Nobody Visits Quotes

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.

who knows if the moon's a balloon,coming out of a keen city in the sky--filled with pretty people? ( and if you and I should get into it,if they should take me and take you into their balloon, why then we'd go up higher with all the pretty people than houses and steeples and clouds: go sailing away and away sailing into a keen city which nobody's ever visited,where always it's Spring)and everyone's in love and flowers pick themselves

Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.

Glasgow is a magnificent city,” said McAlpin. “Why do we hardly ever notice that?” “Because nobody imagines living here…think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn’t been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.

Charlie can't keep you from visiting your mother. She still has primary custody.' 'Nobody has custody of me. I'm an adult.' He flashed a brilliant smile. ' Exactly.

We want you to break into the Smithsonian." "Always a pleasure," Nick said. Kate raised an eyebrow at Nick. "You've done it before?" Nick shrugged. "Nobody goes to D.C. without visiting the Smithsonian." "Most people go when it's open." "I don't like crowds.

What is there to see if I go outside? Don't tell me. I know. I can see other people. I don't want to see other people. They look awful. The men look like slobs and the women look like men. The men have mush faces framed by long hair and the women have big noses, big jaws, big heads, and stick-like bodies. That depresses me. Its no fun to people-watch anymore because there's so little variety in types. You say it's good to get a change of scenery. What scenery? New buildings? New cars? New freeways? New shopping malls? Go to the woods or a park? I saw a tree once. The new ones look the same, which is fine. I even remember what the old ones look like. My memory isn't that short. But it's not worth going to see a squirrel grab a nut, or fish swimming around in a big tank if I must put up with the ugly contemporary human pollution that accompanies each excursion. The squirrel may enliven me and remind me of better vistas but the price in social interaction isn't worth it. If, on my way to visit the squirrel, I encounter a single person who gains stimulation by seeing me, I feel like I have given more than I've received and I get sore. If every time I go somewhere to see a fish swimming, I become someone else's stimulation, I feel shortchanged. I'll buy my own fish and watch it swim. Then, I can watch the fish, the fish can watch me, we can be friends, and nobody else interferes with the interaction, like trying to hear what the fish and I are talking about. I won't have to get dressed a certain way to visit the fish. I needn't dress the way my pride dictates, because who's going to see me? I needn't wear any pants. The fish doesn't care. He doesn't read the tabloids. But, if I go out to see a fish other than my own, I'm right back where I started: entertaining others, which is more depleting than visiting the new fish is entertaining. Maybe I should go to a coffee house. I find no stimulation in watching ordinary people trying to put the make on other uninteresting people. I can fix my own cup of coffee and not have to look at or talk to other people. No matter where I go, I stimulate others, and have been doing so all my life. It used to be I'd sometimes get stimulated back.

it is a federal system of sadistic torture, vivisection, and animal genocide, which has been carried on for decades under the fraudulent guise of respectable medical research. And nobody on the outside knows, or wants to know, or is willing to find out. My parents, my friends, my teachers, wouldnt listen to me, or suggested that if it was bothering me that much I just had to quit the job. Just like that. As if that would have solved anything. As if I could ever live with such cowardice. You can't imagine, or maybe you can, how many people are convinced - without knowing the first thing about it - Animal research is essential. Americans have been hopelessly brainwashed on this issue. The animal rights people, by and large, acknowledge the essential futility of trying to change the system. So they address the smaller issues, fighting for legislation which would provide one extra visit per week to the labs by a custodian of the US dept of agriculture. Or demanding that a squirrel monkey be given an extra 12 square inches in his holding pen, before being led to the slaughter. That sort of thing. For whomever, and whatever it's worth, I hope my little write up is clear. I dont have the guts to do whats necessary. I pray there's someone out there who does. God help all of us.

daughter of the servants.” “Gee, you must have been lonely, Judge, having nobody to play with.” “I played with Sam Westing—chess. Hour after hour I sat staring down at that chessboard. He lectured me, he insulted me, and he won every game.” The judge thought of their last game: She had been so excited about taking his queen, only to have the master checkmate her in the next move. Sam Westing had deliberately sacrificed his queen and she had fallen for it. “Stupid child, you can’t have a brain in that frizzy head to make a move like that.” Those were the last words he ever said to her. The judge continued: “I was sent to boarding school when I was twelve. My parents visited me at school when they could, but I never set foot in the Westing house again, not until two weeks ago.” “Your folks must have really worked hard,” Sandy said. “An education like that costs a fortune.” “Sam Westing paid for my education. He saw that I was accepted into the best schools, probably arranged for my first job, perhaps more, I don’t know.” “That’s the first decent thing I’ve heard about the old man.” “Hardly decent, Mr. McSouthers. It was to Sam Westing’s advantage to have a judge in his debt. Needless to say, I have excused myself from every case remotely connected with

The Man and His Two Sweethearts A MIDDLE-AGED MAN, whose hair had begun to turn gray, courted two women at the same time. One of them was young, and the other well advanced in years. The elder woman, ashamed to be courted by a man younger than herself, made a point, whenever her admirer visited her, to pull out some portion of his black hairs. The younger, on the contrary, not wishing to become the wife of an old man, was equally zealous in removing every gray hair she could find. Thus it came to pass that between them both he very soon found that he had not a hair left on his head. Those who seek to please everybody please nobody.

Harvard Square looked both new and familiar. I felt like I would have been able to tell just from looking that this configuration of buildings and streets was familiar and meaningful to lots of people, not just me. It was weird to visit a suburb that nobody else every visited or went to, and then to return to these widely known halls and buildings where famous statesmen and writers and scientists had been coming for hundreds of years.

Then again, maybe nostalgia was an understandable response to a world that appeared to be going all to hell, as long as everyone remembered that the past was a nice place to visit but nobody should want to settle in it. One

Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.

Up in Illinois, we've forgotten what it's all about. I mean the dead, up in our town, tonight, heck, they're forgotten. Nobody goes to sit and talk to them. Boy, that's lonely. That's really sad. But here-- why, shucks. It's both happy and sad. It's all firecrackers and skeleton toys down here in the plaza and up in that graveyard now are all the Mexican dead folks with the families visiting and flowers and candles and singing and candy. I mean it's almost like Thanksgiving, huh? And everyone set down to dinner, but only half the people able to eat, but that's no mind, they're THERE. It's like holding hands at a séance with your friends, but some of the friends gone.

Instead of the White House, why not take our visiting space alien to ComicCon. We’d have legitimate concerns that nobody would notice an actual alien camouflaged among those pretending to be one. The upside? Our alien visitor phones home and instead reports—“They’re just like us!

We are a city of charming little parkettes, she thinks grimly, that nobody ever visits. Named for local heroes that nobody remembers.

Since most of us are products of a culture and era where nobody likes to discuss death in case it encourages her to visit,

And it’s more than just the distance, You know it is. Nobody survives this kind of thing. You pretend it’s going to work, and you make all these promises, and then you talk on the phone every night and text each other between classes and maybe manage a visit during fall break or something. But then everything’s awkward, because so much has changed, and you don’t fit into each other’s lives anymore.

It was our first ever visit to Walmart...It sucks you in like a black hole. In Walmart nobody can hear you scream. They have no order or continutiy. Walmart just puts rows and aisles wherever the f**k it likes.

Why didn't you tell me?" "I know you won't believe it, but I thought it would be best for you. You were doing so well until I came back. I thought you could go back to how it was. You still can." "Don't say that,Becks.We're going to figure something out." "I know.Even so,I understand that it would've been easier for you if I'd never come back.Maybe you and Jules..." His grip on my arm tightened,and when he spoke,his voice wavered. "Becks. I crashed when you left.Jules held together the pieces,and I will love her forever for that.But if I was with her, it wouldn't be right." He grimaced. "She told me so herself, right before I left with Will. She knew." Jack pushed my hair out of my eyes and off my forehead. "Um,she knew what?" I could barely hear my own voice. "It's always been you,Becks. Nothing will change that,no matter how much time has passed." He glanced down. "No matter if you feel the same way or not. You know what,right?" I shook my head slowly,wanting desperately to believe him, but not sure if I could. "How can you not see that? Everyone sees it." He slid his hand down my arm and grabbed my fingers, holding them in his lip,tracing them. Staring at them. "Remember freshman year? How Bozeman asked you to the Spring Fling?" Bozeman. He was two years older than me. Played offensive lineman. His first name was Zachary, but nobody had called him that since the third grade. I'd been surprised he even knew my name, let alone asked me to the dance. "Of course I remember.You came with me to answer him." We doorbell-ditched Bozeman's house, leaving a two-liter bottle of Coke and a note that said I'd pop to go to the dance with you, or something like that. Bozeman had a reputation for fast hands, but he didn't try anything with me. In fact,he barely touched me at all, even at the fling.And he never asked me out again.Or even talked to me, really.It was weird. "Yeah,well,I didn't tell you, but Bozeman actually asked my permission." "Why?" "Because it was obvious to everyone, except you,how I felt about you.And then that night with the Coke on the porch...after I dropped you off at home, I paid Bozeman a visit." His cheeks went pink and he lowered his eyes. "And?" "Let's just say I rescinded my permission. I didn't realize how much it would bother me." His eyes met mine. I could only imagine what was said between Jack and the lineman, who was twice his size. "Don't be mad," Jack said. Like I'd be angry after everything we'd been through. "I...I'm telling you this because you have to know that it's always been you. And it will always be you.

Whoever has been poor and lonely himself understands other poor and lonely people all the better. At least we should learn to understand our fellow beings, for we are powerless to stop their misery, their ignominy, their suffering, their weakness, and their death. One day Frau Wilke whispered, as she stretched out her hand and arm to me: "Hold my hand. It's like ice." I took her poor, old, thin hand in mine. It was cold as ice. Frau Wilke crept about her home now like a ghost. Nobody visited her. For days she sat alone in her unheated room. To be alone: icy, iron terror, foretaste of the grave, forerunner of unpitying death. Oh, whoever has been himself alone can never find another's loneliness strange. I began to realize that Frau Wilke had nothing to eat. The lady who owned the house, and later took Frau Wilke's rooms, allowing me to stay in mine, brought, of course in pity for her forsaken state, every midday and evening a cup of broth, but not for long, and so Frau Wilke faded away. She lay there, no longer moving: and soon she was taken to the city hospital, where, after three days, she died. One afternoon soon after her death, I entered her empty room, into which the good evening sun was shining, gladdening it with rose-bright, gay and soft colors. There I saw on the bed the things which the poor lady had till recently worn.... The strange sight of them made me unspeakably sad, and my peculiar state of mind made it seem to me almost that I had died myself, and life in all its fullness, which had often appeared so huge and beautiful, was thin and poor to the point of breaking. All things past, all things vanishing away, were more close to me than ever. For a long time I looked at Frau Wilke's possessions, which now had lost their mistress and lost all purpose, and at the golden room, gloried by the smile of the evening sun, while I stood there motionless, not understanding anything anymore.

