Obsessed With Sky Quotes

I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not a very popular one, who once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is. When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lay your head. I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me. Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

I believe in the baby Jesus, and I believe he is handsome and lives in the sky with his pet cow. I believe that it is essential the cow like you, and if you pet the cow with your mind, it will lick your hand and give you cash. But if you make the cow angry, it will turn away from you, forget you exist, and your life will fall into shambles. I believe that as long as the cow likes you, you can get what you want. In order to keep the cow’s favor, you need to ‘let go and let God,’ meaning you can’t obsess about controlling every little thing. You have to let things unfold naturally, and not try to change things you cannot change. On the other hand, I believe that if you’ve made the cow happy by living this way, you’re allowed to ask for favors...

and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds... but thank God it was not that echo alone that I worshipped. What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart, mon grand pch radieux, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish vice, all that I cancelled and cursed. You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and halfthrottled, I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine; Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque, part o nous ne serons jamais spars; Ohio? The wilds of Massachusetts? No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torneven then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita.

It was in this man's class that I first began to wonder if people who wrote fiction were not suffering from some kind of disorder--from what I've since come to think of, remembering the wild nocturnal rocking of Albert Vetch, as the midnight disease. The midnight disease is a kind of emotional insomnia; at every conscious moment its victim--even if he or she writes at dawn, or in the middle of the afternoon--feels like a person lying in a sweltering bedroom, with the window thrown open, looking up at a sky filled with stars and airplanes, listening to the narrative of a rattling blind, an ambulance, a fly trapped in a Coke bottle, while all around him the neighbors soundly sleep. this is in my opinion why writers--like insomniacs--are so accident-prone, so obsessed with the calculus of bad luck and missed opportunities, so liable to rumination and a concomitant inability to let go of a subject, even when urged repeatedly to do so.

When the plane went down in San Francisco, I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes. He memorizes the wrecked metal details, the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa. How people go on, and how people don’t. It was almost a year before I learned that his brother was a pilot. I can’t help it, I love the way men love.

I'm obsessed with him, I think he's every constellation in the sky

You were the most beautiful thing that I’d ever seen. I couldn’t decide whether to pluck you out of the sky and cage you, or simply break your wings.

I sit here before my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatlalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. The Writing is my whole life, it is my obsession. This vampire which is my talent does not suffer other suitors. Daily I court it, offer my neck to its teeth. This is the sacrifice that the act of creation requires, a blood sacrifice. For only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have this transformative power, they must arise from the human body--flesh and bone--and from the Earth's body--stone, sky, liquid, soil. This work, these images, piercing tongue or ear lobes with cactus needle, are my offerings, are my Aztecan blood sacrifices.

Tears blurred my vision. Stars swam together and sparkled like diamonds. I was glad they weren't. Humans would find a way to pluck them from the sky.

Andromeda.” Allister moved closer. “An autumn constellation, forty-four light-years away.” His steps were smooth and indifferent, but his voice was dry, as though he found my panic attack positively boring. His attitude brought a small rush of annoyance in, but it was suddenly swayed as my lungs contracted and wouldn’t release. I couldn’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “Look up.” It was an order, carrying a harsh edge. With no fight in me, I complied and tilted my head. Tears blurred my vision. Stars swam together and sparkled like diamonds. I was glad they weren’t. Humans would find a way to pluck them from the sky. “Andromeda is the dim, fuzzy star to the right. Find it.” My eyes searched it out. The stars weren’t often easy to see, hidden behind smog and the glow of city lights, but sometimes, on a lucky night like tonight, pollution cleared and they became visible. I found the star and focused on it. “Do you know her story?” he asked, his voice close behind me. A cold wind touched my cheeks, and I inhaled slowly. “Answer me.” “No,” I gritted. “Andromeda was boasted to be one of the most beautiful goddesses.” He moved closer, so close his jacket brushed my bare arm. His hands were in his pockets and his gaze was on the sky. “She was sacrificed for her beauty, tied to a rock by the sea.” I imagined her, a red-haired goddess with a heart of steel chained to a rock. The question bubbled up from the depths of me. “Did she survive?” His gaze fell to me. Down the tear tracks to the blood on my bottom lip. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and he looked away. “She did.

It is never too early to start thinking about your own death and the deaths of those you love. I don’t mean thinking about death in obsessive loops, fretting that your husband has been crushed in a horrific car accident, or that your plane will catch fire and plummet from the sky. But rational interaction, that ends with you realizing that you will survive the worst, whatever the worst may be. Accepting death doesn’t mean that you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like “Why do people die?” and “Why is this happening to me?” Death isn’t happening to you. Death is happening to us all.

William looked up... through his tears... past the catwalk and lights... past the sky... through the dark and clouds and stars and into the void where he once knew God existed, then turned himself outside-in, alone, and asked, 'Why?

His gaze met mine. Blue. Cool silk sheets beneath a darkening sky. Although, there was something else. A flicker of something bright and full of life. Like the reflection in a neurotic person’s eyes. It was madness. It was obsession.

The midnight disease is a kind of emotional insomnia; at every conscious moment its victim—even if he or she writes at dawn, or in the middle of the afternoon—feels like a person lying in a sweltering bedroom, with the window thrown open, looking up at a sky filled with stars and airplanes, listening to the narrative of a rattling blind, an ambulance, a fly trapped in a Coke bottle, while all around him the neighbors soundly sleep. This is in my opinion why writers—like insomniacs—are so accident-prone, so obsessed with the calculus of bad luck and missed opportunities, so liable to rumination and a concomitant inability to let go of a subject, even when urged repeatedly to do so.

You know how when you ask someone what they'd do if the sun was headed for Earth and they had twenty-four hours left to live? And everyone always says they'd be with family, eat their favorite food, go someplace they've always wanted to go? Nobody ever says they'd spend the last day curled up in bed crying- because they wouldn't. That's not what anyone wants to do with their final hours. I mean, yeah, you'd cry. And you'd be scared because you're gonna die. And you'd find yourself looking at the sky throughout the day, knowing what's coming because that's just human nature. But for the most part, you'd just enjoy the time you had left. Especially because there's nothing you can do about it. There's no escape, nowhere to hide. So why bother? Obsessing over the end is pointless. If you spend your life dwelling on the worst possible thing, when it finally happens, you've lived it twice. I don't want to live the worst things twice. I try really hard not to think about the bad stuff. But every once in a while I'm human and I look up. Yesterday was just one of those days that I looked at the sun.

It's hard to explain, but it's related to me know that for every moment of beauty this place gives me, I probably miss a thousand more. And I want them all. I swear I'd live on the dunes if I could. I was born out of my time. I should have been around during the end of the eighteenth century, when the Romantic Era kicked off, and writers and artists were obsessed with nature: the ocean, the mountains, the sky. And they believed in following their own path, experimenting, not blindly obeying rules. I found a quote by Henry David Thoreau- "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life"...It made me cry. Urgency is so beautiful.

I’m not so familiar with vices—I like to think I have none, but if anything were to count, you would be my only one. It must be an addiction or an obsession. I have never known anybody as completely as I know you, and yet I still want to sit next to you, draw close to you, closer. I want you to tell me every story, want to listen to you speak until the night sinks in the sky and the stars fade out. I want you to hold me like a grudge, keep me like a promise, haunt me like a ghost.

