Mesh Life Quotes

Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass. 

The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh.

Too Clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was "digitization" which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. "An aesthetic holocaust!

If questioning would make us wise no eyes would ever gaze in eyes; if all of our tale were told in speech, no mouth would wonder each to each. Were spirits free from mortal mesh and love not bound to hearts of flesh no aching breast would earn to meet and find their ecstasy complete. For who is there that lives and knows the secret powers by which he grows? Were knowledge all, what were our need to thrill and faint and sweetly bleed? Then not seek, sweet, the “If” and “Why” I love you until I die. For I must love because I live And life in me is what you give.

With every morn my life afresh must break The crust of self, gathered about me fresh; That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh The spider-devils spin out of the flesh- Eager to net the soul before it wake, That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake. George MacDonald

The life of every man is in the Center of Time, for all were seen in the seeing of Meshe, and are in his eye. We are the pupils of his Eye... Our doing is his Seeing: our being is his Knowing.

Never forget that God has given every single one of us the most astonishing uniqueness. There's no one in the world who can do what you can do, who can think and see the way you do, who can create what you can create. You are a complex mesh of finely woven styles, view-points, abilities, tastes, and gifts. If you don't get to live your life, you've lost an incalculable treasure.

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

A true book is like a net, and words are the mesh. The nature of the mesh matters relatively little. What matters is the live catch the fisherman draws up from the depths of the sea, the flashings of silver that we see gleam within the net.

Hardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling began to affect the netting under which the three children lay. It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic sound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This was accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries. The little five-year-old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, and chilled with terror, jogged his brother's elbow; but the elder brother had already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the little one, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but in a very low tone, and with bated breath:-- "Sir?" "Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes. "What is that?" "It's the rats," replied Gavroche. And he laid his head down on the mat again. The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the elephant, and who were the living black spots which we have already mentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long as it had been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the same as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good story-teller Perrault calls "fresh meat," they had hurled themselves in throngs on Gavroche's tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begun to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new-fangled trap. Still the little one could not sleep. "Sir?" he began again. "Hey?" said Gavroche. "What are rats?" "They are mice." This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice in the course of his life, and he was not afraid of them. Nevertheless, he lifted up his voice once more. "Sir?" "Hey?" said Gavroche again. "Why don't you have a cat?" "I did have one," replied Gavroche, "I brought one here, but they ate her." This second explanation undid the work of the first, and the little fellow began to tremble again. The dialogue between him and Gavroche began again for the fourth time:-- "Monsieur?" "Hey?" "Who was it that was eaten?" "The cat." "And who ate the cat?" "The rats." "The mice?" "Yes, the rats." The child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which ate cats, pursued:-- "Sir, would those mice eat us?" "Wouldn't they just!" ejaculated Gavroche. The child's terror had reached its climax. But Gavroche added:-- "Don't be afraid. They can't get in. And besides, I'm here! Here, catch hold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!

Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think me in forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you!

I said that I have finished telling my story, not that the story is finished. I said before that no story is ever really finished, each one is part of a longer story and consists of smaller stories, some of which are told, others passed over in silence. And whenever you tell any one of the stories, whether you intend it or not, you include the shadow of all the others. The result is that once you have told one story, once you have undone the meshes of the net at one point, you are trapped. You are compelled to go on with the story. And because we ourselves, like all life, are stories, we become the story of the stories.

Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her If questioning would make us wise No eyes would ever gaze in eyes; If all our tale were told in speech No mouths would wander each to each. Were spirits free from mortal mesh And love not bound in hearts of flesh No aching breasts would yearn to meet And find their ecstasy complete. For who is there that lives and knows The secret powers by which he grows? Were knowledge all, what were our need To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed? Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why" I love you now until I die. For I must love because I live And life in me is what you give.

Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded.

I could feel myself thawing in the heat, softening around the edges, like a tortoise emerging into the sun after a long winter’s sleep, blinking and waking up. Kathy did that for me—she was my invitation to life, one I grasped with both hands.

The word “coherence” literally means holding or sticking together, but it is usually used to refer to a system, an idea, or a worldview whose parts fit together in a consistent and efficient way. Coherent things work well: A coherent worldview can explain almost anything, while an incoherent worldview is hobbled by internal contradictions. … Whenever a system can be analyzed at multiple levels, a special kind of coherence occurs when the levels mesh and mutually interlock. We saw this cross-level coherence in the analysis of personality: If your lower-level traits match up with your coping mechanisms, which in turn are consistent with your life story, your personality is well integrated and you can get on with the business of living. When these levels do not cohere, you are likely to be torn by internal contradictions and neurotic conflicts. You might need adversity to knock yourself into alignment. And if you do achieve coherence, the moment when things come together may be one of the most profound of your life. … Finding coherence across levels feels like enlightenment, and it is crucial for answering the question of purpose within life. People are multilevel systems in another way: We are physical objects (bodies and brains) from which minds somehow emerge; and from our minds, somehow societies and cultures form. To understand ourselves fully we must study all three levels—physical, psychological, and sociocultural. There has long been a division of academic labor: Biologists studied the brain as a physical object, psychologists studied the mind, and sociologists and anthropologists studied the socially constructed environments within which minds develop and function. But a division of labor is productive only when the tasks are coherent—when all lines of work eventually combine to make something greater than the sum of its parts. For much of the twentieth century that didn’t happen — each field ignored the others and focused on its own questions. But nowadays cross-disciplinary work is flourishing, spreading out from the middle level (psychology) along bridges (or perhaps ladders) down to the physical level (for example, the field of cognitive neuroscience) and up to the sociocultural level (for example, cultural psychology). The sciences are linking up, generating cross-level coherence, and, like magic, big new ideas are beginning to emerge. Here is one of the most profound ideas to come from the ongoing synthesis: People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence.

The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.

It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me-she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for the second time in my life-only the second time-I became insensible from terror.

No one wants to go to space with a jerk. But at some point, you just have to accept the people in your crew, stop wishing you were flying with Neil Armstrong, and start figuring out how your crewmates’ strengths and weaknesses mesh with your own. You can’t change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a w

There is a difference between being remembered and being caught by the mesh of one's mind.

Spring-cleaned minds Stripped of the mesh Raring to venture out afresh QUARANTINE+VE

She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

Driving to pick up his son, Bennie alternated between the Sleepers and the Dead Kennedys, San Francisco bands he'd grown up with. He listened for muddiness, the sense of actual musicians playing actual instruments in an actual room. Nowadays the quality (if it existed at all) was usually an effect of analogue signaling rather than bona fide tape - everything was an effect in the bloodless constructions Bennie and his peers were churning out. He worked tirelessly, feverishly, to get things right, stay on top, make songs that people would love and buy and download as ring tones (and steal, of course) - above all, to satisfy the multinational crude-oil extractors he'd sold his label to five years ago. But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust!

She wanted him. Not in the sweet way of poetry, though there was that music in the symmetry of his body, in the careful meshing of bone and sinew and flesh that made him. Her want was raw. Physical. She felt it in the palms of her hands and the flesh of her lips and the heaviness of her breasts. In her life, she’d been hungry, and thirsty. She’d needed sleep. She had never, in her life, needed to touch a man.

Come on, Will,” I said. “I have nothing you want. I’m not a happy person. Ever. We don’t mesh. Your life is trite to me, far removed from reality, and I thought your views on Lolita were repugnant, and worse, dangerous.

Bicycling unites physical harmony coupled with emotional bliss to create a sense of spiritual perfection that combines one’s body, mind and spirit into a single moving entity. Bicycling allows a person to mesh with the sun, sky and road as if nothing else mattered in the world. In fact, all your worries, cares and troubles vanish in the rear view mirror while you bicycle along the byways of the world: you pedal as one with the universe." ~ Frosty Wooldridge

I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement. The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. … And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of a flower at first bloom on a wet morning. It’s a holy feeling, and our task in this world is to do everything we can to foster it.

Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

(...) The floor itself was inscribed with a mosaic in the data-pattern mode, representing the entire body of the Curia case law. At the center, small icons representing constitutional principles sent out lines to each case in which they were quoted; bright lines for controlling precedent, dim lines for dissenting opinions or dicta. Each case quoted in a later case sent out additional lines, till the concentric circles of floor-icons were meshed in a complex network. The jest of the architect was clear to Phaethon. The floor mosaic was meant to represent the fixed immutability of the law; but the play of light from the pool above made it seem to ripple and sway and change with each little breeze. Above the floor, not touching it, without sound or motion, hovered three massive cubes of black material. These cubes were the manifestations of the Judges. The cube shape symbolized the solidity and implacable majesty of the law. Their high position showed they were above emotionalism or earthly appeals. The crown of each cube bore a thick-armed double helix of heavy gold. The gold spirals atop the black cubes were symbols of life, motion, and energy. Perhaps they represented the active intellects of the Curia. Or perhaps they represented that life and civilization rested on the solid foundations of the law. If so, this was another jest of the architect. The law, it seemed, rested on nothing.

I lay and looked up through a mesh of twigs at the sky. It was very big, making me and my world look very small. There was something about that i liked. The words and tensions that cluttered life at 309, and made it hard to concentrate at school, slid away to nothing in that big sky

Until I moved to Stockhold I had felt there was a continuity to my life, as if it stretched unbroken from childhood up to the present, held together by new connections, in a complex and ingenious pattern in which every phenomenon I saw was capable of evoking a memory which unleashed small landslides of feeling in me, some with a known source, others without. The people I encountered came from towns I had been to, they knew other people I had met, it was a network, and it was a tight mesh. But when I moved to Stockholm this flaring up of memories became rarer and rarer, and one day it ceased altogether. That is, I could still remember; what happened was that the memories no longer stirred anything in me. No longing, no wish to return, nothing. Just the memory, and a barely perceptible hint of an aversion to anything that was connected with it.

The things you do with your friends are shared memories, thought Edie. You never fully remember the details of your life’s experiences yourself; you need your friends to fill in the gaps to completely experience the memory. Otherwise the depth and power of that memory gets lost to the passage of time.

In his play Antigone, Sophocles summed it up: Wonders are many and none more wonderful than man . . . In the meshes of his woven nets, cunning of mind, ingenious man . . . He snares the lighthearted birds and the tribes of savage beasts, and the creatures of the deep seas . . . He puts the halter round the horse’s neck And rings the nostrils of the angry bull. He has devised himself a shelter against the rigours of frost and the pelting rains. Speech and science he has taught himself, and artfully formed laws for harmonious civic life . . . Only against death he fights in vain. But clear intelligence—a force beyond measure— moves to work both good and ill . . . When he obeys the laws and honors justice, the city stands proud . . . But man swerves from side to side, and when the laws are broken, and set at naught, he is like a person without a city, beyond human boundary, a horror, a pollution to be avoided.29 The

This is what I am, I'll say, to leave this written excuse. This is my life. Now it is clear this couldn't be done- that in this net it's not just the strings that count but the air that escapes through the meshes. Everything else stayed out of reach- time running like a hare across the February dew, and love, best not to talk of love which moved, a swaying of hips, leaving no more trace of all its fire than a spoonful of ash. That's how it is with so many passing things: the man who waited, believing, of course, the woman who was alive and will not be. All of them believed that, having teeth, feet, hands, and language, life was only a matter of honor. This one took a look at history, took in all the victories of the past, assumed an everlasting existence, and the only thing life gave him was his death, time not to be alive, and earth to bury him in the end. But all that was born with as many eyes as there are planets in the firmament, and all her devouring fire ruthlessly devoured her until the end. If I remember anything in my life, it was an afternoon in India, on the banks of a river. They were burning a woman of flesh and bone and I didn't know if what came from the sarcophagus was soul or smoke, until there was neither woman nor fire nor coffin nor ash. It was late, and only the night, the water, the river, the darkness lived on in that death.

He looked down at her and their gazes meshed for long moments. “I was wrong before. You’re definitely the best part.” Faith’s breath stuttered in her lungs. Nobody had ever said anything so damn romantic to her in her life. She’d been told she was gorgeous and beautiful and sexy by men who’d been keen to get her into bed but she’d never been told she was the best part of anybody’s anything.

Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th'meshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever with to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge winder and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work.

I once saw a dead man. Actually, i've seen many dead men. Too many for most. But this one, i've carried with me. Was a car wreck... The driver, he was the dead man. Had a bullet hole in his temple. Shot from the inside of car or out, didn't matter. His hat, though, was one of those mesh hats, with the puffy front. Like a trucker wears. Anyway, written on the hat was: "Shit happens." The epitaph of humanity's gravestone. Shit happens. A neat little bow over a pine box of waste. What a metaphor for life.

I felt an unfamiliar happiness just being in her company, as though a secret door had been opened, and Kathy had beckoned me across the threshold—into a magical world of warmth and light and and Kathy had beckoned me across the threshold—into a magical world of warmth and light and I could feel myself thawing in the heat, softening around the edges, like a tortoise emerging into the sun after a long winter’s sleep, blinking and waking up. Kathy did that for me—she was my invitation to life, one I grasped with both hands.

The tattoos around his eyes burned as he scanned the surrounding area. No one but him probably noticed, but the plumes of darkness branching in every direction were writhing and groaning, desperate to avoid the light of the moon and street lamps. Come to me, he beseeched them. They didn’t hesitate. As if they’d merely been waiting for the invitation, they danced toward him, flattening against his car, shielding it—and thereby him—from prying eyes. “Freaks me out every damn time you do that,” Rowan said as he crawled into the front passenger seat. For the first time, Sean’s friend had accompanied him to “keep you from doing something you’ll regret.” Not that Gabby had known. Rowan had lain in the backseat the entire drive. “I can’t see a damn thing.” “I can.” Sean’s gaze could cut through shadows as easily as a knife through butter. Gabby was in the process of settling behind the wheel of her car. Though more than two weeks had passed since their kiss, they hadn’t touched again. Not even a brush of fingers. He was becoming desperate for more. That kiss . . . it was the hottest of his life. He’d forgotten where he was, what—and who—was around him. He’d never, never, risked discovery like that. But that night, having Gabby so close, those lush lips of hers parted and ready, those brown eyes watching him as if he were something delicious, he’d been unable to stop himself. He’d beckoned the shadows around them, meshed their lips together, touched her in places a man should only touch a woman in private, and tasted her. Oh, had he tasted her. Sugar and lemon. Which meant she’d been sipping lemonade during her breaks. Lemonade had never been sexy to him before. Now he was addicted to the stuff. Drank it every chance he got. Hell, he sported a hard-on if he even spotted the yellow fruit. At night he thought about pouring lemon juice over her lean body, sprinkling that liquid with sugar, and then feasting. She’d come, he’d come, and then they could do it all over again. Seriously. Lemonade was like his own personal brand of cocaine now—which he’d once been addicted to, had spent years in rehab combating, and had sworn never to let himself become so obsessed with a substance again. Good luck with that. “I’m getting nowhere with her,” Rowan said. “You, she watches. You, she kissed.” “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” Gabby’s car passed his and he accelerated, staying close enough to her that anyone trying to merge into her lane wouldn’t clip his car because they couldn’t see him. Not that anyone was out and about at this time of night. “She’s mine. I don’t want you touching her.” “Finally. The truth. Which is a good thing, because I already called Bill and told him you were gonna be the one to seduce her.” “Thanks.” This was one of the reasons he and Rowan were such good friends. “But I thought you were here tonight to keep me from her.” “First, you’re welcome. Second, I lied.

There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into somewhere else. Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on. Somewhere Else is where ghosts live, concealed from view and only glimpsed by people in the real world. Somewhere Else exists at a delay, so that you can't quite keep pace. Perhaps I was already teetering on the brink of Somewhere Else anyway; but now I fell through, as simply and discreetly as dust sifting through the floorboards. I was surprised that I felt at home there. Winter had begun.

