“
I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention. For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks-accidentally-and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive.
”
”
Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors)
“
This is very American, too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness. Planet Advertising in America orbits completely around the need to convince the uncertain consumer that yes, you have actually warranted a special treat. This Bud's for You! You Deserve a Break Today! Because You're Worth It! You've Come a Long Way, Baby! And the insecure consumer thinks, Yeah! Thanks! I AM gonna go buy a six-pack, damn it! Maybe even two six-packs! And then comes the reactionary binge. Followed by the remorse. Such advertising campaigns would probably not be as effective in the Italian culture, where people already know that they are entitled enjoyment in this life. The reply in Italy to "You Deserve a Break Today" would probably be, Yeah, no duh. That's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon, to go over to you house and sleep with your wife.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
”
”
Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet (A Borzoi Book))
“
Leontes is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh?- a note infallible
Of breaking honesty. Horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift;
Hours, minutes; noon, midnight? And all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked - is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.
”
”
William Shakespeare
“
There was nothing left for me to do, but go.
Though the things of the world were strong with me still.
Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-titled streetlight; a frozen clock, a bird visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; towering off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain.
Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth.
Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease.
A bloody ross death-red on a platter; a headgetop under-hand as you flee late to some chalk-and-woodfire-smelling schoolhouse.
Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded.
The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger.
Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead.
Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it.
Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlour; milk-sip at end of day.
Some brandy-legged dog proudly back-ploughs the grass to cover its modest shit; a cloud-mass down-valley breaks apart over the course of a brandy-deepened hour; louvered blinds yield dusty beneath your dragging finger, and it is nearly noon and you must decide; you have seen what you have seen, and it has wounded you, and it seems you have only one choice left.
Blood-stained porcelain bowl wobbles face down on wood floor; orange peel not at all stirred by disbelieving last breath there among that fine summer dust-layer, fatal knife set down in pass-panic on familiar wobbly banister, later dropped (thrown) by Mother (dear Mother) (heartsick) into the slow-flowing, chocolate-brown Potomac.
None of it was real; nothing was real.
Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear.
These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and in this way, brought them forth.
And now we must lose them.
I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant.
Goodbye goodbye good-
”
”
George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo)
“
The magic ground against my mind and I heard the same word whispered over and over in my head.
“Z’emir-amit. Z’emir-amit. Z’emir-amit.”
Oh my God. I knew that name. I read about her. I studied her legends, but I never thought I would come across anything of hers because she had been dead for thousands of years. Dead and buried in distant Iraq, somewhere on the east bank of the Tigris River. That name belonged to the bones in front of me. I could feel it. I knew this magic.
I was looking at the corpse of my grandmother.
She wanted me to say her name. She wanted to know that I understood.
I opened my mouth and said it out loud. “Semiramis.”
Her magic drenched me, not the blow of a hammer, but a cascade of power, pouring onto me as if I stood under a waterfall.
Z’emir-amit. The Branch Bearer. The Shield of Assyria. The Great Queen Semiramis. A line from Sarchedon floated up from my memory. When she turns her eyes on you, it is like the golden lustre of noon-day; and her smile is brighter and more glorious than sunset in the desert… To look on her face unveiled is to be the Great Queen’s slave for ever more.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Breaks (Kate Daniels, #7))
“
Sounds awful."
"No, it's wonderful. And it's just for one year. Let's take a break. Blair's not here. she'll be back next year and we can jump back into the Christmas chaos, if that's what you want. Come on, Nora, please. We skip Christmas, save the money, and go splash in the Caribbean for ten days."
"How much will it cost?"
"Three thousand bucks."
"So we save money?"
"Absolutely."
"When do we leave?"
"High noon, Christmas Day."
They stared at each other for a long time.
”
”
John Grisham (Skipping Christmas)
“
Go on, my dear," urges the snake. "Take one. Hear it? 'Pluck me,' it's saying. That big, shiny red one. 'Pluck me, pluck me now and pluck me hard.' You know you want to."
"But God," quotes Eve, putting out feelers for an agent provacateur, clever girl, "expressly forbids us to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge."
"Ah yessssss, God ... But God gave us life, did He not? And God gave us desire, did He not? And God gave us taste, did He not? And who else but God made the damned apples in the first place? So what else is life for but to tassste the fruit we desire?"
Eve folds her arms schoolgirlishly. "God expressly forbade it. Adam said."
The snake grins through his fangs, admiring Eve's playacting. "God is a nice enough chap in His way. I daresay He means well. But between you and The Tree of Knowledge, He is terribly insecure."
"Insecure? He made the entire bloody universe! He's omnipotent."
"Exactly! Almost neurotic, isn't it? All this worshiping, morning, noon, and night. It's 'Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise the Everlassssting Lord.' I don't call that omnipotent. I call it pathetic. Most independent authorities agree that God has never sufficiently credited the work of virtual particles in the creation of the universssse. He raises you and Adam on this diet of myths while all the really interesting information is locked up in these juicy apples. Seven days? Give me a break.
”
”
David Mitchell (Ghostwritten)
“
I succeeded when you tried to break me,
I spoke when you said noone would listen, I mourned you when you were alive,
I forgot you when you reminded me... and I found me when I lost you
~Bluenscottish
”
”
Bluenscottish
“
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
”
”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems)
“
The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon, and night - throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everybody is driven like mad to keep up with that passing of fake time; awful scramble of shaves and breakfasts and appointments and lunches and medications and ten minutes of night so you barely get your eyes closed before the dorm light's screaming at you to get up and start the scramble again, go like a sonofabitch this way, going through the full schedule of a day maybe twenty times an hour, till the Big Nurse sees everybody is right up to the breaking point, and she slacks off on the throttle, eases off the pace on that clock-dial, like some kid been fooling with the moving-picture projection machine and finally got tired watching the film run at ten times its natural speed, got bored with all that silly scampering and insect squeak of talk and turned it back to normal.
”
”
Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
“
If joy could break windows and hallelujahs could break floorboards, this church would have been broken down by noon.
”
”
Hannah Brencher (If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers)
“
Don’t you dare break,” I told the air conditioning. “I can deal with murderers and exploding toilets, but I need cold air.
”
”
Elise Sax (Die Noon (Goodnight Mysteries, #1))
“
Those late August mornings smelt of autumn from day-break till the hour when the sun-baked earth allowed the cool sea breezes to drive back the then less heavy aroma of threshed wheat, open furrows, and reeking manure. A persistent dew clung sparkling to the skirts of the hedgerows, and if, about noon, Vinca came upon a fallen aspen leaf, the white underside of its still green surface would be damp and glistening. Moist mushrooms poked up through the earth and, now that the nights were chillier, garden spiders retired in the evenings to the shed where the playthings were kept, and there wisely took up their abode on the ceiling.
”
”
Colette (Ripening Seed (English and French Edition))
“
I stretched my arms towards the sky like blades of tall grass
The sun beat between my shoulders like carnival drums
I sat still in hopes that it would help my wings grow
So then I could really be fly
And then she arrived
Like day break inside a railway tunnel
Like the new moon, like a diamond in the mines
Like high noon to a drunkard, sudden
She made my heart beat in a now-now time signature
Her skinny canvas for ultraviolet brushstrokes
She was the sun's painting
She was a deep cognac color
Her eyes sparkled like lights along the new city
She lips pursed as if her breath was too sweet
And full for her mouth to hold
I said, "You are the beautiful, the stress of mathematics."
I said, "For you, I would peel open the clouds like new fruit
And give you lightning and thunder as a dowry
I would make the sky shed all of it's stars, light and rain
And I would clasp the constellations across your waist
And I would make the heavens your cape
And they would be pleased to cover you
They would be pleased to cover you
May I please, cover you, please
”
”
Mos Def
“
Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms.
It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
There is a story, for instance, that has very much the ring of truth about it. It goes like this: One of the older officials, a good and peaceful man, was dealing with a difficult matter for the court which had become very confused, especially thanks to the contributions from the lawyers. He had been studying it for a day and a night without a break — as these officials are indeed hard working, no-one works as hard as they do. When it was nearly morning, and he had been working for twenty-four hours with probably very little result, he went to the front entrance, waited there in ambush, and every time a lawyer tried to enter the building he would throw him down the steps. The lawyers gathered together down in front of the steps and discussed with each other what they should do; on the one hand they had actually no right to be allowed into the building so that there was hardly anything that they could legally do to the official and, as I've already mentioned, they would have to be careful not to set all the officials against them. On the other hand, any day not spent in court is a day lost for them and it was a matter of some importance to force their way inside. In the end, they agreed that they would try to tire the old man out. One lawyer after another was sent out to run up the steps and let himself be thrown down again, offering what resistance he could as long as it was passive resistance, and his colleagues would catch him at the bottom of the steps. That went on for about an hour until the old gentleman, who was already exhausted from working all night, was very tired and went back to his office.
