Meet Me At The Intersection Quotes

There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone.

But now I gotta pay,' he said. To pay?' For my sin. That's why I'm here, right? Justice?' The Blue Man smiled. 'No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you...That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more seperate a breeze from the wind.' ...'It was my stupidity, running out there like that. Why should you have to die on account of me? It ain't fair.' The Blue Man held out his hand. 'Fairness,' he said, 'does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young...Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.' ... 'I still don't understand,' Eddie whispered. 'What good came from your death?' You lived,' the Blue Man answered. But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger.' The Blue Man put his arms on Eddie's shoulders. Eddie felt that warm, melting sensation. Strangers,' the Blue Man said, 'are just family have yet to come to know.

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? "It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. "You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. "It is why we are drawn to babies . . ." He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals.

He called you beautiful, for a black girl and you kissed him. It would not be the last time someone would pay you a provisional compliment, nor the last time you accept it. Back then, you had not yet realized, that those who view your beauty conditionally, undoubtedly felt the same towards your humanity.

She had challenged him on this point one night at Anne and George's, inhibitions weakened by Ronrico: "Explain this Mass to me!" There was a silence as he sat still, apparently looking at the dinner plates and chicken bones. "Consider the Star of David," he said quietly. "Two triangles, one pointing down, one pointing up. I find this a powerful image—the Divine reaching down, humanity reaching upward. And in the center, an intersection, where the Divine and human meet. The Mass takes place in that space." His eyes lifted and met hers: a look of lucid candor. "I understand it as a place where the Divine and the human are one. And as a promise, perhaps. That God will reach toward us if we reach toward Him, that we and our most ordinary human acts—like eating bread and drinking wine—can be transformed and made sacred.

I don't get why men feel insecure when they meet a confident woman! As for me, I'd feel much more secure if every city, every state, every nation in the world is run by women than men.

Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? "It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. "You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.

In this nation people assume they can write your story from beginning to end, and wait for you to fall into place on the stage that has been set, it is why every conversation scans like a hostage negotiation, with your humanity being the item that's up for deliberation.

Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? “It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should? It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. It is why we are drawn to babies..." he turned to the mourners. "And to funerals.

I reach out and trace the dragon relic on his back, my fingers lingering on the raised silver scars, and he stiffens. They're all short, thin lines, too precise to be a whip, no rhyme or reason to their pattern but never intersecting. 'What happened?' I whisper, holding my breath. 'You really don't want to know.' He's tense, but doesn't move away from my touch. 'I do.' They don't look accidental. Someone hurt him deliberately maliciously, and it makes me want to hunt the person down and do the same to them. His jaw flexes as he looks over his shoulder, and his eyes meet mine. I bite my lip, knowing this moment can go either way. He can shut me out like always or he can actually let me in. 'There's a lot of them,' I murmur, dragging my fingers down his spine. 'A hundred and seven.' He looks away. The number makes my stomach lurch, and then my hand pauses. A hundred and seven. That's the number Liam mentioned. 'That's how many kids under the age of majority carry the rebellion relic.' 'Yeah.' I shift so I can see his face. 'What happened, Xaden?' He brushes my hair back, and the look that passes is over his face is so close to tender that it makes my heart stutter. 'I saw the opportunity to make a deal,' he says softly. 'And I took it.' 'What kind of deal leaves you with scars like that?' Conflict rages in his eyes, but then he sighs. 'The kind where I take personal responsibility for the loyalty of the hundred and seven kids the rebellion's leaders left behind, and in return, we're allowed to fight for our lives in the Riders Quadrant instead of being put to death like our parents.' He averts his gaze. 'I chose the chance of death over the certainty.' The cruelty of the offer and the sacrifice he made to save the others hits like a physical blow. I cradle his cheek and guide his face back to mine. 'So if any of them betray Navarre...' I lift my brows. 'Then my life is forfeit. The scars are a reminder.' It's why Liam says he owes him everything. 'I'm so sorry that happened to you.' Especially when he wasn't the one who led the rebellion. He looks at me like he sees into the very depths of who I am. 'You have nothing to apologise for.