I'm obsessed with - perhaps even addicted to - winning, and can't help it.

This thing called Contrmporary America--and its obsession with televisions, game systems, and computers_has gone a littlr far if you ask me. Some call it the Information Age, but I'd tend to say it's more the Sitting-on-one's-butt-and-letting-other-people-do-the-thinking-for-you Age.

I don’t know why I was so obsessed with the sky. Maybe it was the idea of a new day, a fresh start. Or maybe I just liked the way it looked. Not everything had to have some big meaning behind it.

My days are her name The dreams, when the sky is sleepless over my sorrow, are her name The obsession is her name and the wedding, when slayer and sacrifice embrace is her name. Once I sang: every rose as it tires, is her name as it journeys, is her name. Did the road end, has her name changed?

My only real escape came from fantasy. I disappeared into a world of books, becoming obsessed with science fiction. I believed in other planets and races, searching the sky at night for stars, secretly hoping to be abducted and taken to a kinder planet. Maybe God had made a mistake sending me here, I thought. It was obvious I belonged somewhere else. Here I questioned everything and nothing ever made sense.

His love. He could name it now for what it was. Something more than admiration and respect. Something much greater than physical passion. Something that eclipsed possession, and even obsession. He didn’t know the size of it but he suspected it was as limitless as a blue expanse of sky. And it belonged to her.

Branches etched a network of veins across the starry night sky. My own veins were exposed and raw from my attraction to Ella—attraction, hell. More like obsession.

In genealogy you might say that interest lies in the eye of the gene holder. The actual descendants are far more intrigued with it all than the listeners, who quickly sink into a narcoleptic coma after the second or third great-great-somebody kills a bear or beheads Charles I, invents the safety pin or strip-mines Poland, catalogues slime molds, dances flamenco, or falls in love with a sheep. Genealogy is a forced march through stories. Yet everyone loves stories, and that is one reason we seek knowledge of our own blood kin. Through our ancestors we can witness their times. Or, we think, there might be something in their lives, an artist’s or a farmer’s skill, an affection for a certain landscape, that will match or explain something in our own. If we know who they were, perhaps we will know who we are. And few cultures have been as identity-obsessed as ours. So keen is this fascination with ancestry, genealogy has become an industry. Family reunions choke the social calendar. Europe crawls with ancestor-seeking Americans. Your mother or your spouse or your neighbors are too busy to talk to you because they are on the Internet running “heritage quests.” We have climbed so far back into our family trees, we stand inches away from the roots where the primates dominate.

He was obsessed with the magic of air, those smells that turned neuter as they revolved in his lung then spat out in the chosen key. The way the side of his mouth would drag a net of air in and dress it in notes and make it last and last, yearning to leave it up there in the sky like air transformed into cloud. He could see the air, could tell where it was freshest in a room by the colour.

Oh, no. That’s just a name. Oswald isn’t a man, he’s an ondageist. Have you heard of poltergeists?” “Er . . . invisible spirits that throw things around?” “Good,” said Miss Level. “Well, an ondageist is the opposite. They’re obsessive about tidiness. He’s quite handy around the house, but he’s absolutely dreadful if he’s in the kitchen when I’m cooking. He keeps putting things away. I think it makes him happy. Sorry, I should have warned you, but he normally hides if anyone comes to the cottage. He’s shy.” “And

From two niches (to use Barber's word), North and South, we've splintered into hundreds of thousands, a nation of tribes connected not by kinship or even creed. We're merely tethered together by the Internet, by our brand loyalties and shared consumer obsessions.

...and this smoke is ours too. We savvy better than anyone how hallow it rings when they cackle about love and freedom. We savvy their obsession with dividing everyone into homie and palonie. We savvy how they'll hurt others in the name of family, security, tradition.

As he aged, he pursued his scientific inquiries not just to serve his art but out of a joyful instinct to fathom the profound beauties of creation. When he groped for a theory of why the sky appears blue, it was not simply to inform his paintings. His curiosity was pure, personal, and delightfully obsessive.

At the end of the vacation, I took a steamer alone from Wuhan back up through the Yangtze Gorges. The journey took three days. One morning, as I was leaning over the side, a gust of wind blew my hair loose and my hairpin fell into the river. A passenger with whom I had been chatting pointed to a tributary which joined the Yangtze just where we were passing, and told me a story.In 33 B.C., the emperor of China, in an attempt to appease the country's powerful northern neighbors, the Huns, decided to send a woman to marry the barbarian king. He made his selection from the portraits of the 3,000 concubines in his court, many of whom he had never seen. As she was for a barbarian, he selected the ugliest portrait, but on the day of her departure he discovered that the woman was in fact extremely beautiful. Her portrait was ugly because she had refused to bribe the court painter. The emperor ordered the artist to be executed, while the lady wept, sitting by a river, at having to leave her country to live among the barbarians. The wind carried away her hairpin and dropped it into the river as though it wanted to keep something of hers in her homeland. Later on, she killed herself. Legend had it that where her hairpin dropped, the river turned crystal clear, and became known as the Crystal River. My fellow passenger told me this was the tributary we were passing. With a grin, he declared: "Ah, bad omen! You might end up living in a foreign land and marrying a barbarian!" I smiled faintly at the traditional Chinese obsession about other races being 'barbarians," and wondered whether this lady of antiquity might not actually have been better off marrying the 'barbarian' king. She would at least be in daily contact with the grassland, the horses, and nature. With the Chinese emperor, she was living in a luxurious prison, without even a proper tree, which might enable the concubines to climb a wall and escape. I thought how we were like the frogs at the bottom of the well in the Chinese legend, who claimed that the sky was only as big as the round opening at the top of their well. I felt an intense and urgent desire to see the world. At the time I had never spoken with a foreigner, even though I was twenty-three, and had been an English language student for nearly two years. The only foreigners I had ever even set eyes on had been in Peking in 1972. A foreigner, one of the few 'friends of China," had come to my university once. It was a hot summer day and I was having a nap when a fellow student burst into our room and woke us all by shrieking: "A foreigner is here! Let's go and look at the foreigner!" Some of the others went, but I decided to stay and continue my snooze. I found the whole idea of gazing, zombie like rather ridiculous. Anyway, what was the point of staring if we were forbidden to open our mouths to him, even though he was a 'friend of China'? I had never even heard a foreigner speaking, except on one single Linguaphone record. When I started learning the language, I had borrowed the record and a phonograph, and listened to it at home in Meteorite Street. Some neighbors gathered in the courtyard, and said with their eyes wide open and their heads shaking, "What funny sounds!" They asked me to play the record over and over again.

More often than not, we come to understand this only after the crisis has passed. It is at the very moment of anger’s emergence that we must recognize its empty nature. That understanding will strip thoughts of their power to build into a stream of obsession and oppression. They cross the mind without leaving a trace, like the trackless flight of a bird through the sky.

