Metre Quotes

vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture.

She's beautiful,' he murmured. 'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia. 'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.

I've been down by the stream collecting berries. Would you care for some?" I would, actually, but I don't want to relent too soon. I do walk over and look at them. I've never seen this type before. No, I have. But not in the arena. These aren't Rue's berries, although they resemble them. Nor do they match any I learned about in training. I lean down and scoop up a few, rolling them between my fingers. My father's voice comes back to me. "Not these, Katniss. Never these. They're nightlock. You'll be dead before they reach your stomach." Just then the cannon fires. I whip around, expecting Peeta to collapseto the ground, but he only raises his eyebrows. The hoovercraft appears a hundred metres or so away.What's left of Foxface's emaciated body is lifted into the air.

Equality of opportunity is not enough. Unless we create an environment where everyone is guaranteed some minimum capabilities through some guarantee of minimum income, education, and healthcare, we cannot say that we have fair competition. When some people have to run a 100 metre race with sandbags on their legs, the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair. Equality of opportunity is absolutely necessary but not sufficient in building a genuinely fair and efficient society.

Ama o andan sonra, Hermione Granger arkadaşları oldu. Bazı olaylar vardır, dostluklara yol açar, dört metre boyunda bir ifritin canına okumak da öyle bir olaydı işte.

The most remarkable part of all is your DNA. You have a metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto. Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic.

Çünkü büyüdükçe arzularım küçüldü, şaşkınlıklarım küçüldü, beklentilerim küçüldü. Büyüdükçe öyle bir küçüldüm ki içimde taşacak bir şey kalmadı. Büyümenin bir bedeli varsa işte bu, yarım metre uzadım, yirmi kilo aldım ve dünyadan vazgeçtim.

I waited at least two hours. I'd begun to think that he'd given up on me in the weeks that had passed. Or that he no longer cared about me. Hated me even. And the idea of losing him for ever, my best friend, the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets, was so painful I couldn't stand it. Not on top of everything else that had happened. I could feel my eyes tearing up and my throat starting to close the way it does when I get upset. Then I look up and there he was, three metres away, just watching me. Without even thinking, I jumped up and threw my arms around him, making some weird sound that combined laughing, choking and crying.

Men are like parking spaces, the good ones are already taken and the ones left are running out of their metres

Humanity looked in awe upon the beauty and the everlasting duration of creation. The exquisite sky flooded with sunlight. The majesty of the dark night lit by celestial torches as the holy planetary powers trace their paths in the heavens in fixed and steady metre - ordering the growth of things with their secret infusions.

It is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form.

if you say, ‘Full fathom five thy father lies’, you will be considered the greatest poet who ever lived. Express precisely the same thought any other way – e.g. ‘your father’s corpse is 9.144 metres below sea level’ – and you’re just a coastguard with some bad news.

Satisfied, Sundae trotted to a bush near the lake, dug vigorously for some seconds and pulled out a bone deliciously covered in mud and bits of vegetation. She took her prize to a still-sunny patch of grass and began to gnaw at it. Two magpies, their greyish necks identifying them as juveniles, landed on a nearby branch. Sundae paused, eyes flicking up to stare at the birds, then returned to attend to the bone. One of the magpies swooped down and landed on the lawn a couple of metres away from the dog. Sunny’s top lip trembled up in the prelude of a snarl. The magpie approached the dog. Sundae’s body tensed, lip furling up further, eyes focused on the agitator. The magpie inched closer. When it was half a metre away, Sundae launched. The bird flew back to the branch next to its companion. Then both birds threw their heads back and let out a rollicking call; it sounded like laughter. Rumbling a growl, Sundae returned to her bone, casting baleful glares at the birds as she gnawed. Saskia and Tania chuckled. “For all of my life, I have watched the magpies and dogs of Woodgrove play this game,” Tania said. “And every time I see it, I have to laugh.

Perhaps the most chaotic of Divisions Ke Hui Feng 第一 Ψ visited was Recycling. First, it was mammoth, so big most of her tour was spent aboard a drone. Thousands of Dazhong used the 401 thoroughfares from both east and west, the 427 from the south and the 400 from the north to bring their loads of recyclables from the MASS to the enormous MEG Recycling Centre. The roadways might be in ruins outside the MEG boundaries, jagged fragments of pavement between cavernous potholes and trails made by traders, but within the MEG the wide lanes had been cleared and covered with recycled rubber. They were smooth and divided, one lane in—one lane out, between hundred-metre high foamstone walls on either side. No one from the MASS would ever get into the MEG illegally; at least, that was how it seemed. Only those with proper credentials could enter the massive gates: MASS traders, or trading companies, who specialized as middlemen between the gatherers and the Recycling Centre. Not far outside the gates the MASS traders had rebuilt ancient warehouses in which they received goods, stored, and sorted them, then brought them, usually by land freighters, down the ingress roads to meet MEG approved Di sān overseers and, of course, decontaminated Dazhong who further sorted the goods.

You'll like it less when you hear what they've been building. It's a big raised platform at the end of the square about two metres above the ground, with steps running up to it.' 'Like a stage?' Erak suggested. 'Maybe they're going to put on a play.' 'Or an execution,' Horace said.

I asked a professor of nanotechnology what they use to measure the unthinkable small distances of nanospace? He said it was the nanometre. This didn't help me very much. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre. I understood the idea but couldn't visualise what it meant. I said, "What is it roughly?" He thought for a moment and said, "A nanometre is roughly the distance that a man's beard grows in one second". I had never thought about what beards do in a second but they must do something. It takes them all day to grow about a milllimetre. They don't leap out of your face at eight o'clock in the morning. Beards are slow, languid things and our language reflects this. We do not say "as quick as a beard" or "as fast as a bristle". We now have a way of grasping of how slow they are - about a nanometre a second.

Small people need to talk more loudly to be heard. Well I'm small aren't I, I'm not even 1.6 metres tall, but you don't see me raising my voice. Maybe you're okay with not being heard. I just want to be heard by the right people. The right person.

Your 40 trillion cells contain at least a quadrillion mitochondria, with a combined convoluted surface area of about 14,000 square metres; about four football fields.

And they both stand there,... a few metres apart, kicking at the snow. As if they were kicking a memory back and forth, a memory of a woman who insisted on seeing more potential in certain men than they saw in themselves.

Scientists say that the palm tree line, that is the climate suitable to growth of the palm, is moving north, five hundred metres, I think it was, every year...The palm tree line...I call it the coffee line, the strong black coffee line...It's rising like mercury in a thermometer, this palm tree line, this strong coffee line, this scandal line, rising up throughout Italy and already passed Rome...

My bullshit metre is reading that as false'.

The metre of the poet, the metronome of the musician, the centimetre of the mathematician, are all derived from the same root, metron: measure, measurement.

. . . every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people. Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home. The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands. It is past time to tax lawns (or any wasteful consumption), and to devote that tax to third world relief. I would suggest a tax of $5 per square metre for both public and private lawns, updated annually, until all but useful lawns are eliminated.