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending After the dark dove with the flickering tongue Had passed below the horizon of his homing While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin Over the asphalt where no other sound was Between three districts whence the smoke arose I met one walking, loitering and hurried As if blown towards me like the metal leaves Before the urban dawn wind unresisting. And as I fixed upon the down-turned face That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge The first-met stranger in the waning dusk I caught the sudden look of some dead master Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled Both one and many; in the brown baked features The eyes of a familiar compound ghost Both intimate and unidentifiable. So I assumed a double part, and cried And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?' Although we were not. I was still the same, Knowing myself yet being someone other— And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed To compel the recognition they preceded. And so, compliant to the common wind, Too strange to each other for misunderstanding, In concord at this intersection time Of meeting nowhere, no before and after, We trod the pavement in a dead patrol. I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy, Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak: I may not comprehend, may not remember.' And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten. These things have served their purpose: let them be. So with your own, and pray they be forgiven By others, as I pray you to forgive Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail. For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. But, as the passage now presents no hindrance To the spirit unappeased and peregrine Between two worlds become much like each other, So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore. Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight, Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort. First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder. Second, the conscious impotence of rage At human folly, and the laceration Of laughter at what ceases to amuse. And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue. Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains. From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.' The day was breaking. In the disfigured street He left me, with a kind of valediction, And faded on the blowing of the horn. -T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding

Where others might see students with limitations, or students who were lagging behind their peers, Mr. Williams saw a room filled with kids who had lived through titanic experiences, teenagers who could do anything at all, once they accepted whatever sort of history they had brought with them and grasped the full extent of the opportunity lying ahead. He often told me that he felt lucky to work in a room like this one— a room that spoke of just how big the world was, and how mysterious. Meanwhile, I started visiting some of his students at home, and that was when I began to appreciate more fully how illuminating Room 142 was going to be, for the room quickly began to serve as an almost perfect microcosm of the global refugee crisis as a whole. Once I began meeting with particular families, I started hearing about every kind of journey a refugee family could survive. The stories that intersected in this one classroom brought to life the global crisis in a way that I never saw represented in the daily papers. The kids were at South to learn English, but in the process they were sharing with me and with the school’s staff and with their American- born peers all kinds of lessons— about fortitude, about resilience, about holding on to one’s humanity through experiences nobody should have to witness. About starting over, and about transformation.

Bringing Citizen Participation to Life Some years ago John McKnight attended the annual Canadian Conference of Community Development Organizations. Several hundred groups were in attendance. The convener of the conference told him that the best community “developer” in all of Canada was at the conference and pointed toward a middle-aged man named Gaëtan Ruest, the mayor of Amqui, Quebec. John introduced himself to Mayor Ruest and asked about Amqui. The mayor said that it was a town of about six thousand people on the Gaspé Peninsula amid the Chic-Choc Mountains, located at the intersection of the Matapédia and Humqui rivers. These rivers are the richest Atlantic salmon rivers on the North American continent, and Amqui is the regional center for fishing for these salmon. Gaëtan invited John to visit his town, and a year later John was able to take him up on the invitation. He found that all the townspeople were French-speaking, and a great deal of the economic base of the community was from fisherpeople who came to fish for the rare Atlantic salmon. One day, as Gaëtan and John walked together down the street, two men approached the mayor. There was a long conversation in French. After they were finished Gaëtan explained to John what had happened. The mayor said that the town had put nets on salmon streams in order to keep the fish near Amqui and accessible to the fishing guides. The two men reported that somebody was cutting the nets to let the salmon go upstream where they could poach them. “That’s terrible,” Gaëtan replied. “What do you think we can do about that?” The men thought for a while and then suggested three things that could be done. “Is there anybody who could help you do those things?” Gaëtan asked. “Yes,” they responded. “We know a couple of other fisherpeople who could help.” Gaëtan said, “Will you ask them to join you to meet with me at city hall this evening?” They agreed. That evening John joined Gaëtan at the meeting with four concerned people. The mayor had insisted that they meet in the city council’s meeting room and he led a discussion of how the group could deal with the salmon poaching problem. By the time they were done, the group had specific plans and specific people committed to carrying them out. Then Gaëtan asked, “Is there anything the city can do to help you with the job?” The participants came up with two ways the city could be helpful. “I am making you the official Amqui Salmon Preservation Committee,” Gaëtan said. “I want you to hold your meetings in the city council meeting room because you are official. I want you to come to city council meetings and tell the council people how you are coming along.” The convener of the National Association of Community Development Organizations, previously mentioned, told John that the process he had observed in the council meeting room that gave birth to the Amqui Salmon Preservation Committee was repeated over and over during Gaëtan’s long tenure as mayor. As a result, the convener said that in Amqui, hidden away in the Chic-Choc Mountains, almost all the residents had become officials of the local government and the principal problem-solvers for the community. John wholeheartedly believes that every public official can learn a great deal from the mayor of Amqui.