Transhumanism is Terrorism (The Sonnet) Intelligence comes easy, accountability not so much, Yet intelligence is complex, accountability is simple. Technology comes easy, transformation not so much, Yet technology is complicated, transformation is simple. In olden days there were just nutters of fundamentalism, Today there are nutters of nationalism and transhumanism. Some are obsessed with land, others with digital avatars, While humanity battles age-old crises like starvationism. When too much logic, coldness and pomposity set in, Common sense humanity goes out of the window. Once upon a time religion was the opium of all people, Today transhumanism and singularity are opium of the shallow. To replace the sky god with a computer god isn't advancement. Real advancement is when nobody suffers from scarcity of sustenance.

Do you want to know my favorite?” My grip tightened on the railing. In. Out. “Andromeda.” Allister moved closer. “An autumn constellation, forty-four light-years away.” His steps were smooth and indifferent, but his voice was dry, as though he found my panic attack positively boring. His attitude brought a small rush of annoyance in, but it was suddenly swayed as my lungs contracted and wouldn’t release. I couldn’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “Look up.” It was an order, carrying a harsh edge. With no fight in me, I complied and tilted my head. Tears blurred my vision. Stars swam together and sparkled like diamonds. I was glad they weren’t. Humans would find a way to pluck them from the sky. “Andromeda is the dim, fuzzy star to the right. Find it.” My eyes searched it out. The stars weren’t often easy to see, hidden behind smog and the glow of city lights, but sometimes, on a lucky night like tonight, pollution cleared and they became visible. I found the star and focused on it. “Do you know her story?” he asked, his voice close behind me. A cold wind touched my cheeks, and I inhaled slowly. “Answer me.” “No,” I gritted. “Andromeda was boasted to be one of the most beautiful goddesses.” He moved closer, so close his jacket brushed my bare arm. His hands were in his pockets and his gaze was on the sky. “She was sacrificed for her beauty, tied to a rock by the sea.” I imagined her, a red-haired goddess with a heart of steel chained to a rock. The question bubbled up from the depths of me. “Did she survive?” His gaze fell to me. Down the tear tracks to the blood on my bottom lip. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and he looked away. “She did.” I found the star again. Andromeda. “Ask me what her name means.” It was another rough demand, and I had the urge to refuse. To tell him to stop bossing me around. However, I wanted to know—I suddenly needed to. But he was already walking away, toward the exit. “Wait,” I breathed, turning to him. “What does her name mean?” He opened the door and a sliver of light poured onto the terrace. Black suit. Broad shoulders. Straight lines. His head turned just enough to meet my gaze. Blue. “It means ruler of men.” An icy breeze almost swallowed his words before they reached me, whipping my hair at my cheeks. And then he was gone.

What was Sean like growing up?” he asked, opening the door to my building and placing his hand on the small of my back. “Oh, ha ha.” I shook my head, my grin automatic. “Basically the same as he is now.” “Really?” “Yes. When he was eight, all he wanted for Christmas was an Italian suit.” William chuckled, insomuch as William chuckled, and blinked once slowly. “I believe it.” “Actually,” I corrected, “he was also obsessed with the SkyMall catalogue. He loves gadgets, which is great for me because I always know what to get him. The odder the gadget, the more he’ll love it.” “Like what?” “Um, let’s see. Like a waffle maker that also warms your maple syrup.” “That’s not that odd. That’s awesome.” “Okay, then how about a serenity cat pod?” I withdrew my keys and faced the door to my apartment, half-hoping, half-despairing that Bryan was already gone. “A what?” “A pod with mood lighting that makes purring sounds and vibrates. It’s like a little bed, but more modern, for your cat.” “He doesn’t have a cat.” “Doesn’t matter. He would’ve loved it.

Look at me, Elizabeth,” he commanded. His voice dark and deep. “Lizzie,” I corrected without thought, completely out of habit. My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe I had just corrected him. Instinctively I felt that was something people just didn’t do around this man. If he said the sky were purple with pink spots, I’m pretty sure everyone would agree wholeheartedly… and worse, actually believe it. He just seemed to exude that kind of authoritative power. The kind that could make you believe just about anything he said. He gave my hair a painful tug with both hands. “Elizabeth,” he stated emphatically, as if he were a god or a king commanding it be so. “I left a package in your dressing room. It’s a dress. I want you to wear it tonight.” Tonight was the cast party. It was taking place right after our final curtain call. I had no idea he was even attending. Wait, a dress? “The party is at The Brewery next door. I don’t think the cast party is that formal,” I offered, still trying to process why this man would buy me a dress. Realizing quickly that I might sound ungrateful, I stammered, “Not that I don’t appreciate it… I mean I’m sure it’s lovely and—” “Elizabeth.” The sharp command of his voice stopped my rambling. “Yes, sir?” “Wear the dress,” he ordered, not expecting a refusal and not getting one. “Yes, sir,” I whispered. Releasing my hair, he stroked the back of his knuckles down my cheek. “Good girl.” The moment I heard the Hall door close on his retreating back, I sank to my knees in the middle of the stage, feeling shaken and more than a little alarmed. What the hell had just happened?

The astronomers looked up through telescopes and saw the sky in new detail. This draper, Leeuwenhoek, looked down and saw everything else. He saw that the world was mostly microscopic. All along, the biological story had seemed to be about humans, but Leeuwenhoek would show that we were enormous and oversized—the Big Gulps of life. Linnaeus would much later show that there were more big species than had been imagined. But it was Leeuwenhoek who showed that most life was many times smaller than us. History produces unlikely revolutionaries. Leeuwenhoek was to be, without doubt, a revolutionary

Thus unto winter’s chill embrace I turn Who once the summer’s sun did blithely bide ‘Neath solemn visage cold and fair and stern In her cool breast my hot heart to confide. Denied the warmth and wit of summer’s sun Or springtime’s strength, and bright, melodious song I dreamed not to complete what I’d begun Nor dared to haste the laggard hours along. But now with spring and summer sun at rest Laid bare before bright winter’s pale charms I would for love of her lay down my quest And take my ease in Winter-Lady’s arms. Before her beauty fair ‘neath snow-swept sky All other seasons blanch and fade, and die. - The Lost Knight's Lament, "Winter's Lady" (Forthcoming)

March 1898 What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky shone brilliantly overhead as I wandered through the long, cool and sombre corridors in the emptiness of a deserted district: a quarter which might almost have been dead, abruptly abandoned by seamen and foreigners. I was alone, subjected to the stares of prostitutes seated at their windows or in the doorways, whose eyes seemed to ransack my very soul. They did not speak to me. Leaning on the sides of tall bay-windows or huddled in doorways, they were silent. Their breasts and arms were bare, bizarrely made up in pink, their eyebrows were darkened, they wore their hair in corkscrew-curls, decorated with paper flowers and metal birds. And they were all exactly alike! They might have been huge marionettes, or tall mannequin dolls left behind in panic - for I divined that some plague, some frightful epidemic brought from the Orient by sailors, had swept through the town and emptied it of its inhabitants. I was alone with these simulacra of love, abandoned by the men on the doorsteps of the brothels. I had already been wandering for hours without being able to find a way out of that miserable quarter, obsessed by the fixed and varnished eyes of all those automata, when I was seized by the sudden thought that all these girls were dead, plague-stricken and putrefied by cholera where they stood, in the solitude, beneath their carmine plaster masks... and my entrails were liquefied by cold. In spite of that harrowing chill, I was drawn closer to a motionless girl. I saw that she was indeed wearing a mask... and the girl in the next doorway was also masked... and all of them were horribly alike under their identical crude colouring... I was alone with the masks, with the masked corpses, worse than the masks... when, all of a sudden, I perceived that beneath the false faces of plaster and cardboard, the eyes of these dead women were alive. Their vitreous eyes were looking at me... I woke up with a cry, for in that moment I had recognised all the women. They all had the eyes of Kranile and Willie, of Willie the mime and Kranile the dancer. Every one of the dead women had Kranile's left eye and Willie's right eye... so that every one of them appeared to be squinting. Am I to be haunted by masks now?