”
”
Franz Kafka (The Trial)
“
Once your Soul becomes the un-corruptible one, only then, you will have attained a real level of unconditional self-love that no-one can break.
”
”
Heidi M. Morrison (Heidi Morrison Teachings)
“
When I cry, no-one is there except for my books.
When I laugh, no-one is there except for my books.
When I shout, no-one is there except for my books.
I have searched my whole life for a real person to care about.
I gave you what I had and what I didn't, and you gave it up.
Now you dare ask me to speak to you?
After you left me to be alone and broken?
You wonder why I love words more than I love you?
Because the words never left me. You did.
It's sad that people who never knew me want me more than the person who knows everything about me.
”
”
Lillian Frazier
“
Astra is a beauty. (...) Astra is so beautiful that I have no wish to describe her beauty. I will say only that her beauty is the expression of her soul. Her beauty lives in her quiet walk, in her shy movements, in her always-lowered eyelids, in her barely perceptible smile, in the soft outline of her girlish shoulders, in the chastity of her poor, almost beggarly clothing, in her thoughtful grey eyes. She is a white water lily in a pond shadowed by the branches of trees, born amid still, contemplative water. (...) The world of modest female beauty finds its expression in Astra. As for what may lie hidden in the depths of these waters, no-one can say unless he breaks the water's smooth surface, walks barefoot through the cutting sedge and treads the silty, sucking mud — now cold, now strangely warm. But I only stand on the shore, admiring the lily from a distance
”
”
Vasily Grossman (An Armenian Sketchbook)
“
He could not feel that they were an island of life journeying through an abyss of death. He felt almost the opposite--that life was waiting outside the little iron egg-shell in which they rode, ready at any moment to break in, and that, if it killed them, it would kill them by excess of its vitality. He hoped passionately that if they were to perish they would perish by the "unbodying" of the space-ship and not by suffocation within it. To be let out, to be free, to dissolve into the ocean of eternal noon, seemed to him at certain moments a consummation even more desirable than their return to Earth. And if he had felt some such lift of the heart when first he passed through heaven on their outward journey, he felt it now tenfold, for now he was convinced that the abyss was full of life in the most literal sense, full of living creatures.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (Out of the Silent Planet (The Space Trilogy, #1))
“
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
”
”
Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
“
Hi, I’m not answering my phone right now because I’m building kitchen cabinets at 111 Main Street. I’m putting my heart and soul into these cabinets so I won’t be returning calls until I’m finished with the job. Please know I will give the same attention and care to your work, as well. If you need to talk to me feel free to come by 111 Main Street during my lunch break at noon.
”
”
Jon Gordon (The Carpenter: The 3 Greatest Success Strategies of All (Jon Gordon))
“
During one of the advertising breaks he turned to the woman next to him. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he said politely, showing his credentials, “what is it that you like about the show?” “Being taken seriously.” “Not the recipes?” She looked back incredulously. “Sometimes I think,” she said slowly, “that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn’t make it past noon.
”
”
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
“
During one of the advertising breaks he turned to the woman next to him. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he said politely, showing his credentials, “what is it that you like about the show?” “Being taken seriously.” “Not the recipes?” She looked back incredulously. “Sometimes I think,” she said slowly, “that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn’t make it past noon.” The woman on the other side of him tapped his knee. “Prepare for a revolt.
”
”
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
“
Into this dark truth
which opens its cloak to shield us, dizzying, tidal;
opens its sad wings to shoo us away,
just to say yes,
let that fine rain fall on the threshold;
let it fall like wings beating, like a breaking-open.
As a messenger from far away,
drenched and burning with fever,
carries his dispatch here, carries the word.
But the patterns of the rain spread out
and won’t let us hear, won’t let us see
what happens. And that
is what comes up to us,
speaks to us
and grabs us by the shoulders,
what’s shaking and shouting at us is the rain,
it’s the horizon dissolving.
Now we shiver, we burn, facing that gateway,
facing that drawbridge no-one will drop.
No-one is going to listen.
This dark truth, this swaying lightness
like the whisper of endless bats,
all sensing their way,
all surging as one up the veins’ living corridors, all trying
to flee the towers.
To say yes,
let that mist of rain fall against the threshold,
let it fall on the walls;
let it keep erasing them.
”
”
Coral Bracho
“
Entirely my own opinion,” said Ivanov. “I am glad that we have reached the heart of the matter soon. In other words: you are convinced that “we” – that is to say, the Party, the State and the masses behind it – no longer represent the interests of the Revolution.”
“I should leave the masses out of it,” said Rubashov. […] “Leave the masses out of it, “ he repeated. “You understand nothing about them. Nor, probably, do I any more. Once, when the great “we” still existed, we understood them as no one had ever understood them before. We had penetrated into their depths, we worked in the amorphous raw material of history itself…” […] “At that time,” Rubashov went on, “we were called the Party of the Plebs. What did the others know of history? Passing ripples, little eddies and breaking waves. They wondered at the changing forms of the surface and could not explain them. But we had descended into the depths, into the formless, anonymous masses, which at all times constituted the substance of history; and we were the first to discover her laws of motion. We had discovered the laws of her inertia, of the slow changing of her molecular structure, and of her sudden eruptions. That was the greatness of our doctrine. The Jacobins were moralists; we were empirics. We dug in the primeval mud of history and there we found her laws. We knew more than ever men have known about mankind; that is why our revolution succeeded. And now you have buried it all again….” […] “Well,” said Rubashov, “one more makes no difference. Everything is buried: the men, their wisdom and their hopes. You killed the “We”; you destroyed it. Do you really maintain that the masses are still behind you? Other usurpers in Europe pretend the same thing with as much right as you….” […] “Forgive my pompousness,” he went on, “but do you really believe the people are still behind you? It bears you, dumb and resigned, as it bears others in other countries, but there is no response in their depths. The masses have become deaf and dumb again, the great silent x of history, indifferent as the sea carrying the ships. Every passing light is reflected on its surface, but underneath is darkness and silence. A long time ago we stirred up the depths, but that is over. In other words” – he paused and put on his pince-nez – “in those days we made history; now you make politics. That’s the whole difference.” […] "A mathematician once said that algebra was the science for lazy people - one does not work out x, but operates with it as if one knew it. In our case, x stands for the anonymous masses, the people. Politics mean operating with this x without worrying about its actual nature. Making history is to recognize x for what it stands for in the equation."
"Pretty," said Ivanov. "But unfortunately rather abstract. To return to more tangible things: you mean, therefore, that "We" - namely, Party and State - no longer represent the interests of the Revolution, of the masses or, if you like, the progress of humanity."
"This time you have grasped it," said Rubashov smiling. Ivanov did not answer his smile.
”
”
Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon)
“
There was a note on the table.”
“Bring it here,” Van Eck barked. The boy strode down the aisle, and Van Eck snatched the note from his hand.
“What does it … what does it say?” asked Bajan. His voice was tremulous. Maybe Inej had been right about Alys and the music teacher.
Van Eck backhanded him. “If I find out you knew anything about this—”
“I didn’t!” Bajan cried. “I knew nothing. I followed your orders to the letter!”
Van Eck crumpled the note in his fist, but not before Inej made out the words in Kaz’s jagged, unmistakable hand: Noon tomorrow. Goedmedbridge. With her knives.
“The note was weighted down with this.” The boy reached into his pocket and drew out a tie pin—a fat ruby surrounded by golden laurel leaves. Kaz had stolen it from Van Eck back when they’d first been hired for the Ice Court job. Inej hadn’t had the chance to fence it before they left Ketterdam. Somehow Kaz must have gotten hold of it again.
“Brekker,” Van Eck snarled, his voice taut with rage.
Inej couldn’t help it. She started to laugh.
Van Eck slapped her hard. He grabbed her tunic and shook her so that her bones rattled. “Brekker thinks we’re still playing a game, does he? She is my wife. She carries my heir.”
Inej laughed even harder, all the horrors of the past week rising from her chest in giddy peals. She wasn’t sure she could have stopped if she wanted to. “And you were foolish enough to tell Kaz all of that on Vellgeluk.”
“Shall I have Franke fetch the mallet and show you just how serious I am?”
“Mister Van Eck,” Bajan pleaded.
But Inej was done being frightened of this man. Before Van Eck could take another breath, she slammed her forehead upward, shattering his nose. He screamed and released her as blood gushed over his fine mercher suit. Instantly, his guards were on her, pulling her back.
