Neon Blue Quotes

I have a secret. A big, fat, hairy secret. And I’m not talking minor-league stuff, like I once let Joseph Applebaum feel me up behind the seventh-grade stairwell or I got a Brazilian wax after work last Friday or I’m hiding a neon blue vibrator called the Electric Slide in my night table. Which I’m not, by the way. In case you were wondering.

Her fingers moved among barnacles and mussels, blue-black, sharp-edged. Neon red starfish were limp Dalis on the rocks, surrounded by bouquets of stinging anemones and purple bursts of spiny sea urchins.

Razor, calm down. Say hi to our new friends." The gremlin, now perched on Keirran's arm, turned to stare at us with blazing green eyes and started crackling like a bad radio station. "They can't understand you, Razor," Keiran said mildly. "English." "Oh," said the gremlin. "Right." It grinned widely, baring a mouthful of sharp teeth that glowed neon-blue. "Hiiiiiiii.

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?' 'Pain?' Lieutenant Shiesskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.' 'And who created the dangers?' Yossarian demanded. 'Why couldn't He have used a doorbell to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead?' 'People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes right in the middle of their foreheads.' 'They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony, don't they?

I didn't know that would be the last time I'd see him, his neck scar lit blue by the diner's neon marquee. To see that little comma again, to put my mouth there, let my shadow widen the scar until, at last, there was no scar to be seen at all, just a vast and equal dark sealed by my lips. A comma superimposed by a period the mouth so naturally makes. Isn't that the saddest thing in the world, Ma? A comma forced to be a period?

The fog tore apart, light charged the sea like blue neon.

To Have Without Holding: Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch, to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can't do it, you say it's killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor's buttons blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

We’ve been through this, remember? I’m totally open.” He stretched his arms wide to prove it. “I’m an open book, an open door, an open sign that blinks in red and blue neon.” “Your fly’s open too,” Cameron said.

Oh yes, In Love, that demented rose-red circus tent whose half-light forgives all visuals, fig-leaves our lovers, and softens our own brains and the pain of our sawdust pratfalls.   So tempting, that midway faux-marble arch, both funfair and classical— so Greek, so Barnum, such a beacon, with a sign in gas-blue neon:   Love! This way! In!

I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge). The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.

I was the apprentice of Robert James Bakker. I'm sure you've heard of him. I am a sorcerer. I was there when Bakker died. We... made it happen. I too have met death, and did not have to peel the bones away from my chest to survive the encounter. I am also, and incidentally, the Midnight Mayor, the blue electric angels, the fire in the wire, the song in the telephones, and we are having a bad week. Be smart; fear us.

The fancy things I like are sheets. Pots and pans. And the things I really like aren't fancy at all: old aprons and hankies. Butter wrappers from one pound blocks. Peony bushes, hardback books of poetry. And I like things less than that; the sticky remains at the bottom of the apple crisp dish. The way cats sometimes run sideways. The presence of a rainbow in a puddle of oil. Mayonaise jars. Pussy willows. Wash on a line. The tick-tock of clocks, the blue of the neon sign at the local movie house. The fact that there is a local movie house.

My name is Matthew Swift. I’m a sorcerer, the only one in the city who survived Robert Bakker’s purge. I was killed by my teacher’s shadow and my body dissolved into telephone static and all they had left to bury was a bit of blood. Then we came back, and I am we and we are me, and we are the blue electric angels, creatures of the phones and the wires, the gods made from the surplus life you miserable excuse for mortals pour into all things electric. I am the Midnight Mayor, the protector of the city, the guardian of the night, the keeper of the gates, the watcher on the walls. We turned back the death of cities, we were there when Lady Neon died, we drove the creature called Blackout into the shadows at the end of the alleys, we are light, we are life, we are fire and, would you believe it, the word that best describes our condition right now is cranky. Would you like to see what happens when you make us mad?

If the world gives you the blues, if you wake up in the middle of the night with waves of fear and senseless panic washing over you, I am your friend. If you’re overcome by a desperation that makes your mouth open for a scream that never comes out but just freezes your face in mute despair, then you and I have something in common. If you can’t understand them for the life of you, even though you’ve tried so hard, when that dislocation makes you feel like you’re the only one of your species on the planet, I know I can confide in you. If this endless ghetto of lies and heart break, this life-long run of fences and flickering neon signs, night sweats and suicidal urges makes you feel like stopping, just stopping, like stopping breathing, wait. Wait. You don’t have to tell me your name. You don’t have to prove yourself to me. I accept you. If you’re finding life to be the one thing that’s trying to kill you, I want you to stay alive to rise with the sun and fight back.

He became his own blues song, a Tom Waits loser, a Kerouac saint, a Springsteen hero under the lights of the American highway and the neon glow of the American strip. A fugitive, a sharecropper, a hobo, a cowboy who knows that he’s running out of prairie but rides anyway because there’s nothing left but to ride.

because in the morning, the neon glow would be gone, and Clementine Ryder would look like my best friend’s little sister again. Hopefully.

