions. It makes happiness look fickle and untrustworthy. It pervades, lasts longer, and replaces the good feelings with such an eloquent ease you don’t even feel the shift until you are suddenly wrapped in its chains. How hard we strive for happiness, and once we finally have the elusive feeling in our grasp, we hold it briefly, like water as it trickles through our fingers. I don’t want to hold water. I want to hold something heavy and solid. Something I can understand. I understand sadness, and so I trust it. We are meant to feel sadness, if only to protect us from the brief spiels of happiness. Darkness is all I’ll ever know; maybe the key is to make poetry out of it.

Perhaps the body has its own memory system, like the invisible meridian lines those Chinese acupuncturists always talk about. Perhaps the body is unforgiving, perhaps every cell, every muscle and fragment of bone remembers each and every assault and attack. Maybe the pain of memory is encoded into our bone marrow and each remembered grievance swims in our bloodstream like a hard, black pebble. After all, the body, like God, moves in mysterious ways. From the time she was in her teens, Sera has been fascinated by this paradox - how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth - from before birth, even - is still a stranger to us. After all, almost everything we do in our lives is for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm. And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we have never read. Sera plays with this irony, toys with it as if it were a puzzle: How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn't recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties. But if this is true, surely the body also remembers each kindness, each kiss, each act of compassion? Surely this is our salvation, our only hope - that joy and love are also woven into the fabric of the body, into each sinewy muscle, into the core of each pulsating cell?

books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy. Copying,

we can go below our hardened ways to the soft impulses that birth them. Instead of breaking the bone of our stubbornness, we can nourish the marrow of our feeling unheard. Instead of breaking the bone of our fear, we can cleanse the blood of our feeling unsafe. Instead of counting the scars from being hurt in the world, we can find and re-kiss the very spot in our soul where we began to withhold our trust.

Aurum, argentum, gemmae, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager, pietae tabulae, phaleratus sonipes, caeteraque id genus mutam habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur. Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.

The Demon Slayers and Other Stories: Bengali Folktales by Sayantani DasGupta (that’s me) and Shamita Das Dasgupta (that’s my mom). New York, NY: Interlink, 1995. The Ghost Catcher by Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss. Atlanta, GA: August House, 2008. The Buri and the Marrow by Henriette Barkow. London, UK: Mantra Lingua, 2000. Tuntuni, the Tailor Bird by Betsy Bang. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books, 1978.

The books we read in childhood don't exist anymore; they sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind. Whoever still has in him the memory and marrow of childhood should rewrite these books as he experienced them.

I've never been to the ocean, never heard the waves lick the sand in that quiet shushing you read about in books. I've never been to the zoo, smelled the elephant piss, and heard the cries of the monkeys. I've never had frozen yogurt from one of those places where you pull on the handle and fill your own cup with whatever you like. I've never eaten dinner at a restaurant with napkins that you set on your lap and silverware that isn't plastic. I've never painted my nails like the other girls at school, in bright neons and decadent reds. I've never been more than ten miles from home. Ten miles. It's like I live in the forever ago, not where buses rumble and trains have racks. I've never had a birthday cake, though I've wanted one very much. I've never owned a bra that is new, and had to cut the tags off with the scissors from the kitchen drawer. I've never been loved in a way that makes me feel as if I was supposed to be born, if only to feel loved. I've never, I've never, I've never. And it's my own fault. The things that we never do because someone makes us fearful of them, or makes us believe we don't deserve them. I want to do all my nevers-- alone or with someone who matters. I don't care. I just want to live.

And heaven help him, there was that pain again, the one that pierced him to his very marrow and started all that emotion bleeding out of him. Dammit, he loved her. He’d been denying it for weeks now, but he could deny it no longer. Not the giddy drug of infatuation. Not the mind-blowing drive of unadulterated lust. Not the bone-deep need to possess. It was all of those things wrapped up together, but so much more. It was simple, really. She had somehow become all that mattered.

I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets. I tried the Scarsdale diet and the Stillman water diet (you remember that one, where you run weight off trying to get to the bathroom). I tried Optifast, Juicefast, and Waterfast. I even took those shots that I think were made from cow pee. I endured every form of torture anybody with a white coat and a clipboard could devise for a girl who really liked fried pork chops. One night while I was on some kind of liquid-protein diet made from bone marrow, or something equally appetizing, I was with a group of friends at a Howard Johnson’s and some of them were having fried clams. I’ll never forget sitting there with all of that glorious fried fat filling my nostrils and feeling completely left out. I went home and wrote one of my biggest hits, “Two Doors Down.” I also went off my diet and had some fried clams. There were times when I thought of chucking it all in. “Damn the movie,” I would say. “I’m just gonna eat everything and go ahead and weigh five hundred pounds and have to be buried in a piano case.” Luckily, a few doughnuts later, that thought would pass and I would be back to the goal at hand. I remember something in a book I read called Gentle Eating. The author said you should pretend the angels are eating with you and that you want to save some for them. I loved that idea, because I love angels. I have to admit, though, there were times I would slap those angels out of the way and have their part too. A true hog will do that.