But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood. 'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too. As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.

There's a hardness I'm seeing in modern people. Those little moments of goofiness that used to make the day pass seem to have gone. Life's so serious now. Maybe it's just because I'm with an older gang now.[...]I mean nobody even has hobbies these days. Not that I can see. Husbands and wives both work. Kids are farmed out to schools and video games. Nobody seems able to endure simply being themselves, either - but at the same time they're isolated. People work much more, only go home and surf the Internet and send e-mail rather than calling or writing a note or visiting each other. They work, watch TV, and sleep. I see these things. The world is only about work: work work work get get get...racing ahead...getting sacked from work...going online...knowing computer languages...winning contracts. I mean, it's just not what I would have imagined the world might be if you'd asked me seventeen years ago. People are frazzled and angry, desperate about money, and, at best, indifferent to the future.

What is today’s date? Who is the President? How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten? What does “people who live in glass houses” mean? Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false? Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche? Name five rivers. What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes? How about some lovely soft Thorazine music? If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you say to him? What should you do if I fall asleep? Are you still following in his mastodon footsteps? What is the moral of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”? What about his Everest shadow? Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one else has ever had it, or the deliberate extermination of indigenous populations? Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence? Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an even to those of the underworld, or vice versa? Would you visit a country where nobody talks? What would you have done differently? Why are you here?

In New York, when a tree dies, nobody mourns that it was cut down in its prime. Nobody counts the rings, notifies the loved ones. There are other trees. We can always squeeze in one more. Mind the tourists. It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't wanna live there.

Then someone knocks on the door, very clearly, four times. I pull away from Lena quickly. "What's that?" I say, dragging my forearm across my eyes, trying to get control of myself. Lena tries to pass it off as though she hadn't heard. Her face has gone white, her eyes wide and terrified. When the knocking starts up again, she doesn't move, just stays frozen where she is. "I thought nobody comes in this way." I cross my arms, watching Lena narrowly. There's a suspicious needling, pricking at some corner of my mind, but I can't quite focus on it. "They don't. I mean—sometimes—I mean, the delivery guys—" As she stammers excuses, the door opens, and he pokes his head in—the boy from the day Lena and I jumped the gate at the lab complex, just after we had our evaluations. His eyes land on me and he, too, freezes. At first I think there must be a mistake. He must have knocked on the wrong door. Lena will yell at him now, tell him to clear off. But then my mind grinds slowly into gear and I realize that no, he has just called Lena's name. This was obviously planned.

Who am I trying to fool? I'm well aware that at every stage of history there have been crimes against humanity, and they couldn't have happened without humans to commit them. The crimes that have been visited on my children have been committed, and still are being committed, by young people just like them, by people stirring up their delusions, giving them delusions of grandeur. So why do I imagine that people might improve? Everything going on around us seems to indicate that the values our forebears passed down to us no longer apply. Instead, we have sown the seeds of mistrust, scepticism and resignation, which will grow into a jungle of nihilism and cynicism, a jungle in which you will never find the courage to even mention the names of goodness, truth and common humanity, a corp that is now bearing fruit with remarkable speed. We're obliged to dig our own children's graves, but what's even more shocking is that these crimes are creating a future in which there is no place for truth and human decency. Nobody dare to speak truth anymore. Oh, my poor children ... we are burying you, but you should realize that we are also digging a grave for our future. Can you hear me?

It is worth noting here how extraordinary it was for anyone to be homeless in North Korea. This was, after all, the country that had developed the most painstaking systems to keep track of its citizens. Everybody had a fixed address and a work unit and both were tied to food rations—if you left home, you couldn’t get fed. People didn’t dare visit a relative in the next town without a travel permit. Even overnight visitors were supposed to be registered with the inminban, which in turn had to report to the police the name, gender, registration number, travel permit number, and the purpose of the visit. Police conducted regular spot checks around midnight to make sure nobody had unauthorized visitors. One had to carry at all times a “citizen’s certificate,” a twelve-page passport-size booklet that contained a wealth of information about the bearer. It was modeled on the old Soviet ID. All that changed with the famine. Without food distribution, there was no reason to stay at your fixed address. If sitting still meant you starved to death, no threat the regime levied could keep people home. For the first time, North Koreans were wandering around their own country with impunity.

THE COUNCIL WAS NOTHING LIKE Jason imagined. For one thing, it was in the Big House rec room, around a Ping-Pong table, and one of the satyrs was serving nachos and sodas. Somebody had brought Seymour the leopard head in from the living room and hung him on the wall. Every once in a while, a counselor would toss him a Snausage. Jason looked around the room and tried to remember everyone’s name. Thankfully, Leo and Piper were sitting next to him—it was their first meeting as senior counselors. Clarisse, leader of the Ares cabin, had her boots on the table, but nobody seemed to care. Clovis from Hypnos cabin was snoring in the corner while Butch from Iris cabin was seeing how many pencils he could fit in Clovis’s nostrils. Travis Stoll from Hermes was holding a lighter under a Ping-Pong ball to see if it would burn, and Will Solace from Apollo was absently wrapping and unwrapping an Ace bandage around his wrist. The counselor from Hecate cabin, Lou Ellen something-or-other, was playing “got-your-nose” with Miranda Gardiner from Demeter, except that Lou Ellen really had magically disconnected Miranda’s nose, and Miranda was trying to get it back. Jason had hoped Thalia would show. She’d promised, after all—but she was nowhere to be seen. Chiron had told him not to worry about it. Thalia often got sidetracked fighting monsters or running quests for Artemis, and she would probably arrive soon. But still, Jason worried. Rachel Dare, the oracle, sat next to Chiron at the head of the table. She was wearing her Clarion Academy school uniform dress, which seemed a bit odd, but she smiled at Jason. Annabeth didn’t look so relaxed. She wore armor over her camp clothes, with her knife at her side and her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. As soon as Jason walked in, she fixed him with an expectant look, as if she were trying to extract information out of him by sheer willpower. “Let’s come to order,” Chiron said. “Lou Ellen, please give Miranda her nose back. Travis, if you’d kindly extinguish the flaming Ping-Pong ball, and Butch, I think twenty pencils is really too many for any human nostril. Thank you. Now, as you can see, Jason, Piper, and Leo have returned successfully…more or less. Some of you have heard parts of their story, but I will let them fill you in.” Everyone looked at Jason. He cleared his throat and began the story. Piper and Leo chimed in from time to time, filling in the details he forgot. It only took a few minutes, but it seemed like longer with everyone watching him. The silence was heavy, and for so many ADHD demigods to sit still listening for that long, Jason knew the story must have sounded pretty wild. He ended with Hera’s visit right before the meeting.

Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English. The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake. So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate. Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question. Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it." For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com

Before settling in to work, we noticed a large travel case on the mantelpiece. I unsnapped the latches and lifted the top. On one side there was a large desert scene on a marble base featuring miniature gold figurines, as well as a glass clock powered by changes in temperature. On the other side, set in a velvet case, was a necklace half the length of a bicycle chain, encrusted with what appeared to be hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of rubies and diamonds—along with a matching ring and earrings. I looked up at Ben and Denis. “A little something for the missus,” Denis said. He explained that others in the delegation had found cases with expensive watches waiting for them in their rooms. “Apparently, nobody told the Saudis about our prohibition on gifts.” Lifting the heavy jewels, I wondered how many times gifts like this had been discreetly left for other leaders during official visits to the kingdom—leaders whose countries didn’t have rules against taking gifts, or at least not ones that were enforced. I thought again about the Somali pirates I had ordered killed, Muslims all, and the many young men like them across the nearby borders of Yemen and Iraq, and in Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, whose earnings in a lifetime would probably never touch the cost of that necklace in my hands. Radicalize just 1 percent of those young men and you had yourself an army of half a million, ready to die for eternal glory—or maybe just a taste of something better. I set the necklace down and closed the case. “All right,” I said. “Let’s work.

Something struck me as I watched Randy scratch his elbow, then lean against the door frame of the visitation room - I was no longer in love with him. Looking at him with eyes now glazed over in my new affection for Rebecca, he seemed like a nobody, a face in a crowd, gray and meaningless like an old newspaper clipping of a story I’d read so many times, it no longer impressed me. Love can be like that. It can vanish in an instant.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Singapore and China did not have diplomatic relations at that time [1976]. Communism is banned in Singapore, and nobody could visit China without official approval. The Singapore government had prohibited travel there for fear that Singaporeans would be subverted and converted to the communist cause. . .The travel ban was lifted after Lee Kuan Yew's visit. He realised that nobody could experience life there and be seduced by their system. Indeed, they would better appreciate what Singapore offered.

We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game which makes us believe that everything is fine after all.

She had no idea, no better than my kitten, as to how she would survive in this kingdom of her enemies. She must have thought that George was her savior. But not for long. Nobody knows quite what happened after that; but something went wrong with George’s agreeable plan to own both Neville girls and keep their enormous fortune to himself. Some say that Richard, visiting George’s grand house, met Anne again—his childhood acquaintance—and they fell in love, and that he rescued her like a knight in a fable from a visit that was nothing less than imprisonment.

As Sandy and his wife warmed to the tale, one tripping up another in their eagerness to tell everything, it gradually developed as distinct a superstition as I ever heard, and not without poetry and pathos. How long it was since the voice had been heard first, nobody could tell with certainty. Jarvis's opinion was that his father, who had been coachman at Brentwood before him, had never heard anything about it, and that the whole thing had arisen within the last ten years, since the complete dismantling of the old house: which was a wonderfully modern date for a tale so well authenticated. According to these witnesses, and to several whom I questioned afterwards, and who were all in perfect agreement, it was only in the months of November and December that "the visitation" occurred. During these months, the darkest of the year, scarcely a night passed without the recurrence of these inexplicable cries. Nothing, it was said, had ever been seen - at least nothing that could be identified. Some people, bolder or more imaginative than the others, had seen the darkness moving, Mrs Jarvis said with unconscious poetry. ("The Open Door")

Loneliness is one of the most universal human experiences, but our contemporary Western society has heightened the awareness of our loneliness to an unusual degree. During a recent visit to New York City, I wrote the following note to myself: Sitting in the subway, I am surrounded by silent people hidden behind their newspapers or staring away in the world of their own fantasies. Nobody speaks with a stranger, and a patroling policeman keeps reminding me that people are not out to help each other. But when my eyes wander over the walls of the train covered with invitations to buy more or new products, I see young, beautiful people enjoying each other in a gentle embrace, playful men and women smiling at each other in fast sailboats, proud explorers on horseback encouraging each other to take brave risks, fearless children dancing on a sunny beach, and charming girls always ready to serve me in airplanes and ocean liners. While the subway train runs from one dark tunnel into the other and I am nervously aware where I keep my money, the words and images decorating my fearful world speak about love, gentleness, tenderness and about a joyful togetherness of spontaneous people.