“You little wretch,” Van Eck said, holding a monogrammed handkerchief to his face. “You little whore. I’ll take a hammer to both your legs myself—”
“Go on, Van Eck, threaten me. Tell me all the little things I am. You lay a finger on me and Kaz Brekker will cut the baby from your pretty wife’s stomach and hang its body from a balcony at the Exchange.” Ugly words, speech that pricked her conscience, but Van Eck deserved the images she’d planted in his mind. Though she didn’t believe Kaz would do such a thing, she felt grateful for each nasty, vicious thing Dirtyhands had done to earn his reputation—a reputation that would haunt Van Eck every second until his wife was returned.
“Be silent,” he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.
“You think he won’t?” Inej taunted. She could feel the heat in her cheek from where his hand had struck her, could see the mallet still resting in the guard’s hand. Van Eck had given her fear and she was happy to return it to him. “Vile, ruthless, amoral. Isn’t that why you hired Kaz in the first place? Because he does the things that no one else dares? Go on, Van Eck. Break my legs and see what happens. Dare him.”
Had she really believed a merch could outthink Kaz Brekker? Kaz would get her free and then they’d show this man exactly what whores and canal rats could do.
“Console yourself,” she said as Van Eck clutched the ragged corner of the table for support. “Even better men can be bested.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
“
Humans are free. Although we can't fly through the skies all alone, if we can think it, we can do almost anything. We can sleep when we're sleepy. We are free to start or stop anything whenever we wish. Of course, it is a bit hindered by common sense, moralities, and the rules of society. Walking nude out in the streets, stealing from the elderly, and even killing, we can do all of this as long as we throw out our morals. Which is why they drill these laws in our head when we are children. And yet, people still continue to fight, deceive, and steal from each other. And so, people suffer because they live. Even now, there are events of happiness and unhappiness going on all over the world...
What can we do to make everyone happy? Of course that's impossible for me to know. If the answer to that could be found in the shallow wisdoms of a kid, wars would have stopped long ago. But I also dislike just leaving that problem up to society or the government. After all, a great person is just one who follows the popular will of the people. In this world, the essence of a frank honest human is just an idealization. I'm sure that there's nothing that can make everyone happy. Happiness is relative. And that's how people want it. Evil is also relative. Mothers can become demons when they do anything to protect their child. Yet it's usually seen as admirable. But when a person does anything for the country he loves, wars break out. Isn't it all the same thing? No matter how much a person pretends to be good and kind, he will still have negative aspects. But nobody really tries to notice that fact. Why is that? They all try to place the blame on others, and never even consider the possibility that they themselves may have played part in the problem.
Just what the hell am I thinking? The world isn't going to change no matter what I think. Then what should I be doing? I don't really want to do anything. I don't want to order nor trouble anyone. That's just laziness, I guess. I don't go to school nor do I work and I've been wasting my time away since noon. Look at me, talking about the freedom of humans when I'm just some suspicious punk in this down. In conclusion, I have nothing.
”
”
Inio Asano (Goodnight Punpun Omnibus, Vol. 5)
“
Independent Women
Lucy Liu... with my girl, Drew... Cameron D. and Destiny
Charlie's Angels, Come on
Uh uh uh
Question: Tell me what you think about me
I buy my own diamonds and I buy my own rings
Only ring your cell-y when I'm feelin lonely
When it's all over please get up and leave
Question: Tell me how you feel about this
Try to control me boy you get dismissed
Pay my own fun, oh and I pay my own bills
Always 50/50 in relationships
The shoes on my feet
I've bought it
The clothes I'm wearing
I've bought it
The rock I'm rockin'
'Cause I depend on me
If I wanted the watch you're wearin'
I'll buy it
The house I live in
I've bought it
The car I'm driving
I've bought it
I depend on me
(I depend on me)
All the women who are independent
Throw your hands up at me
All the honeys who makin' money
Throw your hands up at me
All the mommas who profit dollas
Throw your hands up at me
All the ladies who truly feel me
Throw your hands up at me
Girl I didn't know you could get down like that
Charlie, how your Angels get down like that
Girl I didn't know you could get down like that
Charlie, how your Angels get down like that
Tell me how you feel about this
Who would I want if I would wanna live
I worked hard and sacrificed to get what I get
Ladies, it ain't easy bein' independent
Question: How'd you like this knowledge that I brought
Braggin' on that cash that he gave you is to front
If you're gonna brag make sure it's your money you flaunt
Depend on noone else to give you what you want
The shoes on my feet
I've bought it
The clothes I'm wearing
I've bought it
The rock I'm rockin'
'Cause I depend on me
If I wanted the watch you're wearin'
I'll buy it
The house I live in
I've bought it
The car I'm driving
I've bought it
I depend on me
(I depend on me)
All the women who are independent
Throw your hands up at me
All the honeys who makin' money
Throw your hands up at me
All the mommas who profit dollas
Throw your hands up at me
All the ladies who truly feel me
Throw your hands up at me
Girl I didn't know you could get down like that
Charlie, how your Angels get down like that
Girl I didn't know you could get down like that
Charlie, how your Angels get down like that
Destiny's Child
Wassup?
You in the house?
Sure 'nuff
We'll break these people off Angel style
Child of Destiny
Independent beauty
Noone else can scare me
Charlie's Angels
Woah
All the women who are independent
Throw your hands up at me
All the honeys who makin' money
Throw your hands up at me
All the mommas who profit dollas
Throw your hands up at me
All the ladies who truly feel me
Throw your hands up at me
Girl I didn't know you could get down like that
Charlie, how your Angels get down like that
[repeat until fade]
”
”
Destiny's Child
“
But now there was a long morning’s walk until noon, and if the men were silent it was because there was everything to think about and much to remember. Perhaps later in the morning, when the sun was up and had warmed them they would begin to talk, or just say the things they remembered, to be sure they were there, to be absolutely certain that things were safe in them. Montag felt the slow stir of words, the slow simmer. And when it came his turn, what could he say, what could he offer on a day like this, to make the trip a little easier? To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes, all that. But what else. What else? Something, something. . . . And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
“
Odd Fellows Chamber Music for 2013 will be in October this year
To Participants in the Odd Fellows Youth Chamber Music Project:
Because an elevator is being installed at the Lodge, probably during August, we have to change the date:
Instead of the two-week August program, we will be holding a weekend Baroque Festival in October, with an emphasis on Bach. There will be groups of all sizes and levels.
The Program will take place on October 19th and 20th, 2013. We will rehearse from 9:30 AM to 12 Noon, and from 1 PM to 5PM, on Saturday. We’ll be feeding you during the lunch break.
The performance will be at 3 PM on Sunday October 20th. Reception after.
We’ll still be keeping one person on each part, and without Conductors.
We will be sending out applications soon. Probably the deadline will be July 1st. Hope you all can make it.
If you know of anyone who has played in the past who hasn’t gotten this invitation, please have them contact us. We’re trying not leave anyone out.
Cathy O’Connor
Ted Seitz
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
”
”
Stephen Co
“
Christmas In India
Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry --
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?
Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring --
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly --
Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"
High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us --
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it.
Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.
Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together --
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment --
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is hut -- we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus --
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
”
”
Rudyard Kipling
“
Baghra had claimed that the volcra had once been men and women, victims of the unnatural power unleashed by the Darkling’s greed. It might have been my mind playing tricks, but I thought I heard something not just horrible, but human in their cries.
When they were almost upon us, the Darkling gripped my arm and simply said, “Now.”
That invisible hand took hold of the power inside me, and I felt it stretch, reaching through the darkness of the Fold, seeking the light. It came to me with a speed and fury that nearly knocked me from my feet, breaking over me in a shower of brilliance and warmth.
The Fold was alight, as bright as noon, as if its impenetrable darkness had never been. I saw a long reach of blanched sand, hulks of what looked like shipwrecks dotting the dead landscape, and above it all, a teeming flock of volcra. They screamed in terror, their writhing gray bodies gruesome in the bright sunlight. This is the truth of him, I thought as I squinted in the dazzling light. Like calls to like. This was his soul made flesh, the truth of him laid bare in the blazing sun, shorn of mystery and shadow. This was the truth behind the handsome face and the miraculous powers, the truth that was the dead and empty space between the stars, a wasteland peopled by frightened monsters.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (The Grisha Trilogy (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1-3))
“
San Francisco was getting small, and everyone is dying. The summers are getting colder, and the falls aren't what they used to be. The kids in the Haight are younger all the time, more of them than before, sitting all day, all night at Haight and Masonic, with the sticks, the hacky sacks, nowhere to go in those stupid floppy reggae hats. And the drive to work was getting unbearable, the repetition too sad, especially at night, when after putting Toph to bed, locking the door, I would go back to the office - the drive just harrowing, the routine - I had even changed routes, had started driving down Geary, all the way down, past the prostitutes, a change of pace, and it was diverting for a week or so, all the cars slowing down, stopping, the cops hunting, laughing - but then even that was a routine, and so we have to leave, because the people are pissing on the streets, during the day now, anyplace, all the time people are pissing on the streets, defecating on Market Street at noon, and I'm getting sick of the hills, always the hills, the turning of wheels to park, and the street cleaning, and those fucking buses attached to the ropes or wires or whatever, always breaking down, those motherfucking drivers getting out and yanking on that rope, the stupid buses just sitting there, in the way, everything just sitting there, stuck, in the way -
Everything weirder, the extremes more pronounced, the contrasts too strong.