There are a few clear themes that emerge when we synthesize all the findings we’ve looked at so far, and those are jewels you should pluck out of this book, place in your pocket, and carry with you for as long as they serve you. Here are the biggies. Eliminate or drastically reduce your intake of refined grains, refined sugar, and high-omega-6 vegetable oils. No healthy human population has thrived on these items, and the bulk of the evidence points toward their harm. Secure a source of those precious fat-soluble vitamins—whether from shellfish, fish eggs, high-quality dairy, bone marrow, organ meats like liver, or cod liver oil.

Karl-Heinz ‘fed’ me the entire book over the next seven weeks. The metaphor is exact. The thin wads of pages were like crucial scraps of nutrition. I devoured them. I masticated, swallowed and digested that book. I cracked its bones and sipped its marrow; every fibre of meat, every cartilaginous module of gristle was dined on with gourmandising fervour.

Slowly, however, her lips curled again, her jaw locking open, baring her teeth with too much gum in a wrenching scream. The bloodcurdling sound ringing through his ears while her nails clawed at her chest, hands violently digging through the soft connective tissue and tearing it to ribbons, blood gushed thick and black over the pink of her dress, painting it red. It was then that Henry saw that there was something terrible inside her, attempting to break its way out. It shattered the marrow of her ribs and slithered from her belly, melting away from her, into a grotesque creature with razor-sharp canines and claws drenched in blood. Her screaming becoming louder, Henry was sure his eardrums were about to burst, and he was caught in a state of paralysis, stuck watching her tear herself apart until all that was left of her was this monstrosity.

With a painful slice, I cut off what I pretended to know about what lies beyond me. I excise myself from the cunning interpretative loops that I gave to what lies beyond me. And my knife cuts even deeper and separates me from the meaning that I conferred upon myself. I cut down to the marrow, until everything meaningful falls from me, until I am no longer as I might seem to myself, until I know only that I am without knowing what I am.

It was as if he had set in motion a mechanism in her head and now her job was to put order into a chaotic mass of impressions. Increasingly intent, increasingly obsessed, probably overcome herself by an urgent need to find a solid vision, without cracks, she complicated his meager information with some book she got from the library. So she gave concrete motives, ordinary faces to the air of abstract apprehension that as children we had breathed in the neighborhood. Fascism, Nazism, the war, the Allies, the monarchy, the republic—she turned them into streets, houses, faces, Don Achille and the black market, Alfredo Peluso the Communist, the Camorrist grandfather of the Solaras, the father, Silvio, a worse Fascist than Marcello and Michele, and her father, Fernando the shoemaker, and my father, all—all—in her eyes stained to the marrow by shadowy crimes, all hardened criminals or acquiescent accomplices, all bought for practically nothing. She and Pasquale enclosed me in a terrible world that left no escape.

Magic An extremely old Tukuna woman chastised some young girls who had denied her food. During the night she tore the bones out of their legs and devoured the marrow, so the girls could never walk again. In her infancy, soon after birth, the old woman had received from a frog the powers of healing and vengeance. The frog had taught her to cure and kill, to hear unhearable voices and see unseeable colors. She learned to defend herself before she learned to talk. Before she could walk she already knew how to be where she wasn’t, because the shafts of love and hate instantly pierce the densest jungles and deepest rivers. When the Tukunas cut off her head, the old woman collected her own blood in her hands and blew it toward the sun. “My soul enters you, too!” she shouted. Since then anyone who kills receives in his body, without wanting or knowing it, the soul of his victim. (112)

Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami Books for Banned Love Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendahl Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason

She browned onions and garlic, and from the pot on the windowsill, chopped a few winter-sad leaves of tarragon. The smell was green and strong, and she thought of spring. Spring in Dijon, when she and Al would hike into the mountains with the Club Alpin, the old women forever chiding her tentative steps, her newborn French: la petite violette, violette américaine. She would turn back to Al, annoyed, and he would laugh. Hardly his delicate flower. When they stopped for lunch, it was Mary Frances with the soufflé of calves' brains, whatever was made liver or marrow, ordering enough strong wine that everyone was laughing. The way home, the women let her be. If she wanted calves' brains now, she wouldn't even know where to begin to look or how to pay. She and Al seemed to be living on vegetables and books, tobacco, quiet. She blanched a bunch of spinach and chopped it. She beat eggs with the tarragon, heated the skillet once again. There was a salad of avocados and oranges. There was a cold bottle of ale and bread. Enough, for tonight.