Beauty Killer" If I can't be beautiful.. I'd rather just die. So self-obsessed with my mascara and mistakes. Vanity's like a funeral an everyone's at my wake. Before I run out of air there's more makeup to apply. Doll eyes stare into Valium colored skies... I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. Rhinestone my eyes closed and please fix my hair. This concealer can't hide all my pink nightmares. Before I run out of air there's more makeup to apply. Doll eyes stare into Valium colored skies. I almost died but it felt great. Faking perfection wasn't worth the wait. I may be easy, easy to hate. But you're so fucking easy.. easy to break. I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. I almost died but it felt great. Faking perfection wasn't worth the wait. I may be easy, easy to hate. But you're so fucking easy.. easy to break. Tell me your secrets and ill tell you my lies. Everything is monotone in my dead eyes. If I cant be beautiful..I'd rather just die. I'm a beauty killer. I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. Gorgeous killer. Hot pink killer. Fierce killer. I'm a beauty killer. I'll fucking kill you...

She thought constantly about Paris and avidly read all the society pages in the papers. Their accounts of receptions, celebrations, the clothes worn, and all the accompanying delights enjoyed, whetted her appetite still further. Above all, however, she was fascinated by what these reports merely hinted at. The cleverly phrased allusions half-lifted a veil beyond which could be glimpsed devastatingly attractive horizons promising a whole new world of wicked pleasure. From where she lived, she looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness...she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness of her sombre sky. She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies, and practising such complex and sophisticated sex as to defy the imagination. It seemed to her that hidden behind the façades of the houses lining the canyon-like boulevards of the city, some amazing erotic secret must lie. "The uneventful life she lived had preserved her like a winter apple in an attic. Yet she was consumed from within by unspoken and obsessive desires. She wondered if she would die without ever having tasted the wicked delights which life had to offer, without ever, not even once, having plunged into the ocean of voluptuous pleasure which, to her, was Paris.

Only ideology has prestige in the fashionable world, because it alone is combatted. And yet there are more serious ideas which have no visible enemy. Indifference of the sky to the earth: it will not rain. Indifference of the soul to things: it will not mingle with them. Indifference of lips to words: they maintain their silence. Indifference of dreams to reality: they will not absolve it. The hysterical obsession with events is itself a result of the end of history. Since there is no longer any history, events should follow one another in endless succession. Since there are no longer any causes, effects must be produced without any break in continuity. Since there is no more meaning in anything, everything should function perfectly.

Do they hear my call in the night? Dreams of faraway lands to go to live, Spending all my time in thinking of him? Knowing I have done all and to love and give. Not enough to keep my love, The moon is my only friend tonight it is calm and white as snow, I cannot stop thinking of his arms his face and smile, I want to leave somewhere away and go. Does anybody share my point of view, Wrapped up in a obsession of non stop thinking, My heart is in love with him, Can I stop this masquerade of my sinking? The butterfly with no home, The Rose that blooms in the night, Cloudy skies that cover the silver of the moon, A dark path in my heart, once so tender and bright. Softness now hurts, Living just being one, Reality sets in, It was over before it begun. Hear my call sweet winds, I ask to be healed and set me free, I know he does not love me, The winds of fate tell me. They tell me to see, What I need to hear and see

eyes. “It was a famous tragedy in Dutch history,” my mother was saying. “A huge part of the town was destroyed.” “What?” “The disaster at Delft. That killed Fabritius. Did you hear the teacher back there telling the children about it?” I had. There had been a trio of ghastly landscapes, by a painter named Egbert van der Poel, different views of the same smouldering wasteland: burnt ruined houses, a windmill with tattered sails, crows wheeling in smoky skies. An official looking lady had been explaining loudly to a group of middle-school kids that a gunpowder factory exploded at Delft in the 1600s, that the painter had been so haunted and obsessed by the destruction of his city that he painted it over and over. “Well, Egbert was Fabritius’s neighbor, he sort of lost his mind after the powder explosion, at least that’s how it looks to me, but Fabritius was killed and his studio was destroyed. Along with almost all his paintings, except this one.” She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but when I didn’t, she continued: “He was one of the greatest painters of his day, in one of the greatest ages of painting. Very very famous in his time. It’s sad though, because maybe only five or six paintings survived, of all his work. All the rest of it is lost—everything he ever did.

Waterfalls" A lonely mother gazing out of her window Staring at a son that she just can't touch If at any time he's in a jam she'll be by his side But he doesn't realize he hurts her so much But all the praying just ain't helping at all 'Cause he can't seem to keep his self out of trouble So he goes out and he makes his money the best way he knows how Another body laying cold in the gutter Listen to me [Chorus:] Don't go chasing waterfalls Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all But I think you're moving too fast Little precious has a natural obsession For temptation but he just can't see She gives him loving that his body can't handle But all he can say is "Baby, it's good to me." One day he goes and takes a glimpse in the mirror But he doesn't recognize his own face His health is fading and he doesn't know why Three letters took him to his final resting place Y'all don't hear me [Chorus (2x)] Come on I seen a rainbow yesterday But too many storms have come and gone Leavin' a trace of not one God-given ray Is it because my life is ten shades of gray I pray all ten fade away Seldom praise Him for the sunny days And like His promise is true Only my faith can undo The many chances I blew To bring my life to anew Clear blue and unconditional skies Have dried the tears from my eyes No more lonely cries My only bleedin' hope Is for the folk who can't cope With such an endurin' pain That it keeps 'em in the pourin' rain Who's to blame For tootin' 'caine into your own vein What a shame You shoot and aim for someone else's brain You claim the insane And name this day in time For fallin' prey to crime I say the system got you victim to your own mind Dreams are hopeless aspirations In hopes of comin' true Believe in yourself The rest is up to me and you [Chorus (2x)]

A massive bookshelf stood behind a deep burgundy desk that was better fit for a Fortune 500 company CEO than a twelve year old. There was a beautiful globe next to it, with Old English writing on it. It looked at least two and a half centuries old. The windows were frosted, the desk lamp was green and the leaning pile of papers on the desk looked like the recycling pastime of an obsessive compulsive stenographer. To the left was a beautiful oil canvas in which a small figure had been drawn on top of a mountain as he clamored towards the heavens while a lemon yellow sun hung on top of it. The arms were like a V reaching for the sky and in the foreground were no less than thirty bodies strewn across the basin in a sea of maroon below. “That was a gift from Edward Louis,” said the voice of the boy from behind Nathaniel. The young man hadn’t been frightened; he was more impressed that the child vampire had slipped in without allowing any noise from the hall to enter with him. “There was a time when he called me King Jeremy the Wicked. Mostly it was an endless jab since I wasn’t much for battles or slaughter. I might add that like many of you humans, I’d rather not know where my food comes from.