The woman who undergoes this operation can sense the morphogenetic field at work in her face. She can feel the lines of force as they guide the embryonic cells into the patterns they must form. Why should a woman let her life be determined by tired collagens or by a shortage of zinc which weakens her electromagnetic field, the matrix of life? The goal of life is living. Life is a field of opportunity, guiding the individual forward along paths created by the meshed forces or objective possibilities as they interweave with a person's own potentialities. And this philosophy of life is now bodied forth in the faces of beautiful women. ("Motherhood

You are not like my rose at all,’ he said to them. ‘You are not special yet. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. My fox was like you. He was like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique.’ And the roses felt quite uneasy. ‘You are beautiful, but you are hollow,’ he went on. ‘No one would give up their life for you. Of course an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looks just like you. But she’s more important than all of you – because I watered her, I sheltered her under a glass dome, and I protected her with a mesh. It was for her that I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three so she could see the butterflies). I have listened to her complaining, grumbling, boasting and even to her silence. Because she is my rose

Tom Pritscher, a Meta-Hermeneutical Master, inventively explains that when you have suffered trauma, you suffer tears in the fabric of your existence. I see these as holes in your subtle bodies, for example in your Etheric or Astral bodies. Music can create a mesh on which can be woven the warp and weft of etheric filaments in order that the holes in the fabric of your subtle bodies can be repaired. Recall too, that as a multi-dimensional being, you must repair tears that exist in all the dimensions of your existence. The Humanity Healing Network advises that you clear and/or remove any extra, hidden, hiding or multiple souls present within the etheric bodies of each parallel life in order to ensure that your One Original Soul Essence resides in each physical body. You must release all merging soul extensions to their proper time and space continuum.

What a strange responsibility it was, to hold someone’s death in your hands. Death seemed fragile, like crumpled paper, a thousand years old. One false move and I could crush it. Death was like old, brittle lace, the appliqué about to separate from the fine mesh threads, nearly shredded, hanging there, beautiful and delicate and about to disintegrate. Life wasn’t like that. Life was robust. It was stubborn. Life took so much to ruin. One had to beat it out of the body. Even just the slightest seed of life, a fertilized egg, took payment, an expert, a machine, and an industrial vacuum, I’d heard. Life was persistent. There it was, every day. Each morning it woke me up. It was loud and brash. A bully. A lounge singer in a garish sequin dress. A runaway truck. A jackhammer. A brush fire. A canker sore. Death was different. It was tender, a mystery. What was it, even? Why did anybody have to die?

They stood looking down Brighton Beach Avenue, Arianna waiting for a signal from Slava. He glared at the doomed souls wandering past them, their legs varicose and bent, the jowls swimming in fat, bellies hung over the legs like overripe fruit. (Had Otto made his way down here, to see firsthand what he was dealing with in his folders, or did he prefer to keep his distance?) Yes, they weren’t easy to be near. The mesh bags stuffed with discount tomatoes, the lumbering bodies heedless of traffic lights, the threadbare emporia that had to traffic in furs and DVDs and manicures to squeeze from the stone of this life the blood of a dollar. And these were the honest ones. After fifty years of Soviet chatteldom, they had come here to get fucked in the ass for a little bit longer before packing off to a spot at Lincoln Cemetery, even this impossible to acquire without money being passed under the table.

She closed in and sat down. Combing road-dust out of her hair. Thinking. The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courthouse came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. Afterword Zora Neale Hurston: “A Negro Way of Saying

They stood looking down Brighton Beach Avenue, Arianna waiting for a signal from Slava. He glared at the doomed souls wandering past them, their legs varicose and bent, the jowls swimming in fat, bellies hung over the legs like overripe fruit. (Had Otto made his way down here, to see firsthand what he was dealing with in his folders, or did he prefer to keep his distance?) Yes, they weren’t easy to be near. The mesh bags stuffed with discount tomatoes, the lumbering bodies heedless of traffic lights, the threadbare emporia that had to traffic in furs and DVDs and manicures to squeeze from the stone of this life the blood of a dollar. And these were the honest ones. After fifty years of Soviet chatteldom, they had come here to get fucked in the ass for a little bit longer before packing off to a spot at Lincoln Cemetery, even this impossible to acquire without money being passed under the table. They never even voted.

That night, I took a while falling asleep and when I did, I had a strange dream. She was sitting in my rocking chair and rocking herself, her dead eyes fixed on me. I lay on my bed, paralysed with fear, unable to move, unable to scream, my limbs refusing to move to my command. The room was suddenly freezing cold, the heater had probably stopped working in the night because the electricity supply had been cut and the inverter too had run out. At one point, I was uncertain whether I was dreaming or awake, or in that strange space between dreaming and wakefulness, where the soul wanders out of the body and explores other dimensions. What I knew was that I was chilled to the bones, chilled in a way that made it impossible for me to move myself, to lever myself to a sitting position in order to switch the bedside lamp on and check whether this was really happening. I could hear her in my head. Her voice was faint, feathery, and sibilant, as if she was whispering through a curtain of rain. Her words were indistinct, she called my name, she said words that pierced through my ears, words that meshed into ice slivers in my brain and when I thought finally that I would freeze to death an ice cold tiny body climbed into the quilt with me, putting frigidly chilly arms around me, and whispered, ‘Mother, I’m cold.’ Icicles shot up my spine, and I sat up, bolt upright in my bed, feeling the covers fall from me and a small indent in the mattress where something had been, a moment ago. There was a sudden click, the red light of the heater lit up, the bed and blanket warmer began radiating life-giving heat again and I felt myself thaw out, emerge from the scary limbo which marks one’s descent into another dimension, and the shadow faded out from the rocking chair right in front of me into complete transparency and the icy presence in the bed faded away to nothingness.

Hurling the box released some of his anger. It felt good so he swept his arm across the top of his dresser, knocking his pitiful possessions onto the floor, the ridiculous little carved animals, pathetic toiletries and useless old catalog he could never afford to order from. These paltry items were the sum of his entire dismal life. He kicked the frame of his bed, hurting his foot and knocking the light cot away from the wall. Heedless of Rasmussen hearing the noise, he cried out his rage and frustration, tore the covers off the bed, picked up the pillow and punched it. He hurled it across the room. Dragging the thin mattress from the metal mesh of the cot, he tossed it on the floor and looked around, but there was nothing else to tear apart since he owned so little. Laughing at the irony, he sank onto the mattress on the floor, his legs drawn to his chest, forehead bowed to his knees, and his hands cradling the back of his neck. Caught between harsh laughter and sobs, he breathed in hitching bursts. He had no future, definitely no girl, and soon, no home. What the hell was he going to do?