THREE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER JESUS DIED ON A ROMAN cross, the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christians, who had once been persecuted by the empire, became the empire, and those who had once denied the sword took up the sword against their neighbors. Pagan temples were destroyed, their patrons forced to convert to Christianity or die. Christians whose ancestors had been martyred in gladiatorial combat now attended the games, cheering on the bloodshed. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. On July 15, 1099, Christian crusaders lay siege to Jerusalem, then occupied by Fatimite Arabs. They found a breach in the wall and took the city. Declaring “God wills it!” they killed every defender in their path and dashed the bodies of helpless babies against rocks. When they came upon a synagogue where many of the city’s Jews had taken refuge, they set fire to the building and burned the people inside alive. An eyewitness reported that at the Porch of Solomon, horses waded through blood. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Through a series of centuries-long inquisitions that swept across Europe, hundreds of thousands of people, many of them women accused of witchcraft, were tortured by religious leaders charged with protecting the church from heresy. Their instruments of torture, designed to slowly inflict pain by dismembering and dislocating the body, earned nicknames like the Breast Ripper, the Head Crusher, and the Judas Chair. Many were inscribed with the phrase Soli Deo Gloria, “Glory be only to God.” Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. In a book entitled On Jews and Their Lies, reformer Martin Luther encouraged civic leaders to burn down Jewish synagogues, expel the Jewish people from their lands, and murder those who continued to practice their faith within Christian territory. “The rulers must act like a good physician who when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow,” he wrote. Luther’s writings were later used by German officials as religious justification of the Holocaust. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbours up. Richard Byrd, the US admiral and explorer, gave a similar explanation in the opening of his book Alone, in which he described his adventure alone through seven months in the Antarctic: I wanted to go for experience's sake: one man's desire to know that kind of experience to the full... to taste... solitude long enough to find out how good it really was... I wanted something more than just privacy... I would be able to live exactly as I chose, obedient to no necessities but those imposed by wind and night and cold, and to no man's laws but my own.

Palo Mayombe is perhaps best known for its display of human skulls in iron cauldrons and accompanied by necromantic practices that contribute to its eerie reputation of being a cult of antinomian and hateful sorcerers. This murky reputation is from time to time reinforced by uninformed journalists and moviemakers who present Palo Mayombe in similar ways as Vodou has been presented through the glamour and horror of Hollywood. It is the age old fear of the unknown and of powers that threaten the established order that are spawned from the umbra of Palo Mayombe. The cult is marked by ambivalence replicating an intense spectre of tension between all possible contrasts, both spiritual and social. This is evident both in the history of Kongo inspired sorcery and practices as well as the tension between present day practitioners and the spiritual conclaves of the cult. Palo Mayombe can be seen either as a religion in its own right or a Kongo inspired cult. This distinction perhaps depends on the nature of ones munanso (temple) and rama (lineage). Personally, I see Palo Mayombe as a religious cult of Creole Sorcery developed in Cuba. The Kongolese heritage derives from several different and distinct regions in West Africa that over time saw a metamorphosis of land, cultures and religions giving Palo Mayombe a unique expression in its variety, but without losing its distinct nucleus. In the history of Palo Mayombe we find elite families of Kongolese aristocracy that contributed to shaping African history and myth, conflicts between the Kongolese and explorers, with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade being the blood red thread in its development. The name Palo Mayombe is a reference to the forest and nature of the Mayombe district in the upper parts of the deltas of the Kongo River, what used to be the Kingdom of Loango. For the European merchants, whether sent by the Church to convert the people or by a king greedy for land and natural resources, everything south of present day Nigeria to the beginning of the Kalahari was simply Kongo. This un-nuanced perception was caused by the linguistic similarities and of course the prejudice towards these ‘savages’ and their ‘primitive’ cultures. To write a book about Palo Mayombe is a delicate endeavor as such a presentation must be sensitive both to the social as well as the emotional memory inherited by the religion. I also consider it important to be true to the fundamental metaphysical principles of the faith if a truthful presentation of the nature of Palo Mayombe is to be given. The few attempts at presenting Palo Mayombe outside ethnographic and anthropological dissertations have not been very successful. They have been rather fragmented attempts demonstrating a lack of sensitivity not only towards the cult itself, but also its roots. Consequently a poor understanding of Palo Mayombe has been offered, often borrowing ideas and concepts from Santeria and Lucumi to explain what is a quite different spirituality. I am of the opinion that Palo Mayombe should not be explained on the basis of the theological principles of Santeria. Santeria is Yoruba inspired and not Kongo inspired and thus one will often risk imposing concepts on Palo Mayombe that distort a truthful understanding of the cult. To get down to the marrow; Santeria is a Christianized form of a Yoruba inspired faith – something that should make the great differences between Santeria and Palo Mayombe plain. Instead, Santeria is read into Palo Mayombe and the cult ends up being presented at best in a distorted form. I will accordingly refrain from this form of syncretism and rather present Palo Mayombe as a Kongo inspired cult of Creole Sorcery that is quite capable