My doors enter from the sidestreet, my windows painted basement black, my mouth kisses the blues harp, my heart hides like notes locked in a cedar chest.

I gave in to a deep and healthy laughter that must have added ten years to my life and given birth to a thousand blue butterflies somewhere in the world.

He perceived the pain in colors: the red of a neon bar sign, the green of a traffic light on a wet night, the blue of an empty video screen.

He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in. There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon light. So many ways to live. And to die.

boardwalks and the neon boulevards, and wordlessly, the habituees of the arcade swivelled their attention from the pool to the pinball, for the magic had shifted to a new discipline, and cigarette smoke hung blue in the air, and it twisted as they turned.

To have without holding Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch ; to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can’t do it, you say it’s killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

If. If Mingus Rude could be kept in this place, kept somehow in Dylan's pocket, in his stinging, smudgy hands, then summer wouldn't give way to whatever came after. If. If. Fat chance. Summer on Dean Street had lasted one day and that day was over, it was dark out, had been for hours. The Williamsburg Savings Bank tower clock read nine-thirty in red-and-blue neon. Final score, a million to nothing. The million-dollar kid. Your school wasn't on fire, you were.

It would appear that the blue sky is actually produced by the solar wind and solar radiation exciting air molecules to emit light, just like a neon lamp!

The tiny puncture wounds left by their fangs oozed the neon colors of their skins. Pus dyed bright pink, yellow, and blue dripped down her fingers.

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it’s tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world’s fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman’s shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit’s cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black.

To You" What is more beautiful than night and someone in your arms that’s what we love about art it seems to prefer us and stays if the moon or a gasping candle sheds a little light or even dark you become a landscape in a landscape with rocks and craggy mountains and valleys full of sweaty ferns breathing and lifting into the clouds which have actually come low as a blanket of aspirations’ blue for once not a melancholy color because it is looking back at us there’s no need for vistas we are one in the complicated foreground of space the architects are most courageous because it stands for all to see and for a long long time just as the words “I’ll always love you" impulsively appear in the dark sky and we are happy and stick by them like a couple of painters in neon allowing the light to glow there over the river

surprisingly dramatic glow some minerals gave off when illuminated with ultraviolet light, or “black light.” In daylight, for instance, the mineral fluorite is a drab, chalky color; in a dark room under UV light, though, fluorite glows a brilliant blue; the mineral calcite shines bright red; and aragonite gives off a neon green. If you’ve ever stepped into a teenager’s cavelike room decorated with black-light posters (less common now than they were in the 1970s, when my three sons were growing up), you’ve seen another version of UV fluorescence in action.

a large terrarium filled with hundreds of snakes. They were artificially bright, their skins almost glowing in shades of neon pink, yellow, and blue. No longer than a ruler and not much thicker than a pencil, they twisted into a psychedelic carpet that covered the bottom of the case.

Peridots and periwinkle blue medallions Gilded galleons spilled across the ocean floor Treasure somewhere in the sea and he will find where Never mind the questions there's no answer for The roll of the harbor wake The songs that the rigging makes The taste of the spray he takes And he learns to give He aches and he learns to live He stakes all his silver On a promise to be free Mermaids live in colonies All his sea dreams come to me City satins left at home I will not need them I believe him when he tells of loving me Something truthful in the sea all lies will find you Leave behind your streets he said and come to me Come down from the neon lights Come down from the tourist sights Run down till the rain delights You do not hide Sunlight will renew your pride Skin white by skin golden Like a promise to be free Dolphins playing in the sea All his sea dreams come to me Seabird I have seen you fly above the pilings I am smiling at your circles in the air I will come and sit by you while he lies sleeping Fold your fleet wings I have brought some dreams to share A dream that you love someone A dream that the wars are done A dream that you tell no one but the gray sea They'll say that you're crazy And a dream of a baby Like a promise to be free Children laughing out to sea All his sea dreams come to me

There was something intrinsically sad about Shinjuku. A vacuum-packed hollowness that no quantity of neon could hide. Roppongi was the same, only there the sadness was older and more Western. All that movement to so little purpose. A million strangers searching for a cure to the darkness behind their eyes in the void between someone else's legs.

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?' 'Pain?' Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.' 'And who created the dangers?' Yossarian demanded. He laughed caustically. 'Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He?' 'People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads.' 'They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or stupefied with morphine, don't they?

I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see him, his neck scar lit blue by the diner’s neon marquee. To see that little comma again, to put my mouth there, let my shadow widen the scar until, at last, there was no scar to be seen at all, just a vast and equal dark sealed by my lips. A comma superimposed by a period the mouth so naturally makes. Isn’t that the saddest thing in the world, Ma? A comma forced to be a period?