Good-bye!" she whispered. Then she summoned all her strength and waved one of her front legs at him. She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.

Security is a big and serious deal, but it’s also largely a solved problem. That’s why the average person is quite willing to do their banking online and why nobody is afraid of entering their credit card number on Amazon. At 37signals, we’ve devised a simple security checklist all employees must follow: 1. All computers must use hard drive encryption, like the built-in FileVault feature in Apple’s OS X operating system. This ensures that a lost laptop is merely an inconvenience and an insurance claim, not a company-wide emergency and a scramble to change passwords and worry about what documents might be leaked. 2. Disable automatic login, require a password when waking from sleep, and set the computer to automatically lock after ten inactive minutes. 3. Turn on encryption for all sites you visit, especially critical services like Gmail. These days all sites use something called HTTPS or SSL. Look for the little lock icon in front of the Internet address. (We forced all 37signals products onto SSL a few years back to help with this.) 4. Make sure all smartphones and tablets use lock codes and can be wiped remotely. On the iPhone, you can do this through the “Find iPhone” application. This rule is easily forgotten as we tend to think of these tools as something for the home, but inevitably you’ll check your work email or log into Basecamp using your tablet. A smartphone or tablet needs to be treated with as much respect as your laptop. 5. Use a unique, generated, long-form password for each site you visit, kept by password-managing software, such as 1Password.§ We’re sorry to say, “secretmonkey” is not going to fool anyone. And even if you manage to remember UM6vDjwidQE9C28Z, it’s no good if it’s used on every site and one of them is hacked. (It happens all the time!) 6. Turn on two-factor authentication when using Gmail, so you can’t log in without having access to your cell phone for a login code (this means that someone who gets hold of your login and password also needs to get hold of your phone to login). And keep in mind: if your email security fails, all other online services will fail too, since an intruder can use the “password reset” from any other site to have a new password sent to the email account they now have access to. Creating security protocols and algorithms is the computer equivalent of rocket science, but taking advantage of them isn’t. Take the time to learn the basics and they’ll cease being scary voodoo that you can’t trust. These days, security for your devices is just simple good sense, like putting on your seat belt.

Sometimes Christian good is hard to be around. It’s not of this world, and the juxtaposition jars. For example, Jean Vanier spent seven years in the British navy, starting in 1942. Later in life he noticed the way people with mental disabilities were mistreated and discarded by society into miserable asylums. He visited the asylums and noticed that nobody in them was crying. “When they realize that nobody cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us.” He bought a little house near Paris and started a community for the mentally disabled. Before long there were 134 such communities in thirty-five countries. Vanier exemplifies a selflessness that is almost spooky. He thinks and cares so little of himself. He lives as almost pure gift. People who meet him report that this can have an unnerving effect. Vanier walked out of a society that celebrates the successful and the strong to devote his life purely to those who are weak. He did it because he understands his own weakness. “We human beings are all fundamentally the same,” he wrote. “We all belong to a common, broken humanity. We all have wounded, vulnerable hearts. Each one of us needs to feel appreciated and understood; we all need help.

There is a brilliant truth I have come to see, largely because of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spiritual writer and fellow resister, whose words are now inscribed on my wall: “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community.” This has proved to be one of the most helpful quotes over the years. I visited another community that had their own version of it: “Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes.” A reminder that we’ve gotta have more than a vision and more than passion. We have to be willing to serve and love each other in real ways.

Well-kept lawns demanded land and a lot of work, particularly in the days before lawnmowers and automatic water sprinklers. In exchange, they produce nothing of value. You can’t even graze animals on them, because they would eat and trample the grass. Poor peasants could not afford wasting precious land or time on lawns. The neat turf at the entrance to chateaux was accordingly a status symbol nobody could fake. It boldly proclaimed to every passerby: ‘I am so rich and powerful, and I have so many acres and serfs, that I can afford this green extravaganza.’ The bigger and neater the lawn, the more powerful the dynasty. If you came to visit a duke and saw that his lawn was in bad shape, you knew he was in trouble.

We are glad to visit your beautiful country. It is prosperous—you all live far from the struggle. Nobody destroys your towns, cities, fields. Nobody kills your citizens, your sisters and mothers, your fathers and brothers. I come from a place where bombs pound villages into ash, where Russian blood oils the treads of German tanks, where innocent civilians die every day.” She caught herself up, exhaled slowly as she marshaled her next words. No one moved, least of all the marksman. “An accurate bullet fired by a sniper like me, Mrs. Roosevelt, is no more than a response to an enemy. My husband lost his life at Sevastopol before my eyes. He died in my arms. As far as I am concerned, any Hitlerite I see through my telescopic sights is the one who killed him.” A frozen silence fell over the room. Only the marksman’s eyes moved as he looked around the table, cataloging responses. The Soviet delegation leader sat clutching his butter knife, looking like he wanted to saw off her head and bowl it through the window into the White House gardens. The smart Washington women in their frills and pearls looked appalled. The First Lady looked . . . Embarrassed? the marksman wondered. Did that horsey presidential bitch look embarrassed? “I’m sorry, Lyudmila dear,” she said quietly, laying down her napkin. “I had no wish to offend you. This conversation is important, and we will continue it in a more suitable setting. But now, unfortunately, it is time to disperse. My duties are calling, and I understand

The Fates themselves grant us one or two places in our lives where the thread untwists and we can follow either one strand or the other. Better to know when and where those choices will come to us instead of being taken by surprise. “ “Why only one or two?” I asked, thinking of all the moments my life had already accumulated in which I’d chosen to follow a different path than the one most people would expect of me. “Why not say that every day lets me choose my own future?” The priest chuckled. “What a gift you have for joking, Lady Helen! You know your future. You’ll be Sparta’s queen, living a life blessed by the gods. Your only surprises will be the name of your husband and whether your babies will be sons or daughters. You don’t need to visit the Pythia. But your noble brothers will be heroes, making their own futures; heroes should know what awaits them.” “He’s right, Helen,” Castor said. “Polydeuces and I should know our fate.” Castor’s fate? He didn’t need an oracle to discover that; I could tell him exactly what it would be. The young priest’s glib words were better than underground fumes for giving me a vision of what lay in store for both of my brothers: They were going to have their ears filled with flattery, then be persuaded to leave a rich gift at Apollo’s shrine just to hear some poor girl babble riddles while she choked half to death on smoke. Then they’d made another offering just to have Apollo’s priests translate the Pythia’s wild words. If their gifts to the sun god were too extravagant, I could also predict what Father would have to say about it when we got home.

I have referred to it as a gift--something for which others with this affliction have taken me to task. I was only speaking from my own experience, of course, but I stand partially corrected: if it is a gift, it's the gift that just keeps on taking. Coping with relentless assault and the accumulating damage is not easy. Nobody would ever choose to have this visited upon them. Still, this unexpected crisis forced a fundamental life decision: adopt a siege mentality--or embark upon a journey. Whatever it was--courage? acceptance? wisdom?--that finally allowed me to go down the second road (after spending a few disastrous years on the first) was unquestionably a gift--and absent this neurophysiological catastrophe, I would never have opened it, or been so profoundly enriched. That's why I consider myself a lucky man.

Dear Young Black Males, If you’re going to be sexual active, please strap up. Wear a condom. STD rates amongst African-American males and females are ridiculously higher than any other ethnic group. Did you know that African-Americans are the most affected by HIV? Yes, it’s true! You’ve got to educate yourself. There’s no reason for you to be uneducated about safe sex. You can Google information from reliable sources, go on YouTube, or visit your doctor to get helpful information. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, be afraid of what STD(s) you can get. And for the record: If you contract HIV, you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life. Many people think that they’re immune when it comes to catching something, but nobody’s exempt. Believe that! Protect yourself or risk being infected. Just because somebody looks good, doesn’t mean that they’re safe or cool to fool around with. Don’t be fooled!

Little Brother, an aspiring painter, saved up all his money and went to France, to surround himself with beauty and inspiration. He lived on the cheap, painted every day, visited museums, traveled to picturesque locations, bravely spoke to everyone he met, and showed his work to anyone who would look at it. One afternoon, Little Brother struck up a conversation in a café with a group of charming young people, who turned out to be some species of fancy aristocrats. The charming young aristocrats took a liking to Little Brother and invited him to a party that weekend in a castle in the Loire Valley. They promised Little Brother that this was going to be the most fabulous party of the year. It would be attended by the rich, by the famous, and by several crowned heads of Europe. Best of all, it was to be a masquerade ball, where nobody skimped on the costumes. It was not to be missed. Dress up, they said, and join us! Excited, Little Brother worked all week on a costume that he was certain would be a showstopper. He scoured Paris for materials and held back neither on the details nor the audacity of his creation. Then he rented a car and drove to the castle, three hours from Paris. He changed into his costume in the car and ascended the castle steps. He gave his name to the butler, who found him on the guest list and politely welcomed him in. Little Brother entered the ballroom, head held high. Upon which he immediately realized his mistake. This was indeed a costume party—his new friends had not misled him there—but he had missed one detail in translation: This was a themed costume party. The theme was “a medieval court.” And Little Brother was dressed as a lobster. All around him, the wealthiest and most beautiful people of Europe were attired in gilded finery and elaborate period gowns, draped in heirloom jewels, sparkling with elegance as they waltzed to a fine orchestra. Little Brother, on the other hand, was wearing a red leotard, red tights, red ballet slippers, and giant red foam claws. Also, his face was painted red. This is the part of the story where I must tell you that Little Brother was over six feet tall and quite skinny—but with the long waving antennae on his head, he appeared even taller. He was also, of course, the only American in the room. He stood at the top of the steps for one long, ghastly moment. He almost ran away in shame. Running away in shame seemed like the most dignified response to the situation. But he didn’t run. Somehow, he found his resolve. He’d come this far, after all. He’d worked tremendously hard to make this costume, and he was proud of it. He took a deep breath and walked onto the dance floor. He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium. This is how you must do it, people.