Surface Perhaps I overfetishize surfaces, but how can one not obsess over the tactile grasp of a child’s hand in your own, or not become infatuated with a woman's sensuous lips or the silkiness of her thighs? We are dominated by the austere sublimity of icy mountain peaks and cascading water. We are haunted by beaming moonlight and the night sky; girdled by a welcome summer's breeze on a parched day. Who has not been possessed by the sweep of music? Even if there's nothing greater obscured or buried within, the surface has soul enough for me to see God.

Do they hear my call in the night? Dreams of faraway lands to go to live, Spending all my time in thinking of him? Knowing I have done all and to love and give. Not enough to keep my love, The moon is my only friend tonight it is calm and white as snow, I cannot stop thinking of his arms his face and smile, I want to leave somewhere away and go. Does anybody share my point of view, Wrapped up in a obsession of non stop thinking, My heart is in love with him, Can I stop this masquerade of my sinking? The butterfly with no home, The Rose that blooms in the night, Cloudy skies that cover the silver of the moon, A dark path in my heart, once so tender and bright. Softness now hurts, Living just being one, Reality sets in, It was over before it begun. Hear my call sweet winds, I ask to be healed and set me free, I know he does not love me, The winds of fate tell me. They tell me to see, What I need to hear and see.

she felt the warmth of a hundred angel wings brushing her mind. And saw the tiger lift his head to the skies with a roar of keen satisfaction. A flicker of a smile lit Tighe’s mouth as if he, too, felt the tiger watching. His eyes bored into her, holding her. Claiming her as he drove into her, driving her higher and higher, faster and faster, until the ritual pounded through her blood like ancient drums, lifting her, launching her… As she stared into those

Lizzie My life was… complicated. You know that feeling you’d get when you’d start to run down a steep hill? As you ran faster, there was this single moment… just a moment… of pure joy. You would stretch your arms out wide as you embraced the sensation that you were almost flying. You believed, truly believed, if you ran just a little bit faster, if you allowed yourself to dare just a little bit more… maybe you would actually fly. Maybe your toes would lift off the ground and you would touch the sky. So, you dared. You ran faster. Faster. You swore you could no longer feel the ground beneath your feet. All you could see was the bright, beckoning azure sky. And then it happened… you glanced down, back to reality. It was just the barest of seconds, but it was enough. Suddenly you realized, you weren’t flying. You were falling.

Take your rainbows Oh! high monsoon instead cloak me and her with rain so that we can hide from that tragic fate Wrap us in one of those grey clouds lets us sail through that gush and storm hide us in these thunder and black clouds until the end of time or until we melt too and drip through these very own skies sell my soul to feisty east winds for more time in her arms because I know no separation only death oh! melancholy rain oh! melancholy rain do I have to cry louder than the thunder itself and lose my ability to utter 'love you' and be labelled as betrayer in front of her confessions I better be unborn and with no existence If there is no being; how can there be separation.

We are obsessed with building labyrinths, where before there was open plain and sky.

He was taken then, for half a minute, shivering and yawning in his long underwear, soft, nearly invisible in the December-dawn enclosure, among so many sharp edges of books, sheets and flimsies, charts and maps (and the chief one, red pockmarks on the pure white skin of lady London, watching over all . . . wait . . . disease on skin . . . does she carry the fatal infection inside herself? are the skies predestined, and does the flight of the rocket actually follow from the fated eruption latent in the city . . . but he can't hold it, no more than he understands Pointsman's obsession with the reversal of sound stimuli and please, please can't we just drop it for a bit . . .), visited, not knowing till it passed how clearly he was seeing the honest half of his life that Jessica was now, how frantically his mother the War must disapprove of her beauty, her cheeky indifference to death-institutions he'd not so long ago believed in -- her unflappable hope (though she hated to make plans), her exile from childhood (though she refused ever to hold on to memories) . . .

Hate is the emotional externalization of a frequency that is found between that of apathy, resentment, and selfishness, and another, expressing compassion, union and collaboration. Thus you can expect many insults, wars, and hatred whenever you, a nation or the whole world is moving upwards. That is simply the result of evolving towards a higher frequency on a planet vastly dominated by the lowest. The rationalists will never understand this because they are obsessed with explaining a world they know too little about. As a matter of fact, you won't need to concern your mind with agreements between opposing forces but simply with evolving. When you find yourself discussing the color of the sky, or the reason for your emotions or your dreams with others, you are wasting your time. What is, is as it is, and needs only to be seen. That is the true meaning of awakening. But the stupid will never see this, because they expect it to happen without reading the right books. They have accumulated too many misinterpretations on the knowledge of ancient times.

The man’s left eye is a rich chocolate brown, but the right is made up of two different colors. One half of the iris is the same deep brown as the left, but the other half is a clear blue, like the sky on a cloudless day. Earth and air.

Finally I achieved my goal and resolved my childhood obsession with now because that’s what a drum does. When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you’re breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder. Jiko says that this is an example of the time being. Sound and no-sound. Thunder and silence.

I’d never been more obsessed in my life.

I do like it. The moon. My name…my name belonged to the moon goddess. Guess I’ve just always been a little obsessed.” “Ah. Yeah. That makes sense. What did this goddess do?” I want to tell him. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say she drove the moon across the sky and fell in love with a handsome shepherd by the name of Endymion, but I don’t say that.

wonder is unique as well because it often commingles with awe, which I think of as wonder’s larger-than-life cousin. Awe arises in moments of vastness as we feel small while gazing at an infinitely starry sky, a tumultuous and vast ocean, or a towering and cavernous Gothic cathedral. Wonder, though, can appear in the size of an ant. More than awe, wonder helps us see the familiar in a fresh, new way. We can appreciate just how extraordinary an ordinary moment can be.

OPENNESS, the wide-sky facet, is a wide-eyed wonder among us grown-ups. It is the capacity to perceive a subject or situation anew while pursuing new knowledge or launching and even executing an endeavor. If you hunger to taste more than vanilla, then tracking this facet can boost your creative approach to life and work.

If Weierstrass is a rock climber, inching his way methodically up the cliff face, Riemann is a trapeze artist, launching himself boldly into space in the confidence—which to the observer often seems dangerously misplaced—that when he arrives at his destination in the middle of the sky, there will be something there for him to grab. It is plain that Riemann had a strongly visual imagination, and also that his mind leaped to results so powerful, elegant, and fruitful that he could not always force himself to pause to prove them. He was keenly interested in philosophy and physics, and notions gathered from long, deep contemplation of those two disciplines—the flow of sensations through our senses, the organizing of those sensations into forms and concepts, the flow of electricity through a conductor, the movements of liquids and gases— can be glimpsed beneath the surface of his mathematics.

She was blue sky and sunshine, plucky optimism and happiness. I was a stoic cloud of pessimism and surliness.

The devil’s formula has never changed. HOW TO BE DECEIVED IN 5 EASY STEPS Question what God actually said. Twist what God said. Paint God like the mean bully in the sky who uses fear tactics to keep you from having any fun. Persuade you to trust yourself more than you trust God and his Word. Catapult your life into darkness and chaos. Convince you that darkness and chaos are actually good things. Rinse, recycle, repeat. It’s literally the oldest lie in the book.

At once, the sounds disappear even though the waves become ravenous and lightning splits the sky.

There would not be enough stars in the sky to amount to the love I have for you. The world would dim and still, I would be angry I didn’t bring you enough light. I could steal the sun and it wouldn’t compare to your soul. Nothing, no one, equates to you, Mickey.

But she was in love, head over heels in love the way you are at age six, without knowing that this love would be as fleeting as it was powerful, and as powerful as it was secret, and misunderstood, an attachment, an obsession that Oceane had never called, nor would ever call `love'.

When the plane went down in San Francisco, I thought of my friend M. He’s obsessed with plane crashes. He memorizes the wrecked metal details, the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: The one in blue Kentucky. In yellow Iowa. How people go on, and how people don’t.

It must be an addiction or an obsession. I have never known anybody as completely as I know you, and yet I still want to sit next to you, draw close to you, closer. I want you to tell me every story, want to listen to you speak until the night sinks in the sky and the stars fade out. I want you to hold me like a grudge, keep me like a promise, haunt me like a ghost. You’re so beautiful it enrages me.

I thought I loved you, but I was wrong. We both ran from madness for so long, love was impossible. There’s only obsession. Only compulsion. You are not a desire, Wife. You’re a godsdamn addiction. Love makes you a weakness. But you’re my strength. My future. Mine. All of you belongs to me. Every heartbeat, every breath. Every second of your eternal life is mine and mine alone. In malevolence, in anger, in hysteria and darkness, you are unwavering. You’re the crescendo, my love. The pinnacle of every song, the climb, and the purpose. And I will love you beyond the final note.

It’s about dominance. It’s about strength. Only those who are truly strong can find the good in the bad. When you enjoy the pleasure in the midst of pain, you’re fortified by it. You’re empowered by it. It turns me on to see a woman cry but still enjoy it. If she can handle it, then she’s a warrior.” I turned my gaze on her, my lips desperate for hers. “That’s why I’m so obsessed with you. You aren’t like the others. You breathe fire. You’re strong. Nothing can break you, not even me.

Preposterous as love is, all the more so is hating someone with such passion like love masked in such a dark fashion - Haunting Secrets -

We were watching videos at night on her Samsung tablet or my company iPad. She showed me the Silvano Agosti 1983 Italian interview with a little Italian boy called “D'Amore si vive, We Live of Love.” The boy was so cute, and his thoughts seemed similar to mine and Martina's. I was so deeply in love with her. The boy on the interview was just like what our own child would be, and we agreed and laughed. “We Live of Love.” What a coincidence! Living. By: Love. I knew the interview from before and she was surprised at how I knew about it. I showed her on my Instagram a picture of the boy I had recently taken a screenshot of and posted. With the subtitle at the right moment under his face: “Descubrir a la vida.” To discover life. Together. With his one and only girlfriend, as the boy explains. I told her multiple times that I was still unsure if she was real, or if it was all a dream; if I had only dreamed of her one night in the dark; if Pinto and I had invented her in my mind. She was a big fan of space, but I thought she liked the mystery behind the endless space with all its questions and secrets for us humans. I thought she liked the sky and space because she recently flew from Argentina to land in my arms. Martina and I were obsessed with Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy; we both knew all their stand-up comedies by heart. We kept replaying the best moments or faces that Chris or Eddie made. We had so much fun watching the same videos over and over that I couldn't believe it. Nobody else ever found the same moments or the same stand-ups as funny as Martina and I did. Nobody before or after found it so amusing. If I showed it to someone, they didn't understand why I was so excited about it or why racist jokes were so funny for an hour from one black comedian to the next. We were obsessed the way Eddie spoke about the „Zebra-Bitch of his dreams, his dream-wife who doesn’t know the concept of money”, saying “she should have an afro, like Angela Davis goes 'God damn it.'“ We were laughing so much. Sometimes I tickled her flat belly or her ribs and she was laughing so sweetly and so much that she couldn't stop. She was begging me to stop tickling her when I barely touched her. She said “No, no, no, no” so many times so quickly and cutely that I had to stop and kiss her; I couldn't resist her lips or her person, I had to kiss and hug her. We laughed so much at particular parts of Chris Rock's stand-up comedies that we could barely stop, almost as if we were tickling each other. We were laughing when Chris Rock was mocking Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony for singing ‘Welfare chariots’ such as „The First of the Month” or when he explained that the government hates rappers, but „only the good rappers get gunned down. They could find Saddam Hussein in a cave in Iraq but couldn't arrest anyone related to Tupac Shakur’s assassination, which didn't happen in a cave in Iraq but in Las Vegas, on the Strip, not one of those side streets, but in front of Circus Circus, after a Mike Tyson fight. Now how many witnesses do you need, to arrest somebody?” We were fascinated with Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy, and Chris Rock, but when I showed her Richard Prior, Doug Stanhope, Aries Spears, or George Carlin, she was no longer so impressed for some reason. Her favorite part perhaps was when Chris Rock talked about love and relationships. He said that „you never really been in love unless you have contemplated murder; unless you have practiced your alibi in front of the mirror, staring at a can of rat poison for 45 minutes straight, you haven't been in love. And the only thing preventing you from killing your significant other was an episode of CSI.” He said that relationships are hard and that in order for them to work, both people need to have the same focus, which is all about: her.

Six. Sex. Star. David. Saturn. Planet. Rings. Eye. Hexagon. Triangles. Eye. On The Sky. Evil. Pushing Buttons. Sins. Influence. People. Lunatics. Psychopaths. Bad vibes. Frequencies. Praying. For. Easy. Prey. Summoning: Spirits. Tempting. Your female. “Like The Snake.” Sadly, they do “like” the snake and the buttons, too. “Like buttons.” “Life.” “Like.” The psychopath (Adam, Sabrina, Martina…) is obsessed with power, controlling other people in order to achieve their goals. They thrive on control, making others jump and "winning," whether it's world domination or obtaining a ride to the coffeeshop, or just a free lunch. Psychopaths see their condition as a blessing, considering it an advantage in this “eye for an eye” and “kill or be killed” and “dog eat dog” world. In their, sadly: Natural Eyes. They lack remorse or empathy and are incapable of feeling guilt. We are the ones more civilized. They remained more natural. Closer to nature. Only we call them: Evil Eye Cult. They must be calling themselves: The Saturn, The Satan, The Nature Cult or Satan’s Eye (Saturn) Cult. Some of us are in between. Two worlds. Kind of sensing them. Sometimes. Surviving. Too. They aren’t true hunters or predators. They are worse. “They are sucking. Blood.” Bloodthirsty people.

We were watching videos at night on her Samsung tablet or my company iPad. She showed me the Silvano Agosti 1983 Italian interview with a little Italian boy called “D'Amore si vive, We Live of Love.” The boy was so cute, and his thoughts seemed similar to mine and Martina's. I was so deeply in love with her. The boy on the interview was just like what our own child would be, and we agreed and laughed. “We Live of Love.” What a coincidence! Living. By: Love. I knew the interview from before and she was surprised at how I knew about it. I showed her on my Instagram a picture of the boy I had recently taken a screenshot of and posted. With the subtitle at the right moment under his face: “Descubrir a la vida.” To discover life. Together. With his one and only girlfriend, as the boy explains. I told her multiple times that I was still unsure if she was real, or if it was all a dream; if I had only dreamed of her one night in the dark; if Pinto and I had invented her in my mind. She was a big fan of space, but I thought she liked the mystery behind the endless space with all its questions and secrets for us humans. I thought she liked the sky and space because she recently flew from Argentina to land in my arms. Martina and I were obsessed with Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy; we both knew all their stand-up comedies by heart. We kept replaying the best moments or faces that Chris or Eddie made. We had so much fun watching the same videos over and over that I couldn't believe it. Nobody else ever found the same moments or the same stand-ups as funny as Martina and I did. Nobody before or after found it so amusing. If I showed it to someone, they didn't understand why I was so excited about it or why racist jokes were so funny for an hour from one black comedian to the next. We were obsessed the way Eddie spoke about the „Zebra-Bitch of her dreams, her dream-wife who doesn’t know the concept of money”, saying “she should have an afro, like Angela Davis goes 'God damn it.'“ We were laughing so much. Sometimes I tickled her flat belly or her ribs and she was laughing so sweetly and so much that she couldn't stop. She was begging me to stop tickling her when I barely touched her. She said “No, no, no, no” so many times so quickly and cutely that I had to stop and kiss her; I couldn't resist her lips or her person, I had to kiss and hug her. We laughed so much at particular parts of Chris Rock's stand-up comedies that we could barely stop, almost as if we were tickling each other. We were laughing when Chris Rock was mocking Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony for singing ‘Welfare chariots’ such as „The First of the Month” or when he explained that the government hates rappers, but „only the good rappers get gunned down. They could find Saddam Hussein in a cave in Iraq but couldn't arrest anyone related to Tupac Shakur’s assassination, which didn't happen in a cave in Iraq but in Las Vegas, on the Strip, not one of those side streets, but in front of Circus Circus, after a Mike Tyson fight. Now how many witnesses do you need, to arrest somebody?” We were fascinated with Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy, and Chris Rock, but when I showed her Richard Prior, Doug Stanhope, Aries Spears, or George Carlin, she was no longer so impressed for some reason. Her favorite part perhaps was when Chris Rock talked about love and relationships. He said that „you never really been in love unless you have contemplated murder; unless you have practiced your alibi in front of the mirror, staring at a can of rat poison for 45 minutes straight, you haven't been in love. And the only thing preventing you from killing your significant other was an episode of CSI.” He said that relationships are hard and that in order for them to work, both people need to have the same focus, which is all about: her.

Journal Entry – April 17, 2013/May 10, 2013 Hollow. Numb. Empty. Nothingness. Are these feelings? Or are they just words in the English language? I ask these questions, because these words best describe how I feel right now as I sit here in my hospital room. The waiting game. My mind and thoughts swishing around my head, and my eyes burn feeling as if I am going to cry at any moment. Breakfast has come and gone. Vitals have been taken. And the five to ten minute check in with my assigned morning nurse has occurred. It has been three hours since I woke up, and I have twelve to thirteen hours to survive before I can go to sleep for the night. My day will be made up of one education group, lunch, dinner, and the remainder of the day and evening doing nothing but laying on the bed curled up in a ball depressed waiting for the time to pass looking at the clock hanging on the wall periodically wishing the time would move faster… on the flip side…a few days later…Writing in an attempt to keep my mind and head out of the skies. My heart feels as though it will beat outside of my chest, and my brain is on its own axis within my skull. I feel like I am on top of the world. I feel like I could do anything. I feel like I could write forever. I feel like my mind is on the spin cycle of a washing machine. Or, like I am hooked onto a pair of windshield wipers stuck on a speed mode. Although, my brain has spun faster than this and I feel that the meds are keeping the jerks at bay, I still feel that all too familiar whirling feeling. It is indescribable. It is hard to pinpoint. Some of it must be anxiety. Some of it must be that I am locked up like a caged animal ready to pounce. Then again, some of it must be nature. My brain misfiring and backfiring and causing itself to spin in every which direction at all sorts of speeds none of which are consistent or in the same direction. Inconsistency. Slow, fast, in between. A complete blur. I have trouble tracking. I have trouble focusing. I have trouble remembering…My mind is obsessing. I try to stop my mind from racing. I try to stop my eyes from darting across the page. I try to stop my legs from jittering. To no avail. It all starts again. My internal engine drives the show. It is as if I have a compulsion to move and dart and jerk. It is uncomfortable. My thoughts are scattered. My thoughts do not make sense. I find I have to edit my own thoughts or at least dig through the mess. I must navigate the thoughts to find the ones that fit together all in time before the memory loses focus and the tracking loses hold and “poof” the statement or thought is gone forever. Frustrating. I am intelligent. I feel stupid. My mind is in 5th gear and climbing at an unprecedented rate of speed. It is magical and amazing, but terrifying and exhausting. How to remain “normal” – is it possible? Is there a possibility of the insanity to stop? Is it possible for the cycle of speed to come to an end? I like the productivity, but the wreckage is too much to take. I just want a break. I want to be normal. I don’t want to be manic.

I should say that it was only for me that Marxism seemed over. Surely, I would tell G. at least once a week, it had to count for something that every single self-described Marxist state had turned into an economically backward dictatorship. Irrelevant, he would reply. The real Marxists weren’t the Leninists and Stalinists and Maoists—or the Trotskyists either, those bloodthirsty romantics—but libertarian anarchist-socialists, people like Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, Karl Korsch, scholarly believers in true workers’ control who had labored in obscurity for most of the twentieth century, enjoyed a late-afternoon moment in the sun after 1968 when they were discovered by the New Left, and had now once again fallen back into the shadows of history, existing mostly as tiny stars in the vast night sky of the Internet, archived on blogs with names like Diary of a Council Communist and Break Their Haughty Power. They were all men. The group itself was mostly men. This was, as Marxists used to say, no accident. There was something about Marxist theory that just did not appeal to women. G. and I spent a lot of time discussing the possible reasons for this. Was it that women don’t allow themselves to engage in abstract speculation, as he thought? That Marxism is incompatible with feminism, as I sometimes suspected? Or perhaps the problem was not Marxism but Marxists: in its heyday men had kept a lock on it as they did on everything they considered important; now, in its decline, Marxism had become one of those obsessive lonely-guy hobbies, like collecting stamps or 78s. Maybe, like collecting, it was related, through subterranean psychological pathways, to sexual perversions, most of which seemed to be male as well. You never hear about a female foot fetishist, or a woman like the high-school history teacher of a friend of mine who kept dated bottles of his own urine on a closet shelf. Perhaps women’s need for speculation is satisfied by the intense curiosity they bring to daily life, the way their collecting masquerades as fashion and domesticity—instead of old records, shoes and ceramic mixing bowls—and their perversity can be satisfied simply by enacting the highly artificial role of Woman, by becoming, as it were, fetishizers of their own feet.

Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day’s civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day. Night is very beautiful on this great beach. It is the true other half of the day’s tremendous wheel; no lights without meaning stab or trouble it; it is beauty, it is fulfilment, it is rest. Thin clouds float in these heavens, islands of obscurity in a splendour of space and stars: the Milky Way bridges earth and ocean; the beach resolves itself into a unity of form, its summer lagoons, its slopes and uplands merging; against the western sky and the falling bow of sun rise the silent and superb undulations of the dunes.

Over the years I’ve seen my body as an enemy to be conquered, deprived, and beaten into submission—that is, into the smallest possible shape and size. Occasionally I felt proud of its strength and curviness. But more often I saw it as a symbol of my personal weakness and shame, an outward manifestation of my inadequacies and failures. Catching sight of myself in a mirror—an experience I tried to avoid—could send me into a dark place for hours. I spent years wallowing in self-hatred because of the size of my thighs. My weight went up and down over those decades, from the low side of “normal” to mildly obese, but my level of despair and self-loathing stayed sky-high.

If God’s love is not the primary thing we see displayed at the cross, like fireworks exploding in the sky, then we’re not looking through the same lens that Jesus does.

The connoisseurs sniff, categorise, rank, price, demote. Celadons, the colour caught between green and blue, get sky after rain, and kingfishers, and iced water, all of which are lyrical.

On the way back to the house, he began to plan the seduction of his future wife, pausing to pluck her a single rose just as the sky opened up with a renewed downpour. They

The watershed came from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, the brainchild of Bill Borucki, another longtime denizen of Ames Research Center. Bill had been advocating for this planet-hunting mission for decades, seemingly forever. I remember him doggedly pushing the concept when I was a postdoc at Ames, twenty years before Kepler became a reality. His concept was to launch a small telescope into orbit just to obsessively stare at one little area of sky. He proposed that if we could precisely monitor the brightness of a large number of stars in one random area of the galaxy, watching for any flickering, we could tell if planets ever passed in front of any of them. A

The temple drum is as big as a barrel, and it sits on a tall wooden platform. When you play it, you stand in front, facing the stretched hide, trying to control your breathing, which is jumping all over the place because you are so nervous. The priests and nuns are chanting by the big altar, and you listen for your cue, which is getting closer and closer. Then, at just the right moment, you take a big breath, raise your sticks, draw back your arms, and You have to get the timing just right, and even though I was scared to make a mistake in front of all those people, I think I did a pretty good job. I really like drumming. While I’m doing it, I am aware of the sixty-five moments that Jiko says are in the snap of a finger. I’m serious. When you’re beating a drum, you can hear when the BOOM comes the teeniest bit too late or the teeniest bit too early, because your whole attention is focused on the razor edge between silence and noise. Finally I achieved my goal and resolved my childhood obsession with now because that’s what a drum does. When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you’re breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder. Jiko says that this is an example of the time being. Sound and no-sound. Thunder and silence.

Surely, Ji Sun thought, after their grief wore off some, the Americans would be jarred into a recognition that they were part of an entire planet of people, some of whom, her own parents included, had been facing fears of buildings falling out of the sky for many years. But it seemed September 11 had had the opposite effect, and the Americans she knew became more obsessed with their Americanness than ever before, with what America meant, what America would do, and what that would mean (for America). The rest of the world was mere audience, at best,

Fear can tie your wrists to the sky, letting you hang there suspended, wildflowers encaged. twilight obsessed.

Always let the smoke linger long enough for you to remember it's sharp perky charm in-between two set of nervous arms. Darling, I've lost underneath these sunless skies where connection hangs perfectly where your spit splits in two mid air and obsessed with death, workout after workout; eyes glued to hyper space, revealing your lace and mind altering vivid pace.

A category is defined by what is not included in it. And whats outside a given category, is in turn, part of a larger, more comprehensive category that exists outside of that. When someone is standing in front of me, I see a different aspect of that person depending on where I am standing. This holds true only when the other person and I are at the same level. If you are in an airplane in the sky and you look down at a person on the ground, that person looks like the same speck, no matter what angle you see him from. That's because he belongs now to a different category or level. Do you know why people are obsessed with categories? It's because they're afraid of what lies outside their own category. They're afraid of the fact that they are a mere speck. That's also why they simply consider everything outside their own category as alien and exclude it. Just as Procrustes did when he cut people to size in order to make them fit his bed. It is fear that drives Jack to chop down his own beanstalk, isn't it? And of course his fear ends up making him unable to climb up to the world beyond the clouds, ever again. Poor fellow! When people lock themselves into the category they call 'romance novels,' they end up reading Dostoyevsky as romance. Keep this in mind. The alien doesn't exist outside you, it's inside you.

I really like drumming. While I'm doing it, I am aware of the sixty-five moments that Jiko says are in the snap of a finger. I'm serious. When you're beating a drum, you can hear when the BOOM comes the teeniest bit too late or the teeniest bit too early, because your whole attention is focused on the razor edge between silence and noise. Finally I achieved my goal and resolved my childhood obsession with NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder. Jiko says that is an example of the time being. Sound and no-sound. Thunder and silence.

Another sort of landscape poetry is to be found in Wordsworth, for whom the title of poet of nature might perhaps be claimed. To him the landscape is an influence. What he renders, beyond such pictorial touches as language is capable of, is the moral inspiration which the scene brings to him. This moral inspiration is not drawn at all from the real processes of nature which every landscape manifests in some aspect and for one moment. Such would have been the method of Lucretius; he would have passed imaginatively from the landscape to the sources of the landscape; he would have disclosed the poetry of matter, not of spirit. Wordsworth, on the contrary, dwells on adventitious human matters. He is no poet of genesis, evolution, and natural force in its myriad manifestations. Only a part of the cosmic process engages his interest, or touches his soul—the strengthening or chastening of human purposes by the influences of landscape. These influences are very real; for as food or wine keeps the animal heart beating, or quickens it, so large spaces of calm sky, or mountains, or dells, or solitary stretches of water, expand the breast, disperse the obsessions that cramp a man’s daily existence, and even if he be less contemplative and less virtuous than Wordsworth, make him, for the moment, a friend to all things, and a friend to himself. Yet these influences are vague and for the most part fleeting. Wordsworth would hardly have felt them so distinctly and so constantly had he not found a further link to bind landscape to moral sentiment. Such a link exists. The landscape is the scene of human life. Every spot, every season, is associated with the sort of existence which falls to men in that environment. Landscape for Wordsworth’s age and in his country was seldom without figures. At least, some visible trace of man guided the poet and set the key for his moral meditation. Country life was no less dear to Wordsworth than landscape was; it fitted into every picture; and while the march of things, as Lucretius conceived it, was not present to Wordsworth’s imagination, the revolutions of society—the French Revolution, for instance—were constantly in his thoughts. In so far as he was a poet of human life, Wordsworth was truly a poet of nature. In so far, however, as he was a poet of landscape, he was still fundamentally a poet of human life, or merely of his personal experience. When he talked of nature he was generally moralizing, and altogether subject to the pathetic fallacy; but when he talked of man, or of himself, he was unfolding a part of nature, the upright human heart, and studying it in its truth.