There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense. There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days--burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob--a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand metres high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic. Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for 'fifty,' blooming for fifty days--the ninth plague of Egypt. The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance. There is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. And the nafhat--a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen--a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as 'that which plucks the fowls.' The beshabar, a black and dry northeasterly out of the Caucasus, 'black wind.' The Samiel from Turkey, 'poison and wind,' used often in battle. As well as the other 'poison winds,' the simoom, of North Africa, and the solano, whose dust plucks off rare petals, causing giddiness. Other, private winds. Travelling along the ground like a flood. Blasting off paint, throwing down telephone poles, transporting stones and statue heads. The harmattan blows across the Sahara filled with red dust, dust as fire, as flour, entering and coagulating in the locks of rifles. Mariners called this red wind the 'sea of darkness.' Red sand fogs out of the Sahara were deposited as far north as Cornwall and Devon, producing showers of mud so great this was also mistaken for blood. 'Blood rains were widely reported in Portugal and Spain in 1901.' There are always millions of tons of dust in the air, just as there are millions of cubes of air in the earth and more living flesh in the soil (worms, beetles, underground creatures) than there is grazing and existing on it. Herodotus records the death of various armies engulfed in the simoom who were never seen again. One nation was 'so enraged by this evil wind that they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath.… I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again.

How much epic poetry does the world really need? Every conflict joined, every war fought, every city besieged, every town sacked, every village destroyed. Every impossible journey, every shipwreck, every homecoming: these stories have all been told, and countless times. Can he really believe he has something new to say? And does he think he might need me to help him keep track of all his characters, or to fill those empty moments where the metre doesn’t fit the tale?

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.

Love seeketh not Itself to please Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.' So sung a little Clod of Clay Trodden with the cattle's feet, But a Pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet: 'Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to Its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath... I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again.

She still weighed only forty kilos and stood one metre twenty-four centimetres tall.

The social space between people who don't know each other is form one to three and a half metres. - Beate Lonne

We have roughly 100 trillion cells in our bodies and inside each of them are two metres of DNA – if you unravelled them all, they’d stretch to the sun and back a hundred times.

Jumping out of a window one hundred and fifty metres above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I’m wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.

How did you find me?" "You were lying in the grass a metre away from me. It wasn't rocket science.

Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hells despair. So sang a little Clod of Clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet; But a Pebble of the brook, Warbled out these metres meet. Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to Its delight: Joys in anothers loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.

A molecule of hydrogen....whether in Sirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time. Each molecule therefore throughout the universe bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of the Archives at Paris, or the double royal cubit of the temple of Karnac. No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction.... We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to any of the causes which we call natural.

Instead of finding myself in the future, I traveled about fifty metres along the sidewalk at 200mph before finding myself in a bush. When asked by the nurse filling out the hospital accident reports 'Cause of accident?' I stated, 'time travel attempt' but she wrote down 'stupidity'.

We can taste what's in our mouths, touch what's within our reach, smell within hundreds of metres and hear within tens of miles. But it's only through our vision that we are in communication with the sun and stars.

You’ve changed the metre,’ said Philippa. ‘I reserve the right,’ said Lymond, ‘to change the metre. Don’t interrupt.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

When some people have to run a 100 metre race with sandbags on their legs, the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair. Equality of opportunity is absolutely necessary but not sufficient in building a genuinely fair and efficient society.

The upward flow of ancient heat to the Earth’s surface is measured in tens of milliwatts per square metre; the flow from the Sun above is measured in hundreds of watts per square metre.

Like rain drops dripping on the floor like a thousand drumists beating those drums repeatedly, My blood runs through my veins ninety nine point nine metres per second when i think of you.

The mercy bullet I envy horses: if they break a leg and feel humiliated because they can no longer charge back and forth in the wind, they are cured by a mercy bullet. So if something in me gets broken, physically or spiritually, I would do well to look for a proficient killer, even if he is one of my enemies. I will pay him a fee and the price of the bullet, kiss his hand and his revolver, and if I am able to write, extol him in a poem of rare beauty, for which he can choose the metre and rhyme.

Malthus's school was in the centre of the town of Adrianople, and was not one of those monkish schools where education is miserably limited to the bread and water of the Holy Scriptures. Bread is good and water is good, but the bodily malnutrition that may be observed in prisoners or poor peasants who are reduced to this diet has its counterpart in the spiritual malnutrition of certain clerics. These can recite the genealogy of King David of the Jews as far back as Deucalion's Flood, and behind the Flood to Adam, without a mistake, or can repeat whole chapters of the Epistles of Saint Paul as fluently as if they were poems written in metre; but in all other respects are as ignorant as fish or birds.

But opposites attract, as they say, and that's certainly true when it comes to Emma Marchetta and me. She's the beauty and I'm the brains. She loves all forms of reality television, would donate a kidney if it meant she could pash Andrew G, is constantly being invited out to parties and other schools' semi formals, and likes any movie featuring Lindsay Lohan. I, on the other hand, have shoulder-length blonde hair, too many freckles and - thanks to years of swimming the fifty-metre butterfly event - swimmer's shoulders and no boobs. In other words, I look like an ironing board with a blonde wig. - Cat

Jordana is in the umpire's highchair. I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box. Her legs are crossed. I wait for her to speak. 'I have two special skills,' she says. She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet. 'Blackmail,' she says. She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this. 'And pyromania.' I am impressed that Jordana knows this word. 'Right,' I say. 'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.' I feel powerless. She is in a throne. 'Okay,' I say.

It is hard to write, not, as might be expected, for reasons of metre or scholarship or elaborate symbolism, but because the actual writing depends almost entirely on the chance, the mood, the energy, of the moment.

Hard to believe that it was only ten minutes ago that this actually seemed like a good idea,’ Otto said, staring at the tiny cars passing by on the street hundreds of metres below him. I would like it noted that I have never classified what you are about to do as a ‘good idea’, a calm voice with a slight synthetic edge said inside Otto’s head.

As Mickey looked on in shock, Emily used the opportunity to turn her anger on him. Pulling the tape from her mouth, she roared like Diana and kicked out at him with a surprise blow to his stomach that knocked him down to his knees. Emily tried to remember everything Diana had taught her, and tested out her fighting moves. Before Mickey could land one punch on Emily, Paelen appeared and gave him a bone-crunching blow to the chin. ‘That is for Joel!’ The hit was hard enough to lift Mickey off the ground and send him flying several metres in the air before crashing down on a sand dune.

Mind you, I'm a fine one to talke. I mean, I killed myself and just look at me now: I'm a qualified pilot, I can escape from a cockpit in five metres of water and I'm halfway up a mountain with a nutty gymnast who wants to chuck herself off the edge.

Visibility limits your imagination of the ocean only as far as you can see, ten metres, fifteen at a stretch. But it's only in the utter black that you can feel the true scale, the volume and weight of that gaping unknowable drift between continents.

Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill'd with your most high deserts? Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb Which hides your life and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say 'This poet lies: Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.' So should my papers yellow'd with their age Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue, And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage And stretched metre of an antique song: But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.

More energy is needed to rise a millimetre above a neutron star's surface than to break completely free of Earth's gravity. A pen dropped from a height of one metre would impact with the energy of a ton of TNT (although the intense gravity on a neutron star's surface would actually, of course, squash any such objects instantly). A projectile would need to attain half the speed of light to escape its gravity; conversely, anything that fell freely onto a neutron star from a great height would impact at more than half the speed of light.