I want to say you'd be surprised by the kind of people who go visit their relatives and lovers in jail, but really you wouldn't be surprised at all. It's just like you see on TV - desperate, broken-toothed women in ugly clothes, or other ladies who dress up like streetwalkers to feel sexy among the inmates and who are waiting for marriage proposals from their men in cuffs, even if they're in maximum security and the court has already marked them for life or death penalty. There are women who come with gangs of kids who crawl over their daddies, and there are the teenagers and grown-up kids who come and sit across the picnic tables bitter-lipped while their fathers try to apologize for being there. Then there are the sisters, like me, who show up because nobody else will. Our whole family, the same people who treated my brother like he was baby Moses, all turned their backs on Carlito when he went to the slammer. Not one soul has visited him besides me. Not an uncle, a tia, a primo, a friend, anybody.

to look around. At first sight, the apartment was perfectly ordinary. He made a quick circuit of the living room, kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom. The place was tidy enough, but with a few items strewn here and there, the sort of things that might be left lying around by a busy person—a magazine, a half-finished crossword puzzle, a book left open on a night table. Abby had the usual appliances—an old stove and a humming refrigerator, a microwave oven with an unpronounceable brand name, a thirteen-inch TV on a cheap stand, a boom box near a modest collection of CDs. There were clothes in her bedroom closet and silverware, plates, and pots and pans in her kitchen cabinets. He began to wonder if he’d been unduly suspicious. Maybe Abby Hollister was who she said she was, after all. And he’d taken a considerable risk coming here. If he was caught inside her apartment, all his plans for the evening would be scotched. He would end up in a holding cell facing charges that would send him back to prison for parole violation. All because he’d gotten a bug up his ass about some woman he hardly knew, a stranger who didn’t mean anything. He decided he’d better get the hell out. He was retracing his steps through the living room when he glanced at the magazine tossed on the sofa. Something about it seemed wrong. He moved closer and took a better look. It was People, and the cover showed two celebrities whose recent marriage had already ended in divorce. But on the cover the stars were smiling over a caption that read, Love At Last. He picked up the magazine and studied it in the trickle of light through the filmy curtains. The date was September of last year. He put it down and looked at the end tables flanking the sofa. For the first time he noticed a patina of dust on their surfaces. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned in some time. He went into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. It seemed well stocked, but when he opened the carton of milk and sniffed, he discovered water inside—which was just as well, since the milk’s expiration period had ended around the time that the People cover story had been new. Water in the milk carton. Out-of-date magazine on the sofa. Dust everywhere, even coating the kitchen counters. Abby didn’t live here. Nobody did. This apartment was a sham, a shell. It was a dummy address, like the dummy corporations his partner had set up when establishing the overseas bank accounts. It could pass inspection if somebody came to visit, assuming the visitor didn’t look too closely, but it wasn’t meant to be used. Now that he thought about it, the apartment was remarkable for what

You’re back,” I said, refusing to embarrass myself further by getting angry. “I took Tag home. He had big plans to train for his next fight old school, like Rocky, but discovered that it’s a little more appealing in the movies. Plus, I don’t do a very good Apollo Creed.” “Tag’s a fighter?” “Yeah. Mixed martial arts stuff. He’s pretty good.” “Huh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know anything about the sport. “Didn’t Apollo Creed die in one of the movies?” “Yeah. The black guy always dies at the hands of the white man.” I rolled my eyes, and he grinned, making me grin with him before I remembered that I was embarrassed and ticked off that he had kissed me and left town. It felt a little too much like the past. The grin slipped from my face and I turned away, busying myself shaking out the saddle blankets. “So why did you come back?” I kept my eyes averted. He was quiet for a minute, and I bit my lips so I wouldn’t start to babble into the awkward silence. “The house needs more work,” he replied at last. “And I’m thinking of changing my name.” My head shot up, and I met his smirk with confusion. “Huh?” “I heard there was this new law in Georgia. Nobody named Moses can even visit. So I’m thinking a name change is in order.” I just shook my head and laughed, both embarrassed and pleased at his underlying meaning. “Shut up, Apollo,” I said, and it was his turn to laugh.

New York is a city of eight million people, approximately seven million of whom will be furious when they hear you were in town and didn’t meet them for an expensive dinner, five million furious you didn’t visit their new baby, three million furious you didn’t see their new show, one million furious you didn’t call for sex, but only five actually available to meet you. It is completely reasonable to call none of them. You could instead sneak off to a terrible, treacly Broadway show that you will never admit you paid two hundred dollars to see. This is what Less does on his first night, eating a hot dog dinner to make up for the extravagance. You cannot call it a guilty pleasure when the lights go down and the curtain goes up, when the adolescent heart begins to beat along with the orchestra, not when you feel no guilt. And he feels none; he feels only the shiver of delight when there is nobody around to judge you. It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show

Galveston?” he asked in that amazing voice, still surprising me by keeping our conversation going. “Yeah. Staying at a beach house and everything. Totally slumming it and having a miserable time, you know?” I gave him a real smile that time. Rip just raised his brows. “I promised her I would go visit, and she promised she would come up too... What’s that face for?” I surprised myself by laughing. “I don’t believe it either. I’ll get lucky if she comes once. I’m not that delusional.” I didn’t imagine the way his cheek twitched again, just a little, just enough to keep the smile on my face. “I’m stuck making my own lunches from now on. I have nobody to watch scary movies with who’s more dramatic than I am screaming at the scary parts. And my house is empty,” I told him, going on a roll. “Your lunches?” was what he picked up on. I wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink that he was asking me so many questions, but I wasn’t going to complain. “I can’t cook to save my life, boss. I thought everyone knew. Baking is the only thing I can handle.” “You serious?” he asked in a surprised tone. I nodded. “For real?” “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I can’t even make rice in an Instant Pot. It’s either way too dry or it’s mush.” Oh. “An Instant Pot is—” “I know what it is,” he cut me off. It was my turn to make a face, but mine was an impressed one. He knew what an Instant Pot was but not a rom-com. Okay. “Sorry.” He didn’t react to me trying to tease him, instead he asked, “You can’t even make rice in that?” “Nope.” “You know there’s instructions online.” Was he messing with me now? I couldn’t help but watch him a little. How much had he drunk already? “Yeah, I know.” “And you still screw it up?” I blinked, soaking up Chatty Cathy over here like a plant that hadn’t seen the sun in too long. “I wouldn’t say I screw it up. It’s more like… you either need to chew a little more or a little less.” It was his turn to blink. “It’s a surprise. I like to keep people on their toes.” If I hadn’t been guessing that he’d had a couple drinks before, what he did next would have confirmed it. His left cheek twitched. Then his right one did too, and in the single blink of an eye, Lucas Ripley was smiling at me. Straight white teeth. That not-thin but not-full mouth dark pink and pulled up at the edges. He even had a dimple. Rip had a freaking dimple. And I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. I couldn’t help but think it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen, even though I had zero business thinking anything along those lines. But I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t say a single word to mention it; otherwise, it might never come out again. What I did trust myself to do was gulp down half of my Sprite before saying, “You can make rice, I’m guessing?” If he wanted to talk, we could talk. I was good at talking. “Uh-huh,” he replied, sounding almost cocky about it. All I could get myself to do in response was grin at him, and for another five seconds, his dimple—and his smile—responded to me.

«It's not easy to believe.» «I» she told him, «I can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.» «Really?» «I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in "War of the Worlds". I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kind of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.»

The Magic of Goulash “The trip down the aisle [on a bus or train, during his travels] was where all the stakes were. Because as I’m going down that aisle, I’ve got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting. Somebody I can trust, somebody who might be able to trust me. The stakes are high because I know that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going, that person had to invite me to their home. Because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel.” The clincher question Cal used to get free room and board around Europe as a poor traveler was: “Can you tell me: How do you make the perfect goulash?” He would purposefully sit down next to grandmas, who would then pour out their souls. After a few minutes of passionate pantomiming, people would come from around the train to help translate, no matter the country. Cal never had to worry about where he was spending the night. “During [one dinner party a grandma threw in Hungary to feed me goulash,] one of the neighbors says, ‘Have you ever tasted apricot brandy? Because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father. He lives a half an hour away. You’ve got to come to taste the apricot brandy.’ That weekend, we’re tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts, another neighbor comes over to me. ‘Have you ever been to Kiskunhalas, the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kiskunhalas.’ Now we’re off to Kiskunhalas. I’m telling you, a single question about goulash could get me 6 weeks of lodging and meals, and that’s how I got passed around the world. 10 years. 10 years.

Since my first research visit to Malta in November 1999 I've learned that objects -- and even places -- of archaeological importance can and do disappear here in mysterious ways. For example, ancient remains of an estimated 7000 people were found in the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni, buried in a matrix of red earth, when it was excavated by Sir Themistocles Zammit at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today only six skulls are left, stashed out of public view in two plastic crates in the cavernous vaults of Malta's National Museum of Archaeology. Nobody has the faintest idea what has happened to all the rest of the bones. They've just 'vanished', according to officials at the Museum. And the six skulls? After much pressure and protest I have been allowed to see them only this morning and they are -- I must confess -- extremely and unsettlingly odd. They are weirdly elongated -- dolichocephalic is the technical term but this is dolichocephalism of the most extreme form. And one of the skulls, though that of an adult, is entirely lacking in the fossa median -- the clearly-visible 'join' that runs along the top of the head where two plates of bone are separated in infancy (thus facilitating the process of birth) but later join together in adulthood. I should be paying attention to the fantastic views and seascapes unfolding beneath the helicopter but I keep on wondering: what would people with skulls like that have looked like during life? How could they have survived birth and grown to adulthood? And did the other skulls from the Hypogeum -- the lost skulls, the lost bones -- also show the same distinctive peculiarity?

That’s Cervella.” Vero’s hand picks at something in her hair, as she glares down at a disassembled bike. “This one’s his favourite. Do you bike?” Ligaya nods as she remembers the fat-tire red bike. Pedro’s. He let her borrow it to visit family in the next village. She touches her thighs as she remembers the feeling of freedom, covering such distance by the strength of her own legs, not minding at all when she had to ride home in the pouring rain, her sweat and the rainwater indistinguishable on her cheeks. Again, she feels the uncomfortable vertigo of her body being in one place and her mind in another, the two so far apart. But Vero does not wait for an answer. She pulls Ligaya—not roughly—her fingertips soft on the exposed skin of Ligaya’s wrist. But Ligaya is unaccustomed to touch. Nobody touched her at the Poons. She breathes deeply and counts the bikes. She must not flinch, wills herself not to pull away; she cannot afford to give offense. Vero twirls her around and points at a poster above the workbench. “That! Read it!” But Ligaya does not have to read it. Vero reads it for her. Since the bike makes little demand on material or energy resources, contributes little to pollution, makes a positive contribution to health and causes little death, or injury, it can be regarded as the most benevolent of machines. —Stuart S. Wilson She pauses as if she might expect a response this time. She gestures at the room stuffed with bikes until it seems the very walls and ceiling are made of bikes, the scent of rubber tires replacing oxygen. “Ridiculous, right? The bike will save the world, he says. Yes, but you just need one, I say. One bike. That I can see. That I can even admire. I’m sure Stuart buddy here couldn’t even imagine this … this … biketrocity. And that he should be to blame?!