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” —Mark 1:35 2. Have an honest heart. “Call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”—Jeremiah 29:12-13 3. Open your Bible. “The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” —Hebrews 4:12 4. Have a genuine friend. “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”—Hebrews 10:24-25 God has not meant for our lives to be empty. His plan is for us to live full and abundant lives (see John 10:10). As Rick Warren explains in his book The Purpose-Driven Life, “The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.”8 God did not make you to be empty. Walk with and in the purpose He has planned for you. Prayer: Father God, lift me out of a life of emptiness. You didn’t make me to be there, and that’s not where I will remain. With Your Spirit and power I will rise above this phase of emptiness and live an abundant life. Thank You for giving me a gentle whisper. Amen.   Action: If you find yourself in an empty stage of life, put into action this week the four steps that are given.   Today’s Wisdom: Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. —JEREMIAH 17:7-8

heu, uatum ignarae mentes! quid uota furentem, quid delubra iuuant? est mollis flamma medullas interea et tacitum uiuit sub pectore uulnus. uritur infelix Dido totaque uagatur urbe furens, qualis coniecta cerua sagitta, quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixit pastor agens telis liquitque uolatile ferrum nescius: illa fuga siluas saltusque peragrat Dictaeos; haeret lateri letalis harundo. nunc media Aenean secum per moenia ducit Sidoniasque ostentat opes urbemque paratam, incipit effari mediaque in uoce resistit; nunc eadem labente die conuiuia quaerit, Iliacosque iterum demens audire labores exposcit pendetque iterum narrantis ab ore. post ubi digressi, lumenque obscura uicissim luna premit suadentque cadentia sidera somnos, sola domo maeret uacua stratisque relictis incubat. illum absens absentem auditque uidetque, aut gremio Ascanium genitoris imagine capta detinet, infandum si fallere possit amorem. non coeptae adsurgunt turres, non arma iuuentus exercet portusue aut propugnacula bello tuta parant: pendent opera interrupta minaeque murorum ingentes aequataque machina caelo. (Alas, poor blind interpreters! What woman In love is helped by offerings or altars? Soft fire consumes the marrow-bones, the silent Wound grows, deep in the heart. Unhappy Dido burns, and wanders, burning, All up and down the city, the way a deer With a hunter’s careless arrow in her flank Ranges the uplands, with the shaft still clinging To the hurt side. She takes Aeneas with her All through the town, displays the wealth of Sidon, Buildings projected; she starts to speak, and falters, And at the end of the day renews the banquet, Is wild to hear the story, over and over, Hangs on each word, until the late moon, sinking, Sends them all home. The stars die out, but Dido Lies brooding in the empty hall, alone, Abandoned on a lonely couch. She hears him, Sees him, or sees and hears him in Iulus, Fondles the boy, as if that ruse might fool her, Deceived by his resemblance to his father. The towers no longer rise, the youth are slack In drill for arms, the cranes and derricks rusting, Walls halt halfway to heaven.) Book IV 65-89

The thought is immediately accompanied by a dull ache below her shoulder. It is a phantom pain, she knows, a psychosomatic ache, but still she feels the hurt. After all, it has been many years since the blow that made her arm swell and ache for days. On the other hand, who knows? Perhaps the body has its own memory system, like the invisible meridian lines those Chinese acupuncturists always talk about. Perhaps the body is unforgiving, perhaps every cell, every muscle and fragment of bone remembers each and every assault and attack. Maybe the pain of memory is encoded into our bone marrow and each remembered grievance swims in our bloodstream like a hard, black pebble. After all, the body, like God, moves in mysterious ways. From the time she was in her teens, Sera has been fascinated by this paradox—how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth—from before birth, even—is still a stranger to us. After all, almost everything we do in our lives is for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm. And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we have never read. Sera plays with this irony, toys with it as if it were a puzzle: How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn’t recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties. But if this is true, surely the body also remembers each kindness, each kiss, each act of compassion? Surely this is our salvation, our only hope—that joy and love are also woven into the fabric of the body, into each sinewy muscle, into the core of each pulsating cell?