We pass a church with a massive blue neon cross, and I am spiritually lifted by feelings of great religiosity. No, I’m not, for crying out loud. Don’t be ridiculous. But what I do love about this road is how the gaudy becomes grand, how tastelessness is a way of everyday life. You have to admire how these people shamelessly try to get your attention as you drive by, whether they’re trying to feed you a hamburger or a savior. (p.37)

Across the intersection he could see the crumbling blue-green facade of the Palace Amusements building, the grinning ten-foot-high face on its north wall smiling out on empty streets and vacant lots. The arcade entrances were covered with plywood; broken neon tubing hung from the walls. He thought of the hours he had spent there as a kid, playing pinball, firing the real .22s in the shooting gallery, riding the bumper cars. It hurt to look at it now.

A long time back, I used to listen to a song by Dennis Wilson. It was from Pacific Ocean Blue, the album he made after The Beach Boys fell apart. There was a line in it I loved: Loneliness is a very special place. As a teenager, sitting on my bed on autumn evenings, I used to imagine that place as a city, perhaps at dusk, when everyone turns homeward and the neon flickers into life. I recognised myself even then as one of its citizens and I liked how Wilson claimed it; how he made it sound fertile as well as frightening.

There were streets, narrow and crowded with people and vehicles. Above them flashed neon lights and blinking billboards of every colour, shape and size. Some ran up the sides of buildings, others blinked on and off in store windows. In the space above the sidewalk, higher than a double-decker bus, hung flashing neon signs in bright pink, yellow, read, blue, orange, green and white. Yes, if white could be whiter than white, it was when it was in neon, Hong Mei thought. She knew Nathan Road in Kowloon was famous for its neon lights.

I watched an orange-red crane turning against the blue background of the sky. I watched a black insect that drew a broad, foaming, icy furrow across the heavens. The eternal youth of the world makes me feel breathless. Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me. Yesterday evening I was going up the Boulevard Raspail and the sky was crimson: it seemed to me that I was walking upon an unknown planet where the grass might be violet, the earth blue. It was trees hiding the red glare of a neon-light advertisement.

Read. You should read Bukowski and Ferlinghetti, read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and listen to Coltrane, Nina Simone, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Son House, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Nick Drake, Bobbie Gentry, George Jones, Jimmy Reed, Odetta, Funkadelic, and Woody Guthrie. Drive across America. Ride trains. Fly to countries beyond your comfort zone. Try different things. Join hands across the water. Different foods. New tasks. Different menus and tastes. Talk with the guy who’s working in construction on your block, who’s working on the highway you’re traveling on. Speak with your neighbors. Get to know them. Practice civil disobedience. Try new resistance. Be part of the solution, not the problem. Don’t litter the earth, it’s the only one you have, learn to love her. Care for her. Learn another language. Trust your friends with kindness. You will need them one day. You will need earth one day. Do not fear death. There are worse things than death. Do not fear the reaper. Lie in the sunshine but from time to time let the neon light your way. ZZ Top, Jefferson Airplane, Spirit. Get a haircut. Dye your hair pink or blue. Do it for you. Wear eyeliner. Your eyes are the windows to your soul. Show them off. Wear a feather in your cap. Run around like the Mad Hatter. Perhaps he had the answer. Visit the desert. Go to the zoo. Go to a county fair. Ride the Ferris wheel. Ride a horse. Pet a pig. Ride a donkey. Protest against war. Put a peace symbol on your automobile. Drive a Volkswagen. Slow down for skateboarders. They might have the answers. Eat gingerbread men. Pray to the moon and the stars. God is out there somewhere. Don’t worry. You’ll find out where soon enough. Dance. Even if you don’t know how to dance. Read The Four Agreements. Read the Bible. Read the Bhagavad Gita. Join nothing. It won’t help. No games, no church, no religion, no yellow-brick road, no way to Oz. Wear beads. Watch a caterpillar in the sun.

The man in the lead had a silver arm and implant around his neon-blue eye. Magnus Rone. Beside him stood a grim-faced, silver-furred Tano, holding a weapon in each of his four hands—House of Zeringei. Next to him was a man wearing a leather harness and a green cloak—House of Loden. Another gladiator flanked Magnus wearing blue, fish-scale armor—House of Man’u. On the other side of him, stood a massive fighter dressed all in black with a skull logo on his shoulder and a face that looked hewn from rock—House of Mortas. Behind them spread out a line of fierce looking fighters of different species. All of them held weapons—swords, staffs, axes. The imperators of Kor Magna had arrived.

The New York sidewalk led us along a little corner park rimmed with yellow-orange and violet pansies that seemed to be smiling, their faces upturned, and past a bagel shop that smelled of sesame and salt, delicious warm air. We passed an empty wine bar with a pink chandelier, whimsical and dim inside, and a neighborhood diner with its blue neon sign huge and lit up, little white line-cook hats—the city seemed in my vision like a multifaceted gem, spectacular. I wished I could keep everything I witnessed like a photograph, to forever hold this electric aliveness. The colors of the flowers and the clothing were crisp and rosy, hyper-bright against the subdued sun-drenched pigments of the streets and the brick buildings, all seeming faded, softer than real. Pops of coral and red—a scarf, a lady’s lips—were pops of life.

The Middengard Wyrm had arrived at last. Precisely according to Bryce’s plan. She’d been dripping blood for it all this way, leaving a trail, constantly scraping off her scabs to reopen her wounds—ones she’d intentionally inflicted on herself by “falling” into the stream. If the Wyrm relied on scent to hunt, then she’d left a veritable neon sign leading right to them. She hadn’t known when or how it would attack, but she’d been waiting. And she was ready. Bryce fell back as not only shadows, but blue light flared from Azriel—right alongside the ripple of silver flame from Nesta. Back-to-back, they faced the massive creature with razor-sharp focus. Ataraxia gleamed in Nesta’s hand. Truth-Teller pulsed with darkness in Azriel’s. Now or never. Her legs tensed, readying to sprint. Nesta’s eyes slid to Bryce’s for a heartbeat. As if understanding at last: Bryce’s “unhealing” hand. The blood she’d wiped on the walls. Her musing about the linked river system in these caves, sussing out what they knew regarding the terrain and the Wyrm. To unleash this thing—on them. “I’m sorry,” Bryce said to her. And ran.

And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,” Yossarian continued. “There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else he’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about — a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain? Pain?” Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife pounced upon the word victoriously. “Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers. And who created the dangers?” Yossarian demanded. He laughed caustically. “Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of his celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn’t He? People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads. They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or stupified with morphine, don’t they? What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. It’s obvious He never met a payroll. Why, no self-respecting businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a shipping clerk!

I sip something called the Blue Screen of Death, which is in fact neon-blue, with a bright LED winking inside one of the ice cubes.

Someone's Missing" Someone's telling the toll to me I'm cut and I'm weeping like a rubber tree But i don't care who's left behind Lost revelations that I'll never find In the long hall pipes are whispering Blues prepared for anti-christening Somewhere there's an honest soul To mirror teeth where neon lures troll And what's extinct might come alive A purple smoke in some internal shrine With a long sigh let the hissing in Stones deformed by gentle kissing and All the closed eyes start to glisten But it feels like someone's missing Yeah it feels like someone's missing

I've lived inside every ward of Freedom Incorporated and found I don’t like being lied to. Put me in prison; do not put me on the street then call that freedom. Do not force me to into believing block-cut neon red, white, and blue letters super-glued to the tall, outside company wall blinking Freedom Incorporated,” chapter seven ‘The Problem’ from writer Cosmo Starlight’s sixth edition novel “Freedom Incorporated.

A little-known fact: Next to nothing is impossible. Actually, nothing itself is impossible. Nothing is the absence of all things. But that absence is, itself, a thing, and—well, the logic’s so screwy you could uncork a wine bottle with it. The point is, most of the stuff people say is impossible is not at all impossible. Starting a car that’s already started, that’s im- possible. Traveling to where you are is impossible. Sleeping through Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” is impossible (and so is listening to it). And that’s the list. Taking a neon-blue dump? Well... You’d think, but really it’s just improbable. To sum up a wildly unmanageable concept: most things we call impossible are actually just things that require more effort than we’re willing to give. And even when it comes to impossible, it’s really only the Rick Astley that nobody will try if they’re given a few slices of pizza.

She answered him by reaching back, between his thighs, and gently encircling his scrotum with thumb and forefinger. She rocked there for a minute in the dark, erect above him, her other hand on his neck. The leather of her jeans creaked softly with the movement. Case shifted, feeling himself harden against the temperfoam. His head throbbed, but the brittleness in his neck seemed to retreat. He raised himself on one elbow, rolled, sank back against the foam, pulling her down, licking her breasts, small hard nipples sliding wet across his cheek. He found the zip on the leather jeans and tugged it down. “It’s okay,” she said, “I can see.” Sound of the jeans peeling down. She struggled beside him until she could kick them away. She threw a leg across him and he touched her face. Unexpected hardness of the implanted lenses. “Don’t,” she said, “fingerprints.” Now she straddled him again, took his hand, and closed it over her, his thumb along the cleft of her buttocks, his fingers spread across the labia. As she began to lower herself, the images came pulsing back, the faces, fragments of neon arriving and receding. She slid down around him and his back arched convulsively. She rode him that way, impaling herself, slipping down on him again and again, until they both had come, his orgasm flaring blue in a timeless space, a vastness like the matrix, where the faces were shredded and blown away down hurricane corridors, and her inner thighs were strong and wet against his hips. O

Every girl needs to make an entrance. It’s part of her signature. My hot pink high heels hit the sidewalk and I straightened. My blue jean skirt was brand new and had a bunch of totally rad colorful ruffles on it. My neon green top was spandex and fit like a glove.

They wore full-coverage raid suits, thick-filtered helmets, their gloves embellished with a ridge of claw-like, upturned hooks along each knuckle, all emblazoned with the logo of Atlas—Greek Titan of Endurance—shouldering the world in a neon blue silhouette.

– (image) green halo, hovering above my head –  / – (voice): desuetude, decline of neural pathways. Everything we’ve always wanted – / – (image) the bright blue-glowing logo of Baosteel – / (image) man in an expensive suit holding a purple pill between thumb and forefinger –

Nanaki would be besotted for many hours. She would watch like a novice, like she was in a foreign country, with fresh eyes. Like starting all over again. Like wiping clean a film of experience from eyes and starting afresh, like a child. She would then do a very Chandigarh thing - buy herself a tub of buttered popcorn and continue observing. On days she would get so late that the blue of the sky would deepen into a flush of Prussian. Poor selling boys launched neon frisbees to attract little children taking a walk with parents. The sodium pole lamps would be lit and the water of the bird fountain would become a psychedelic pink. She would continue to observe- not in a way that would make people uncomfortable but in a detached, wholesome way, like she was part of the surroundings. This was also one of the early lessons by her favourite Prof Ramanujan at DCA, who always said that observation was the key. Nature or culture.

smoking and dozing next to the slow roll of the Los Angeles River. Through the misery of dry-heat days and blue-neon nights, he listened to the roar of traffic overhead and wondered how a man could shed the perilous weight of memory. Time and again, he imagined climbing the crumbling pylons of the bridge, folding his uniform neatly over the rail, and stepping naked onto the highway to let that roar take him down. After fifteen days, and with his mind made up, he was standing on the bridge when

Everything seems neon lit when I look back at that time, like the track suits that made color exhausting and the parachute pants that gave all the boys who wore them airplane eyes. Sometimes I'll even remember an old man in greasy overalls and instead of mechanic's blue, I see them bright yellow and glowing. That's the art of the '80s. It's also the damage of it. Perhaps because they belonged to me, I will say that the '80s were as best as any time to grow up in. I think too they were a good time to meet the devil. Particularly that June day in 1984, when the sky seemed to be made on the kitchen counter, the clouds scattering like spilled flour.

But here is something I know now, something I did not have the words for back then: straight is a myth. Any seemingly curveless length of graphite or ink will, upon closer inspection, reveal itself to be uneven. Think of any line from your childhood, I should have told the girls: the thick red stripe on the gymnasium floor, the skinny blue lines on a sheet of loose-leaf. Draw a line between the events of your life. Look at any of these up close, and you’ll see what I mean. On earth, a line is just a bunch of bumps. There’s no such thing as straight.

town a a couple of hours ago, from New Orleans, named Richard, or Ricardo, Santos. You really want to talk to him: this is probably his work. He’s got a car we don’t know about. He could be checked into Caesars. You can get a full bio on Beauchamps from Luanne Rocha, who’s a sergeant in the Robbery Special Section of the LA cops. I’ve got her number for you.” Harvey wrote down Rocha’s information. Another plainclothes guy, this one in a baby blue golf shirt over lightweight chinos, had come up to listen in and now said, “Shit, Tom, you already cleared the case. There’s nothing left to do. Go down to Caesars and grab the guy.” Rae: “Let me tell you something. If you start running this thing down and you stumble over Deese, you can’t go in with a sissy baby blue golf shirt. Deese killed a lot of people and ate some of them. He’s

Tokyo." Mr. Fuchigami's voice inflates with pride. "Formerly Edo, almost destroyed by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, then again in 1944 by nighttime firebombing raids. Tens of thousands were killed." The chamberlain grows silent. "Kishikaisei." "What does that mean?" There's a skip in my chest. We've entered the city now. The high-rises are no longer cut out shapes against the skyline, but looming gray giants. Every possible surface is covered in signs---neon and plastic or painted banners---they all scream for attention. It's noisy, too. There is a cacophony of pop tunes, car horns, advertising jingles, and trains coasting over rails. Nothing is understated. "Roughly translated, 'wake from death and return to life.' Against hopeless circumstances, Tokyo has risen. It is home to more than thirty-five million people." He pauses. "And, in addition, the oldest monarchy in the world." The awe returns tenfold. I clutch the windowsill and press my nose to the glass. There are verdant parks, tidy residential buildings, upmarket shops, galleries, and restaurants. For each sleek, new modern construction, there is one low-slung wooden building with a blue tiled roof and glowing lanterns. It's all so dense. Houses lean against one another like drunk uncles. Mr. Fuchigami narrates Tokyo's history. A city built and rebuilt, born and reborn. I imagine cutting into it like a slice of cake, dissecting the layers. I can almost see it. Ash from the Edo fires with remnants of samurai armor, calligraphy pens, and chipped tea porcelain. Bones from when the shogunate fell. Dust from the Great Earthquake and more debris from the World War II air raids. Still, the city thrives. It is alive and sprawling with neon-colored veins. Children in plaid skirts and little red ties dash between business personnel in staid suits. Two women in crimson kimonos and matching parasols duck into a teahouse.

The sign at the end of the parking lot burned GEIN’S MOTEL in hot blue neon. He peered at the sign strangely, as if someone might be hiding behind it.

Say something about real love. Yes, true love—more than parted lips, than parted legs in sorrow’s darkroom of potash & blues. Let the brain stumble from its hidingplace, from its cell block, to the edge of oblivion to come to itself, sharp-tongued as a boar’s grin in summer moss —Yusef Komunyakaa, from “Safe Subjects,”Neon Venacular: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1993)

Approaching target area," they heard the pilot say, "Ninety klicks to go, drop-off in one minute thirty-five seconds." However, there was nothing to be heard but the wind rattling against the plane traveling at high velocity across the stormy sky. The voice spoke directly into their heads. "OK, people, get ready," another disembodied voice said. To everyone in each of the three stealth combat aircraft, this voice was almost as familiar as their own. It belonged to Metatron, the commander. "Our scouting drones report no movement whatsoever and minimal security measures. Everyone is sound asleep. They have no idea what's coming at them. Exactly how we like it," he paused for a moment before continuing, and the condescending tone in his voice indicated that he would enjoy the things to come, "Stick to the routine, and this will be a walk in the park. I won't tolerate any casualties today." Nephilim prepared herself, running a final status check on her systems. Her neon-blue eyes were the shape of almonds. When she closed them for a moment, her delicate, pale face appeared to be that of a young woman in her early twenties. Anyone who assumed this, however, couldn't be more wrong. A second later, she was content. All systems were operating within specified parameters. She was ready. Opening her eyes again, she caught a look from Adriel sitting opposite to her. A slight grin flashed over his lips. His deep black skin contrasted with his unnaturally blue eyes, and they outright glowed in the half-dark. He, too, was prepared and agreed with the commander's words. This shouldn't be much more than routine.

For a second, he didn't believe what he was seeing, tried to convince himself that he was still sleeping, caught in a horrible nightmare. The darkness was not empty. Eyes were lurking out there. Monstrous neon-blue eyes. Dozens of them. Jeff turned around and started running faster than he ever had in his life. Missy noticed his panic and followed him barking loudly. He opened the alarm device and pressed the emergency button. Suddenly a shrill alarm rose all across the settlement; white lights sprang on everywhere. "They found us!" Jeff yelled into the device frantically, hoping that everyone having one could hear him now, "Ambush...Blue Death approaching from the south. God save us all!" Those were his last words. Less than a second later, he felt a brutal force kick him off his feet and terrible pain. He landed in a puddle of his own blood, coming from a big hole in his chest. The last thing he saw before he died was a horrific mechanical creature, vaguely resembling a cat-sized scorpion, jumping Missy and ripping her head off with its claws. *** "I'm

For a second, he didn't believe what he was seeing, tried to convince himself that he was still sleeping, caught in a horrible nightmare. The darkness was not empty. Eyes were lurking out there. Monstrous neon-blue eyes. Dozens of them. Jeff turned around and started running faster than he ever had in his life. Missy noticed his panic and followed him barking loudly. He opened the alarm device and pressed the emergency button. Suddenly a shrill alarm rose all across the settlement; white lights sprang on everywhere. "They found us!" Jeff yelled into the device frantically, hoping that everyone having one could hear him now, "Ambush...Blue Death approaching from the south. God save us all!" Those were his last words. Less than a second later, he felt a brutal force kick him off his feet and terrible pain. He landed in a puddle of his own blood, coming from a big hole in his chest. The last thing he saw before he died was a horrific mechanical creature, vaguely resembling a cat-sized scorpion, jumping Missy and ripping her head off with its claws. *** "I'm afraid God's busy," Metatron said with blatant amusement in his voice as he watched how his people downright executed the man and his dog, "Can we help you?

Heavy turbulence shook the aircraft, yet it held course toward its destination. Its powerful engines barely produced any noise, and the black hull made it almost invisible against the darkness. Three more of the same type of aircraft followed it, traveling in formation, like silent birds of prey hiding in the shadows of the night. The passengers inside weren't bothered by the shaky ride. Highly focused and ready for anything, they sat there in silence, secured with safety bars into long rows of seats facing each other. All wore the same tight black combat suits and gloves, firearms were strapped to their thighs, and everyone had a rucksack on their back. Matching, tight-fitting helmets covered their heads, cheeks, and upper necks. Only a small part of their faces was visible, and their eyes. All of them had identical neon-blue eyes. Their stares were somewhat chilling and disturbing; the unnatural eyes and their unmoving faces made them look like an army of living dolls, waiting to spring into action.

Illuminated neon lights look exceptionally bright at dusk, particularly that moment right after the sun has buried itself beyond the vista and all hints of warmth smolder with hope just before surrendering. The natural world falls asleep as the man-made world comes to life, like passing the electric torch across an impossibly navy-blue sky.