Everything and Nothing* There was no one inside him; behind his face (which even in the bad paintings of the time resembles no other) and his words (which were multitudinous, and of a fantastical and agitated turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a dream someone had failed to dream. At first he thought that everyone was like him, but the surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance to whom he began to describe that hollowness showed him his error, and also let him know, forever after, that an individual ought not to differ from its species. He thought at one point that books might hold some remedy for his condition, and so he learned the "little Latin and less Greek" that a contemporary would later mention. Then he reflected that what he was looking for might be found in the performance of an elemental ritual of humanity, and so he allowed himself to be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long evening in June. At twenty-something he went off to London. Instinctively, he had already trained himself to the habit of feigning that he was somebody, so that his "nobodiness" might not be discovered. In London he found the calling he had been predestined to; he became an actor, that person who stands upon a stage and plays at being another person, for an audience of people who play at taking him for that person. The work of a thespian held out a remarkable happiness to him—the first, perhaps, he had ever known; but when the last line was delivered and the last dead man applauded off the stage, the hated taste of unreality would assail him. He would cease being Ferrex or Tamerlane and return to being nobody. Haunted, hounded, he began imagining other heroes, other tragic fables. Thus while his body, in whorehouses and taverns around London, lived its life as body, the soul that lived inside it would be Cassar, who ignores the admonition of the sibyl, and Juliet, who hates the lark, and Macbeth, who speaks on the moor with the witches who are also the Fates, the Three Weird Sisters. No one was as many men as that man—that man whose repertoire, like that of the Egyptian Proteus, was all the appearances of being. From time to time he would leave a confession in one corner or another of the work, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard says that inside himself, he plays the part of many, and Iago says, with curious words, I am not what I am. The fundamental identity of living, dreaming, and performing inspired him to famous passages. For twenty years he inhabited that guided and directed hallucination, but one morning he was overwhelmed with the surfeit and horror of being so many kings that die by the sword and so many unrequited lovers who come together, separate, and melodiously expire. That very day, he decided to sell his theater. Within a week he had returned to his birthplace, where he recovered the trees and the river of his childhood and did not associate them with those others, fabled with mythological allusion and Latin words, that his muse had celebrated. He had to be somebody; he became a retired businessman who'd made a fortune and had an interest in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. It was in that role that he dictated the arid last will and testament that we know today, from which he deliberately banished every trace of sentiment or literature. Friends from London would visit his re-treat, and he would once again play the role of poet for them. History adds that before or after he died, he discovered himself standing before God, and said to Him: I , who have been so many men in vain, wish to be one, to be myself. God's voice answered him out of a whirlwind: I, too, am not I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare, dreamed your own work, and among the forms of my dream are you, who like me, are many, yet no one.

True beauty is found not in the exceptional but in the commonplaces Where does the beauty lie, in the exceptional or the commonplace? Some people believe, true beauty can be find only in exceptional and there isn’t any beauty in commonplaces, and it seems, they are all quotidian objects; but yet, another group of people attribute to the factual beauty of commonplaces and believe the beauty of exceptional seems artificial and it’ll be ephemeral. After weighing the evidence, it is certain that the true beauty lie in the commonplace not in the exceptional. People are most move by natural feature than the artificial ones. Those people that believe the beauty lie in the exceptional prefer the artificial beauties, which is made by human, to the natural beauties. Consider Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Liza, one of the most beautiful painting in the world. For sure it is beautiful and few people who view the painting are not moved by the sheer beauty of it. But how much time a person can enjoy watching this art work and praise it? One hour? Two hours? One week? Like Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Liza, the cathedral of north dame in Paris is another exceptional object which is wonderful and there are too many tourist that travel untold miles to view cathedral. Nobody can tell it is not beautiful; but, does it sacrifice people’s tendency as much as the original beauties do? People interest to visit these beautiful building and wonderful painting at least one time to be familiar with those great art work but it cannot be considered as a true beauty which is one of the requirement of human to be alive. On the other hand, the natural beauties which are around us are fantastic and eternal. They are always improve motivation on people and make them pleased. Consider a flower, although every people have seen many kind of flowers, it is always beautiful and move people to appropriate them. Like flower, plants, stars, sun, moon, sky, sea every object in the nature can be caused of an excited on people and motivate them to be alive. The common place beauties are the most part of the human’s life. If people every time don’t appreciate every beauty around him, and he praise exceptional object when he encounter, it cannot be a fair conclusion that the exceptional objects are true beauty. Indeed people believe nature is constantly compeer of human along the history, like one of his organs, he is not praising them every time, but it is incredible for human to feel he must be alive without common place beauty. Ultimately, after considering both sides of the issue, it must be concluded that the true beauty lie in the commonplace not in the exceptional. Exceptional are the beauties which can be as a complementary for the natural beauties. Because people’s life can be current even without exceptional but without commonplace beauties it is impossible for people to be alive.

I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe." "Really?" "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in this universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud.

competition takes place on discrete interventions rather than the full cycle of care where value is determined. Value can only be measured over the care cycle, not for an individual procedure, service, office visit, or test. Yet care is structured around medical specialties and discrete services, not the integrated care of medical conditions. Physicians act as free agents, performing their specialty and billing separately. Navigating the care cycle is challenging. Nobody takes an overall care-cycle perspective, including steps to avoid the need for interventions (prevention) and ongoing management of medical conditions to forestall recurrence (disease management).

In some countries that I have visited, I saw that citizens are very rude and animalistic. They have no moral, no values, and no manners. They are always starring at others, judging with their eyes of ignorance and their very small conscience, they are impolite wherever you go, and their customer service is horrible. They never say sorry for anything and even offend you when you complain about their mistakes and lack of proper attitude. Besides, eating in some of these nations often reveals to be a huge disaster. Food is often rotten, and commonly comes with either hair, stones of even glass, as I have found many times. They waste money as I have never seen anywhere else and are simultaneously very abusive in prices. Their prices are high but their quality level is not even suitable for animals. They represent a waste on foreign investments. Their youngest generation is also a disaster; Extremely ignorant, without any respect or education, undeserving of any job or even trust. Nobody in his right mind should ever employ them, marry them or befriend them. Most are always trying to use their friendships to take advantage of others, especially if such people are outsiders. Their women are gold diggers and extremely promiscuous, especially towards men of other cultures, as if their pride was built on the number of sex partners they can have from the widest variety of nations from around the globe, especially if such men are wealthy. And yet, they can also show a high predisposition for racist behaviors and ignorance in what regards the planet they live in. They are, foremost, selfish, sadistic and parasitic. These countries and their people represent the lowest level of mankind. Whenever you witness what I just described, you are experiencing a country reaching its end. Move out of it while you can, for God will set on such people Divine justice as quickly as such citizens, by their immoral behavior, approach it. Many of such countries end with the loss of their sovereignty for political reasons, invasions by foreign armies, civil wars, violent revolutions, major economical collapses leading the citizens to poverty and starvation, and much more.

There was this new minister who went to the cemetery sorry, cemetery and he got his PhD and his DD and he’s got assign to his first church. I’ll never forget this. When he got there the church was a little lively but he was dead and he told the people now that am your new pastor we gonna do things a little different around here. He said, no more shouting, we’re going to do things in order. And theres going to be a quietness. He said I want you to follow my lead. He said I’ve graduated from the seminary and I’ve been educated and we’re going to do things in order and we’re going to take away this noise. It took him about 6 months to get things all tone down, he thought. He never even bothered to write his sermons out because some of the people were still shouting. But after 6 months he had everything under control and everything was dead. Dead quite. I mean quite. And finally he worked on his message all week long, had it all type written out on 15 pages, double space. Had everything perfect and now he is going to demonstrate his educational powers. Ready to wax eloquent and have them know they have an educated preacher/minister. He got into his message that he was reading. And he got to page 5, there was an ooooooooooooold fashion deacon in the back and let out one of them big old weeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllll gloryyyyyyyyyyyyyyy !!!!!. that was like an atom bomb that struck. And he became frustrated and all 15 pages of notes fell on the ground and he lost his place. He was never been so humiliated in all of his life. He could not finish his sermon. The only thing he could do is stop and pray and put the benediction on. He became so aggravated at the brother at the back. He said I did not know what I said to make him shout but he said am going to visit him in the morning and am going to found out what I said. And whatever I said am going to cut it out of my mind and I’ll never say it again so he won’t shout. Monday morning he headed out and he went to this brother who was a farmer. He didn’t even bother to go to the house. He wanted to handle this man to man. The brother offered a cup of coffee but the pastor refused it. He said I came out here to talk man to man sir. Do you remember when I first came to the church I said we were going to do things differently. He said yes sir I do remember. You remember I said nobody was going to make some noice. He said yes sir I remember that. He said yesterday you embarrassed me. I only got half way through my sermon. He said I want you to be honest with me brother. What was it that I said that made you shout because whatever it is am not going to say it no more. The brother breathed and said let get one thing straight pastor, you’ve been here six months. aint nothing you ever said made me shout. Nothing at all. But when I get to thinking how deep I was in sin and Jesus brought me out and cleaned me and wrote my name the book of life. How so good He’s been to me. When I was thinking of what He done for me, I couldn’t help but shoouuuuuuuuuuuuuuut to His gloryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. I don’t just shout in church, here with my mules thinking of Jesus, I feel another shouuuuuuuuuuuuut coming up.