8:00am The sun is shining, the cows are mooing, and I am ready for the mines. I hope I find something awesome today. Steve has told me about some pretty crazy things I had no idea existed. According to him, I must find empty tombs in the desert. That’s where the real treasures are. For today, I will stick to regular mining. Who knows, maybe I will come across an abandoned mine shaft; could be my lucky day.   12:30pm I was forced to come home for lunch today because I had too much stuff to carry. I was getting low on my iron ore, gold, and lapis lazuli stocks before this mine trip. It’s amazing how quick lapis goes when you are busy enchanting everything but the kitchen sink. I’d enchant that too if I had one. I wonder what an enchanted kitchen sink would do. Would it do my dishes for me? That would be so cool.   I have plenty of both now. I can make some new armor and enchant it! I love mining.   Steve decided to join me for lunch and we ate a couple of pork chops and some cake. I love cake! We ate until no more food could fill us up. Then, Steve had the guts to brag about how, when he mines, he takes a horse with extra storage so he can stay down there all day long. Well fancy you, Steve.   He also went on to tell me about how well the crops are doing these days. He thinks it’s because he is looking after them half of the time. What he doesn’t know is I throw bone marrow on them when I am working. Makes my job faster and gives me more free time so whatever you need to tell yourself, Steve.   Life may be easier switching every day between mines and farming, but it still doesn’t make me his biggest fan. I just don’t think he needs to fall in a hole, either. At least… Not right now. I would consider us to be frienemies; Friendly enemies. Yes. At times we pretend to get along, but most of the time, we are happiest doing our own thing.   6:00pm Mining this afternoon was super fun… Not! I got attacked by a partially hidden skeleton guy. I couldn’t see him enough to strike back until half of my life hearts were gone. I must not have made the space bright enough. Those guys are nasty. They are hard to kill too. If you don’t have a bow and arrow you might as well surrender. Plus, they kind of smell like death. Yuck.   Note to self: Bring more torches on the next mining day.   On the other hand, I came back with an overshare of Redstone, too much iron for my own good, and oddly, quite a few diamonds. I won’t be sharing the diamonds with anyone. They are far too precious. They will go to some new diamond pickaxes, and maybe some armor. Hmm, I could enchant those too! The iron and Redstone though, I am thinking a trip to the village may be in order. See what those up-tight weirdos are willing to trade me.   For now, it’s bedtime.   6:10pm You can only sleep at night. You can only sleep at night. You can only sleep at night.   6:11pm That stupid rule gets me every time. Why can’t I decide when it’s bed time?   First, I will go eat a cookie, then I will go to sleep. Day Thirty-Three   3:00am I just dreamt that our world was made of cookies.

(p.112-114) This past, the Negro's past, of rope, fire torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for this women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible - this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering - enough is certainly as good as a feast - but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth - and indeed, no church - can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one's bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry. The apprehension of life here so briefly and inadequately sketched has been the experience of generations of Negroes, and it helps to explain how they have endured and how they have been able to produce children of kindergarten age who can walk through mobs to get to school. It demands great force and great cunning continually to assault the mighty and indifferent fortress of white supremacy, as Negroes in this country have done so long. It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. The Negro boys and girls who are facing mobs today come out of a long line of improbable aristocrats - the only genuine aristocrats this country has produced. I say "this country" because their frame of reference was totally American. They were hewing out of the mountain of white supremacy the stone of their individuality. I have great respect for that unsung army of black men and women who trudged down back lanes and entered back doors, saying "Yes, sir" and "No, Ma'am" in order to acquire a new roof for the schoolhouse, new books, a new chemistry lab, more beds for the dormitories, more dormitories. They did not like saying "Yes, sir" and "No Ma'am", but the country was in no hurry to educate Negroes, these black men and women knew that the job had to be done, and they put their pride in their pockets in order to do it. It is very hard to believe that they were in anyway inferior to the white men and women who opened those back doors. It is very hard to believe that those men and women, raising their children, eating their greens, crying their curses, weeping their tears, singing their songs, making their love, as the sun rose, as the sun set, were in any way inferior to the white men and women who crept over to share these splendors after the sun went down. ... I am proud of these people not because of their color but because of their intelligence and their spiritual force and their beauty. The country should be proud of them, too, but, alas, not many people in this country even know of their existence.