Humans live in society and exercise their free will in socio-economic relations. Unlike the dials in a well-functioning clock which do not intersect, humans have the potential to be compassionate or not to be. But, why should I part with my time to help some stranger I might never meet again or for someone who lives miles away from me? Why should I part with my wealth if it is scarce, legally belongs to me and so nobody could question what I would decide to do with it in life? Science seeks cause-effect relations in physical realities. Mathematics is one of the tools to guide this search in complex relationships. Some scientists exclusively focus on material processes. So, they only extract the deeper meaning as regularity and algorithm itself. Science can only help us thus far. The reflection on nature and its regularity around us requires a philosophical underpinning for deeper meaning.

I used to think that a story was something special. That it was the one key that could unlock the broken places in us. What you hold in your hand is the story of a broken writer who attempted to kill himself and failed who meets a broken actress who attempted to kill herself and failed and somewhere in that intersection of cracked hearts and shattered souls, they find that maybe broken is not the end of things, but the beginning. Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken. What's more, maybe our broken pieces don't fit us. Maybe all of us are standing around with a bag of the stuff that used to be us and were wondering what to do with it and until we meet somebody else whose bag is full and heart empty we can't figure out what to do with our pieces. And standing there, face to face, my bag of me over my shoulder, and your bag of you over your shoulder, we figure out that maybe my pieces are the very pieces needed to mend me but until we've been broken we don't have the pieces to mend each other. Maybe in the offering we discover the meaning, and value, of being broken. Maybe checking out and retreating to an island is the most selfish thing the broken can do because somewhere on the planet is another somebody standing around holding a bag of all the jagged pieces of themselves and they cant get whole without you. There was a time in my life when I unselfishly offered my gift. Risked everything. Emptied myself. And when I did, I found that more bubbled up. The well never ran empty. But then, life tore my heart in two and I swore I'd never never offer it again. That I'd never risk that. Maybe love, the real kind only wished for in whispers and the kind our hearts are hardwired to want, is opening up your bag of you and risking the most painful statement ever uttered between the stretched edges of the universe: "This was once me." Maybe that in and of itself is the story.

I do not exist to be a teachable moment. I have better things to do.

After shaving and showering and throwing on fresh jeans and a white T-shirt, I left my trailer around 8:30 p.m. and headed towards the lake trail. The setting sun was a soft fiery red and the sky was streaked with purple gashes. The surface of the lake was perfect, pinkish-silver calm glass, and as I walked down to the edge of the lake I thought of Johnny’s comment about “our bench.” With the street lights sparkling uphill to my right, and the smooth lake surface on my left, and the brushed concrete trail under me, I felt like I was approaching an intersection point in the setting Johnny had created for Vermilion Lake. It took about ten minutes to see the bench in the distance and a person sitting there. As I got closer, I saw Johnny, but she looked different. She had come to the bench straight from a late meeting with Will New, and she was dressed in a formal dark-blue business suit with jacket and knee-length skirt. She was wearing a stark-white buttoned blouse and her bare legs were slipped into black high heels. Her red hair was up in an extremely formal looking bun without a strand free. I’d not seen her with glasses the night before and she looked very scholarly. She stood up as I approached, and said, “Hi Tom,” and gave me a gentle hug. As I held her for a second against my chest I could feel her soft breasts through the layers of her suit, and the scent of her hair was beautiful, and then she stepped back and said, “Please sit down. We’ve got a lot to discuss.” The whole scene felt very different from the previous night. And from this meeting onwards I wouldn’t quite know what to make of Johnny. She was about to become a character composed of incongruous pieces, sometimes strong, sometimes fragile—almost patient-like. It was as if she had fallen apart and some force was in the process of reassembling her as a beautiful mess.

They wanted mortal, self-reproducing life forms to spread out through the Universe. So several of them, the Elders in the title, held a meeting by intersecting near a planet called Tralfamadore. The author never said why the Elders thought the spread of life was such a hot idea. I don’t blame him. I can’t think of any strong arguments in favor of it. To me, wanting every habitable planet to be inhabited is like wanting everybody to have athlete’s foot.

Meet me where everything is more than it seems. Meet me at the uncanny intersection of the ordinary world, where the mountain sings the music of rivers, where one dandelion seed unfurls a feathered umbrella and takes flight in the wind.