A little later, as we talked of the Maniot dirges by which I was obsessed, I was surprised to hear this bloodshot-eyed and barefoot old man say: “Yes, it’s the old iambic tetrameter acalectic.” It was the equivalent of a Cornish fisherman pointing out the difference, in practicality incomprehensible dialect, between the Petrachian and the Spenserian sonnet. It was quite correct. Where on earth had he learnt it? His last bit of information was that, in the old days (that wonderful cupboard!) the Arabs used to come to this coast to dive for the murex.

Proud Songsters The thrushes sing as the sun is going, And the finches whistle in ones and pairs, And as it gets dark loud nightingales In bushes Pipe, as they can when April wears, As if all Time were theirs. These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing, Which a year ago, or less than twain, No finches were, nor nightingales, Nor thrushes, But only particles of grain, And earth, and air, and rain.

Coming from a country where mapmakers tend to exclude any landscape feature smaller than, say, Pike’s Peak, I am constantly impressed by the richness of detail on the OS 1:25,000 series. They include every wrinkle and divot of the landscape, every barn, milestone, wind pump and tumulus. They distinguish between sand pits and gravel pits and between power lines strung from pylons and power lines strung from poles. This one even included the stone seat on which I sat now. It astounds me to be able to look at a map and know to the square metre where my buttocks are deployed.

So-called real life has only once interfered with me, and it had been a far cry from what the words, lines, books had prepared me for. Fate had to do with blind seers, oracles, choruses announcing death, not with panting next to the refrigerator, fumbling with condoms, waiting in a Honda parked round the corner and surreptitious encounters in a Lisbon hotel. Only the written word exists, everything one must do oneself is without form, subject to contingency without rhyme or reason. It takes too long. And if it ends badly the metre isn't right, and there's no way to cross things out.

I think I was enchanted When first a sombre Girl — I read that Foreign Lady** — The Dark — felt beautiful — And whether it was noon at night — Or only Heaven — at Noon — For very Lunacy of Light I had not power to tell — The Bees — became as Butterflies — The Butterflies — as Swans — Approached — and spurned the narrow Grass — And just the meanest Tunes That Nature murmured to herself To keep herself in Cheer — I took for Giants — practising Titanic Opera — The Days — to Mighty Metres stept — The Homeliest — adorned As if unto a Jubilee 'Twere suddenly confirmed — I could not have defined the change — Conversion of the Mind Like Sanctifying in the Soul — Is witnessed — not explained — 'Twas a Divine Insanity — The Danger to be Sane Should I again experience — 'Tis Antidote to turn — To Tomes of solid Witchcraft — Magicians be asleep — But Magic — hath an Element Like Deity — to keep —

Matisse bir zamanlar bir santimetre kare mavi ile aynı mavinin bir metre karesinin aynı şey olmadığını söylemişti. Alanın yaygınlığı tonu değiştirir. Aynı şekilde, mavi bir daire aynı maviden bir kareyle aynı şey değildir. Sınırların şekli de tonu değiştirir. Ama bu yalnızca başlangıç. Her ton doku tarafından, çevresindeki diğer tonlarla görüntünün yarattığı uzam tarafından, resmin içindeki ve üzerindeki ışık tarafından ve görüntünün çekim alanı demek olan o tuhaf olgu –asla hareket etmeyen bu sessiz sanatın çerçevesi içinde, nesnelerin düşme ve gerileme oranlarını belirleyen şey– tarafından farklılaştırılır.” sayfa 19

The social space between people who don’t know each other is from one to three and a half metres. That’s the distance you would keep if the situation allowed, but look at bus queues and toilets. In Tokyo people stand closer to each and feel comfortable, but variations from culture to culture are in fact relatively minor.

It goes something like this: I am one person among 6.5 billion people on Earth at the moment. That's one person among 6,500,000,000 people. That'a lot of Wembley Stadiums full of people, and even more double-decker buses (apparently the standard British measurements for size). And we live on an Earth that is spinning at 67,000 miles an hour through space around a sun that is the centre of our solar system (and our solar system is spinning around the centre of the Milky Way at 530,000 mph). Just our solar system (which is a tiny speck within the entire universe) is very big indeed. If Earth was a peppercorn and Jupiter was a chestnut (the standard American measurements), you'd have to place them 100 metres apart to get a sense of the real distance between us. And this universe is only one of many. In fact, the chances are that there are many, many more populated Earths - just like ours - in other universes. And that's just space. Have a look at time, too. If you're in for a good run, you may spend 85 years on this Earth. Man has been around for 100,000 years, so you're going to spend just 0.00085 percent of man's history living on this Earth. And Man's stay on Earth has been very short in the context of the life of the Earth (which is 4.5 billion years old): if the Earth had been around for the equivalent of a day (with the Big Bang kicking it all off at midnight), humans didn't turn up until 11.59.58 p.m. That means we've only been around for the last two seconds. A lifetime is gone in a flash. There are relatively few people on this Earth that were here 100 years ago. Just as you'll be gone (relatively) soon. So, with just the briefest look at the spatial and temporal context of our lives, we are utterly insignificant. As the Perspective Machine lifts up so far above the woods that we forget what the word means, we see just one moving light. It is beautiful. A small, gently glowing light. It is a firefly lost somewhere in the cosmos. And a firefly - on Earth - lives for just one night. It glows beautifully, then goes out. And up there so high in our Perspective Machine we realize that our lives are really just like that of the firefly. Except the air is full of 6.5 billion fireflies. They're glowing beautifully for one night. Then they are gone. So, Fuck It, you might as well REALLY glow.

Soldier on guard says they've identified “someone on two legs a hundred metres from the outpost”. The other soldier, in the lookout, says “A girl about ten,” but by then they're already shooting. Girl's dead[...]The point is this use of code, on two legs, denoting human. It reminded me of that speech by their Prime Minister saying that we were beasts walking on two legs [...]The idea that having legs makes you human. I thought of adding a Primo Levi-ish dimension to it. Merging this two-legged idea with a sort of general question about what is a man, you know, linking it to “if this is a man who labours in the mud/ who knows no peace/ who fights for a crust of bread?” [...] my thesis being that the occupation, the closures, the siege have made amputees of all of us, crawling around in the mud. Legless in Gaza. The lot of us.

Unanswered vox hails requested medical aid and supply, but the line of Astartes at the top of the north ridge was grimly silent as the exhausted warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders came to within a hundred metres of their allies. A lone flare shot skyward from inside the black fortress where Horus had made his lair, exploding in a hellish red glow that lit the battlefield below like a madman’s vision of the end of the world. And the fire of betrayal roared from the barrels of a thousand guns.

The most remarkable part of all is your DNA. You have a metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto.8 Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic.

Halpin was pretty generally deprecated as an intellectual black sheep who was likely at any moment to disgrace the flock by bleating in metre. The Tennessee Fraysers were a practical folk - not practical in the popular sense of devotion to sordid pursuits, but having a robust contempt for any qualities unfitting a man for the wholesome vocation of politics.

The two great pillars upon which the kingdom of Satan is erected, and by which it is upheld, are ignorance and error;

Tek isteğim arayıp da bulunan olmaktı. Oysa ne beni bulduğuna sevinen oldu, ne de kaybettiğine üzülen. Sanırım tüm varlığımla gerçek bir zaman kaybıyım.

İnanın bana, güzel bir sabahta İstanbul'a varmak, bir insanın hayatındaki en güzel andır.