”
”
Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
“
Gina flopped back on her cot, arm up over her eyes. “Oh, my God, Molly, what am I going to do? The fact that he came here tonight at all is . . . He’s clearly interested, but that’s probably just because he thinks I’m a total perv.”
“Whoa,” Molly said. “Wait. You lost me there.”
Gina sat up, a mix of earnestness, horror, and amusement on her pretty face. “I didn’t tell you this, but after I first spoke to Lucy’s sister—we were in the shower tent so no one would see us—I let her leave first and then I waited, like, a minute, thinking we shouldn’t be seen leaving the tent together. And before I go, he came in.”
He. “Leslie Pollard?” Molly clarified.
Gina nodded. “I freaked out when I saw him coming, and it’s stupid, I know, but I hid. And I should have just waited until I heard the shower go on, but God, maybe he wouldn’t have pulled the curtain, because he obviously thought he was in there alone . . .”
Molly started to laugh. “Oh my.”
“Yeah,” Gina said. “Oh my. So I decide to run for it, only he’s not in one of the changing booths, he’s over by the bench, you know?”
Molly nodded. The bench in the main part of the room.
“In only his underwear,” Gina finished, with a roll of her eyes. “Oh, my God.”
“Really? Molly asked. Apparently Jones was taking his change of identity very seriously. He hated wearing underwear of any kind, but obviously he thought it wouldn’t be in character for Leslie Pollard to go commando. “Boxers or briefs?”
Gina gave her a look, but she was starting to laugh now, too, thank goodness. “Briefs. Very brief briefs.” She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, my God, Molly, he was . . . I think he showers at noon because he knows no one else will be in there, so he can, you know, have an intimate visit with Mr. Hand.”
Oh, dear.
“And now I know, and he knows I know, and he also probably thinks I lurk in the men’s shower,” Gina continued. “And the fact that he actually came to tea tonight, instead of hiding from me, in his tent, forever, means . . . something awful, don’t you think? Did I mention he has, like, an incredible body?”
Molly shook her head. Oh dear. “No.”
“Yes,” Gina said just a little too grimly, considering the topic. “Who would’ve guessed that underneath those awful shirts he’s a total god? And maybe that’s what’s freaking out the most.”
“You mean because . . . you’re attracted to him?” Molly asked.
“No!” Gina said. “God! Because I’m not. I felt nothing. I’m standing there and he’s . . . You know how I said he reminds me of Hugh Grant?”
Molly nodded, too relieved to speak.
“Well, I got the wrong Hugh. This guy is built like Hugh Jackman. And beneath the hats and sunblock and glasses, he’s actually got cheekbones and a jaw line, too. I’m talking total hottie. And, yes, I can definitely appreciate that on one level, but . . .” She glanced over at the desk, at her digital camera. She’d gotten it out of her trunk earlier today.
Which, Molly had learned, meant that she’d spent more time this afternoon looking at her saved pictures.
Which included at least a few of Max.
Molly’s relief over not having to deal with the complications of Gina having a crush on Leslie felt a whole lot less good. She wished someone would just go ahead and steal Gina’s camera already. Maybe that would help her move on.
”
”
Suzanne Brockmann (Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9))
“
Fuel your body.
Think about your environment as an ecosystem. If there’s pollution, you’ll feel the toxic side effects; if you’re in the fresh air of the mountains, you’ll feel alive. You’d be surprised at how many of the foods that we eat actually sap our body of fuel. Just look at three quick examples: soda, potato chips, and hamburgers. I’m not a hard-liner who says that you should never consume these things, but this kind of steady diet will make it harder for your body to help you. Instead, look at the foods that are going to give you energy. Choose food that’s water soluble and easier for your body to break down, which gives you maximum nutrition with minimal effort. Look at a cucumber: it’s practically water and it takes no energy to consume, but it’s packed with nutrients. Green for me is the key.
We overeat and undernourish ourselves way too much. When you eat bad food, your body will feel bad and then you will feel bad. It’s all connected. I drink green juice every day and eat huge salads. I am also a big believer in lean protein to feed and fuel the muscles--I might even have a chicken breast for breakfast.
Growing up, because I danced every single day, I would basically eat anything I wanted and I wouldn’t gain any weight. I would eat anything and everything trying to put on a few pounds, but it never worked--and my skin was terrible as a result of it. We’d blame it on the sweat from the dancing, but I never connected it to what I ate. As I got older, I started to educate myself more about food. I learned that I need to alkalize my body. It’s never about how I look. Instead, I go by how I feel. I notice immediately how good, clean food boosts my energy while junk makes me feel lethargic. I’m also a huge believer in hydrating. Forget about eight glasses of water a day; I drink eight glasses before noon!
”
”
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
“
You are a drop of water in ocean but you can become ocean itself.
Truth is found in ocean of silence, where one has to dissolve himself into Nothingness.
Don't limit yourself to drop of water, come drown in the deepness of heart and become the ocean.
Knowing the death as life is, and Known dying in every moment as bliss, then death doesn't exist anymore.
Know anything from it's root and it will perish itself into nonexistence of nothingness.
Beauty is in, just being what one is. Like nature, in competition with noone. Just be yourself and be free.
You are surrounded from everywhere, from existence of God. But you seek it in sleep, awake and open your eyes, you may see, feel and be the existence of God itself.
Everyone has spoken only one Truth, but people are in Chaos with them because of their blind beliefs and low Perspectives. Change your perspective and everything will change. You will find "One Truth, Different Perspectives".
You suffer from worldly pain or pleasure, doesn't matters. Both are inside phenomenon attached to you and outside world. Knowing the Roots, Break this attachment between the chaos of two and step into the eternal bliss.
Don't limit yourself to the outside world and worldly affairs, awake to the Cosmic Realisation of Oneness and know the universe inside you.
I don't believe in the concept of God existence or not. I believe in Realisation of Cosmic Oneness and it's divine nature of self existence in everything and everyone. Which is beyond explanation and can be only experienced and achieved in Eternal Bliss of Silence.
Being Love is true form of a being. Other are just misconception and illusions of thoughts and beliefs.
Don't attach worldly things to your happiness, everything change with time, find bliss inside and it will be for eternity unhindered by time and worldly Storms.
Change is the law of Nature don't fear the change and it's consequences, rather learn to accept whatever come the way, walk with it step by step.
Change can be powerful in changing things outside but it's powerless if you know it can not move the mountains of your heart inside.
If you Stay unhindered Inside, Storms outside can not touch you.