Until this night, this awful night, he’d had a little joke about himself. He didn’t know who he was, or where he’d come from, but he knew what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on the corners, the big steel and glass buildings filled with milky evening light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the telephones-it didn’t matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss through plate glass windows when nobody was about. He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in books. He also liked the automobiles that burnt oil from the earth like lamps. And the great jet planes that flew on the same scientific principles, above the clouds. He always stopped and listened to the people laughing and talking up there when one of the people laughing and talking up there when one of the planes flew overhead. Driving was an extraordinary pleasure. In a silver Mercedes-Benz, he had sped on smooth empty roads from Rome to Florence to Venice in one night. He also liked television-the entire electric process of it, with tiny bits of lights. How soothing it was to have the company of the television, the intimacy with so many artfully painted faces speaking to you in friendship from the glowing screen. The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked the music. He liked the Vampire Lestat singing “Requiem for the Marquise”. He didn’t pay attention to the words much. It was the melancholy and the dark undertone of drums and cymbals. Made him want to dance. He liked the giant yellow machines that dug into the earth late at night in the big cities with men in uniforms, crawling all over them; he liked the double-decker buses of London, and the people-the clever mortals everywhere-he liked, too, of course. He liked walking in Damascus during the evening, and seeing in sudden flashes of disconnected memory the city of the ancients. Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians in these streets. He liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient monuments in big smooth good-smelling books. He took his own photographs of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images on those pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of Rome there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes. Oh, yes, much to like around him always-the violin music of Bartók, little girls in snow white dresses coming out of the church at midnight having sung at the Christmas mass. He liked the blood of his victims too, of course. That went without saying. It was no part of his little joke. Death was not funny to him. He stalked his prey in silence; he didn’t want to know his victims. All a mortal had to do was speak to him and he was turned away. Not proper, as he saw it, to talk to these sweet, soft-eyed things and then gobble their blood, break their bones and lick the marrow, squeeze their limbs to dripping pulp. And that was the way he feasted now, so violently. He felt no great need for blood anymore; but he wanted it. And the desire overpowered him in all its ravening purity, quite apart from the thirst. He could have feasted upon three or four mortals a night.

I opened the book more firmly this time. When Foodie and Wordie Meet/Mate: A Seductive Poem for Every Item in Your Kitchen by Fenella Burch. Courgette Smooth as cream A cuisinier’s dream Taut and green Did I see you in a dream? As field becomes fallow Courgette begets marrow Mash, roast or fry Then I’ll kiss you till you cry.

Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami

Today, fees at Eton are now almost £13,000 per term, and at Winchester £400 more. But with the phrase ‘bred into the marrow of their bones’ the aristocracy suddenly lurches from a quaint daydream to something altogether more chilling. This is eugenics, in top hat and tails.

Darkening of bones and meat around the bones occurs primarily in young broiler-fryer chickens (6 to 8 weeks old). The bones have not calcified or hardened completely, so pigment from the bone marrow seeps through the bones and into the surrounding area. Freezing also contributes to this darkening. This is an aesthetic issue, not a safety one.

The central facts of the incarnation, satisfaction, and resurrection are the fulfillment of the three great thoughts of the Old Covenant, the content of the New Testament, the Kerygma of the Apostles, the foundation of the Christian Church, the marrow of its history of dogma and the centre of the history of the world.

Some Consequences of the Made Thing The End. Above these words the sky closes. It closes by turning white. Not The white of all clouds or being within a cloud. White of worldless light. The End. Feel a silence there that reminds you of a scent. Crushed grass the hooves galloped through Or is it the binder’s glue? Some silence never not real finally can be Heard. Silence before the first words. Precedent chaos. Or marrow work. Or just the sound of the throat opening to speak. Like those scholars of pure water Who rode through mountains and meadows To drink from each fresh spring a glass And then with brush and ink wrote poems On the differences of sameness, You too feel yourself taste the silent page Of the end and the silent page of beginning. They taste so much of whiteness never more White than white that’s been lost. You have some sense of the book Altering, page sewn secretly next to page, Last page stitched to first. O, earth— It rolls around the solar scroll Turning nothing into years and years into Nothing. At The End you’re a witness to this work That wears the witness away. And who are you Anyway. Pronoun of the 2nd person. Lover, Stranger, God. Student, Child, Shade. Something similar gathers in you. Another way of saying I in a poem— Of saying I in a poem that realizes at the end That I am just a distance from myself. And so are you. That same distance.

Jess herself had not eaten fowl or roast or even fish in years, but the books awakened memories of turkey and thick gravy, and crab cakes, and rib-eye roasts. Redolent of smoke and flame, the recipes repelled and also reminded her of pink and tender meat, and breaking open lobster dripping with sweet butter, and sucking marrow out of the bones.

Human perception often fails, but the eye of God pierces to the marrow. A human being sees what is on the surface, but God looks upon the heart. In the kingdom of eternal blessedness an everlasting brightness shines upon all things and there perfect sanctity, having obtained every delight, exults in the sons of the kingdom. Nothing without order happens there; nothing polluted enters there; nothing sordid and contrary to honesty is found there. Whatever sin the filth of the flesh has committed is burned away by a cleansing fire and is made clean by many kinds of purgation according to the decision of the eternal judge. And just as a vessel, scrubbed clean of rust and carefully polished all over, is placed in a treasury, so too the soul, cleansed from the contagion of every sin, enters paradise, and there, fortified with every happiness, it rejoices without fear or concern.

It brings great shame to turn against those ideals. Our kinship. Our honor. It is almost unbearable to think that your god and brethren despise you. To think that you shattered the bones of the weak and sucked out their marrow, believing that they deserved to die… and then to see that you yourself are one of those failures. And then to see that, perhaps, we did not eat our weakest, but destroyed our strongest.

Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.”
 - Psalm 63:3-6

Thomas Goodwin said that “next to the Bible, he esteemed Dr. Ames, his Marrow of Divinity, as the best book in the world.

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb.4:12).

Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Szabó The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami

I want to go somewhere good when I read, not into someone else's crappy life.

From the first yearning for a Saviour’s birth To the full joy of knowing sins forgiven, We start our journey here on God’s good earth To catch an echo of the choirs of heaven. I send these out, returning what was lent, Turning to praise each ‘moment’s monument’. The lectern Some rise on eagles’ wings, this one is plain, Plain English workmanship in solid oak. Age gracefully, it says, go with the grain. You walk towards an always open book, Open as every life to every light, Open to shade and shadow, day and night, The changeless witness of your changing pain. Be still, the lectern says, stand here and read. Here are your mysteries, your love and fear, And, running through them all, the slender thread Of God’s strange grace, red as these ribbons, red As your own blood when reading reads you here And pierces joint and marrow . . . So you stand, The lectern still beneath your trembling hand.

1.    Preheat the oven to 350°F. Combine the endive, parsley, ½ cup of the mint, the greens, bread crumbs, 1 tablespoon of the caraway seeds, 1 tablespoon of the coriander seeds, the citrus peel, nutmeg, dates, ½ cup of the capers, the egg, brown sugar, verjuice, and marrow in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper. Season both sides of the lamb with salt and pepper. Spoon the mixture into the center of the lamb and tie closed with kitchen string. Place in a baking pan and bake for 1¼ hours, or until the internal temperature reaches 160°F for medium. Remove the lamb from the pan and let rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, bring the stock to a boil in a small sauce pan, until reduced by half. 2.    Add the orange juice to the baking pan and stir well to loosen the pan drippings. Purée the pan drippings with the Renaissance Stock, the remaining 2 tablespoons of mint, the remaining 2 tablespoons of capers, and the granulated sugar until smooth. Stir in the orange zest and warm in a small saucepan. 3.    Place the leg of lamb in the center of a serving platter and spoon the sauce over the lamb. Sprinkle the remaining ½ tablespoon of caraway and coriander seeds over the lamb and around the platter. ORIGINAL RECIPE: A Legge of Lambe searst with Hearbes Strue it as before shewed, with sweet Hearbes and grated Bread, Bisket seeds, a few Coriander-seeds, Lemmon pills minst fine, Nutmeg sliced, sliced Dates, a little grosse pepper, Capers washt cleane: put all together with sixe or seven yolkes of new layd Egges, hard roasted and whole, & put them in your stuffe and worke them with Sugar, Rosewater and verjuyce, and the Marrow of a bone or two, Salt and pepper, put all together into the Skin: Carrawayes and Orangado are fittest garnish for your Dish. MURRELLS TWO BOOKES OF COOKERIE AND CARVING, BOOK 1, 1615

In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki approaches the question of fast and slow learners in terms of horses. “In our scriptures, it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn to run. “When we hear this story, almost all of us want to be the best horse. If it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best.” But this is a mistake, Master Suzuki says. When you learn too easily, you’re tempted not to work hard, not to penetrate to the marrow of a practice.

Graft-versus-host disease is more apt to be seen with bone-marrow transplants, not solid organ transplants.

The Lectern Some rise on eagles wings, this one is plain, Plain English workmanship in solid oak; Age gracefully it says, go with the grain. You walk towards an always open book, Open as every life to every light, Open to shade and shadow, day and night, The changeless witness of your changing pain. Be still the lectern says, stand here and read Here are your mysteries, your love and fear, And running through them all, the slender thread Of God's strange grace red as these ribbons, red As your own blood when reading reads you here And pierces joint and marrow ... So you stand The lectern still beneath your trembling hand.

But I learned from these new books that Southerners think we are really rather sad. They have an idea of a people dwelling on a mountain, inbred, lonely, mysterious; that we ritually climb and descend, and make sacrifices, and burn eternal flames, and send bridal parties from village to village in the spring so men like Daila can impregnate women like me, all in order to placate something implacable. They see our culture as rich, in the same way perhaps that a seam of ancient ore is rich — because of compression and repression. They imagine that we drink a lot, even more than we do (and it is a thing I learned from the bar, that they drink as much as we, that every culture that’s discovered alcohol drinks too much) and that we are poorer than we are because only a few of us sell anything to them. A melancholy drunken land, a land of storytellers, a land of sly jokes, an Asam-hating land, and nothing like the land I remembered. It was as if someone had constructed a scaffolding around us, and then removed us and written only about the scaffolding. The more I read, the more the materials of the scaffolding — splintered wood, narrow pipes of metal — slid into the hollows of my bones. I knew that the next time I went to the mountain, I would have a stranger’s mind in mine. Though I walked in streets I had known since girlhood, I would never again be able to step upon them without an erudite word in my head and a bracing of metal in my marrow.

