Moisture Life Quotes

He drinks the life of those who come too close to him. Steals their youth. Also,” she said after a pause, “he moisturizes.

But a plant on the edge of a deserts is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent upon the moisture.

Tears of grief are unique. They contain chemicals that aren't found in the more mundane droplets of moisture that bathe the eyes, as if our tears wash us free of some noxious cause of sorrow. And tonight, after crying until I am empty, I have a rare glimpse of my own interior landscape - wounds piled like tiny skeletons into the reef of conscious adult life. I am aground amid my conquered traumas, stranded as a consequence of my achievements.

Moisture and greeness have to do with innocence, love, heart, feelings and tears. All of the [fluids] in our body become moist when we are moved-we cry, we lubricate, we bleed, all of the numinous experiences of our bodies have to do with moisture. And it's moisture that brings life to this planet, that is the cure for the desert experience and the cure for aridness.

She wanted to be the rain, to cover him with moisture, to bring life to his seed.

He wasn’t a carrier of commitment-phobia or other notable boy diseases and he used expensive moisturizer. That’s about all it takes to bang my gong.

There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality. Sleet falls as she walks these streets, holding this knowledge inside her. Sleet that leaves cheeks and eyebrows heavy with moisture. Everything passes.

Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered two words before she fell asleep. ‘Real hurts.’

Moisture falls from the sky, cleansing the world and sustaining precious life. But it's the gloom—the cold, dark air—that receives notice. We fail to see the miracle of raindrops through our own tears.

You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry, aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert.

Hippocrates cured many illnesses—and then fell ill and died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar—who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so many thousand foot and horse in battle—they too departedthis life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire. But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin, Socrates by the human kind. And? You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time to disembark. If it’s for another life, well, there’s nowhere without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body—so much inferior to that which serves it. One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage.

Ayumi had a great emptiness inside her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No life could take route there. Not even birds would fly over it. What had created such a wasteland inside Ayumi, only she herself knew. No, maybe not even Ayumi knew the true cause. But one of the biggest factors had to be twisted sexual desires that men around Ayumi had forced upon her. As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create the sunny personality that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.

It would be wholly impossible for me to say whether this cloudy, silently disturbed, unraveled sky is mirrored in my soul or the reverse, whether or not I read the image of my own inner life in this sky. Sometimes everything is so completely uncertain! There are days when I am convinced that no man on earth can recognize certain moods of air and cloud, certain tones of color, certain fragrances and movements of moisture as finely, as exactly, and as truly as I can, with my old, nervous sense of poet and wanderer. And then again, as today, it can be doubtful to me whether I have seen, heard, and smelled anything after all, whether everything that I took to be true is not merely an image cast outward, the image of my inner life.

My family sat in their pool courtyard," Harah said, "in air bathed by the moisture that arose from the spray of a fountain. There was a tree of portyguls, round and deep in color, near at hand. There was a basket with mish mish and baklawa and mugs of liban—all manner of good things to eat. In our gardens and, in our flocks, there was peace . . . peace in all the land." "Life was full with happiness until the raiders came," Alia said. "Blood ran cold at the scream of friends," Jessica said. And she felt the memories rushing through her out of all those other pasts she shared. "La, la, la, the women cried," said Harah.

The branch of fungi leading to animals evolved to capture nutrients by surrounding their food with cellular sacs, essentially primitive stomachs. As species emerged from aquatic habitats, organisms adapted means to prevent moisture loss. In terrestrial creatures, skin composed of many layers of cells emerged as a barrier against infection. Taking a different evolutionary path, the mycelium retained its netlike form of interweaving chains of cells and went underground, forming a vast food web upon which life flourished.

Lifelong full-body salving is why Black folks look so young. Black doesn’t snap, crackle, or pop—why? Because: moisture. It’s why some of us look twelve at thirty. Listen to me, white folks. I’m dropping life secrets here. Why else do you think the Olsen twins (born in 1986) look the same age as Nia Long (born in 1970)? You haven’t used the BUTTERS.

A plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture

He walked to the ocean and above him the moon disappeared, concealed by tattered rags of clouds, and for a few moments he could only hear the water, not see it, and the sky was thick and warm with moisture, as if the very air here were denser, more significant. Maybe this is what it is to be dead, he thought, and realized it wasn’t so bad after all, and felt better.

My immortality would be gone," Magnus said. "All the years of my life would come on me at once. I would be unlikely to survive it. Almost four hundred years is quite a lot to take, even if you moisturize regularly.

that droplet of moisture that had slipped from me like a tear seemed almost to tell the story of my life. It fell through empty space, with no control whatsoever over its destiny; rolled along a path of silk; and somehow came to rest there on the teeth of that dragon. I thought of the petals I’d thrown into the Kamo River shallows outside Mr. Arashino’s workshop, imagining they might find their way to the Chairman. It seemed to me that, somehow, perhaps they had.

There is a deep dryness of the soul and all of the recalcitrant contrivances of man to quench his own thirst will bring not a single drop of moisture to those parched places, for God and God alone holds the water that satiates the soul.

The tree is waiting. It has everything ready. Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe cones and nuts are providing essential food in this scarce time for mice and squirrels, and its bark is hosting hibernating insects and providing a source of nourishment for hungry deer. It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It’s just getting on with it quietly. It will not burst into life in the spring. It will just put on a new coat and face the world again.

Thank you Jonah." He lowers his head at the break in my voice. I ignore the moisture in his eyes and pretend that mine don't sting. "For what?" he whispers. " For showing me that people can change. Even if it is one person out of a million.

The house was an immense place, isolated in a great wooded area. The building and the trees seemed wet, glistening dimly in the grey morning light that was much like the light of midday of Anthea. It was refreshing to his over-sensitive eyes. He liked the woods, the quiet sense of life in them, and the glistening moisture - the sense of water and of fruitfulness that this earth overflowed with, even down to the continual trilling and chirping sounds of the insects. It would be an endless source of delight compared to his own world, with the dryness, the emptiness, the soundlessness of the broad, empty deserts between the almost deserted cities where the only sound was the whining of the cold and endless wind that voiced the agony of his own, dying people.....

Suddenly feeling overwhelmed, Talon said, 'It doesn’t matter. They are all dead.' He felt moisture gathering in his eyes and blinked. 'It’s been a while since I’ve felt that.' Caleb nodded. 'It never goes away, completely. But you’ll discover other things in life.

Mother trees have an effect on the oceans as well, as Katsuhiko Matsunaga and his team in Japan had confirmed. The leaves, when they fall in the autumn, contain a very large, complex acid called fulvic acid. When the leaves decompose, the fulvic acid dissolves into the moisture of the soil, enabling the acid to pick up iron. This process is called chelation. The heavy, iron-containing fulvic acid is now ready to travel, leaving the home ground of the mother tree and heading for the ocean. In the ocean it drops the iron. Hungry algae, like phytoplankton, eat it, then grow and divide; they need iron to activate a body-building enzyme called nitrogenase. This set of relationships is the feeding foundation of the ocean This is what feeds the fish and keeps the mammals of the sea, like the whale and the otter healthy.

Especially in times of exile, when our anchors are pulled up and we’re no longer taking cues from the outside world, we have a chance to find that inner well and reinstate our connection to the sacred. We may find it overgrown, or hard to reach through the brambles, but each of us faces a time when the well within needs tending: when we’re no longer able to bestow blessings on others because we’ve over-given, or when something precious has been taken from us, or life’s demands have been too taxing on our fragile system. When the moisture goes out of our lives, and we’re no longer able to see beauty or converse with magic, we must ask ourselves how we can replenish our well-ness.

Ayumi had a great emptiness inside her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No life could take root there. Not even birds would fly over

Overhead, trees dappled in sunlight. You can’t know how beautiful the sun is there, how it touches everything and soaks it through, succulent, like water, like moisture. Light beading on the skin, dew, glistening. So much light, an ocean of it, a sea of light spread across everything.

When Mrs. Pattern first came into my life, she was gossiping in the lane with a nursemaid who was wheeling a perambulator containing a baby of exceptional repulsiveness.Babies, as all bachelors will agree, should not be allowed at large unless they are heavily draped, and fitted with various appliances for absorbing sound and moisture. If young married persons persist in their selfish pursuit of populating the planet, they should be compelled to bear the consequences. They should be shut behind high walls, clutching the terrible bundles which they have brought into the world, and when they emerge into society, if they insist on bringing these bundles with them, they should see that they are properly cloaked, muted, sealed up and, above all, dry. They should not wave them about in the streets to the alarm of sensitive persons who are used to the company of Siamese cats.

Wearing fake happiness is as good as smearing foundation. A bit of moisture drains it all.

A hint of ghost-moisture through human life Seismic mass pressing and raw My eye doesn’t meet the gaze of my other eye One with crossed eyes can turn out like that.

He drinks the life of those who come too close to him. Steals their youth. Also,” she said after a pause, “he moisturizes.” She

Holding his breath, swaying drunkenly beneath a bulb which illumined little more than grime and moisture, Moon stared awhile at the cement wall; it took just such a hopeless international latrine in the early hours of a morning, when a man was weak in the knees, short in the breath, numb in the forehead and rotten in the gut, to make him wonder where he was, how he got there, where he was going; he realized that he did not know and never would. He had confronted this same latrine on every continent and not once had it come up with an answer; or rather, it always came up with the same answer, a suck and gurgle of unspeakable vileness, a sort of self-satisfied low chuckling: Go to it, man, you’re pissing your life away.

She wept, and Lazlo drew her into an embrace as though it were the most natural thing in the world that he should draw a mournful goddess against his shoulder, enfold her in his arms, breathe the scent of the flowers in her hair, and even lightly stroke her temple with the edge of his thumb. And though there was a layer of his mind that knew this was a dream, it was momentarily shuffled under by other, more compelling layers, and he experienced the moment as though it were absolutely real. All the emotion, all the sensation. The texture of her skin, the scent of her hair, the heat of her breath through his linen shirt, and even the moisture of tears seeping through it. But far more intense was the utter, ineffable tenderness he felt, and the solemnity. As though he had been entrusted with something infinitely precious. As though he had taken an oath, and his very life stood surety to it. He would recognize this later as the moment his center of gravity shifted: from being one of one—a pillar alone, apart—to being half of something that would fall if either side were cut away.

So even though Grandpa's life has closed its final chapter, the story that he embodied continues each time we take a handful of dirt to check moisture levels or turn our head at the sound of the wind shifting directions before a storm. It lives on as we give thanks for the abundance that we have, whatever it looks like. It lives on in every decision we make that puts someone else first.

Because this painting has never been restored there is a heightened poignance to it somehow; it doesn’t have the feeling of unassailable permanence that paintings in museums do. There is a small crack in the lower left, and a little of the priming between the wooden panel and the oil emulsions of paint has been bared. A bit of abrasion shows, at the rim of a bowl of berries, evidence of time’s power even over this—which, paradoxically, only seems to increase its poetry, its deep resonance. If you could see the notes of a cello, when the bow draws slowly and deeply across its strings, and those resonant reverberations which of all instruments’ are nearest to the sound of the human voice emerge—no, the wrong verb, they seem to come into being all at once, to surround us, suddenly, with presence—if that were made visible, that would be the poetry of Osias Beert. But the still life resides in absolute silence. Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something, or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read. Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a band of hikers will make themselves heard. But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails, the solid and dependable apples, this heap of rumpled books, this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver. These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur. The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen. Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over, like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does, as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so, and things fall into being, tumble through the progression of existing in time. Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life—this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife—and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they are not, would not be, poised on the edge these same things inhabit when they are represented. These things exist—if indeed they are still around at all—in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiting to be spoken. Single word that has been forming all these years in the light on the knife’s pearl handle, in the drops of moisture on nearly translucent grapes: At the end of time, will that word be said?

What if you lose your muse? Your mind will keep searching for an unknown palm, an empty core of clustered starry moisture, a broken harmony of a long lost song. Your heart will trample across moments, scattered here and there hoping to smile through a blank verse, an unmade sculpture, a void cosmos walking through a violet sky. And your soul? That, a sparkle of a crimson sun will dance along the glitter of a fragmentary dream, and in a love that clutches you in transience of an eternity, hold your breath in a paradise of a vibrant vision, and there you will find your muse again, once again. So what if you lose your muse?

Those who’ve left their bootprints in the trenches are those who value human life most. They get unwanted glimpses into the savage nature we really have underneath all the expensive clothes and moisturized skin. This of course, rules out the politicians, feminists, and liberals who are far too cozy hiding behind their daddies’ wallets and sophomoric mentalities as those who feign having tasted the true consequence of a single blood-drop darkening the sand.

She loved so many things about the desert, but her favorite was the rain; the way the landscape sprang to life at the slightest hint of moisture, exploding into a kaleidoscope of exotic colors and smells, never ceased to amaze her.

Second hand books had so much life in them. They'd lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. They'd been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up a mountain where the air thinned. "Some had been held aloft tepid rose-scented baths, and thickened and warped with moisture. Others had child-like scrawls on the acknowledgement page, little fingers looking for a blank space to leave their mark. Then there were the pristine novels, ones that had been read carefully, bookmarks used, almost like their owner barely pried the pages open so loathe were they to damage their treasure. I loved them all. And I found it hard to part with them. Though years of book selling had steeled me. I had to let them go, and each time made a fervent wish they'd be read well, and often. Missy, my best friend, said I was completely cuckoo, and that I spent too much time alone in my shadowy shop, because I believed my books communicated with me. A soft sigh here, as they stretched their bindings when dawn broke, or a hum, as they anticipated a customer hovering close who might run a hand along their cover, tempting them to flutter their pages hello. Books were fussy when it came to their owners, and gave off a type of sound, an almost imperceptible whirr, when the right person was near. Most people weren't aware that books chose us, at the time when we needed them.

We all know that rainbows are temporary optical illusions based on the factors of sunlight, moisture, and heat. The environment creates each rainbow like the mind creates a self. Both creations are relatively real, in that we can genuinely experience them temporarily; but just as the factors that created the illusion (whether rainbow or self) arose, so will they also pass. There is no permanent self; there is no permanent rainbow. It is not true to say that there is no self at all or that everything is empty or illusory, but it is true that everything is constantly changing and that there is no solid, permanent, unchanging self within the process that is life. Everything and everyone is an unfolding process.