I breathe in the fresh summer air as I pass a table covered with all sorts of cakes---Victorian sponge, Madeira, Battenberg, lemon drizzle. Again my mind drifts to my childhood, this time to the Michigan State Fair, which my family would visit at the end of every summer. It had all sorts of contests---pie eating, hog calling, watermelon seed spitting (Stevie's favorite)---but the cake competition was my favorite challenge of all. Every year I'd eye the confections longingly: the fluffy coconut cakes, the fudge chocolate towers filled with gooey caramel or silky buttercream, the cinnamon-laced Bundts topped with buttery streusel. The competition was divided into adult and youth categories, and when I turned twelve, I decided to enter a recipe for chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream and peanut brittle. My mom was a little befuddled by my participation (her idea of baking involved Duncan Hines and canned, shelf-stable frosting, preferably in a blinding shade of neon), but she rode along with my dad, Stevie, and me as we carted two-dozen cupcakes to the fairgrounds in Novi. The competition was steep---pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, German chocolate cupcakes, zucchini cupcakes with lemon buttercream---but my entry outshone them all, and I ended up taking home the blue ribbon, along with a gift certificate to King Arthur Flour.

I sit on the stoop and watch passersby. During the day ours is an ugly street, washed out and dusty with trash piled up and cars honking and trying to park in odd corners, but at night, the bars light up brilliantly with neon signs and flashing televisions. In the summer, they set up blue plastic tables and stools outside and I can hear parts of people’s conversations as they drink.

An hour later Tianna was walking toward Planet Bang, wearing a sweater shell with sequins and an ankle-grazing skirt slit up the sides to the top of her thighs. She glanced at the waning moon and stopped. There was something important she had to do before the moon turned dark and it was in some way connected to Justin and Mason, but what? She stared at the sky as she continued, hoping the memory would come to her the way soccer and skateboarding had. When she rounded the corner, the music grew louder. A neon sign throbbed pink, blue, green, and orange lights over the kids waiting to go inside. She recognized some of them. It seemed as if everyone had come with a friend or friends. Their heads turned and watched her as she walked to the end of the line. She spread her hands through her hair and arched her back. As long as they were going to stare, she might as well give them a show. She twisted her body and stuck one long leg out from the slit in her skirt. Guys smiled back at her as she stretched her arms in a sexy pose. The girls mostly turned away, pretending they hadn't been checking out their competition.

Oh you, the drizzle that falls at dawn. The cold that bites the bones. The light that hangs under the thick blanket. You, the hope of the rising sun. The beauty that rolls like dewdrops over the leaves, more brilliant than jewels. How can my heart not be captivated by your cheerfulness when welcoming the morning? The blossoming petals of the flowers, the dainty stems of the roses blowing in the wind. Enchanted by your crisp laughter, by your personal warmth that shines from deep within. How could I not fall for your graceful, understated beauty? How you spread happiness in ways I don't understand. You vibrate the strings of hope in my weary soul. And you make me think of you, day and night. You lull my restless sleep by reflecting your dazzling light like the neon lights across the street. Your smile is imagined in my dreams like a kite flying in the blue sky in my childhood longing. You stir my heart like a boat tossing on the waves. Waiting for the tide to take me home. Do not break my hope to reach your shores. Let me walk on your soft sand. Take shelter under your umbrella that covers me from the sun's scorching heat. You accept me into your small and simple yet well-organized cottage full of flowers. You welcomed me joyfully at your solid teak door. And you will take care of me no longer as a stranger in your clean home but as my own. In love blossomed by waiting, praying and hoping. In the consolation of the heart in order to realize the eternal dreams.

There’d been a recent rain, and against the coal of night, the shiny cobbled streets gleamed amber, rose, and neon-blue from reflected lamps and signs.

An image began to form in her mind. There were streets, narrow and crowded with people and vehicles. Above them flashed neon lights and blinking billboards of every colour, shape and size. Some ran up the sides of buildings, others blinked on and off in store windows. In the space above the sidewalk, higher than a double-decker bus, hung flashing neon signs in bright pink, yellow, red, blue, orange, green and white. Yes, if white could be whiter than white, it was when it was in neon, Hong Mei thought. She knew Nathan Road in Kowloon was famous for its neon lights. Were these streets of Kowloon that she was seeing it her head?

The door swung open and Zach stormed in. “Honey, I’m home!” Laughter followed. Rob smiled to himself. I’ll never get tired of hearing that. Zach came into the kitchen. Rob was standing by the counter, taking out muffins from a pan. He was wearing neon pink shorts with the print of little black dicks and flip-flops. The shorts were a ‘welcome to gay’ gift from Carson. On top of that, he had a navy suit jacket, a light blue shirt, and a silver tie. Zach came up to him and hugged him from behind. “Hey, baby!” Rob kissed his cheek. “How was your first day at school?

Someone—Tony or Warner Bros.?—had decided that the grueling schedule and the added tension in the band might be alleviated somewhat by the relative comfort of bus touring versus Old Blue. It was a nice idea. It might have even been a gambit to see if the camaraderie of sharing a luxurious living situation might heal the band’s broken bonds. So we loaded all of our gear into the parking lot behind our apartment and waited for our new accommodations to arrive. Everyone, I think even Jay, was excited about the prospect of spending at least some small part of our lives seeing what it was like to tour in style. That was until he laid eyes on the Ghost Rider. What we were picturing was sleek and non-ostentatious like the buses we had seen parked in front of theaters at sold-out shows by the likes of R.E.M. or the Replacements. Instead, what we got was one of Kiss’s old touring coaches—a seventies-era Silver Eagle decked out with an airbrushed mural in a style I can only describe as “black-light poster–esque,” depicting a pirate ship buffeted by a stormy sea with a screaming skeleton standing in the crow’s nest holding a Gibson Les Paul aloft and being struck by lightning. The look on Jay’s face was tragic. I felt bad for him. This was not a serious vehicle. I’m not sure how we talked him into climbing aboard, and once we did, I have no idea how we got him to stay, because the interior was even worse. White leather, mirrored ceilings, and a purple neon sign in the back lounge informing everyone, in cursive, that they were aboard the “Ghost Rider” lest they forget. So we embarked upon Uncle Tupelo’s last tour learning how to sleep while being shot at eighty miles per hour down the highway inside a metal box that looked like the VIP room at a strip club and made us all feel like we were living inside a cocaine straw. Ghost Rider indeed.

I drove to the bar Theodosha had called from and parked on the street. The bar was a gray, dismal place, ensconced like a broken matchbox under a dying oak tree, its only indication of gaiety a neon beer sign that flickered in one window. She was at a table in back, the glow of the jukebox lighting her face and the deep blackness of her hair. She tipped a collins glass to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine. “Let me take you home,” I said. “No, thanks,” she replied. “Getting swacked?” “Merchie and I had another fight. He says he can’t take my pretensions anymore. I love the word ‘pretensions.’” “That doesn’t mean you have to get drunk,” I said. “You’re right. I can get drunk for any reason I choose,” she replied, and took another hit from the glass. Then she added incongruously, “You once asked Merchie what he was doing in Afghanistan. The answer is he wasn’t in Afghanistan. He was in one of those other God-forsaken Stone Age countries to the north, helping build American airbases to protect American oil interests. Merchie says they’re going to make a fortune. All for the red, white, and blue.” “Who is they?” But her eyes were empty now, her concentration and anger temporarily spent. I glanced at the surroundings, the dour men sitting at the bar, a black woman sleeping with her head on a table, a parolee putting moves on a twenty-year-old junkie and mother of two children who was waiting for her connection. These were the people we cycled in and out of the system for decades, without beneficial influence or purpose of any kind that was detectable. “Let’s clear up one thing. Your old man came looking for trouble at the club today. I didn’t start it,” I said. “Go to a meeting, Dave. You’re a drag,” she said. “Give your guff to Merchie,” I said, and got up to leave. “I would. Except he’s probably banging his newest flop in the hay. And the saddest thing is I can’t blame him.” “I think I’m going to ease on out of this. Take care of yourself, kiddo,” I said. “Fuck that ‘kiddo’ stuff. I loved you and you were too stupid to know it.” I walked back outside into a misting rain and the clean smell of the night. I walked past a house where people were fighting behind the shades. I heard doors slamming, the sound of either a car backfiring or gunshots on another street, a siren wailing in the distance. On the corner I saw an expensive automobile pull to the curb and a black kid emerge from the darkness, wearing a skintight bandanna on his head. The driver of the car, a white man, exchanged money for something in the black kid’s hand. Welcome to the twenty-first century, I thought. I opened my truck door, then noticed the sag on the frame and glanced at the right rear tire. It was totally flat, the steel rim buried deep in the folds of collapsed rubber. I dropped the tailgate, pulled the jack and lug wrench out of the toolbox that was arc-welded to the bed of the truck, and fitted the jack under the frame. Just as I had pumped the flat tire clear of the puddle it rested in, I heard footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a short, thick billy club whip through the air. Just before it exploded across the side of my head, my eyes seemed to close like a camera lens on a haystack that smelled of damp-rot and unwashed hair and old shoes. I was sure as I slipped into unconsciousness that I was inside an ephemeral dream from which I would soon awake.

Now that he knew that he was, that he existed to celebrate his existence, he looked with delight and fascination at every all-night hot-food stall, every neon welcome to a caste bar or club, every vagrant waft of steam from the pneumatique ventilators, every puddle of yellow streetlight, every rain-slick cobble, because in the continued existence of those other things he saw his own being reflected.

Chiga-Chiga Sputnik-kid, Captain Elvis in neon skin-hugger and power-wheels, rides the high wires in the wee wee dawn hours when the cablecars sleep in their barns, when four A.M. TAOS gurls call the Scorpios from the high and the low places; silver-maned, forgotten samurai in a world with honor without swords; out on blue six through the vastnesses of Great Yu.

It could be worse , I told myself, and added the neon blue, vibrating tentacle toy to my online shopping cart. It could be drugs. I could drop a fortune on meth instead of monster dildos, right? It’s not that bad.

It’s frosty and blue like a Slurpee with cherries, gummy fish and neon-colored umbrella straws hanging off the rim of the half-gallon fish bowl. I lean forward and take a sip, ready to drown my sorrows in this cocktail.

Everything felt more mystifying bathed in neon.