She stares at him, standing with a group of people by the five-metre high chocolate fountain

I once read that if the folds in the cerebral cortex were smoothed out it would cover a card table. That seemed quite unbelievable but it did make me wonder just how big the cortex would be if you ironed it out. I thought it might just about cover a family-sized pizza: not bad, but no card-table. I was astonished to realize that nobody seems to know the answer. A quick search yielded the following estimates for the smoothed out dimensions of the cerebral cortex of the human brain. An article in Bioscience in November 1987 by Julie Ann Miller claimed the cortex was a "quarter-metre square." That is napkin-sized, about ten inches by ten inches. Scientific American magazine in September 1992 upped the ante considerably with an estimated of 1 1/2 square metres; thats a square of brain forty inches on each side, getting close to the card-table estimate. A psychologist at the University of Toronto figured it would cover the floor of his living room (I haven't seen his living room), but the prize winning estimate so far is from the British magazine New Scientist's poster of the brain published in 1993 which claimed that the cerebral cortex, if flattened out, would cover a tennis court. How can there be such disagreement? How can so many experts not know how big the cortex is? I don't know, but I'm on the hunt for an expert who will say the cortex, when fully spread out, will cover a football field. A Canadian football field.

Bir kadın bir şehir olmalı. İstanbul kadar loş. Haliç kadar bulanık. Erik kadar tuza hasret. Nergis kadar güzel kokmalı. Derinlerine alıp sokmalı, sarmalı. Kalbi cam gibi kıpkırmızı atmalı.

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives it ease, And builds a heaven in hell's despair." So sang a little clod of clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet, But a pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet: "Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite.

It might weigh little over a kilogram but, taken on its own scale, the brain is unimaginably vast. One cubic millimetre contains between twenty and twenty-five thousand neurons. It has eighty-six billion of these cells, and each one is complex as a city and is in contact with ten thousand other neurons just like it. Within just one cubic centimetre of brain tissue, there is the same number of connections as there are stars in the Milky Way. Your brain contains a hundred trillion of them. Information in the form of electricity and chemicals flows around these paths in great forking trails and in circuits and feedback loops and fantastical storms of activity tat bloom to life speeds of up to a hundred and twenty metres per second. According to the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, 'The number of permutations and combinations of activity that are theoretically possible exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe.' And yet, he continues, 'We know so little about it that even a child's questions should be seriously entertained.

Now it is very striking, and well worth investigating, that such trifling, nay, apparently childish, means as metre and rhyme produce so powerful an effect. I explain it to myself in the following manner: That which is given directly to the sense of hearing, thus the mere sound of the words, receives from rhythm and rhyme a certain completeness and significance in itself for it thereby becomes a kind of music; therefore it seems now to exist for its own sake, and no longer as a mere means, mere signs of something signified, the sense of the words. To please the ear with its sound seems to be its whole end, and therefore with this everything seems to be attained and all claims satisfied. But that it further contains a meaning, expresses a thought, presents itself now as an unexpected addition, like words to music - as an unexpected present which agreeably surprises us - and therefore, since we made no demands of this kind, very easily satisfies us; and if indeed this thought is such that, in itself, thus said in prose, it would be significant, then we are enchanted.

But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try - Ransom has tried a hundred times - to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him. But I don't know that any of these attempts has helped me much. At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender.

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath.… I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again. Upon

OTOBİYOGRAFİ 1902'de doğdum doğduğum şehre dönmedim bir daha geriye dönmeyi sevmem üç yaşımda Halep'te paşa torunluğu ettim on dokuzumda Moskova'da komünist Üniversite öğrenciliği kırk dokuzumda yine Moskova'da Tseka-Parti konukluğu ve on dördümden beri şairlik ederim kimi insan otların kimi insan balıkların çeşidini bilir ben ayrılıkların kimi insan ezbere sayar yıldızların adını ben hasretlerin hapislerde de yattım büyük otellerde de açlık çektim açlık gırevi de içinde ve tatmadığım yemek yok gibidir otuzumda asılmamı istediler kırk sekizimde Barış madalyasının bana verilmesini verdiler de otuz altımda yarım yılda geçtim dört metre kare betonu elli dokuzumda on sekiz saatta uçtum Pırağ'dan Havana'ya Lenin'i görmedim nöbet tuttum tabutunun başında 924'de 961'de ziyaret ettiğim anıtkabri kitaplarıdır partimden koparmağa yeltendiler beni sökmedi yıkılan putların altında da ezilmedim 951'de bir denizde genç bir arkadaşla yürüdüm üstüne ölümün 52'de çatlak bir yürekle dört ay sırtüstü bekledim ölümü sevdiğim kadınları deli gibi kıskandım şu kadarcık haset etmedim Şarlo'ya bile aldattım kadınlarımı konuşmadım arkasından dostlarımın içtim ama akşamcı olmadım hep alnımın teriyle çıkardım ekmek paramı ne mutlu bana başkasının hesabına utandım yalan söyledim yalan söyledim başkasını üzmemek için ama durup dururken de yalan söyledim bindim tirene uçağa otomobile çoğunluk binemiyor operaya gittim çoğunluk gidemiyor adını bile duymamış operanın çoğunluğun gittiği kimi yerlere de ben gitmedim 21'den beri camiye kiliseye tapınağa havraya büyücüye ama kahve falıma baktırdığım oldu yazılarım otuz kırk dilde basılır Türkiye'mde Türkçemle yasak kansere yakalanmadım daha yakalanmam da şart değil başbakan filân olacağım yok meraklısı da değilim bu işin bir de harbe girmedim sığınaklara da inmedim gece yarıları yollara da düşmedim pike yapan uçakların altında ama sevdalandım altmışıma yakın sözün kısası yoldaşlar bugün Berlin'de kederden gebermekte olsam da insanca yaşadım diyebilirim ve daha ne kadar yaşarım başımdan neler geçer daha kim bilir.

A half-moon hung in the sky. Dozens of insects were chirping and buzzing in the garden. I'm so confused, I muttered, leaving Sensei's house. The air rising off the river carried a crisp hint of autumn. Good-night, Sensei. [...] Autumn is here, so at Satoru's place there will be warm things to eat while we drink. Turning in the direction of Sensei, who was now several hundred metres away, I kept speaking to him. I walked along by the river, as if I were having a conversation with the moon. I kept talking, as if for ever.

In any case, it is a mistake to equate concreteness with things. An individual object is the unique phenomenon it is because it is caught up in a mesh of relations with other objects. It is this web of relations and interactions, if you like, which is 'concrete', while the object considered in isolation is purely abstract. In his Grundrisse, Karl Marx sees the abstract not as a lofty, esoteric notion, but as a kind of rough sketch of a thing. The notion of money, for example, is abstract because it is no more than a bare, preliminary outline of the actual reality. It is only when we reinsert the idea of money into its complex social context, examining its relations to commodities, exchange, production and the like, that we can construct a 'concrete' concept of it, one which is adequate to its manifold substance. The Anglo-Saxon empiricist tradition, by contrast, makes the mistake of supposing that the concrete is simple and the abstract is complex. In a similar way, a poem for Yury Lotman is concrete precisely because it is the product of many interacting systems. Like Imagist poetry, you can suppress a number of these systems (grammar, syntax, metre and so on) to leave the imagery standing proudly alone; but this is actually an abstraction of the imagery from its context, not the concretion it appears to be. In modern poetics, the word 'concrete' has done far more harm than good.