Wonder now if your interiority reads differently. Hieroglyphics of porous marrow pocketed with secrets, — Lauren Turner, from “Engaging the Core,” The Only Card in a Deck of Knives (Buckrider Books, 2020,

book. Myeloma as a description has its origins with the Greek medical genius Hippocrates, who did the earliest known work on cancer, which he called karkinoma (carcinoma) because the tumors often resembled a crab, karkinos in ancient Greek. In modern descriptions, the condition is complex and treacherous: Plasma cells in the bone marrow become malignant and produce tumors, causing destruction of the bone and resulting in pathologic fracture and pain. A secretory form of the disease is characterized by the presence of Bence-Jones protein, a monoclonal immunoglobulin, which can cause anemia and kidney disease

My charter is to examine my egoistical self and alter my being by placing on paper whatever rests inside of me. I seek to develop a cohesive philosophy for living – and for dying – that is spiritually nourishing by dichotomizing the events in life that formed me. I aspire to discover an authentic core that will guide me through a physical world where human thoughts and deeds deepen our lives. Just as a flower must bud, every person feels in his or her marrow the need to express what it means to be human. Unlike a flower, which we perceive as a singular iridescent unit of material reality, we tend to perceive oneself as containing interlacement of multitudes, an array of interlaced voices.

All white blood cells are parented by stem cells which exist in the bone marrow.  Once born, certain types of cells move to the thymus gland, which is located next to the heart. It’s really one of the most fascinating glands in the body. “Once in the thymus, the cells are trained to defend the body. The cells are even tested to make sure they can tell the difference between ‘self’ cells and ‘non-self’ cells.  If a cell fails the test, it is not allowed to leave.  Only one percent make it out of the thymus.  The others are destroyed.

Trust the Lord Even before Trusting Oneself (03 March)     Bible Passage: Proverbs 3:5-8   "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones."   ------------------------------------------------ John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."  When the Apostle John wrote the above verse, he used a Greek word that means much more than what many people might think.  It is easy to read his words and conclude that a person will be saved if he or she simply believes that Jesus once existed or even that He still exists.  But that is not correct.  The Greek word that he used for "believeth" actually means to commit to and to trust in the object of one's belief.  So "believeth" does mean to believe that Jesus once existed and that He still exists.  But it also means to commit oneself to Him and to trust in Him.

An excursion through the politics of conceptual labor is the meat of the chapters that follow. The political effects and practices that imperial formations impose and induce are its marrow.

She was always hyper aware of synchronicities in her life, which either deterred or confirmed so many of her life choices. That was part of how her gift worked.

Coffee in hand, she found a quiet table in the corner. Opening her book, she pretended to read while she soaked in the humanity around her.

Harty Choak Pie Translation: Artichoke pie. This old English recipe comes from an old recipe book in Martha Washington’s family. The coffin used, lest you become alarmed, was a pastry-lined dish or pan shaped like a (you guessed it!) coffin. The verges mentioned is verjuice or green juice—any sour juice of a green fruit used in place of vinegar. Grape juice was commonly used this way. Artichokes Sugar Pastry Verges (green juice) Butter Cinnamon Marrow bones Ginger Take 12 harty choak [artichoke] bottoms, good and large and boil them. Discard the leaves and core, and place the bottoms on a coffin of pastry, with 1 pound butter and the marrow of 2 bones in big pieces, then close up the coffin, and bake it in the oven. Meanwhile, boil together ½ pound sugar, ½ pint verges, and a touch of cinnamon and ginger. When the pie is half-baked, put the liquor into it, replace it in the oven until it is fully baked.

Browsing, or, as he called it, “Book-tasting… makes one hungry for more than he needs for the nourishment of his thinking-marrow.

In my eighteen years I've heard the phrase children are resilient in passing, half a dozen times. But in books they tell you that a child's personality is set by the time he is four years old. That gives parents a four-year window to mold and love accordingly. And thank God that my mother still loved me when I was four, that she only kept her distance later in my life, with the sum of who I was already set like a wobbly Jell-O mold. I can be shaken; I can have a mother reject me over and over, and still I remain someone who is accustomed to love, enough to still seek it out. I desire a deep connection because I have had a deep connection. Reject me, and I'll look elsewhere. I'll just cast less and less of my pearls before swine each time.

explosive. Love is a disease that infects you to the marrow of your bones, travels through your bloodstream, and drives you crazy. You just have a choice, you can succumb to the disease and become a statistic, or you can grasp it by its throat and choke it into submission.

Books matter. She can’t understand people who don’t feel that intrinsically, feel it in their marrow.

For those eyes of yours, gliding through my eyes to the depths of my heart, stir the hottest fire in my marrow. Therefore, have mercy on me, who die because of you.