[On kneeling down at the Warsaw Ghetto Monument during his 1970 state visit to Poland:] "Es war eine ungewöhnliche Last, die ich auf meinem Weg nach Warschau mitnahm. Nirgends hatte das Volk, hatten die Menschen so gelitten wie in Polen. Die maschinelle Vernichtung der polnischen Judenheit stellte eine Steigerung der Mordlust dar, die niemand für möglich gehalten hatte. [...] Ich hatte nichts geplant, aber Schloß Wilanow, wo ich untergebracht war, in dem Gefühl verlassen, die Besonderheit des Gedenkens am Ghetto-Monument zum Ausdruck bringen zu müssen. Am Abgrund der deutschen Geschichte und unter der Last der Millionen Ermordeten tat ich, was Menschen tun, wenn die Sprache versagt. Ich weiß es auch nach zwanzig Jahren nicht besser als jener Berichterstatter, der festhielt: 'Dann kniet er, der das nicht nötig hat, für alle, die es nötig haben, aber nicht knien – weil sie es nicht wagen oder nicht können oder nicht wagen können.'" ("I took an extraordinary burden to Warsaw. Nowhere else had a people suffered as much as in Poland. The robotic mass annihilation of the Polish Jews had brought human blood lust to a climax which nobody had considered possible. [...] Although I had made no plans, I left my accommodations at Wilanow Castle feeling that I was called upon to mark in some way the special moment of commemoration at the Ghetto Monument. At the abyss of German history and burdened by millions of murdered humans, I acted in the way of those whom language fails. Even twenty years later, I wouldn't know better than the journalist who recorded the moment by saying, 'Then he, who would not need to do this, kneels down in lieu of all those who should, but who do not kneel down – because they do not dare, cannot kneel, or cannot dare to kneel.'") [Note: The quotation used by Brandt is from the article Ein Stück Heimkehr [A Partial Homecoming] (Hermann Schreiber/ Der Spiegel No. 51/1970, Dec. 14, 1970]

May 21st was my 53rd day on the trail, as well as another pivotal and painful one. It was the day that I entered the Grayson Highlands; an area famous on the trail, as well as the United States for their wild ponies. Nobody owns them and no one takes care of them. They all live up there grazing and reproducing, with no natural predators, while droves of people visit the highlands every year to photograph and pet them. Due to all the visitors, the ponies can be overly friendly and nippy at times. They’re quite accustomed to people and could almost be described as tame. However, the second you forgot they were wild; you could end up with a pony bite. Something

Dr Todd Feinberg writes of a patient, Lizzy, who suffered strokes in her occipital lobes. As can happen in such cases, her brain didn’t immediately process the fact she’d gone ‘suddenly and totally’ blind, so it continued projecting its hallucinated model of the world. Visiting her hospital bed, Feinberg enquired if she was having trouble with her vision in any way. ‘No,’ she said. When he asked her to take a look around and tell him what she saw, she moved her head accordingly. ‘It’s good to see friends and family, you know,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel like I’m in good hands.’ But there was nobody else there. ‘Tell me their names,’ said Feinberg. ‘I don’t know everybody. They’re my brother’s friends.’ ‘Look at me. What am I wearing?’ ‘A casual outfit. You know, a jacket and pants. Mostly navy blue and maroon.’ Feinberg was in his hospital whites. Lizzy continued their chat smiling and acting ‘as if she had not a care in the world’.

In the case of the airport, code both facilitates and coproduces the environment. Prior to visiting an airport, passengers engage with an electronic booking system – such as SABRE – that registers their data, identifies them, and makes them visible to other systems, such as check-in desks and passport control. If, when they find themselves at the airport, the system becomes unavailable, it is not a mere inconvenience. Modern security procedures have removed the possibility of paper identification or processing: software is the only accepted arbiter of the process. Nothing can be done; nobody can move. As a result, a software crash revokes the building’s status as an airport, transforming it into a huge shed filled with angry people. This is how largely invisible computation coproduces our environment – its critical necessity revealed only in moments of failure, like a kind of brain injury.

I knew from experience that my sensitivity to what scripture calls "powers and principalities" was stronger some days than others. As I biked through downtown (Cochabamba, Bolivia), I saw groups of young men loitering on the street corners waiting for the next movie to start. I stopped and walked through a bookstore stacked with magazines depicting violence, sex, and gossip, endless forms of provocative advertisement and unnecessary articles imported from other parts of the world. I had the dark feeling of being surrounded by powers much greater than myself and felt the seductive allure of sin all around me. I got a glimpse of the evil behind all the horrendous realities that plague our world-extreme hunger, nuclear weapons, torture, exploitation, rape, child abuse, and various forms of oppression-and how they all have their small and sometimes unnoticed beginnings in the human heart. The demon is patient in the way it seeks to devour and destroy the work of God. I felt intensely the darkness of the world around me. After a period of aimless wandering, I biked to a small Carmelite convent close to the house of my hosts. A very friendly Carmelite sister spoke to me and invited me into the chapel to pray. She radiated joy, peace, and yes, light. She told me about the light that shines into the darkness without saying a word about it. As I looked around, I saw the images of Teresa of Avila and Therese of Liseaux, two sisters who taught in their own times that God speaks in subtle ways and that peace and certainty follow when we hear well. Suddenly, it seemed to me that these two saints were talking to me about another world, another life, another love. As I knelt down in the small and simple chapel, I knew that this place was filled with God's presence. Because of the prayers offered there day and night, the chapel was filled with light, and the spirit of darkness had not gotten a foothold there. My visit to the Carmelite convent helped me realize again that where evil seems to hold sway, God is not far away, and where God shows his presence, evil may not remain absent for very long. There always remains a choice to be made between the creative power of love and life and the destructive power of hatred and death. I, too, must make that choice myself, again and again. Nobody else, not even God, will make that choice for me.

My father went into hospital with leg ulcers that were slow to heal. There were strict visiting hours and then, with an outbreak of norovirus, a virtual lockdown of the ward, which meant that for days on end he was alone: nobody to hold his hand, speak his name, tell him he was loved; nobody to keep him tethered to the world. His leg ulcers were healed, but away from the home he loved, stripped of familiar routines and surrounded by strangers and machines, he swiftly lost his bearings and his fragile hold upon his self. There is a great chasm between care and 'care', and my father fell into it.

He sat on the couch, talking to the charming and captivating character who sat there masquerading as his sister. I had switched to "automatic pilot," and watched myself from outside my own body as I responded openly and effortlessly to the brother I had never had any desire to get to know. It seemed to him that he had found a friend who was almost made to order. Fortunately, his sister had changed. This girl had no longing look for understanding, and spoke casually and amusingly without any of the distrust or cautiousness he had known in his sister. He liked her, and decided to come around more often. It was as though I had been watching a play, although I was simultaneously in the audience and on the stage. But as my older brother continued to visit, Carol began to falter, finding it increasingly difficult to communicate. Donna had reverted to "talking in poetry" evasively.

I didn’t blame Curtis for coming to what was nominally a Protestant church and expecting to hear about the Bible. I’d also had to adjust to the AUUCC’s staunch secularism. Having been drawn there to grieve my mother, I would have loved some divine reassurance, but during my very first visit Sparlo said, “There are no answers, only the eternal questions,” and I remember thinking, Damn, one more time, nobody’s offering any certainty.

asked them not to. It was the one condition I made when I left you with them. I made them swear they’d never reveal your origin. They gave me their word as Norriel. And they kept it.” “But why? I don’t understand.” “Because your life was in great danger. The best way to save you was to keep your origin and whereabouts a secret. Nobody was to know where you were or else you’d die; there was a latent risk we couldn’t ignore. And Mirta and Ulis kept their word, and with it they saved your life. For the next eighteen years you were in no danger, since nobody knew where you were hidden. I visited your parents secretly on several occasions, making sure it was a time when you were not there. Their happiness at having you could not have been greater. Your parents were very proud of you, Komir, and they loved you more than their own lives. I know because they told me so. That you must know.” Komir’s eyes moistened. “If you knew I was in danger, if you brought me to my parents fleeing from danger, then you know who was after me. Not only that, you know who was trying to kill me, and so you know who killed my parents. Who, Haradin?” The Mage bowed his head. “I don’t have the answer you want, Komir.” “Yes you do, Haradin, I know you do! Tell me!” Komir insisted. “I never succeeded in finding out who wanted you dead. What I can tell you is that the assassins I fought were from somewhere very distant, from another continent, if my guess is correct. Hence I guess that their master, the one who ordered your death, must also have been. The assassins I defeated to save your life had slanted eyes. They belong to no known race of Tremia, and that I can tell you for sure as I’ve traveled the whole continent in

Because I asked them not to. It was the one condition I made when I left you with them. I made them swear they’d never reveal your origin. They gave me their word as Norriel. And they kept it.” “But why? I don’t understand.” “Because your life was in great danger. The best way to save you was to keep your origin and whereabouts a secret. Nobody was to know where you were or else you’d die; there was a latent risk we couldn’t ignore. And Mirta and Ulis kept their word, and with it they saved your life. For the next eighteen years you were in no danger, since nobody knew where you were hidden. I visited your parents secretly on several occasions, making sure it was a time when you were not there. Their happiness at having you could not have been greater. Your parents were very proud of you, Komir, and they loved you more than their own lives. I know because they told me so. That you must know.” Komir’s eyes moistened. “If you knew I was in danger, if you brought me to my parents fleeing from danger, then you know who was after me. Not only that, you know who was trying to kill me, and so you know who killed my parents. Who, Haradin?” The Mage bowed his head. “I don’t have the answer you want, Komir.” “Yes you do, Haradin, I know you do! Tell me!” Komir insisted. “I never succeeded in finding out who wanted you dead. What I can tell you is that the assassins I fought were from somewhere very distant, from another continent, if my guess is correct. Hence I guess that their master, the one who ordered your death, must also have been. The assassins I defeated to save your life had slanted eyes. They belong to no known race of Tremia, and that I can tell you for sure as I’ve traveled the whole continent in

A new job,” said Sandor eventually, “new colleagues, strange city, far from home. It’s the dream of escape. Of reinvention. You begin again, and the past belongs only to history. But the dream becomes a nightmare, because the job is demanding, you know nobody except your wife who may or may not be aware of your addiction—either way that brings great pressure to bear on the relationship—and hanging over you is the prospect of your mother’s arrival for a visit. Would it be surprising in these circumstances to find yourself struggling again with your addiction? It would be a great shame to undo all the good work you’ve done these last few months.” Joe hung his head. “Uff,” he said. “Urgh.” “Let it out,” said Sandor. “And breathe.” “Aaaargh!” “Deep breath in. Can you tell me what’s going through your mind?” Joe raised his head but kept his hands clasped over the top as though to keep it from exploding. “I know you’re right. I’m a self-deluding moron! That’s what’s going through my mind. Dumb as fuck!

Busy street of emotions On a languid Sunday afternoon on the busy street, Everything everywhere appeared to be missing a beat, Few of their desires, of their hopes, many of their own dreams, And in midst of all this I could hear strange screams, There was rush, there was movement, there was life in its busiest state, Many loved to be a part of it whereas a few showed all signs of hate, They were the ones who were not chasing life, they were after something different, That the busy street did not offer, and to the most people caught in its glamour it nothing meant, To me all appeared to be seeking the same illusive something, A thing that is born of nothing, and to a few it means everything, That something, about which I had no clue, but the busy street certainly knew about it, It knew everything about it, But it had concealed it from all, happy and sad alike, For now it had kept everyone busy pursuing what he/she liked, and what next he/she would like, It was then she appeared in the busiest corner of the street, Where people crossed each other; but noone nobody did ever meet, They all saw other people's eyes but not what their eyes could see, All were in this maze of fascinations where they had been before, but there they again and again wished to be, And then she got up and left this busy corner, And whispered in my ear, “let me show you a life that is real and livelier!” I followed her wherever she went, And that is how my Sunday was spent, Finally as the evening set in and people began to feel weary, And life too seemed dreary, I looked at the once busy street that was now empty and desolate, “This is the fact of life, and this is what you shall be able to isolate!” With these last words she disappeared, And now on the street, only I and my infinite avatars appeared, Everywhere, in everything, and the street got busy again, Because now I was dealing with life in its reality: joy, sorrow, love, faith, defection, everything and even pain, So whenever you visit this busy street, walk towards everything with every feeling, Because in our lives we all are either with retreating joy or with an advancing pain dealing!