”
”
Harsh Ranga Neo
“
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
”
”
Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
“
As physicist Edward Witten once said, “String theory is extremely attractive because gravity is forced upon us. All known consistent string theories include gravity, so while gravity is impossible in quantum field theory as we have known it, it’s obligatory in string theory.” Ten Dimensions But as the theory began to evolve, more and more fantastic, totally unexpected features began to be revealed. For example, it was found that the theory can only exist in ten dimensions! This shocked physicists, because no one had ever seen anything like it. Usually, any theory can be expressed in any dimension you like. We simply discard these other theories because we obviously live in a three-dimensional world. (We can only move forward, sideways, and up and down. If we add time, then it takes four dimensions to locate any event in the universe. If we want to meet someone in Manhattan, for example, we might say, Let’s meet at the corner of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, on the tenth floor, at noon. However, moving in dimensions beyond four is impossible for us, no matter how we try. In fact, our brains cannot even visualize how to move in higher dimensions. Therefore all the research done in higher-dimensional string theory is done using pure mathematics.) But in string theory, the dimensionality of space-time is fixed at ten dimensions. The theory breaks down mathematically in other dimensions. I still remember the shock that physicists felt when string theory posited that we live in a universe of ten dimensions. Most physicists saw this as proof that the theory was wrong. When John Schwarz, one of the leading architects of string theory, was in the elevator at Caltech, Richard Feynman would prod him, asking, “Well, John, and how many dimensions are you in today?” Yet over the years, physicists gradually began to show that all rival theories suffered from fatal flaws. For example, many could be ruled out because their quantum corrections were infinite or anomalous (that is, mathematically inconsistent). So over time, physicists began to warm up to the idea that perhaps our universe might be ten-dimensional after all. Finally, in 1984, John Schwarz and Michael Green showed that string theory was free of all the problems that had doomed previous candidates for a unified field theory. If string theory is correct, then the universe might have originally been ten-dimensional. But the universe was unstable and six of these dimensions somehow curled up and became too small to be observed. Hence, our universe might actually be ten-dimensional, but our atoms are too big to enter these tiny higher dimensions.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything)
“
Hyphen This word comes from two Greek words together meaning ‘under one’, which gets nobody anywhere and merely prompts the reflection that argument by etymology only serves the purpose of intimidating ignorant antagonists. On, then. This is one more case in which matters have not improved since Fowler’s day, since he wrote in 1926: The chaos prevailing among writers or printers or both regarding the use of hyphens is discreditable to English education … The wrong use or wrong non-use of hyphens makes the words, if strictly interpreted, mean something different from what the writers intended. It is no adequate answer to such criticisms to say that actual misunderstanding is unlikely; to have to depend on one’s employer’s readiness to take the will for the deed is surely a humiliation that no decent craftsman should be willing to put up with. And so say all of us who may be reading this book. The references there to ‘printers’ needs updating to something like ‘editors’, meaning those who declare copy fit to print. Such people now often get it wrong by preserving in midcolumn a hyphen originally put at the end of a line to signal a word-break: inter-fere, say, is acceptable split between lines but not as part of a single line. This mistake is comparatively rare and seldom causes confusion; even so, time spent wondering whether an exactor may not be an ex-actor is time avoidably wasted. The hyphen is properly and necessarily used to join the halves of a two-word adjectival phrase, as in fair-haired children, last-ditch resistance, falling-down drunk, over-familiar reference. Breaches of this rule are rare and not troublesome. Hyphens are also required when a phrase of more than two words is used adjectivally, as in middle-of-the-road policy, too-good-to-be-true story, no-holds-barred contest. No hard-and-fast rule can be devised that lays down when a two-word phrase is to be hyphenated and when the two words are to be run into one, though there will be a rough consensus that, for example, book-plate and bookseller are each properly set out and that bookplate and book-seller might seem respectively new-fangled and fussy. A hyphen is not required when a normal adverb (i.e. one ending in -ly) plus an adjective or other modifier are used in an adjectival role, as in Jack’s equally detestable brother, a beautifully kept garden, her abnormally sensitive hearing. A hyphen is required, however, when the adverb lacks a final -ly, like well, ill, seldom, altogether or one of those words like tight and slow that double as adjectives. To avoid ambiguity here we must write a well-kept garden, an ill-considered objection, a tight-fisted policy. The commonest fault in the use of the hyphen, and the hardest to eradicate, is found when an adjectival phrase is used predicatively. So a gent may write of a hard-to-conquer mountain peak but not of a mountain peak that remains hard-to-conquer, an often-proposed solution but not of one that is often-proposed. For some reason this fault is especially common when numbers, including fractions, are concerned, and we read every other day of criminals being imprisoned for two-and-a-half years, a woman becoming a mother-of-three and even of some unfortunate being stabbed six-times. And the Tories have been in power for a decade-and-a-half. Finally, there seems no end to the list of common phrases that some berk will bung a superfluous hyphen into the middle of: artificial-leg, daily-help, false-teeth, taxi-firm, martial-law, rainy-day, airport-lounge, first-wicket, piano-concerto, lung-cancer, cavalry-regiment, overseas-service. I hope I need not add that of course one none the less writes of a false-teeth problem, a first-wicket stand, etc. The only guide is: omit the hyphen whenever possible, so avoid not only mechanically propelled vehicle users (a beauty from MEU) but also a man eating tiger. And no one is right and no-one is wrong.
”
”
Kingsley Amis (The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage)
“
That is the ultimate alternative: is the opposition between Loveand Law to be reduced to its “truth,” the opposition, internal to theLaw itself, between the determinate positive Law and the excessivesuperego injunction, the Law beyond every measure—that is to say,is the excess of Love with regard to the Law the form of appearanceof a superego Law, of a Law beyond any determinate law; or is theexcessive superego Law the way the dimension beyond the Law ap-pears withinthe domain of the Law, so that the crucial step to be ac-complished is the step (comparable to Nietzsche’s “High Noon”)from the excessive Law to Love, from the way Love appears withinthe domain of the Law to Love beyond the Law? Lacan himselfstruggled continuously with this same deeply Pauline problem: isthere love beyond Law? Paradoxically (in view of the fact that thenotion as unsurpassable Law is usually perceived as Jewish), in thevery last page of Four Fundamental Concepts,he identifies this stance oflove beyond Law as that of Spinoza, opposing it to the Kantian no-tion of moral Law as the ultimate horizon of our experience. InEthics of Psychoanalysis,Lacan deals extensively with the Pauline di-alectic of the Law and its transgression13—perhaps what we shoulddo, therefore, is read this Pauline dialectic together with its corol-lary, Saint Paul’s other paradigmatic passage, the one on love from 1Corinthians 13.
Crucial here is the clearly paradoxical place of Love with regard to All(to the completed series of knowledge or prophecies): first, SaintPaul claims that love is here even if we possess all of knowledge—then, in the second quoted paragraph, he claims that love is hereonly for incomplete beings, that is, beings who possess incompleteknowledge.When I “know fully . . . as I have been fully known,” willthere still be love? Although, in contrast to knowledge, “love neverends,” it is clearly only “now” (while I am still incomplete) that“faith, hope, and love abide.”
The only way out of this deadlock isto read the two inconsistent claims according to Lacan’s feminineformulas of sexuation:14even when it is “all” (complete, with no ex-ception), the field of knowledge remains, in a way, non-all, incom-plete—love is not an exception to the All of knowledge, but preciselythat “nothing” which makes incomplete even the complete series/field of knowledge. In other words, the point of the claim that, evenif I were to possess all knowledge, without love, I would be nothing,is not simply that withlove, I am “something”—in love, I am also noth-ing,but, as it were, a Nothing humbly aware of itself, a Nothing par-adoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack.Only a lacking, vulnerable being is capable of love: the ultimatemystery of love, therefore, is that incompleteness is, in a way, higherthan completion. On the one hand, only an imperfect, lacking beingloves: we love because we do notknow all. On the other hand, evenif we were to know everything, love would, inexplicably, still behigher than completed knowledge. Perhaps the true achievement ofChristian is to elevate a loving (imperfect) Being to the place ofGod, that is, of ultimate perfection. That is the kernel of the Chris-tian experience. In the previous pagan attitude, imperfect earthlyphenomena can serve as signs of the unattainable divine perfection.In Christianity, on the contrary, it is physical (or mental) perfectionitself that is the sign of the imperfection (finitude, vulnerability, un-certainty) of you as the absolute person. becomes a sign of this spiritual dimension—not the sign of your“higher” spiritual perfection, but the sign of youas a finite, vulner-able person. Only in this way do we really break out of idolatry. Forthis reason, the properly Christian relationship between sex and loveis not the one between body and soul, but almost the opposite...
”
”
ZIZEK
“
Even among the uninitiated - men and women who were unaware of how a day's labor had been defined through years of tense negotiation - extracting such large drafts of labor required extraordinarily coercive measures. Violent confrontations between masters and slaves seemed to grow as the lower Mississippi Valley became a slave society. Wielding the lash with greater frequency if not greater force, planters struggled to bend slaves to the new order. Slaves resisted with equal ferocity. Unrest increased and rumors of rebellion boiled to the surface. During the 1790s and into the new century, the lower Mississippi Valley was alive with news of revolt, as one intrigue after another came to light. In 1791, 1795, and again in 1804 and 1805, planters uncovered major conspiracies. They responded with the lash, mutilating many rebels and suspected rebels, deporting others, and executing still others, often after grotesque torture.
Yet behind this bloody facade, master and slave began to renegotiate the terms under which slaves lived and worked. Many of these involved the pace of labor; others originated in the organization of labor and the authority of the masters' subalterns, as overseers became a fixture on the largest estates. From the planters' perspective, the large units on which sugar and cotton were grown made movement from plantation to plantation - a prominent feature of slave life in eighteenth-century Louisiana - unnecessary and undesirable. But perhaps the most intense conflicts arose over the slaves' economy: their free Sundays and half-Saturdays, their gardens and provision grounds, and their right to sell their labor and market its product. Slaves in the lower Mississippi Valley had a long tradition of independent productive activities. Planters, who once saw advantages in allowing slaves to subsist themselves, pressed for an allowance society in which rations replaced gardens and the right to market.