You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper and some poets try that. Shakespeare knew that it’s much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letter. It doesn’t matter what it’s about. It can be the exact depth in the sea to which a chap’s corpse has been sunk; hardly a matter of universal interest, but if you say, ‘Full fathom five your father lies’, you will be considered the greatest poet that ever lived. Express precisely the same thought in any other way – e.g. ‘your father’s corpse is 9.144 metres below sea level’ – and you’re just a coastguard with some bad news.

An indisputable event, my gallant Ned. Accordingly, people have proposed naming this devil fish Bouguer's Squid. And how long was it? the Canadian asked. Didn't it measure about six metres? said Conseil, who was stationed at the window and examining anew the crevices in the cliff. Precisely, I replied Wasn't its head, Conseil went on, crowned by eight tentacles that quivered in the water like a nest of snakes? Precisely. Weren't its eyes prominently placed and considerably enlarged? Yes, Conseil. And wasn't its mouth a real parrot's beak but of fearsome size? Correct, Conseil. Well, with all due respect to master, Conseil replied serenely, if this isn't Bouguers Squid, it's at least one of his close relatives!

Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.” “OK …” “Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.” Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was. “Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?” “Just wait and see.” A few seconds later, I understood. As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout. One of Nick’s ended up on his nose. And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur. Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this. So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then I reached out my hand. “Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head. So I promptly leapt off too. Straight into a bush. Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me. With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open. “I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox. A few seconds later, I wobbled after him. And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize. Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall. Like Humpty Dumpty. Or some kind of really unathletic cat. “Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!” “Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.” And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish. I had to wait three days. Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there. Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass. Ha. Told you I was faster. LBxx

A full explanation of this is beyond the scope of this book, suffice to say that Einstein was forced into this bold move primarily because Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism were incompatible with Newton’s 200-year-old laws of motion. Einstein abandoned the Newtonian ideas of space and time as separate entities and merged them. In Einstein’s theory there is a special speed built into the structure of spacetime itself that everyone must agree on, irrespective of how they are moving relative to each other. This special speed is a universal constant of nature that will always be measured as precisely 299,792,458 metres (983,571,503 feet) per second, at all times and all places in the Universe, no matter what they are doing. This

We said our goodbyes to Eurytion, Tyson pulled the cattle grid off the hole and we dropped back into the maze. I wish I could’ve put the mechanical spider on a leash. It scuttled along the tunnels so fast that most of time I couldn’t even see it. If it hadn’t been for Tyson’s and Grover’s excellent hearing, we never would’ve known which way it was going. We ran down a marble tunnel, then dashed to the left and almost fell into an abyss. Tyson grabbed me and hauled me back before I could fall. The tunnel continued in front of us, but there was no floor for about thirty metres, just gaping darkness and a series of iron rungs in the ceiling. The mechanical spider was about halfway across, swinging from bar to bar by shooting out metal web fibre. ‘Monkey bars,’ Annabeth said. ‘I’m great at these.’ She leaped onto the first rung and started swinging her way across. She was scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure. Annabeth got to the opposite side and ran after the spider. I followed. When I got across, I looked back and saw Tyson giving Grover a piggyback ride (or was it a goatyback ride?).

He Never Expected Much Well, World, you have kept faith with me, Kept faith with me; Upon the whole you have proved to be Much as you said you were. Since as a child I used to lie Upon the leaze and watch the sky, Never, I own, expected I That life would all be fair. ’Twas then you said, and since have said, Times since have said, In that mysterious voice you shed From clouds and hills around: ‘Many have loved me desperately, Many with smooth serenity, While some have shown contempt of me Till they dropped underground. ‘I do not promise overmuch, Child; overmuch; Just neutral-tinted haps and such,’ You said to minds like mine. Wise warning for your credit’s sake! Which I for one failed not to take, And hence could stem such strain and ache As each year might assign.

Such are the distances, in fact, that it isn’t possible, in any practical terms, to draw the solar system to scale. Even if you added lots of fold-out pages to your textbooks or used a really long sheet of poster paper, you wouldn’t come close. On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with the Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over 300 metres away and Pluto would be two and a half kilometres distant (and about the size of a bacterium, so you wouldn’t be able to see it anyway). On the same scale, Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, would be 16,000 kilometres away. Even if you shrank down everything so that Jupiter was as small as the full stop at the end of this sentence, and Pluto was no bigger than a molecule, Pluto would still be over 10 metres away. So

The fact that I am still alive, when so many friends and others climbing the 8000ers have died is humbling. ... It is only death that has stopped many mountaineers from achieving the full tally of 14.

Witchcraft is part of a living web of species and relationships, a world which we have forgotten to observe, understand or inhabit. Many people reading this paragraph will not know even the current phase of the moon, and if asked for it will not instinctively look up to the current quarter of the sky, but down to their computers. Neither will they be able to name the plants, birds or animals within a metre or mile radius of their door. Witchcraft asks that we do these first things, this is presence. Animism is not embedded in the natural world, it is the natural world. Our witchcraft is that spirit of place, which is made from a convergence of elements and inhabitants. Here I include animals, both living and dead, human and inhuman. Our helpers are mammals, reptiles, fish, birds and insects. Some can be counted allies, others are more ambivalent. Predator and prey are interdependent. These all have the same origin and ancestry, they from from plants, from copper green life. Bones become soil. The plants have been nourished on the minerals drawn up from the bowels of the earth. These are the living tools of the witch's craft. The cycle of the elements and seasons is read in this way. Flux, life and death are part of this, as are extinctions, catastrophe, fire and flood. We avail ourselves of these, and ultimately a balance is sought. Our ritual space is written in starlight, watched over by sun and moon. So this leaves us with a simple question. How can there be any Witchcraft if this is all destroyed? It is not a rhetorical question. Our land, our trees, animals and elements hold spirit. Will we let our familiars, literally our family be destroyed? If we hold any real belief and experience of spirit, then it does not ask, it demands us to fight for it.

And so it is in poetry also: all this love of curious French metres like the Ballade, the Villanelle, the Rondel; all this increased value laid on elaborate alliterations, and on curious words and refrains, such as you will find in Dante Rossetti and Swinburne, is merely the attempt to perfect flute and viol and trumpet through which the spirit of the age and the lips of the poet may blow the music of their many messages. And so it has been with this romantic movement of ours: it is a reaction against the empty conventional workmanship, the lax execution of previous poetry and painting, showing itself in the work of such men as Rossetti and Burne-Jones by a far greater splendour of colour, a far more intricate wonder of design than English imaginative art has shown before. In Rossetti’s poetry and the poetry of Morris, Swinburne and Tennyson a perfect precision and choice of language, a style flawless and fearless, a seeking for all sweet and precious melodies and a sustaining consciousness of the musical value of each word are opposed to that value which is merely intellectual. In this respect they are one with the romantic movement of France of which not the least characteristic note was struck by Theophile Gautier’s advice to the young poet to read his dictionary every day, as being the only book worth a poet’s reading.