Anger and even fury. I have no other motivation. Anger about the senseless distraction. The only thing that keeps me going is anger. I don't have any love in me at all. I hate community. Two things make me furious. Spiritualism, and community. People who talk about community want to manage other people. I grew up in a village. And people say that's a community, but it isn't. It's a lot of individuals, following the rules. And spiritualism, spiritual people are often very greedy, avaricious, and waste a hell of a lot of time. Nobody deserves what they are promised by spiritual people. And some people promise them eternal life. I think it's a horrific punishment to get eternal life. Ordinary people should never have such punishment visited on them

Ghana was a thoroughly triumphal visit for Malcolm X, with exception of one sour event: As Malcolm was departing from his hotel on the way to the airport, he bumped into Muhammad Ali, who was touring West Africa, and Ali snubbed him. Later Ali eagerly expressed his unconditional loyalty to Elijah Muhammad, ridiculing Malcolm to a New York Times correspondent and laughing at the “funny white robe” his onetime friend wore and his newly grown beard. “Man, he’s gone. He’s gone so far out he’s out completely.” With words he would later regret, the boxer added, “Nobody listens to that Malcolm anymore.

Tragedy never visited the Paladin’s doorstep, and she ended up a backwoods sheriff’s deputy; that one needs pain to drive her ambition. The Scribe met his death at the bottom of a vodka bottle. The Witch never found her Knight; they’re supposed to be unstoppable, united…but only for a little while. I could go on: the Thief, the Killer, all the others…” She looked back toward me. Her eyes downcast. “And as for the Prophet,” she said with a bitter little laugh, “she was just an old bag lady with a shopping cart full of cans. And nobody listened to her until it was much, much too late.

this is the mirror in which pain is asleep this is the country nobody visits

The large hall, together with the tomb chamber over the actual burials below and the outer dome above, was the Taj Mahal’s core. A bronze lamp hanging above the cenotaphs cast a golden glow. During the day nobody noticed the lamp, even fewer were aware of its romantic history. A gift from Lord Curzon, a viceroy of British India, it was inlaid with silver and gold, and modelled on the design of a lamp that hung in the mosque of Sultan Beybars II of Cairo. The story went that on a visit to the Taj, Lord Curzon was so dismayed by the smoky country lanterns used by his guides to show him around, that he resolved to present the Taj with worthy lighting. For a century now, Mehrunisa reflected, an Englishman’s love had illuminated the imperial Mughal tomb.

A long time ago inside a local ice rink, 15 year olds went to battle to win a game of hockey.  They played for themselves, for their teams, for their coaches, for their towns, and for their families. It was a 0-0 tie in the 2nd period.     Both goalies were outstanding.  But one appeared to be somewhere else. Thinking.  The shot came.    The antagonist wasn’t aiming to break the scoreless tie.  He was living up to his agreement with the other team’s coach.  A coach who wanted his son to be the team's goalie.     He didn’t want a new goalie that could take his team where they have never been.  The playoffs.  A goalie that could secure his team at the top.  The coach watched the shot he bought.      The goalie could have shifted, dodged out of the way, but he was paralyzed.  He dropped to the ice when the puck struck his unprotected neck.     The player skated over to examine the goalie. He had accomplished his task.    And with the money he earned, he can buy the bicycle he always wanted.     The goalie’s father was standing amongst the other parents.  He was enraged that his son didn’t make the save.     He felt the hard work he put into his boy slowly fade, and quickly die out.  He knew how good his son was, and would be.  He knew the puck struck because the goalie let it.  He did not know why.   I groaned as the puck hit me in the arm.  I had pads, but pads can only soften the blow. I squeezed my arm.     My father stood and watched.     My friend fired another shot that whacked me in the throat, knocking me down.  I felt dizzy.      It was frigid on the pond in winter.     This is where I learned to play hockey.  This is also where I learned it was painful to be a goaltender.  I got up slowly, glowering at him.  My friend was perplexed at my tenacity.     “This time, stay down!” And then he took the hardest slap shot I have ever encountered.     The puck tore through the icy air at incredible speed right into my face.     My glove rapidly came up and snatched it right before it would shatter my jaw.  I took my glove off and reached for the puck inside.     I swung my arm and pitched it as fiercely as I could at my friend.     Next time we play, I should wear my mask and he should wear a little more cover than a hat.  I turned towards my father.  He was smiling.  That was rare.     I was relieved to know that I was getting better and he knew it.  The ice cracked open and I dropped through…      The goalie was alone at the hospital.  He got up and opened the curtains the nurse keeps closing at night so he could see through the clear wall.     He eyed out the window and there was nothing interesting except a lonely little tree.  He noticed the way the moonlight shined off the grass and radiated everything else.  But not the tree.  The tree was as colourless as the sky.     But the sky had lots of bright little glowing stars.  What did the tree have?  He went back to his bed and dozed off before he could answer his own question.   Nobody came to visit him at the hospital but his mother.     His father was at home and upset that his son is no longer on the team.  The goalie spot was seized by the team’s original goalie, the coach’s son.     The goalie’s entire life had been hockey.  He played every day as his father observed.  He really wanted a regular father, whatever that was.  A father that cares about him and not about hockey.  The goalie did like hockey, but it was a game.         A sport just like other sports, only there’s an ice surface to play on.  But he did not love hockey.     It was just something he became very good at, with plenty of practice and bruises.     He was silent in his new team’s locker room, so he didn’t assume anyone would come and see how he was doing.

was now over two million dollars, a nice little nest egg nobody knew about, not even his ex-wife. The $200,000 from Smith would simply be walking-around cash. The St. Paul police and the bureau suspected Smith had a partner when they took him down, but Smith never put Burton’s name in play. He took all the weight. When Smith was being sodomized in jail, when the bureau visited him, talking about how they could make his life easier if he just told them who he worked with, he didn’t give in, didn’t fold, and didn’t turn in his partner. Burton knew all this, tracking his partner’s incarceration, always worried he might break. He never did. Meanwhile, Burton moved to kidnapping and found his true calling within the bureau. When he brought home the daughter of one of New York’s wealthiest businessmen, taking down the kidnappers in a spectacular chase through the subway tunnels, his name and reputation were cemented. He published a book. Traveled the country speaking about his cases, and now performed training for the bureau. Retiring at the end of the year, he could expect to greatly enhance his wealth on the speaking circuit. Several prestigious colleges had inquired of his interest in teaching. His life was set. Then, four months ago Smith showed up on his doorstep. Burton owed him and there was no argument. His life was what it was because Smith never turned him in. Smith took all the heat, and Burton ended up with all the glory. Burton spent days and nights thinking of ways out of helping Smith. He offered up part of his nest egg. Smith wasn’t interested. Burton offered to put him in touch with people who would put him to work, let him earn a respectable living, start a new life, a comfortable life, a decent life. Smith wasn’t interested in any of that. He wanted one thing: he wanted Charlie Flanagan, and he didn’t just want to hurt him, he wanted to gut him. And Burton owed him. And if Burton refused, Smith would kill him. If he could just get through the next day, help Smith get what he wanted and get his crew theirs; he’d be free and clear. Smith would be gone. Burton could retire a happy and wealthy man. If Charlie Flanagan, Lyman Hisle, and their daughters had to pay the ultimate price for that—well, it was him or them. If that was the way it had to be, he’d

Alone, [Chamcha] all at once remembered that he and Pamela had once disagreed, as they disagreed on everything, on a short-story they’d both read, whose theme was precisely the nature of the unforgivable. Title and author eluded him, but the story came back vividly. A man and a woman had been intimate friends (never lovers) for all their adult lives. On his twenty-first birthday (they were both poor at the time) she had given him, as a joke, the most horrible, cheap glass vase she could find, in colours a garish parody of Venetian gaiety. Twenty years later, when they were both successful and greying, she visited his home and quarrelled with him over his treatment of a mutual friend. In the course of the quarrel her eye fell upon the old vase, which he still kept in pride of place on his sitting-room mantelpiece, and, without pausing in her tirade, she swept it to the floor, crushing it beyond hope of repair. He never spoke to her again; when she died, half a century later, he refused to visit her deathbed or attend her funeral, even though messengers were sent to tell him that these were her dearest wishes. ‘Tell her,’ he said to the emissaries, 'that she never knew how much I valued what she broke.’ The emissaries argued, pleaded, raged. If she had not known how much meaning he had invested in the trifle, how could she in all fairness be blamed? And had she not made countless attempts, over the years, to apologize and atone? And she was dying, for heaven’s sake; could not this ancient, childish rift be healed at last? They had lost a lifetime’s friendship; could they not even say goodbye? 'No,’ said the unforgiving man. – 'Really because of the vase? Or are you concealing some other, darker matter?’ – 'It was the vase,’ he answered, 'the vase, and nothing but.’ Pamela thought the man petty and cruel, but Chamcha had even then appreciated the curious privacy, the inexplicable inwardness of the issue. 'Nobody can judge an internal injury,’ he had said, 'by the size of the superficial wound, of the hole.

Shut up, shut up, will you! Nobody minds that you are in pain. Pain is a human condition. You do not care that I am hungry, do you? And therefore I do not need to care whether you are in agony. Nobody is hurting you! Be quiet, be quiet! Rannig, fill his mouth with dirt, and I’m sure I do not care what diseases he contracts. He has already been in the water. He has probably swallowed millions of pestilential microbes, and they are none of them acting too quickly. Do you hear me? I say shut up, sir! By my hat—the man makes a noise to shatter teeth! Here, what are you complaining about?” Bartleby looked over and saw where Shandandzo was gripping himself. “Oh, they are only knees! You have two of them and an immune system—the body heals, if you leave it alone! You need not shout about it!” He took the headwrap from Rannig’s hand and shoved it into Shandandzo’s mouth. “There. That will quiet you for a while. Don’t you know there are men reading and having their tea? Shameful of you to carry on in this way. The captain only put your knife behind your kneecaps and made a few fractures. Hardly anything to cry about at all. A man has no business crying about kneecaps. A tendon, I grant you, might deserve a paltry yelp or two, but you are alive and you have your health otherwise— you can want nothing else. You hardly need your knees when you are always on the gad, stealing priceless artifacts from visiting dignitaries—and you are a noble besides. Nobles have money: they hardly need feelings or knees. They have men for that.” He snuffed and watched Shandandzo’s eyes roll back in his head. “Now, if you will be a very good convulsing noble, or whatever it is you are, you will be quiet and make no more fuss about your knees.” He turned back toward the teahouse, humphed to himself, and moved to go, but turning back, he said, “And if you make anymore obnoxious noises whilst I am writing my notes, I will have the boy throw you down a well.