...
Under the new regime, plantation slaves frequently worked from dawn to noon and then, after a two hour break, until 'the approach of night.' As the planters' demands intensified, the time left for slaves to work their gardens grew shorter. Sustaining them took an extraordinary commitment. The frantic pace at which slaves worked in their own plots was captured by an emigre from Saint Domingue in 1799, who observed that a slave returning form the field 'does not lose his time. He goes to work at a bit of the land which he has planted with provisions for his own use, while his companion, if he has one, busies herself in preparing some for him, herself, and their children.' 'Many of the owners take off a part of that ration,' noted another visitor. Slaves 'must obtain the rest of their food, as well as their clothing, from the results of their Sunday labors.' Planters who supplied their slaves with clothes forced them to work on Sunday 'until they have been reimbursed for their advances,' so that the cash that previously went into the slaves' pockets went to the masters'.
”
”
Ira Berlin (Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves)
“
I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived.
But it was vital to my survival to have a one bedroom of my own i saw the aprtment almost as a sanatorium a hospice clinci for my own recovery I painted the walls in the warmest colors i could find and bought myself flowers every week as if i were visiting myself in the hospital
is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty
why are you studying Italian so that just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again and is actually successful this time?
ciao comes from if you must know it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval venetians as an intimate salutation Sono il Suo Schiavo meaning i am your slave.
om Naamah Shivaya meaning I honor the divinity that resides whin me.
I wanted to experience both , I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence the dual glories of a human life I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos the singular balance of the good and he beautiful I'd been missing both during these last hard years because both pleasure and devotion require a stress free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety , As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion.
four feet on the ground a head full of foliage looking at the world through the heart.
it was more than I wanted to toughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well.
same guatemalan musicians are always playing id rather be a sparrow than a snail on their bamboo windpipes
oh how i want italian to open itself up to me
i havent felt so starved for comprehension since then
dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontanana
dolce sitl nuovo
Dante wrote his divine comedy in terza rima triple rhyme a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating here times every five lines.
lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle
we are the masters of bel far niente
larte darrangiarsi
The reply in italy to you deserve a break today would probably be yeah no duh that's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon to go over to your house and sleep with your wife,
I walked home to my apartment and soft-boiled a pair of fresh brown eggs for my lunch i peeled the eggs and arranged them on a plate beside the seven stalks of the asparagus (which were so slim and snappy they didn't need to be cooked at all,)I put some olives on the plate too and the four knobs of goat cheese I'd picked up yesterday from the fromagerie down the street tend two slices of pink oily salmon for dessert a lovely peach which the woman at the market had given to me for free and which was still warm form the roman sunlight for the longest time I couldn't even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing finally when i had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal i went and sat in apatch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bit of it with my fingers while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian happiness inhabited my every molecule.
I am inspired by the regal self assurance of this town so grounded and rounded so amused and monumental knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history i would like to be like rome when i am an old lady.
I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
You wouldn’t believe the schedule this dude has me on. There’s apparently a lot more to therapy than I thought.” James could imagine. Group therapy from nine to ten. Whips and Chains 101 from ten to noon. Break for lunch, and then on to Advanced Butt Plugging. Actually, it sounded kind of fun.
”
”
Sophie Oak (Pure Bliss (Nights in Bliss, Colorado, #6))
“
The major problem in Africa is neither politics nor Apartheid. It is the deep hatred of a Black Person by another Black Person. For example: should have Blacks loved each other, and supported each other, no-one would break their trust and support for one another. No-one would be a 'sellout'. No-one would be turning against his brother. They would uplift and promote each another. They would protect their lineage, their heritage, and so on. In fact, those tribal fights wouldn't even exist. The xenophobic attacks wouldn't exist. But a Black Man hates HIMSELF.
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
So Trump was 29% likely to win. What does 29% mean?” he asks. This is an odd question for many: they’re doing a Master’s degree at Harvard, and they’re being asked what a percentage means. The question is aiming at the gut reaction of the brain to the number. Inevitably, students think it might be a trick question. Dan waits a while, and when no-one raises their hands, he breaks away from the example to tell a story: “You know, when I first started teaching, I was terrified of silence. I thought, ‘oh my god, I’ve got to do something, they’re not saying anything’.” The class laughs: he has eased the tension created by the silence. “The more I taught, the more I realised that silences are important in a class – they give time for people to think. These days, I’m not afraid of silence at all.” After a few seconds, a woman puts up her hand. “Well, obviously, I knew that it meant there was some chance that he would win. But it was still a shock that the 29% happened.
”
”
David Franklin (Invisible Learning: The magic behind Dan Levy's legendary Harvard statistics course)
“
Mick reached backwards without breaking eye contact and ran his hand across the door behind him, “See this?” he said. “This is my door. And no-one is touching my door today.” He shook his head slowly as if the issue wasn’t even up for debate.
Surle said nothing, just stared.
Mick swung his sword lazily, pointing towards the floor between himself and the infamous Marshal, “See this floor here? This floor is my porch,” he said. “And no-one is welcome on my porch today, especially you.”
Still nothing from Surle, just silence.
“So why don’t you just sod off like a good little lackey?
”
”
Aaron D'Este (Weapon of Choice)
“
Rebellious"™
You're a barefoot odyssey, perched on a granite counter.
Perched on edgeless intensity and arched reasoning.
Why do I succumb to valiant persuasions?
Just shatter me with your mammoth reality, break me into shards you think will clatter.
But, I'm not made of material gravity I'm a symphony of notes looking to burst free!
Call me lyrical,
call it mercy,
call this poetic justice and end my dispassionate existence so criminal.
Bang your gavel against my criminalistic loins, I'm guilty of animalistic tendencies and tamed to humanoid inadequacies.
I can shatter you in all aspects, and put you back in form in all retrospectives.
I do not care to mold you into material to use as an art plateau.
My hilly curves canvas's your mighty sword, burst free!
Sing to me!
Write me your lies.
I beckon to endure your truths passionately, injustice webbed upon us is it poetic?
Or law abiding?
Where will it begin?
Where will it end?
Time has frozen around me, and all I can think of is this consumption of you.
Wholely intoxicating, and wholely seductive.
And I can't decide;
When your limbs are apart and pinned displayed like a canvas to be ravaged, will you be entirely vulnerable to my demonstrations?
Or will you swallow me whole?
Swallow you, wallow in you...
I'm invaded by your touch.
Caught up!
Caught up!
Caught up!
So caught up to us.
I say;
just lay down my body,
tie up my mind,
spank my assets,
kisses so low and divine.
This hasn't yet fully begun, and for sure won't end soon.
So meet in our place of desire this noon, when footsteps cross the moon.
Darkness descends during daylight when I draw the curtains tight, shutting out the world that claims our time.
Now you're mine,
you can't escape me,
you can't escape this!
I won't let you!
Now you're a convoluted odyssey subdued by ministration
firm,
tender,
meticulous,
smitten,
sensitized and shackled.
You're a richly tainted taste of sin.
A resolute candle of insatiable inspiration.
Whose wick lit quick,
whose burn smoulders on.
Lights out, darkness nears and you burn within me.
If I'm a sin, get on bended knees.
Prey on me, and you're forgiven. To hell with Mary I want to cum quick see?
Rebel no more,
we've found retribution!
Call it retribution,
call it mercy,
call this poetic justice,
call this confession.
I want the marks of your claws
to escort me out the door.
I want the ruthless indulgence of rebellion tattooed across your psyche!
Exhale my name, and blow the flame out!
I'll lay and lay som more,
till the next time my rebellious lover comes through the door...
”
”
DragonPoetikFly© & Roger Brightley©
“
A loud clearing of Enrique’s throat tears us apart.
Alex looks at me with intense passion. “I have to get back to work,” he says, his breathing ragged.
“Oh. Well, sure.” Suddenly embarrassed at our PDA, I step back.
“Can I see you later today?” he asks.
“My friend Sierra is coming over for dinner.”
“The one who looks in her purse a lot?”
“Um, yeah.” I need to change the subject or I’ll be tempted to invite him, too. I can see it all now--my mom seething in disgust at Alex and his tattoos.
“My cousin Elena is gettin’ married on Sunday. Go with me to the wedding,” he says.
I look at the ground. “I can’t have my friends know about us. Or my parents.”
“I won’t tell ’em.”
“What about people at the wedding? They’ll all see us together.”
“Nobody from school will be there. Except my family, and I’ll make sure they keep their mouths shut.”
I can’t. Lying and sneaking around has never been my strong point. I push him away. “I can’t think when you’re standing that close.”
“Good. Now about that wedding.”
God, looking at him makes me want to go. “What time?”
“Noon. It’ll be an experience you won’t forget. Trust me. I’ll pick you up at eleven.”
“I didn’t say ‘yes’ yet.”
“Ah, but you were about to,” he says in his dark, smooth voice.
“Why don’t I meet you here at eleven,” I suggest, gesturing to the body shop. If my mom finds out about us, all hell will break loose.
He lifts my chin up to face him. “Why aren’t you afraid of bein’ with me?”
“Are you kidding? I’m terrified.” I focus on the tattoos running up and down his arms.
“I can’t pretend to live a squeaky-clean life.” He holds up my hand so it’s palm against palm with his. Is he thinking about the difference in the color of our skin, his rough fingers against the nail polish on the tips of mine? “In some ways we’re so opposite,” he says.
I thread my fingers through his. “Yeah, but in other ways we’re so similar.”
That gets a smile out of him, until Enrique clears his throat again.
“I’ll meet you here at eleven on Sunday,” I say.
Alex backs away, nods, and winks. “This time it’s a date.
”
”
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
“
The family has always been a very important part of Italian life. In country areas, it is still common for grandparents, parents, and children to live in the same house. Even when young couples find a home of their own, they like to visit their parents regularly.
In recent years, the traditional closeness of the family has become less important for some Italians, especially in the big cities. Each year thousands of young people from the southern regions leave their families and move north, to find work in the industrial areas.
A typical Italian family in a town lives in an apartment, probably with a kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom, and two or three bedrooms. Children come home from school around noon. Many workers also come home for a two-hour break, joining the family for a large midday meal, and perhaps taking a nap afterward, before returning to work. For children, the afternoon is usually occupied with homework, after which there is time for play or activities such as swimming or judo. The evening meal is usually small and taken while watching television, reading, or enjoying conversation.
”
”
Marilyn Tolhurst (Italy (People & Places))
“
some 2,200ft up, and two miles distant. As if that weren’t enough, Seana Bhraigh and Meall Glac an Ruighe tore into the sky, attempting to upstage Gleann a’ Chadha Dheirg itself. It appeared the sky wanted in on the action too. The clouds had merged into one huge mass which sported virtually every possible variation of black, white and grey. It rippled and undulated as though alive, breathing, and then, as if I couldn’t take any more, the sun appeared again. Through the tiniest break in this veil high above, chinks of light streamed through, flashes raced down to meet me as I appreciated their warmth. The Highlands came alive, light and shadow danced over the lowlands and tore up the mountains. Dark then light, in shadow then illumination, it was the ultimate cinematic experience, and I was the only one there to bear witness. I sat there, open-mouthed for an hour. No-one shared my corner, nobody experienced what I had seen. It was all mine.
”
”
Keith Foskett (High and Low: How I Hiked Away From Depression Across Scotland (Outdoor Adventure Book 6))
“
The average Texas cattle herd driven northward numbered 2,500 cows, composed primarily of hardy Texas longhorns, a breed that could travel long distances without water. A dozen cowboys, including a trail boss, along with 50–60 horses, four mules, and a chuck wagon (sometimes called a mess wagon) that hauled the food and bedding, accompanied the herd. Starting shortly after dawn, with a noon break, they moved about 15 miles a day. The trip could take from four to six months.
”
”
Nancy Weidel (Wyoming's Historic Ranches (Images of America: Wyoming))
“
I hated mornings with a fiery passion. I had no idea who had decided that the entire world needed to wake up at ass o'clock, but that person needed to be nut-punched. Needless to say, I wasn't the nicest person in the world if woken up before noon.
”
”
K.A. Robinson (Breaking Alexandria)
“
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the noon day: And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.” Isaiah 58:8-12 KJV.
”
”
Nannette Elkins (The Daniel Fast: A Devotional)
“
Nobody's Gunna Break My Stride
Last night I had the strangest dream
I sailed away to China
In a little row boat to find ya
And you said you had to get your laundry cleaned
Didn't want no-one to hold you
What does that mean
And you said
Ain't nothin' gonna to break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down, oh-no
I got to keep on movin'
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch ground
Oh-no, I got to keep on movin'
You're on a roll and now you pray it lasts
The road behind was rocky
But now you're feeling cocky
You look at me and you see your past
Is that the reason why you're runnin' so fast
And she said
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down, oh-no
I got to keep on moving
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch ground
Oh-no, I got to keep on moving
Never let another girl like you, work me over
Never let another girl like you, drag me under
If I meet another girl like you, I will tell her
Never want another girl like you, have to say
Ooooooh
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh-no, oh-no, I got to keep on moving
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch the ground
Oh-no, I got to keep on movin'
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh-no, oh-no, I got to keep on moving
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch the ground
Oh-no, I got to keep on movin'
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh-no, I got to keep on moving
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
I'm running and I won't touch the ground
Oh-no, I got to keep on movin'
Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh-no, oh-no, I got to keep on moving
”
”
Matthew Wilder
“
The sun had reached its noon zenith in the sky in the world that lay outside the dark and grimy warehouse, and coming in slantwise through the small window sent a dusty shaft that fell like a theatrical spotlight about Jennie’s head and shoulders as she lectured. “If you have committed any kind of an error and anyone scolds you – wash,” she was saying. “If you slip and fall off something and somebody laughs at you – wash. If you are getting the worst of an argument and want to break off hostilities until you have composed yourself, start washing. Remember, every cat respects another cat at her toilet. That’s our first rule of social deportment, and you must also observe it. “Whatever the situation, whatever difficulty you may be in you can’t go wrong if you wash. If you come into a room full of people you do not know, and who are confusing to you, sit right down in the midst of them and start washing. They’ll end up by quieting down and watching you. Some noise frightens you into a jump, and somebody you know saw you were frightened – begin washing immediately. “If somebody calls you and you don’t care to come and still you don’t wish to make it a direct insult – wash. If you’ve started off to go somewhere and suddenly can’t remember where it was you wanted to go, sit right down and begin brushing up a little. It will come back to you. Something hurt you? Wash it. Tired of playing with someone who has been kind enough to take time and trouble and you want to break off without hurting his or her feelings? Start washing. “Oh, there are dozens of things! Door closed and you’re burning up because no one will open it for you – have yourself a little wash and forget it. Somebody petting another cat or dog in the same room, and you are annoyed over that – be nonchalant; wash. Feel sad – wash away your blues. Been picked up by somebody you don’t particularly fancy and who didn’t smell good – wash him off immediately and pointedly where he can see you do it. Overcome by emotion – a wash will help you to get a grip on yourself again. Any time, anyhow, in any manner, for whatever purpose, wherever you are, whenever and why ever that you want to clear the air, or get a moment’s respite or think things over – WASH!
”
”
Paul Gallico (Jennie (Collins Modern Classics))
“
in. I was glad of the break with Rome. I never felt that it was good that our affairs should be governed by an outside power, or that the fruits of our labour should be paid to a prelate who never set foot in the country. But it seems few are willing to go thus far and no further – not even the King himself.’ ‘But Paul – the King is a true Catholic. No-one could be more devoted than him. He hates heresy. He is a true son of the Church.
”
”
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (The Dark Rose (The Morland Dynasty, #2))
“
The good news was that the smoke, whatever its source, was not getting closer to us. The bad news was that it was moving towards Oban. We wasted no time rowing across the loch. The group we’d already sent over remained visible and clearly busy, though doing what was anybody’s guess from our vantage point in the birlinn. It was getting on past noon, and I hated the idea of leaving the birlinn behind. Crafting it had been a singularly powerful experience, one that I wasn’t sure was repeatable. The birlinn we’d made was unique. In the end, though, it was a boat. It wasn’t alive like the three hundred people we were trying to keep breathing. Not to mention the thousands in Oban who could die. I’d planned to take one of the oars to give a rower a break, but I must have looked haggard. When I’d gone to offer, the bloke with the oar had taken one look at me and said, “Naw, mate.” Sitting on a thwart next to Eilidh, I fervently wished for something to distract me from the radiating warmth on my left. Rowing would at least give me something to do that wasn’t thinking about that heat or second guessing all the decisions we’d made in the past few days. We could have taken the strongest of us and returned to Oban, leaving the other three hundred to take the slower route around the loch. Sure, that was a possibility. But if we’d done that, we’d have left them vulnerable, including the children. That wasn’t acceptable to me or to anyone else. Oban had the advantage of numbers and at least some preparation at this point; the people with us did not. There were any number of things we could be questioning, but if we sat here picking apart the instincts we’d followed, all we’d do was pick up an ulcer. We were still alive. That was all that mattered. I tuned back in to the birlinn to hear a couple of the rowers talking, both of them darting glances at me and Eilidh in the process. “. . . wrecked all of Sackington’s guns and stole his grenades,” one of them said, not really trying to be quiet. Eilidh zeroed in on him like a bloodhound catching a whiff of the quarry. “Yes. We did.” “Erm, he wasn’t saying it was a bad thing!” one of the rowers blurted out. “Yes, I was! We could have used those instead of hitting things with sticks, for fuck’s sake,” the other one said. “No offense.” “Mate, they don’t even work anymore,” I said, and when I could almost see his thoughts pivot to but there’s magic now, I sighed. “We happened to be present when someone figured out how to use their magic to fire a rifle at one of Bawbag’s simulacra. Not only did the bullet literally bounce right back, but it killed his daughter when it ricocheted, and his next shot was dead on. Can you guess what happened then?” “He died,” said the guy who had tried to reassure me they weren’t questioning that decision. He had sandy brown hair that was a mess of waves half stuck to his head with sweat from the exertion, and his muscles were bulging out of his shirt—guess he was getting those Strength increases. “Did he die?” the other bloke asked. “Aye, he might as well have just shot himself in the heart. Even swords bounced right off that damn thing—piercing it with the point seems to be the only thing even marginally successful, and that might be imbuing it with Purifire more than the actual poke.” “I know how to shoot a gun,” Eilidh said bluntly. “And amateurs with firearms tend to hurt much more than they help, let alone in a state of active combat. This isn’t the fucking Wild West.” She sounded Done with a capital D, and I didn’t blame her. To his credit, the bloke seemed to mull that over for a bit before nodding as if ceding the point. Whatever the Ascended Alliance knew about friendly fire of an arcane nature, that did not extend to human-made explosives. If
”
”
Mati Ocha (The Ascendent Sky (The Transcendent Green #2))
“
There is a girl with sunshine hair who turns my world to shreds. She burns my eyes, breaks my thoughts to pieces. There is a glow around her like the sky at noon, but it narrows, the image, it shrinks, and the pain eases its grip into numb nothing. It shrinks and shrinks again until it becomes a pinprick of life in the dark.
A spark that fades to nothing at all.
”
”
Alexandra Bracken (Sparks Rise (The Darkest Minds #2.5))
“
I'd never had an audience like Rebecca Cross. Her shining eyes and respectful silence spurred me to ever greater heights of invention. Ever deeper trenches of imagined horrors. By Friday, I'd pegged half our class as speeding towards some kind of astonishing doom. And Becca was mine. We'd been written off as weirdos together. Together. Some girls treated their friends as athletes in competitive trials, constantly moving them up and down the ranks. But for us best friendship was deadly serious. More permanent than a tattoo. We invented code words and handshakes. We made repeated blood pacts. We scratched each other's arms with pine needles and sipped unholy potions we invented in our parents' gardens out of some nebulous, but passionate desire to show out devotion. We snuck clothes into each other's drawers, so we could swear to anyone who asked (no-one ever asked) that we lived together. Our mom's conducted hush phone calls, worried we'd burn bright then break each others hearts. They set up play dates with other children who never asked to come back. Our parents didn't get it. That was all. They didn't believe you could find your soulmate at six.
”
”
Melissa Albert (The Bad Ones)
“
And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! "All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun at noon, Right up above the mast did stand. No bigger than the moon. "Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath, nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
”
”
Marmaduke Park (Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean From Authentic Accounts Of Modern Voyagers And Travellers; Designed For The Entertainment And Instruction Of Young People)
“
seen. It swirled around with a life of its own and was an even deeper and brilliant gold than the outside casing of the stone. Lu had always admired it. When she had asked him where it came from, he only smiled and said that one day she would find out for herself. Now, he wrapped her hand around the stone and told her to go play in the gardens. After she left, he had drifted off to sleep, never to wake up. That had been one year ago, and Lu had companionless since. Now, her loneliness was compounded by drudgery. Every moment of her day was planned out for her, scripted like a play. Her father believed that a strict schedule produced a disciplined mind, and unfortunately, her tutors agreed. Every morning at dawn, she was awakened for breakfast in the garden and was then whisked off to horseback riding lessons in the family woods. This wouldn’t have been so bad except that her horseback riding instructor was also her science tutor and demanded she recite the Periodic Table of Elements at least once during each ride. Promptly at nine, her morning lessons of math, English, and science began. At noon, she had a short lunch break taken in the sunroom.
”
”
Lanie (Farr) Nelson (The Arbors of Eden)
“
Siesta
Mud tracked from the rice fields blazon a path
From kitchen to cellar escaping noon’s wrath.
A quiet siesta to break the ordeal
Of scything and sifting and spinning the wheel.
Half a dream later he returns to the field
To seeding earth’s furrows. massaging its yield.
And when Sun descends gravely back to her tomb
He tracks back to the kitchen, the cellar, his room.
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
The god of open options is a cruel and vindictive god. He will break your heart. He will not let anyone get too close. But at the same time, because he is so spiteful, he will not let anyone get too far away because that would mean they are no longer an option. On and on it continues, exhausting and frustrating and confusing and endless, pulling towards and then pushing away, like the tide on a beach, never finally committing one way or the other. We have been like the starving man sitting in front of an all-you-can-eat buffet, dying simply because he would not choose between the chicken and the shrimp. The god of open options is also a liar. He promises you that by keeping your options open, you can have everything and everyone. But in the end, you get nothing and no one.
”
”
Lydia Brownback (Finding God in My Loneliness)
“
Soothe My Soul"
I'm coming for you
When the sun goes down
I'm coming for you
When there's no-one around
I'll come to your house
Break down the door
Girl I'm shaking
And I need more
There's only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
I'm coming for you
I need to feel your skin
I'm coming for you
To stop this crawling
I'm taking my place
By your side
And I'm not leaving
Until I'm satisfied
There's only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
I'm coming for you
My body's hungry
I'm coming for you
Like a junkie
I can't stop
Desire in me
I'm not waiting
Patiently
There's only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way to soothe my soul
There's only one way
Only one way
There's only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way to soothe my soul
Only one way
Only one way
Only one way
”
”
Depeche Mode
“
Duffy watched the wooden chest bobbing slowly away downstream. “Noon?” he repeated absently. “What’s so special about noon?” Aurelianus tried standing up again, and made it this time. “All these magics involve a breaking or violation of the natural laws,” he told Duffy, “and those laws relax just a little, are weakest, at noon and midnight.
”
”
Tim Powers (The Drawing of the Dark)
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[...] it was so hot that noon that the bird in their confusion were running into walls like clay pigeons and breaking through screens to die in the bedrooms.
”
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Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
“
I had only had a few days in Tokyo this time. But that was long enough to get used to its ways again — stations where you never have to wait, trains that are never late, telephones that never break down, shop girls who bow to you and smile. It all went together with the high tech facade of the place, the insistent newness of it, the looming skyscrapers and streets crowded with people in chic black or sewer-rat grey, all inexplicably in a hurry. In the countryside, on the other hand, no-one was in a hurry. ‘Countryside’, actually, is rather a mistranslation. Inaka really means anywhere that is not Tokyo — the provinces, in other words, the boondocks, the sticks.
”
”
Lesley Downer (On the Narrow Road to the Deep North)
“
I wonder why Santa is fat?’ pondered Braindead. ‘He’s a terrible role model really, isn’t he? “Listen, children, if you’re good then the fat man will bring you presents, and don’t forget to leave him alcohol and cake so he gets even fatter.” What’s that teaching our kids, eh? That the nicest, kindest, loveliest man in the world, who we allow to break into our homes every year, is a fat bastard who has a serious eating disorder. Santa has issues. He needs rebranding
”
”
Tracy Bloom (No-one Ever Has Sex on Christmas Day (No-One Ever Has Sex, #3))
“
Four days in a row, up at four. a.m. to test fly new Lockheed warplanes until noon, under the name of Chester Babcock; then off to Paramount to write songs for the rest of the day as his other self, Jimmy Van Heusen; the, a two-and-a-half-day break, during which he only had to get up whenever the studio did, to write songs all day this time. Then back to Go, and you can sleep as long as you like when the war is over, buddy.
”
”
Wilfrid Sheed (The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty)
“
One form of intermittent fasting involves not eating any grains, or anything that turns into sugar in your bloodstream between 6 P.M. and noon the next day. This daily 18-hour fast will bring you into ketosis, a metabolic change that happens when your cells exhaust the energy from carbohydrates and sugars, and break down fats into a powerful fuel known as ketones. Then your brain starts burning ketones for fuel.
”
”
Alberto Villoldo (Grow a New Body)
“
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