We may now briefly enumerate the elements of style.  We have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of keeping his phrases large, rhythmical, and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them to fall into the strictly metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of combining and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern, feet and groups, logic and metre—harmonious in diversity: common to both, the task of artfully combining the prime elements of language into phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the task of weaving their argument into a texture of committed phrases and of rounded periods—but this particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common to both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words.  We begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete a pleasure.  From the arrangement of according letters, which is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but has been exercised.  We need not wonder, then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages rarer. -ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE

In Lebanon, home to well over a million Syrian refugees, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) decided to use its limited ‘winterization’ funds to pay cash transfers to vulnerable families living above 500 metres altitude. These were unconditional, although recipients were told they were intended for buying heating supplies. Recipient families were then compared with a control group living just below 500 metres. The researchers found that cash assistance did lead to increased spending on fuel supplies, but it also boosted school enrolment, reduced child labour and increased food security.55 One notable finding was that the basic income tended to increase mutual support between beneficiaries and others in the community, reduced tension within recipient families, and improved relationships with the host community. There were significant multiplier effects, with each dollar of cash assistance generating more than $2 for the Lebanese economy, most of which was spent locally.

Mrs. Alingsby was tall and weird and intense, dressed rather like a bird-of-paradise that had been out in a high gale, but very well connected. She had long straight hair which fell over her forehead, and sometimes got in her eyes, and she wore on her head a scarlet jockey-cap with an immense cameo in front of it. She hated all art that was earlier than 1923, and a considerable lot of what was later. In music, on the other hand, she was primitive, and thought Bach decadent: in literature her taste was for stories without a story, and poems without metre or meaning. But she had collected round her a group of interesting outlaws, of whom the men looked like women, and the women like nothing at all, and though nobody ever knew what they were talking about, they themselves were talked about. Lucia had been to a party of hers, where they all sat in a room with black walls, and listened to early Italian music on a spinet while a charcoal brazier on a blue hearth was fed with incense… Lucia’s general opinion of her was that she might be useful up to a point, for she certainly excited interest.

Parks waits a long while, until he’s absolutely certain that Justineau’s monologue is finished. The truth is, for most of the time he’s been trying to figure out what it is exactly that she’s trying to tell him. Maybe he was right the first time about where they were heading, and Justineau airing her ancient laundry is just a sort of palate-cleanser before they have sex. Probably not, but you never know. In any case, the countermove to a confession is an absolution, unless you think the sin is unforgivable. Parks doesn’t. “It was an accident,” he tells her, pointing out the obvious. “And probably you would have ended up doing the right thing. You don’t strike me as the sort of person who just lets shit slide.” He means that, as far as it goes. One of the things he likes about Justineau is her seriousness. He frigging flat-out hates frivolous, thoughtless people who dance across the surface of the world without looking down. “Yeah, but you don’t get it,” Justineau says. “Why do you think I’m telling you all this?” “I don’t know,” Parks admits. “Why are you telling me?” Justineau steps away from the parapet wall and squares off against him – range, zero metres. It could be erotic, but somehow it’s not. “I killed that boy, Parks. If you turn my life into an equation, the number that comes out is minus one. That’s my lifetime score, you understand me? And you … you and Caldwell, and Private Ginger f**king Rogers … my God, whether it means anything or not, I will die my own self before I let you take me down to minus two.” She says the last words right into his face. Sprays him with little flecks of spit. This close up, dark as it is, he can see her eyes. There’s something mad in them. Something deeply afraid, but it’s damn well not afraid of him. She leaves him with the bottle. It’s not what he was hoping for, but it’s a pretty good consolation prize.

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer. Rare is the rose-burst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer; Sweet is the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter; And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmaster'd the metre. Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing; Never a river that flows, but a majesty sceptres the flowing; Never a Shakespeare that soar'd, but a stronger than he did enfold him, Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him. Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted and hidden; Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor is bidden; Under the joy that is felt, lie the infinite issues of feeling; Crowning the glory reveal'd. is the glory that crowns the revealing. Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboll'd is greater; Vast the create and beheld, but vaster the inward Creator; Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving; Back of the hand that receives, thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving. Space is as nothing to Spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing; The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing; And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine, Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is Divine. RICHARD REALF

Sevilebilmek için hayatını riske atmak gerektiğini düşündü. ... Annecik ciddi bir ses tonuyla "Sanat asla mutluluktan doğmaz" dedi. ... ...ve çocuk bir resmin, bir heykelin veya hikayenin, sevilen birinin yerini alabileceğini sanacak kadar aptal. ... ...bu yüzden eğer bunu okumanın sizi kurtaracağını sanıyorsanız... Herhangi bir şeyin sizi kurtaracağını sanıyorsanız... ... ...Bence annesi ölene dek bir erkeğin hayatındaki diğer kadıınların hiçbiri metres olmaktan öteye geçemez. ... ...Tamamlayamadığım şeylerle dolu hayatımda, bir tamamlanmamış olay daha. ... Hayatımın, Zen Budizmi öğrencilerine meditasyon yapmaları için ödev olarak verilen ve mantıksal çözümü olmayan problemlerden hiçbir farkı yok. ... Radyoda, duran aracın polise bildirildiği söylendi. Annecik radyonun sesini köledi. "Kahretsin" dedi. "Lütfen bizden bahsetmediklerini söyle bana." "Metalik sarı bir Duster'dan söz ediyorlar" dedi çocuk. "Bu bizim arabamız." Annecik, "Bu senin ne kadar az şey bildiğini gösteriyor" dedi. Kendi kapısını açtı ve çocuğa sürücü tarafına geçip arabadan inmesini söyledi. Yanlarından hızla geçen araçları kontrol etti. Ve, "Bu bizim arabamız değil" dedi. ... "Dünyayı parçalara ayırdık" diyor, "ama parçalarla ne yapacağımızı bilemiyoruz..." ... "Vaktimizin çoğunu başkalarının yarattığı şeyleri yargılayarak geçirdiğimizden, kendimiz hiçbir şey yaratamadık." ... ...hissettiğimden daha zavallı bir şey görmek iyi geliyor. ... Her bağımlılık aynı sorunu çözmek için bulunmuş bir yöntemdir, dedi. Uyuşturucular, obezite, alkol veya seks, huzuru bulmak için kullanılan farklı farklı yöntemlerdi. Bildiklerimizden kaçmak için. Eğitimimizden. Elmayı ısırmış olmaktan. ... İnsanlar dünyanın güvenli ve düzenli bir yer olması için yıllarca çalışırlardı. Ama hiç kimse bunun ne kadar sıkıcı olabileceğinin farkında değildi. Bütün dünyanın parsellendiğini, hız limitleri konduğunu, bölümlere ayrıldığını, vergilendirildiğini ve düzenlendiğini, bütün insanların sınavlardan geçirildiğini, fişlendiğini, nerede oturduğunun ne yaptığının kaydının yapıldığını düşünün. Hiç kimseye macera yaşayacak bir alan kalmadı, satın alınabilenler hariç. Lunaparka gitmek, Film izlemek gibi. Ama yine de bunlar sahte heyecanlardı. Dinozorların çocukları yemeyeceğini bilirsiniz. Büyük bir sahte afetin olma şansı bile oy çoğunluğuyla ortadan kaldırıldı. Gerçek afet veya risk ihtimali olmadığından, Gerçek kurtuluş şansı da ortadan kalkmış oldu. Gerçek mutluluk yok. Gerçek heyecan yok. Eğlence, keşif, buluş yok. Bizi koruyan kanunlar aslında bizi can sıkıntısına mahkum etmekten başka bir işe yaramazlar. Gerçek karmaşaya ulaşamadığımız sürece, asla gerçekten huzurlu olamayacağız. Her şey berbat bir hal almadığı sürece yoluna da girmeyecek. Bunlar Anneciğin ona anlattığı şeylerdi. "Keşfedilmemiş tek alan, elle tutulamayanların dünyasıdır. Bunun dışındaki her şey çok sıkı örülmüştür" derdi. Çok fazla kanunun içinde hapsolmuş durumdayız. Elle tutulamayanlar derken interneti, filmleri, müziği, hikayeleri, sanatı, dedikoduları, bilgisayar programlarını, yani gerçek olmayan her şeyi kastediyordu. Sanal gerçeklikten bahsediyordu. Yalandan inanılan şeylerden. Kültürden. Gerçekdışı şeyler, gerçeklikten daha güçlüdür. Çünkü sadece elle tutulamayan fikirler, mefhumlar, inanışlar ve fanteziler kalır. Taşlar ufalanır. Ağaçlar çürür. İnsanlar da maalesef ölürler. Fakat bir düşünce, bir rüya, bir efsane gibi aslında son derece kırılgan şeyler yaşarlar da yaşarlar. ... "...Beni mahkum etmeniz çok gereksizdi. Bürokrasiniz ve kanunlarımız dünyayı temiz ve güvenli bir toplama kampına çevirdi" diye b