I hate that they left,” Winnie announced, “and he didn’t even get me a pony.” Emmie caught Stevens’s eye at that remark and returned his smile. “The earl will be back, Winnie, and Lord Amery will probably visit again, too. Besides, we have too much to do to be missing them for very long.” “Beg pardon, Miss?” Stevens interrupted when she would have taken Winnie by the hand and returned with her to the kitchens. “Stevens?” “His lordship left summat for Miss Winnie in the stables,” Stevens said, his blue eyes twinkling with mischief, “but not a pony.” “Oh, Miss Emmie.” Winnie swung Emmie’s hand. “Can we go see? Please?” “Let’s do.” Emmie nodded at Stevens, and Winnie was off like a shot. “So, where is it?” Winnie asked, peering down the barn aisle moments later. “What can it be doing in the stable if it isn’t a pony?” “Up there.” Stevens pointed to the hayloft. “I’ll fetch it down.” Stevens came down the ladder moments later, moving carefully with something tucked under one arm. “Said his name’s Scout.” Stevens put a wiggling black ball of puppy fur on the ground and passed a twine rope into Winnie’s hands. “Bought him in York. He said Lord Amery weren’t keen on leaving a pony behind and nobody to teach Miss Winnie how to ride it yet.” “A puppy!” Winnie squealed. “Oh, a puppy! Is he mine? Can I keep him?” “He’s yours,” Stevens replied, smiling broadly, “and from the way he’s taking on, I doubt you could get rid of him.” “A dog,” Emmie said, nonplussed. And now, now, she felt tears welling. That blasted, sweet, barbaric, impossible man… A dog was such a messy creature, drooling and shedding and worse and so lovable… And Winnie needed some companionship. As Winnie scratched her puppy’s tummy and scuffled with him in the dirt, Stevens offered Emmie an apologetic smile. Winnie was in transports, giggling at her puppy, when just a few minutes before, she’d been near tears. “It’s very thoughtful of his lordship, but that thing is going to be enormous.” The

She thought it strange that she had never visited Peterborough before; after all it was an incredible focal point for wealth. But after she arrived, she realized it ordered a different sort of money to the type she was used to. Peterborough’s money was active money, it was finance consortium muscle, corporate power, political influence; the only gambling here was the venture capital backing industrial research lab. Nobody hoarded money in Peterborough, they worked it; the static, emasculated trusts which enabled her patrons to indulgently through life shrank from this city’s vitality. Prior’s Fen epitomized the new culture, bold, purposeful architecture sticking two defiant fingers up to the dead past. The antithesis of Monaco.

And, if the reason why nobody comes to visit us from the future, is that the human race has no future?

He [my cousin] was by profession manger of a museum in the days when a museum meant a great deal to the general public. I had some idea of what a city museum was: staid, stuffy, and wearisome, visited by everybody that was anybody and all the nobodies as well. But this museum was a novelty, a 'floating palace of curiosities' on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

It was another watershed event for a woman who had for so long believed herself worthless, with little to offer the world other than her sense of style. Her life in the royal family had been directly responsible for creating this confusion. As her friend James Gilbey says: “When she went to Pakistan last year she was amazed that five million people turned out just to see her. Diana has this extraordinary battle going on in her mind. ‘How can all these people want to see me?’ and then I get home in the evening and lead this mouse-like existence. Nobody says: ‘Well done.’ She has this incredible dichotomy in her mind. She has this adulation out there and this extraordinary vacant life at home. There is nobody and nothing there in the sense that nobody is saying nice things to her--apart of course from the children. She feels she is in an alien world.” Little things mean so much to Diana. She doesn’t seek praise but on public engagements if people thank her for helping, it turns a routine duty into a very special moment. Years ago she never believed the plaudits she received, now she is much more comfortable accepting a kind word and a friendly gesture. If she makes a difference, it makes her day. She has discussed with church leaders, including the Archbishop or Canterbury and several leading bishops, the blossoming of this deep seated need within herself to help those who are sick and dying. “Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can,” she says. Visits to specialist hospitals like Stoke Mandeville or Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children are not a chore but deeply satisfying. As America’s First Lady, Barbara Bush, discovered when she joined the Princess on a visit to an AIDS ward of the Middlesex Hospital in July 1991 there is nothing maudlin about Diana’s attitude towards the sick. When a bed-bound patient burst into tears as the Princess was chatting to him, Diana spontaneously put her arms around him and gave him an enormous hug. It was a touching moment which affected the First Lady and others who were present. While she has since spoken of the need to give AIDS sufferers a cuddle, for Diana this moment was a personal achievement. As she held him to her, she was giving in to her own self rather than conforming to her role as a princess.

These people were the only contact I had outside of the men and women who picked me up hitchhiking back and forth to work every day. I’d arrive at the shop, listen to Christian radio, get blessed out by Jon and blessed back in by his visiting friends and neighbors. It was like being sent to a foreign country to be immersed in a language that somehow, over time, became your own. “Peace be with you, brethren,” “You know what they say in John thirteen,” “The King is coming!” I fought it like crazy, but my only alternative was talking to nobody. I’d tried that already and had wound up lecturing to cows until the farmer told me I was ruining their digestion.

In the end, after advice from the Foreign Office, she decided make a three-day visit to Bosnia, still slowly recovering from civil war, in the company of the distinguished journalist Lord Deedes. He recalled not only her gentle sense of humour but her ability to listen and to communicate the uncommunicable. When she walked around Sarajevo’s largest cemetery she encountered a mother tending her son’s grave. ‘There was no language barrier,’ he wrote. ‘The two women gently embraced. Watched this scene from a distance, I sought in my mind who else could have done this. Nobody.

There is an antidote to this misuse of data. First, make the reports as simple as possible so that everyone understands them. Remember the saying “Metrics are people, too.” The easiest way to make reports comprehensible is to use tangible, concrete units. What is a website hit? Nobody is really sure, but everyone knows what a person visiting the website is: one can practically picture those people sitting at their computers.

Andy Dietz, who is on the staff of a church in the panhandle of Texas, has been coordinating mission trips overseas for many years. On one particular trip with his young people, the project had been finished, and the kids had left for home, but Andy stayed over to visit with missionary friends in the area. He was coming back through a European city on his way home. Having an overnight transit, he went downtown for dinner, found himself in the wrong part of town, and was mugged and kidnapped. After taking all his money, and all he could get from the ATM machine, his captors had him wire his family to ask for $5,000 to secure his release. His family notified us, and we activated a prayer network and contacted our personnel in the city who were not even aware he was there. They notified the police, but before anything could be done, Andy was able to elude his captors and get away while they were eating and drinking. I called him after he got home to talk through the experience and seek to minister to him. I asked him, after such a traumatic experience, if he thought he would go on any more mission trips. He said, “Oh yes. It's the most gratifying thing I do to take these kids overseas.” He continued, “I was negligent and learned that I have got to be more vigilant about where I go.” He described what it was like to be beaten, tied up, put in the trunk of a car, and his life threatened. He said, “They didn't know me. Nobody knew where I was. I meant nothing to them. My life was worthless. I realized they wouldn't think twice about getting rid of me, and no one would know.” He continued, “You can imagine how desperate I was to get away. And all I could think of was God saying, 'Andy, this is how desperate you should be to know Me.'” I held the phone in disbelief. I can only imagine the extent of desperation to escape a situation where your life is threatened. Can you imagine being so desperate to know God in all of His fullness, to have a heart that is so passionate for Him and His holiness? I think that's the only thing that will be a fail-safe deterrent to immoral behavior. We are always vulnerable; Satan will see to that, but in Christ we have been given the capacity to walk in holiness and victory.

What are we doing here, what is our effect, what will be left behind as legacy, and so on. It all has to be thought about, of course. Step by step. This house is a good example.” He reached to his left and patted a patch of exposed wiring in the wall. “Maybe they paid off the owner or maybe he has no idea we are in it. Who knows? But now we are in it and all of the village sees we are in it, and so now they know that it belongs, in essence, to nobody, or to anybody the state on a whim decides to give it to. So what will happen when we leave, when the new school is up and running and we don’t visit here much any more—or at all? Maybe several families will move in, maybe it will become a community place. Maybe. My guess is it will be taken apart, brick by brick.” He took off his glasses and massaged them with the hem of his T-shirt. “Yes, first someone will take the wires, then the sheeting, then the tiles, but eventually every stone will be repurposed. This is my bet . . . I may be wrong, we will have to wait and see. I am not as ingenious as these people. No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them. When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless.” “I don’t see anything ingenious about poverty like this. I don’t see anything ingenious about having ten children when you can’t afford one.” Fern put his glasses back on and smiled at me sadly. “Children can be a kind of wealth,” he said.

Favorite stories are full of friends to visit when you have nobody else.

Uncle Isidore wasn’t exactly an Uncle. Nobody knew his exact relationship to the family; but my parents called him ‘Uncle’, and my cousins called him ‘Uncle’, and my uncles called him ‘Uncle’. He used to visit our home regularly, once a week, to collect his half a crown and eat a bit of supper. He went around all my relations’ houses to receive a silver coin and grumble. It wasn’t even as if he were a religious man. He just lived that way and the rest of the time he would read at Cardiff Central Library, or return to his dingy bed-sitting-room and play his violin. Not that he was a competent musician. On the contrary, he would scrape the easy bits and whistle the difficult phrases. That was his philosophy and his life. [...] It used to disturb people that he didn’t have a reason for living.

Then, later that same year, Dan’s bride, Deborah Burisch, visited her new in-laws and asked to “borrow” Dan’s diploma, telling them she wanted to make a copy. She never returned it, and to this day nobody, with the possible exception of Deborah herself, knows where the certificate is.

am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, and so no one can say what it is like. I, sister Faustina, by the order of God, have visited the abysses of hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence. I cannot speak about it now; but I have received a command from God to leave it in writing. The devils were full of hatred for me, but they had to obey me at the command of God. What I have written is but a pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell.