Nails Beauty Quotes

Lady Katsa, is it?" "Yes, Lord Prince." "I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky." "Yes, Lord Prince." "I've heard you can kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger." She smiled. "Yes, Lord Prince." "Does it make it easier?" "I don't understand you." "To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?

You're going to break his heart, Abby. You're going to break his heart! The one girl he trusts enough to fall for, and you're going to nail him to the wall!

You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, endless discussion and limitless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. We are gleaming animals painted in moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.

Neither one of you will just come out and say it, that’s the problem. You’re both so scared of what might happen that you’re fighting it tooth and nail. I know for a fact that if you looked Travis in the eye and told him you wanted him, he would never look at another woman again.

As she watched him she understood the quality of his beauty. How his labor had shaped him. How the wood he fashioned had fashioned him. Each plank he planed, each nail he drove, each thing he made molded him. Had left its stamp on him. Had given him his strength, his supple grace.

I also felt that Ron and Hermione would have gotten divorced. I'm sorry, I just do. The end of Harry Potter did feel ultimately to me...just the fact everybody had married everybody. The books were so real and so grounded in what things are really like when you're that age, she nailed that so beautifully. And then there was this slightly fantastical ending. I know that was there for her to say, 'Really, I mean it, no more books,' but you do sort of go, people who were in a war are different from people who haven't been, and how does it affect them? But am I going to second-guess my favorite writer? I think not.

Van Houten, I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory. I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officers, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. But Alhamdulilah all of this is better than the scent of a woman completely on fire, or a truckload of men, who look like my father pulling out my teeth and nails, or fourteen men between my legs, or a gun, or a promise, or a lie, or his name, or his manhood in my mouth.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the small of my back, tugging me to his chest. I threw my arms around his shoulders, sliding my nails up and down his neck gently. “Stay with me. And with Nathaniel and Lauren. All day. Be happy today.” “That’s it?” He bent down and kissed me richly. “Each time I look at you, I want to see a smile on your beautiful face.” “Will you be looking at me a lot?” “I’m always stealing glances,” he confessed. “You rarely notice.

...the other half of rising—the very half that makes rising necessary—is having been nailed to the cross.

I will go directly to her home, ring the bell, and walk in. Here I am, take me-or stab me to death. Stab the heart, stab the brains, stab the lungs, the kidneys, the viscera, the eyes, the ears. If only one organ be left alive you are doomed-doomed to be mine, forever, in this world and the next and all the worlds to come. I'm a desperado of love, a scalper, a slayer. I'm insatiable. I eat hair, dirty wax, dry blood clots, anything and everything you call yours. Show me your father, with his kites, his race horses, his free passes for the opera: I will eat them all, swallow them alive. Where is the chair you sit in, where is your favorite comb, your toothbrush, your nail file? Trot them out that I may devour them at one gulp. You have a sister more beautiful than yourself, you say. Show her to me-I want to lick the flesh from her bones.

What was beauty unless you intended to use it, like a hammer, or a key? It was just something for other people to use and admire, or envy, despise. To nail their dreams onto like a picture hanger on a blank wall. And so many girls saying, use me, dream me.

But here the correlation with Beauty and the Beast ends. In the fable, the beauty kisses the beast. In the Bible, the beauty does much more. He becomes the beast so the beast can become the beauty. Jesus changes places with us. We, like Adam, were under a curse, but Jesus "changed places with us and put himself under that curse" (Gal. 3:13).

I met a girl in a U-Haul. A beautiful girl And I fell for her. I fell hard. Unfortunately, sometimes life gets in the way. Life definitely got in my way. It got all up in my damn way, Life blocked the door with a stack of wooden 2x4's nailed together and attached to a fifteen inch concrete wall behind a row of solid steel bars, bolted to a titanium frame that no matter how hard I shoved against it- It wouldn't budge. Sometimes life doesn't budge. It just gets all up in your damn way. It blocked my plans, my dreams, my desires, my wishes, my wants, my needs. It blocked out that beautiful girl That I fell so hard for. Life tries to tell you what's best for you What should be most important to you What should come in first Or second Or third. I tried so hard to keep it all organized, alphabetized, stacked in chronological order, everything in its perfect space, its perfect place. I thought that's what life wanted me to do. This is what life needed for me to do. Right? Keep it all in sequence? Sometimes, life gets in your way. It gets all up in your damn way. But it doesn't get all up in your damn way because it wants you to just give up and let it take control. Life doesn't get all up in your damn way because it just wants you to hand it all over and be carried along. Life wants you to fight it. It wants you to grab an axe and hack through the wood. It wants you to get a sledgehammer and break through the concrete. It wants you to grab a torch and burn through the metal and steel until you can reach through and grab it. Life wants you to grab all the organized, the alphabetized, the chronological, the sequenced. It wants you to mix it all together, stir it up, blend it. Life doesn't want you to let it tell you that your little brother should be the only thing that comes first. Life doesn't want you to let it tell you that your career and your education should be the only thing that comes in second. And life definitely doesn't want me To just let it tell me that the girl I met, The beautiful, strong, amazing, resilient girl That I fell so hard for Should only come in third. Life knows. Life is trying to tell me That the girl I love, The girl I fell So hard for? There's room for her in first. I'm putting her first.

Beautiful is another word we tossed around too casually, slopping it over everything from cars to nail polish until the word collapsed under the weight of all the banality. But the world is beautiful. I hope they never forget that. The world is beautiful.

The anger of the weak never goes away, Professor, it just gets a little moldy. It molds like a beautiful blue cheese in the dark, growing stronger, and more interesting. The poor and the weak die with all their anger intact and probably those angers go on growing in the dark of the grave like the hair and the nails.

The most common English word spoken in the nail salon was sorry. It was the one refrain for what it meant to work in the service of beauty. Again and again, I watched as manicurists, bowed over a hand or foot of a client, some young as seven, say, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," when they had nothing wrong. I have seen workers, you included, apologize dozens of times throughout a forty-five-minute manicure, hoping to gain warm traction that would lead to the ultimate goal, a tip--only to say sorry anyway when none was given. In the nail salon, sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. It no longer merely apologizes, but insists, reminds: I'm here, right here, beneath you. It is the lowering of oneself so that the client feels right, superior, and charitable. In the nail salon, one's definition of sorry is deranged into a new word entirely, one that's charged and reused as both power and defacement at once. Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat.

You don't notice the dead leaving when they really choose to leave you. You're not meant to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper undulating down. I would compare it to a woman in the back of a lecture hall or theater whom no one notices until she slips out.Then only those near the door themselves, like Grandma Lynn, notice; to the rest it is like an unexplained breeze in a closed room. Grandma Lynn died several years later, but I have yet to see her here. I imagine her tying it on in her heaven, drinking mint juleps with Tennessee Williams and Dean Martin. She'll be here in her own sweet time, I'm sure. If I'm to be honest with you, I still sneak away to watch my family sometimes. I can't help it, and sometimes they still think of me. They can't help it.... It was a suprise to everyone when Lindsey found out she was pregnant...My father dreamed that one day he might teach another child to love ships in bottles. He knew there would be both sadness and joy in it; that it would always hold an echo of me. I would like to tell you that it is beautiful here, that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe. But this heaven is not about safety just as, in its graciousness, it isn't about gritty reality. We have fun. We do things that leave humans stumped and grateful, like Buckley's garden coming up one year, all of its crazy jumble of plants blooming all at once. I did that for my mother who, having stayed, found herself facing the yard again. Marvel was what she did at all the flowers and herbs and budding weeds. Marveling was what she mostly did after she came back- at the twists life took. And my parents gave my leftover possessions to the Goodwill, along with Grandma Lynn's things. They kept sharing when they felt me. Being together, thinking and talking about the dead, became a perfectly normal part of their life. And I listened to my brother, Buckley, as he beat the drums. Ray became Dr. Singh... And he had more and more moments that he chose not to disbelieve. Even if surrounding him were the serious surgeons and scientists who ruled over a world of black and white, he maintained this possibility: that the ushering strangers that sometimes appeared to the dying were not the results of strokes, that he had called Ruth by my name, and that he had, indeed, made love to me. If he ever doubted, he called Ruth. Ruth, who graduated from a closet to a closet-sized studio on the Lower East Side. Ruth, who was still trying to find a way to write down whom she saw and what she had experienced. Ruth, who wanted everyone to believe what she knew: that the dead truly talk to us, that in the air between the living, spirits bob and weave and laugh with us. They are the oxygen we breathe. Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish. This wide wide Heaven is about flathead nails and the soft down of new leaves, wide roller coaster rides and escaped marbles that fall then hang then take you somewhere you could never have imagined in your small-heaven dreams.

If a soul could leave the body, she thought, this is the sound it would make: like the screech of a nail being pulled from old wood.

Each night I am nailed into place and forget who I am. Daddy? That's another kind of prison. It's not the prince at all, but my father drunkeningly bends over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon me like some sleeping jellyfish. What voyage is this, little girl? This coming out of prison? God help - this life after death?

All this "honest work" kills beauty in man too. It forces men into poor diet, poor choices, poor paths outside the workplace. Everything in life for them, whether they chose so or not, must revolve around their "honest work". No time to research, pick, and cook a proper meal so I have chips and soda again. No time to work out, to worship the sun in peace, to study so I watch television and jerk off in-between beers again. No time to even so much as consider another way of life so I hammer nails into useless thing for useless people in useless place again. You are being scammed, robbed.

To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising--the very half that makes rising necessary--is having first been nailed to the cross.

While I was backstage before presenting the Best New Artist award, I talked to George Strait for a while. He's so incredibly cool. So down-to-earth and funny. I think it should be known that George Strait has an awesome, dry, subtle sense of humor. Then I went back out into the crowd and watched the rest of the show. Keith Urban's new song KILLS ME, it's so good. And when Brad Paisley ran down into the front row and kissed Kimberley's stomach (she's pregnant) before accepting his award, Kellie, my mom, and I all started crying. That's probably the sweetest thing I've ever seen. I thought Kellie NAILED her performance of the song we wrote together "The Best Days of Your Life". I was so proud of her. I thought Darius Rucker's performance RULED, and his vocals were incredible. I'm a huge fan. I love it when I find out that the people who make the music I love are wonderful people. I love Faith Hill and how she always makes everyone in the room feel special. I love Keith Urban, and how he told me he knows every word to "Love Story" (That made my night). I love Nicole Kidman, and her sweet, warm personality. I love how Kenny Chesney always has something hilarious or thoughtful to say. But the real moment that brought on this wave of gratitude was when Shania Twain HERSELF walked up and introduced herself to me. Shania Twain, as in.. The reason I wanted to do this in the first place. Shania Twain, as in.. the most impressive and independent and confident and successful female artist to ever hit country music. She walked up to me and said she wanted to meet me and tell me I was doing a great job. She was so beautiful, guys. She really IS that beautiful. All the while, I was completely star struck. After she walked away, I realized I didn't have my camera. Then I cried. You know, last night made me feel really great about being a country music fan in general. Country music is the place to find reality in music, and reality in the stars who make that music. There's kindness and goodness and....honesty in the people I look up to, and knowing that makes me smile. I'm proud to sing country music, and that has never wavered. The reason for the being.. nights like last night.

Fire         i   The morning you were made to leave she sat on the front steps, dress tucked between her thighs, a packet of Marlboro Lights near her bare feet, painting her nails until the polish curdled. Her mother phoned–   What do you mean he hit you? Your father hit me all the time but I never left him. He pays the bills and he comes home at night, what more do you want?   Later that night she picked the polish off with her front teeth until the bed you shared for seven years seemed speckled with glitter and blood.       ii   On the drive to the hotel, you remember “the funeral you went to as a little boy, double burial for a couple who burned to death in their bedroom. The wife had been visited by her husband’s lover, a young and beautiful woman who paraded her naked body in the couple’s kitchen, lifting her dress to expose breasts mottled with small fleshy marks, a back sucked and bruised, then dressed herself and walked out of the front door. The wife, waiting for her husband to come home, doused herself in lighter fluid. On his arrival she jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his torso. The husband, surprised at her sudden urge, carried his wife to the bedroom, where she straddled him on their bed, held his face against her chest and lit a match.       iii   A young man greets you in the elevator. He smiles like he has pennies hidden in his cheeks. You’re looking at his shoes when he says the rooms in this hotel are sweltering. Last night in bed I swear I thought my body was on fire.

Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone. If torture were to stop now, I might still recover – if never my looks, then at least my strength and my kes. But other week… or maybe five days… or even three… and it will be too late. Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.

She’d painted her nails with rainbow stripes and it occurred to him that Vicki was just as beautiful and mysterious as a rainbow. One he’d been chasing for years without ever coming close to reaching the pot of gold at the end.

Black Beauty" I paint my nails black, I dye my hair a darker shade of brown 'Cause you like your women Spanish, dark, strong and proud I paint the sky black You said if you could have your way You'd make a night time of today So it'd suit the mood of your soul Oh, what can I do? Nothing, my sparrow blue Oh, what can I do? Life is beautiful but you don't have a clue Sun and ocean blue Their magnificence, it don't make sense to you Black beauty, oh oh oh Black beauty, oh oh oh I paint the house black My wedding dress black leather too You have no room for light Love is lost on you I keep my lips red The same like cherries in the spring Darling, you can't let everything Seem so dark blue Oh, what can I do? To turn you on or get through to you Oh, what can I do? Life is beautiful but you don't have a clue Sun and ocean blue Their magnificence, it don't make sense to you Black beauty, oh oh oh Black beauty, oh oh oh Black beauty, ah ah Black beauty, ah ah Black beauty, ah ah ah ah Black beauty, baby Black beauty, baby Oh, what can I do? Life is beautiful but you don't have a clue Sun and ocean blue Their magnificence, it don't make sense to you Black beauty, oh oh oh Black beauty, oh oh oh Black beauty, oh oh oh Black beauty, oh oh oh

You’re only helpless when your nails are drying and even then I’m sure you could still pull the trigger if you had to.

She had made a terrible error in judgement and he had turned it into something permanent and beautiful. That was the nail in the tire. Or not even that. Not her reading it, not his writing it, but

When you paint your lips, eye lids, nails or whatever, to look attractive, don't forget your up stairs(intellect) if you leave it behind, i will consider all other colors invalid.

You realize people like you and Trav are going to fight, right?" America said, filing her nails as she chewed the huge wad of gum in her mouth. I turned over on the bed. "You are officially fired. You are a terrible conscious.

both you and paintings are layered… first, ephemera and notations on the back of the canvas. Labels indicate gallery shows, museum shows, footprints in the snow, so to speak. Then pencil scribbles on the stretcher, usually by the artist, usually a title or date. Next the stretcher itself. Pine or something. Wooden triangles in the corners so the picture can be tapped tighter when the canvas becomes loose. Nails in the wood securing the picture to the stretcher. Next, a canvas: linen, muslin, sometimes a panel; then the gesso - a primary coat, always white. A layer of underpaint, usually a pastel color, then, the miracle, where the secrets are: the paint itself, swished around, roughly, gently, layer on layer, thick or thin, not more than a quarter of an inch ever -- God can happen in that quarter of an inch -- the occasional brush hair left embedded, colors mixed over each other, tones showing through, sometimes the weave of the linen revealing itself. The signature on top of the entire goulash. Then varnish is swabbed over the whole. Finally, the frame, translucent gilt or carved wood. The whole thing is done.

His laugh was like nails to a chalkboard. "I cannot remember a time when anything was new to me. I only ever see the tattered remains of what once was.

One should let one's nails grow for a fortnight. O, how sweet it is to drag brutally from his bed a child with no hair on his upper lip and with wide open eyes, make as if to touch his forehead gently with one's hand and run one's fingers through his beautiful hair. Then suddenly, when he is least expecting it, to dig one's long nails into his soft breast, making sure, though, that one does not kill him; for if he died, one would not later be able to contemplate his agonies. Then one drinks his blood as one licks his wounds; and during this time, which ought to last for eternity, the child weeps.

Is that from the fight or the window?” “The window,” he answered, frowning at my bloodied nails. “You saved my life, you know.” His eyebrows pulled together. “I wasn’t leaving without you.” “I knew you’d come,” I smiled, squeezing his fingers between mine.

POCKET-SIZED FEMINISM The only other girl at the party is ranting about feminism. The audience: a sea of rape jokes and snapbacks and styrofoam cups and me. They gawk at her mouth like it is a drain clogged with too many opinions. I shoot her an empathetic glance and say nothing. This house is for wallpaper women. What good is wallpaper that speaks? I want to stand up, but if I do, whose coffee table silence will these boys rest their feet on? I want to stand up, but if I do, what if someone takes my spot? I want to stand up, but if I do, what if everyone notices I’ve been sitting this whole time? I am guilty of keeping my feminism in my pocket until it is convenient not to, like at poetry slams or my women’s studies class. There are days I want people to like me more than I want to change the world. There are days I forget we had to invent nail polish to change color in drugged drinks and apps to virtually walk us home at night and mace disguised as lipstick. Once, I told a boy I was powerful and he told me to mind my own business. Once, a boy accused me of practicing misandry. You think you can take over the world? And I said No, I just want to see it. I just need to know it is there for someone. Once, my dad informed me sexism is dead and reminded me to always carry pepper spray in the same breath. We accept this state of constant fear as just another part of being a girl. We text each other when we get home safe and it does not occur to us that our guy friends do not have to do the same. You could saw a woman in half and it would be called a magic trick. That’s why you invited us here, isn’t it? Because there is no show without a beautiful assistant? We are surrounded by boys who hang up our naked posters and fantasize about choking us and watch movies we get murdered in. We are the daughters of men who warned us about the news and the missing girls on the milk carton and the sharp edge of the world. They begged us to be careful. To be safe. Then told our brothers to go out and play.

His hand was a claw, sharp enough to open her. She would be like all the others—Ruta Badowski, in her broken dancing shoes. Tommy Duffy, still with the dirt of his last baseball game under his nails. Gabriel Johnson, taken on the best day of his life. Or even Mary White, holding out for a future that never arrived. She’d be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that they’d be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. They’d come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how they’d walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-man’s-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, they’d simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself.

Off To The Races" My old man is a bad man but I can't deny the way he holds my hand And he grabs me, he has me by my heart He doesn't mind I have a Las Vegas past He doesn't mind I have an LA crass way about me He loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart Swimming pool glimmering darling White bikini off with my red nail polish Watch me in the swimming pool bright blue ripples you Sitting sipping on your black Cristal Oh yeah Light of my life, fire of my loins Be a good baby, do what I want Light of my life, fire of my loins Give me them gold coins, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Ready for you My old man is a tough man but He's got a soul as sweet as blood red jam And he shows me, he knows me Every inch of my tar black soul He doesn't mind I have a flat broke down life In fact he says he thinks it's why he might like about me Admires me, the way I roll like a Rolling Stone Likes to watch me in the glass room bathroom, Chateau Marmont Slippin' on my red dress, puttin' on my makeup Glass film, perfume, cognac, lilac Fumes, says it feels like heaven to him Light of his life, fire of his loins Keep me forever, tell me you own me Light of your life, fire of your loins Tell me you own me, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Now I'm off to the races, laces Leather on my waist is tight and I am fallin' down I can see your face is shameless, Cipriani's basement Love you but I'm going down God I'm so crazy, baby, I'm sorry that I'm misbehaving I'm your little harlot, starlet, Queen of Coney Island Raising hell all over town Sorry 'bout it My old man is a thief and I'm gonna stay and pray with him 'til the end But I trust in the decision of the Lord to watch over us Take him when he may, if he may I'm not afraid to say that I'd die without him Who else is gonna put up with me this way? I need you, I breathe you, I never leave you They would rue the day I was alone without you You're lying with your gold chain on, cigar hanging from your lips I said "Hon' you never looked so beautiful as you do now, my man." And we're off to the races, places Ready, set the gate is down and now we're goin' in To Las Vegas chaos, Casino Oasis, honey it is time to spin Boy you're so crazy, baby, I love you forever not maybe You are my one true love, you are my one true love You are my one true love

I figured if I held my breath long enough and sucked my stomach up under my ribs far enough and powdered my face pale enough and gave myself enough razor burns and plucked the hairs between my eyebrows until my eyes watered and painted my nails girly enough and squeezed my jeans on tight enough and demolished my natural beauty enough I’d be pretty enough

Could I come near your beauty with my nails, I could set my ten commandments in your face.

It's only when the settlement work has gone on for months that one realizes how bad things are. As our secretary said to me, your finger-nails never seem dirty until you wash your hands.

Excuse me while I throw this down, I’m old and cranky and tired of hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better. Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing. Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and big ones, and no breasts whatsoever. Real women start their lives as baby girls. And as baby boys. And as babies of indeterminate biological sex whose bodies terrify their doctors and families into making all kinds of very sudden decisions. Real women have big hands and small hands and long elegant fingers and short stubby fingers and manicures and broken nails with dirt under them. Real women have armpit hair and leg hair and pubic hair and facial hair and chest hair and sexy moustaches and full, luxuriant beards. Real women have none of these things, spontaneously or as the result of intentional change. Real women are bald as eggs, by chance and by choice and by chemo. Real women have hair so long they can sit on it. Real women wear wigs and weaves and extensions and kufi and do-rags and hairnets and hijab and headscarves and hats and yarmulkes and textured rubber swim caps with the plastic flowers on the sides. Real women wear high heels and skirts. Or not. Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and smell good and they are androgynous and smell good, except when they don’t smell so good, but that can be changed if desired because real women change stuff when they want to. Real women have ovaries. Unless they don’t, and sometimes they don’t because they were born that way and sometimes they don’t because they had to have their ovaries removed. Real women have uteruses, unless they don’t, see above. Real women have vaginas and clitorises and XX sex chromosomes and high estrogen levels, they ovulate and menstruate and can get pregnant and have babies. Except sometimes not, for a rather spectacular array of reasons both spontaneous and induced. Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither, and otherwise. Doesn’t make them any less real. There is a phrase I wish I could engrave upon the hearts of every single person, everywhere in the world, and it is this sentence which comes from the genius lips of the grand and eloquent Mr. Glenn Marla: There is no wrong way to have a body. I’m going to say it again because it’s important: There is no wrong way to have a body. And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with the “real women are like such-and-so” crap. You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis. All human beings are real. Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem. Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and me

One should let one’s fingernails grow for a fortnight. Oh! how sweet to snatch brutally from his bed a boy who has as yet nothing upon his upper lip, and, with eyes open wide, to feign to stroke his forehead softly, brushing back his beautiful locks! And all of a sudden, just when he least expects it, to sink your long nails into his tender breast, but not so that he dies, for if he died you would miss the sight of his subsequent sufferings. Then you drink his blood, sucking the wounds, and during this time, which should last an eternity, the child weeps.

You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. ..It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. We are gleaming animals painted in moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.

He sat on the edge of my bed. He didn't say anything at first, just stared at my toenails. I curled them under instinctively and immediately was worried that I'd messed up my painting job. I let them uncurl. Only one was marred. I used my thumb to rub most of the polish off of it and then I stared at my foot, which suddenly looked so vulnerable and imperfect with the one toe ringed in hot pink polish but bare on the inside of the nail. Like I'd started but had forgotten to finish being beautiful.

Why do you want to talk about ugly things?” she said. Her voice was silvery, like a music box. She waved one hand in the air to dry the nails. “We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It’s not good for you.

They want time to move fast so they can paint their nails a provocative red and wear high heels that crack walnuts and make people jump. He wants time to slow down so he can prolong the enjoyment of walking among them, of being next to this self-contained beauty.

Snow White swallows that like a sword. She lets the hammer click back into place. Everything in her that's not nailed down is shaking loose.

Since he’d shared, I felt compelled to give him something. “‘Hurt’.” He nodded. “The original Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails?” I smiled. “Johnny. Always.

I suppose food is a part of life that most humans can control. They give food a lot of power - food can make a person more beautiful, or less beautiful; it can improve or damage skin; it can make a person's body more attractive, help make hair and nails stronger; it can heal you or slowly kill you. There's also clean food and dirty food; if you eat clean, the message is that you are a clean and pure person; if you eat dirty, then the message is that you are dirty and impure. If you lose control in your life, you can find control in your food.

destroying beauty a rose red sunlight; I take it apart in the garage like a puzzle: the petals are as greasy as old bacon and fall like the maidens of the world backs to floor and I look up at the old calendar hung from a nail and touch my wrinkled face and smile because the secret is beyond me.

Empurpled rapturous hills I guess and the long day brushstroke by brushstroke enfeebling into darkness and then the fires blooming on the pitch plains. In the beautiful blue night there was plenty of visiting and the braves was proud and ready to offer a lonesome soldier a squaw for the duration of his passion. John Cole and me sought out a hollow away from prying eyes. Then with the ease of men who have rid themselves of worry we strolled among the Indian tents and heard the sleeping babies breathing and spied out the wondrous kind called by the Indians winkte or by white men berdache, braves dressed in the finery of squaws. John Cole gazes on them but he don’t like to let his eyes linger too long in case he gives offence. But he’s like the plough-horse that got the whins. All woken in a way I don’t see before. The berdache puts on men’s garb when he goes to war, this I know. Then war over it’s back to the bright dress. We move on and he’s just shaking like a cold child. Two soldiers walking under the bright nails of the stars. John Cole’s long face, long stride. The moonlight not able to flatter him because he was already beautiful.

Where’s the nobility in patching up a bunch of old tables and chairs? Corrosive to the soul, quite possibly. I’ve seen too many estates not to know that. Idolatry! Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? Because, I mean—mending old things, preserving them, looking after them—on some level there’s no rational grounds for it— … fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn’t be an object. It’d be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag.” — Hobie, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

There is a tree. At the downhill edge of a long, narrow field in the western foothills of the La Sal Mountains -- southeastern Utah. A particular tree. A juniper. Large for its species -- maybe twenty feet tall and two feet in diameter. For perhaps three hundred years this tree has stood its ground. Flourishing in good seasons, and holding on in bad times. "Beautiful" is not a word that comes to mind when one first sees it. No naturalist would photograph it as exemplary of its kind. Twisted by wind, split and charred by lightning, scarred by brushfires, chewed on by insects, and pecked by birds. Human beings have stripped long strings of bark from its trunk, stapled barbed wire to it in using it as a corner post for a fence line, and nailed signs on it on three sides: NO HUNTING; NO TRESPASSING; PLEASE CLOSE THE GATE. In commandeering this tree as a corner stake for claims of rights and property, miners and ranchers have hacked signs and symbols in its bark, and left Day-Glo orange survey tape tied to its branches. Now it serves as one side of a gate between an alfalfa field and open range. No matter what, in drought, flood heat and cold, it has continued. There is rot and death in it near the ground. But at the greening tips of its upper branches and in its berrylike seed cones, there is yet the outreach of life. I respect this old juniper tree. For its age, yes. And for its steadfastness in taking whatever is thrown at it. That it has been useful in a practical way beyond itself counts for much, as well. Most of all, I admire its capacity for self-healing beyond all accidents and assaults. There is a will in it -- toward continuing to be, come what may.

Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone. If torture were to stop now, I might still recover – if never my looks, then at least my strength and my kes. But another week… or maybe five days… or even three… and it will be too late. Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.

Rousseau (I’ll note with your permission) Could not conceive how solemn Grimm Dared clean his nails in front of him, The madcap sage and rhetorician. Champion of rights and liberty, In this case judged wrong-headedly. One still can be a man of action And mind the beauty of one’s nails: Why fight the age’s predilection? Custom’s a despot and prevails.

I live in my neighborhood. My neighborhood consists of the dry cleaner, the subway stop, the pharmacist, the supermarket, the cash machine, the deli, the beauty salon, the nail place, the newsstand, and the place where I go for lunch. All this is within two blocks of my house. Which is another thing I love about life in New York: Everything is right there. If you forgot to buy parsley, it takes only a couple of minutes to run out and get it. This is good, because I often forget to buy parsley.

Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street. He wore nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak. He ate only once a day, and never something cooked. He fasted for fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh waned from his thighs and cheeks. Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy beard grew on his chin. His glance turned to icy when he encountered women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city of nicely dressed people. He saw merchants trading, princes hunting, mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted bitter. Life was torture. A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was his goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my self, the great secret.

Today is a black day. Tomorrow it may be white. You may look beautiful one day, and not the next. It is not only a matter of other people's perceptions, it's about our own perceptions. We constantly change. Every day our hair grows, our nails grow, we grow older. Everything ends.

Taking the . . . vow to help others implies that instead of holding our own individual territory and defending it tooth and nail, we become open to the world that we are living in. It means we are willing to take on greater responsibility, immense responsibility. In fact, it means taking a big chance. —CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE

Why the devil couldn’t it have been blue?” I said to myself. And this thought—one of the most profound ever made since the discovery of butterflies—consoled me for my misdeed and reconciled me with myself. I stood there, looking at the corpse with, I confess, a certain sympathy. The butterfly had probably come out of the woods, well-fed and happy, into the sunlight of a beautiful morning. Modest in its demands on life, it had been content to fly about and exhibit its special beauty under the vast cupola of a blue sky, al sky that is always blue for those that have wings. It flew through my open window, entered by room, and found me there. I suppose it had never seen a man; therefore it did not know what a man was. It described an infinite number of circles about my body and saw that I moved, that I had eyes, arms, legs, a divine aspect, and colossal stature. Then it said to itself, “This is probably the maker of butterflies.” The idea overwhelmed it, terrified it; but fear, which is sometimes stimulating, suggested the best way for it to please its creator was to kiss him on the forehead, and so it kissed me on the forehead. When I brushed it away, it rested on the windowpane, saw from there the portrait of my father, and quite possibly perceived a half-truth, i.e., that the man in the picture was the father of the creator of butterflies, and it flew to beg his mercy. Then a blow from a towel ended the adventure. Neither the blue sky’s immensity, nor the flowers’ joy, nor the green leaves’ splendor could protect the creature against a face towel, a few square inches fo cheap linin. Note how excellent it is to be superior to butterflies! For, even if it had been blue, its life would not have been safe; I might have pierced it with a pin and kept it to delight my eyes. It was not blue. This last thought consoled me again. I placed the nail of my middle finger against my thumb, gave the cadaver a flip, and it fell into the garden. It was high time; the provident ants were already gathering around…Yes, I stand by my first idea: I think that it would have been better for the butterfly if it had been born blue.

She looked exactly like an angel. I know my jaw dropped a little, and I just stood there looking at her for what seemed like a long time, shocked into silence, until I suddenly remembered that I had a line I had to deliver. I took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "You're beautiful," I finally said to her, and I think everyone in the whole auditorium, from the blue-haired ladies in the front to my friends in the back row, knew that I actually meant it. I'd nailed that line for the very first time.

That surface bore the swirls and lines – fainter of course, and interrupted, and scarred – that, below, would let his finger print. I moved my hand, feeling the textures, copper, stone, nail, skin; and thought about the mechanics through which we locate beauty. By art, we can only do it through a disinterested precision which represses, while it mimes, all the interest that impels it. And we can only hope the difference between the repressed and the represented will read as intensity. His hand was beautiful.

Christ’s nail-pierced hands are beautiful beyond measure, for they tell us of His love and His willingness to save us regardless of the cost.

The trouble is, we have up-close access to women who excel in each individual sphere. With social media and its carefully selected messaging, we see career women killing it, craft moms slaying it, chef moms nailing it, Christian leaders working it. We register their beautiful yards, homemade green chile enchiladas, themed birthday parties, eight-week Bible study series, chore charts, ab routines, “10 Tips for a Happy Marriage,” career best practices, volunteer work, and Family Fun Night ideas. We make note of their achievements, cataloging their successes and observing their talents. Then we combine the best of everything we see, every woman we admire in every genre, and conclude: I should be all of that. It is certifiably insane.

By the way, what is a dream?” I asked after some hesitation. YoonGi answered in his drawling voice. “I told you I don't have one.” “No, I mean... .” I hesitated and continued. “I was wondering what a dream is. What do people mean by a dream?” He looked at me and then turned his gaze towards the sky, frowning. “Something you want to achieve? I guess.” HoSeok took over, waving his mobile phone at us. “The dictionary definitions are first, ‘an imaginary series of events you experience while you are asleep’; second, ‘a situation or an ideal you hope to realize’; and third, ‘false expectations or thoughts that are almost unlikely or completely unlikely to turn into reality’.” “Isn't the third definition odd? How can something that is unlikely to turn into reality be called a dream?” HoSeok responded. “People sometimes tell you to wake up from your dream. So, if you're dreaming of turning back and going home before we get to the rock, wake up from your dream!” Some of us laughed out loud, but the rest showed no reaction, probably because they had no more energy left. “That's weird. How can something that you want to achieve most in your life and something that is unlikely to come true both be called a dream?” YoonGi said, giggling. “Maybe it means that people are that desperate. They just can't give up on their dreams even though they know they won't come true. Don't ever try to have a dream.” I looked at him in surprise.“How come?” YoonGi had started biting his nails and, feeling conscious of my glance, he put his hands in his pockets. “Because it's tough having one.

Guy goes to the doc, and he says, ‘Doc, you gotta help me. I got this terrible headache. It feels like somebody is pounding a nail through my forehead. Like I got a big pair of pliers squeezing behind my ears. It’s tension from my job. I can’t stop working right now, but the headache’s killing me. You gotta help.’ So the doc says, ‘You know, I do have a cure. Exactly the same thing happened to me—I was working too much, and I got exactly the same headache. Then one night I was performing oral sex on my wife, and her legs were squeezing my head really tight, really hard, and the pressure must have done something, because the headache was a lot better. So I did this every night for two weeks, and at the end of two weeks, the headache was gone.’ And the guy says, ‘I’m desperate, Doc, I’ll try anything.’ The doc said, ‘Well, then, I’ll see you in two weeks.’ So the guy goes away, and two weeks later he comes back for his appointment and he’s the most cheerful guy in the world. And he says, ‘Doc, you’re a miracle worker. I did just what you told me, and the headache’s gone. Vanished. I feel great. I think it’s got to be the pressure, and—by the way, you’ve got a beautiful home.

This woman controls my heartbeats. Every love lyric I sing each night is made for her. Every melody chases her heartbeat, and every chorus begs for her love. It has been brought to my attention that a few people on my management team have chosen to approach the love of my life and tell her that she wasn't good for my image. Due to her looks and the past she had no say in creating, they said she wasn't good enough. It's true, we grew up in the same town, but that didn't mean our home lives were built on the same steady foundation. I was blessed enough to never know struggle. This girl had to fight tooth and nail for everything she was given. She sacrificed her own youth, because she didn't want her little sister to go into the foster system. She gave up love, in order for me to go chase my dreams. She gives and gives in order to make others happy, because that's the person she is. She's the most beautiful human being alive, and for anyone--especially people who are supposed to be in my corner--to say differently disgusts me to my core. I am not a robot. I hurt, I ache, I love, and I cry. And it breaks me to live in a world where I have to be afraid of showing who I really am in order to gain followers. So if you don't like this fact--that I am not single and that I am hopelessly in love--then that's fine. If I lose fans over this, I'm okay with that. I will make every sacrifice in the world from this point on in order to give my love fully to the woman who has given more than she ever should've had to give. I love you, Haze. From the new moon to the fullest. From now until forever.

As regards your government of yourself and your household, Sancho, my first piece of advice is to be clean and to cut your fingernails, and not to let them grow long, as some people do, moved by ignorance to believe that long nails make their hand look beautiful, as if those appendages, those excrescences that they leave uncut have any right to be called fingernails at all, because they are more like talons of a kestrel: a monstrous and filthy abuse.

It is ironic that we have more technology to make our lives more efficient, ostensibly reducing our workload, and we work harder than we ever have. I was dragged into email kicking and screaming. On most issues technological I’m wrong, but I think I had this one nailed. Given the way emails come like baseballs from a machine in a batting cage, I spend more time responding to them than I spent manually opening and responding to letters. My friends from England write beautiful letters: bonded correspondence paper, elegant penmanship, and prose that reads like poetry. I shoot back an email. To the equivalent of a well-prepared feast I reciprocate with the equivalent of a bag of chips.

Is it lame to say I think I’m stuck in a nightmare? I always thought everyone was being so dramatic when they said that: ‘This feels like a nightmare.’ Like, really, that’s all you feel when tragedy happens? I don’t know how I wanted them to feel, but I can say now they hit the nail on the head. There’s another cliché for you, whatever. I want to wake up. And if I can’t wake up, I want to go to sleep forever where there’s a chance I dream everything beautiful about you,

He studied the nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly, gauging the nerve-sensations produced. It fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his that worked so beautifully and smoothly and delicately. Then he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle drawn expectantly about him, and like a blow the realization would strike him that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat...

Who" The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October’s the month for storage. The shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach: Old tools, handles and rusty tusks. I am at home here among the dead heads. Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won’t notice. My heart is a stopped geranium. If only the wind would leave my lungs alone. Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down. They rattle like hydrangea bushes. Mouldering heads console me, Nailed to the rafters yesterday: Inmates who don’t hibernate. Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze, A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted, Their veins white as porkfat. O the beauty of usage! The orange pumpkins have no eyes. These halls are full of women who think they are birds. This is a dull school. I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet, Without dreams of any sort. Mother, you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways. I said: I must remember this, being small. There were such enormous flowers, Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely. The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry. Now they light me up like an electric bulb. For weeks I can remember nothing at all.

Ladies and gentlemen, when you paint your lips, eyes, nails, hair, side-beards, or whatever, to look beautiful or handsome, don't forget your up stairs, if you don't go up there to put things in order, then, consider the former attributes null and void.

Everyone wishes their life were happier.” Lily shook her head. “No. Not like beautiful people. They walk this earth, their chin up to the rest of us, and think that great happiness, great love, great joy is their right and their prerogative. Passion as the entitlement of the beautiful, the way power is the entitlement of the rich.” Lily paused. “Especially when it comes to love. Beauty and love become somehow synonymous. How can plain people have great love? They can’t, that’s how. They can have average love, mediocre love, but their hearts can’t soar. Only beautiful hearts can soar.” “I think you’ve hit on the nail right there,” said Spencer. “Beautiful people don’t necessarily have beautiful hearts.” “But it doesn’t matter, don’t you see? You don’t fall in love with a heart. You fall in love with a woman’s face, with her body, with her hair, with her smell. That’s first, everything else is secondary. My mother’s beauty when she was young was so extreme that she didn’t understand how every man who met her didn’t love her in extremis.

When I learned my mom was going to die of cancer at the age of forty-five, I felt the same way. I didn’t even believe in God, but I still felt that he owed me something. I had the gall to think How dare he? I couldn’t help myself. I’m a selfish brute. I wanted what I wanted and I expected it to be given to me by a God in whom I had no faith. Because mercy had always more or less been granted me, I assumed it always would be. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t granted to my friend whose eighteen-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver either. Nor was it granted to my other friend who learned her baby is going to die of a genetic disorder in the not-distant future. Nor was it granted to my former student whose mother was murdered by her father before he killed himself. It was not granted to all those people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they came up against the wrong virus or military operation or famine or carcinogenic or genetic mutation or natural disaster or maniac. Countless people have been devastated for reasons that cannot be explained or justified in spiritual terms. To do as you are doing in asking If there were a God, why would he let my little girl have to have possibly life-threatening surgery?— understandable as that question is—creates a false hierarchy of the blessed and the damned. To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising—the very half that makes rising necessary— is having first been nailed to the cross. That

HAMBRE (HUNGER) Anhelo tu boca, tu voz, tu pelo. En silencio y con hambre, rodando por las calles. El pan no me alimenta, me rompe el alba. Tengo hambre por tu sonrisa, Tus manos el color de una cosecha salvaje, Con hambre de las piedras pálidas que son tus uñas, Quiero comer tu piel como una almendra entera. Necesito el rayo de sol que quema de tu hermosa cuerpo, Tu nariz soberana del elegante cara, Quiero comer la sombra fugaz de tus pestañas, Paseo con hambre, olfateando el crepúsculo, Buscandote, por tu corazón caliente, Como una puma en los páramos de las montañas… ******************************** I long for your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, rolling through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, The dawn breaks me. I have a hunger for your smile. Your hands the color of a savage harvest, I hunger for the pale stones are your nails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I need the sunshine that burns from your beautiful body. Your nose,sovereign on an elegant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, I move on, hungry, sniffing the twilight, Looking for you, for your warm heart, As a cougar in the wilds of the mountains ...

I hope you two had fun up there,” Ruby said later, grinning at us as we descended into the kitchen. “Because Will made paella, and I’m telling you . . . I may eat this and only this for the rest of my life.” “Is Will coming home with us?” Niall asked her from the kitchen. “It was an excruciatingly competitive game of chess we had going,” I said. “Neither of us was willing to give up until it was over.” Will’s smile was sneaky. “I see, chess? Because it sounded like you were hanging pictures.” Niall nodded. “Something was definitely getting nailed up there.” I laugh-coughed down at the floor.

Dear New Orleans, What a big, beautiful mess you are. A giant flashing yellow light—proceed with caution, but proceed. Not overly ambitious, you have a strong identity, and don’t look outside yourself for intrigue, evolution, or monikers of progress. Proud of who you are, you know your flavor, it’s your very own, and if people want to come taste it, you welcome them without solicitation. Your hours trickle by, Tuesdays and Saturdays more similar than anywhere else. Your seasons slide into one another. You’re the Big Easy…home of the shortest hangover on the planet, where a libation greets you on a Monday morning with the same smile as it did on Saturday night. Home of the front porch, not the back. This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it. Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch. Private properties hospitably trespass on each other and lend across borders where a 9:00 A.M. alarm clock is church bells, sirens, and a slow-moving eight-buck-an-hour carpenter nailing a windowpane two doors down. You don’t sweat details or misdemeanors, and since everybody’s getting away with something anyway, the rest just wanna be on the winning side. And if you can swing the swindle, good for you, because you love to gamble and rules are made to be broken, so don’t preach about them, abide. Peddlin worship and litigation, where else do the dead rest eye to eye with the livin? You’re a right-brain city. Don’t show up wearing your morals on your sleeve ’less you wanna get your arm burned. The humidity suppresses most reason so if you’re crossing a one-way street, it’s best to look both ways. Mother Nature rules, the natural law capital “Q” Queen reigns supreme, a science to the animals, an overbearing and inconsiderate bitch to us bipeds. But you forgive her, and quickly, cus you know any disdain with her wrath will reap more: bad luck, voodoo, karma. So you roll with it, meander rather, slowly forward, takin it all in stride, never sweating the details. Your art is in your overgrowth. Mother Nature wears the crown around here, her royalty rules, and unlike in England, she has both influence and power. You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure. Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch, the poverty and the murder rate, all of it, just how it is and how it turned out. Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix. —June 7, 2013, New Orleans, La.

Look, I never believed in fate. I always thought that I would meet some beautiful young woman and it would be easy,” Tristan says. I listen intently. “And then I met Claire, and everything I thought I wanted went out the window. Her kids hated me and I had to fight tooth and nail to convince her to love me. Never in a million years did I ever imagine my life as it is now. But I honestly believe I am where I’m meant to be. Claire and those kids were meant for me, and the bigger picture of my destiny was already mapped out. They were my family long before I even met them; perhaps before they were even born it was decided that they would end up being mine.

Faith Poem I don't know how to do anytthing I am trying to move mountains with words But I am an ant I scribble I drool I move like a worm whose world (words) encompassed a mile How do I rise above? Where will this worm find wings? I look in the mirror and I see filth Who is that? Where did The Angel go? Why is there dirt staring back at me? Why is the soil of incompetence beneath my nails Why does doubt paint blue rings beneath my eyes and stain my skin Why does my spine assume failure Why do my lips flirt with they sky; why do I try to lasso Beauty with such a pitiful rope? Where is the hair of Rapunzel or Samson? Where is my sling Where is my stone, My gun? Where is the weapon with which I may fight this apathy that feels like sleep in my limbs that loosens my brother's smile That kills my neighbor's daughter This pen is scrawny and hardly seems able to ink out or erase this plague that infests my Generation This Giant, This Ogre This Beast, This Death that assumes a million faces, that borrows my own.

Osho was very generous with his genius. When I went to Poona in 1988, he answered a question of mine. “Rumi says, ‘I want burning, burning.’ What does this burning have to do with my own possible enlightenment?” “You have asked a very dangerous question, Coleman. Burning has nothing to do with your enlightenment. This work you have done with Rumi is beautiful. It has to be, because it is coming out of Rumi’s love. But for you these poems can become ecstatic self-hypnosis.” He pretty much nailed me to the floor with that one. Sufism is good, but end up with Zen. It was a fine hit he gave me. I am still drawn to the Sufi longing and love-madness, but clarity is coming up strong on the inside. I have not assimilated his wisdom yet, but I mean to. I am very grateful to him. But it is not wisdom for everyone. Osho crafted his words to suit the individual. Ecstatic self-hypnosis might be just the thing for someone else. He was showing me a daylight beyond any beloved darkness, an ecstatic sobriety beyond any drunkenness.

It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made it overlap its neighbor.  Then the world went out in darkness, and I didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all—at least for a while. When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself—nearly.  Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me—a fellow fresh out of a picture-book.  He was in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground. "Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow.

Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there's no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone.

Be honest with yourself. You were at your lowest and broken down. You were unsure and lost hope. You were hiding your fears until you showed them on your sleeve. You felt like everything and everyone was the hammer and you were the nail as they were beating down on you, and it was never-ending. Their empty threats had you scared and you were always running because your weakness was exposed. You were their prey. You didn’t know who to believe because of their mixed signals. You might not see it now, but you are stronger than you can ever imagine. You cannot become comfortable in your pain. You have to let the pain that you feel turn you into a rose without thorns. There are sixteen pieces on the chessboard. The king is the most important piece, but the difference is that the queen is the most powerful piece! You are a queen, you can maneuver around your opponents; they do not have the power over your life, your mind or soul. You might think you’ve been a prisoner, but that is your past’. Look in the now and work your way to how you want your future to be. Exercise your thoughts into a pattern of letting go, and think positively about more of what you want than what you do not want. Queen! You are a queen! As a matter of fact, you are the queen! Act as if you know it! You are powerful, determined, strong, and you can make the biggest and most extravagant move and put it into action. Lights, camera, strike a pose and own it! It is yours to own! Yes, you loved and loved so much. You also lost as well, but you lost hurt, pain, agony, and confusion. You’ve lost interest in wanting to know answers to unanswered questions. You’ve lost the willingness to give a shit about what others think. You’ve surrendered to being fine, that you cannot change the things you have no control over. You’ve lost a lot, but you’ve gained closure. You are now balanced, centered, focused, and filled with peace surrounding you in your heart, mind, body, and soul. Your pride was hurt, but you would rather walk alone and be more willing to give and learn more about the queen you are. You lost yourself in the process, but the more you learn about the new you, the more you will be so much in love with yourself. The more you learn about the new you, the more you will know your worth. The more you learn about the new you, the happier you are going to be, and this time around you will be smiling inside and out! The dots are now connecting. You feel alive! You know now that all is not lost. Now that you’ve cut the cord it is time to give your heart a second chance at loving yourself. Silence your mind. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. As you open your eyes, look at your reflection in the mirror. Aren’t you beautiful, Queen? Embrace who you are. Smile, laugh, welcome the new you and say, “My world is just now beginning.

See!” she snapped at him. “You men are all brutish. You force your strength and will on us as if we matter for naught and then you wonder why we don’tlike ”—she spat the word at him—“you. Really? Is it any wonder? Why would any woman want to subject herself to the male ego? Why?” She looked down at his body as a sudden heat came into her gaze that made him instantly nervous. “Sure, you’re a handsome beastie with kissable lips when they’re not bleeding. You’re fair in form with big, bulging—” He actually cringed in fear of the word “cock” coming out of her mouth again, but luckily she averted her thoughts as her gaze met his. For the first time the despair left her voice. “Your eyes are so beautiful.” She ran one finger over his brow, making him instantly hard for her. “Did you know that?” Then the gloomy tone returned as she dropped her hand from his face. “Of course you do. You’re a worthless man. Just like all the others.” “Yeah,” Blaise teased. “You’re worthless, Varian. And what on him bulges again, Merewyn?” Varian glared at the mandrake, who merely continued to laugh at him. “Everything. His arms, his legs, his—” “Enough, Merewyn,” Varian said from between clenched teeth. “Well, you do bulge. I’ve seen it.” “We’ve all seen it,” Merrick said, his voice filled with humor, “And it’s sickening.” Varian glared at the triplets, especially the ferret, who was laughing and rolling around his brother’s neck. “When she is over this, I’m going to kill all of you.” Merewyn let out a long-suffering sigh. “Of course you will. That’s what men do. They destroy everything. Everything. Because you’re all worthless whoremongers.” Varian winced at her choice of words. “Whoremongers?” Blaise repeated with a laugh. “Yes. You all go out with your giant lances, spearing anything you can find. Nailing your targets against trees and walls, while you gallop from field to field, bragging over your conquests, uncaring of who you’ve hurt while you quest for more glory.” “Good gods,” Merrick said, his face horrified. “Is she speaking of what I think she is?” “Do you mean warmongers?” Varian asked her. “No! Whoremongers. All of you.” She looked over at the triplets. “Especially them.

Do you know what kind of a world we live in? We live in a world where, if a man came up with a sure cure for cancer, and if that man were found to be married to his sister, his neighbors would righteously burn down his house and all his notes. If a man built the most beautiful tower in the country, and that man later begins to believe that Satan should be worshipped, they’ll blow up his tower. I know a great and moving book written by a woman who later went quite crazy and wrote crazy books, and nobody will read her great one any more. I can name three kinds of mental therapy that could have changed the face of the earth, and in each case the men who found it went on to insane Institutes and so-called religions and made fools of themselves—dangerous fools at that—and now no one will look at their really great early discoveries. Great politicians have been prevented from being great statesmen because they were divorced. And I wasn’t going to have the Mensch machine stolen or buried or laughed at and forgotten just because I had long hair and played the lute. You know, it’s easy to have long hair and play the lute and be kind to people when everyone else around you is doing it. It’s a much harder thing to be the one who does it first, because then you have to pay a price, you get jeered at and they throw stones and shut you out.

So meaning is only a moment and a transition from absurdity to absurdity, and absurdity only a moment and a transition from meaning to meaning. Oh, that Siegfried, blond and blue-eyed, the German hero, had to fall by my hand, the most loyal and courageous! He had everything in himself that I treasured as the greater and more beautiful; he was my power, my boldness, my pride. I would have gone under in the same battle, and so only assassination was left to me. If I wanted to go on living, it could only be through trickery and cunning. Judge not! Think of the blond savage of the German forests, who had to betray the hammer-brandishing thunder to the pale Near Eastern god who was nailed to the wood like a chicken marten. The courageous were overcome by a certain contempt for themselves. But their life force bade them to go on living, and they betrayed their beautiful wild Gods, their holy trees and their awe of the German forests.

Why do we bury our dead?” His nose was dented in at the bridge like a sphinx; the cause of which I could only imagine had been a freak archaeological accident. I thought about my parents. They had requested in their will that they be buried side by side in a tiny cemetery a few miles from our house. “Because it’s respectful?” He shook his head. “That’s true, but that’s not the reason we do it.” But that was the reason we buried people, wasn’t it? After gazing at him in confusion, I raised my hand, determined to get the right answer. “Because leaving people out in the open is unsanitary.” Mr. B. shook his head and scratched the stubble on his neck. I glared at him, annoyed at his ignorance and certain that my responses were correct. “Because it’s the best way to dispose of a body?” Mr. B. laughed. “Oh, but that’s not true. Think of all the creative ways mass murderers have dealt with body disposal. Surely eating someone would be more practical than the coffin, the ceremony, the tombstone.” Eleanor grimaced at the morbid image, and the mention of mass murderers seemed to wake the rest of the class up. Still, no one had an answer. I’d heard Mr. B. was a quack, but this was just insulting. How dare he presume that I didn’t know what burials meant? I’d watched them bury my parents, hadn’t I? “Because that’s just what we do,” I blurted out. “We bury people when they die. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?” “Exactly!” Mr. B. grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and began gesticulating with it. “We’ve forgotten why we bury people. “Imagine you’re living in ancient times. Your father dies. Would you randomly decide to put him inside a six-sided wooden box, nail it shut, then bury it six feet below the earth? These decisions aren’t arbitrary, people. Why a six-sided box? And why six feet below the earth? And why a box in the first place? And why did every society throughout history create a specific, ritualistic way of disposing of their dead?” No one answered. But just as Mr. B. was about to continue, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to see Mrs. Lynch poke her head in. “Professor Bliss, the headmistress would like to see Brett Steyers in her office. As a matter of urgency.” Professor Bliss nodded, and Brett grabbed his bag and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as he left. After the door closed, Mr. B. drew a terrible picture of a mummy on the board, which looked more like a hairy stick figure. “The Egyptians used to remove the brains of their dead before mummification. Now, why on earth would they do that?” There was a vacant silence. “Think, people! There must be a reason. Why the brain? What were they trying to preserve?” When no one answered, he answered his own question. “The mind!” he said, exasperated. “The soul!” As much as I had planned on paying attention and participating in class, I spent the majority of the period passing notes with Eleanor. For all of his enthusiasm, Professor Bliss was repetitive and obsessed with death and immortality. When he faced the board to draw the hieroglyphic symbol for Ra, I read the note Eleanor had written me. Who is cuter? A. Professor Bliss B. Brett Steyers C. Dante Berlin D. The mummy I laughed. My hand wavered between B and C for the briefest moment. I wasn’t sure if you could really call Dante cute. Devastatingly handsome and mysterious would be the more appropriate description. Instead I circled option D. Next to it I wrote Obviously! and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking.

The Woman Poet // Die Dichterin You hold me now completely in your hands. My heart beats like a frightened little bird's Against your palm. Take heed! You do not think A person lives within the page you thumb. To you this book is paper, cloth, and ink, Some binding thread and glue, and thus is dumb, And cannot touch you (though the gaze be great That seeks you from the printed marks inside), And is an object with an object's fate. And yet it has been veiled like a bride, Adorned with gems, made ready to be loved, Who asks you bashfully to change your mind, To wake yourself, and feel, and to be moved. But still she trembles, whispering to the wind: "This shall not be." And smiles as if she knew. Yet she must hope. A woman always tries, Her very life is but a single "You . . ." With her black flowers and her painted eyes, With silver chains and silks of spangled blue. She knew more beauty when a child and free, But now forgets the better words she knew. A man is so much cleverer than we, Conversing with himself of truth and lie, Of death and spring and iron-work and time. But I say "you" and always "you and I." This book is but a girl's dress in rhyme, Which can be rich and red, or poor and pale, Which may be wrinkled, but with gentle hands, And only may be torn by loving nails. So then, to tell my story, here I stand. The dress's tint, though bleached in bitter lye, Has not all washed away. It still is real. I call then with a thin, ethereal cry. You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel?

There were groans---his---and moans---hers---and cool hands under his shirt, nails scraping against his skin, zings of electricity along his nerves, clothes tearing... "Not here." Her words. Because if he had his way, she'd already be naked and the limo driver would have been handsomely paid to take a coffee break somewhere far away. He had a vision of himself pushing her onto the seat, flipping up that pretty skirt, and hammering into her until they both shattered in ecstasy and she screamed his name. Had he spoken those words out loud? "Law...Indecent exposure..." Words he didn't understand except they meant more waiting when he ached to his hands on her, strip her naked, and make all his fantasies come true. Insatiable, he tore open her top and flicked the catch on her bra, freeing her breasts from their restraint. Beautiful. Round and firm. Nipples hardened to deliciously dark peaks. He drew one into his mouth, licked and sucked until she cried out. Her hand tightened in his hair until pain merged with pleasure, and he couldn't think beyond doing it again.

The maybe-twenty-year-old face in the mirror is one I should probably recognize since it's my own, but I don't. She had eyes like arctic pools. Hair that falls like a soft mist, veiling half her face. Her skin is a sea of satin. Her nails are little polished glass shards. Her lips, a subtle pink, with cheeks gently blushed the same. The person in the mirror is a person I don't know. "What do you think?" The large woman asks me, obviously proud of her work. "Can you live with this?" My left hand falls off. "Roxie!" Thr large woman yelps. "Adhesive, honey! Proper, level-four-grade adhesive! - I do swear!

Gregori stepped away from the huddled mass of tourists, putting distance between himself and the guide. He walked completely erect,his head high, his long hair flowing around him. His hands were loose at his sides, and his body was relaxed, rippling with power. "Hear me now, ancient one." His voice was soft and musical, filling the silence with beauty and purity. "You have lived long in this world, and you weary of the emptiness. I have come in anwer to your call." "Gregori.The Dark One." The evil voice hissed and growled the words in answer. The ugliness tore at sensitive nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. Some of the tourists actually covered their ears. "How dare you enter my city and interfere where you have no right?" "I am justice,evil one. I have come to set your free from the bounaries holding you to this place." Gregori's voice was so soft and hypnotic that those listening edged out from their sanctuaries.It beckoned and pulled, so that none could resist his every desire. The black shape above their head roiled like a witch's cauldron. A jagged bolt of lightning slammed to earth straight toward the huddled group. Gregori raised a hand and redirected the force of energy away from the tourists and Savannah. A smile edged the cruel set of his mouth. "You think to mock me with display,ancient one? Do not attempt to anger what you do not understand.You came to me.I did not hunt you.You seek to threaten my lifemate and those I count as my friends.I can do no other than carry the justice of our people to you." Gregori's voice was so reasonable, so perfect and pure,drawing obedience from the most recalcitrant of criminals. The guide made a sound,somewhere between disbelief and fear.Gregori silenced him with a wave of his hand, needing no distractions. But the noise had been enough for the ancient one to break the spell Gregori's voice was weaving around him. The dark stain above their heads thrashed wildly, as if ridding itself ot ever-tightening bonds before slamming a series of lightning strikes at the helpless mortals on the ground. Screams and moans accompanied the whispered prayers, but Gregori stood his ground, unflinching. He merely redirected the whips of energy and light, sent them streaking back into the black mass above their heads.A hideous snarl,a screech of defiance and hatred,was the only warning before it hailed. Hufe golfball-sized blocks of bright-red ice rained down toward them. It was thick and horrible to see, the shower of frozen blood from the skies. But it stopped abruptly, as if an unseen force held it hovering inches from their heads. Gregori remained unchanged, impassive, his face a blank mask as he shielded the tourists and sent the hail hurtling back at their attacker.From out of the cemetery a few blocks from them, an army of the dead rose up. Wolves howled and raced along beside the skeletons as they moved to intercept the Carpathian hunter. Savannah. He said her name once, a soft brush in her mind. I've got it, she sent back instantly.Gregori had his hands full dealing with the abominations the vampire was throwing at him; he did't need to waste his energy protecting the general public from the apparition. She moved out into the open, a small, fragile figure, concentrating on the incoming threat. To those dwelling in the houses along the block and those driving in their cars, she masked the pack of wolves as dogs racing down the street.The stick=like skeletons, grotesque and bizarre, were merely a fast-moving group of people. She held the illusion until they were within a few feet of Gregori.Dropping the illusion, she fed every ounce of her energy and power to Gregori so he could meet the attack.

if they label you soft, feather weight and white-livered, if the locker room tosses back its sweaty head, and laughs at how quiet your hands stay, if they come to trample the dandelions roaring in your throat, you tell them that you were forged inside of a woman who had to survive fifteen different species of disaster to bring you here, and you didn’t come to piss on trees. you ain’t nobody’s thick-necked pitbull boy, don’t need to prove yourself worthy of this inheritance of street-corner logic, this blood legend, this index of catcalls, “three hundred ways to turn a woman into a three course meal”, this legacy of shame, and man, and pillage, and man, and rape, and man. you boy. you won’t be some girl’s slit wrists dazzling the bathtub, won’t be some girl’s, “i didn’t ask for it but he gave it to me anyway”, the torn skirt panting behind the bedroom door, some father’s excuse to polish his gun. if they say, “take what you want”, you tell them you already have everything you need; you come from scabbed knuckles and women who never stopped swinging, you come men who drank away their life savings, and men who raised daughters alone. you come from love you gotta put your back into, elbow-grease loving like slow-dancing on dirty linoleum, you come from that house of worship. boy, i dare you to hold something like that. love whatever feels most like your grandmother’s cooking. love whatever music looks best on your feet. whatever woman beckons your blood to the boiling point, you treat her like she is the god of your pulse, you treat her like you would want your father to treat me: i dare you to be that much man one day. that you would give up your seat on the train to the invisible women, juggling babies and groceries. that you would hold doors, and say thank-you, and understand that women know they are beautiful without you having to yell it at them from across the street. the day i hear you call a woman a “bitch” is the day i dig my own grave. see how you feel writing that eulogy. and if you are ever left with your love’s skin trembling under your nails, if there is ever a powder-blue heart left for dead on your doorstep, and too many places in this city that remind you of her tears, be gentle when you drape the remains of your lives in burial cloth. don’t think yourself mighty enough to turn her into a poem, or a song, or some other sweetness to soften the blow, boy, i dare you to break like that. you look too much like your mother not t

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you, I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,) I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems, Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems, Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears, Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges, Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue, Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest, Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones, Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails, Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side, Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone, Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root, Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above, Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg, Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel; All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female, The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean, The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame, Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity, Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman, The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings, The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening, The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes, The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair, The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out, The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, The exquisite realization of health; O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the soul!

the canvases which Mr. St. Jones referred to with a paintbrush that was long and slightly bowed: for the most part interiors, or undergrounds, of pocked and craggy holes, rock vaults with mossy floors and slimy walls, or narrow scenic vistas that skinny silver streams squirmed through like sidewinders flipped on their backs, beneath downward grasping tentacles of roots, stalactites dagger-sharp and dangling by threads of stone, stalagmites teetering, all doused, frozen in molten electric white that suggested what a glimpse of hell might be, too beautiful, some still lifes too, great bulbous beets, hoary legumes, giant scallions, white carrots, tomatoes, berries, squash in huge radiant bowls, and portraits, signed by Ionia, of shadows, from which gleamed eyes and teeth and nails and, here and there, a glowing bubble, or scrotum, caught the eye. Near the door a counter clacked but rather quietly.

We often think the purpose of criticism is to nail things down. During my years as an art critic, I used to joke that museums love artists the way that taxidermists love deer, and something of that desire to secure, to stabilize, to render certain and definite the open-ended, nebulous, and adventurous work of artists is present in many who work in that confinement sometimes called the art world. A similar kind of aggression against the slipperiness of the work and the ambiguities of the artist's intent and meaning often exists in literary criticism and academic scholarship, a desire to make certain what is uncertain, to know what is unknowable, to turn the flight across the sky into the roast upon the plate, to classify and contain. What escapes categorization can escape detection altogether. There is a kind of counter-criticism that seeks to expand the work of art, by connecting it, opening up its meanings, inviting in the possibilities. A great work of criticism can liberate a work of art, to be seen fully, to remain alive, to engage in a conversation that will not ever end but will instead keep feeing the imagination. Not against interpretation, but against confinement, against the killing of the spirit. Such criticism is itself great art. This is a kind of criticism that does not pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to travel with the work and its ideas, to invite it to blossom and invite others into a conversation that might have previously seemed impenetrable, to draw out relationships that might have been unseen and open doors that might have been locked. This is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are irreducible and subjective. The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end.

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft.

Mindy runs to the DVD player and delicately places the disk in the holder and presses play. “Will you sit in this chair, please, Princess Mindy?” I ask, bowing deeply at the waist. Mindy giggles as she replies, ”I guess so.” After Mindy sits down, I take a wide-tooth comb and start gently combing out her tangles. Mindy starts vibrating with excitement as she blurts, “Mr. Jeff, you’re gonna fix my hair fancy, ain’t you?” “We’ll see if a certain Princess can hold still long enough for me to finish,” I tease. Immediately, Mindy becomes as still as a stone statue. After a couple of minutes, I have to say, “Mindy, sweetheart, it’s okay to breathe. I just can’t have you bouncing, because I’m afraid it will cause me to pull your hair.” Mindy slumps down in her chair just slightly. “Okay Mr. Jeff, I was ascared you was gonna stop,” she whispers, her chin quivering. I adopt a very fake, very over-the-top French accent and say, “Oh no, Monsieur Jeff must complete Princess Mindy’s look to make the Kingdom happy. Mindy erupts with the first belly laugh I’ve heard all day as she responds, “Okay, I’ll try to be still, but it’s hard ‘cause I have the wiggles real bad.” I pat her on the shoulder and chuckle as I say, “Just try your best, sweetheart. That’s all anyone can ask.” Kiera comes screeching around the corner in a blur, plunks her purse on the table, and says breathlessly, “Geez-O-Pete, I can’t believe I’m late for the makeover. I love makeovers.” Kiera digs through her purse and produces two bottles of nail polish and nail kit. “It’s time for your mani/pedi ma’am. Would you prefer Pink Pearl or Frosted Creamsicle? Mindy raises her hand like a schoolchild and Kiera calls on her like a pupil, “I want Frosted Cream toes please,” Mindy answers. “Your wish is my command, my dear,” Kiera responds with a grin. For the next few minutes, Mindy gets the spa treatment of her life as I carefully French braid her hair into pigtails. As a special treat, I purchased some ribbons from the gift shop and I’m weaving them into her hair. I tuck a yellow rose behind her ear. I don my French accent as I declare, “Monsieur Jeffery pronounces Princess Mindy finished and fit to rule the kingdom.” Kiera hands Mindy a new tube of grape ChapStick from her purse, “Hold on, a true princess never reigns with chapped lips,” she says. Mindy giggles as she responds, “You’re silly, Miss Kiera. Nobody in my kingdom is going to care if my lips are shiny.” Kiera’s laugh sounds like wind chimes as she covers her face with her hands as she confesses, “Okay, you busted me. I just like to use it because it tastes yummy.” “Okay, I want some, please,” Mindy decides. Kiera is putting the last minute touches on her as Mindy is scrambling to stand on Kiera’s thighs so she can get a better look in the mirror. When I reach out to steady her, she grabs my hand in a death grip. I glance down at her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is opening and closing like a fish. I shoot Kiera a worried glance, but she merely shrugs. “Holy Sh — !” Mindy stops short when she sees Kiera’s expression. “Mr. Jeff is an angel for reals because he turned me into one. Look at my hair Miss Kiera, there are magic ribbons in it! I’m perfect. I can be anything I want to be.” Spontaneously, we all join together in a group hug. I kiss the top of her head as I agree, “Yes, Mindy, you are amazing and the sky is the limit for you.

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft. Her fingers curled around the violin. She wanted to ask Arin a question yet couldn’t bear to do it, couldn’t say that she didn’t understand what had happened to him the night of the invasion. It didn’t make sense. The death of his family was what her father would call a “waste of resources.” The Valorian force had had no pity for the Herrani military, but it had tried to minimize civilian casualties. You can’t make a dead body work. “What is it, Kestrel?” She shook her head. She set the violin back on the wall. “Ask me.” She remembered standing outside the governor’s palace and refusing to hear his story, and was ashamed once more. “You can ask me anything,” he said. Each question seemed the wrong one. Finally, she said, “How did you survive the invasion?” He didn’t speak at first. Then he said, “My parents and sister fought. I didn’t.” Words were useless, pitifully useless--criminal, even, in how they could not account for Arin’s grief, and could not excuse how her people had lived on the ruin of his. Yet again Kestrel said, “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” It felt as if it was. Arin led the way out of his old suite. When they came to the last room, the greeting room, he paused before the outermost door. It was the slightest of hesitations, no longer than if the second hand of a clock stayed a beat longer on its mark than it should. But in that fraction of time, Kestrel understood that the last door was not paler than the others because it had been made from a different wood. It was newer. Kestrel took Arin’s battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith’s coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained. She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before.