-Yürüyebileceğimden emin değilim. -Öyleyse seni taşırım. -Aşk bu mu? -Aşk nedir, bilmiyorum artık. Bir hafta önce pek çok fikrim vardı. Aşk nedir, nasıl kalıcı kılınır. Şimdi aşığım ve en ufak bir fikrim yok. Şimdi aşığım ve bu konuda bir aptaldan farkım yok. .... Dolunayın gerçekleştiği güne, Ay’ın ne büyüdüğü ne de küçüldüğü güne, Babilliler “yürek dinlencesi” anlamına gelen Sabat adını vermişlerdi. Bu günde Ay tanrıçasının, Babil’de bilinen adıyla Ay’daki kadın İştar’ın adet gördüğüne inanılırdı; çünkü neredeyse her eski ve ilkel toplumda olduğu gibi Babil’de de çok eski zamanlardan beri bir kadının aybaşı kanaması geçirirken çalışması, yemek pişirmesi ya da yolculuk etmesi tabu sayılırdı. Bildiğimiz Sebt gününün kökeni olan Sabat’ta erkekler de kadınlar gibi dinlenmek zorundaydı; çünkü Ay adet görürken tabu herkes için geçerliydi. Başlangıçta (ve doğal olarak) ayda bir kez gözlemlenen Sebt, daha sonra Hristiyanlar tarafından Yaratılış mitleriyle birleştirilip işe yarar bir şekilde haftalık hale getirildi. Böylelikle günümüzde sert adaleli, sert kasketli, sert zihinli erkekler, adet görmeye ilişkin arketip psikolojik bir tepki sayesinde pazar günleri işe gitmekten kurtulmuşlardır. .... Lüzumlu ve lüzumsuz delilikler vardır. İkinci gruba girenler Güneş karakteri taşır birinci gruba girenlerse Ay ile bağlantılıdır. Lüzumsuz delilikler, hırs, saldırganık ve ergenlik öncesine özgü endişeden oluşan gevrek bir karışımdır, çok uzun zaman önce atılmış olması gereken bir çöp yığınıdır. Lüzumlu delilikler, kişinin, akranları ne kadar kaçık bulsa da erdemli ve doğru olduklarını içgüdüleriyle sezdiği dürtülerdir. Lüzumsuz delilikler insanın başını kendisiyle belaya sokar. Lüzumlu delilikler insanın başını başkalarıyla belaya sokar. İnsanın başının başkalarıyla belaya girmesi her zaman daha iyidir. Hatta lüzumlu olabilir. Şiir, şiirin iyi yazılmışı, Ay özelliklerini taşır ve lüzumlu deliliklerle ilgilidir. Gazetecilik Güneş özellikleri taşır (Güneş adında pek çok gazete varken hiçbirinr Ay adı verilmemiştir) ve lüzumsuzluklara adanmıştır. .... Saygı ve itaat yeminleri etmek yerine, yardım ve yataklık edeceğimiz sözünü vermeliyiz belki.. .... "Dünyanın öbür ucuna dek onun peşinden gideceğim." diye hıçkıra hıçkıra ağladı. Evet şekerim ama dünyanın bir ucu yok. Kolomb bunu saptamıştı. .... (Mutluluk gözyaşları sahne sağından çıkar. Şaşkınlık gözyaşları sahne solundan girer, yer ışıklarına doğru ilerler.) .... Bir pastanın üstünde yirmi mum. Bir pakette yirmi Camel. Geride bıraktığımız yirmi yüzyıl. Peki ya sonra? Bir pastanın üstünde yirmi mum. Bir pakette yirmi Camel. Federal kodeste yirmi ay. Genç bir kızın boğazından aşağı yuvarlanan yirmi kadeh tekila. Hazreti İsa'nın son kez kıç üstü oturuşundan bu yana yirmi yüzyıl geçmiş ve onca zaman sonra bizler tutkunun çekip gittiğinde nereye gittiğini hala bilmiyoruz. .... Ahmaklar, örgütlü davalara hizmet konusunda en uygun kişilerdir; çünkü nadiren yapacak daha yaratıcı bir işleri olur ve böyle bir işleri olsa bile dar görüş nedeniyle kısıtlandıklarından o işi muhtemelen yapmazlar. .... Bernard'ın dolunay ışığının dört buçuk metre yükseklikteki kırk vatlık bir ampule eşit olduğunu söylediğini hatırladı. .... "Bak hayatım, sevgilin nam salmış biri. Orospu çocuğunun her şeyden bomba yapabileceği söyleniyor." .... Dört elementten üçü tüm yaratıklar tarafından paylaşılır ama ateş yalnızca insanoğluna bağışlanmış bir hediyeydi. .... Bir nefes sigaraya, bir lokma yemeğe, bir fincan kahveye, bir parça göte ya da temposu hızlı bir öyküye ihtiyaç duyduğu halde nasibine hepi topu felsefe düşen her zeki kişinin yapacağı gibi dik dik bakıyorlardı ona. .... İnsan kendi kurallarını da bozamadıktan sonra kimin kurallarını bozabilirdi?