As soon as he had left the room and walked into the air, he knew that he would never return and for the first time his fears lifted. It was a spring morning, and when he walked into Severndale Park he felt the breeze bringing back memories of a much earlier life, and he was at peace. He sat beneath a tree and looked up at its leaves in amazement - where once he might have gazed at them and sensed there only the confusion of his own thoughts, now each leaf was so clear and distinct that he could see the lightly coloured veins which carried moisture and life. And he looked down at his own hand, which seemed translucent beside the bright grass. His head no longer ached, and as he lay upon the earth he could feel its warmth beneath him.

But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there,—so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,—that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminiscences.

I feel like I’ve loved you for my whole life, Lilly,” he whispers back, his own voice just as choked as mine. “I just needed to find you.” He lifts his head, his eyes shining, and I watch, spellbound, as a single bead of glittering moisture breaks free and glides down his cheek.

Having a rough time on the trail is not the same as the irredeemable frustrations of urban life, such as being stuck in traffic or wading through a crowded store. Difficulty on the trail, like this long and rainy day, is usually reflected upon fondly. There is the soothing, rhythmic beat of rainfall, the feeling that the woods are being washed and rejuvenated, the odors of the woods awakened by moisture. There is appreciation for the most simple of things, such as a flat and dry piece of ground and something warm to eat. There is satisfaction in having endured hardship, pride in being able to do for myself in the outdoors. There is strength in knowing I can do it again tomorrow.

While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows.

On those walks, he tried very hard not to think of anything in particular. He concentrated instead on what he saw before him, noticing at night what had eluded him by day: how the dirt was so fine it was almost sand, and puffed up into little plumes as he stepped in it, how skinny threads of bark-brown snakes whipsawed silently beneath the brush as he passed. He walked to the ocean and above him the moon disappeared, concealed by tattered rags of clouds, and for a few moments he could only hear the water, not see it, and the sky was thick and warm with moisture, as if the very air here were denser, more significant. Maybe this is what it is to be dead, he thought, and realized it wasn’t so bad after all, and felt better.

We had pale yellow tile in our bathroom rimmed with thin tiles of white. I’d dumped Tack’s old, mismatched towels and added new, thick emerald green ones. They were hanging on the towel rack. My eyes moved. My moisturizer and toner bottles were the deep hued color of moss. My toothbrush was bright pink, Tack’s was electric blue. There was a little bowl by the tap where I tossed my jewelry when I was washing my hands or preparing for bed. It was ceramic painted in glossy sunshine yellow and grass green. My eyes went to the mirror. My undies were cherry red lace. I grinned at myself in the mirror. I lived in color, every day, and my life was vibrant. I rubbed in moisturizer hoping our baby got his or her Dad’s sapphire blue eyes. But I’d settle if they were my green.

XIX. Do you retire to these quieter, safer, greater things! Think you that it is just the same whether you are concerned in having corn from oversea poured into the granaries, unhurt either by the dishonesty or the neglect of those who transport it, in seeing that it does not become heated and spoiled by collecting moisture and tallies in weight and measure, or whether you enter upon these sacred and lofty studies with the purpose of discovering what substance, what pleasure, what mode of life, what shape God has; what fate awaits your soul; where Nature lays us to rest When we are freed from the body; what the principle is that upholds all the heaviest matter in the centre of this world, suspends the light on high, carries fire to the topmost part, summons the stars to their proper changes—and ether matters, in turn, full of mighty wonders? You really must leave the ground and turn your mind's eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we must enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of life there awaits much that is good to know—the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of living and dying, and a life of deep repose.

beneath the brush as he passed. He walked to the ocean and above him the moon disappeared, concealed by tattered rags of clouds, and for a few moments he could only hear the water, not see it, and the sky was thick and warm with moisture, as if the very air here were denser, more significant. Maybe this is what it is to be dead, he thought, and realized it wasn’t so bad after all, and felt better.

Again we are all sprung from the same seed, all have the same father, by whom mother earth the giver of increase, when she has taken in from him the liquid drops of moisture, conceives and bears goodly crops and joyous trees and the race of man, bears all kinds of brute beasts, in that she supplies food with which all feed their bodies and lead a pleasant life and continue their race; wherefore with good cause she has gotten the name of mother.

Byzantium The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

A throbbing ache started to grow in her womb. She wanted more, wanted something... "Rothbury, please," she begged. "Please." And then his fingers were there, delving inside, spreading her moisture up and down and around her opening. Her hips circled and dipped along with his movements. She moaned, saying his name. He groaned, panting along with her. Expertly, he handled her. Rhythmically, sweetly, he tortured her. "Open my trousers," he breathed. She complied. Soon he was freed, his hardness jutting upward, seeking her heat. "Look at me," he bit out through his teeth. As if through a haze, she met his heated, intense gaze. "This is the only time in my life I will ever hurt you." Her brow scrunched and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask him just what exactly he meant, when the tip of his manhood pulsed at the opening of her center. "Hold on," he said, his voice strained. Charlotte gripped his shoulders. Rothbury gripped her hips. Lifting her, he hesitated for a moment. "Do you want it?" She nodded and made some sort of noise, half whimper and half the word "yes." He bent his head to suckle one of her breasts again. For long moments, he held her poised above him as he toyed with her nipples, flicking, lapping, and gently running the bottom row of his teeth against them. When she started to wriggle, he impaled her in one smooth, swift motion. She cried out, nearly surging off of him. "Shh. Shh." He kissed her eyelids, the apples of her cheeks. "Only this time, my angel. Only this time it hurts." He kept very still, waiting for some sort of response from her, she imagined. Where there was once only pleasure, she now felt a stabbing pain. It seemed to radiate around his arousal. Her breathing slowed. This couldn't be it. There had to be more... And then she felt a sort of tickling. She looked down at their joined bodies to find Rothbury using his thumb to flick quickly against a tiny nubbin of flesh hidden in her folds. It felt... wonderful. Like magic, her hips began to move of their own accord. Her breathing increased and the throbbing, damp pleasure returned. She rocked against him. "There you are, Charlotte," he murmured against her throat. "Better?" She nodded shakily, tiny shivers shimmering down her upper body as he nipped at her earlobe. His large hands held her backside tightly against him, controlling, rolling her with him in a primal rhythm.

family life is like that of nations: each member battles for his measure of air and light, of nourishment and territory, and particularly for that measure of admiration and attention which is called ‘glory.’ It is like a forest; each tree must fight for its sunlight; under the ground the roots engage in a death struggle for moisture. We are told that some even exude an acidity that is noxious to all except themselves. Mr. Frazier, in every lively healthy family there is one who must pay.

I have endured everything: hunger and thirst, want of money, want of clothes, of shoes, of linen, every cruelty that penury can inflict. I have blown on my frozen fingers in that pickle-jar of great men, which I should like to see again, now, with you. I worked through a whole winter, seeing my head steam, and perceiving the atmosphere of my own moisture as we see that of horses on a frosty day. I do not know where a man finds the fulcrum that enables him to hold out against such a life.

None of them know, Aomame thought. But I know. Ayumi had a great emptiness inside her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No life could take root there. Not even birds would fly over it. What had created such a wasteland inside Ayumi, only she herself knew. No, maybe not even Ayumi knew the true cause. But one of the biggest factors had to be the twisted sexual desires that the men around Ayumi had forced upon her. As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create the sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically—on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.

At the side of the house he scraped scales of fungus off the shingles. His basement smelled of mildew, his eyes stinging when he put in the laundry. The soil of his vegetable garden was too wet to till, the roots of the seedlings he’d planted washing away. The rhododendrons shed their purple petals too soon, the peonies barely opening before the stalks bent over, the blossoms smashed across the drenched ground. It was carnal, the smell of so much moisture. The smell of the earth’s decay. At night the rain would wake him. He heard it pelting the windows, washing the pitch of the driveway clean. He wondered if it was a sign of something. Of another juncture in his life. He remembered rain falling the first night he spent with Holly, in her cottage. Heavy rain the evening Bela was born. He began expecting it to leak through the bricks around the fireplace, to drip through the ceiling, to seep in below the doors. He thought of the monsoon coming every year in Tollygunge. The two ponds flooding, the embankment between them turning invisible.

Try this: Tomorrow as you shower, praise God for the cleansing that Jesus’ forgiveness provides. As you’re getting dressed, thank God for clothing you with Christ’s righteousness. When you put on your moisturizer, ask God to soften your heart to his leading throughout the day. As you apply your makeup, thank him for being the foundation of your life. When you put in your contacts, ask God to give you eyes to see his workings in the world. And as you put on your earrings, thank him for beautifying your life with the fruits of the Spirit.

You will open the door to this mystery with the word breath. We will select the word mystery instead of the word eternity because they are all mysterious and always we must breathe this warm and mysterious. The warm and sober breath, the solemn and knowing breath; the lasting breath of satisfaction we have earned in earning our last, so the trickle of moisture that provides mountains with valleys and those with streambeds. I have been told to help you breathe and who am I to point out your previous mastery? There is so little that I can do while we wait to begin this life.

The tree is waiting. It has everything already. Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe cones and nuts are providing essential food in this scarce time for mice and squirrels, and its bark is hosting hibernating insects and providing a source of nourishment for hungry deer. It is far from dead. It is, in fact, the life of the wood. It's just getting on with it quietly. It will not burst into life in the spring. It will just put on a new coat and face the world again.

I feel you calling, in the autumn sweet transformation. I have reached my brightest green to the gold burning sun. I have folded my colours into the wind, bright colours taken to the sky. My silk has gone to moisture in the rising atmosphere and I am your colours again, deep and warm. I hear your calling and I answer, I come back to you, to slip inside the dark. Will I be found by the decaying things? Will I be found by the roots and drunk by tree and flower? Will I slip and mingle and roll along, find my way to a river and with it dance, and give myself in a sigh to the ocean? Will I scatter, a few fragments of sand – my body to glisten beneath a caress of moonlight as I make my way towards no more as I find my way to forever

Before he wakes, he dreams of a man standing in a field. He can't see the man's features, but he is tall and thin, and he's helping another, older man hitch the hulk of a tractor carapace to the back of a truck. He knows he's in Montana from the whitened, curved-bowl vastness of the sky, and from the particular kind of cold there, which is completely without moisture and which feels somehow purer than cold he's felt anywhere else. He still can't see the man's features, but he thinks he knows who he is, recognizes his long strides and his way of crossing his arms in front of him as he listens to the other man. 'Cody,' he calls out in his dream, and the man turns, but he's too far away, and so he can't quite tell, under the brim of the man's baseball cap, they share the same face.

Before he wakes, he dreams of a man standing in a field. He can't see the man's features, but he is tall and thin, and he's helping another, older man hitch the hulk of a tractor carapace to the back of a truck. He knows he's in Montana from the whitened, curved-bowl vastness of the sky, and from the particular kind of cold there, which is completely without moisture and which feels somehow purer than cold he's felt anywhere else. He still can't see the man's features, but he thinks he knows who he is, recognizes his long strides and his way of crossing his arms in front of him as he listens to the other man. 'Cody,' he calls out in his dream, and the man turns, but he's too far away, and so he can't quite tell if, under the brim of the man's baseball cap, they share the same face.

I made a discovery. It was cold enough to make my eyes water, and I found out that If I kept them almost closed, the moisture diffused the lights, so that everything - the Moon, the stars, the street lamp - seemed to have halos and points of scattered light around it. The snow-banks seemed to glitter like a sea of spun sugar, and all the stars were woven together by a lace of incandescence, so that I was walking through a Universe so wild, so wonderful that my heart nearly broke with its beauty. "For years, I carried that time and place in mind. It's still there. But the thing is, the Universe didn't make it. I did. I saw it, but I saw it because I made myself see it. I took the stars, which are distant suns, and the night, which is the Earth's shadow, and the snow, which is water undergoing a state-change, and I took the tears in my eyes, and I made a wonderland. No one else has ever been able to see it. No one else has ever been able to go there. Not even I can ever return to it physically, it lies thirty-eight years in the past, in the eye-level perspective of a child, its stereoscopic accuracy based on the separation between the eyes of a child. In only one place does it actually exist. In my mind Elizabeth - in my life. "But I will die, and where will it be, then?" Elizabeth looked up at him. "In mind mind a little? Along with the rest of you?" Hawks looked at her. He reached out and, bending forward as tenderly as a child receiving a snowflake to hold, gently enclosed her in his arms. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth," he said. "I never realized that. I never realized what you were letting me do." "I love you.

A well-known skin specialist patronized by many famous beauties charges seventy-five dollars for a twenty-minute consultation and eight dollars for a cake of sea-mud soap. I get more satisfaction and just as much benefit out of applying a purée of apples and sour cream! [...] Of course, all masques should COVER THE NECK too. [...] Masques should only be used ones or twice a week. [...] While the masque is working, place pads soaked in witch hazel or boric acid over your eyelids and put on your favorite music. [...] A masque really works only when you're lying down. Twenty minutes is the right length of time. Then wash the masque off gently with warm water and follow with a brisk splash of cold water to close the pores. [...] For a luxurious once-a-week treatment give your face a herbal steaming first by putting parsley, dill, or any other favorite herb into a pan of boiling water. (Mint is refreshing too.) Hold a towel over your head to keep the steam rising onto your face. The pores will open so that the masque can do a better job. [...] Here are a few "kitchen masques" that work: MAYONNAISE. [...] Since I'm never sure what they put into those jars at the supermarket, I make my own with whole eggs, olive or peanut oil, and lemon juice (Omit the salt and pepper!). Stir this until it's well blended, or whip up a batch in an electric blender. PUREED VEGETABLES - cucumbers, lemons, or lettuce thickened with a little baby powder. PUREED FRUITS - cantaloupe, bananas, or strawberries mixed to a paste with milk or sour cream or honey. A FAMOUS OLD-FASHIONED MIXTURE of oatmeal, warm water, and a little honey blended to a paste.

I'm here, Papa," she whispered, saying the words she had longed to say for her entire life. "I'm here, and I'm never going to leave you again." He made a sound of contentment and closed his eyes. Just as Evie thought he had fallen asleep, he murmured, "Where shall we walk first today, lovey? The biscuit baker, I s'pose..." Realizing that he imagined this was one of her long-ago childhood visits, Evie replied softly, "Oh, yes." Hastily she knuckled away the excess moisture from her eyes. "I want an iced bun... and a cone of broken biscuits... and then I want to come back here and play dice with you." A rusty chuckle came from his ravaged throat, and he coughed a little. "Let Papa take forty winks before we leaves... there's a good girl..." "Yes, sleep," Evie murmured, turning the cloth over on his forehead. "I can wait, Papa.

For here is the philosophy which sharpeneth the senses, satisfieth the soul, enlargeth the intellect and leadeth man to that true bliss to which he may attain, which consisteth in a certain balance, for it liberateth him alike from the eager quest of pleasure and from the blind feeling of grief; it causeth him to rejoice in the present and neither to fear nor to hope for the future. For that Providence or Fate or Lot which determineth the vicissitudes of our individual life doth neither desire nor permit our knowledge of the one to exceed our ignorance of the other, so that at first sight we are dubious and perplexed. But when we consider more profoundly the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things wandering through infinite space undergo change of aspect. And since we are all subject to a perfect Power, we should not believe, suppose or hope otherwise, than that even as all issueth from good, so too all is good, through good, toward good; from good, by good means, toward a good end. For a contrary view can be held only by one who considereth merely the present moment, even as the beauty of a building is not manifest to one who seeth but one small detail, as a stone, a cement affixed to it or half a partition wall, but is revealed to him who can view the whole and hath understanding to appraise the proportions. We do not fear that by the violence of some erring spirit or by the wrath of a thundering Jove, that which is accumulated in our world could become dispersed beyond this hollow sepulchre or cupola of the heavens, be shaken or scattered as dust beyond this starry mantle. In no other way could the nature of things be brought to naught as to its substance save in appearance, as when the air which was compressed within the concavity of a bubble seemeth to one's own eyes to go forth into the void. For in the world as known to us, object succeedeth ever to object, nor is there an ultimate depth from which as from the artificer's hand things flow to an inevitable nullity. There are no ends, boundaries, limits or walls which can defraud or deprive us of the infinite multitude of things. Therefore the earth and the ocean thereof are fecund; therefore the sun's blaze is everlasting, so that eternally fuel is provided for the voracious fires, and moisture replenisheth the attenuated seas. For from infinity is born an ever fresh abundance of matter.

Here is what the sea smells like. It is more texture than scent, because the sea is primarily made of two substances that have no smell of their own: water and salt. Salt has no smell, but makes the air sting, and so all of the other smells of the sea are layered upon the pang of salt. Water has no smell but instead a comfort. We feel moisture as life and so the smells of the ocean are layered upon the contentment of the water. Salt is treble and water is bass. I don't know how I know this is true, but I know it is true. The sea smells like old wood and wet leaves. Like cold mud and warm stone. Like every creature who has ever lived in it, a churning graveyard and nursery. Like winds from the inland carrying the hot circulation of life and winds from the ocean carrying the distant froth of waves against ships and islands. Like gray, only more so. Like blue, only less so.

Of all the plants, trees have the largest surface area covered in leaves. For every square yard of forest, 27 square yards of leaves and needles blanket the crowns. Part of every rainfall is intercepted in the canopy and immediately evaporates again. In addition, each summer, trees use up to 8,500 cubic yards of water per square mile, which they release into the air through transpiration. This water vapor creates new clouds that travel farther inland to release their rain. As the cycle continues, water reaches even the most remote areas. This water pump works so well that the downpours in some large areas of the world, such as the Amazon basin, are almost as heavy thousands of miles inland as they are on the coast. There are a few requirements for the pump to work: from the ocean to the farthest corner, there must be forest. And, most importantly, the coastal forests are the foundations for this system. If they do not exist, the system falls apart. Scientists credit Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia for the discovery of these unbelievably important connections. They studied different forests around the world and everywhere the results were the same. It didn't matter if they were studying a rain forest or the Siberian taiga, it was always the trees that were transferring life-giving moisture into land-locked interiors. Researchers also discovered that the whole process breaks down if coastal forests are cleared. It's a bit like if you were using an electrical pump to distribute water and you pulled the intake pipe out of the pond. The fallout is already apparent in Brazil, where the Amazonian rain forest is steadily drying out. Central Europe is within the 400-mile zone and, therefore, close enough to the intake area. Thankfully, there are still forests here, even if they are greatly diminished.

Dear God, I love this tree. I love the light filtering through the moss and the leaves. I love all your earth songs—the breeze rustling through the grass, the rhythm of crickets, the beating of wings. I love the rain water in the bird bath and the dragonflies that flit over it. I love the air so laden with moisture that the dew rains out of the tree and bathes my face. I love the artistic little prayers that the spiders weave through the woods. I love the way you blend daylight into darkness, how dusk softens the sharp edges of the world. I love the way the moon changes shape every night. I love the slope of your hills—horizons inside and out. I feel that I’m part of it, that it’s part of me. Here, surrounded and permeated by your creation, I feel you. I feel life. I know myself connected. O God, is there anything you’ve made that can’t pour life and healing into me? When I think of the simplicity and extravagance of creation, I want to bend down and write the word yes across the earth so that you can see it.

Jak’ri had admired how she’d handled captivity, the way Ava had conquered her fears again and again, the sense of humor she hadn’t abandoned in favor of despair. He’d been grateful for the reprieves she’d granted him from his own captivity in dreams, treasuring the moments of freedom they’d shared at Runaka Point. And he respected the intelligence she had repeatedly exhibited both back on the ship and here on this alien world. He studied her from the corner of his eye. She’d pulled her long hair back in what she called a ponytail that slid this way and that across the top of her pack. Little tendrils had escaped and danced around her pretty face as a faint sheen of moisture glistened on her forehead. Jak’ri’s heart thudded in his chest. Since becoming an adult, he had wondered periodically what having a lifemate would be like, if experiencing that depth of emotion and caring would change him in some way. His parents’ union was a loving one, full of laughter, affection, and teasing. Throughout his life, his mother and father had shared a closeness that he’d begun to wonder if he would ever find himself, since past lovers had failed to engender those emotions in him. But now he knew. Now he understood.

But self-mastery triumphs in this Modern Life of ours. So if we haven’t found happiness or calm or balance amidst it all - if we don’t cope - it’s because we’ve not tried hard enough. Because Modern Life dictates there’s an answer out there . . .you just have to try harder to find it and master it. Of course it doesn’t exist. So we are set up to fail. I feel for younger people. I think they’re hit particularly hard by this doomed imperative. Many sociologists peg increased anxiety among teens and young adults to this phenomenon. The standard solution is to consume - food, possessions, partners, gurus. If our self-worth is suffering, we’re told to buy a new moisturizer. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, writes, “We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” Shia once again: “Today we’re told to do more stuff that has no purpose, which makes anxious.” Again, I think young people feel this acutely. And here’s the dirty clincher: All of it drives us outward, away from our true selves and fro our yearning to know ourselves better. Plus, it drives us away from each other. Lack of community and belonging is cited by Dr. Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - And More Miserable Than Ever Before, as the primary driver of anxiety today. I’d include extensive quotes from Dr. Twenge, but I think the book title says it all. Then (big sigh), when we do find it all too much, Modern Life slaps us with a “disorder” or disease diagnosis.

Can anything possibly be salvaged from it?” Wherever you are right now in the story, I am going to interrupt you with Isaiah 35. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. (verses 1–2) There is nothing wrong with a desert that a little rain can’t fix. Dry land is not inherently barren; the dirt itself is not evil. We are after all “formed…of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). And no one’s life is apart from that basic ground from which God can bring his purposes to blossom. There are stretches of time when nothing is growing, but all the while nutrients are in the soil and seeds embedded just beneath the surface. A moment will come when the necessary moisture will bring faith to flower. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” (verses 3–4) You think that you have all you can take? That you can’t lift another burden? That you can’t manage another challenge? Well, “Be strong…! Behold, your God.” God comes. He comes in “vengeance.” He will take care, decisively and completely, of all that is wrong with the story. He comes with “recompense.” He will provide everything to make you whole and mature. The word recompense has a root meaning of “weaning from the mother’s breast.” A happy time, for it means you are making a transition from being a weak and dependent infant, but it’s a terrifying time too, for it means you are no longer treated indulgently as an innocent. “He will come and save you.” Everything God does is woven into the plot for your salvation—the judgments on your sin, the weaning from your innocence, the gifts of maturity. At the end of the story, for you who choose to be his people, you will have a put-together life, a life vibrant with health, a life whole and solid in love.

Suddenly he felt like everything was all wrong. He’d made wrong choices every day of his life. In his mind’s eye floated everyone who’d died because of him. Everyone who’d been hurt. From Mindor to Endor, back to Yavin—back to the corpses that had lain, still smoking, in the ruined doorway of the Lars moisture farm. I guess I sort of thought everything was over. I got my happy ending. I thought I did. I mean, didn’t I do everything you asked me to? Master Yoda, you wanted to break the rule of the Sith. And they’re gone. Ben, you asked me to destroy Darth Vader. I did that, too. Father—even you, Father. You told me that together we would throw down the Emperor. And we did. Now it’s over. But it’s not the end. It’s never the end. The cave boomed and shivered as the rock storm arrived like an artillery barrage. Luke just sat, head down, letting dust and grit trickle inside the back of his collar as meteorites pounded the hills. I guess I was still kind of hoping there might be a Happily Ever After in there somewhere. Not even for me. I was ready to die. I still am. It’s everybody else. It’s like everything we went through, it was for nothing. We’re still fighting. We’ll always be fighting. It’s like I didn’t actually save anybody. Gone is the past, he remembered Master Yoda saying once. Imaginary is the future. Always now, even eternity will be. Which Luke had always interpreted as Don’t worry about what’s already done, and don’t worry about what you’ll do later. Do something now. Which would be fine advice, if he had the faintest clue what that something should be. Maybe if he’d had more experience as a general, he’d know if he should search for his missing men, or return to the crash site and wait for pickup, or try to find some way to signal the task force spaceside. I never should have taken this job. I just don’t know what a general would be doing right now. All I know is what a Jedi … Then his head came up. I do know what a Jedi would be doing—and it isn’t sitting around feeling sorry for himself, for starters.

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God’s air, the Allfather’s air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man’s work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher’s bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod’s slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never—do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother’s milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan’s land. Thy cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistering on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!

His favorite recipe was perfectly simple. He would cook the whole cap of a cèpe, which sometimes weighed three quarters of a pound, in olive oil with whole garlic cloves in a low oven for forty-five minutes until the moisture evaporated. As the mushroom gently browned, the flavors became concentrated, almost like a piece of meat.

Every summer Gloria gathered tiny gherkins from our garden and placed them in jars with vinegar, tarragon, cocktail onions, and black pepper, to be used throughout the year. She made an extraordinary strawberry jam that was “cooked” in the summer sun. The berries were added to a sugar syrup and boiled for a couple of minutes, then the whole mixture was poured into a roasting pan, covered with a screen to keep out insects, and left in the sun for several days until the moisture evaporated and the berries reached an almost candied state.

When he pulls away, a hint of moisture dots his own eyes. 'We'll always have Tiffany's.' I pull my lips between my teeth as I struggle to swallow through the pain in my throat. 'We'll always have Tiffany's.

This cramped little space that stank of earth and smoke and sweat, that dripped water during every hard rain, and whose floor was often a half-frozen soup of mud and sunflower seeds and straw, now seemed to him more comfortable than Ketterling’s HQ could ever be, and he knew why. Here, surrounded by the weapons hanging from nails by their straps, the boxes of hand grenades, the cut-down artillery shells filled with cigarette butts, the crumpled moisture-bloated magazines and greasy playing cards, one lived an honest life. You couldn’t get that back home anymore. The radio and the newspapers were full of lies that would have been insulting even if the streets hadn’t been full of rubble and the air with the shriek of air-raid sirens, and it wasn’t enough for the government that the people merely endure it all, bombs and lies, without objecting. They had to believe the lies, had to parrot them back with sickly smiles plastered on their faces, lest they be branded defeatists and be taken away. It wasn’t like that here. Nickolaus wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. Here, a man might be hungry, he might itch with lice, he might sting with pain from cuts that never healed, he might be empty-headed with fatigue and half-deafened from noise, but he always knew precisely where he stood—with his comrades and with the enemy. There were no intrigues, no politics, no flag-waving. A man never looked you in the eyes and told you black was white, or worse yet, demanded that you agree that black was white. There was no need because he had already asked you to die for him, and once you had agreed, what need was there for words?

Sofia just stared at me and I shook my head, turning back towards my door as Roxy mumbled something against my chest. “Forget it,” I muttered, my gut twisting as I failed him again. “You know,” Sofia said softly behind me. “Everyone says Darius Acrux is heartless and cold blooded just like the Dragon he turns into. But you’re not, are you?” I gave her a flat look over my shoulder but she carried on anyway. “You actually give a shit about other people, don’t you? You want to protect them, look after them…” Her gaze fell on the unconscious girl in my arms like that was proof and I growled at her. “Is there a point to your inaccurate analysis?” Sofia had the nerve to roll her fucking eyes at me. “I’ll message you my number. You can tell Phillip to message me whenever he likes.” I raised an eyebrow at her in surprise and she threw a final look at Roxy in my arms before turning and heading away from us. I unlocked my door awkwardly while still holding her and headed inside, kicking it closed behind me as I dropped her bag and crossed the wide space towards the bed. Roxy’s head lolled back against my shoulder and her hair hung over my arm. She was still soaking wet and I hadn’t realised how much she’d been shivering as I’d walked here but now I could feel the tremors of her body where it was pressed to mine. I quickly used my water magic to pull every bit of moisture from her clothes and hair then pushed some warmth from my body into hers. She drifted near to consciousness as she stopped shivering and shifted in my arms, mumbling something incoherent as she pressed her cheek to my chest. My heart thumped a little harder than usual and I cleared my throat uncomfortably as I lowered her down onto the bed. Her brows pinched and she started mumbling something again as I released her. I pulled her shoes off and tossed them on the floor and she kicked out at me, forcing me to step back. “I can do it myself, Darcy,” she muttered, still slurring. “You shouldn’t have to look after me like this.” Before I could stop her, she lifted her hips up, pulled her skirt off and threw it at me. She still hadn’t opened her eyes and I didn’t think she was really awake at all. The gold panties she wore matched the bra which I could still see as her buttonless shirt had fallen open. I tried not to stare at her, I really tried but I couldn’t stop looking at her bronze skin, her narrow waist, the swell of her breasts as they rose and fell in time with her deep breaths... Fuck it’s like someone picked apart my deepest desires and brought every fantasy I’ve ever had to life. Why did it have to be her? Why did I have to lust after one of the only people in the whole of Solaria who I could never have? I knew I was going to have to marry a Dragon Shifter one day but that didn’t stop me from having other women. But this one would never be mine in any way. She hated me more viscerally than I thought anyone else ever had. And I couldn’t even blame her. I’d hate me too if I was her. What we’d done to her, what I’d done... it was necessary but I still didn’t like it. I was supposed to be working with the other heirs to get rid of them and instead here I was protecting her like I'd lost my fucking mind. (Darius POV)

For the truth of the eye was not in sweet blandishments, no, only through its own tears it came to seeing, only by sorrow it came to perception, only when filled with its own tears to the tears of the world, truth-filled by the obliterating moisture of all existence! Oh, only when awakening in tears did the earthly-death, in which the play-entangled discovered themselves and to which they clung, become changed to death-perceiving, all-perceiving life.

For Mescal was there. Far away she must be, a mere grain of sand in all that world of drifting sands, perhaps ill, perhaps hurt, but alive, waiting for him, calling for him, crying out with a voice that no distance could silence. He did not see the sharp peaks as pitiless barriers, nor the mesas and domes as black-faced death, nor the moisture-drinking sands as life-sucking foes to plant and beast and man. That painted wonderland had sheltered Mescal for a year. He had loved it for its color, its change, its secrecy; he loved it now because it had not been a grave for Mescal, but a home. ‘Therefore he laughed at the deceiving yellow distances in the foreground of glistening mesas, at the deceiving purple distances of the far-off horizon, The wind blew a song in his ears; the dry desert odors were fragrance in his nostrils; the sand tasted sweet between his teeth, and the quivering heat-waves, veiling the desert in transparent haze, framed beautiful pictures for his eyes.

Secondhand books had so much life in them. They’d lived, sometimes in many homes, or maybe just one. They’d been on airplanes, traveled to sunny beaches, or crowded into a backpack and taken high up a mountain where the air thinned. Some had been held aloft tepid rose-scented baths, and thickened and warped with moisture. Others had childlike scrawls on the acknowledgment page, little fingers looking for a blank space to leave their mark. Then there were the pristine novels, ones that had been read carefully, bookmarks used, almost like their owner barely pried the pages open so loath were they to damage their treasure. I loved them all.

the tree stockpiles water in winter. In winter, there’s more than enough rain, and the tree is not consuming water, because almost all plants take a break from growing at that time of year. Together with belowground accumulation of spring showers, the stockpiled water usually lasts until the onset of summer. But in many years, water then gets scarce. After a couple of weeks of high temperatures and no rain, forests usually begin to suffer. The most severely affected trees are those that grow in soils where moisture is usually particularly abundant. These trees don’t know the meaning of restraint and are lavish in their water use, and it is usually the largest and most vigorous trees that pay the price for this behavior.

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good manners are the moisturizer of life.

So, what exactly did Ignita tell you about me?” he hissed, sounding decidedly peevish, even to his own ears. “All good?” “Besides that you are her favourite great-nephew by any measure under the suns –” wielding the foot-wide ladle with aplomb, she poured one last bucketful of dragonwort soup, a noted restorative, down his throat with a pleasant gurgle “– she said that you are honourable, faithful, creative, artistic, misunderstood, a Dragon whose heart lives in his poetry, which you have sadly neglected to admit to me; you are finicky to a fault, severely short-sighted and lacking in firepower.” Gnarr-rum-blasted-death! he swore unhappily. “Nice list. Thanks for sharing.” Blithely, the mite added, “Ignita is also furious that you did not come to her earlier with your eye problems.” Blitz said something even ruder. “She even claimed that I’m more stubborn than you, which I believe was meant to be a compliment. Now, hold still. The eye drops are next.” “She specifically said, ‘Lacking in fire power?’ ” He sighed moodily, unable to break the sense of being utterly defeated. This was not a happy place for a Dragon. His wings drooped as if they weighed a tonne each, and his food stomach churned with nausea. “She didn’t use words such as disabled, worthless, fireless lizard, witless fool, cold-hearted undraconic worm, a Dragon who is no Dragon at all, or –” “Blitz, stop.” “So, why don’t you just run back to Daddy, little Princess? Go on. Go home. Why be dragged down in the maelstrom of a worthless loser?” “Blitz! Shut your stupid fangs.” “Whinging being so charismatic in a Dragon …” Grinding her teeth furiously, the girl who was climbing his neck leaned over to his left upper ear canal and hissed, “Do you know what I would go back to, you thumping great moron? Let me give you the salient highlights. Since I was old enough to walk and my mother passed, it has been impressed upon me that my sole purpose in life is to get married to the richest fool I can charm into my bed, no matter how despicable he might be. I will not inherit. That privilege is for my brothers. Instead, I am merely an entry on my kingdom’s asset register – a very fat entry. I am commanded to be charming, accomplished and perfectly presented at all times. I go to balls to catch wealthy Princes. Can you imagine what it is like to be valued for your dark, beautiful skin, and nothing else? To only ever be seen skin-deep – I mean … you know?” Blitz groaned softly. “So aye, I don’t really want to go home, in case that was somehow unclear. I would rather live with an enormously unreasonable, complaining, crabby, haughty chunk of a Dragon, because among your many admirable qualities and your damnably beautiful honour, you have one gift I value above all others. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?” He croaked, “Of course, aye … sort of … not a whole lot. Sorry.” Nonsensical, but true. Warm moisture dripped into his ear. Crying! Oh, by his wings, what had he done now? The Princess whispered, “You see me, and accept me, just as I am.

Al never forgot that lesson. But he admits to embarrassment that it took him another fifty years to understand why that rich soil was black. The reason was carbon. “Higher concentrations of carbon help feed all the life in the soil,” Al says. “And the darker soils retain moisture better, because the carbon builds a latticework that holds it in place.

At the point that I lay on my deathbed or find myself at the end of my life in whatever way that might come, I want to know with assurance that I squeezed everything out of my life and into the lives of those around me. I want to be wrung dry. I want to be a limp rag empty of everything. For if there is even the slightest hint of moisture within me that I somehow did not squeeze out into the life of someone else, I may have done well in life, but I nonetheless carried something to my grave that should have been left in the life of someone now standing at my graveside. And to die empty is the passion that wrings me dry in the living of my days.

Pregnancy Skincare: Nurturing Your Glow with Expert Care – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Pregnancy – a wondrous journey that transforms your world in every conceivable way. As you prepare to welcome a new life into the world, your body takes center stage, and so does your skincare routine. Amidst the excitement and anticipation, the canvas of your skin undergoes its own set of changes. But fret not, for the guidance of best gynecologist obstetricians in Chandigarh and the expert care at Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital can help you navigate the realm of pregnancy skincare with grace and confidence. The Glow and the Challenges Ah, the famed pregnancy glow! While it’s true that many expectant mothers experience a certain radiance, it’s also a time when your skin decides to throw a few curveballs. Hormones like estrogen and progesterone, the maestros behind many pregnancy changes, might lead to increased oil production. This could result in unexpected acne or that elusive “glow” turning into a somewhat excessive shine. And let’s not forget about the infamous melasma, often referred to as the “mask of pregnancy.” This uneven pigmentation might make an appearance on your face, especially if you’re basking in the sun’s rays without proper protection. But worry not, for the guidance of the best gynaecologist in Chandigarh, you can take steps to manage these challenges and let your true radiance shine through. Dos and Don’ts In this symphony of pregnancy skincare, it’s crucial to compose a harmonious routine that nurtures both your skin and the life growing within you. First and foremost, let’s talk hydration. Drinking water is like giving your skin a refreshing dose of vitality, ensuring that it remains supple and resilient. As you venture into the world of skincare products, remember that less is more. Opt for gentle, pregnancy-safe cleansers that cleanse without stripping away your skin’s natural moisture. Ingredients like hyaluronic acid and glycerin can be your skin’s best friends, offering hydration without clogging pores. Ah, the allure of sunscreen! Now more than ever, shielding your skin from the sun’s rays is of paramount importance. Look for a broad-spectrum SPF and ensure that it’s pregnancy-safe. A hat and sunglasses can also join the ensemble of sun protection. Now, as you scan the beauty aisles, you might come across a wide array of products promising miracles. But be cautious – not all ingredients are pregnancy-friendly. Best gynecologist in Sector44C would advise steering clear of retinoids, salicylic acid, and benzoyl peroxide. Instead, embrace the calming embrace of ingredients like chamomile and aloe vera. Treating Yourself with Care Amidst the whirlwind of preparations, don’t forget to treat yourself to moments of self-care. A gentle exfoliation once or twice a week can help slough away dead skin cells and keep your complexion radiant. Opt for exfoliants with natural granules to ensure that your skin is treated with the gentleness it deserves. Expert Support for Your Glow The journey of pregnancy is as unique as a fingerprint, and so is your skin’s response to it. That’s why seeking guidance from the best obstetricians in Chandigarh can make all the difference. As you navigate the realms of pregnancy skincare, remember that the changes your skin undergoes are a testament to the incredible journey you’re on. It’s a journey of growth, transformation, and the anticipation of new beginnings. With the guidance of experts, a touch of self-care, and the support of Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital, you can stride through this journey with confidence, letting your inner glow shine as brightly as your dreams.

As any plant grows, it builds its body to suit its environment, both in root and shoot. The shape that emerges is a direct response to the physical obstacles it encountered, the distribution of nutrients in the soil, and the direction of the light. In this way a plant's entire body is a physical expression of the conditions, moment to moment, over the whole story of its life. The newest shoots and roots will account for changes; the oldest parts of the plant are a record of conditions that came before. In this way the plant is a map for which one hardly needs a key: the story of a plant's life can be decoded on sight. In our brains, a memory is a physical entity, a connection between neurons. In plants, memories may be physical pathways too; the root that threads through soil branches and turns, indicating where a patch of moisture once was. The lobe on a trunk where a branch once existed tells the story of sunlight since shaded out. The substrate of these memories is the soil and the atmosphere, rather than our brain matter.

She’d thought binding would enslave her. Instead, for the first time in her life, she felt whole. Tighe watched her with moisture in his own eyes. He kissed her, and the sweetness, the passion, exploded inside her a hundred times more brilliant than before as if she’d been living life in two dimensions, two black-and-white dimensions, and through this ritual, he’d lifted her into a stunning new existence.

By the time a tree is full-grown, the underground root system is enormous; a mature oak tree, for example, has literally hundreds of miles of roots to tap the soil’s resources in an endless quest for water. Each drop is collected by the root hairs and passed along, from one cell to the next, up the trunk and to the leaves, and in such a way that none of the precious moisture and minerals collected by the roots leaks back into the soil.

Twice the clouds came down, to swathe Bel Air in their delicate folds of moisture for twenty-four hours. On the second occasion, the five of us walked in cloud halfway to the Col de Fer. By road, of course. The exercise acted like a cure. I never remember feeling fitter in all my life. And the music of the orchestra of waters we could not see was unforgettable.

Gnocchi So, the recipe for gnocchi: A little over 1 pound of potatoes suitable for mashing; red potatoes are an option as well. Don’t peel them, so no excess moisture infiltrates the potatoes. Cook them in water with salt until they’re soft but not too soft. Halve and mash with a potato masher. Remove the peel from the masher after each potato. Add flour to the mashed potatoes. This can’t be quantified; add as much as goes in—it depends on the potato, on the degree to which it was cooked, on the moisture in the potato, and on the flour itself. In any case, the mashed potatoes must be warm. Stir until a warm, pleasant dough forms. Coat your hands with flour and form snakes with a diameter of about 1 centimeter (or nearly ½ an inch)—different from the semolina gnocchi rolls. Cut every roll into little pieces, almost 1 inch long—usually each piece should be closer to ½ an inch, but Aviram was afraid that would be too much work for me. Place the gnocchi on a floured tray, leaving some space around each one. Here, too, he spared me some work; I didn’t transfer each gnocco with a fork in order to create slits that would enhance cooking and soaking in the sauce. Drop the gnocchi in several batches, depending on quantity, into a large pot (I didn’t buy one; Michal loaned me a pot on the day of the dress rehearsal) full of water with salt, as when preparing pasta; use 1 tablespoon of salt per 4 cups of water or so, over a large flame. Once the gnocchi float, remove them with a skimmer into a serving bowl, pour the sauce that has been prepared in advance over them, and sprinkle parmesan. You can also prepare them slightly in advance and warm them in the oven.   ***

There are these tiny shrimp that live in potholes in the rocks of the desert, and whenever it’s dry, they go dormant. You don’t even know they’re there. But as soon as it rains, you see them darting around in the water, as if they fell from the sky in droplets instead of just waiting around for the first sign of moisture to revive them. Tonight I was a desert shrimp. Something happened to me on a cellular level. I felt it as soon as the water reached my thighs. It’s like some dormant portion of me moistened itself back to life, and as I glided forward into the pool and took my first few strokes, I didn’t care anymore what I looked like or what people might say about me or whether they thought it was hilarious that chubby girl was out there doing freestyle. I didn’t care about anyone or anything. I just swam. I

How, then, shall he be a God, who has not as yet been made a man? Or how can he be perfect who was but lately created? How, again, can he be immortal, who in his mortal nature did not obey his Maker? For it must be that thou, at the outset, shouldest hold the rank of a man, and then afterwards partake of the glory of God. For thou dost not make God, but God thee. If, then, thou art God’s workmanship, await the hand of thy Maker which creates everything in due time; in due time as far as thou art concerned, whose creation is being carried out. Offer to Him thy heart in a soft and tractable state, and preserve the form in which the Creator has fashioned thee, having moisture in thyself, lest, by becoming hardened, thou lose the impressions of His fingers. But by preserving the framework thou shalt ascend to that which is perfect, for the moist clay which is in thee is hidden [there] by the workmanship of God. His hand fashioned thy substance; He will cover thee over [too] within and without with pure gold and silver, and He will adorn thee to such a degree, that even “the King Himself shall have pleasure in thy beauty.” But if thou, being obstinately hardened, dost reject the operation of His skill, and show thyself ungrateful towards Him, because thou wert created a [mere] man, by becoming thus ungrateful to God, thou hast at once lost both His workmanship and life. For creation is an attribute of the goodness of God but to be created is that of human nature. If then, thou shalt deliver up to Him what is thine, that is, faith towards Him and subjection, thou shalt receive His handiwork, and shall be a perfect work of God.