Message In A Bottle Quotes

Nothing that’s worthwhile is ever easy. Remember that.

If you like her, if she makes you happy, and if you feel like you know her---then don't let her go.

True love is rare, and it's the only thing that gives life real meaning.

Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.

Someday you'll find someone special again. People who've been in love once usually do. It's in their nature.

Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go.

This is not a goodbye, my darling, this is a thank you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go. I love you, T.

But because they didn't see each other very often, their relationship had more ups and downs than either of them had experienced before. Since everything felt right when they were together, everything felt wrong when they weren't.

I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step towards finding you.

If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.

There are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore.

Things changed, people changed, and the world went rolling along right outside the window.

The ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together...

It's impossible to protect your kids against disappointment in life.

If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been.

As a girl, she had come to believe in the ideal man -- the prince or knight of her childhood stories. In the real world, however, men like that simply didn't exist.

I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless them, and I find myself wondering why--out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved--I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.

But even though she was attractive, there was something else about her that caught his eye. She was intelligent, he could sense that right away, and confident, too, as if she were able to move through life on her own terms. To him, these were the things that really mattered. Without them, beauty was nothing.

She was everything I wanted. She was beautiful and charming, with a quick sense of humor, and she supported me in everything I did.

That initial anger she had felt turned to sadness, and now it had become something else, almost a dullness of sorts. Even though she was constantly in motion, it seemed as if nothing special ever happened to her anymore. Each day seemed exactly like the last, and she had trouble differentiating among them.

It is at moments like these that I know my what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return.I am here because there is no other place to be.

I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.

At night, when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me.

Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him.

Love is Love no matter old you are, and I knew if I gave you enough time, you'd come back to me.

I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you.

I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away

And suddenly she knew exactly why Catherine had fallen in love with him. It wasn't that he was unusually attractive, or ambitious, or even charming. He was partly those things, but more important, he seemed to live life on his own terms.

If some lives form a perfect circle, other take shape in ways we cannot predict or always understand. Loss has been part of my journey. But it has also shown me what is precious. So has love for which I can only be grateful.

Life passes by now like the scenery outside a car window. I breathe and eat and sleep as I always did, but there seems to be no great purpose in my life that requires active participation on my part...I do not know where I am going or when I will get there.

if they were meant to be together they would find a way to do it.

I wish we didn't live so far apart... You're kind of addicting.

I think... that when it comes to us, anything is possible.

Who do you think it was that brought the bottle to her?

I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless him.

One of the things I've learned in my life is that sometimes you've got to take a chance.

Life doesn't often turn out the way we think it will, does it?

There are lots of real men out there - men who could fall in love with you at the drop of a hat.

I find myself wondering why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.

Sometimes my grief is overwhelming, and even though I understand that we will never see each other again, there is a part of me that wants to hold on to you forever.

I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me, I am not happy, help me -- like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message.

To all the ships at sea, and all the ports of call. To my family and to all friends and strangers. This is a message, and a prayer. The message is that my travels taught me a great truth. I already had what everyone is searching for and few ever find. The one person in the world who I was born to love forever. A person, like me, of the outer banks and the blue Atlantic mystery. A person rich in simple treasures. Self-made. Self-taught. A harbor where I am forever home. And no wind, or trouble or even a little death can knock down this house. The prayer is that everyone in the world can know this kind of love and be healed by it. If my prayer is heard, there will be an erasing of all guilt and all regret and an end to all anger. Please, God. Amen.

They continued to watch each other from across the room, both frozen for a moment by the shadow of distant possibilities.

You've gotten so caught up in being alone that you're afraid of what might happen if you actually find someone else that can take you away from it.

I know you loved her, but it's okay to let it go now. You know that, don't you? You've got to be able to let it go.

Real people had real agendas, real demands, real expectations about how other people should behave.

It's probably not going to lead to anything. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. If everyone who thought they might fail didn't even try, where would we be today?

I love you,too, Garrett. But sometimes love isn't enough.

As I write, I am struggling with the ghost of someone I loved and lost. I now understand more fully the difficulties you were going through, and I realize how painful it must have been for you to move on.

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

Lyrics do that sometimes. They find their home at just the right time. Like a secret message in a bottle, floating on a current for decades, only to wash up at someone's feet when the words are needed.

Whatever you decide to do, remember that you have to be able to go forward in life without looking back.

I think of you, I dream of you, I conjure you up when I need you most. This is all I can do, but to me it isn't enough. It will never be enough, this I know; yet what else is there for me to do? If you were here, you would tell me, but I have been cheated of even that. You always knew the proper words to ease the pain I felt. You always knew how to make me feel good inside.

gracias por venir a mi vida y darme alegría, gracias por amarme y recibir mi amor a cambio. Gracias por los recuerdos que serán atesorados por siempre. Pero sobre todo, gracias por mostrarme que llegará un momento en el que finalmente puedo dejarte ir.

I don't know if spirits do indeed roam the world, but even if they do, I will sense your presence everywhere. When I listen to the ocean, it will be your whispers; when I see a dazzling sunset, it will be your image in the sky.

لقد علمتني أنه من الممكن الاستمرار في الحياة ، ولا يهم مقدار الحزن الذي نعانيه

I send my words to you over the ether net like a message in a bottle...

To her, none of those friendships seemed the way they used to, but then of course they weren't. Things changed, people changed, and the world went rolling along right outside the window.

Writing... is like putting a message in a bottle, and casting it into the evening tide... It is a container of yourself, bled through your fingertips, and it travels the world in your place.

In another place, in another time, she would have felt the majesty of the beauty around her, but as she stood on the beach, she realized that she didn't feel anything at all. In a way, she felt as if she weren't really here, as if the whole thing was nothing but a dream.

A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.

من المستحيل أن تحمي أطفالك من الإحباط أو خيبة الأمل التي سيصادفونها في حياتهم

By midnight Theresa was yawning steadily, and Garrett suggested that she get some sleep. "But I came down here to see you," she protested drowsily. "But if you don't get your sleep, I'll look blurry.

The way he spoke about Catherine made Theresa hurt for him more than she would have imagined. It wasn't just his voice, but the look on his face before he described her - as if torn between the beauty of his memories and the pain of remembering.

But now, alone in my house, I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless him, and I find myself wondering why--out of all the people in all the world I could have ever loved--I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.

Every full bottle of alcohol has a message in it, a surprise that one will not discover until one drinks it

Dust sleeping on your bookshelf and all your plants are drying out you are too busy to save yourself is your mind heading for burnout? Coffee rings on your bedside table anxiety pills under your pillowcase working round the clock to foot the bill is there no time for breakfast these days? Friends haven't seen you in a while your phone is always out of reach you're slowly forgetting how to smile is your silence a figure of speech? Life can sometimes seem to be unfair but hoping is better than you think send the message in a bottle if you dare is it so hard to not force yourself to sink?

The love between writer and a reader is never celebrated. It can never be proved to exist. But he was the man I loved most. He was the reader for whom I wrote. That’s what my writing was. Messages in bottles.

It sounds to me like you're making excuses," Jeb said quietly. "You're trying to convince yourself, and you're using me to listen to yourself talk.

You taught me that it’s possible to move forward in life, no matter how terrible your grief. And in your own way, you’ve made me believe that true love cannot be denied.

They're beautiful. How did you know I loved roses?" "I didn't, but I've never heard of a woman who didn't, so I took a chance. a

This is the story of Aphrodite, a name well-known by my kind, and others that were unknown to each other before me.

And if you think that you're showing your love to Catherine by suffering the way you've been doing, then somewhere along the way, I must have messed up in raising you." "You didn't mess up...." "I must have. Because when I look at you, I see myself, and to be honest, I'd rather see someone different. I'd like to see someone who learned that it's okay to go on, that it's okay to find someone that can make you happy. But right now, it's like I'm looking in the mirror and seeing myself twenty years ago.

دائمًا ماتهب في عالمنا - الذي قلما نفهمه - رياح الأقدار حاملة أحداثًا لا نتوقعها . فأحيانًا ماتعصف بكيان المرء ، وأحيانًا لا نشعر بها على الأطلاق . ولكننا لا نستطيع إنكارها . فهي تحمل دائمًا معها مستقبلنا الذي لا نستطيع تجاهله

Theresa, remember - you've got nothing to lose. The worst that could possibly happen is that you fly home in a couple of days. That's all. You're not going on a quest to search for a tribe of cannibals. You're just going to find out if your curiosity was warranted.

I think every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn't bother to do it. It is a message in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It's saying, 'I'm here and I believe that you are somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime.

I confess that I am now suspicious of nearly every attempt to code anger as unhealthy, no matter how well meaning or persuasive the source. I believe Stanton was correct: what is bad for women, when it comes to anger, are the messages that cause us to bottle it up, let it fester, keep it silent, feel shame, and isolation for ever having felt it or re-channel it in inappropriate directions. What is good for us is opening our mouths and letting it out, permitting ourselves to feel it and say it and think it and act on it and integrate it into our lives, just as we integrate joy and sadness and worry and optimism.

The bottle, with its impotent message, was gone out to sea, and the problem that it had provoked was reduced to a simple sum in addition—one and one make two, by the rule of arithmetic; one by the rule of romance.

They're beautiful. How did you know I loved roses?" "I didn't, but I've never heard of a woman who didn't, so I took a chance." She smiled. "So you send lots of women roses?" "Millions. I have a lot of fans. Dive instructors are almost like movie stars, you know." "They are, huh?" "You mean you didn't know? And here I thought you were just another groupie.

Those letters seemed so wonderfully tragic to me. Each one a message he would never get. A note in a bottle, bobbing on the ocean. Lost.

That night I lay in bed, thinking about how summer romances really do happen so fast, and then they’re over so fast. But the next morning, when I went to the deck to eat my toast, I found an empty water bottle on the steps that led down to the beach. Poland Spring, the kind Cam was always drinking. There was a piece of paper inside, a note. A message in a bottle. The ink was a little smeared, but I could still read what it said. It said, “IOU one skinny-dip.

I'm addicted to the entire planet. I don't want to leave it. I want to get down into it. I want to say hello. On the beach, I could have stopped all day long and looked at those damned shells, looked for all the messages that come not in bottles but in shells...

Can this be true, this simple obvious message, or am I like those shipwrecked mariners who seize an empty bottle and eagerly read out what isn't there? And yet you are there, here, sprung like a genie to ten times your natural size, towering over me, holding me in your arms like mountain sides. Your red hair blazing and you are saying, "Make three wishes and they shall all come true. Make three hundred and I will honour every one.

This case was too full of skewed, slippery parallels, and I couldn't shake the uneasy sense that they were somehow deliberate. Every coincidence felt like a sea-worn bottle slammed down on the sand at my feet, with my name engraved neatly on the glass and inside a message in some mockingly indecipherable code.

For the Deist ... prayer is calling across a void to a distant deity. This lofty figure may or may not be listening. He, or it, may or may not be inclined, or even able, to do very much about us and our world, even if he (or it) wanted to ... all you can do is send off a message, like a marooned sailor scribbling a note and putting it in a bottle, on the off-chance that someone out there might pick it up. That kind of prayer takes a good deal of faith and hope. But it isn't Christian prayer.

Releasing videos on YouTube is kind of like throwing messages in bottles out into a churning sea made up entirely of messages in bottles. The chance of your message getting noticed and someone being sent out to rescue you is punishingly slim. But every once in a blue moon someone who owns a big boat made of money finds your message and agrees to let you ride on his big boat made of money if you keep making messages for him.

If your voice could overwhelm those waters, what would it say? What would it cry of the child swept under, the mother on the beach then, in her black bathing suit, walking straight out into the glazed lace as if she never noticed, what would it say of the father facing inland in his shoes and socks at the edge of the tide, what of the lost necklace glittering twisted in foam? If your voice could crack in the wind hold its breath still as the rocks what would it say to the daughter searching the tidelines for a bottled message from the sunken slaveships? what of the huge sun slowly defaulting into the clouds what of the picnic stored in the dunes at high tide, full of the moon, the basket with sandwiches, eggs, paper napkins, can-opener, the meal packed for a family feast, excavated now by scuttling ants, sandcrabs, dune-rats, because no one understood all picnics are eaten on the grave?

and one of the things she had learned early in her life was that if you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it. If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out you were wrong in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been

There isn't an hour of my life without you in it. I mend the boats, test them and all the while the memories come in like the tide. I was thinking today of when we were young, and you left our world for a bigger world. I was a lot more scarred then I would admit. I fought my fear by telling myself you'd come back someday, and trying to think of the first thing I'd say to you when I saw you again. I must have tried out a hundred possibilities. What did I finally say? Not much, my mouth wouldn't work except to kiss you, and when you said I'm here to stay that said it all. Well, I'm doing it again. I keep imagining what I'd say to you if somehow you came back.

My Dearest, I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together. I can almost feel you beside me as I write this letter, and I can smell the scent of wildflowers that always reminds me of you. But at this moment, these things give me no pleasure. Your visits have been coming less often, and I feel sometimes as if the greatest part of who I am is slowly slipping away. I am trying, though. At night when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me. Last night, in my dreams, I saw you on the pier near Wrightsville Beach. The wind was blowing through your hair, and your eyes held the fading sunlight. I am struck as I see you leaning against the rail. You are beautiful, I think as I see you, a vision that I can never find in anyone else. I slowly begin to walk toward you, and when you finally turn to me, I notice that others have been watching you as well. “Do you know her?” they ask me in jealous whispers, and as you smile at me, I simply answer with the truth. “Better than my own heart.” I stop when I reach you and take you in my arms. I long for this moment more than any other. It is what I live for, and when you return my embrace, I give myself over to this moment, at peace once again. I raise my hand and gently touch your cheek and you tilt your head and close your eyes. My hands are hard and your skin is soft, and I wonder for a moment if you’ll pull back, but of course you don’t. You never have, and it is at times like this that I know what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return. I am here because there is no other place to be. But then, as always, the mist starts to form as we stand close to one another. It is a distant fog that rises from the horizon, and I find that I grow fearful as it approaches. It slowly creeps in, enveloping the world around us, fencing us in as if to prevent escape. Like a rolling cloud, it blankets everything, closing, until there is nothing left but the two of us. I feel my throat begin to close and my eyes well up with tears because I know it is time for you to go. The look you give me at that moment haunts me. I feel your sadness and my own loneliness, and the ache in my heart that had been silent for only a short time grows stronger as you release me. And then you spread your arms and step back into the fog because it is your place and not mine. I long to go with you, but your only response is to shake your head because we both know that is impossible. And I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away. I find myself straining to remember everything about this moment, everything about you. But soon, always too soon, your image vanishes and the fog rolls back to its faraway place and I am alone on the pier and I do not care what others think as I bow my head and cry and cry and cry.

My Darling, It is late at night and though the words are coming hard to me, I can’t escape the feeling that it’s time that I finally answer your question. Of course I forgive you. I forgive you now, and I forgave you the moment I read your letter. In my heart, I had no other choice. Leaving you once was hard enough; to have done it a second time would have been impossible. I loved you too much to have let you go again. Though I’m still grieving over what might have been, I find myself thankful that you came into my life for even a short period of time. In the beginning, I’d assumed that we were somehow brought together to help you through your time of grief. Yet now, one year later, I’ve come to believe that it was the other way around. Ironically, I am in the same position you were, the first time we met. As I write, I am struggling with the ghost of someone I loved and lost. I now understand more fully the difficulties you were going through, and I realize how painful it must have been for you to move on. Sometimes my grief is overwhelming, and even though I understand that we will never see each other again, there is a part of me that wants to hold on to you forever. It would be easy for me to do that because loving someone else might diminish my memories of you. Yet, this is the paradox: Even though I miss you greatly, it’s because of you that I don’t dread the future. Because you were able to fall in love with me, you have given me hope, my darling. You taught me that it’s possible to move forward in life, no matter how terrible your grief. And in your own way, you’ve made me believe that true love cannot be denied. Right now, I don’t think I’m ready, but this is my choice. Do not blame yourself. Because of you, I am hopeful that there will come a day when my sadness is replaced by something beautiful. Because of you, I have the strength to go on. I don’t know if spirits do indeed roam the world, but even if they do, I will sense your presence everywhere. When I listen to the ocean, it will be your whispers; when I see a dazzling sunset, it will be your image in the sky. You are not gone forever, no matter who comes into my life. you are standing with God, alongside my soul, helping to guide me toward a future that I cannot predict. This is not a good-bye, my darling, this is a thank-you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go. I love you

I'm sorry l haven 't talked to you in so long. I feel l've been lost... no bearings, no compass. I kept crashing into things, a little crazy, I guess. l've never been lost before. You were my true north. l could always steer for home when you were my home. Forgive me for being so angry when you left. l still think some mistake's been made... and l'm waiting for God to take it back. But l'm doing better now. The work helps me. Most of all, you help me. You came into my dream last night with that smile that always held me like a lover... rocked me like a child. All l remember from the dream is a feeling of peace. l woke up with that feeling and tried to keep it alive as long as l could. l'm writing to tell you that l'm on a journey toward that peace. And to tell you l'm sorry about so many things. l'm sorry l didn't take better care of you so that you never spent one minute being cold or scared or sick. I'm sorry I didn't try harder to find the words to tell you what I was feeling. I'm sorry I never fixed the screen door. I fixed it now. I'm sorry I ever fought with you. I'm sorry I didn't apologize more. I was too proud. I'm sorry I didn't bring you more compliments on everything you wore and every way you fixed your hair. I'm sorry I didn't hold on to you with so much strength that even God couldn't pull you away. All my love.

My Dearest, Can you forgive me? In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore. You, my darling, are the wind that I did not anticipate, the wind that has gusted more strongly than I ever imagined possible. You are my destiny. I was wrong, so wrong, to ignore what was obvious, and I beg your forgiveness. Like a cautious traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead. I was a fool to ignore my destiny, but even fools have feelings, and I’ve come to realize that you are the most important thing that I have in this world. I know I am not perfect. I’ve made more mistakes in the past few months than some make in a lifetime. I was wrong to deny what was obvious in my heart: that I can’t go on without you. You were right about everything. I tried to deny the things you were saying, even though I knew they were true. Like one who gazes only backward on a trip across the country, I ignored what lay ahead. I missed the beauty of a coming sunrise, the wonder of anticipation that makes life worthwhile. It was wrong of me to do that, a product of my confusion, and I wish I had come to understand that sooner. Now, though, with my gaze fixed toward the future, I see your face and hear your voice, certain that this is the path I must follow. It is my deepest wish that you give me one more chance. For the first few days after you left, I wanted to believe that I could go on as I always had. But I couldn’t. I knew in my heart that my life would never be the same again. I wanted you back, more than I imagined possible, yet whenever I conjured you up, I kept hearing your words in our last conversation. No matter how much I loved you, I knew it wasn’t going to be possible unless we—both of us—were sure I would devote myself fully to the path that lay ahead. I continued to be troubled by these thoughts until late last night when the answer finally came to me. Oh, I am sorry, so very sorry, that I ever hurt you. Maybe I’m too late now. I don’t know. I love you and always will. I am tired of being alone. I see children crying and laughing as they play in the sand, and I realize I want to have children with you. I am sick and sad without you. As I sit here in the kitchen, I am praying that you will let me come back to you, this time forever.

What's Toraf's favorite color?" She shrugs. "Whatever I tell him it is." I raise a brow at her. "Don't know, huh?" She crosses her arms. "Who cares anyway? We're not painting his toenails." "I think what's she's trying to say, honey bunches, is that maybe you should paint your nails his favorite color, to show him you're thinking about him," Rachel says, seasoning her words with tact. Rayna sets her chin. "Emma doesn't paint her nails Galen's favorite color." Startled that Galen has a favorite color and I don't know it, I say, "Uh, well, he doesn't like nail polish." That is to say, he's never mentioned it before. When a brilliant smile lights up her whole face, I know I've been busted. "You don't know his favorite color!" she says, actually pointing at me. "Yes, I do," I say, searching Rachel's face for the answer. She shrugs. Rayna's smirk is the epitome of I know something you don't know. Smacking it off her face is my first reflex, but I hold back, as I always do, because of the kiss I shared with Toraf and the way it hurt her. Sometimes I catch her looking at me with that same expression she had on the beach, and I feel like fungus, even though she deserved it at the time. Refusing to fold, I eye the buffet of nail polish scattered before me. Letting my fingers roam over the bottles, I shop the paints, hoping one of them stands out to me. To save my life, I can't think of any one color he wears more often. He doesn't have a favorite sport, so team colors are a no-go. Rachel picked his cars for him, so that's no help either. Biting my lip, I decide on an ocean blue. "Emma! Now I'm just ashamed of myself," he says from the doorway. "How could you not know my favorite color?" Startled, I drop the bottle back on the table. Since he's back so soon, I have to assume he didn't find what or who he wanted-and that he didn't hunt them for very long. Toraf materializes behind him, but Galen's shoulders are too broad to allow them both to stand in the doorway. Clearing my throat, I say, "I was just moving that bottle to get to the color I wanted." Rayna is all but doing a victory dance with her eyes. "Which is?" she asks, full of vicious glee. Toraf pushes past Galen and plops down next to his tiny mate. She leans into him, eager for his kiss. "I missed you," she whispers. "Not as much as I missed you," he tells her. Galen and I exchange eye rolls as he walks around to prop himself on the table beside me, his wet shorts making a butt-shaped puddle on the expensive wood. "Go ahead, angelfish," he says, nodding toward the pile of polish. If he's trying to give me a clue, he sucks at it. "Go" could mean green, I guess. "Ahead" could mean...I have no idea what that could mean. And angelfish come in all sorts of colors. Deciding he didn't encode any messages for me, I sigh and push away from the table to stand. "I don't know. We've never talked about it before." Rayna slaps her knee in triumph. "Ha!" Before I can pass by him, Galen grabs my wrist and pulls me to him, corralling me between his legs. Crushing his mouth to mine, he moves his hand to the small of my back and presses me into him. Since he's still shirtless and I'm in my bikini, there's a lot of bare flesh touching, which is a little more intimate than I'm used to with an audience. Still, the fire sears through me, scorching a path to the furthest, deepest parts of me. It takes every bit of grit I have not to wrap my arms around his neck. Gently, I push my hands against his chest to end the kiss, which is something I never thought I'd do. Giving him a look that I hope conveys "inappropriate," I step back. I've spent enough time in their company to know without looking that Rayna's eyes are bugging out of their sockets and Toraf is grinning like a nutcracker doll. With any luck, Rachel didn't even see the kiss. Stealing a peek at her, she meets my gaze with openmouthed shock. Okay, it looked as bad as I thought it did.

A month has passed since I’ve written, but it has seemed to pass much more slowly. Life passes by now like the scenery outside a car window. I breathe and eat and sleep as I always did, but there seems to be no great purpose in my life that requires active participation on my part. I simply drift along like the messages I write you. I do not know where I am going or when I will get there. Even work does not take the pain away. I may be diving for my own pleasure or showing others how to do so, but when I return to the shop, it seems empty without you. I stock and order as I always did, but even now, I sometimes glance over my shoulder without thinking and call for you. As I write this note to you, I wonder when, or if, things like that will ever stop. Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face—I know it is an impossibility, but I cannot help myself. My search for you is a never-ending quest that is doomed to fail. You and I had talked about what would happen if we were forced apart by circumstance, but I cannot keep the promise I made to you that night. I am sorry, my darling, but there will never be another to replace you. The words I whispered to you were folly, and I should have realized it then. You—and you alone—have always been the only thing I wanted, and now that you are gone, I have no desire to find another. Till death do us part, we whispered, and I’ve come to believe that the words will ring true until the day finally comes when I, too, am taken from this world.

Our bodies speak, if you would only listen. They speak another language: the mother tongue. It’s half the puzzle, the missing pieces you have been searching for, the how and why behind the symptoms you fixate on, the whole behind the healing, which cannot be found at the bottom of a bottle of pills. But you do not speak our language. My sick sisterhood, whose bodies have been felled by mysterious illnesses, bearing the arcane names of men long dead, to signify their suffering with no cure, no hope. The mothers who long for answers to the questions that their bodies are living, for soul-utions to the protest against this cold, hard world. Into their dry hungry mouths are dropped pills not answers. Prescriptions and descriptions of symptoms – not cures or laws to halt the toxic corporate world that is allowed to carry on felling us like trees in the Amazon… Each woman is an Amazon. But she does not know it. Instead she is treated. Separately. Her pile of notes, her bills, growing higher. Each one believes the sickness is hers alone. Each is sent home, ignored, tolerated. Alone. In the darkness. Until one day Medicine Woman arises within her. And there in the centre of her pain she finds her outrage, her strength, her persistence as she searches for answers. She finds the will to die to this world and the right to live a different life where she is honoured for the value of her soul, not the sweat of her brow. She begins to understand the messages her body is sending… Things are not right. In here… out there. She begins to remember there is magic in her: the power to heal, the power to transform. Medicine Woman rises.

One thing was for sure: I had no interest in questioning whether Islam was inherently a religion of peace or one of war, whether the terrorists had misappropriated an innocent faith or the liberal Muslims were only in denial of what Islam actually taught. I'd never claim to know what "true" Islam stood for; religions were too big to make it that simple, there was too much history and too many verses, and everyone just took the parts that they wanted anyway. For a prophet's message to become what they call a world religion, it'd have to be big enough to accommodate all kinds of personalities. Good ones, mean ones, greedy ones, kind ones, hard ones, soft ones, and they all own Islam as much as it owns them. The water has no shape; it's shaped by the bottle. I could see that as a Muslim, contrasting Qari Saheb's sweetness with that maniac Rushdie, and I even saw it with Catholics in Geneva, between sweet Gramps and that dickhead monsignor or Fat Ed.

When he was seventy-four years old the Cretan novelist Nikos Kazantzakis began a book. He called it Report to Greco... Kazantzakis thought of himself as a soldier reporting to his commanding officer on a mortal mission—his life. ... Well, there is only one Report to Greco, but no true book... was ever anything else than a report. ... A true book is a report upon the mystery of existence... it speaks of the world, of our life in the world. Everything we have in the books on which our libraries are founded—Euclid's figures, Leonardo's notes, Newton's explanations, Cervantes' myth, Sappho's broken songs, the vast surge of Homer—everything is a report of one kind or another and the sum of all of them together is our little knowledge of our world and of ourselves. Call a book Das Kapital or The Voyage of the Beagle or Theory of Relativity or Alice in Wonderland or Moby-Dick, it is still what Kazantzakis called his book—it is still a "report" upon the "mystery of things." But if this is what a book is... then a library is an extraordinary thing. ... The existence of a library is, in itself, an assertion. ... It asserts that... all these different and dissimilar reports, these bits and pieces of experience, manuscripts in bottles, messages from long before, from deep within, from miles beyond, belonged together and might, if understood together, spell out the meaning which the mystery implies. ... The library, almost alone of the great monuments of civilization, stands taller now than it ever did before. The city... decays. The nation loses its grandeur... The university is not always certain what it is. But the library remains: a silent and enduring affirmation that the great Reports still speak, and not alone but somehow all together...

My Darling, Where are you? And why, I wonder, have we been forced apart? I don’t know the answer to these questions, no matter how hard I try to understand. The reason is plain, but my mind forces me to dismiss it and I am torn by anxiety in all my waking hours. I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again. I try to remember the way we once were, It was times like those that I understood the meaning of true happiness. I would know in my heart that we’d be together forever. Is it always that way, I wonder, when two people are in love? I don’t know, but if my life since you were taken from me is any indication, then I think I know the answers. From now on, I know I will be alone. I think of you, I dream of you, I conjure you up when I need you most. This is all I can do, but to me it isn’t enough. It will never be enough, this I know, yet what else is there for me to do? If you were here, you would tell me, but I have been cheated of even that. You always knew the proper words to ease the pain I felt. You always knew how to make me feel good inside. Is it possible that you know how I feel without you? When I dream, I like to think you do. Before we came together, I moved through life without meaning, without reason. I know that somehow, every step I took since the moment I could walk was a step toward finding you. We were destined to be together. But now, alone, I have come to realize that destiny can hurt a person as much as it can bless them, and I find myself wondering why—out of all the people in all the world I could ever have loved—I had to fall in love with someone who was taken away from me.

is turning all life into a unified flow experience. If a person sets out to achieve a difficult enough goal, from which all other goals logically follow, and if he or she invests all energy in developing skills to reach that goal, then actions and feelings will be in harmony, and the separate parts of life will fit together—and each activity will “make sense” in the present, as well as in view of the past and of the future. In such a way, it is possible to give meaning to one’s entire life. But isn’t it incredibly naive to expect life to have a coherent overall meaning? After all, at least since Nietzsche concluded that God was dead, philosophers and social scientists have been busy demonstrating that existence has no purpose, that chance and impersonal forces rule our fate, and that all values are relative and hence arbitrary. It is true that life has no meaning, if by that we mean a supreme goal built into the fabric of nature and human experience, a goal that is valid for every individual. But it does not follow that life cannot be given meaning. Much of what we call culture and civilization consists in efforts people have made, generally against overwhelming odds, to create a sense of purpose for themselves and their descendants. It is one thing to recognize that life is, by itself, meaningless. It is another thing entirely to accept this with resignation. The first fact does not entail the second any more than the fact that we lack wings prevents us from flying. From the point of view of an individual, it does not matter what the ultimate goal is—provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime’s worth of psychic energy. The challenge might involve the desire to have the best beer-bottle collection in the neighborhood, the resolution to find a cure for cancer, or simply the biological imperative to have children who will survive and prosper. As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life. In the past few years I have come to be quite well acquainted with several Muslim professionals—electronics engineers, pilots, businessmen, and teachers, mostly from Saudi Arabia and from the other Gulf states. In talking to them, I was struck with how relaxed most of them seemed to be even under strong pressure. “There is nothing to it,” those I asked about it told me, in different words, but with the same message: “We don’t get upset because we believe that our life is in God’s hands, and whatever He decides will be fine with us.” Such implicit faith used to be widespread in our culture as well, but it is not easy to find it now. Many of us have to discover a goal that will give meaning to life on our own, without the help of a traditional faith.