On the third day after all hell broke loose, I come upstairs to the apartment, finished with my shift and so looking forward to a hot shower. Well, lukewarm—but I’ll pretend it’s hot. But when I pass Ellie’s room, I hear cursing—Linda Blair-Exorcist-head-spinning-around kind of cursing. I push open her door and spot my sister at her little desk, yelling at her laptop. Even Bosco barks from the bed. “What’s going on?” I ask. “I just came up but Marty’s down there on his own—he won’t last longer than ten minutes.” “I know, I know.” She waves her hand. “I’m in a flame war with a toxic bitch on Twitter. Let me just huff and puff and burn her motherfucking house down…and then I’ll go sell some coffee.” “What happened?” I ask sarcastically. “Did she insult your makeup video?” Ellie sighs, long and tortured. “That’s Instagram, Liv—I seriously think you were born in the wrong century. And anyway, she didn’t insult me—she insulted you.” Her words pour over me like the ice-bucket challenge. “Me? I have like two followers on Twitter.” Ellie finishes typing. “Boo-ya. Take that, skank-a-licious!” Then she turns slowly my way. “You haven’t been online lately, have you?” This isn’t going to end well, I know it. My stomach knows it too—it whines and grumbles. “Ah, no?” Ellie nods and stands, gesturing to her computer. “You might want to check it out. Or not—ignorance is bliss, after all. If you do decide to take a peek, you might want to have some grain alcohol nearby.” Then she pats my shoulder and heads downstairs, her blond ponytail swaying behind her. I glance at the screen and my breath comes in quick, semi-panicked bursts and my blood rushes like a runaway train in my veins. I’ve never been in a fight, not in my whole life. The closest I came was sophomore year in high school, when Kimberly Willis told everyone she was going to kick the crap out of me. So I told my gym teacher, Coach Brewster—a giant lumberjack of a man—that I got my period unexpectedly and had to go home. He spent the rest of the school year avoiding eye contact with me. But it worked—by the next day, Kimberly found out Tara Hoffman was the one talking shit about her and kicked the crap out of her instead

It seemed to him that here began that slow, and somehow desperately painful recognition that the enchanted world of wealth and love and beauty, of living fulfillment and of fruitful power, which he had visioned as a child in all his dreams about the fabled rich along the Hudson river - did not exist; and that he must look for that grand life in ways stranger, darker, and more painful in their labyrinthine complications than any he had ever dreamed of as a child; and that, like Moses, he must strike water from the common stone of life, and like Samson, take honey from the savage lion's maw of the great world, find all the joy of living that he had lusted for in the blind swarm, the brutal stupefaction of the streets; goodness and truth in the mean hearts of common men; and beauty in the only place where it can ever be found - inextricably meshed, inwrought, and interwoven in that great web of horror, pain and sweat and bitter anguish, that great woven fabric of blind cruelty, hatred, filth and lust and tyranny and injustice, of joy, of faith, of love, of courage and devotion - that makes up life, and that resumes the world.

What constitutes the pleasure of the traveler is the obstacle, the fatigue, the peril itself. What pleasure can there be in an excursion where one is always sure of arriving, finding ready horses, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the comforts one can enjoy at home. One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the lack of the sudden surprise, the absence of all adventures. Everything is so well regulated, so well meshed, so well labeled, that chance is no longer possible; another century of perfection, and each one will be able to foresee, from the day of his birth, what will happen to him until the day of his death. Human will will be completely annihilated. No more crimes, no more virtues, no more physiognomies, no more originality. It will become impossible to distinguish a Russian from a Spaniard, an Englishman from a Chinese, a Frenchman from an American. People will not even be able to recognize one another, for everyone will be same. Then an immense boredom will seize the universe, and suicide will decimate the population of the globe, for the principal spring of life—curiosity—will have been destroyed forever.

But is it necessary," he urged, "to confound Christ with His ministers, the law with its exponents? May not men preserve their hope of heaven and yet lead more endurable lives on earth?" "Ah, my child, beware, for this is the heresy of private judgment, which has already drawn down thousands into the pit. It is one of the most insidious errors in which the spirit of evil has ever masqueraded; for it is based on the fallacy that we, blind creatures of a day, and ourselves in the meshes of sin, can penetrate the counsels of the Eternal, and test the balances of the heavenly Justice. I tremble to think into what an abyss your noblest impulses may fling you, if you abandon yourself to such illusions; and more especially if it pleases God to place in your hands a small measure of that authority of which He is the supreme repository. — When I took leave of you here nine years since," Don Gervaso continued in a gentler tone, "we prayed together in the chapel; and I ask you, before setting out on your new life, to return there with me and lay your doubts and difficulties before Him who alone is able to still the stormy waves of the soul.

Ione III. TO-DAY my skies are bare and ashen, And bend on me without a beam. Since love is held the master-passion, Its loss must be the pain supreme — And grinning Fate has wrecked my dream. But pardon, dear departed Guest, I will not rant, I will not rail; For good the grain must feel the flail; There are whom love has never blessed. I had and have a younger brother, One whom I loved and love to-day As never fond and doting mother Adored the babe who found its way From heavenly scenes into her day. Oh, he was full of youth's new wine, — A man on life's ascending slope, Flushed with ambition, full of hope; And every wish of his was mine. A kingly youth; the way before him Was thronged with victories to be won; so joyous, too, the heavens o'er him Were bright with an unchanging sun, — His days with rhyme were overrun. Toil had not taught him Nature's prose, Tears had not dimmed his brilliant eyes, And sorrow had not made him wise; His life was in the budding rose. I know not how I came to waken, Some instinct pricked my soul to sight; My heart by some vague thrill was shaken, — A thrill so true and yet so slight, I hardly deemed I read aright. As when a sleeper, ign'rant why, Not knowing what mysterious hand Has called him out of slumberland, Starts up to find some danger nigh. Love is a guest that comes, unbidden, But, having come, asserts his right; He will not be repressed nor hidden. And so my brother's dawning plight Became uncovered to my sight. Some sound-mote in his passing tone Caught in the meshes of my ear; Some little glance, a shade too dear, Betrayed the love he bore Ione. What could I do? He was my brother, And young, and full of hope and trust; I could not, dared not try to smother His flame, and turn his heart to dust. I knew how oft life gives a crust To starving men who cry for bread; But he was young, so few his days, He had not learned the great world's ways, Nor Disappointment's volumes read. However fair and rich the booty, I could not make his loss my gain. For love is dear, but dearer, duty, And here my way was clear and plain. I saw how I could save him pain. And so, with all my day grown dim, That this loved brother's sun might shine, I joined his suit, gave over mine, And sought Ione, to plead for him. I found her in an eastern bower, Where all day long the am'rous sun Lay by to woo a timid flower. This day his course was well-nigh run, But still with lingering art he spun Gold fancies on the shadowed wall. The vines waved soft and green above, And there where one might tell his love, I told my griefs — I told her all! I told her all, and as she hearkened, A tear-drop fell upon her dress. With grief her flushing brow was darkened; One sob that she could not repress Betrayed the depths of her distress. Upon her grief my sorrow fed, And I was bowed with unlived years, My heart swelled with a sea of tears, The tears my manhood could not shed. The world is Rome, and Fate is Nero, Disporting in the hour of doom. God made us men; times make the hero — But in that awful space of gloom I gave no thought but sorrow's room. All — all was dim within that bower, What time the sun divorced the day; And all the shadows, glooming gray, Proclaimed the sadness of the hour. She could not speak — no word was needed; Her look, half strength and half despair, Told me I had not vainly pleaded, That she would not ignore my prayer. And so she turned and left me there, And as she went, so passed my bliss; She loved me, I could not mistake — But for her own and my love's sake, Her womanhood could rise to this! My wounded heart fled swift to cover, And life at times seemed very drear. My brother proved an ardent lover — What had so young a man to fear? He wed Ione within the year. No shadow clouds her tranquil brow, Men speak her husband's name with pride, While she sits honored at his side —

What’s it about?” Danny seemed authentically curious. “The night. It’s got its own set of rules.” “Day’s got rules too.” “Oh, I know,” Joe said, “but I don’t like them.” They stared through the mesh at each other for a long time. “I don’t understand,” Danny said softly. “I know you don’t,” Joe said. “You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy’s leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there’s a difference, like the banker’s just doing his job but the loan shark’s a criminal. I like the loan shark because he doesn’t pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be sitting where I’m sitting right now. I’m not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men’s club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid’s grades. Die at my desk, and they’ll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt’s hit the coffin.” “But that’s life,” Danny said. “That’s a life. You want to play by their rules? Go ahead. But I say their rules are bullshit. I say there are no rules but the ones a man makes for himself.

So when Jesus directs us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” he does not mean we should pray for it to come into existence. Rather, we pray for it to take over at all points in the personal, social, and political order where it is now excluded: “On earth as it is in heaven.” With this prayer we are invoking it, as in faith we are acting it, into the real world of our daily existence. Within his overarching dominion God has created us and has given each of us, like him, a range of will—beginning from our minds and bodies and extending outward, ultimately to a point not wholly predetermined but open to the measure of our faith. His intent is for us to learn to mesh our kingdom with the kingdoms of others. Love of neighbor, rightly understood, will make this happen. But we can only love adequately by taking as our primary aim the integration of our rule with God’s. That is why love of neighbor is the second, not the first, commandment and why we are told to seek first the kingdom, or rule, of God. Only as we find that kingdom and settle into it can we human beings all reign, or rule, together with God. We will then enjoy individualized “reigns” with neither isolation nor conflict. This is the ideal of human existence for which secular idealism vainly strives. Small wonder that, as Paul says, “Creation eagerly awaits the revealing of God’s children” (Rom. 8:19).

Echad is first mentioned in the garden. It says a man and a woman, when they join together, become echad, or “one.” But that word echad is more explosive with meaning than just one flesh. It can literally mean to fuse together at the deepest part of our beings. Two becoming one, completely glued together, completely meshing. I still remember one of the hardest conversations I have had with Alyssa. We were just starting to date again, and were sitting in the car after a wonderful date night. We knew marriage was a possibility on the horizon, and I felt like I finally had to share things in my past that would affect her if we got married. I was incredibly nervous, as well as terrified of rejection or hurt, but I realized that if intimacy were to grow, I had to get vulnerable. For marriage to be what it truly is—two people becoming one in mind, body, soul, and spirit—I had to be honest. I remember sharing with her many things, but specifically some details of my sexual past. My teenage years were littered with me almost worshiping sexual fulfillment in pornography, partying, and girls. And I say worship, because that was where I got my worth, value, and purpose as well as what I most lived for (which is what the definition of worship is). I had to apologize and ask forgiveness from Alyssa for things I had done before I even knew her because of echad—one form of complete and utter intimacy. Because of that beauty, mystery, and power, God created it to function best in a man and a woman coming together for life and constantly echading or fusing together. I needed forgiveness because I had betrayed echad. I had betrayed oneness. I had betrayed intimacy. And if I wasn’t honest about it, it’d be a little part of my life or heart that Alyssa didn’t know—thus blocking echad. But something really peculiar happened in that moment. With the grace and forgiveness of Jesus, Alyssa forgave me. She heard all that I was and am, and still wanted to walk this journey with me. I still remember the tenderness in her voice as she spoke truth and forgiveness over me. In that moment I was exposed and known, and yet because of Alyssa’s grace, I was at the same time loved. And that is where intimacy is found—to be fully loved and to be fully known. To be fully loved, but not fully known will always allow us to buy the lie that “if they only knew the real me, they wouldn’t want me anymore.” And to be fully known but not fully loved feels sharp, painful, at a level of rejection that hurts so bad. But to be fully known and at the same time fully loved, now that is intimacy. I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Intimacy is certainly romantic in some aspects, but at its deepest level, it’s much more than that. It can be experienced with friends and family, not just spouses and loved ones.

One possibility is that many of these universes are unstable and decay to our familiar universe. We recall that the vacuum, instead of being a boring, featureless thing, is actually teeming with bubble universes popping in and out of existence, like in a bubble bath. Hawking called this the space-time foam. Most of these tiny bubble universes are unstable, jumping out of the vacuum and then jumping back in. In the same way, once the final formulation of the theory is found, one might be able to show that most of these alternate universes are unstable and decay down to our universe. For example, the natural time scale for these bubble universes is the Planck time, which is 10−43 seconds, an incredibly short amount of time. Most universes only live for this brief instant. Yet the age of our universe, by comparison, is 13.8 billion years, which is astronomically longer than the lifespan of most universes in this formulation. In other words, perhaps our universe is special among the infinity of universes in the landscape. Ours has outlasted them all, and that is why we are here today to discuss this question. But what do we do if the final equation turns out to be so complex that it cannot be solved by hand? Then it seems impossible to show that our universe is special among the universes in the landscape. At that point I think we should put it in a computer. This is the path taken for the quark theory. We recall that the Yang-Mills particle acts like a glue to bind quarks into a proton. But after fifty years, no one has been able to rigorously prove this mathematically. In fact, many physicists have pretty much given up hope of ever accomplishing it. Instead, the Yang-Mills equations are solved on a computer. This is done by approximating space-time as a series of lattice points. Normally, we think of space-time being a smooth surface, with an infinite number of points. When objects move, they pass through this infinite sequence. But we can approximate this smooth surface with a grid or lattice, like a mesh. As we let the spacing between lattice points get smaller and smaller, it becomes ordinary space-time, and the final theory begins to emerge. Similarly, once we have the final equation for M-theory, we can put it on a lattice and do the computation on a computer. In this scenario, our universe emerges from the output of a supercomputer. (However, I am reminded of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when a gigantic supercomputer is built to find the meaning of life. After eons doing the calculation, the computer finally concluded that the meaning of the universe was “forty-two.”)

From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky: My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an inexplicable, shadowy dignity that reminded me of the portraits and symbols engraved on paper money. The books were not made of words and sentences but of that smoky assurance, the insistent solidity of folded, textured, Victorian interiors elaborately barricaded against the doubt and ennui of a dreadfully God-forsaken vision. The drama of resisting some corrosive, enervating loss, some menacing boredom, made itself clear in the matter-of-fact reality of the story. Behind the drawings I felt not merely a tissue of words and sentences but an unquestioned, definite reality. I read the books over and over. Inevitably, at some point, I began trying to see how it was done, to unravel the making--to read the words as words, to peek behind the reality. The loss entailed by such knowledge is immense. Is the romance of "being a writer"--a romance perhaps even created to compensate for this catastrophic loss--worth the price? The process can be epitomized by the episode that goes with one of my favorite illustrations. Alice has entered a dark wood--"much darker than the last wood": [S]he reached the wood: It looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the--into the--into what?" she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the--under the--under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. "What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why to be sure it hasn't!" This is the wood where things have no names, which Alice has been warned about. As she tries to remember her own name ("I know it begins with L!"), a Fawn comes wandering by. In its soft, sweet voice, the Fawn asks Alice, "What do you call yourself?" Alice returns the question, the creature replies, "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on . . . . I can't remember here". The Tenniel picture that I still find affecting illustrates the first part of the next sentence: So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. In the illustration, the little girl and the animal walk together with a slightly awkward intimacy, Alice's right arm circled over the Fawn's neck and back so that the fingers of her two hands meet in front of her waist, barely close enough to mesh a little, a space between the thumbs. They both look forward, and the affecting clumsiness of the pose suggests that they are tripping one another. The great-eyed Fawn's legs are breathtakingly thin. Alice's expression is calm, a little melancholy or spaced-out. What an allegory of the fall into language. To imagine a child crossing over from the jubilant, passive experience of such a passage in its physical reality, over into the phrase-by-phrase, conscious analysis of how it is done--all that movement and reversal and feeling and texture in a handful of sentences--is somewhat like imagining a parallel masking of life itself, as if I were to discover, on reflection, that this room where I am writing, the keyboard, the jar of pens, the lamp, the rain outside, were all made out of words. From "Some Notes on Reading," in The Most Wonderful Books (Milkweed Editions)

After that, things happened very quickly. She gave me a key to her house, and I gave her a key to my apartment. If we were in town, we spent every weekend together. She cooked for me—she was good in the kitchen, but then she was good everywhere. We watched the Friday night fights on TV, and on Saturday or Sunday afternoons we'd go for long walks in the mountains above Malibu. Occasionally we would go to a movie, slipping in after the lights went down. Whenever we went out, Barbara [Stanwyck] would wear a scarf over her head, or a kind of hat, so it would be hard to tell who she was. For the next four years, we became part of each other's lives. In a very real way, I think we still are. Barbara proved to be one of the most marvelous relationships of my life. I was twenty-two, she was forty-five, but our ages were beside the point. She was everything to me—a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor and enormous accomplishments to her name.

into his jeans and button-down shirt. He dropped off the RAF overalls in the trunk of the car, and then looked around him. The car park was empty. He walked to the side of the parking lot. The fence was low there and he vaulted across it to the low ground that led to the pebble beach. He cut straight across, heading to the port, walking quickly across the shrub and grassland. A line of low trees near the port fence gave him cover. He studied the wire fence. It was about ten feet tall, with regularly spaced posts, and he couldn’t see any signs of electricity. There wasn’t any barbed wire at the top, which made his life a lot easier. He grabbed the wire mesh and shook it. It was firm and would take his weight. He wrapped his legs around a post and pulled himself up with both hands, using it like a fast rope. He crouched over the top and jumped down. The brick wall of a building lay in front of him. He could hear an engine wheezing and what sounded like train railway

Coughing from the smoke-glazed air, Devon ducked back into the carriage. He found Winterborne pulling shards of glass from his hair, his eyes still closed, his face scored with a mesh of bloody scratches. “I’m going to pull you outside and guide you to the river’s edge,” Devon said. “What’s your condition?” Winterborne asked, sounding remarkably lucid for a man who’d just been blinded and had his leg broken. “Better than yours.” “How far are we from solid ground?” “About twenty feet.” “And the current? How strong is it?” “It doesn’t bloody matter: We can’t stay here.” “Your odds are better without me,” came the calm observation. “I’m not going to leave you in here, you arse-witted bastard.” Devon gripped Winterborne’s wrist and pulled it across his shoulders. “If you’re afraid you’ll owe me a favor after saving your life…” With effort, he towed him toward the open doorway. “…you’re right. A huge favor.

Rydstrom, let’s just be frank here. Considering your reaction to me”—she delicately pointed to his erection—“do you really think I’ll need to use sorcery on you?” He clenched his jaw, unable to deny what was so obvious. “Of course you’d kill me after our babe is born?” Our babe. He’d never said the phrase in his life. Even she tilted her head at the words. But then she slowly smiled—and it was beguiling and took his breath away. Had she noticed? “Well, I wouldn’t be a very good evil sorceress if I allowed you to live.” “Then there’s one thing I can assure you. You will never get my vow from me.” “Then, Rydstrom, I can’t let you have me without it.” At that, everything became clear. She would tease him, sexually tormenting him until he gave up the words. Why did the thought make blood surge to his groin?

Even if DNA is the only viable genetic molecule, there is no reason why the same amino acids in similar combinations would be used as enzymes by all life. Alien and terrestrial life forms simply wouldn’t mesh, so the aliens couldn’t eat our plants and animals.

Seeing as how nothing is outside the vast, wide-meshed net of heaven, who is there to say just how it is cast?” “I find good people good, and I find bad people good, if I am good enough.

Bad enough he had Lyric against her will; but now he was threating the life of an innocent soul who hasn’t had a chance to experience life one bit.

day. All the games were over between them; she refused to be a prisoner in her mind the way she used to be. Ty once had too much control over her life and now that she had it back, she wasn’t letting it go.

The researchers eventually concluded that the good teams had succeeded not because of innate qualities of team members, but because of how they treated one another. Put differently, the most successful teams had norms that caused everyone to mesh particularly well.

Losing her was one of the worst things in his life and it caused a void in him that no woman could seem to fill, no matter how hard they tried.

Fear and trepidation set in Torrin’s eyes when he heard the click of the knife. Slowly, he turned his head to be met with Blessing’s fierce gaze. His life flashed before his eyes; Blessing’s look was of one that could kill easily with no remorse or a second thought. Blessing

She had a completely new identity, a new life, and a new start. Suraya was dead and Sarah had been born, but that came with a price. Torrin devised a plan for her to get with Ty and coach him to kill Lyric.

Dr. Bradshaw had been her doctor since she was a little girl, so she knew that she had her best interest at heart. They had built a relationship over the years; Lyric trusted Doc with her life.

For the life of her, she couldn’t remember how she knew old girl’s face.

I know what I’m doing isn’t traditional, but I just couldn’t wait so here goes. Blessing, my love, will you take my hand in marriage? Will you have me as your wife, the one to be in your life, forever?” Seeing

I just bought a neon-pink and mesh bra that basically is one giant bow. My breasts spill out of it like a present. To be clear, I’m not dating anyone right now. The delight is purely for me.

That is what we are, what we do: nose a net, push push, a net that never exists. The knots in the mesh as strong as our own believing. Our own fears. Ha. Admit it: you don’t have the slightest idea what you are doing, you never ever did. With all the nets in the world, real or unreal. You swam around in a flashing confused school following the tail of the fish in front. Pretty much. Nibbling at whatever passed, in whatever current you swam into. Even the love of your life felt like luck, like she might vanish in the finning crowd at any moment. Which she did.

Place Message Here" I knew that somewhere Jesus wept. --Larry Brown, Dirty Work That was when our love began for me, though late, the way a flock of darkness settles over your shoulders. I remember the muted reflections that smudged the water prowling among the lingering rocks, a snail crawling out of its shell, the drizzle of light, the blackened windows. It was when that the sun peeled away the dark from the air, the surface of the water, then the soul. It was only then that I could read the shadows that followed our words. It seemed that the whole planet was taking aim at our future. I thought, then, that I could see your own soul in the constant waves tearing unconcerned at the impenetrable dunes. I wanted, then, to believe the moon is a flower, fragrant, its stem tossed across the water. It was then that I entered some other world, the way your life wakes suddenly in the middle of the night to find your own worn-out dreams lying in sheets around you, an empty bottle on the table, and yet some voice stumbling down the hallway of the wind trying the locked doors of the heart, calling out your name. It was then on that shore after I heard the news of my friend's heart tearing open like a wet paper bag. I was standing where Marconi sent his messages which seemed to fill the air, still, like swallows. There is always another life in the corner of our eyes, one that begins because our poor words have never said what we meant at the time. Today, here, ladybugs fill my porch screen trying to reach the early sun that radiates through the fine mesh. They halt there like messages never received, empty husks of some abandoned future we can never know. Why is it we love so fully what has washed up on the beaches of our hearts, those lost messages, lost friends, the daylight stars we never get to see? Bad luck never takes a vacation, my friend once wrote. It lies there among the broken shells and stones we collect, a story he would say begins with you, with me, a story that is forever lost among the backwaters of our lives, our endless fear of ourselves, and our endless need for hope, a story, perhaps an answer, a word suddenly on wing, the simple sound of a torn heart, or the unmistakable scent of the morning's fading moon. Richard Jackson, The Cortland Review. Spring 2005.

But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead.

What, then, is this innocent painter’s special talent? Baudelaire describes Guys—and other such innovative artists—as similar to a child who possesses a ready openness and interest in surrounding things and people, no matter how ordinary or trivial. An innovative artist’s special talent is that very childlike sensibility meshed with the grown-up’s capacity for understanding and following through on a task. “Genius is the capacity to retrieve childhood at will,” Baudelaire announced. The capacity to retrieve childhood at will. Genius, like wonder, is an active trait, not an innate talent. You can track and foster wonder. You can create a new view of yourself and thus of the world around you.

Net of love! What are these scenes unfolding, Over the water of the lake, Where boats are sailing though water is randomly flowing, Is it a sight of motion with no mistake? As the fisherman casts his net, And its octagonal boundaries gradually sink into the water, Where they now lie in their world wet, And wait as octagonal shapes and one single net, when put together, A shoal of fish swims freely and maybe happily too, As they enter this octagonal mesh that waits in silence, The fisherman feels something stir in his mind too, And pulls the net breaking his wait of prolonged patience, And he smiles at the fish struggling to break free, He holds them one by one and tosses them on the floor, This is how it has always been and this is how it shall always be, The struggle for the floor to be the sky and for the sky to even invade the floor, For what spring and summer tames as beauty, Shall be confounded by the Autumn that appears to appear too soon, For in the temple of life there is no deity, There is only the law of bane and the boon, So I watch the fish wriggle on the floor of the boat, As my thoughts sail away with the one I love, And I cast my net over the vast expanse of fate as I wait, To notice in her the same feeling of love reflecting all over my net of love, That I cast only to seek her attention and few smiles, While her beauty glides throughout the universe, Her charm is rendered eternal across the universe’s infinite miles, And my net of love also gets cast across this endless universe!