He was walking down a narrow street in Beirut, Lebanon, the air thick with the smell of Arabic coffee and grilled chicken. It was midday, and he was sweating badly beneath his flannel shirt. The so-called South Lebanon conflict, the Israeli occupation, which had begun in 1982 and would last until 2000, was in its fifth year. The small white Fiat came screeching around the corner with four masked men inside. His cover was that of an aid worker from Chicago and he wasn’t strapped. But now he wished he had a weapon, if only to have the option of ending it before they took him. He knew what that would mean. The torture first, followed by the years of solitary. Then his corpse would be lifted from the trunk of a car and thrown into a drainage ditch. By the time it was found, the insects would’ve had a feast and his mother would have nightmares, because the authorities would not allow her to see his face when they flew his body home. He didn’t run, because the only place to run was back the way he’d come, and a second vehicle had already stopped halfway through a three-point turn, all but blocking off the street. They exited the Fiat fast. He was fit and trained, but he knew they’d only make it worse for him in the close confines of the car if he fought them. There was a time for that and a time for raising your hands, he’d learned. He took an instep hard in the groin, and a cosh over the back of his head as he doubled over. He blacked out then. The makeshift cell Hezbollah had kept him in in Lebanon was a bare concrete room, three metres square, without windows or artificial light. The door was wooden, reinforced with iron strips. When they first dragged him there, he lay in the filth that other men had made. They left him naked, his wrists and ankles chained. He was gagged with rag and tape. They had broken his nose and split his lips. Each day they fed him on half-rancid scraps like he’d seen people toss to skinny dogs. He drank only tepid water. Occasionally, he heard the muted sound of children laughing, and smelt a faint waft of jasmine. And then he could not say for certain how long he had been there; a month, maybe two. But his muscles had wasted and he ached in every joint. After they had said their morning prayers, they liked to hang him upside down and beat the soles of his feet with sand-filled lengths of rubber hose. His chest was burned with foul-smelling cigarettes. When he was stubborn, they lay him bound in a narrow structure shaped like a grow tunnel in a dusty courtyard. The fierce sun blazed upon the corrugated iron for hours, and he would pass out with the heat. When he woke up, he had blisters on his skin, and was riddled with sand fly and red ant bites. The duo were good at what they did. He guessed the one with the grey beard had honed his skills on Jewish conscripts over many years, the younger one on his own hapless people, perhaps. They looked to him like father and son. They took him to the edge of consciousness before easing off and bringing him back with buckets of fetid water. Then they rubbed jagged salt into the fresh wounds to make him moan with pain. They asked the same question over and over until it sounded like a perverse mantra. “Who is The Mandarin? His name? Who is The Mandarin?” He took to trying to remember what he looked like, the architecture of his own face beneath the scruffy beard that now covered it, and found himself flinching at the slightest sound. They had peeled back his defences with a shrewdness and deliberation that had both surprised and terrified him. By the time they freed him, he was a different man.  

Old Hubert must have had a premonition of his squalid demise. In October he said to me, ‘Forty-two years I’ve had this place. I’d really like to go back home, but I ain’t got the energy since my old girl died. And I can’t sell it the way it is now. But anyway before I hang my hat up I’d be curious to know what’s in that third cellar of mine.’ The third cellar has been walled up by order of the civil defence authorities after the floods of 1910. A double barrier of cemented bricks prevents the rising waters from invading the upper floors when flooding occurs. In the event of storms or blocked drains, the cellar acts as a regulatory overflow. The weather was fine: no risk of drowning or any sudden emergency. There were five of us: Hubert, Gerard the painter, two regulars and myself. Old Marteau, the local builder, was upstairs with his gear, ready to repair the damage. We made a hole. Our exploration took us sixty metres down a laboriously-faced vaulted corridor (it must have been an old thoroughfare). We were wading through a disgusting sludge. At the far end, an impassable barrier of iron bars. The corridor continued beyond it, plunging downwards. In short, it was a kind of drain-trap. That’s all. Nothing else. Disappointed, we retraced our steps. Old Hubert scanned the walls with his electric torch. Look! An opening. No, an alcove, with some wooden object that looks like a black statuette. I pick the thing up: it’s easily removable. I stick it under my arm. I told Hubert, ‘It’s of no interest. . .’ and kept this treasure for myself. I gazed at it for hours on end, in private. So my deductions, my hunches were not mistaken: the Bièvre-Seine confluence was once the site where sorcerers and satanists must surely have gathered. And this kind of primitive magic, which the blacks of Central Africa practise today, was known here several centuries ago. The statuette had miraculously survived the onslaught of time: the well-known virtues of the waters of the Bièvre, so rich in tannin, had protected the wood from rotting, actually hardened, almost fossilized it. The object answered a purpose that was anything but aesthetic. Crudely carved, probably from heart of oak. The legs were slightly set apart, the arms detached from the body. No indication of gender. Four nails set in a triangle were planted in its chest. Two of them, corroded with rust, broke off at the wood’s surface all on their own. There was a spike sunk in each eye. The skull, like a salt cellar, had twenty-four holes in which little tufts of brown hair had been planted, fixed in place with wax, of which there were still some vestiges. I’ve kept quiet about my find. I’m biding my time.

The DUCE diverted funds intended for the Fiume adventure, and used them for His own election campaign. He was arrested for the illegal possession of arms, sent parcel bombs to the Archbishop of Milan and its mayor, and after election was, as is well-known, responsible for the assassination of Di Vagno and Matteoti. Since then He has been responsible for the murders of Don Mizzoni Amendola, the Rosselli brothers, and the journalist Piero Gobetti, quite apart from the hundreds who have been the victims of His squadistri in Ferrara, Ravenna and Trieste, and the thousands who have perished in foreign places whose conquest was useless and pointless. We Italians remain eternally grateful for this, and consider that so much violence has made us a superior race, just as the introduction of revolvers into Parliament and the complete destruction of constitutional democracy have raised our institutions to the greatest possible heights of civilisation. Since the illegal seizure of power, Italy has known an average of five acts of political violence per diem, the DUCE has decreed that 1922 is the new Annus Domini, and He was pretended to be a Catholic in order to dupe the Holy Father into supporting Him against the Communists, even though He really is one Himself. He has completely suborned the press by wrecking the premises of dissident newspapers and journals. In 1923 he invaded Corfu for no apparent reason, and was forced to withdraw by the League of Nations. In 1924 He gerrymandered the elections, and He has oppressed minorities in the Tyrol and the North-East. He sent our soldiers to take part in the rape of Somalia and Libya, drenching their hands in the blood of innocents, He has doubled the number of the bureaucracy in order to tame the bourgeoisie, He has abolished local government, interfered with the judiciary, and purportedly has divinely stopped the flow of lava on Mt Etna by a mere act of will. He has struck Napoleonic attitudes whilst permitting Himself to be used to advertise Perugina chocolates, He has shaved his head because He is ashamed to be seen to be going bald, He has been obliged to hire a tutor to teach Him table manners, He has introduced the Roman salute as a more hygienic alternative to the handshake, He pretends not to need spectacles, He has a repertoire of only two facial expression, He stands on a concealed podium whilst making speeches because He is so short, He pretends to have studied economics with Pareto, and He has assumed infallibility and encouraged the people to carry His image in marches, as though He were a saint. He is a saint, of course. He has (and who are we to disagree?) declared Himself greater than Aristotle, Kant, Aquinas, Dante, Michelangelo, Washington, Lincoln, and Bonaparte, and He has appointed ministers to serve Him who are all sycophants, renegades, racketeers, placemen, and shorter than He is. He is afraid of the Evil Eye and has abolished the second person singular as a form of address. He has caused Toscanini to be beaten up for refusing to play 'Giovinezza', and He has appointed academicians to prove that all great inventions were originally Italian and that Shakespeare was the pseudonym of an Italian poet. He has built a road through the site of the forum, demolishing fifteen ancient churches, and has ordered a statue of Hercules, eighty metres high, which will have His own visage, and which so far consists of a part of the face and one gigantic foot, and which cannot be completed because it has already used up one hundred tons of metal.