Ursula having always that strange brightness of an essential flame that is caught, meshed, contravened. She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments! She seemed to try and put her hands out, like an infant in the womb, and she could not, not yet. Still she had a strange prescience, an intimation of something yet to come.

I’d hate for us to get into an argument,” he said, “but if that’s the only way we could communicate....” Carlotta said that grown-ups recover from arguments if they keep their knives in the drawer. “What if our talents don’t mesh?” he worried. “We’ll create a weave that works,” she said in a silvery tone. He brought her to a bench by the lake; they chatted while kids played soccer behind them. “I’m not sure the west coast would appeal with me.” “So you don’t want me to disrupt your life,” Carlotta needled him. “I know two men who’ll provide for me from their millions.” “And let their money ruin your talent?” he nearly exploded. “Over my dead body. I thought you could support yourself. You and I together....” We’ve encircled each other; I can about guess what will happen next. Either her “no” or her “yes” would cause him to quake. They inspected the flowers in a rock garden – purple and red, daisies past their prime, white dots and white dust on deep green leaves, brown tufts that created an impression of mauve from a distance but looked red and green as they moved closer – all on purplish brown stalks. Other nearby blooms could have been the tails of the proudest birds – the kind that have red maple feathers and violet eyes. Carlotta interrupted his reverie. “You’ll have to speak up. I can’t say ‘yes’ for both of us.

There was a long period between the moment we met and the one where we became best friends. Our personalities didn’t mesh right away, nor did we become this strange entity that miraculously survived for almost nine years with that magical smile you sometimes flash at me.

So in my mind, God’s question during that encounter in church had less to do with the content — having a family — and more to do with His nature. Why would He put this desire deep within my core only to ask me to relinquish it? Why invite me to travel a road with a dead end? It took me three days to respond. I knew the right answer, but I couldn’t speak it. Instead, I spent hours picturing a life like the one God was asking me to consider, void of family but full of Him. Could I love a God who might take away the very desire He put in me? Could I trust the leadership of a Man when the mystery He offered wasn’t wondrous but perplexing? Could I further engage with the very One on whose watch I was wounded? Somehow, out of this darkness, which seemed so bleak, came a response that I didn’t expect. It was so unlike me that I knew I was being overshadowed. The Holy Spirit erected a resolve in my soul that my flesh could not have produced. Yes! I was made for this yes, and the God whose Spirit meshed with mine inside of me produced it. The question and His answer, from within me, changed everything. Yes, I could love Him. Yes, I could trust His leadership. Yes, I could even find delight and joy and contentment living from the underside of mystery — perplexity. Yes, there was a dance to be danced in this valley.

Put aside for a while all that mesh of complex activities that is entangling your health, find some placid traveling-companion and come West. I shall meet you at the railroad with ponies and a packhorse, and you may roam this unseeing land with as little regard for the conventionalities as when you once slide down the roof of our icehouse.... I will be your guide, cook and horse-wrangler; you need only ride and be glad... for time and the world will be all yours if you so choose, and in the freshness of a natural life you will forget that you were once in a fair way to be an invalid.

Your subconscious will not change the truth of the world that surrounds you. It will just mesh the information that you will present to it so that it can support your beliefs or the picture that you have set in your mind.

Why don’t you get along with her?” His expression sobered. “Rava is who she is. Being older than me and of more importance, she was raised differently and never felt the need to have much of a relationship with me. That’s not to say she doesn’t care about me--she does. I think she’s even proud of me, in her own way.” He touched the officer’s insignia tacked to the shoulder of his black, asymmetrically cut uniform jacket. “I fought to achieve this rank, not an easy task, for men are not generally placed in command positions. We’re too hotheaded, as a group. Still, she has no trouble stepping on and over me, which you can probably appreciate.” “Perhaps,” I said, though his words confused me. Certain activities were not deemed appropriate for me since I was a woman, but for the most part, I did not resent my lot in life. But Saadi was strong, intelligent and extremely capable. In Hytanica, he would have been the pride of his family. How could he have been overlooked in Cokyri? Had Rava been the pride of his family instead? “This place. It’s so different from Cokyri,” he continued, content to accept my simple answer. “Not that different,” I replied with a short laugh. “We eat and work and sleep.” “That’s not what I mean.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s how people look at me. It’s not the same at all.” “People hate you because you’re Cokyrian. Did you expect to take pleasure in that?” “That’s not it, either.” He thought for a moment. “It’s strange, the level of fear in the eyes of your women. Belligerence I expect, from everyone, but the fear primarily radiates from the women.” He shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “But what do I know? Listen, I haven’t even seen half of what there is to see in Hytanica. You could show me one day.” “You seem to be everywhere in this city,” I scoffed. “There can’t be much left for you to explore. Or have you just been following me around?” “Well, you’re the most interesting feature of the city I’ve come across.” He smirked, and I gave him a sideways glance. Was he admitting to stalking me? Then he chuckled. “As long as I’m assigned to oversee the city, we’re bound to run into each other. I would be lying, however, if I denied that I look forward to our encounters.” Heat again flooded my face. Saadi was making me uncomfortable. I was in danger of liking him too much.

She says ye never left me side?”she asked. He felt his cheeks grow warm. Clearing his throat once, he finally answered. “Aye.” “Why?”she asked. Why? For the past four days, he’d imagined everything he would say to her as soon as he found her. Her illness delayed the heartfelt words he had wanted to have with her. Now, when the moment finally arrived, his mind turned blank. All the sweet words he’d planned to tell her fled on the wings of a frantically beating heart. “Ye came fer me,”she whispered. “Ye came fer me and ye killed Helmert. And ye never left me side.”Her voice was filled with disbelief. “Why?” He stammered for a moment, tripping over his own tongue. “I,”he paused, searching for the right words, the words he hoped would not terrify her. “Ye be a fine woman, Laurin. I’ve grown quite fond of ye these past weeks.” She studied him closely for a moment. “So fond of me that ye were willin’to risk yer life to save mine?”Her tone said his answer made little sense. “Aye,”he whispered. Suddenly his mouth felt dry, his tongue thick. “Fond enough to risk my own life for yours.” “Fond, like ye’d be fond of a dear friend, or somethin’more?” He could not understand why she asked that particular question. Refusing to read anything into her question, he replied. “Somethin’more, lass. Far more than friendship.” Tears welled in her eyes as she stared at him. It made his gut wrench, thinking he’d brought her a moment of discomfort or sorrow. Leaning over, he took her hand in his. “Laurin, I ken ye do no’have the same feelin’s for me as I do for ye. I ken ye may never have them, but it matters no’to me. I would be willin’to wait an entire lifetime on nothin’more than a wish and a prayer, in case, just in case some day ye might be able to return those feelins.” He’d not pressure her into anything, would not beg her for her hand or her heart. “How can ye say that?”she asked, swiping away an errant tear. “How could ye wait a lifetime for me?” With a slow shake of his head, he smiled. “Och! Lass, ye’d be well worth the wait.

I love you,” Val began, wondering where in the nine circles of hell that had come from. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry; that came out… wrong. Still…” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “It’s the truth.” Ellen’s fingers settled on his nape, massaging in the small, soothing circles Val had come to expect when her hands were on him. “If you love me,” she said after a long, fraught silence, “you’ll tell me the truth.” Val tried to see that response as positive—she hadn’t stomped off, railed at him, or tossed his words back in his face. Yet. But neither had she reciprocated. “My name is Valentine Windham,” he said slowly, “but you’ve asked about my family, and in that regard—and that regard only—I have not been entirely forthcoming.” “Come forth now,” she commanded softly, her hand going still. “My father is the Duke of Moreland. That’s all. I’m a commoner, my title only a courtesy, and I’m not even technically the spare anymore, a situation that should improve further, because my brother Gayle is deeply enamored of his wife.” “Improve?” Ellen’s voice was soft, preoccupied. “I don’t want the title, Ellen.” Val sat up, needing to see her eyes. “I don’t ever want it, not for me, not for my son or grandson. I make pianos, and it’s a good income. I can provide well for you, if you’ll let me.” “As your mistress?” “Bloody, blazing… no!” Val rose and paced across the porch, turning to face her when he could go no farther. “As my wife, as my beloved, dearest wife.” A few heartbeats of silence went by, and with each one, Val felt the ringing of a death knell over his hopes. “I would be your mistress. I care for you, too, but I cannot be your wife.” Val frowned at that. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. A conditional rejection, that’s what it was. She’d give him time, he supposed, to get over his feelings and move along with his life. “Why not marry me?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. She crossed her arms too. “What else haven’t you told me?” “Fair enough.” Val came back to sit beside her and searched his mind. “I play the piano. I don’t just mess about with it for polite entertainment. Playing the piano used to be who I was.” “You were a musician?” Val snorted. “I was a coward, but yes, I was a musician, a virtuoso of the keyboard. Then my hand”—he held up his perfectly unremarkable left hand—“rebelled against all the wear and tear, or came a cropper somehow. I could not play anymore, not without either damaging it beyond all repair or risking a laudanum addiction, maybe both.” “So you came out here?” Ellen guessed. “You took on the monumental task of setting to rights what I had put wrong on this estate and thought that would be… what?” “A way to feel useful or maybe just a way to get tired enough each day that I didn’t miss the music so much, and then…” “Then?” She took his hand in hers, but Val wasn’t reassured. His mistress, indeed. “Then I became enamored of my neighbor. She beguiled me—she’s lovely and dear and patient. She’s a virtuoso of the flower garden. She cared about my hand and about me without once hearing me play the piano, and this intrigued me.” “You intrigued me,” Ellen admitted, pressing the back of his hand to her cheek. “You still do.” “My Ellen loves to make beauty, as do I.” Val turned and used his free hand to trace the line of Ellen’s jaw. “She is as independent as I am and values her privacy, as I do.” “You are merely lonely, Val.

His mouth slid from hers and dragged roughly along her throat, crossing sensitive places that made her writhe. Blindly turning her face, she rubbed her lips against his ear. He drew in a sharp breath and jerked his head back. His hand came to her jaw, clamping firmly. “Tell me what you know,” he said, his breath searing her lips. “Or I’ll do worse than this. I’ll take you here and now. Is that what you want?” As a matter of fact… However, recalling that this was supposed to be a punishment, a coercion, Beatrix managed a languid, “No. Stop.” His mouth ravished hers again. She sighed and melted against him. He kissed her harder, pressing her back against the slatted side of the stall, his hands roaming indecently. Her body was laced and compressed and concealed in layers of feminine attire, frustrating his attempts to caress her. His garments, however, presented far fewer obstacles. She slid her arms inside his coat, fumbling to touch him, tugging ardently at his waistcoat and shirt. Reaching beneath the straps of his trouser braces, she managed to pull part of his shirt free of the trousers, the fabric warm from his body. They both gasped as her cool fingers touched the burning skin of his back. Fascinated, Beatrix explored the curvature of deep intrinsic muscles, the tight mesh of sinew and bone, the astonishing strength contained just beneath the surface. She found the texture of scars, vestiges of pain and survival. After stroking a healed-over line, she covered it tenderly with her palm. A shudder racked his frame. Christopher groaned and crushed his mouth over hers, urging her body against his, until together they found an erotic pattern, a cadence. Instinctively Beatrix tried to draw him inside herself, pulling at his lips and tongue with her own. Christopher broke the kiss abruptly, panting. Cradling her head in his hands, he pressed his forehead against hers. “Is it you?” he asked hoarsely. “Is it?” Beatrix felt tears slip from beneath her lashes, no matter how she tried to blink them back. Her heart was ablaze. It seemed that her entire life had led to this man, this moment of unexpressed love. But she was too frightened of his scorn, and too ashamed of her own actions, to answer. Christopher’s fingertips found the tear marks on her damp skin. His mouth grazed her trembling lips, lingering at one soft corner, sliding up to the verge of a salt-flavored cheek. Releasing her, he stepped back and stared at her with baffled anger. The desire exerted such force between them that Beatrix belatedly wondered how he could maintain even that small distance. A shaken breath escaped him. He straightened his clothes, moving with undue care, as if he were intoxicated. “Damn you.” His voice was low and strained. He strode out of the stables. Albert, who had been sitting by a stall, began to trot after him. Upon noticing Beatrix wasn’t going with them, the terrier dashed over to her and whimpered. Beatrix bent to pet him. “Go on, boy,” she whispered. Hesitating only a moment, Albert ran after his master. And Beatrix watched them both with despair.

Lyric fought for her breath, not willing to give up on life again.

By making our defenseless planet the ultimate beneficiary of our economic activity, we align our values with a different set of motivations. When we begin to see life as an interdependent mesh, we place the survival of the human species on equal footing with our economic interests and ourselves.

You might be unsure about the true nature of God (or the life force in the universe) even if you have well defined religious beliefs. I say this because you might have been taught two conflicting ideas about God. You might have been consciously told God was love, but at the same time been subconsciously taught He might condemn you if you aren’t good enough. These two ideas don’t mesh and they cause a great deal of confusion for most people.

Her pure heart wouldn’t be able to handle life if anything happened to that baby, so she did the only thing she could do and that was agree to his demands. For a minute, he just stood in his place, eyeing her

To the Teachers in Our Schools My Dear Brethren and Sisters: The Lord will work in behalf of all who will walk humbly with Him. He has placed you in a position of trust. Walk carefully before Him. God’s hand is on the wheel. He will guide the ship past the rocks into the haven. He will take the weak things of this world to confound the things that are mighty. I pray that you will make God your Counselor. You are not amenable to any man, but are under God’s direction. Keep close to Him. Do not take worldly ideas as your criterion. Let there be no departure from the Lord’s methods of working. Use not common fire, but the sacred fire of the Lord’s kindling. Be of good courage in your work. For many years I have kept before our people the need, in the education of the youth, of an equal taxation of the physical and mental powers. But for those who have never proved the value of the instruction given to combine manual training with the study of books, it is hard to understand and carry out the directions given. Do your best to impart to your students the blessings God has given you. With a deep, earnest desire to help them, carry them over the ground of knowledge. Come close to them. Unless teachers have the love and gentleness of Christ abounding in their hearts, they will manifest too much of the spirit of a harsh, domineering master. The Lord wishes you to learn how to use the gospel net. That you may be successful in your work, the meshes of your net must be close. The application of the Scriptures must be such that the meaning shall be easily discerned. Then make the most of drawing in [268] the net. Come right to the point. However great a man’s knowledge, it is of no avail unless he is able to communicate it to others. Let the pathos of your voice, its deep feeling, make an impression on hearts. Urge your students to surrender themselves to God. “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” Jude 1:21-23. As you follow Christ’s example you will have the precious reward of seeing your students won to Him.

But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust! Bennie knew better than to say this stuff aloud.

The two weeks gave me a chance to think of the many changes I was going to confront. Of course, the reality of life in Israel during the first years of statehood proved to be much harder than anticipated. Additionally, I had not seen Yuda since 1944, almost six years. What if what we wrote to each other did not translate well into the reality of life? On that trip I had all the time to think of the new society, where people from all over the world were supposed to form a new, cohesive fabric. How will all this mesh? As for myself, I confronted a transition between a world that I knew and a world that I could not exactly fathom, yet a world that I had slightly idealized in my mind.